Slashdot Mirror
Human Activity to Blame For 2003 Heatwave
Dirak writes "The temperatures of the summer of 2003 were almost undoubtedly the highest in Europe for over 500 years. New research shows how human influence, mainly fossil fuel burning, can be blamed for increasing the risk of such a heatwave and by the middle of this century every other summer could be even hotter than 2003."
What a great boon for real estate in Norway! Time to buy up those cottage properties.
No way. We humans caused it through what is known as the "environmental slashdot effect."
It involves burning servers heating the atmosphere and such...
This research has some serious flaws. It is essentially based on information for a single summer, the other information presented even contradicts the conclusions it draws. The estimations on temperature growth are not really supported by anything - I think it was written to grab headlines.
You might want to read though it and draw your own conclusions before you buy into the media hype.
Human Activity including exhaling has become a huge problem in europe. I propose we have some regulations on the number of exhales per day per human. When everyone exercises and everyone's breathing hard, the ENVIRONMENT is taking one for the team.
Bring on global warming!
What difference does a report like this really make? The people who don't believe in global warming as it is will only repeat their same excuses, and the people who do believe in global warming will offer a smug told you so. I personally believe something has to be done to curtail our fossil fuel usage (although I'm sure running out of it will certainly help in the future), but really, who will this report convince?
At last us Brits might get some decent summers!
They must have had some terrible green-house gas emissions 500 years ago!
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
The August 14, 2003 blackout on the U.S. East coast was due to a heat wave that caused the electrical system to be overloaded by too many air conditioners. Once that hit there was a drop in hydrocarbon emmisions fast.
by the middle of this century every other summer could be even hotter than 2003.
Excellent, it sure sucked where I live.
Didn't I hear a news report about Mt. Saint Helens just the other day... something about it putting out more C02 than all human civilization? Surely that has no influence on the atmosphere...
Measureing temps for only 50 years, or even 500 isn't enough of a sample. Now, if they had thousands of years of data, they would see that temps are always in flux. FWIW, humans are not the largest contributer of C02 into the atmosphere.
That's what I keep telling the kids, shut the window your letting the heat out.
...welcome our new oxygen-hating, heat-loving, carbon-dioxide breathing overlords from outer space.
I hope you find our athmosphere pleasantly breathable by now. If not, we will proceed with the exhaust of flammable fossils until you are happy.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Everyone hold your breath now!!
mmph
mmmmmph... gaak!
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
There is a simple and very effective way to fight the smog.
This is by building a chembuster
So, just build one and test it out.
what summer heatwave? on my holidays this year it rained so hard the village where we were staying was was washed into the sea!
seriously tho - i live in a place that is so unnacustomed to snow, that when it finally does get around to snowing it makes the front page of the local newspaper. my daughter said to me the other day "dad, remember when it snowed three years ago, there was enough snow for us to make a snowman!". and i can remember building snow forts as a boy. the weather is seriously messed up, we don't need science to tell us that it is.
... though personally I doubt it.
In the Kyoto Protocol, signed 1996, the many countries agreed to reduce their Co2 output below 95% of the output in the year 1990.
However, the biggest Co2 producer was among the countries that decided not to ratify the Protocol - the USA - while resposible for 25% of the Co2 produced worldwide, they decided that protecting the environment of the entire world was not an important issue.
Brief update: a few weeks ago Russia ratified the Protocol - way to go USA, even Russia has a higher priority on clima protection than you.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
And it's about time we started getting some of this global warming we've been promised for so long.
Just got to get a swimming pool and some high velocity lawn sprinklers now.
http://jfin.org/jFin pure java open source financial library
Remember, we can predict the flight of a rocket, even though can't resolve the individual quantum states of its constituent particles.
Message ends.
"Human activity to blame" != "Human activity can be blamed". The study does not prove human activity was the culprit (in fact they say it is possible it was not), but merely offers an explanation in which human activity was the cause.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Name an actual climatologist who seriously believes Kyoto will actually stop global warming.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
this one sounds differentt ions/grp6/question1375.html
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/frequent_ques
Seriously, this has been by far the coldest December in recent memory. It's been a while since I saw frozen puddles outside.
Russia's CO2 levels in 1990 were higher than they are today. So signing the treaty allows them to pollute more.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Well, I too doubt that it will have any larger effect, BUT first of all, a small effort is better than no effort. And this really might make it easier to get more effective programs under way.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
And actually claim responsibility and make amends for the vast amount of pollution that they are pumping out into the world's atmosphere?
You must be joking.
the Petroleum industry brainwashing force is strong luke
But the more I look at it, the more it all boils down to one poorly-trimmed tree.
this article is based solely on europe - its projections are vague at best: mainly, one would deduce, due to the fact that it only seems to cite data from 2003. perhaps it's intended to be alarmist by citing the human death factor, for the average joe who doesnt keep at all abreast of such issues - but other recent data, namely, the mauna loa anomaly and the international arctic science committee's report, appear to harbor much more catastrophic potentiality.
mauna loa is the big one to watch - with 2 years (some would argue even 1), we should know whether or not the major 2 year co2 increase is a fluke - or if it's a sign of runaway global warming (which many say we're technically in now, but accelerated to varying degrees depending on the source). this could trigger methane hydrate deposits to break free from river and seabeds by warming said bodies of water - and then, we're in anything from some really hot water (har) to aworld of shit. (note: latter link is distant future, but theoretically possible)
and they get paid to do it
Never send a Human to do a Machine's job.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Name an actual climatologist who seriously believes Kyoto will actually stop global warming.
Name an actual climatologist who seriously believes doing nothing at all is better than Kyoto.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Yes, this is proof that a butterfly that farts in China causes a tornado in Peru.
And I'm Santa Claus of course
The hotter things get, the more likely that people are going to install, and use air conditioners. Air conditioners dump their excess hear outside (warming the environment), and they require power, which most likely is some sort of thermal process. [both fossil fuels and nuclear dump waste heat]
And, if it's fossil fuels being used for energy, then there are extra greenhouse gases created, as well.
Yes, there may be strain on the power grid, but that's just something that humans will compensate for, and correct.
The only built in governor kicks in when the planet gets to the point that humans can no longer survive (or our food and water supplies can't keep up).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Someone's actually got 500 years worth of accurate temperature recordings?
Surely they must be on the web somewhere...
At least Russia has a stance.
SHAME ON YOU, USA.
It is quite striking that wherever there's a predominently american crowd, the gut reaction to anything global warming related is denial - even with a comparably smart crowd like this one.
I sincerely hope we're not at the brink of self inflicted global destruction. But are you guys so addicted to your gas guzzlers and inefficient houses that you refuse to even discuss your behaviour's more or less possible/probable consequences?
That's about 10 times as many people who died in the WTC on 11 September. When that happened, Al-Qaeda instantly became public enemy no. 1. But the oil-companies and car-manufacturers are getting away scot-free.
>On the example of the tobacco company lawsuits, I doubt such action would succeed
I thought that some Tobacco companies recently had to pay a fortune in a recent lawsuit?
Maybe a lawsuit on the polluting comapnies is what is needed if world governments aren't willing to take drastic action to curb pollution.
A lot of people have seen evidence of what are called chemtrails which are believed to behind weather modification. The US is keeping its weather mild and shifting to other countries. that is what the nutters say anyway.
No.
:-)
Since dark basements give no tan that can complain.
Hey, I'm a geek, what did you think I'd write.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Human Activity to Blame...
Too much "human activity" in Europe?! *nudge* *nudge*
I would ask you to consider whether your response if a result of having listened too much to talk radio.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I'm pretty sure that we haven't had accurate thermometers for that long.
Clear, Dark Skies
Why, if both have the exact same outcome? Are you hoping that if we try really hard we will get a gold star for effort?
"And this really might make it easier to get more effective programs under way."
No, because by effectively ruining the economy it will only ruin any chance we will be able to develop new technologies that will actually do something to help the problem.
These are things real policy makers weigh when determining whether or not to accept things like Kyoto.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Name an actual climatologist who seriously believes Kyoto will actually stop global warming.
Yeah, it's just another fake eyes-wide-shut protocol tossed by the greedy pigs of the so called civilized world, only to make belief they actually are trying to do something about global warming. That's what the kyoto protocol is, just a fake attempt to cover things up while the orgy and the destruction keep going.
And even this, as small as it is, the USA will not sign . FTS.
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
The hottest place (in temperature difference) on that map is the Auvergne and the Massif-central, in France. That is also one of the most _under_populated areas of France.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the world is more complicated that what your "Save the Earth" after school specials lead you to believe.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
It's difficult to prove causality in such a chaotic system as weather patterns. But according to a recent radio segment about this research, science can say that it is 'more likely than not' that human sources caused this heat wave... which incidentally tends to be the threshhold of proof for civil lawsuits. This opens up possibilities for bringing wrongful death suits against polluters for the victims of the heat wave.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
In the article, Myles Allen says "we cannot say which of the heatwaves were man-made and which were natural, but we can apportion blame for the change in risk."
A more appropriate headline would be "Humans Likely Responsible for Increased Heatwave Risk". But no, we have to be sensationalist and scare people by blaming the "hot weather" on SUVs.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
You know Kyoto isn't about global warming or the environment. It is about tying developed countries hands industrially, while undeveloped countries, like France, have more room to grow.
The reason the US won't sign it is because it is an unfair treaty that punishes US industry in particular. Please stop pretending it is about the environment.
And the other explanations are what exactly? I'm sick of this head-in-the-sand "it might not be us so let's do nothing" approach.
I am however, very familiar with how large corporations do PR campaigns. It always strikes me as spooky how a large corporations sees a profit problem, hires a PR agency giving it millions of dollars, whereas the PR agency does things such as write bogus reports from "independent" institutes saying whatever the company wanted (Linux was not written by Linus Torvalds, smoking tobacco is not bad for you, whatever...), as well as a media campaign which includes commercials, the "independent" institute people going on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and if they're lucky, the major corporate news stations as well.
For example, I've been tracking Wal-Mart and the Walton family's giving in this regard. Two of the things they try to do is privatize education and create what we call "right-to-work-for-less" laws. I care more about the latter than the former, but I've been researching the former more lately. The Walton family is obsessed with privatizing education, giving massive amounts of money to efforts to do so, including giving $10,492,047.38, just in 2003, to the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation America. They've also given millions in the last year alone to a variety of such education privatziation organizations, as have the foundations of other billionaires and millionaires such as the Olins, Scaifes and so forth. One of their jobs is to "astroturf", e.g. make fake it appear that a fake grassroots campaign exists to privatize education. Many of the privatize education groups have black and Hispanic faces at the top of the organization to talk to the press. These foundations also create scholarship foundations (for private schools only) to put a humanitarian face on the effort, and the scholarship front of this massive effort draws in people like Charles Rangel, Will Smith and people like that. These people are very clever and you wouldn't believe how tens of millions of dollars from the Wal-Mart billionaires alone can change the public discourse. And of course, the Olins, Scaifes and so forth are involved with this, even Bill Gates is peripherally involved.
My point is to stress how big money can generate all this talk you hear about privatization of education, charter schools, how our schools are failing and the need for tests and so forth. I am not deeply concerned with this relative to other issues, I'm just using it as an example, and I have been following it lately. I've been more concerned with Wal-Mart and the Walton Family and other businesses very successful campaign to do away with labor laws, or create bad labor laws around the country. They passed a right-to-work-for-less law in Oklahoma a few years ago, mostly by focusing on the massive evangelical churches in Oklahoma and preying on job and unemployment fears, the law passes something like 50.1% to 49.9% on a referendum. They're pushing these laws all over the country - they're even trying in Pennsylvania which is scary, because one thinks of Pennyslvania as a union state. Anyhow big money combined with a public which is more apt to be accepting Jesus as their personal savior in evangelical churches then seeking rank-and-file run militant labor unions can lead to all sorts of wacky laws passing.
Which is why the attitude on Slashdot about global warming scares me. Admittedly I am not an expert on chemical reactions with fossil fuels. I only have seen this show before: some group with no axe to grind and is objective as one can be says there is a problem (tobacco causes cancer, whatever...). Big corporations hire lawyers, PR firms, their own "experts" blah blah blah attacking this effort. Soon they're putting commercials on TV, catch phrases and so forth. Soon I hear the same thing coming out of people's mouths at lunchtime, they're complaining about trial lawyers or so
Does endless beating of hurricanes on Florida few months back tell you anything.. Although this artice might not be perfect it doesnt mean that we can totally dismiss our part in polluting the air. Its just takes some people (or nations) longer to understand that actions have consequence (hint USA and Australia), so when one summer there will only be hurricanes hitting Florida and not so much sun, then they will maybe start to think.. but too late..
I know you're being sardonic and perhaps even attempting humour, but the exhalations of humans could easily be balanced by the "inhalations" of plants. We just need enough healthy flora per fauna. Sadly, we're destroying the flora at an alarming rate also.
Unsustainably, perhaps?
>>
In other words, we made up a computer simulation, with factors we believe create the world. In our simulation, we created factors that we believe equal Mankind's Activities.
Then we run the new, modified simulation. We run the unmodified simulation. We compare the results of both of our made-up, simulations. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't.
THEREFORE, it must be global warming. If it is global warming, it must be Mankind's Activities.
Well I too have prepared and run some simulations. They ALWAYS conclusively show that anyone named Peter Stott or Myles Allen who is somekind of quasi-scientist, is a pathetic moron.
THEREFORE, we need some real scientists to study this.
For example, if it is GLOBAL warming, why only study Europe?
Wasn't it hot enough in other places so you're study data isn't front loaded? I mean if we compare the temperatures at the South Pole in winter to the Sahara desert in summer, we can conclude that the ice will melt Real Soon Now, or that the Sahara will freeze solid.
I agree that Mankind's Activities include burning fossil fuels and raising cows. Burning creates CO2, cows Methane, both green-house gases.
BUT burning creates energy, and cows create food.
>>So whose's first to give up food and energy?
>>Which 3rd Nation do we deny food and energy?
>>Let's devote our skills and talent to build better energy economies, and stop trying to become "scienctific" facists. Conservation if fine, but 2nd and 3rd world counties can't afford environmental controls.
China and India spew more bad stuff than the rest of the world combined.
Bad science like this will lead to the deaths of billions in China and India if restrictions are placed - or worse, War over resources.
And not one mention about THE SUN. Every "it must be Global Warming from Mankind's Activities" "study" I have ever seen ignores the HOT GLOWING BALL OF FIRE IN THE SKY which throws more heat at the entrie EARTH than billions and billions of cow farts and automobiles. But lets not discuss THE SUN cause all by it's lonesome it could be the real cause of Global Warming, and if it is, we are all out of work!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unfortunately, as far as the politicans are concerned, all the options that have any chance of actually being implemented seem to be merely different ways of doing nothing.
The records don't reliably go back any further than that dipshit.
There's just been a programme about global warming on one of the national talk radio stations in the UK and the expert presented what seemed to be a precise and fact-based argument about why global warming is cyclic and how humankind has not made any significant difference.
I won't bore you with the details, but he did discuss the industrial revolution, CO2 emissions, mini-ice ages etc. and did not come across as a crackpot - I forget his name but I believe he was a professor.
This all seems to show that there are many theories and you can take your pick of which one suits your standpoint - it's like other debates on the health benefits of wine, coffee, chocolate etc. next week we'll all be saying the opposite - mind you, I'm still never going to eat at McDonalds!!
AT&ROFLMAO
There'll always be. Whom do you think those pro-fossil-fuel researches sponsored by big oil companies were done by?
Every now and then, there will be some so-called climatologist come up with his/her research saying "it's normal, it happened before, no evidence, nothing to prove, etc, etc." No matter how flawed their researches are, they have fund and their conclusions goes to the public.
The same had happened to tabacco industy and it took a heck of evidence and law suits to shut them up.
And now there are MS-sponsored research saying Windows TCO blah blah blah.Anyone remember the infamous Ken Brown?
There will always be souls to be bought. Big company's money is the one to blame.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
http://www.junkscience.com/
Besides Bush that is...
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Here is the Petagon Climate Report) which was leaked through The Observer.
An interview whith one of its athors (Doug Randall) is here.
The BBC has some reactions from scientists on it.
-- Qu'est-ce que la propriété intellectuelle? It is thought control.
The big concern, Kyoto-wise, is China. A nation long famous for its citizens using bicycles, China's economic growth is expected to bring with it a rise in fossil-fuel-burning industrial factories... and automobile usage.
It's just kind of odd that a nation with a billion-plus population poised to become an industrial juggernaut gets a free pass on Kyoto.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Good thing we bought that swimming pool, it'll come to good use if summer temperatures are bound to be higher in the following years.
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
Guess what in 2004 is the biggest POLLUTER, and emitter of "greenhouse" gases in Washington State? It emits several times what the next biggest polluter does (a coal power plant).
/ 20 02105397_volcano01m.html
a rs un.html
Guess?
Give up?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews
Mt. St. Helens. And it hasn't even had a MAJOR eruption yet! So, how are we going to stop volcanoes from violating the sainted Kyoto treaty?
For every scientist who predicts global warming doom and gloom, you will find as many who say that it isn't happening, or that human activity isn't a significant factor. Indeed there is ONE REASON for global warming and cooling... The Sun.
Even a relatively stable middle aged star like our Sun doesn't have constant output. There are some who think that ice ages and warming periods are caused by variations in the Sun's output. Indeed, as the Sun gets older, it's output on average INCREASES as the nuclear fusion reaction expands to get more fuel...
Speaking of ice ages, did you know we are barely 10,000 years out of our last one, and may still be warming FROM it? 10,000 years are mere seconds in geologic time.
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/v
Now I expect to get moderated down to hell.
Corporatism != Free Market
There is MORE CO2 produced by just NORTHERN China's coal mine fires, started by bad mining practices, than the entire US produces, EACH YEAR.
But since China and the Kyoto Protocol treat coal mine fires differently, we have bad science become bad government policy.
The we have bad government policy become somekind of USA is bad because we don't march to the sea with the other lemmings.
We do want to protect the environment of the entire world - why doesn't your goverment adopt the tough environmental standards we have had for decades? Clean air, clean water, etc etc - Kyoto is bad for you, bad for your country.
That 5% means CharonX must lose his/her job and die or there will be no drop in emissions in your country!
You think your part of the world is better because some herd of Pointy Haired Bureaucrats signed a piece of paper? Think again on how this will actually play out. Which 5% of your nation is going to just STOP?
way to go USA, even Russia has a higher priority on clima protection than you.
For those of you that found the parent to be insightful, please go read a newspaper, and get an education. Russias ratification of Kyoto had nothing to do with them trying to be good shepherds of the environment, and everything to do with money, and their admittance to the WTO.
Just another day in Paradise
Yeah yeah, well all know that humans are some of the earth's lil' inner heating problems, and we can fix it if we would.
Hydrogen car is here, and rape oil fuel, actually a engineering student once made a gasoline engine that could run 100km/litre, that was mysteriously sold for some millions to an unknown unexisting company.
And with Oil being one of the bigger things on this planet, that makes money go around, I dont think any government or company would be interested to say "let's leave the fossils down there and start using water" at least not until the last drop of oil has been vapoured into heat and polluted air.
America consumes the most resources in the world.
America pollutes the most in the world.
America will gunhoe into war, but won't stand on a united front to fix the problems very much contributed to by that of America.
You guys can keep deceiving yourselves with hollow "We are the good guys" rhetoric, but actions show truth.
And its becoming more and more clear to many, that America is a country not about trying to archive any sort of global stability, but that of a country with black and white materialistic, selfish values...
A country that thinks Global interest is American Interest.
The magazine Science posted this article today. To quote its conclusion for those who can't RAFA:
"there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen."
http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Cult ure/archive/200412/CUL20041202a.html
The Slashdot headline is wrong (no surprise).
The linked story about the study says the research indicated that human activity increased the likelihood of the 2003 heatwave. That is not equivalent to a cause-and-effect relationship.
If Slashdot had the guts to practice real journalism, it would have told us who paid for this study. But, they won't do that because they're too damned opportunistic to do anything but lean on the work of others.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
i took the title to mean 200 million europeans doing star-jumps warmed the earth...
this sig no verb
Can you send me the several liters of LSD it would require to think this thing works? Then I'd be glad to build one and test it out.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Bush can't save the dollar, so don't expect him to save anything else. Bush also thinks that Iraq had has or maybe still has (up it's sleeve) Weapons of mass destruction. and Bush thinks that marrage is about religion so gays can't get married.
And unfortunately the US political system has this horrible idea of putting all there eggs in one basket called the presidency.(so much for democracy!), so don't expect the US to do anything for at least another 4 years.
Bush:
I spoke to God last night and he told me of the Axis of Evil, how the Gays are dambed and how i should use up all the fostle fules so that the evolutionists can't disprove creationism.
Doctor:
If only he was taking acid I'd feel a hell of a lot safer.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Bring on nuclear winter. That will even things up nicely.
the world and our children are in a lot of children. I completely agree with you!.
Correction: now that Russia's economy has faltered and meeting the Kyoto targets will essentially be cost-free, Russia has made climate change a priority. Back in the day when Kyoto was signed, and Russia would have had to make some policy changes to meet it, they weren't interested.
This was published in Nature, which is one of the two most prestigious science journals (the other one is Science). It is based on climate models that predict that the probability of heat waves like that of 2003 has doubled due to greenhouse gas emissions. (According to the same models, by 2050 about 50% of European summers are going to be like the 2003 or worse.)
If we suppose the probabilities from the models are correct, the attribution of part of blame to greenhouse gases is correct, just like one can claim some lung cancers are caused by tobacco.
I have already seen speculation about the possible use of the results in courts against the polluters.
What exactly do you mean by "the orgy and the destruction"? That brings to mind people running wide-eyed through the country side, burning oil & coal willy-nilly as they go.
There are very few people on this rock that don't think it's better to choose an environmentally friendly option if one exists. But people aren't going to bend over backwards & spend billions of dollars to address global warming. And just because you think it's important enough to spend thousands of your dollars on doesn't mean you should force other people to do the same.
I would rather see governments spend money on engineering research and technology than Kyoto protocols. The only way people will adopt cleaner solutions is if those solutions don't cost them too much more (or cost less!) than what they are using now and/or offer other benefits. And that will happen through new technologies.
Hybrids are a good here-and-now solution. People love them. They're lining up to buy the new Accord hybrid. They feel good about helping the environment, save a little money each week on gas, and get some extra torque & horsepower at the low end. Not bad. That's a great example of technological solution that people will adopt. We need more of this stuff. Of cousre, fusion would be nice.
The article was on EUROPE not AMERICA, so unless you plan on blamming America for warming up all of Europe. The article lacks anything close to an actual scientific study with DATA and other such meaningful tidbits. Considering the fact that human CO2 emmissions worldwide are at worst 50% of the total CO2 emmitted and that America is at worst 25% of that number followed buy SUV owners being responsible for at worst 5% of that even smaller number you really need stop with the hate.
10 000 in France http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3181941.st m
Germany and Spain only counted heat deaths as those directly attributable to heat, rather than as a statistical excess (i.e. in the hundreds). The general figure of 20 000 now widely accepted for Europe summer 2003 must be taken as one of the highest meteorological morbidities of the last 50 years.
Many environmental scientists have suggested that global warming will actually make Norway colder. This is because Norway is relatively warm considering its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. If the world warms up, the gulf stream disappears (or shifts), and Norway gets colder.
Thats the theory anyway...
Also, Norwegain cottages are at a premium due to hytte culture- so dont expect any bargains there!!
"The temperatures of the summer of 2003 were almost undoubtedly the highest in Europe for over 500 years."
Then what caused the extreme tempertures 500 years ago? Did a bunch of Europeans dig a bunch of oil wells in Russia and set6 them on fire for a few decades?
Also, did fossil fuels cause the summer of 2004 to be so cool?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
For example, the arguments that got everyone so mad during the presidential election, like the Swift Boat Veterans' claims and Moveon.org etc.'s counterclaims, were personal attacks, and as everyone on Slashdot noted at the time, irrelevant to policy decisions in the 21st century.
I'm not going to argue with your issues-- this thread is getting long enough already-- but I think you'll have more impact in the future if you said, for example, that privatising schools is bad because it will amount to government support of religious education, rather than that it's bad because Wal-Mart likes it.
To be honest, I think your attitude is more similar (though less sinister) to the evangelicals than you know.
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
I wonder how long it will take for the US to make a law that gives immunity against lawsuits to power plants and automakers for their part in generating the C02?
In USA the climate protects YOU!
...astroturfers are hired to log onto Slashdot to change our opinion.
Some people get paid to post here? I gotta get me some of that!
Ask any Oil executive. They will point you to a stack of whitepapers from unbiased, independent research studies they have paid for^H^H^H^H done on the subject. All this global warming is coming from cowshit (methane). Everyone knows that. Eat more burger, cool the planet. Don't take away my Hummer.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
But were they 5% of 1990 levels?
Speaking of Science, which like I said is one of the top two science journals and even from U.S. :), has an editorial with the title The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change --- well worth reading.
The original Nature article about summer 2003 blame is reviewed here, reading the article itself requires a subscription either from you personally or from your institution. Possible speculation about juridical consequences is also there.
And i don't think either it's about protocol costing too much or investing in new technologies. This last point is especially flawed since the last 50 years sure prove that investements in new tech do not naturally go towards ecological improvement unless it's enforced by law and state
All in all, it's the logics of production for profit which is to blame for ecological disaster. And while the world is dying in wars, malaria (heard about novartis not complying with WHO agreement ? see this for a very mild point of view ), working children, et al what exactly is making it all worthwile ? The abillity to drive a S.U.V. fo 1% of the population ? The extra-fat & land-destroying mega burger menu ?
Bah .. i don't even blame the people. I blame the ruling elite. And the banks.
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
Where are all the "Dear Abbey" letters asking what Open Source software every geek should install on their parents' computers for Christmas? Tis' the season you smelly turds...
In case people are interested, you can find the actual article in the most recent issue of Nature (abstract is free but you pay for the full text). Also, there were stories about this on NPR and in the Washington Post.
Some of these stories stress that if the study is seen as proof that the preponderance of the evidence points to fossil fuels as the source of deadly heat waves, then people may begin trying to bring civil suits against fossil fuel producers and distributors on that basis. That seems far fetched to me, since it seems like the you'd have to prove the specific corporation you're suing is responsible, but who knows? It would seem to be a very liberarian solution to the problem of global warming, though, so /. oughta like it.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
No, I would like suggest that you drop you LSD habit and start taking care of yourself instead of your pusher.
Without the actual report an knowledge of the models, the only thing I gather from the /. referenced and nature articles is that the 'urban heat island' correlates the same if it's windy or not windy. Other than that, what's new?
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Regardless of whether global warming is real (I happen to think it is but it's not as bad as it's made out to be) we still have to invest money in alternative energy technology because oil and to a lesser extent coal isn't going to last forever.
More over it would be nice to breath in air that wasn't polluted with fumes from cars which are causing untold numbers of premature deaths.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I'll agree with the author and put it simply this way.
People, stop believing and admiring the opinion of the news anchors who know almost NOTHING about the scientific process. Idiots watching Fox, CNN, MSNBC provide to much authority to these brainless hacks who take good science and absolutly butcher it. The main stream news media are into info-tainment. Stop using them as your critical analysis providers and turn on your own brains.
In Canada the other day the MSNBC employees were discussing how they need to drop a bomb on a Palestinian protest that was occuring. It was downright racist and NEVER should have been allowed on TV. Due to Canada's anti-hate laws if they can, this guy might get 5 years prison. I'm hoping he gets nailed!
It amazes me that people so poorly understand science that they take the word of a 'news' person over a peer reviewed journal.
The stupidity of the average human is astounding.
James L
1. There is a reasonable, well balanced discussion of the whole global warming issue at
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/
2. The Kyoto protocol is not the only approach to solving the problems of global warming. Also, keep in mind that treaties of this sort are motivated more by politics than by science. As Jerry Pournelle said, "regulatory science is to science as deer hunters are to deer."
3. People often have a serious lack of imagination. When discussing global warming, pollution, and so on, what you hear the most is "we have to stop doing X, or do less of Y". Instead of trying to tell people to give up luxuries to which they have become accustomed, which is clearly going to generate much resistance, it is better to look for cleaner ways of supporting the same lifestyle. Moreover, the focus seems to be on limiting the growth of warming. Nobody is discussing the possibility of counteracting it, such as by finding ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere or seed the atmosphere with reflective particles to reduce the solar energy input. Tough problems demand imagination and creativity.
Other options include:
It saddens me that the US has chosen the last option.
There are a lot of things that have happened to the earth in the past that don't seem to effect things in the long run, after all we are here. OTOH, how most of us are to survive a major climatic flip-flop isn't exactly clear. In any case, significan atmospheric changes can happen much quicker than 10,000 years. Changes can happen in as short as 50.
Many people have theorised that some serious weather disturbances are due to CO2 build-up. These people do not represent any single interest group and they are extremely worried. They aren't just looking at the 2003 data, they are going back over time. The buildup of CO2 is noticeable worldwide since the advent of the industrial age, more so since the advent of the internal combustion engine. The speed of change is unique.
I guess I am just used to the southern US climate.
I am guessing that if I picked a year at random (for which they have records) they could not determine what the temperature was for that summer (without consulting the records that is).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It is complete bullshit to be accusatory of the USA in that manner. The USA does deserve to be blamed for not doing more than anyone else, but you need to recognize that, by signing the Kyoto protocol, the USA would be doing far more and suffering far more than anyone else would.
Russia and most of Europe actually do not need to do anything to comply. They can just sit on their asses and brag about being compliant. The USA and Australia, two major polluters and evaders of Kyoto would need to make enormous strides to comply with Kyoto.
Don't claim that Russia has some higher priority here. They're not doing a damn thing by signing because their country has been in collapse so long that they don't cause that much pollution now.
"MIT: Global Warming Bombshell. A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics" http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_ muller101504.asp
http://www.techcentralstation.com/102704F.html
http://www.oism.org/oism/lecture/viewer/lecturepla yer.htm
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
[ironic mode on]
Talking about Global Warming is very unpatriotic in the US!
Remember there are no such thing as
- Global Warming
- AIDS
- Teen Pregnancy because of bad (bigotry) or non existent education
- dead US soldiers in Iraq
- millions of americans without health care
But there are things such as:
- WMD in Iraq
- Bush talks to God
- Al Quaida - Saddam H. connection
- Need for automatic weapons to protect from evil arab TeRrORiSts on US soil
- love for the US troops from the friendly and peaceful people from Iraq
[ironic mode off]
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Yes, it would hurt for you USAians to comply with Kyoto but then you bastards have been hiding your heads in the sand and ignoring the problem as you are some of the biggest polluters and contributers to global warming on the planet.
And yes Russia is hoping that the carbon credits will prop up its economy, but we thought you USAians believed in all that good free market shit which is why Kyoto was structured that way in the first place.
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
On the other hand, rejection of the protocol by the US has nothing to do with money ?? I prefer a country signing it for money than ignoring it for the same reasons.
believe parent may be using "Imperial" pints -- England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, et al -- rather than the somewhat smaller pints we colonials use.
[this sig has been trunca
I don't beleive anything from these scientists anymore. They have been wrong so many times, a reasearcher from so university that I can't remember right now, found that the sun is responsible for most of the green house effect. Only about ~5% was from humans. In addition a good example is Mt. St. Helens that has been erupting for 3 months now. Apparently it has dumpt as much sulfer-dioxide in the air in those 3 months, as California over the past 3 years.
People need to wake up and realize that the earths climate does change, and it does change rapidly at points in times (say over 100 - 500 years). Let me give you an example, they say in the US over the past 100 years the average temp has risen by 1 degree. That sounds horrible in it self, until you realize that all the tracking stations are in major cities, and over the last 100 years what has happened to cities. YES, they have grown, and by growing the laid more pavement, and pavement keeps more heat trapped, than does dirt.
This is just european liberals trying to get money for the new year to continue their useless research. That is why this was released, I do agree that the temp is getting higher for seasons, and colder for others, but in fairness we don't have anything to compare our current flucuations to. This is probably totally normal.
One last thing: We have to realize that the earth has lived through much more than humans. It lived through a molton lava period, it lived through a period where the sky was black from an astroid hitting the planet and whipping out a ton of life, it lived through an ice age. So maybe we are just reaching a peek in the temp levels before then start moving back down to an ice age.
Man, the guy that cooked that up must be the "pusher"!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I'm sure the Earth has sustained worse temperature fluxations. I mean, look at cows and how much methane they produce. Now think about dinosaurs -- its like a cow the size of a school bus. Imagine how much greenhouse gases dinosaur farts created! And look what happened to the dinosaurs, they turned out just fine.....oh crap!
SIGFAULT
Eh? Human activities are to blame?
Causation, yes. But blame, no. It was one of the most enjoyable summers I've ever had. The weather was finally tolerable, and we could grow vegetables in our garden longer.
I for one would like to thank human activity for thawing out my summers a little.
So? Ok, so Russia ratified this treaty for non-environmental reasons. What exactly does this change? US is still behind. And for economical reasons, so it's even less ethical. Of course, I'm being stupid talking about ethics in political context...
I read about a psychology experiment at a university. The subjects were asked to wait in a small anteroom outside the room where the experiment proper was taking place. The anteroom was equipped with a few ordinary-looking chairs, lights and pictures on the walls. Unbeknown to the subjects, the anteroom was also equipped with video cameras -- and the experimenter had a console which allowed pictures to be knocked down, chairs to collapse and light bulbs to blow at the flick of a switch. {Also plenty of spares so the anteroom didn't look too much like a war zone!} The experiment consisted of observing the subject in the anteroom, operating a self-destruct button at an appropriate time {e.g. bringing down a picture when the subject approached it} -- and then calling the subject into the room for debriefing. Most of the subjects ended up blaming themselves for the damage.
There is also the case of a DJ on a radio station in the Midlands who was playing a rather old, worn record one day, and the needle skipped. Several listeners rang in to apologise for jostling their sets and causing the record to skip!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Also note that the year 2003 had one of the highest amounts of sun spot activity in recent history. High sun spot activity has significant effects on the global climate. As the end of this article says, "There's more to global climate change than just carbon dioxide."
Love sees no species.
"Why, if both have the exact same outcome? Are you hoping that if we try really hard we will get a gold star for effort?"
It won't be the exact same. It will be slightly different. I think "small effort" also implies a "small change".
No, because by effectively ruining the economy it will only ruin any chance we will be able to develop new technologies that will actually do something to help the problem.
It won't neccessarily ruin the economy. Since there will be fines on corporations for bad environmental practices, they would hire scientists to find more efficient (and therefore less expensive, which is the bottom line for the company) ways to use more environmental techniques. This means that the jobs lost from the Kyoto agreement could come back in the form of environmental research jobs, representing another shift towards more high-tech jobs that we've been seeing in the last 100 or so years.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
well what a damn suprise. im 16 and not going to bother with driving lessons since well all be using transporters soon enough beam me to college skotty
*smokes some more*
Yeah, the U.S. should sign this yet China is exept. Whose most likely to put in place emissions reductions? The U.S. has already cut it's emissions in half over the last 30 years or so. BTW, this thread is about Europe's summer but I suppose that's our fault too.
I call bullshit on this report. It makes absolutely no sense. Did we Americans also create our massive mild-temperature spell here in the heartland like the Europeans allegedly did for their warm-spell? I didn't think so. If I was a sensationalistic environmentalist I would cite this year's Kansas summer temps as evidence that we're rapidly moving into a devestating ice age and whip the public into a frenzy over the impending (wait for it...) doom.
This global warming thing is BS. Even if it was true, it won't be Kyoto that stops it it will stop when the oil runs out.
Global warming people are just socialists pretending to be greens. They want to ride a populist environmental scare-mongering bandwagon. This is so they can use our fear to gain power: global and unaccountable power, socialist style.
Big brother says: "if you don't buy global warming, that's a thought crime. Obey me by signing my Kyoto treaty and by the way anything else I tell you to do or think."
What's even more staggering are some of the Slashdot users who obviously have little-to-no clue but pretend to know everything. These people give off knee-jerk reactions without even reading the article once. No evidence or even logic is needed, scientific reports must be wrong here.
One of the funniest replies I've read in this thread claimed that researchers cannot get funding unless they shout "Doomsday is coming". Not even the most imaginary hypothetical example is cited - the report is simply made up by some liberal asshole. And that's even modded insightful. And then for each and every such knee-jerk reactions you get another opposite knee-jerk that Bush and co. are to blame for global warming.
Reading Slashdot on such topics makes you think the world is really only divided into two kinds of persons - the coporate man/politicians and the crazy gaians. Every scientist has a conspiracy in mind, every environmental research is biased and meaningless. If someone is thinking about starting a business I'd suggest selling tinfoil hats here, the Slashdot crowd simply cannot resist it.
I'd like to suggest first that even if corporations like Wal-Mart are evil, they might still be right about privatising schools or lowering the minimum wage. Assuming an idea is bad because one of its proponents is bad is called the ad hominem fallacy.
From what I understand, he's criticizing the method, i.e. using money to fund a fake grassroots movement to push an agenda so that it doesn't look like it's coming from a corporation.
While I can not stand W. or his agenda, I find myself in agreement with him on this one. If this is going to work, it has to involve not just the large producers but future and near future producers. That means China, India, and Mexico.
But it would be far better if he showed even the slightest interest in this and was even trying to get these other countries involved rather than making it look like another excuse/lie
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Only if there were more people like you in America... you are totally right-on! The hatred against environmentalists by even the educated is worrysome. How can we effectively battle corporate brainwashing?
Meh.
Well, that's hard to say. Peer reviewed journals from that period do not publish their tables of contents that far back on the Web (Nature, for example, goes back to 1980), so someone would have to go hit a physical library to get you that citation. Perhaps you know of an online index of such documents that I don't... I rarely need documents older than 20 years in my line of work.
HOWEVER, we can be fairly certain that such articles do exist. Phrenology was a very popular theory, and the scientific community would have welcomed papers on the subject.
The real topic was that peer review does not guarantee correctness, only mainstream scientific respect. That's a decent generic baseline, but saying, "this guy on slashdot made a typo, so he can't have seen a flaw in this research," doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The current environment (no pun intended) in the scientific community surrounding global warming is hostile to any information (not even theories, but raw data) which suggests that humans may not play a significant role in said warming. In that environment, you are going to see some junk science published in respected journals. This happens every time there is a major political topic dominating a field.
Global warming may well be human induced, I have no idea, but I can tell you with certainty that we're going to have to dig ourselves out of at least 20 years of heavily biased research before we understand how. One example: scientists discovered that forest fires that burn hotter now due to fire prevention efforts over the last 100 years are able to burn permafrost and release HUGE amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapor (greenhouse gasses). Upon discovering this, the immediate reaction was, "well, this is probably reponsible for more greenhouse emmisions than humans, but we can't know what would tip the balance." There is no objectivity in this field and all data comes with a set of preconceptions that are going to be very hard to break through.
There is no easier way for the rest of the socialist world to regulate American economic activity than via the total farce of human influenced global warming.
Air conditioners, Radiators (in cars, industry), heat from cooking. We are wasting loads of energy in the form of heat.
We have ways to recover some heat from wasted water like this
Now imagine how much heat you could get from water-cooled server rooms. That could go straight to the hot water tank but instead goes down the drain.
Heat pumps like this would prevent all that heat from going up in the air and changing the weather.
What is needed are updated building codes (Hint: start with big houses and restorants for the grey water heat recovery)
Instead, we go liberate some oil to keep the status quo...
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
In related news, hippies everywhere are rushing to blame the entire problem on American decadence and Hummers, despite the proliferation of 18-wheelers and coal energy plants in the world. Film at 11, after the latest ELF attack.
The possibility of denial shows this can't be science. (1) Real science doesn't lead to a lot of screaming. (2) You can't republish the same result ("humans responsible for warming") 50 times. Example: new research finds human genom takes form of double helix... (3) Opponents are termed "wrong" not "bad".
Are you actually comparing murder (via "environmental" factors) to natural death due to old age?
That's a mighty slippery slope, there mister.
But are you guys so addicted to your gas guzzlers and inefficient houses that you refuse to even discuss your behaviour's more or less possible/probable consequences?
I'm an American. I drive a VW Golf TDi (diesel) which gets 45mpg. Since moving into my house, I have upgraded the old AC to a very high-efficiency heat-pump with a computerized "set-back" thermostat. The water heater that I recently installed is very well insulated and is microprocessor controlled to minimize energy usage by analyzing demand and adjusting temperature accordingly. I use compact flourescent lights in most ceiling fixtures and lamps throughout the house. I have motion sensors on outdoor lights and my driveway light comes on only at night.
Not all Americans are like the ignorant buffoons on Slashdot who deny the existence of, or man's contribution to, global warming. Many of us are capable of rational thought and recognize that global warming is real and that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that it is largely due to man-made greenhouse gases. Remember that, in 2000, more Americans voted for Al Gore than for George Bush and that Al Gore was a staunch supporter of the Kyoto Treaty and environmental legislation to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
It got hot. A lot of French people died.
Tell me the bad part?
Liberty uber alles.
IMMEDIATELY suspend all shipments of BARRY WHITE MUSIC!!! The planet depends on it!!!
second society
If you think this is anything other than a money grab by socialist politicians (CO2 taxes are next) and companies seeking an excuse to raise prices and/or to relocate, you're sadly mistaken.
Clever politicians and companies see the possibilities. Stupid (== socialist) politicians think there will be ecological benefits, and think they can score by blaming industry.
In the end, Europeans will suffer as their standard of living plummets. If you spend money on something that's at best inconsequential but more likely counterproductive, you're less well off.
In Texas it was cool and rainy, not warm at all. I disagree!
This has to be, one of the most interesting things I've seen posted to slashdot in a long while. If true, it paints a very grim picture of corporate greed making inroads to even the strongest bastions of free thought. As much as this community is accused of having herd mentality, I find that there are a lot of herds to listen too, and one is bound to be more correct ;)
Keep up the good work. As long as you're looking in the right places for the truth behind things, it's ok to sound a little tinfoilish.
Success is as dangerous as failure, hope as hollow as fear.
The standard example of that is the BSE debacle in the UK. Fantastic claims were made as to the projected death rate from CJD, which have simply not materialised. The purported vCJD, claimed to come from exposure to BSE, has risen amongst people with little exposure, while remaining as rare a being struck by lightening (and at levels consistent over the past few decades) in groups who _are_ exposed. In fact, allowing for the fact that CJD is now more accurately diagnosed due to far greater awareness of the condition and better diagnostic tests, it's possible the rate is actually falling.
This didn't of course stop people from claiming that we would all be dead by next wednesday, and could they have some research funding please? They are now reduced to claiming longer and longer incubation periods, which unless the condition has no left tail on the incubation are simply implausible. End of world not round corner.
In the case of `Global Warming', the claim that researchers have no axe to grind is laughable. There's no news in no news, and just as with CJD a researcher can make a good career out of arguing for the world ending soon.
ian
The possibility of denial shows this can't be science. (1) Real science doesn't lead to a lot of screaming.
Galileo and Copernicus would disagree with you. What about Darwin? Ever hear of the "Scopes Monkey Trial"?
(2) You can't republish the same result ("humans responsible for warming") 50 times.
So there was only one published study linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer? ANSWER ME!
(3) Opponents are termed "wrong" not "bad".
You are not an "opponent." An actual opponent would have scientific credentials and expertise in climatology. You are just someone who bad-mouths scientific studies that run contrary to what you want to believe.
If you really believe what you wrote, then you need to spend more time reading than writing.
I got a serious chuckle out of it, then sadly read the followups...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Personally I blame Microsoft for Global warming, But then again I could just as easily Blame Micheal Moore.
another person brainwashed by corporate powers... yeah, just keep telling yourself "millions of people pumping crap into the air will not change anything" and "scientists are just making stuff up so they can get grant money". MY GOD, why is humanity so easily decieved?
Meh.
Us moderates simply don't bother to post in obviously stupid discussions like this one (your post excepted). Of course, this post is a paradox, but such is life.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Oh my god! OH MY GOD! The artic ice cap is going to melt! The tidal wave is going to flood New York! A new ice age is coming! And the wolves are going to eat us! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee!! ... or not
[Insert pithy quote here]
Wow that site is completely unbiased and the "article" contains ZERO facts. I espeically like the "How I became an Ebay Power Seller" and "Anti-Bush T-Shirts" links. Just shows you how deep and concerned this person is for life on this planet.
The best quote it has is this - "This new research - reported today (2 December) in Nature - shows how human influence, mainly fossil fuel burning, can be blamed for increasing the risk of such a heatwave"
CAN be blamed on increasing the risk..thats it folks. Move along.
If you must keep reading you'll learn that all they did was "simulate" the 2003 year using god knows what kind of broken model and came to this conclusion..
"We found that although the high temperature experienced in 2003 was not impossible in a climate unaltered by man, it is very likely that greenhouse gases have at least doubled the risk"
There you have it folks, green house gases may, or MAY NOT increase the risk of heat waves.
Meanwhile Mt. St. Helens is getting ready to produce more CO2 than the US has produced in 100 years. It is already dumping between 50 and 250 tons of Sulfer Dioxide into the air EVERY DAY. (Note a common updated coal fired power plant produces some 20ish tons a day).
Call me when the other half of the planet buys a clue.
Apple free since 1990!
I've been waiting for this global warming phenomenon for ages - a few more years now, and Norway'll get that Hawaiian climate I've been longing for.
"The Earth is round. Elvis is dead. Climate change is happening."
http://undoit.org/
n/t
I read somewhere that the last time we had global warming the ancient civilizations were formed - Egypt, Babylonia, etc... These civilizations formed in what should've been the hottest places on the planet.
Which means one of two things: Either we humans live best in 120-150 degree whether (doubtful) or global warming will increase rainfall and fertility in those regions (likely).
Seeing as how we're coming out of a little ice age, I am looking forward to snowless winters and wet summers and an extended growing cycle. It'll help solve the world's starvation problem, and may even bring some species back that are on the brink of extinction.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You sir, are a moran.
Meh.
I guess it's very hard to get continued funding for a study that says "Everything's fine, situation normal" That must be why, no matter what the scientific endeavor, there's always some cataclysmic disaster looming on the horizon.
The astronomers who report, "No, that asteroid is not going to hit us" still get funding. Since there are a lot of countries and businesses that will be incurring big costs from the measures that will be required to control global warming, I'm sure that there is plenty of funding for scientists who want to challenge the prevailing scientific opinion on the matter. And climate forecasting would be important enough to attract funding even if global warming were not a concern.
NOVA did a show on that topic several years ago called "Do Scientists Cheat?" and documented several examples of serious cheating. Not only that, they sited research that established that during the last 20 years (from the date of the show, about 15 years ago) 48% !!! of all published research included cooked or falsified data. These revelations resulted in some PhD's having their degrees withdrawn and certain drugs taken off the market.
....
If you believe, like I do, that ethics and morality have declined since that show was aired you have to believe that the situation has gotten worse, not better. Further, the government agencies that fund most research won't fund projects whose hypotheses challange the status quo set forth by the politically active environmentalist. That fact alone establishes the bias of all research to favor Global Warming. It is a constant amazement to me that Dr Ed Loranz proved in 1962 that mathematical modeling the weather, even using computers, is impossible, yet modern environmentalist think that even though any given model is inherently flawed by Chaos, several flawed models can over come Chaos. Just like another organization that uses a group of flawed individuals to choose another individual who can speak without error, 'ex cathedra'.
The problem gets even worse. Many government agencies are committed to persuing policies based on environmentalist presumptions. Here in Nebraska there is a project called COHYST http://cohyst.dnr.state.ne.us/
In 1997 "The states of Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado, and the US Department of the Interior have entered into a Cooperative Agreement (CA) partnership to address endangered species (whooping crane, piping plover, least tern, pallid sturgeon) issues affecting the Platte River Basin. The initative has two major purposes:
1. To develop and implement a "recovery implementation program" to improve and conserve habitat for four threatened and endangered species that use the Platte River in Nebraska:
2. To enable existing and new water uses in the Platte River Basin to proceed without additional actions required for the four species under the Endangered Species Act.
The Cooperative Hydrology Study (COHYST) is a cooperative effort to improve understanding of the hydrological and geological conditions in the Platte Basin in Nebraska upstream of Columbus, Nebraska. A group of Nebraska interests have joined together as sponsors and partners to develop scientifically supportable hydrologic databases.
"
Sounds great, doesn't it?
But, when you investigate, you discover that research isn't driving the policies, the policies are driving the research. This is candidly stated in the original documents, and a local engineer outlined many of the problems in http://www.platterivertruth.org/defects1.pdf
and http://www.platterivertruth.org/index1.html
The purpose of the science was to 'prove' the previously chosen solutions to the 'problem'. Documents used to exist on the internet, but were removed (after I made copies which I don't presently have access to), in which project leaders stated that regardless of the science, or even if the science is not compelted or even done, the goals will become law. It's another kind of "my mind is made up, don't comfuse me with facts."
It's interesting to note that the ground water model (a computer program) used to predict water flows is actually run BACKWARDS! The desired results are entered and backstream parameters are adjusted till the initial data is arrived at. Then the model is cited as proof that the conclusions are justified by the input data. In reality that method is chosen for two reasons: 1) the model usually results in wild oscillations, as all chaotic systems tend to do, so 2) running the model backwards avoids chaos and allows ANY DESIRED result to be arrived at by adjusting parameters so that a particular set of parameters links the input data to the desired results. Simple test environments that are no where near the complexities of the huge Platte River basin are used to 'verify' the model method.
Like most environmental pronouncements from the Extreme Left Wing, it is Junk Science at its worse and all for environmentalist causes.
"we cannot say which of the heatwaves were man-made and which were natural, but we can apportion blame for the change in risk."
The difference is that lomborg is a true "junk scientist".
Meh.
...They passed a right-to-work-for-less law in Oklahoma a few years ago
I live in Oklahoma to, and never saw wal mart in this. I find wal mart to be a despicable corporation, but lets not blame them for things they arnt responsible for. The reason right to work passed is because the only opposition to it was out of town astroturfers. If there was LITTERLY NO opposition from it in the state of Oklahoma why should it fail? From what I can see it seems to be a good law. Imagine that, Keating passign a good law. Look! A flying pig!
Did anyone happen to notice that there were areas on that map in the article that showed no change or actually cooled? Isn't kind of difficult to show statistical differences or to create any kind of forecasting model based on one years worth of data?
Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'
... they are essentially taking people's ignorance of the past," he added.
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 02, 2004
Washington (CNSNews.com) - An MIT meteorologist Wednesday dismissed alarmist fears about human induced global warming as nothing more than 'religious beliefs.'
"Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?" said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
"Essentially if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by 'all scientists,' you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief," Lindzen said. His speech was titled, "Climate Alarmism: The Misuse of 'Science'" and was sponsored by the free market George C. Marshall Institute. Lindzen is a professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
Once a person becomes a believer of global warming, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added.
According to Lindzen, climate "alarmists" have been trying to push the idea that there is scientific consensus on dire climate change.
"With respect to science, the assumption behind the [alarmist] consensus is science is the source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists [who agree.] But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign," Lindzen said.
Alarmist predictions of more hurricanes, the catastrophic rise in sea levels, the melting of the global poles and even the plunge into another ice age are not scientifically supported, Lindzen said.
"It leads to a situation where advocates want us to be afraid, when there is no basis for alarm. In response to the fear, they want us to do what they want," Lindzen said.
Recent reports of a melting polar ice cap were dismissed by Lindzen as an example of the media taking advantage of the public's "scientific illiteracy."
"The thing you have to remember about the Arctic is that it is an extremely variable part of the world," Lindzen said. "Although there is melting going [on] now, there has been a lot of melting that went on in the [19]30s and then there was freezing. So by isolating a section
'Repetition makes people believe'
The climate change debate has become corrupted by politics, the media and money, according to Lindzen.
"It's a sad story, where you have scientists making meaningless or ambiguous statements [about climate change]. They are then taken by advocates to the media who translate the statements into alarmist declarations. You then have politicians who respond to all of this by giving scientists more money," Lindzen said.
"Agreement on anything is taken to infer agreement on everything. So if you make a statement that you agree that CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a greenhouse gas, you agree that the world is coming to an end," he added.
"There can be little doubt that the language used to convey alarm has been sloppy at best," Lindzen said, citing Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbles and his famous observation that even a lie will be believed if enough people repeat it. "There is little question that repetition makes people believe things [for] which there may be no basis," Lindzen said.
He believes the key to improving the science of climate change lies in altering the way scientists are funded.
'Alarm is the aim'
"The research and support for research depends on the alarm," Lindzen told CNSNews.com following his speech. "The research itself often is very good, but by the time it gets t
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
2003 was an excellent year for Bordeaux wines! Since I don't live in Europe, bring it on! In the mean time, someone help me figure out a way to containt this heat wave thingy to Europe. ;-)
Previously the nay-sayers didn't even accept the fact that global warming was happening! But now that it's pretty much proven to be occuring, nobody calls them on their previous opinion. The corporations have done a very good job brainwashing the masses here in north america.
Meh.
"The temperatures of the summer of 2003 were almost undoubtedly the highest in Europe for over 500 years."
If this argument is true, then that means they were burning fossil fuels over 500 years ago - the last time the had temperatures similar to those in 2003.
Therefore, your argument makes no sense, since they probably weren't driving SUV's over 500 years ago, but somehow they had the same temperatures.
Indeed, we do not have accurate temperature readings for Europe or anywhere else for the last 500 years, and I would be very suspicious of the accuracy of any outdoor weather thermometer built in say 1850 or 1910. I've worked with laboratory grade mercury thermometers, and they come with a nice correction chart that usually go from about half a degree plus or minus (sometimes more) over the range of the thing.
You obviously have much greater insight and wisdom than these scientists. Never mind that you don't even seem to know the difference between weather and climate. You'll go on with your head firmly planted in the sand so you can rest easy in your comfortable ideology bubble.
"The sky isnt falling people.Move along,nothing to see here.More of the same crap that goes on year after year,nothing new here.Feel free to continue life as it was and bring back regular gasoline."
Self delusion can be comforting. It's much easier to deny hard realities than to face them and work toward resolving them. Yes, it's very hard. You may continue sleeping if you wish. Those mean old tree-hugging hippies only lurk in your dreams and fantasies, though. The rest of us are responsible citizens who want a stable world for our children and grandchildren to inhabit.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Here's something that really confuses me: Libertarianism and anti-Environmentalism seem to go almost universally hand-in-hand.
One of the fundamentals of Libertarianism is private property rights. I should be allowed to fuck somebody in the ass as long as they consent and it's on my property. I should be allowed to drive a car at six times the speed limit as long as it's on my property. I should not be allowed to drive my car onto your property unless you agree to it.
So take a very simple extrapolation to environmental situations. I own a factory. I dump bizarre, toxic chemicals without any treatment. It's my property, so I should be able to do whatever I want. The same goes for driving an SUV, burying garbage, dumping mercury into my pond, whatever.
But the very instant that the pollution you emit gets onto somebody else's property, you're no longer in the right. When your toxic chemicals enter the ground water and leak into your neighbor's land, you're going beyond your rights. Even the staunchest Libertarian should agree that I should not have the right to contaminate the ground, water, or air on your property.
So for all of you wannabe Libertarians out there saying, "I have a right to drive a vehicle that gets as few miles per gallon and as many emissions as I feel like", answer me this: why do you have the right to contaminate the air I breathe on my property?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Human activity to blame
Sorry. I'd better stop then.
I think you'll find that given the lack of knowledge of CJD at the time all that could be given were possible scenarios. It was the media and politicians that took the worst case and promoted that, not the researchers.
Out of all the polution in the air Humans are responcible for around 10% of it. That is a lot from one speacies but 90% of the polution is naturally occuring vocanos, and such. We had massive climate changes in the past even before humans existed. Some from external influences such as Large Rocks from space and such. But others are just more naturall over time. While I agree we should work to reduce our polution because 10% of all the air polution in the world is still a Really High, But there are a lot of other factors involved too. The earth climate is always changing and has been, I am sure we are part of the cause but I am sure there other factors at work so without us the heat wave may have came 10 more years in the future or 10 year ago in the past. Right now science in this field is still weak and we are still mainly in gather data section in scienctific process. But a lot of sciencetist are human too and let their own personal feelings get in the way of there scienctific judgement, and tend to jump to a conclusion where there is more work to be done, and continue their work trying to prove that they are right and not looking evedence to prove themselvs wrong. In many ways Science today is just a slighly more accurate base of understanding the world, then sacrificing a vergin to appeal to the god. Right now science is saying that we should reduce air polution and we should at least to help control there study to see if human air polution has the expeced result on climate change.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is my last rejected submission on climate change - posted anonymously to avoid karma-whornig accusations.
New evidence of climate change unprecedented in human history seems to arrive almost every day. Two new studies have added more data to the mountain of evidence supporting the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. A UN Environmental Program report shows that the world faces a 'staggering threat', with the Arctic already being severely affected, with thawing of much of the sea ice and the Greenland icecap predicted.
The extinction of polar bears and seals seems likely. Worse, the decrease is salinity will affect the thermohaline pump that drives the North Atlantic drift, potentially stopping the Gulf Stream and reducing Europe to an icy wilderness. But it's not all bad news - the reduced ice cover will open new areas for gas and oil extraction!
Meanwhile, at the other end of the planet, Nature reports that the respected British Antarctic Survey has shown that loss of sea ice has causedAntarctic Krill populations to crash; this is the probable cause of crashing populations of various species, including the Gentoo penguin. (BAS press release here.) Sceptical readers may be interested to note that the US government now accepts that human CO2 emissions are causing climate change.
So, look: if Europe implements it all and there's no bad effects, it'll be much easier to convince the US to do it in the future.
However, you've got to understand it from this perspective, too: is it really sensible to maybe cripple your economy on something which will have, at best, a small, impossible-to-measure effect?
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
- 0.11 percent of the greenhouse effect (that is, 3 percent of 3.6 percent) is due to human releases of CO2
- 50% global CO2 emission reduction would therefore account for a smidge of greenhouse effect
- about 99.89 percent of the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with carbon-dioxide emissions from human activity.
- Factoring in the other greenhouse gases, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is about 0.3 percent.
So... is this corporate propaganda, or is the focus on carbon emissions greatly exaggerated?No one is disputing a warming trend, only the degree to which human emissions contribute. Of course people are alarmed by the reports, but perhaps a better question might be,
Will restricting emissions slow, stop, or reverse a global warming trend?
It's an important and clever study. One big question on the observational side of climate change studies is how much the direct observation of warming is due to local rather than global heating. Thermometers tend to be clustered near where people are, and there are local heating effects around cities that, while pretty trivial on a global scale, might be showing up.
The cited paper addresses this question and shows that this bias in the estimate is small. It does this by showing very similar trends in nighttime temperature on windy days as on calm days, though (for compelling and obvious reasons) the local heating effect is (and can be shown to be) much larger on calm days.
The strident denial camp, (many of them paid in the style of 'tobacco scientists') of course, loves the "urban heat island" hypothesis and often parades it around so as to deny one part of the science.
This paper goes a long way toward demolishing that argument. That's one reason why it's very important. The linked breathless journalism article is pretty unclear about that, unfortunately.
This work is also interesting as a lovely demonstration of how science works. I'd teach this one in high school science if I were teaching high school science.
mt
Whether you believe that global temperature increase is or is not a direct result of human activity is not the issue. Issue is: do you think that the right way to discover how and to what extent CO2 affects climate is by conducting a vast, unsupervised global experiment? This is effectively what we're doing- dumping vast amounts amount of CO2 into the atmosphere with no real idea of the consequences.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
we are really in a phase in human history over the coming decades and centuries where humans can really wipe themselves out if radical changes are not made on the order of the changes of the feudalism to capitalism type during the Glorious, American and French revolutions. Our systems of production can not continue as they are, Keynesianism and liberalism has shown itself to be a band-aid, not a solution, and a band-aid that doesn't work very well. IMHO, of course.
:( And the few countries that stay true (more or less) to communism, such as Vietnam or Cuba and (not Western European) socialist (or trying to be socialist) states such as Venezuela or Belarus, won't persuade anyone, unless they build paradise in their countries. And even that may not be enough...
The answer, however surprising, is communism. By switching to communism the society solves all problems related to corporate greed, astroturfing and stuff. It also becomes capable of correcting manufactured or irrational demand (demand for Big Macs, SUVs, etc.). It also works very well for increasing quality of life through improved healthcare, education, etc.
Sadly, the United States (most of all) was extremely effective in persuading almost everyone, whose opinion matters, that communism is somehow evil and liberal/democratic/free market societies are an answer to all problems. This (and the willingness of the USA to support pro-US coups with money, weapons and know-how) makes the possibility of communist revolutions very low.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
this summer was not even close to being as hot as the one in 2003. Let's burn some more fuel! At least one good thing from the Bush administration.
They passed a right-to-work-for-less law...
This may be shocking to you, but some of us believe this is a good thing. And not because we're greedy corporate execs. But because we're coming from a vastly different set of assumptions.
I believe that minimum wage laws are both immoral and economically damaging for the poor. I'm happy to support the point in thoughtful debate, and I think you'll find I have not been brainwashed by the powers-that-be.
And before you condemn liberalism (in the classical sense, of course), realize that the world you see before you bears only a slight resemblance to a free market. As someone else's sig said, "corporatism != free market".
PS: Keynesianism has little to do with liberalism . Keynes advocated inflationary monetary and fiscal policy, whereas the old-school liberal (a la Thomas Jefferson) was a staunch supporter of hard money and government non-intervention.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
On the other hand, rejection of the protocol by the US has nothing to do with money ?? I prefer a country signing it for money than ignoring it for the same reasons.
Well, since Russia has a target of 0% change in greenhouse gas emissions, it costs them absolutely nothing to ratify. Wonder what took them so long? Obviously, they just used it as a poker chip to get something else that they wanted.
Now, do you suppose that all 95 Senators (the vote was 95-0) who voted in a resolution against it were just being asshats? Or, is their arguement valid that the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Personally, when I see that kind of agreement amongst both parties (despite Al Gore's grandstanding symbolic signature to the resolution), I think that they may have a point.
Why should we sign on when China (the #2 emitter of greenhouse gases) is exempted from the treaty? It's patently unfair...and don't get me wrong, I'm all for lowering greenhouse emissions, but Kyoto isn't about that, it's about helping developing nations...they get to increase their emissions!
Just another day in Paradise
Yeah, I think he should instead have brought up bloodletting.
It was more mainstream (at least up until ~125 years ago) and it has even more of the "wtf??" factor.
If you don't say anything, your opinion will never be known. The discussion will always be 'stupid' until you input.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
That's my take on the matter. This is a prime example of a "Post Hoc" logical fallacy, that is, saying A caused B soley because B happened after A. (If this summer had been the coldest in 500 years somewhere in the world, I'm sure we could say global warming melted some ice caps or something, ala The Day After Tomorrow)
I mean, yeah, reducing pollution is a good thing. Go for it. But the fact is, as you said, we don't know enough about the climate to accurately predict the week's weather, much less how a single Honda getting 27MPG vs one getting only 25 impacts the macro-global climate as a whole!
One more rant before I sit down. According to the initial post this -- whateveritis caused the hottest day Europe has seen in "the last 500 years". So... what happened 500 years ago? Call it a hunch, but I don't think it was a bunch of frilly old tights-wearin' Elizabethans in SUV's.
-- Just another unsolicited opinion... from the Peanut Gallery.
The stupidity of the average human is astounding.
No kidding! How can someone not know the difference between to and too? Idiots!
that have caused the global warming trend in the last 20 years.
However, by using sophisticated climate models and new statistical techniques , this study has been able to separate the human factors from natural ones.
Quote from something completely different:
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Go figure. Ha, figure, get it?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
And whether its natural or not we need to do something about it because like it or not human civilisation is balanced on a knife edge. I do hope you live in one of the Jesusland states - the flat ones in the middle that will vanish under monsoons and a rising sea level. Survive that.
You had me going until that last part. I'm pretty sure anyone who was smart enough to know what "Maunder minimum" actually means would also be able to figure out that places in the MIDDLE of a continent are probably higher than the EDGES of a continent. So the areas you seem to loathe so much (but hey, wasn't the electorial map really more shades of purple?) would actually be pretty safe from even a few HUNDRED feet of ocean rise. Whereas the bastions of purity I'm sure you worship (the so called "blue" areas which in reality are just a bit deeper shade of purple) would be gone and you'd be begging the supposed "red" area people (a somewhat lighter shade of purple) for a bit of the land that they own. Yes, even in Kansas. Perhaps especially in Kansas.
Leave the hatred out of the science bro. Otherwise you just end up looking like a fool. Hatred always clouds the mind and it seems to have done a bang-up job of it here. When you actually say out loud you are hoping for someones death when they disagree with you - you ceased being a scientist of any sort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anyone that reads this article without his thinking cap on is going to get his dander up over this, but lets think about this.
You can prove the earth IS warming without any danger of falling into an argument over measurement. How? THE ICE AGES ARE OVER (just in case you didn't notice). This mudball has been warming up (on average) for thousands of years, and there wasn't a single car, power plant, or petroleum factor around for anything but the smallest infintesimal percentage of the time.
This planet (historically) has been through ages both hotter and much cooler than this, and only a bunch of evolved monkey like creatures is arrogant enough to claim responsibility.
Personally, I like global warming. The beach is much nicer without ice sheets and hiking in the mountains is a lot more fun WITHOUT snowshoes, ice crampons, and extreme cold weather suits.
Oh, and while I'm riling up the religious types of environmentalists, some extinctions can be good too. Personally, I worry in the fall about hitting deer at night on a back road (a real problem here). I am very thankful I don't have to worry about an INTERSTATE blocked by a wandering heard of DINOSAURS (hitting one of those could put a dent in your car, and the meat eaters could absolutely destroy the market for convertables).
Think about what's going on here and ignore the chicken-littles that are funded by your fear. You'll find ways of having over-inflated egos without trying to take credit for "global warming" disasters.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
With models, much less statistical models, human minds cannot judge the effects of assumptions or equations. The model tells you the outcome.
So, perhaps we could judge if we had enough informaton on the model's sensitivity to variations in these? That is an NP-complete problem, and we can't judge the results of these either.
So, anyone can prove anything with a model.
In business, using an Excel spreadsheet, we know this is true.
Let a SCIENTIST do the same thing with a Fortran program, and the journalistic world falls on its face in worship.
Lew
One of the funniest replies I've read in this thread claimed that researchers cannot get funding unless they shout "Doomsday is coming". Not even the most imaginary hypothetical example is cited - the report is simply made up by some liberal asshole.
Ah... why would this person be liberal. Aren't liberals the ones screaming doomsday? I'm a moderate liberal who thinks that the left is far too entrenched with the idea that humans are "destroying the planet". I see daily evidence of this in many forms. One: when interviewed by Nova, a researcher who had discoverd massive greenhouse gas emmisions from recent forest fires that burned permafrost material (greenhouse gasses that would not have been released before, due to the change in fire prevention strategies and capabilities) said that this was probably responsible for more greenhouse gasses (CO2 and water vapor) than fossil fuels, but "we don't know how much it takes to tip the balance." Even in the face of cold, hard evidence that the single largest problem was not fossil fuels, this guy's very first reaction was to defend the efforts to curb fossil fuels... not the reaction of someone who is interested in the objective facts.
Two: I have a good friend whose Solar observatory was labeled in congressional funding circles as "an enemy of the planet" (I kid you not), for having published data (not conclusions, data) that supported a non-anthropomorphic warming model and could not secure further funding.
Three: I watch as scientists around the world attempt to discredit any research done with private dollars, without any real concern for the quality of the research itself. In every other field, private research is judged on the basis of its scientific merit or lack thereof, but if you get money from an oil company, car company or heavy industry, and do atmospheric research you can't get published in a reputable journal regardless of the quality of your work.
Put those three together, and come up with a model for me of how research is not skewed toward finding a link between human activity and global warming.
"Reading Slashdot on such topics makes you think the world is really only divided into two kinds of persons - the coporate man/politicians and the crazy gaians"
No, being polar about politics makes you think that.
Focus on the issue.... the issue is, was the burning of fossil fuels related to the heat wave. The answer is, we can't possibly know.
Nothing in this article suggested that except for the conclusion... this is highly specious work, as it is *very* difficult to attribute global conditions of any type to specific weather phenomena. If this weren't the case, we would be able to predict hurricaines far in advance.
Do you have a brain? Plants remove X amount of carbon from the air. Putting X+Y amount of carbon into the air results in Y left over. Tagged? Do you have a point, other than the one on your head?
>>What process caused the CO2 to get "stored" in the first place, again?
I am pretty sure most people can probably puzzle out where the carbon in fossil fuels came from. What's your point? That we need to grow animals and chuck them into places where silt is deposited?
The problem with conservative talk is that it's mostly (when not entirely) spiv philosophy. You know what sucks about spiv philosophy? Its the politically expedient masquerading as wisdom.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
function cryofanPostingTactics()
{
wakeUp();
scanSlashdotStories();
postHypeAndDistortions();
foreach(reply in getReplies())
{
if (reply.containsIntelligenceAndFacts())
ignore();
else
{
switch(rand() % 4)
{
case 0: reply.reply("Rush has brainwashed you"); break;
case 1: reply.reply("Read more Noam Chomksy"); break;
case 2: reply.reply("You have been programmed by the evil corporate masters"); break;
case 3: reply.reply("Whatteva you say Massa!"); break;
}
}
}
}
I guess it's very hard to get continued funding for a study that says "Everything's fine, situation normal"
There are lots of those studies. But they don't get covered in the press because it isn't necessary to cover them in the press. We need to pay attention to potential problems. That's the way all living beings operate. Unless you are mentally unstable, you don't sit around all day thinking about the fact that your digestion is working properly or your hair is growing or your heart is beating. But when your digestion stops working properly, then you notice and pay attention.
There aren't a lot of potential problems we humans have as a species: we should be really happy. But there are some big ones. One of the big ones is global warming because it has the potential of destroying civilization and making large parts of the globe uninhabitable.
Keep burning those fossil fuels as long as we need them and enjoy the WEATHER while we have it. Once we've gone to fusion and fuel cells and whatever clean energy is next, the CLIMATE will continue on as it was before we interrupted it by building our temporary greenhouse (effect). So with all that cheap energy, we'll be warm indoors, but the outdoors won't be much fun, north of Bahamas' latitude.
New research shows how human influence, mainly fossil fuel burning, can be blamed for increasing the risk of such a heatwave and by the middle of this century every other summer could be even hotter than 2003.
I think the sun might have had something to do with it too.
Interesting, but I don't beleive it's true. Do you have a reference to back this up?
You're sounding very emotional.
We are spending billions a year to examine all sorts of risks that we might face: disease, natural disasters, wars, famine, etc. Of those tens of thousands of study per year, a few pop up that warn us of potential disaster. Those are the ones we pay attention to. Then, we allocate more funding to those areas, scientists study those issues more extensively, and they reach some sort of conclusion, usually not completely unanimous but with a clear consensus among most scientists. That's the way things work. It's rational, it's sensible, and it's the best way we know how to make decisions.
The only thing that's "emotional" in this discussion is that people like you don't want to face the scientific process. You have decided for yourself that global warming is inconvenient, so you are just going to ignore it. Your is the same kind of irrational and emotional behavior that causes people to run up huge debts or gamble or take drugs: you are addicted to something, and even though it's clear it's bad for you, you just refuse to look at the facts.
As an architect
You should put a warning sign on anything you design. I wouldn't want to enter a place designed by someone who thinks one should ignore known problems and instead focus on the the things that are working well.
It might be a better use of one's time to look at the pattern of scientific herd-mentality FIRST, and then take into account individual studies second.
One can't win with people like you. When there is pretty much universal consensus among scientists about global warming (and there is) and you call it "herd mentality". If there weren't universal consensus, you'd call the results "speculative" and "unproven". It's clear again: you just don't want to face reality because it would be inconvenient for you.
Temperatures broke 100 a few times in France during the heat wave
As many as half the deaths were at nursing homes, which were short-staffed because many aides and doctors were on vacation and were overcrowded because many families had checked in elderly relatives and also headed off to beaches and mountains.
Most nursing homes and hospitals lack air conditioning because of health laws. French authorities have long believed air-conditioning systems do more harm, by spreading germs, than good
About 20% of the victims died at home, alone. Most homes and apartments in France also lack air conditioning.
the number of deaths in France was much higher, even on per capita basis, than anywhere else in Europe. (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-08-26-f rance-death_x.htm)
It's funny because the foibles of the French was mocked in the press ad nauseum. Those who were paying attention then know that, like Chicago in 95, the heat didn't cause the deaths. Those who werent paying attention then most certainly arent now.
I love the utter stupidity of the V8 driving folks around here-- it reminds me of the movie Kids, where one of 'm said: "Aids? Nonsense. I don't know anyone with AIDS, so it doesn't exist." Y'all morons can continue to spill out fossil fuels, but ey, I'm in the firing line, I live in The Netherlands, a few meteres below sealevel. Continue this way, US citizens, vote for Bush, don't sign the Kyoto Treaty. Remember that your country is largely dependant on oil. See the rest of the world making large advances into fuell cell and more efficient technology. See the US trail behind. See the US economy fall into pieces. Which it is already doing, by the way.
I cannot name a climatologist, however, lets assume:
Now, any one of those assumptions could in fact be wrong. However, if they are true, then I believe that many experts on environmental matters (including some professors I've had) would consider the Kyoto treaty damaging. The worst thing you can do about a problem is to pretend to be doing something about it - at great cost - so that the problem is "being worked on" and there is less pressure to solve it because we're "already doing something, isn't that enough?" when in fact it's not doing anything. But worse, it looks like our ability to fix the climate will be very much a function of our technology - the same thing that caused the problem in the first place. What we need right now is to develop new energy sources that do not release carbon and methane into the air, and new methods of food production that avoid the large herds of cows etc. All of this costs money for our economy to support, and so funnelling money into something like Kyoto may make it take significantly longer to make all of the breakthroughs required to get us out of the whole we may have dug ourselves.
Not to mention the fact that we have *NO IDEA* as of right now what happens when we start limiting our CO2 output - complex systems like the climate tend to be very sensitive to changes in variables and their derivatives. We need a solid predictive model if we're going to fight this thing - and by all means we should fight it if we can figure out how to.
Cheers,
Justin
All that property is near the shore, along the fjords, which will be submerged when Greenland and Antarctica melt. And I don't think the locals, recently graduated from millennia of Vikings, will be reading your deed to your mountain cabin after civilization collapses and they come looking for food.
--
make install -not war
This past Spring and Fall were just that, for once, in Dallas/Ft. Worth area (also know as North Texas).
This past Summer were also one of the most mild in recent memory: while we had been getting as many as 20 days over 100, there were around 5 or less this time around. And it's not like there were lots of days in the high 90's either. We had more rainfall than normal and that helped to keep things cooler than normal.
It wasn't even until the last two weeks that it's really become uncomfortably cold around here either.
Some predict this Winter will be unusually cold, but I doubt it.
By the way, an inhabitant of China emits 0.6 tons of CO2 per year. China has more inhabitants, but the USA still emits twice the amount China does. Please keep these numbers in mind if you talk about China.
This data comes from research done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of North Dakota.
Capitalism is great for those with capital. As Jesse Jackson said. "Capitalism without capital is just another ism".
Alas the rich and powerful have found out that people are very easily manipulated using the "opiate of the masses"
evil is as evil does
Eveidence at a fossil site near Norfolk, England indicates a warmer climate in the past for that region, there's an article written at www.nhm.ac.uk/services/press/items/gianthippos.htm lightly discussing the finds of "fossil bones of hippo, found alongside horse, hyena, fish and a variety of rodent remains".
What was happening in East Anglia 500,000 to 780,000 years ago?
"The real topic was that peer review does not guarantee correctness, only mainstream scientific respect."
Aaah this clears it up. Of course this can only mean that all peer reviewed is wrong, or at least none of it can be trusted to be right.
Since we can not trust any methodology which is not 100% perfect we can go on believing in whatever we want. We can safely ignore all science and scientists and just open up the bible or listen to Rush Limbaugh. Rush is a 100% correct 100% of the time.
evil is as evil does
...they were wrong then - and they're wrong now...
*The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)
*I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
*In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
*This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
*This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
*If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
I heartily share in the depression many feel about much of slashdot's "willful ignorance," or at least curt dismissal, of envoronment studies citing global warming as a clear and present danger. What I've never gotten is why they so immediately cite bias, just because I don't get what thos of us who see global warming as a danger stand to gain through our "doomsaying." We're employed just like everyone else , we live with the same realities, what do environmentalists stand to gain by telling everyone that we have to drastically change our lifestyle for the sake of the environment? It's not like the majority of us stand to make any money off of it or benefit directly except for preventing catatrophic climate change. The point isn't that the economy is utterly worthless and we should all go out and join PETA, it's that global warming does and will continue to affect both ourselves and those who disagree with us ever more seriously, and that economic concerns shouldn't be disregarded but should be rendered secondary to the wellbeing of the biosphere we all have to share.
We're not out to raise rabble for its own sake, it's just that the issue isn't one we can write off whatever arguments you want to make about the exact ratio of natural to man-made contributions to climate cycles. Better to act now and in the increasingly unlikely event that that would be wrong write off the loss and enjoy the new technology developed in the meanwhile, than look around in 2100 and realize we can't do anyhting but turn up the AC.
--Sparks
I thought about debating your points, but given that you see "shows" and that practice apparently makes you an expert maybe we should take what you say with some grains of salt. Also you don't respond to replies. I find that very annoying.
Spock would never harm the earth, especially after he had to travel back in time to save it. Then again, those klingon engines could have emitted some serious CO2 in that trip.
Globe Warms You!
In America, there is a general trend in the technical community to distrust authority.
Just because someone is an intellectual/scientist/researcher doesn't mean that they aren't wrong. Just because there are lots of them saying the same thing doesn't mean they're right.
It can be argued that Europeans are much more submissive to authority figures than Americans, due to their culture/history.
In the US, it's hard to take environmentalist warnings seriously due to their somewhat erratic prediction rate (nuclear winter, the coming ice age, resource depletion, population bombs, etc) and their somewhat obvious bias against industrial activities (cars).
It is possible that burning fossil fuels may have some impact on global warming. I believe the fact that the sun is getting hotter to have a much more significant impact on global temperatures.
46% of Oklahomans voted against this law, so I don't know how the opposition was all out-of-town astroturfers or that there was "no opposition". Wal-Mart is who is coordinating the national effort, and their financial contributions regarding this are a matter of public record. I also know that the campaign for this was primarily focused on evangelical churches, just as Coburn's recent campaign was and Inhofe's before him, especially in rural eastern Oklahoma.
As far as it being a good law or not, it depends on a variety of factors. If you have a lot of money, it is a good law, if you don't make much money, it is a bad law. I would say that it is a bad law economically for 80% of the population, a good law for 1% of the population, and for 19% of the population its sort of a wash.
What the law does is imposes government regulation on contracts between unions and businesses. It declares that unions and businesses can not come to certain types of agreements. It is not even a free market bill, since in a free market a union and business would be able to come to any type of contract they want. This makes it illegal for employers to come to certain agreements with unions which favor the union. It's the government helping big business screw workers. And 54% of Oklahomans voted for it, praise the Lord.
Good luck in your efforts to define liberalism other than how 99% of the world defines it.
HEY! You're not clever! Congratulations, gimp.
Something the Chicken Little crowd fails to understand: the sea levels have been higher in the past. The North American Mid-West (Kansas, Indiana, Iowa, etc...) used to be under and inland sea. The world temperature has flucuated a lot in the last 10,000 years. It was once much hotter that it is now, and it will be much colder. This is the natural cycle of the planet.
Just the other day a study showed that Mt. St. Helens in Washington State is putting out more greenhouse gases than all of the man made sources in Washington. Now relealize that St. Helens is just one of hundreds of semi-active and active volcanos that are poluting the atmosphere, plus add in the fact that the mini-ice age that started c. 610 AD is ending and you see that the world is getting a little warmer...
But of course, this is just my $0.02 worth.
The US has a problem with the Kyoto protocol because it is specifically designed to hurt the US. The US has extremely strict requirements, but a number of other countries have effectively none. The US was pushing for a more equitable agreement where everyone had to comply to stricter requirements.
It would be similar to saying the NY Yankees are so much better than other teams, so they can only play with 6 players on the field while the other team gets 9.
mod parent up
Oh yes, the Soviet Union and Communist China were such environmental wonderlands. LOL... the former Soviet Union has numerous large areas that make the US Super Fund sites look like DisneyWorld. But if you think it's such a great idea, I'll pay for a one way ticket to VietNam for you.
In politics & life one can not choose the motivations behind people's actions. Therefore the next best thing is is to evaluate their actions.
Why Russia or other nations rafitied the Kyoto protocol is irrelevant. What is important though is that they faithfully execute the protocol.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
What does a RT work for less law have to do with minimum wage? RT work for less has nothing to do with the minimum wage.
Your calling it "Right to Work for Less" made me assume it was about minimum wages. I see now I was incorrect - the actual title is "Right to Work", and it says "No person shall be required, as a condition of employment, to [join a union, not join a union, be approved by a union]".
Sounds like a good law to me. I have personally known workers who were screwed over by unions. Unions deserve no special government protections - if they can't convince people to join, too bad for them.
I don't expect to convince you. I can only suggest you study some history and economics.
Good luck in your efforts to define liberalism other than how 99% of the world defines it.
There's actually a lot of disagreement about how to define it. See the Wikipedia article for the details.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
Perhaps you missed the part in your basic geography classes where they call those flat middle states the "high plains"?
Kansas (where I'm from) has an average elevation of 2000 feet (cite). As you may know, it's not a state well known for wide variances in elevation.
Not too likely to be disappearing. Tell us about your PhD again?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Anyone who doesn't believe the same thing that I believe is obviously riding on life's short bus.
Just look at [Anecdotal Fact A], [Anecdotal Fact B], and their relationship to [Widely-known prinicple], and the numerous scientists who support My opinion.
Those 'scientists' who don't agree with My stance have clearly sold out for political or monetary interests, while the scientists who agree with My stance are motivated by pure altruism.
It is clear that those who do not agree with My stance on this issue probably vote for a political party that I don't vote for, and probably masturbate too much.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
I've also wondered why these various protests with people brandishing guns & missles, why an anti-personnel isn't dropped on them. They are the perpetrators of violence against innocent individuals and killing them would be a benefit to humanity. Canada's anti-hate laws are an example of a country with it's head up it's ass.
it would be terrible if schools were privatized. Kids might actually get an education.
Communisim is, indeed, a fine idea.
But the countries you listed are not Communist. They are oligarchies at best and dictatorships at worst.
There are no truly communistic nation in our history.
No it's government helping big business screw unions. If they labeled the bill "the fuck unions act of 2003", it would have passed by even bigger margins because lots of people hate unions. Especially once you get out of the NE and Great Lakes regions.
I've tried to get details on the models used for global warming. The problem is, all the papers that seem to go into detail require me to pay more than I can affort to read them. I don't want to read the stupid analysis done by beurocrats, I want to read the real studies.
Given I can't read them, can someone elighten me as to wether or not my conception of model development is correct.
1. See that temperatures have raised ~.8C in the last 100 years from mostly terrestrial weather measurments, with satellite
2. Hypothesize why this is happeneing. One hypothesis, increase in some gases my cause heat to be trapped.
3. No good way to test hypothesis on a large enough scale prove hypothesis as it relates to the whole earth.
4. Create model instead of direct experiment. Measure amount of greenhouse gases in air for some period of time.
5. Make a mathmatical model that gives the correct temperature for past measurments of greenhouse gases.
6. If there are times where temperature decreases when greenhouse gases increased, add other causes, such as solar variations, or volcanic activity. Use satellites to measure solar irradience, make educated guess at solar irradience pre-1978.
7. With addition of solar variations, volcanic activity and possibly other factor, the model matches history closely.
8. Keep other factor constant in model, increase greenhouse gases, see increase in temperature.
9. Proof that increased greenhouse gases causes increased temperatures.
I would hope the models are more complete than this, but I don't know, I can't afford to know. Do they take into account all the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases? How well do they account for sources and sinks? Is it really known what causes the earth's cold/warm cycles? If not, how can the models seperate natural long term cooling/warming trends from those caused by greenhouse gases? Is there some poorly understood warming trend in the background, so the actual warming preduced by greenhouse gases is small?
Does a good physical model exist for the trapping of thermal energy by greenhouse gases? I know certain wavelengths of visible energy are absorbed and retransmitted as thermal energy by certain molecules, such as water. We have to account for it when doing radiometry measurements from spacecraft. What wavelengths of energy are absorbed by greenhouse gases, and what wavelenghts are retransmitted? Would most of that energy just be reflected and not converted to thermal wavelengths if the gases were not there?
Does the increased amount of these gases increase Rayleigh or Mei scattering? Does that have any impact on temperature? I guess the sulfates put in the air by volcanoes cause cooling because of scatering, but I can only guess.
I've tried to search for information, but I always end up sifting through politicized crap with no real numbers or methods.
Given all the questions I have, and not really enough time or money to dig through all the crap, to possible get answers, people might be able to undestand my sceptisicm with regards to global warming. Just too many unknowns for me to make a good decision, so I'll just stick with the status quo.
Honestly, one of the reason I've doubted the research is I don't trust the U.N. or Europeans to be objective. There's a greater potential for tinkering with other people's economies and shifting global economic power by screaming about the environment than by any other mechanism. That's reason one.
Reason two, is that my uncle--a logical and educated man whom I respect very much, and owe much of my current interests to--has a degree in geology and chemistry, and was in college in the mid-70's. He distinctly remembers the same groups of people screaming "global winter". Remember that? No, you won't hear that mentioned today, but it came from the same mouths that scream "global warming" today. The same push for legislation happened then, as it does now. Aren't you glad we resisted those laws then, when they had such a potential for damage? Why, pray tell, should we make the same mistake now, unless the science is bulletproof. Remember, in the 70's, they said it was good science too. Who to trust?
Recently, however, I've come to believe that there's something to the studies and I've read the IPCC and several other papers (not fully understanding some of it, as I'm not a researcher), and I have doubts that the current US administration is objective. Last year, I sold my car and bike everywhere.
That's my contribution, from a doubting Thomas. What's yours?
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
What special government protections? The RT work for less law is government getting involved in a contract between unions and companies. In states that don't have these laws, unions and companies are free to come to any type of contract they want with one another. RT work for less laws are a special government protection for corporations, not for unions.
This is bullshit. The US has a target of 93% of 1990 emissions. The EU (as a whole) and most of Eastern Europe have a target of 92%, with Luxembourg on 72%, Germany and Denmark on 79%, Austria on 87% and the UK on 87.5% standing out as being a lot more "hurt" by this than the US. I really wish US would stop playing the victim and get on with life. A lot of these countries are on track for meeting these targets. Some of them have exceeded those targets (notably Russia, currently with 60% of 1990 levels vs a target of 100%, and China currently with 83% vs no target set yet).
france is as developed as any other european country (which is very high)
besides, i wouldn't call a country capable of designing and building a 4th generation fighter aircraft (rafale) undeveloped.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Aaah this clears it up. Of course this can only mean that all peer reviewed is wrong, or at least none of it can be trusted to be right.
Wow-- so what's it like living in such a black & white world? The quote from the grandparent is correct-- peer review DOES NOT GAURANTEE correctness. Did the grandparent imply that peer review has NOTHING to do with correctness? Of course not. Please stop looking at the issue in such a binary fasion.
After reading this debate between you, Triskele, and your opponent, I am more skeptical of your claims, not less. I'm astounded by your claiming to be a man of science, yet you have to resort so consistently to being elitist, smug, and condescending. It makes your argument look weak. After all, if your evidence was really so awesome and convincing, then you could have detailed it in a civil manner (the way your opponent treated you). For what reason did you behave otherwise?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The reason we voted for right to work is because the typical union sucks. Seniority, time over skill, political support, union bosses taking all the money, etc, etc. Oklahoma is near the bottom of jobs in the country and we've been union for a long time. Many companies won't even look here for just that reason. Time to change.
BTW, I live in OK you insensitive clod!
BBC: Sun's warming influence 'under-estimated'i /tech/1045327.stm)
1 15714-63 34r.htm)
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sc
Scientists at Armagh Observatory claim a unique weather record could show that the Sun has been the main contributor to global warming over the past two centuries.
Washington Post: Hotter-burning sun warming the planet
(http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040718-
The sun is burning hotter than usual, offering a possible explanation for global warming that needs to be weighed when proceeding with expensive efforts to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, Swiss and German scientists say.
"The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures," said Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research.
Why certainly. There's Mann, Bradley and Hughes who in 1997 managed to falsify the global temperature record for the last 1000 years, and who were joined by Steve Jones in producing a even greater fraud when they stretched the false data back to 2000 years.
c .html
You can see it all exposed at:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/tr
These fraudsters produced a graph which was no better than a table of random numbers. To cap it all these refuse to reveal all their data and statistical methods even when Nature ordered them to do so.
I've made this point before, but it bears pointing out again: Blaming human activity for global climate change is as absurd as blaming a butterfly in Bangladesh for a tornado in Texas. It is utter arrogance to believe (and fear mongering to posit) that human activity could have more than a negligable impact of global climate.
Now, that being said, I'm going to give everyone some pretty pictures. First, is a picture of solar activity. Notice the peaks corresponding to March of 2000 and March of 2002. Now look at this picture which shows anomalous activity. Notice the stabilization of the global climate which corresponds to the peaking of the sunspot cycle. The greatest number of anomalies are to be found during periods which have greater rates of change in solar activity. Remember that industrial output is more or less a constant rate.
The fact is, global climate change is being effected by solar activity. Our polluting of our own environment no more affects global warming than shitting your pants makes your house hotter in the summer.
This is great news for my new sunblock AKA crude oil in a can.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
while undeveloped countries, like France
Just because we don't pollute as much as the Americans, doesn't mean we're "undeveloped" (it has more to do with 75% nuclear electricity)
" Yes there are many different options open to the world, some of which may actaully make a difference."
...and guess what: Kyoto isn't one of them.
This is not entirely true. I don't think Vietnam deserves to be called either. Cuba and Venezuela have representative democracy (and usually fair elections, as confirmed by international observers) and many elements of direct democracy. Belarus can be said to have a benevolent dictator, who has immense popular support (and very vocal, but small, opposition).
:(
The political systems in these countries are different from what is common in the US, Europe and South-East Asia. Certain freedoms are limited, most of all, the freedom to oppose the regime, but this doesn't make these countries dictatorships. And with the exception of Venezuela, there are usually no oligarchs (in Venezuela the oligarchs are actually capitalists opposed to the president Chavez).
Of course, I can still agree with your last statement to a very large extent. All these and other countries, including the Soviet Union, were not truly communistic. Two simple reasons are that 1) you can't build communism in a single country, only in the whole world and 2) you need advanced means of production to start the transition to communism. These reasons were ignored by well-meaning revolutionaries, who believed that it's worth trying, but as a result their attempts were mostly unsuccessful.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Didn't we already dismiss these models recently?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Dude.... take a ride on the clue bus.
I live in Phoenix, and it IS FUCKIN COLD!
If the ice on the continent's melts off won't those land masses lift up do to the loss of all of that weight? It is my understanding that they "float" on the surface anyway, thus the whole pan-Gaea(ps?) thing.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
What criteria are used to dermine that climate is changing? Isn't it relative? Is it cyclical?
Hmmm...Problem Solving mode kicks in:
* Is the climate changing ?
** If climate is changing, is it man made?
*** Is it caused by automobiles?
*** Is it caused by something else?
** If climate is changing, is it non-man made?
*** Is it caused by volcanos?
*** Is it caused by cosmic rays / space phenomenon?
*** Is it caused by cows farting?
*** Is it caused by something else?
Turning off problem solving mode...we now return to previous chain of though...
--
This story makes me think of some old stories like the one about data stats for temperatures based on ships logs which refers to CLWOC's work. Or about the
Corals Adapting to Global Warming.
Just random observations...
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Now, I'd like you to tell me why it fell to me to take a look and correct what appear to be your misconceptions? Are you happy being ignorant and repeating inaccurate and misleading things?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
If the heat wave is real - then water vapour is far more likely to be the culprit. H2O is a stronger green house gas in all wavelengths than CO2 is and it is 100x greater in concentration than CO2.
That being said... the climate of dear old earth is now 20 degrees colder than usual. Usual here is measured on the scale of 570 million years.
People need to learn a bit on paleoclimatology.
A couple great (and very readable) resources on 'astroturfing' and sneaky PR efforts are two books by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton: "Trust Us, We're Experts" and "Toxic Sludge is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry".
Check 'em out.
-Nils
Map 1
Map 2
It might be a better use of one's time to look at the pattern of scientific herd-mentality FIRST, and then take into account individual studies second.
Most respectable scientists agree that we're changing our climate, so you pretend to believe that this is because of a herd mentality? I guess it must be that, there can't be any OTHER reason they would all come to the same conclusions. Perhaps you're the one finding the answers that you want to find.
Why is it so hard for folks like you to accept that billions of humans might actually be able to change the condition of our planet? The same people seem to think that we'll be able to fix it later when it goes bad, which would be much more difficult.
j.j.
"Of course this can only mean that all peer reviewed is wrong, or at least none of it can be trusted to be right."
;-)
Hyperbole much?
No, of course I did not say, nor intend that.
What I did say and intend to convey is that we cannot rely on peer review to provide unbiased results, only LESS BIASED than they would be by default.
I do not claim that the scientific community would be any better off without peer review (others have, and I leave this bean in their pockets, as I have no educated opinion on the alternatives).
In other words: be a critical thinker, and never let any process or organization make you think that you no longer NEED to think.
"Since we can not trust any methodology which is not 100% perfect we can go on believing in whatever we want."
Now you've created your second level of straw man.
"We can safely ignore all science and scientists and just open up the bible or listen to Rush Limbaugh."
Or "Nature"
In the last century, communists have killed millions and millions more people than the "evil" corporations ever have. So who is truly evil?
cpeterso
Don't tell me, tell Nova and the scientist who was doing the emissions testing. Their test seemed quite reasonable to me, and their measurements seemed conclusive. The episode in question was, "Fire Wars".
Oh, yeah??
Prove it!!
"Right To Work" laws stop unions from forcing employees to join the union. If someone wants a job, but doesn't want to be forced to pay union dues, that seems fair to me.
What the USA calls liberals is what the rest of the world calls social democrats or something similar. What the rest of the world calls liberals, the USA call libertarians.
cpeterso
See, here it comes again. A scientific study is published in a peer reviewed journal and the misinformed who refuse to see jump in to regurgitate ideological propaganda to muddy the water.
You blame the media for being lazy but you just choose alternate media with an ideological agenda to form your nonsensical and logically-challenged opinions. You use phrases like "sloppy science" but refuse to point out any errors in the science while simultaneously spewing out drivel about "dinosaurs passing gas."
Your reference to the coldest day in New York shows that you didn't even take heed of my point about the difference between weather and climate. You say we don't have the data but this article is in reference to a scientific study -- one of many that you refuse to accept. You prefer to ignore sound, peer-reviewed science and throw your hands in the air and muse that it's "less likely that any real solutions will be able to cut through the noise" -- completely oblivious to the fact that it is you who is creating the noise and that the noise you are making is drowning out the signals the science is sending us and making solutions impossible.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Thank god, an American with a clue, you must be a rare offset...
Which is why the attitude on Slashdot about global warming scares me.
You know why, because American media is very one sided, even though Americans question things, if they are only getting one sided reporting, then they are bound to have a bias opinion.
The average Americans sees CNN NBC etc as liberal. The average Australian sees ALL American news as right wing news, there is a clear lack of diversity in America, from a viewpoint of someone outside of America. Diversity in the media is a requirement in a free country, something America lacks.
But many of those European nations' emissions have reduced because of economist downturns during the USA's 1990s boom. Those European nations are not saints for "saving the earth"; they are more concerned with slowing down the US economy than actually saving the earth.
cpeterso
Global warming either occurs or it doesn't. There is no theory of global lukewarming.
"It won't neccessarily ruin the economy."
And where did you get your degree in economics?
"Since there will be fines on corporations for bad environmental practices..."
Are you for some reason under the impression that such fines do not already occur? Believe it or not, big evil corporations do try to engage in environmentally clean behavior.
"This means that the jobs lost from the Kyoto agreement could come back in the form of environmental research jobs"
They might hire a few more people to deal with that problem, unlikely but possible, but the increase in taxes to pay off the Russians because they used to be a big polluter combined with the halt of development that could potentially increase pollution would kill off many more jobs than would be brought should your little theory work.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
It saddens me that you so simple minded that you think that is the extent of the issues at hand.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The real reason for these hot summers is extra heat being generated by internet sites from being slash-dotted.
Squirrel!
I believe that minimum wage laws are both immoral and economically damaging for the poor.
Wow. I don't. Without a floor, wages would be pushed into the dirt whenever there was a situation of too many workers and not enough jobs. For one example, read Grapes of Wrath. The family is fictional, but the historical aspect is not.
Hey, even *with* minimum wage, those that get paid 50k in the tech industry are afraid of those who will come along and take 40k just to have a job.
Perhaps you believe in retraining for all those who are getting beaten in certain fields. Surprise! It takes a long time and money to weather the storm and acquire new skills. A janitor can't simply retrain to be an accountant. An accountant can't simply retrain to be a lawyer. A software engineer can't simply retrain to be a financial analyst. And when a person manages to retrain, do you think a 40 year old janitor-made-accountant will start at the same rung as a 40 year old accountant who started when he was 21? No.
Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Once there is too much labor available for a job, it stays that way for a long time because those who don't have jobs can't necessarily afford to take time off and retrain. They're usually busy taking whatever they can get.
And if there were no minimum wage, what would janitors get paid? Likely close to nothing, since there's a huge pool of labor that won't ever go away. Employers will take advantage of this labor pool and keep decreasing wages.
Minimum wage is already below the nationally accepted poverty line. Take away minimum wage and we will have people practically enslaved at 10 cents an hour within a few years.
I believe your viewpoint is simply ignorant.
But were they 5% of 1990 levels?
The treaty says to reduce emmisions by 5% of 1990 levels, not to 5% of kyoto levels. Russia currently outputs ~60% as much CO2 as they did in 1990 due to the economy going into the toilete. That means that they can increase their current levels by ~50% and still comply with kyoto.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
But by burning fossil fuels you are releasing CO2 that has been locked out of the atmosphere for millions of years at a rate that equation 1 can't hope to compete with. Plants can absorb the CO2 from fossil fuels, but the rate at which they do it is fixed by the amount of plant life available . The amount of CO2 locked back up by fossil fuel formation is effectively zero over the timescale considered (decades/centuries).
Well, I don't want to get into the name calling, and I must admit that I haven't RTFA (It's slashdotted), but I think you are forgetting a CO2 sink that most global warming papers I've read tend to neglect; Plankton. The Earth's surface is 70% water. The most abundant life form in that water is plankton. Plankton eat CO2. The amount of CO2 locked up by plankton in limestone and such absolutely dwarfs fossil fuels by orders of magnitude. Though some of it is burned for agriculture, humans do not burn CaCO3 on a large scale. That carbon is effectively gone until it is pushed under the Earth's crust and spouts back out of a volcano or is smashed by a giant space rock. By comparison, all the trees on Earth are insignificant. So tell me, does this study focus on deforestation and cows farting, or does it look at the single largest CO2 sink on the planet?
I think most television-watching people have seen the commercial featuring an eagle gasping and wheezing while flying through a polluted sky in 1970, then showing a present-day eagle soaring through a clear-blue sky "thanks in part to clean coal technologies." This commercial was created by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a non-profit organization that appears to be a grassroots public-interest group.
It's all bullshit: "Spreading misleading messages"
In summary, this commercial is propaganda from the coal industry. ABEC, which tries to pass itself off as a grassroots public-interest group, has received virtually all of its funding from the coal industry. ABEC receives logistical support (staff and other resources) from the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED), a coal-industry trade group that has aggressively lobbied against limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, rejects "the theory of catastrophic global climate change," and takes credit for helping persuade Bush not to support the Kyoto Treaty on reducing emissions.
"Clean coal" is an industry buzz term for technologies that allow coal to be burned with fewer deadly emissions. (see article) The Sierra Club says these technologies focus almost exclusively on toxins such as sulfur dioxide and mercury, but don't address the more contentious matter of carbon dioxide.
If you haven't seen this misleading commercial, you can view it (QT, WMV) at ABEC's web site on this page: Featured Video
From the commercial:
Bullshit?From ABEC President Steve Miller:
Thanks to "clean coal" technologies? Of course, the coal industry spent millions of dollars lobbying against the 1970 Clean Air Act. Also note that he doesn't mention carbon dioxide and global warming.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I am intregued by your tinfoil hat business and wish to subscribe to your newletter.
"No, of course I did not say, nor intend that."
;-)"
Really? It was you who said
"The real topic was that peer review does not guarantee correctness, only mainstream scientific respect."
Right?
"What I did say and intend to convey is that we cannot rely on peer review to provide unbiased results, only LESS BIASED than they would be by default."
Well DUH fuckhead.
"In other words: be a critical thinker, and never let any process or organization make you think that you no longer NEED to think."
Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind. And here I though I no longer needed to think anymore.
'Or "Nature"
Right, because there is no difference between a peer reviewed scientific publication and the bible or rush limbaugh.
Instead we should ourselves undertake decades of study in climatology and physics. Then we should do our own experiments because people who have done experiments can't be trusted to be unbiased. Only then after we have thought for ourselves should we come to any kind of conclusion.
Needless to say this applies to everybody. After spending decades studying and performing experiments everybody should simply ignore you and start over from scratch because you may be biased. After all they need to think for themselves.
evil is as evil does
All of the other damn lefties on this site seem to have gotten their information from that pathetic excuse for a movie.
You obviously mean Pol Pot and Stalin. But they didn't kill millions because they were communist, but because they were power-tripping paranoid madmen.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Already denied everything to do with global warming. Go figure, considering his ties to Oil.
People who make assumptions are the assholes. Thank you, have a nice day.
Due to your lackadaisical writing style I am unable to tell if you are making or mocking these statements. Please clarify so I know how to refute your argument.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean, who is most evil? Or just, who is evil? If you mean the latter, then both. If you mean most evil, that's going to depend on one's opinions - whether you feel it's worse to kill people for an ideal or for money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and don't trust those scientists either; they are for the most part evil. There are in fact many reasons for Hollywood's evil scientist stereotype; eg.:
1. scientists are generally evil.
2. science doesn't support creationism.
3. "real science" sometimes leads to a lot of screaming, esp. when it's data points to views I disagree with.
4. scientists just want to destroy and bring suffering upon ordinary people, and they think they're so goddamn smart.
Granted, I have not read this report, but if it is talking about a single summer and using that as evidence of something happening, I would be inclined to not swallow it hook, line, and sinker. As an engineer, I would be leery of looking at a single data point and concluding anything. I would also be leery of looking at two trends (human industrialization and temperature) and concluding that they are related.
I think the bigger piece is a distrust of the scientist involved. I am exceedingly weary of people with an agenda who go out to try and prove what they already believe. My girlfriend is a sociologist who is working with a PhD. They wrote a paper together about the (negative) effects of globalization on a small village in China. The thing that disturbed me is that it seemed to me, as an outsider, they had already made up their minds when they started doing research. The work was looking for the evidence to prove it.
My concern is that the same thing is happening with climate studies. Showing that green house gas production and temperature have a correlation isn't useful. It might suggest something of an avenue of exploration, but it is without a doubt proof of nothing. In fact, an earlier poster said that they scientist concluded that human activity only might be the reason. Now, not having read the report that might not be true, but if it is, I think it shows why people and leery of such reports. If a report goes ahead and shows a correlation, but in the end says that it has no evidence of causation, you just spent a few hundred pages proving what is already known. The earth was once hot, got cold, and is getting hot again.
What we really need is a very good atmospheric model WITH good atmospheric data from previous years. The problem is that we have neither. We have only begun to start collecting good atmospheric data.
So, are people skeptical, sure. There is an overall cause, namely environmentalism, that wants to find evidence of global warming. Industry doesn't want to find it. Americans, tending to be more capitalistic in nature and sympathetic to industry tend to want to believe more on the side of industry. Europeans being more socialistic in nature and being more hateful towards industry tend to want to find it. I don't think it is a big mystery is to why Europe and the US thinks differently. I also don't think that either are right. The simple fact of the matter is that we have scant evidence, poor atmospheric models, a massive complex system that involves a lot more then just the atmosphere, and are working in a science where running a controlled experiment is extremely hard. Each side might intuitively have an opinion, and some scientist have scratched around the surface, but the simple fact the matter is that no one knows. Anyone who claims to know the answer one way or the other is a liar, pure and simple.
My point here is that I simply don't comprehend what you are worried about. Global warming simply isn't an urgent problem. Recall that the temperature has risen up to a degree Fahrenheit in the past couple of centuries and that we had tremendous difficulty even determining whether global warming was occuring. Yet we should impose draconian restrictions on carbon dioxide production and set back the welfare of hundreds of millions of human beings for a barely detectable danger?
As a society, our record of ecological damage isn't great. But developed countries have vastly reduced their pollution output. I mean real pollution that kills people and harms the environment like sulfur dioxide, fecal bacteria, or heavy metals, not carbon dioxide.
Even far tougher problems than global warming like overpopulation and poverty are being dealt with. Population growth has slowed dramatically worldwide. Meanwhile again on a global scale, income levels and personal wealth have steadily increased since the end of the Second World War. IMHO this improvement is directly due to the widespread application of capitalism and the infamous carbon-fuel based economy.
I think it's a general concensus in parts of the oil industry that the current fossil fuel consumption patterns can't and won't continue indefinitely. The wonderful thing about capitalism is that we have built-in mechanisms for handling changes when the transition in the economy occurs. It won't be pretty, but I think the process and result will be better than rival proposed methods (eg, the current Kyoto treaty).
Finally, I think you should worry about irrationality in your thinking before you worry about it in other people. Among other things, it will more productive since you can't change the way other people think. Besides, I think there aren't many things more fruitless than speculating on the rationality or stupidity of someone's actions when you don't know enough to form an opinion on the matter.
Here are just 2: British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle said that implementing restrictions in CO2 emissions would be 'ruining the world's industries and ... returning us all to the Dark Ages.' "It is my opinion that the only people who would be affected by abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol would be several thousand people who made a living attending, in attractive places, conferences on global warming."
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Dr. Craig Idso of The Center for CO2 Science
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and many others!
Please think before you post - your tinfoil hat is showing.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
In politics & life one can not choose the motivations behind people's actions. Therefore the next best thing is is to evaluate their actions.
I said nothing about being able to "choose", but I did evaluate them based upon their motivations. How many years did it take them? Oh, and please explain to me why China doesn't have to lower greenhouse emission? And, why Kyoto allows other countries to increase them!?! Yes, we should lower greenhouse emissions, but this treaty is all about money for developing nations, and little to do with the environment.
Just another day in Paradise
Also, the correct phrase here should be "right to work for less" not "RT work for less". It's not worth saving five letters just to have a partial acronym that no one understands.
- You're the one who made the questionable claims.
- You're the one who didn't check to see if the facts were straight.
- You're the one who didn't cite any source. ("Scientists" is not up to snuff.)
In casual conversation it's impractical to be so rigorous, but anyone posting toSustainability and energy independence essay
Personally, I blame the media for being lazy.
You probably have some quaint out-moded idea that "the media" is a sacred institution with a responsibility to dig out facts and report them to the public, so they may become more well-informed about making choices in a democratic society.
Being market-driven, the media has found such pursuits less profitable than reporting sensational results about Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson instead of boring, expensive -to-research, needlessly-upsetting-to-advertisers stories about the causes of global warming.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
A "moran." What's a moran? There are 3 cities in the US named "Moran." Are you calling me a city? That would be a first for me.
As far as empty buildings in the north go, I say again look to the policies and ideologies that emptied those buildings. Quite often thriving or sustainable industries were closed down so that the population can be moved to ghettos in the largest cities.
To ignore several old cultures living dozens of centuries in the regions they steward and turn around and market that same region as "wilderness" or worse "Europe's last wilderness" is racist or just ignorant.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.