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.
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?
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.
That's what I keep telling the kids, shut the window your letting the heat 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 +++
"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.
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...
If you did it was inaccurate. I don't have the figures any more, but I did work them out for a previous reply on this subject where I had believed the same thing you have been told. It turns out that vulcanism only accounts for about 50% of CO2 emissions in total at the moment. No single source dwarfs human production, as is routinely reported in some sources.
I used to think that.
Then I found out how difficult and expensive it actually is to make frewater from seawater.
The annual rainfall in the UK is quite high, but it is the water USAGE that is the problem.
Too much fresh water is wasted and not enough is done to reduce the loss of fresh water.
I live in Ireland now, and it is not uncommon here to see burst pipes leaking water from inspection covers for a couple of weeks before anything is done about them.
Mind you, the summer of 2003 wasn't too bad here, we go into the low 20's for most of it. (Yaaay)
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.
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.
By drilling in the Antarctic ice they DO have thousands of years of data.
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.
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?
Human Activity to Blame...
Too much "human activity" in Europe?! *nudge* *nudge*
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.
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.
There are many indirect measures that you can get.
Ice core samples from artic/antarctic. Also trees can tell you some things of the temperature centuries back, they grow faster and get bigger year rings warmer years.
It wouldn't surpise me if there are other ways.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
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
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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!
"For example, if it is GLOBAL warming, why only study Europe?"
Because there are lots of records in europe. Perhaps you'd care to ask the Apache or Sioux for their weather records for 1504? And I doubt you'd get much better data from africa, australia, or asia (except maybe china & japan).
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
i took the title to mean 200 million europeans doing star-jumps warmed the earth...
this sig no verb
Bring on nuclear winter. That will even things up nicely.
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.
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!!
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?
...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!
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.
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
That's because of all the microscopic particles they put into the atmosphere that reflect light back into space.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
IMMEDIATELY suspend all shipments of BARRY WHITE MUSIC!!! The planet depends on it!!!
second society
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 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.
The difference is that lomborg is a true "junk scientist".
Meh.
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.
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!
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
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.
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
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 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
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 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.