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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...
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.
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.
You mean that some Joe Random Commentator on Slashdot (who can't spell flawed) has spotted some "serious" flaws in a research paper that the peer reviewers of Nature, one of the most reputable scientific journals in the world, have failed to spot.
Well, spank me on the arse and call me shorty!
I'll look forward to reading your comments in the next issue of Nature.
No but, yeah but, no but...
This research has some serious flaws..... I think it was written to grab headlines.
I agree. Fuming liberals were responsible for the heatwave.
They are cooling off now though.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"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.
It could be used to establish liability - just like the research into smoking causing cancer; before there was good research the tobacco companies could avoid liability (even though they knew fairly well that smoking caused various diseases), once the research was public they could reasonably be sued for carrying on their activities. Imagine Exxon getting sued for those excess 30,000-50,000 deaths per year due to anthropogenic global warming.
Don't think this is likely? The SCO nonsense should convince you that lawyers will do absolutely anything. On the example of the tobacco company lawsuits, I doubt such action would succeed, but it could cause serious costs and embarrassment to oil companies, car companies, etc., who fail to take action to moderate their impact.
-- Nothing unusual happened today
Or the chemists saying that bucky-balls are a major cause of global arthritis?
Or the recent flood of biologists publishing data suggesting that trees are plotting behind are backs.
These results are based on model runs. You can believe them or not (although its unlikely you're qualified to make a informed assessment), but I've heard of no climate modelers deliberately putting falsifying data or results in order to keep funding.
Do you have any references to such activity, or are you just spreading malice?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
So -- using that old razor of Occam's -- either the entire world and every observable natural system is on the brink of an unheard-of disaster, or there is a noticable (and understandable) trend in scientific research to a) follow the herd, and b) doomsay.
True enough, Up here in the arctic the change in temprature is really noticable. Over the last few years all sorts of plants and animals that would hardly ever bee seen in here just 10-15 years ago have become common place. They do concede in this article that the climate is still colder than it was during the middle ages when people were able to grow wheat in quantity as far north as sub arctic Norway, Sweden and in Iceland: "...the temperatures of summer 2003 were almost undoubtedly the highest in Europe for over 500 years." So I'm still not convinced that this isn't just a natural fluctuation in the climate, althought is is probably not completely unaffected by human activity.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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?
You're sounding very emotional. Maybe a couple of deep breaths might help.
As an architect who has written both simulation engines and created complex models of various systems, I can tell you that the implicit assumptions going into a simulation are the ones that cause poor predictive ability. These are almost never discovered until later when better models are created.
Nobody is accusing the world of science of foul-play. I'm simply pointing out that scientists are people too. And as a system of people, they also have observable behaviour. 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.
I'm certain that all involved were top-drawer and well-meaning people.
You're saying that scientists are either falsifying or wilfully misinterpreting their results (stressing that "there's always some cataclysmic disaster looming on the horizon" which you imply is fictional). And you suggest, they do this for personal, professional or financial gain.
You have absolutely no evidence for either implication, both of which are absolutely disgraceful.
And yes, I'm emotional, you've just accused me of being a dishonest charlatan. I'm allowed to be emotional.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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
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).
Look, the global warming theory doesn't deny that global climate fluctuates, so stop beating that strawman. What we are currently are worrying about is a much sudden and drastic change than before.
Think of it as a pendulum that has slowly gone back and forth has now very suddenly rocketed towards one extreme as if someone whacked it with a tennis racket. Yes, it was already heading in that direction, and it hasn't reached the previous extreme end yet. However, the speed causes more difficulties for species to adapt than they had before, and we worry what will happen when it reaches the extreme end, and if it will continue in that direction much further than before.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You further rub salt in the wounds by claiming that that scientists are doing this because they can't get funding for "everything's fine, situation normal" reports. Of course, this is balderdash anyway: the oil industry does fund such reports, and presumably the Bush administration would also rather see such things.
To me, accusing the scientists working in this area of being greed-driven liars most certainly is accusing them of "foul play".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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!!
...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!