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BBC on Global Dimming
linoleo writes "The BBC reports that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has declined significantly between the 1950s and the 1990s, apparently due to particulate air pollution. Scientists are worried that this global dimming may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall. Most alarmingly, it may have led us to greatly underestimate the greenhouse effect: with particulate pollution being brought under control, a global temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable." The lengthy transcript of the show is available.
It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming.
I like when news outlets use this type of language. "Woke up". As if the other scientists were slope-headed morons rejecting some obvious truth just because they did something sooooo horrible as wait for independent confirmation of one guy's conclusions.
Because we all know that science has advanced the world over the last 4000 years or so by jumping on every statement made by anybody who ever put forward a hypothesis.
But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming - in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out.
In addition, this is quite a conclusion to jump to. There are many, many factors involved in climate changes on Earth. To suggest that little or no climate changed is being "caused" by something man made without backing it up goes beyond the bounds of irresponsible journalism to the point that I'd have to question whether the individual who wrote this story ought to be left in the employ of the BBC.
I just love reading the pop-sci crap that gets fed to the public. We observe less solar radiation all over the world, and the next thing you know, we're jumping straight into the conclusion that two man made pollutants are cancelling each other out and keeping the greenhouse effect - an incredibly complicated process to discuss - in check.
I love the media. It's so much fun. Too bad it's about as informational as repeatedly banging your head against a brick wall.
P.S.: The expression is "in the cards", not "on the cards".
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Just like most of the rest of the articles on global stuff, this translates to, "WE ALL GOING TO DIE! THE SKY IS FALLING! Maybe. If this and this happens. Oh, and it's got to happen here, or we'll be just fine"
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Let me get this straight... we are getting less sunlight, but the world is getting hotter?
The unofficial
Great - the UK might be a nice place to live by then! You can keep your Med coasts in France, and Spain - arrid deserts, they'll be in 100 years. Invest in Dorset, I say :)
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Isn't the oilcrisis going to be a reality before this? I think we got worse things to worry about.
there is no such thing as global warming!
Really, this article jumps to far too many conclusions with far too little data.
And with exactly the same certainty as this statement expresses, if I dance around in a circle every Thursday night, an average rainfall increase of 17 inches could be in the cards!
...except for Detroit and Cleveland, which would become slightly less uninhabitable.
Global temperature has risen, fallen, and risen since 1880, even though carbon dioxide levels have steadily risen. In fact, for 30 years between 1940 and 1970 the temperature dropped all that it had gained in the past 50 years. Overall in the past 120 years global temperature has risen 1 degree celsius.
One brings into question the level of accuracy from third world countries in the early 1900's. When one looks at the average temperature in America it tells a different story. From 1880 to 1920 temperatures dropped 0.5 degrees celsius. From 1920 to 1934 temperatures rose 0.9 degree celsius. From 1934 to 1976 temperatures dropped 0.8 degrees celsius. From 1976 to present temperatures have risen 0.7 degrees celsius, for a net total of 0.3 degrees celsius in 124 years.
NT
Vehicle Stars used car search is my current project
lets all screw up our environment.. we may as well speed it up .. start using more coal and gas based turn off all clean nuclear power stations (yes they are clean until the end product is required). and then we can go and increase the capacity of our engines 10 fold.. no worries.. lets all be selfish and not give a shit!!!..
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Global Dimming Dec 18
Hint to editors: I obtained the links by doing a Slashdot search for dimming. Also checked that a Google site:slashdot.org search also turned up results.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
News at 11.
Seriously folks, non-doomsday research doesn't get as much funding as doomsday research.
I knew buying all that land in the frozen north would pay off!
all those people will be flocking to the tropical shores of wonderful Lake erie!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I already knew that many humans out there are suffering from global dimming... of their brains!
www.weberseite.at
And at the same time the amount of energy put out by the Sun is increasing.y /sun_output_0 30320.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom
http://www.hypography.com/article.cfm?id=32945
Where doomed
With al the pollution, floods, drought, storms, global warming, global ice-age, asteroid impacts, spiders,... what is the safest place on earth to live?
No serious, I live somewhere in western europe near the cost. But since I am only in my early 20's, I can still move somewhere else.
So where would you move to, or how high above or below sea level would you move?
All these fear mongering stories are nice and scary, but damit, provide them with a map with the affected areas.
You guys are always so negative. With a global temperature rise of 10 degrees, think of all the places that would become inhabitable... like Canada.
The article wanders a bit: it starts by talking about the dramatic increase in particulate matter in the atmosphere, i.e. very small bits of carbon and ash given off as a result of combustion.
But then the article ends with this:
That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
That is unless we act urgently to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases.
That's a good point but it doesn't quite fit with the original premise.
I would also like to have seen a guesstimate of the percentage of particulati that came from volcanos and forest fires vice the hand of man, but I guess that would be a time-consuming and difficult process. (I imagine it would involve taking air samples from all over the world, and from various altitudes, and examining any solids to determine their origin.)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Global warming would be a welcome event for people like me living in Wisconsin. Today is beautiful 0F with a wind chill of -20F. Lets just hope the warming is seasonal and doesn't occur in the summer :)
rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
OK, I call BS! Human beings seem to be fully capable of inhabiting locations on earth from -60 F to +115 F. While it may change the mixture of life present in places all over the world, this cycle called the ice ages has been doing the same damned thing for millions of years.
A ten degree increase in temperature, by itself, will not appreciably impact the ability of human beings to survive anywhere on the globe.
Other impacts, like sea level increase, may necessitate moving populations around, but worst case places like Arizona and Utah would then be more inhabitable with increased rainfall.
The sky is NOT falling, and we are not all doomed!
...you already think it's uninhabitable.
People already live in the edge conditions of human habitability... places like the Sahara Desert, Antarctica, and New Jersey.
I guess they mean that places that are currently inhabitted will have to be abandoned.
Global dimming is just one factor. You have the greenhouse gas- CO2, methane-; The sun changes its brightness output a tenth or two a percent in cycles; the earth's orbit varies a bit; weather and ocean currents change, and so on. The Cassandras see runaway warming or ice ages at every turn. Real scientists say to continue studying to better understand it.
Kent: Hordes of panicky people seem to be evacuating the town for some unknown reason. Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?
Professor: Mmm, yes I would, Kent.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F09.html
See the Slashdot story from 2003.
Best Slashdot Co
...of a recent Slashdot article about fun with numbers.
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 output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of wes
can't find any on the search engines.
welcome our new global warming overlords.
It's frickin cold up here in Canada during winter.
A few more degrees, and the Champlain Sea might be reborn, and give me a nice beachfront property on the edge of the soon to be renamed "Ottawa Valley".
So, actually, they are asking us to keep polluting, to keep global warming and global dimming balanced ?
... Two powers in delicate balance
this sounds like a bad cartoon
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I saw the actual programme, and it was far from Pop Science. In paticular the 9/11 data was fairly stark in underlining the impact of removal of aeroplanes from the skys for just two days over the US.
But of course, we could all just bury our heads in the sand and claim it is pop science.
The programme went into a "light" amount of detail, but mainly said this was something that required more research but was on the scary side of its implications. They certainly didn't say it was cancelling out the greenhouse effect, they claimed it was MASKING its impact, a very different claim.
The real trouble is that anything that claims there is a global warming problem caused by pollution comes up against one basic problem:
The US Energy Policy.
To my mind these elements equate to the old "the odds of this thing going critical if I drop it are pretty low" school of porting nuclear materials. The odds may be low, but the cost is huge, hence the reason you don't just lob the stuff about.
So it was a lightweight programme, well yes it wasn't the Open University, but "Pop Science", not really. It definately played for some dramatic effect, but there was evidence for those who were watching.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Would you buy stock in IBM now based on its performance in 2100?
"No, of course not," you'd say. "I don't know anything about the year 2100. IBM might not exist. Hell, computers may not exist."
Yet this very attitude is used all the time in quasi-scientific studies. Look -- if we had asked scientists 100 years ago what the biggest danger to pollution was, they probably would have said "horse dung."
In 100 years, I guarantee you that not only will technology have changed, but people will have changed as well. Articles such as this one resort to fear-mongering to try and increase the celebrity of their idea. We live in an age where the popularity of one's hypothesis is more important than its correctness.
Incidently, that link goes directly to the first chapter - it is one of Baen's first experiments with putting books still in print online.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
This would certainly explain something that has bothered me for some time. I am cursed with a memory that remembors images with clarity I wish I didn't have. I have noticed that images from my childhood, (admittedly decades old now), seem to be 'brighter' than those I have of recent times. It's not a 'hazy' difference as you would expect. It is that the images seem 'brighter' to me. If I revisit the same location, it's not the same, even on a bright sunny day.
I know it probably seems ludicrous to most people. I don't talk about things like that normally, because people just dismiss you as nuts, but it's real to me. I am curious, are there any others out there with long term photo memories that exhibit the same thing as I see?
... is it'll be HOT and DARK
at the same time.
no fun in that that I can see.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
This was a genuinely distubing broadcast - although I think it is too early to base predictions. The essential point is that human activity had two effects: Greenhouse gasses trapped IR and had a warming effect. Pollution (particulates) created clouds and had a cooling effect. This was dramatically demonstrated by the no-fly ban after 9-11. When the absence of contrails caused an astonishing two degree temperature shift in just days. The two effects to some extent are cancelling each other out. Reducing the temperature shift and making things look much better than they are. As fuels get cleaner - the amount of particuate emission is reducing and the warming effect is more profound. So the upshot of the show was this: The models which are being proposed which co-relate CO2 to global warming are probably wrong. They are not nearly sensitive enough. If you model the cooling and heating phenomenon indendently you could have much larger temperature swings much sooner. The show went on to suggest some of the catestrophic effects of a 2 or 3 degree temperature shift over the next thirty years. This was slightly over-dramatic for my tastes. That said I would urge anyone interested in the environmental debate to watch this or read the transcript. Carni
Can anyone explain why light causes more heating if it reaches the surface than if it's absorbed in the atmosphere? I would have thought that the energy released would be the same either way, so why would more light reaching the surface cause an increase in temperature?
Most alarmingly, it may have led us to greatly underestimate the greenhouse effect: with particulate pollution being brought under control, a global temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
So, what you are saying is: Get the biggest friggin car you can find and drive it as much as you can 'cause pollution is the only thing standing between us and a giant heat wave.
In the words of Nelson, Ha Ha!
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Nevermind trying to make physics 'cool', how about teaching our children to apply the scientific method & think critically, so that they won't be mislead by junk-science hyperbole, such as this.
R3
Stuff that matters: circuitbreakers, vacuum-cleaners coffee makers, calculators generators, matching salt+pepper shakers
> with particulate pollution being brought under control, a global temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable
So... so... the environmentally concerned scientists are saying...
WE NEED MORE POLLUTION?!
My head hurts.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The big blue marble is starting to glow.
rewriting history since 2109
This idea was from a BBC program called Horizon, last night. In the 50's, and 60's, Horizon was a serious TV Sci program, in which scientific peers reviewed each others' hypothesises, and discussed their proofs.
:-).
:-)
It has now brought us the likes of this, "Killer Atkins" "The Bible Code" and "Mega Waves".
I for one don't watch Horizon, or any Science program on terrestrial TV, at least not since Tomorrow's World was canned. The only "Pop-Sci" I get, is New Scientist, which is sufficiently buried enough in newsagents to make me believe it isn't quite "pop" enough
If you think that the world is going to end tomorrow because of theory x; submit theory x to a journal, get funding from the Met Office; NASA, whatever is relevant, write a bliddy good model, go to your friendly local mac store, ask to borrow 1100 Xserve G5's for a few hours, and work out if your hypothesis is correct.
THEN call the National Press
My UID is prime. Is yours?
Less sunlight is reaching the earth, yet the earth is going to get 18 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in the next 95 years?
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Not to worry, people. The US Government is well aware of the problem and is taking steps to protect both your safety and it's own petroleum-based power dynamic.
Nothing to see here, move along.
As a student of global climate change (the warming part has long since been dropped), a few scientific facts need to be added.
#1 - Global climate change means exactly that - it will get warmer in some places, colder in others. And while idyllic thoughts of long summers around Great Bear Lake might spark a real estate boom, there will be a few downsides to the change. Disease vectors love warm weather, which means that pesky malaria (so, caused by bad air after all!) will become a feature of northern summers.
#2 - The problem of increased warming due to pollution reduction is well known. These are relatively large particles being talked about, the ones that reflect sunlight back out (like after a volcano) - this does not include the smaller particles that have a much larger "green house" effect. Thus as we reduce large particulate pollution, the speed of warming will indeed increase.
#3 - The "wait and study it so we know what is happending" arguement. This arguement has many supporters, including those who love discount rates. The fact is, once a glacier begins to melt (ahem, Greenland), there will be no way to stop it. Mind you, it might take a few hundred to a few thousand years... so maybe 2k'ers get the last laugh?
sig? what sig? i didn't see any sig...
If there are dark particulates in the air absorbing a significant portion of the sunlight, that solar energy doesn't just dissappear. Generally, the only way the Earth "gets" less solar energy is when the surface is covered with something highly reflective such as ice (decreases with warming temperature) or clouds (likely increases with warming temperature).
Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems unlikely the particulates they're talking about are water or small bits of shiny metal, so I'm guessing they're absorbing said energy, not reflecting it. And guess what, if these particles are absorbing the energy, they're going to be heating up, which means that in turn they'll heat up the air around them. If my thinking is correct, the Earth is not receiving less energy, it's just that a greater portion of it is being turned into heat in the atmosphere. The effects of such a change are far to complex for me to figure out, but I'm damn sure it's nothing so simple as "cancelling out" the greenhouse effect. In fact, it doesn't even make sense in that context.
I can't believe someone hasn't references Crichton's new novel....give it a read and then look at this post again. It'll open your eyes.
a global temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
and other parts prime for days at the beach! My property values in NJ are going to go up!!!
How is this "INSIGHTFUL".
The poster clearly understands none of the issues raised and probably has not even read/understood TFA.
I wonder how many of the people taking the piss out of the programme hail from the Land of the Free? Perhaps this is their way of justifying Amerika's staunch dismissal of the Kyoto treaty? Bastards.
I agree that this is a large jump to make. Just because the solar radiation isn't getting to the ground doesn't mean that the atmosphere isn't getting the full force of the solar radiation. It would seem IMO that the particulates that are absorbing the solar radiation would cause the atmosphere to get even hotter than if the ground were aborbing it, thus this is part of the greenhouse effect and not canceling it. Of course, IANAM (Meteorologist).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Climate science is not quite as simple as the "If you fill a bathtup with a hole in it at X gallons per minute where the hole leaks Y gallons per hour" sort of questions you're probably used to.
It's a bit more fucking complicated!!!
So, we pollute and we fry the planet. Now by removing our pollution, we fry the planet.
I vote neither. Scientists go into this stuff with philosophical assumptions (let's find out HOW the Industrial age screwed up the environment, etc.) and this is what you get.
Another idea: Our pollution or lack of it really doesn't affect the global cycles of heat/cooling of the earth that have gone on for centuries.
Oh, btw, did you know that the same scientists discovered that a US nuke bomb test caused this 9.0 earthquake which also casued the tsunami in Asia? Well, just kidding, but this idea seriously is floating around in some places...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
that word "drop". I do not think it means what you think it means. When I look at those graphs I definitely see a rise over the last 30 years. Although I guess the "30 years" you're referring to could be 1940-1970. There is a drop during this range, although far less than the rise before and after it, and I do not know if the drop is statistically different from zero. My instinct says it is, but I don't always trust my instincts on these matters.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I remember the sunlight as being brighter decades ago. It was a "whiter" sun, now it has more yellow to it. I thought the same as you, and replied like that when we discussed this at technocrat yesterday.
It's not nuts to think about it, just an observation is all. I had thought it was part age related as well, just normal lessening of eye acuity, but I think the apparent sunlight has gotten noticeable dimmer as well. That would explain the scene/image brightness deal you remember. And the stats are there in the research, sunlight hitting the surface has lessened.
I got to the second chapter and as soon as the preaching started, I closed that browser window like a ninja.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
As long as China builds all those coal power plants producing five times as much pollution as the Kyoto treaty will reduce.
If everybody started driving electric/hybrid vehicles today, in 5 years there would be less pollutants/carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists now believe that these ingredients are keeping sunlight out. So if the amount of carbon dioxide etc. decreased so would global warming. Right????? Come on people. Don't let the extremests make you feel guilty for driving your "environmentally unfriendly" vehicle. Our vehicles are maintaining the "delicate balance" of the cooling and warming cycles.
Just beacuse you've unplugged the power cord to your laptop -- and it's running on battery power -- doesn't mean that your laptop is getting power.
Not local trends. bottom line is, in the past 200 years, the glaciers have not grown, they've shrunk... in a very very big way. This is a typical capacitor argument, all the ice in the north and the south tend to help moderate temperature, making swings small (if any). They serve as a battery... once the battery is gone, temperatures will not be moderated.
I just love reading the pop-sci crap that gets fed to the public. We observe less solar radiation all over the world, and the next thing you know, we're jumping straight into the conclusion that two man made pollutants are cancelling each other out and keeping the greenhouse effect - an incredibly complicated process to discuss - in check.
Did you actually see the program? I found the whole thing fairly informative.
It included coverage of an international research effort (cost ~25million (pounds?)) to investigate the effect. This was conducted in a region of the Indian Ocean where weather patterns allow for "nearby" polluted and clean air regions. It was shown that the pollution dropped the radiation levels by a staggering 10%.
P.S.: The expression is "in the cards", not "on the cards".
It's "on the cards" in Australia and UK.
for temperature and climate changes to be sure about anything. For example, jet contrails could be just as big of a factor in climate change as CO2 gas. Some say that they warm the atmosphere while others say that they reduce the variability of the temperature, causing other problems. It also could be that this worry about temperatures is based on the fact that more people are living in urban "heat islands", where overall temperatures are going up. As the city sprawl grows around them, the materials around them (concrete, asphalt, etc.) don't cool off as quickly at night, leaving people wondering why it seems hotter here than it was just a few years ago. The Phoenix metro area has this effect going on for sure... The bottom line is that there's more research that needs to be done. Obviously, we should take steps to eliminate excess CO2 output and cut down on other pollutants, but to blame them solely as the culprits for climate change is irresponsible.
Around April 13th, 2003 I read a news article which mentioned that scientists were not measuring the output from the sun. So without knowing how much the orbit is wobbling (which has caused warming and cooling trends in the past) or how much energy is actually coming out of the sun (which I assume fluctuates), we are going to get these predictions?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I am myself (as most Slashdotters) often dubious of the spin put on science for main-stream TV, and while the Horizon program did indeed have lots of the usual London flooded/dust-storm enveloping the BT tower/etc. scenes, plus lots of "but then, things get even worse..." sort of narrative - there was still some good science and a genuine warning to be heeded.
Consider the solid data accumulated from such straight-forward measurements as solar energy and pan evaporation, and the reasoning behind cloud reflectance (particulates building more/smaller raindrops). Together with the observations on the effects of contrails taken during the only time aircraft were grounded in the US (after 9/11). Also, the fact that while industrialised nations have cleaned up air quality - their summers have also been getting warming...
OK, so maybe global warming is/isn't held in check by global dimming. But does anyone here really believe that 6 billion people spewing out CO^2 shouldn't have had more effect by now...
This is why I support wind farms (& nuclear) and don't believe in low cost airlines!
In Florida, from jet trails alone, one can start out with a completly clear day and end up with total cloud cover as they grow and grow. I don't remember so many thick jet trails in the past. So I doubt scientists are worried about cloud cover, especially when it seems somebody is intent on creating it.
Weather control? You decide.
Fry: This snow is beautiful. I'm glad global warming never happened.
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter cancelled it out.
IMHO even over 50 years, we should be able to spot trends of that order of magnitude in our food crops.
get offa my cloud
and my thread
ok
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Crichton writes amazing potboilers, but I'd go elsewhere for science. It's like going to Tom Clancy for foreign policy or Stephen King for religion.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
So obviously the answer is controlled release of particulate pollutants....someone tell the power company!
I don't know about you guys, but I think it's a lot of fun to be alive at the apex of the world :)
if all of this solar energy was going to make it to the earth anyway, how will this increase the temperature of the planet?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The solution seems simple, though expensive.
We place large satellites in space with many square miles of solar collectors. They produce clean power which is beamed down to Earth to replace "dirty" power sources.
As an added benefit, they reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth, reducing the amount of warming. In effect, our clean power producers also regulate the Earth's temperature!
Now to pay for it all...
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
One explanation is the one that has been posited elsewhere in this thread, namely that our particulates generate a cooling effect and that this range was when the particulates were "outperforming" the CO2, methane, etc.
Although I agree that correlation != causation, it often gives insight in experiments to run or theories to test. Of course, with our atmosphere we only have one, so doing controlled experiments on it are difficult, and would probably be ill-advised. The question I ask myself for this issue is: what is the danger if we are right (about greenhouse gasses), and what is the danger if we are wrong (about greenhouse gasses)?
If we are right, then it seems that we should act at once to reduce greenhouse gasses, because by the time the evidence is incontrovertible (I'll agree that luckily it is not yet there), it will be harder to take the necessary steps to fix the problem.
If we are wrong, then there are two other possibities I see. First, that by removing greenhouse gasses, nothing happens but a waste of time and energy. The other possibility is that we actually harm the environment somehow. This last possibility is very unlikely as we haven't been polluting the air long enough for the earth to be "hooked" on our greenhouse gasses.
If we do "waste" time and energy, is it possible that we will destroy our economy? Very unlikely. In fact, it could very well lead to more jobs as someone will have to install the scrubbers, etc., although IANAE (Economist).
Finally, one should also consider the likelihood that we are right against the likelihood that we are wrong. Right now, I would say there is a preponderance of evidence that greenhouse gasses lead to global warming, but that it not yet beyond a reasonable doubt. Still, that preponderance calls for action, as improving the air we breathe is most definitely not a bad thing.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
At the liklihood of being branded a heretic, it should be said that global warming, its causes, its effects, and its magnitude, if any, are not understood yet and this article just illustrates that. We have been assured for many years that rising atmospheric CO2 levels (which is factual) will cause the earth's temperature to increase due to the 'greenhouse effect' of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which reduces heat radiation into space (also factual). Scientists have attempted to create all sorts of sophisticated computer models to predict the magnitude of the warming and its effects on the global climate. Other scientists have attempted to reconstruct the historical climate by looking at tree rings, glacial ice gas bubbles, sedimentary rock layers, etc. to determine what has happened in the past. So far, so good.
The problem with all of this is that we are modeling a very large amount of heat reaching the earth from the sun every day minus an equally large amount of heat leaving the earth every day which leaves a tiny little theoretical residue of heat remaining on the earth to allegedly warm us up. Our current computer modeling techniques are just too crude to be used to draw any conclusions from. This article points out that the amount of heat reaching the earth has decreased significantly due to particulates in the atmosphere but also from increased cloud cover, caused by the particulates, or occuring independently of them. It is also possible, even likely, that the output from the sun is declining, which happens to be the currently-popular theory for explaining the cause of recent, and periodic, 'ice ages.'
What we are seeing is that even with a significant decline in solar radiation, the effect on temperatures has been relatively small. The fans of the global warming models will, of course, claim that the carbon dioxide effects have almost exactly balanced out the solar radiation decline but another, much more likely, conclusion, is that the earth's climate has a feedback control in the circulation of ocean currents, the amount of water evaporated, and the degree of cloud cover and that the computer models we currently have are not nearly sophisticated enough to give us any idea at all of what will happen in the future due to changes in solar radiation or carbon dioxide levels.
The next ice age might be just beginning or we might be on the verge of catastrophic warming but we simply do not know.
I was reading an article a month or two ago in Scientific American about this. The net effect of global warming may well be to make the east coast of the US and the UK colder and drier, not warmer. I can't remember the exact details, but basically right now these areas are warmed by the Gulf Stream, If the Greenland and arctic ice melt, a mass of cold fresh water will drive this current below the surface, giving lower temperatures and less moist air.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Let's not get too defensive. Would you prefer pop-sci, or no-sci, because (sadly or not, its a fact bar a major societal change in priorities) that's what the choice is.
BTW agree with the other poster, the expression most certainly is "on the cards" in the UK, which is where the BBC is based.
It's not like we're so special or anything... just another insignificant speck in the vastness of the universe.
How can we regret anything when we're all dead?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
depending on all the factors, more of the heat is lost to colder "space" in one situation as opposed to another. We get heat from three sources, internally from the planet itself, man made burning and normal large scale surface burning (lightning strikes to forest for example), and solar radiation. The atmosphere acts as an insulating blanket and keeps it more moderate than not, but it's not a *perfect* insulator, and tiny variables cause profound changes. In one situation with the increase in greenhouse gasses-including water vapor-the heat stays trapped longer, resulting in higher over all median temps. In another, because of a higher level of reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, we have less heat gain from solar radiation, but the heat loss is about the same, so it gets colder as a median. The point in the research is that the particulate matter tends to partially cancel the effects of "more" gasses in the atmosphere, suggesting that if we over reduce just one component in the atmosphere while the others are increasing, we could actually make it worse, not better. an interesting concept that is logical though. In this case we are getting more of the gasses and reducing the particulate matter lately due to enacted controls on how we burn things on purpose, so it would tend to then again increase the median surface temp because the envelope would be receiving more heat again.
It's a dang yo yo in other words.
The effects are profound though, about all the scientists agree that even small temp variances taken as an average over some years duration tend to then cause shifts in localised/regional climate some places much colder or drier than normal, others hotter and wetter, sea levels go up and down with how much of the water vapor is trapped as sea ice or glaciers as opposed to free flowing, etc.
We as humans get used to relatively short geological time spans and adjust and adapt our society around our surroundings obviously, so if it changes radically one way or the other it can cause any number of what to us are adverse conditions.
I think the main point is that it doesn't take extreme variables to get profound changes, and that said changes can happen rapidly, more rapidly than they used to think. We are seeing it now, there is absolutely zero doubt the poles are getting warmer and the ice is melting there. And the more that melts, the faster the remaining ice will melt because of the albedo effect. That will continue until such a time as it is "too much" for the planet to absorb in that direction, and it will start to refreeze. Back and forth, been going on for millions of years, just now they think we could be real dang close to a tipping over point in this yo yo travel.
The planet seems to have a remarkable ability to self regulate towards a median, it's the swings back and forth that are the worry and the extrmes in the travels back and forth make it "less inhabitable". We as humans tend to like it better in the middle regions there, that's how we can even handle it and thrive.
We are sort of spoiled now being in the middle of a relatively temperate time as far as the needs of humans are. With the polar caps melting, this will greatly reduce the "averaging" effects and cause some pretty dramatic temp variances in places now that are considered more moderate, and those areas are where the bulk of the humans live.
I think the real main problem that we are having in these sorts of discussions is that there is no single one noun to describe it, and various people tend to pick one or the other and try to make that data fit that noun, and it can't be done.
It is *both* a global cooling and a global warming phenomenon that occurrs,simultaneously, just that the actual perceived results are felt differently depending on where anyone "you" is standing geographically. To arctic and antarctic dwellers, they are experiencing "warming", to others in the more temperate zones, it will be getting colder. And areas that are used to x-am
mx
I personally like the theory that the earth will actually cool because less and less sun will be able to get through.
This seems to lean that way to me.
Climate has been changing long before we were around. How do we know we are not in a warming cycle. I think there are far too many factors to consider, to claim anyone knows for certain.
It's good to know that in case all the climate scientists on the Earth suddenly drop dead that Slashdotters will be able to take up the slack. I mean, clearly an educated background and field experience in climatology makes one no more qualified to be a climate scientist than reading the latest right-wing blogs. In case anybody cares what actual scientists think about this matter, feel free to read http://www.realclimate.org/, which is a blog for a group of climate scientists.
I remember growing up, reading sci-fi books about the massive engineering projects of terraforming Mars so that people could walk around in shortsleeves on it...lately I've been thinking we're going to need to do the same thing to our planet, in real time.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
...but not today.
Excuse me, he's suggesting that both are causing a massive affect
Affect: v. To have an influence on or effect a change in.
Effect: n. Something brought about by a cause or agent. Example: "He's suggesting that both are causing a massive effect"
Here's a Global Cooling Article from the 1970's that suggested placing soot on the poles...
http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
. . . assume it all goes tits-up and we just roast to death or drown in rising waters; followed by all forms of plant and animal life; what happens next? Fast forward millions of years --> the pollution has cleared, great many earthquakes have removed every visible sign of human existence (alongwith the odd meteor hit), nature once again reigns supreme and then, a little fish hops out the water and slowly transforms . . . evolution once again? Age of kings? Rediscover the airplane? Just how might this turn out to be?
"The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950,"
r _1 6.shtml
No, it has increased by about 2 weeks in that period.
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/press_releases/p
It's true that popular media accounts of the holocaust tend to include some apocryphal material -- the soap story, the lampshades, sometimes lumping all the camps together as if they were run the same way. It's also true that the weight of the evidence has convinced every credible historian on the planet of the fact that the holocaust occurred. No one smoking gun is going to demonstrate conclusively that it did, and it's possible that any given fact might be questioned -- but the big story is there and cannot be wished away.
I think there's a danger, when we start laying into vague targets like "the media," that we'll confuse the quality of the messenger with the truth of the message. And that ain't always inadvertent; holocaust deniers consciously manipulate the slightly-off pop news stories to question the whole history.
I'd agree completely with your basic mutterings about, oh, newspapers, and the 10:00 local news, and to some extent magazines like Discover. But behind Discover's "Top 100 Science Stories of 2004" article, which chose global warming as its number 1 story by the way, there is a truth: the overwhelming majority of scientists today are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming is now occurring. Get just a nudge away from the low pop sources -- to Scientific American, which is a little more highbrow among the pop stuff, or then to Nature -- and you'll see that, loud and clear, with less boneheaded news manner to the narrative. The evidence is so overwhelming that even the Bush administration, laden with energy industry biases as it clearly is, has conceded that the warming's happening.
For anyone to wish the actual phenomenon away with a "this is a big complicated phenomenon, and the pop media's suggesting it has simple explanations" would be an exercise in wishful thinking. It'd be on that level of silliness we're bemoaning in "the media," wouldn't it? At that point we're talking tortuous self-deception at the level of creationism -- speaking (indirectly) of another overwhelming truth that people try to dispel by "debating" at a pop-cultural level...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
... when it's simply a diatribe.
The issue is not whether the BBC article is wrapped in pop-science or not. The issue is global climate change. Historically, segments of the human population have gotten into entrapment scenarios with relative ease and horrific consequences. Some people have noticed this trend and speculated that global climate change could be a deciding factor in the biggest of these scenarios ever.
The parent's claim that the "pop-scientist" just jumped to a conclusion does absolutely nothing to refute said conclusion. Yes, the idea that the two effects cancel each other out is overly simplistic, but until I see some kind of refutation, the theory seems plausible. Why should it not be plausible?
The comment that the BBC is being irresponsible is inflamatory. How is the idea no-change being caused by man any different than the idea of change being caused? The claim is: to want something to "back it up" (the theory), but if you read the article, they do make an attempt. Why isn't this attempt sufficient for a BBC article, and if it isn't, what higher standard for evidence is?
Overall, the BBC article does predict dire consequences with little solid evidence. However, we have the same issue at stake with the World Health Organization trying to make predictions for epidemics. But, I live in what was one of the SARS hot-spots, and even if they don't have strong evidence, I don't mind WHO predictions being used to guide public health policy.
I don't see this BBC article as any different, other than by the fact that it wasn't issued as a statement of an official body, so it won't be used in public policy. However, it doesn't mean that one might as well bang your head against a wall, instead of considering that the current lack of global climate change may be itself a serious problem.
I know the Earth is in trouble because I read it every other day. I just wish they would decide if it's warming up or cooling off. Either way, I believe it! (Because I'm stupid.)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
How ironic this is. We are causing global warming by polluting our atmosphere. Yet if we stop polluting the atmosphere, we will speed up global warming. I think it's time to admit we're screwed either way.
When are we just gonna admit that the easiest, nay only, fix is to just have a shitload less people?
We can hope that Technology will find a way to pollute less... but those gains will likely be offset by the ever increasing number of people. In fact the same Technology that creates cleaner methods of living also allows far more people to live, and live longer.
Noone can deny that if there were fewer people consuming resources, we would have less of an impact on the environment.
I'm not saying ditch technology. I'm saying that just because it's technically possible for six billion humans to live on the planet doesn't mean it's a good idea.
It ought to be possible to vaguely guess the theoretical carrying capacity of the planet. An Earth sciences book on my shelf suggests that the solar energy available at the Earth's surface is arond 5.42 x 10^24 J/a. Not all of the surface areas can support a lot of life. Even in the areas which can, somewhere on the order of 90% of the energy is lost in transfer between each level.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Global warming is a train-wreck towards which we're all headed, and I guess Big Bro' wants to downplay it to avoid panic.
YOU CAN (AND SHOULD) READ THE ARTICLE YOURSELF AT http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon
Mad poster wrote: "I like when news outlets use this type of language. 'Woke up'."
The article does not try to imply scientists are closed-minded or doddards. The portion of the article "mad poster" is referring to is simply pointing out that light-meter measurements indicating the Global Dimming pattern did not receive much attention until they had been corroborated by a completely different method of measurement: water evaporation rates.
Global Dimming required corroboration by multiple methods of measurement because it was very surprising, very surprising for two reasons: (1) the effect was so large that scientists found it hard to believe nobody had mentioned it before (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence), and (2) it seems to contradict Global Warming.
These two kinds of measurements, light-meter, and water evaporation rates, have been made at least back to the 1950's, and both indicate that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface has declined by 10 to 30 percent, depending on location, from the 1950s to the early 1990s.
Mad poster wrote: "To suggest that little or no climate changed is being 'caused' by something man made without backing it up goes beyond the bounds of irresponsible journalism
I'm not even sure what the first sentence means. The article didn't give evidence why humans aren't causing climate change? What? He was in a hurry to be one of the first posts, I suppose -- before a TRULY informative post was submitted, which would make it harder for the slashdot disinformtion network to manipulate the modding process.
The article actually presents the following evidence that Global Dimming has been caused by pollution particles in the air:
Project INDOEX found a 10 percent reduction in sunlight reaching the Earth's surface due to pollution particles in the air. This was attributed to pollution particles making clouds more reflective. Clouds are formed by water vapor condensing on the surface of airborne particles. The presence of air pollutant particles causes these droplets to be smaller and so more reflective. The droplets are smaller because there are ten times as many particles for droplets to form about. Why smaller droplets are more reflective the article does not say.
From the blog you linked to; " The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science."
Then the very first blog post on the site starts with "...Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces."
So I'm supposed to trust the credibility when the very first post immediately violates the sites stated policy by presupposing a conclusion. Sorry pal, but scientists are like everybody else - looking to pad their own wallets by capitalizing on the publics inability to grok a subject.
The only scientists I've found with absolute credibility on the subject (i.e., not having their research funded) say "global warming" is bunk, as is global cooling.
Why do we have to decrease CO2?
Couldn't we just increase particulate emissons and be done with it already?
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Look at the log of this badmouthed uneducated dimwit. Insightful my arse.
Get an education (look at him blabbering about the cost of books) before posting here or get lost.
You probably drive a highly polluting Tractor, like a Hummer, and now you feel attacked?
After you got that education, please give us all the factors in climate models and why you don't think the ones mentioned in the programme matter. See you in 10 years.
Oh, gee, you're right. They said bad things were happening before, and they were wrong! So they're always going to be wrong!
So I'm going to go out and buy a Hummer, stop recycling, start a few forest fires, and help lobby to remove all pollution regulation to help our businesses grow. After all, nothing bad will ever happen, it's just propaganda by evil communist anti-business types.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I didn't say anything, I just posted an article. Nice kneejerk reaction though.
We were wrong! It's more people moving towards the use of solar powered homes! We're using up the sun!
I advise all of you to help accelerate the process and get air pollution under control so we can sink L.A. and then go visit Bill Hicks' Arizona Bay.
Global warming will be cancled out by nuclear winter.
Want to make some money? Calculate how much the oceans will rise when all of the ice on Antarctica and in the north pole melts and due to the expansion of water from the temp. increase.
Then buy land 1,000 (or whatever) feet above sea-level and you'll have beachfront property in a few years.
Of course you're going to need a big sea-wall for the 80ft waves cause by the gigantic hurricanes...
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The realclimate blog (by real climate scientists, they say) has an article debunking this "we thought that there would be global cooling in the 70s" idea. Basic idea seems to be pop media doing their thing then, and now, it's just a case of pop media hysteria, but a general scientific consensus that there really is a problem.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!
in other news....due to high levels of solar radiation over the past 100 years caused by ever increasing solar activity evaporation has incresed world wide. This phenomana has dramaticly increased temperatures, cloud cover and pricipitaion world wide....
The dimming effect of the increased cloud cover has futher dimminished the ability of ocean born orginaims to photocythisis and as a further effect has dimminished the oceans ability to absorb co2 from the atmosphere.
stendec@gmail.com
One of the scientists was standing in front of what looked like glass panels etched with some form of program code. There were even some brief close-ups, but I couldn't work out what it was supposed to be.
Any ideas what it was and where can I get a printer that does that? Glass lasts longer than paper!
When warming and dimming are said to cancel, this only be true on average. Warming and dimming are both caused by pollutants, but concentrations for the two will vary from spot to spot. Why is this pertinent? If two adjacent locations are dimmed and/or warmed differently, the resulting temperature differential could result in storms. One source of dimming that NASA is already monitoring is contrails. See http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/GLOBE/
There are of course those who suggest that global warming is, "helping to keep us out of another ice age," or that, "dimming caused by particulates will balance out greenhouse effect." The real answer is that we just don't understand the weather well enough, so to pretend that we can our effects against each other, or against natural forces, is silly.
I suspect that even with Apollo-scale funding, we still couldn't learn enough about weather soon enough, because I'll bet long-baseline observations are a crucial part of the process.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
How does it feel to waste all that time typing up a post nobody will read thanks to the subject of "MOD PARENT SOMEHOW"?
.. and don't actually provide any citations for your random claims.....
Oh... and the fact that you sound like a lunatic getting psyched up to go bomb a Hummer dealership.....
You're not very good at trolling. Maybe it's just not for you. I'd suggest that tinkertoys may be more your speed.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
You might want to read the title of the parent post, which is also reflected in your own title. The article posted was written in 1975, nearly 30 years ago.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
This is not some Paris Hilton story that you can blow off that easily. These are serious people who are worried about serious threats.
... If it turns out that the cooling is stronger than we thought then the warming also is a lot stronger than we thought, and that means the climate's more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we originally thought, and it means our models may be under sensitive to carbon dioxide."
Listen to Peter Cox, a researcher at the UK's Hadley Center, who's suddenly facing a situation where his models may have to be recalibrated:
"We've got two competing effects really.
What might this mean?
"If we don't do anything by about twenty thirty we could have a global warming of exceeding two degrees, and at that point it's believed the Greenland ice sheet would start to melt in a way that you wouldn't be able to stop it once it started it, it would melt. Take a long time to melt but ultimately it would lead to a sea level rise of seven or eight metres."
That's 25 years away. Maybe these people are a bunch of wackos who just happen to also be well-published climatologists, but are you willing to bet the next generation's well-being on that?
With the tsunami in the Indian Ocean we've gotten a little taste in what can happen when you don't keep up with what going on with the planet. This story sounds much much bigger than that - and unlike undersea earthquakes, humans are in the drivers seat on this one.
This article is probably the one that will turn people from "concerned" to "worried." We are talking about making the planet uninhabitable. On any continent. It's amazing that people are talking about this as "pop science garbage." How comforting it is to take such a position, because otherwise you'd actually have to be worried about this issue.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Several related articles repeatedly make an unreferenced claim that solar output between the '50s' and the present has not declined, as allegedly measured by 'satellites.' The conclusion, therefore, is that the reduced solar radiation observed at ground level is due entirely to changes in the atmosphere, such as particulates.
The problem with this, though, is that the 'Solar and Heliospheric Observatory' satellite was not even launched until 1995 and it does not seem to have been designed to measure total solar output, at least directly and routinely, but seems to be more focused on observing the solar interior, the solar atmosphere, and the solar wind. I suspect that when SOHO was being designed, no one gave much thought to the possibility that it might be interesting to monitor and track solar radiation spectral output because there wasn't any thought that it might be changing and it would be easier to observe on earth, anyway. Maybe solar output is truly not changing between the '50s' and 2005 but I don't think anyone really knows.
I wonder if the so-called "chemtrails" have had any effect on this situation. I can't vouch for the chemical content of the trails, but it does seem fairly peculiar to me how these specific planes fly in tic-tac-toe patterns and have a drastically different contrail appearance than a normal jet. The trails just hang there for hours, and are thicker with more of a grey color to them...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The US Energy Policy is an example of localized dimming...If someone buries their head in the sand (or in some other dark place...), their vision is limited.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Its about time the really big polluters were stopped!
I personally feel that Volcanoes in Hawaii and mainland USA ie Mt St Helens(not to mention the rest of the world)should be forced to stop spweing out airborne particulate at a rate that makes man-made efforts look like fairy dust.
Mind you they have not been to bad in the last 50years so it will be a bit of a shock when they go back to a more active pattern in the next 100-500yrs.
yes they spew out chemicals (long list) as well as ash...
{ Pillar candles great for when the power fails and you cant see the keyboard..
Such statements [like yours for instance] suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
So your "we simply do not know" is dead wrong. We've been warned that there's a serious threat here. Do we know absolutely? Of course not. But uncertainty isn't an argument against action - not when the stakes are so high and the measures themselves so doable. (Uncertainty also things could be worse than we thought - which is precisely what this article argues)
> The article posted was written in 1975, nearly 30 years ago.
Call me stupid but I do believe that was his point. Journalism today seems to be more about sensationalizing news than disseminating truth. Without any real contextual information, journalists like to try to raise everyone's blood pressure because they think they're doing society some kind of service.
"Oh no, what should I be worried about today? I must buy a paper!"
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
> When are we just gonna admit that the easiest, nay only, fix is to just have a shitload less people?
Well volunteered. Do you have a gun in the house?
Actually, I would suspect that a rise in temperature in Cleveland would make it even more uninhabitable due to the increased odor.
You made only one substantive criticism:
n /dimming_trans.shtml
>> "and don't actually provide any
>> citations for your random claims....."
The citation for all my claims was the ORIGINAL article we are all supposedly discussing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizo
I change my mind, you've never really read that article, have you? Perhaps you're not a disinformation agent, you're just too dumb.
Goes to show you should never be too quick to assume malice for what can be attributed to simple stupidity.
BBC EXCLUSIVE: Scientists have acquired evidence that the Earth will be absorbed by the Sun in approximately 7.7 billion years.
"No one will survive this catastrophe," claims experts. "All life on planet Earth will be extinguished. If we don't take action now, this atrocity will claim every living man, woman and child on this planet."
Environmentalists are asking for trillions of dollars for research grants and book advances with which to shriek about the coming apocalypse.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
If you look at losses in biodiversity in the past 100 years, its clear we won't need to wait that
long to determine if we need long term baseline studies. The majority of the effects of anthropogenic "forcing" will have become sufficiently large by that time for us to realize it is probably already too late to save the biodiversity we rely on for our survival. 80% of all plants are now regarded as in danger of extinction the majority of larger animals will not be that much further behind.
The frogs, birds, and larger mammals are checking out now, we will leave just a moment latter in a geological sense.
God has always favored beetles, cockroaches, and bacteria anyway. How else could you explain why there are so many more of them? Even adopting th ethics of roaches, as current administration is busily doing, won't be enough to save us.
and dream on, fool yourself that no global warming is happening because of false predictions made in the past. we have been hearing this story for 20-30 years now as a kind of excuse that nothing is happening because they had it wrong once, and thus we can continue our thoughtless and egoistic lifestyle without having to worry.
means two distinct forces cancelling out? How is it that the abscence of supporing data proves the validity of two theories? I would rather venture to guess that the abscence of proof for global warming means only that there is no proof of global warming. How could one draw the conclusion that there must be some other force "hiding" the effects of global warming? I say giant three-headed aliens are living among us. The fact that we can't see them merely proves they are invisible, duh.
"I did watch ... with healthy dose of 'scepticism'."
I suggest you stay away from the pizza and other fast foods to avoid the indigestion. You may not live long enough to finish watching the program.
Don't feel too bad, Reuters made the same mistake last week in covering the tsunammi story.
Here
After that go outside, play, and take some good breaths of our polluted air. You'll be happier that way.
The analogy comes from Tarot reading, in which the cards must be interpreted to determine the future. Hence, "in the cards" is appropriate even though "on the cards" is technically correct from a rational perspective. Like most things people believe in, the perspective in question is not a rational one.
Having said that, try the southern hemisphere. Some place currently classified as temperate (to cool). Away from the coast. At least 1,000 meters above MSL. Not too close to a fault-line. With a high water table flowing from a pristine catchment basin.
Remember that doing this doesn't guarantee you'll be "safe", it is just, kinda sorta, increasing your odds. Or not.
At the very least, move away from the coast. Europe is probably in for a rough ride this century. Summers are getting warmer, melting the Arctic ice-packs. Winter in Western Europe is probably going to get colder because the warm current of the Gulf Stream is being stopped in the North Sea by the fresh-waters coming from the melting ice. Expect lots more extreme weather patterns. Expect higher variances in temperature and rainfall. Severe 50-year events will pop up every 8-10 years.
Hope I have cheered you up.
Dr. Freud
Technology meets Transportation.
Burning wood, it seems, has two good qualities then: (1) increases the particulates in the atmosphere to keep things cooler, while (2) only releases carbon dioxide that was already in the current (as compared to fossile) carbon cycle, thus not producing any net increase (as long as it's not burning wood from a forest that will never grow back).
Meanwhile, on the plus side, this news portends significant savings in the funds currently used to maintain the US muclear arsenal. No need for nukes when the world can be reduced to a glassy dessert without them.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
... rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable
Well, yes, but think of all the parts of the world which will be juuuust right!
- - "(cost ~25million (pounds?))"
Mentioning the cost that way makes it seem that expensive research is more reliable/accurate/honest. Cost doesn't necessarily make the research better or the conclusions more accurate. Funding does, however attract more people that are in it for the money.
Eg. Several companies spent a lot of money to "prove" that smoking isn't harmful.
Note to those who are low on logic fluid:
This doesn't mean that expensive research is less worthwhile either.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Sunbathers account for between 1% and 12% of total sunbathing cases. In Mexico, only the super rich and tourists sunbathe, but skin cancer is approaching US rates.
Nice moderator downgrade, "michael." You're a pussy as well as an idiot Leftist.
Save the planet, prevent global warming, Pollute!
This is a problem with a lot of people's ability to think. They believe that because they can apply a metaphor, and then can then draw conclusions based on that metaphor.
The earth's atmosphere is an atmosphere, not an egg, what happens to eggs on roofs is of no consequence to the actual atmosphere. I don't know anything about meteorology, maybe this idea is true, or maybe it isn't. I'm all for responsible stewardship of the environment, and I'm happy to differ to the experts.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I'm a fan of conspiracy theories. I was just reading about chemtrails recenty. Supposedly, some humans out there have control of earth's weather, possibly the Japanese and Russians. The people in the west just refuse to acknowledge the obvious.
Then, someone is loading chemicals of some sort in to jet fuel on some planes, and they fly across the sky putting out chemicals which creates clouds and haze. Unatural cloud formations, and unusual colors when light it reflected from it. I've seen some of the photographs, it's interesting at least. Now I just came across reports of unknown objects in the trail, seeing pictures, weird, I don't know what it is, some of it looks like optical effects, but others look like something is there.
Anyways, my source is http://www.rense.com for much of it, and like the alien/ufo stuff probably needs a lot of skepticism. I don't know the truth, but it wouldn't suprise me if the government was conducting more experiments on the people.
pictures of orbs in chemtrails at http://www.weatherwars.info/Orbs1.htm
and basically more stuff at their site if you're curious... i wouldn't classify myself as a believer but I think they have observed in some cases, something interesting that I can't offhand explain. Maybe elaborite hoax/deception because someone was bored and thought it would be fun?
Anyways you're already wasting time on slashdot and reading an AC post... so what the hell right...
From the naked colony episode: Without the $4,000 membership fee, Beavis and Butt-head must sneak into Sunny Grove Nudist Colony to see naked people.
The shot from the last scene -- showing the boys as old men
Reporter: "Beavis and Butt-head, you've lived long and fruitful lives, now what would you say is your crowning achievement?"
Old Butt-head: "Uhhh...we saw naked people."
It's not all doom and gloom if the worst case scenario presented happens. It IS possible to stop the "run away" effect that the authors mentioned as a worst case scenario.
The "solution" (or rather, band-aid) is to simply launch a solar sail, and cover up a portion of the Sun. One instantly reduces the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth.
Yes, there are technical issues involved; but nothing insurmountable. Yes, the effects are not fully understood. But at least it would put an instant stop to Greenland melting, the rain-forests burning up, and much of Northern Europe and America turning into a desert.
So you can sleep a little easier tonight. The world isn't going to fry in 25 years; or at least if it does, there are ways to control it.
And if you think about it a little more, this is the ultimate outer space weapon, for getting the population of a planet to be under one's control. Someone probably has written a science fiction novel about it already.
Oh my goodness, Antarctica, the Sahara and every ocean are already uninhabitable. What will we do next?
I think it has to be the USA's fault. Probably Republicans and possibly GW Bush's fault.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
The dimming has been measured by multiple scientists, in multiple locations, by different methods. It isn't a theory, it's an effect that has actually been observed and quantified.
Now I can't tell you why there's not been a drop in agricultural output; actually, for all I know there has. But there's certainly more to agricultural output than what you might imagine. Perhaps the dimming is just effecting certain frequencies of light that plants don't respond as effeciently to in photosynthesis, perhaps farmers are compensating by using more fertiliser? Who knows?
Whatever the reason, it doesn't mean that dimming isn't happening. It is.
So, you read the "article" and because the "article" was "crap," you decided the science must be as well? One of the problems with modern science is precisely this. So-called scientists "familiarize" themselves with research by reading some typically untrained, largely ignorant, possibly near-illerate, probably politically motivated journalist's rendition of the research and then call it bogus science. Courses in logic typically identify this kind of argumentation as "straw man" because nothing in the ensuing debate has anything to do with a reasoned critique of a real argument and instead substitute the straw man (the "article" in this case) for the actual research. Possibly you should look into a career as a demagogue. There is room at the top on both sides of the political fence for this kind of reasoning.
"If wisdom grew on trees, you Sir, would be a bush". Plunkett & Macleane
If wisdom grew on trees, George W. would be a bush.
Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?
h es _quote04.html
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speec
"a global temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable"
We Transhumans are going to render much of the world's inhabitants into a - shall we say - altered state long before that happens...
Seriously, people who predict events 100 years in the future WITHOUT taking into account the impact of technological development over that period are just looking like idiots.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
:D
Why smaller droplets are more reflective the article does not say.
I believe it has to do with the cross-section of a cloud, not really to do with the size of a particle.
Basically you pack a lot of tiny reflectors in a small volume when the density of pollutants is large and each droplet is small. For a larger droplet (with a less number of them), there are greater gaps / spaces in between them, hence easily letting the sunlight to scatter through.
In short, it's the density of particles that affects the degree of reflection. Not the size of each droplet, well, not exactly.
Why should we worry about the habitability of this rock 100 years from now?
In 100 years humans will have [nearly] perfected the art and science of space habitation.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Biomass production over a wide range of environments should be majorly effected by a 22% drop in solar output. We should see it in ocean plankton, wild forest growth rates, the carrying capacity of grasslands, etc.
Also, though many places have updated their agriculture, there are quite a number of subsistence farmers around the world who are using the same methods as they did 50 years ago and who haven't gotten modern hybrid seeds in that time. They should see the full effect.
Granted, plants don't use the spectrum equally at all wavelengths, so something that preferentially reflected the blue might have less impact. But still, with the large magnitudes of dimming being claimed, there should be very noticeable effects in an area that biologists and ecologists monitor very closely.
You could just save yourself quite a bit of effort there by voting for Bush. All things that dickface stands for.
So Greenland will become green after all.
Yes, my bad in not realising it was referring to a 1975 article.
Depressing stuff...
I was correcting the parent to mine, who missed the date, and was thinking that it was a recent article that suggested the shorter growing season in England when it has, in the last 20 years or so, extended.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
you narrow minded idiot, you should sit on the same table as george bush!
Humidity is related to temperature because when it is cool and humid, the moisture wicks the heat from your body more rapidly. Alternately, when it is hot and humid, the moisture insulates the heat to your body.
This is why 100F in the midwest is miserable whereas 100F in Las Vegas feels cool. Both Wind and Humidity effect the relative way a temperature feels. I find it insulting that the news agencies only consider the one that make you feel worse.
At 40 below, your spit freezes before it hits the ground. This is not true when the wind chill is -40.