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New Climate Change Warning
sebFlyte writes "A new grid computing climate research project, climateprediction.net, has come up with its first major results, and they're really not good news for the planet according to the BBC. The simulations suggest that over the next hundred years we could see average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K, more than twice what was previously thought."
11K? 11000 degree rise? 11 Kelvin increase? The temperature will be 11K?
Could we not just have the front page update delayed for 10seconds to completely avoid this additional server load when a new story is posted?
liqbase
This thing was run on so many PCs. They obviously took the simulation itself into account -- good job!
Someday people are going to feel awfully silly that they were worrying about terrorism instead of the warning signs of ecological degeneration.
I suspect that the planet will be fine in either case. Now perhaps not good news for it inhabitants...
Disclaimer: I actually do think there's something in the global warming argument. I think putting loads more energy into a chaotic system gives that system the freedom to explore states in its phase space that could cause us some real grief. I actually don't care if "the planet will survive, it's seen worse". I'd prefer to survive personally, and I'd like to keep a few other humans around as well...
:-). I don't think that alarmist, over-the-top "reports" are doing any real good - in fact I think they harm the argument they try to represent.
However I think the results are pretty conclusive in their own right and right-minded politicians ought to be doing something on that basis alone (they're finally beginning to, as well
So, by varying the parameters in a simulation, they've found a range of temperature increases which we should engender reactions from "concerned" (2 degrees) through "terrified" (11 degrees). Hey, I admitted my bias in the first paragraph! The press reports the "terrified" figure and it's big news. Until someone points out that it's a Normal distribution, and the massively-more-likely figure is in the "worried" temperature range of (guessing here) 5-6 degrees.
The problem is not that the scientists are lying (they're not), and not that the press are lying either (they're not). The problem is a lack of understanding of the end-result in announcing a catastrophe and then saying "No, we'll be ok". There's a fable about this, and it involves a boy crying "wolf" too many times...
I'm not sure who's to blame. Should the scientists state more forcefully what their expectation is rather than the extremes of their results? Would they ever get published in that case ? Should journalists be held accountable for doing the equivalent of shouting "Fire" in a theatre ? Well, a journalist's job is not to report the news, it's to sell papers, and catastrophes sell better. Perhaps there's a need for a neutral ground, some sort of arbiter that can interpret the results in a way the public can understand (since no-one seems to take science these days), but *that*'s open to *easy* abuse as well.
Perhaps science was better off in its ivory tower after all. That's a depressing thought. Perhaps the best solution would be to comprehensively educate people about science (better, about statistics) and beat the snake-oil salesmen at their own game.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I hope they mean 11 degrees kelvin and not 11000 degrees, whatever the scale.
They should have just found a way to point the finger at someone else...
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
11K? Is that 11 000 *unknown units* or 11 degrees kelvin? If 11 degrees kelvin, why not just say 11 degrees celsius...
Oh well. As long as it's the The Century After The Next, and not the day after tomorrow... not my problem.
If I have any kids, I'll be sure to painfully torture them myself long before climate becomes an issue.
Here's a graphic that shows the cause of all this, in a particularly vivid way.
Almost fell off my chair when I first saw this info...
All this snow in the northeast is really starting to piss me off.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I hope that the money that Tuvalu get from the .tv TLD buys them some higher ground then.
elhuevo.
How could they possibly validate a model that simulates global climate? Is there another Earth somewhere or a time machine that I'm unaware of?
The same assumption that we'll all be standing around in our undies one hundred years from now.
Get with the program. None of this is going to be relevant a hundred years from now.
Nanotech will obviate any of this being significant, probably well within fifty years.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Anyone else read Michael Crichton's latest novel State of Fear?
He has an interesting take on the subject, backed with documentation to his sources.
It was sunny today.
The news was unable to predict either of these to any accuracy only 24 hours prior to the weather event.
You want to believe that they can predict the weather 100 years from now?
Out of sample results? Anything?
it shows there's no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide.
Uh. Ok.
Both.
... if you think ol' Sol has a constant output, I have a bridge to sell you.
Again, why do I have to keep posting the same thing: where are the scientists?
SHOW me a graph of solar infrared output versus Earth temperatures, over a period of at least 50 years.
THEN we'll see how much B.S. this global warming crap is.
Mankind doesn't have the ability to alter the planet in this way. We're off by dozens of orders of magnitude.
Get real, folks. It's all about the sun.
Looking out at the mountains of snow outside, I really have to ask myself whether I'd mind a few extra degrees right about now. This brings new meaning to the idea of fair-weather supporters...
Do conservatives just not think there are consequences, or does it just appear that way? "Pollute the environment? Don't worry about it. Dump motor oil on your lawn, screw it. Make a liberal cry. Hahaha. Torture innocents? Eh. Has to be done. Drive up the national debt? C'est l'vie. Declare war for no good reason? They love us for it, the liberal media lies if they say any different."
I thought America was founded by *scientists*, non? The prevailing scientific opinion is that global warming is real and dangerous. Where'd these religious zealots come from, and when do we start shooting?
They are that much different from the average Joe.
I don't think 'being humored' means what you think it means.
I am just trying to find a silver lining to all the gloom and doom.
It's better to deal with one issue then to not deal with any issues at all.
You have to prioritize based on immediate threat.
Life is not for the lazy.
I hate to sound like a nihilist, but here's what it seems like:
The cause is either primarily manmade or natural. If it's manmade, it's not like anybody who has the power to do something about it is going to mess with the industries that cause it.
If it's natural (ye eyef rolle upwardf) then it's not like anybody can do anything about it anyway.
My personal belief is that it isn't natural. It just seems like a magnificent coincidence that natural climate change would occur right at the same point as our civilization's greatest amount of energy consumption and waste production. But what does it matter what I think? The industries are still going to back the necessary propaganda to make it seem like there's nothing they're doing wrong, the idiotic masses will believe it, and in the meantime, will continue to rake in the profits necessary so that the richest amongst them can afford the real estate costs for those parts of the planet that are still inhabitable by the time we start really seeing the damage.
average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K
whoa whoa whoa... 11,000 degrees! Damn! I'm not even sure if you mean Fahrenheit or Celcius, but I know that's hot!
A few decades ago, it was global cooling, now they're all panicky about global warming. I wonder what it'll be next?? It's all just ridiculous scare tactics/political propoganda. The data they're citing isn't even standardized.
Don't worry people, sit tight, the sky isn't gonna fall down on us.
All those Pentium 4's running sure are a threat for the future.
the scientists who 30 years ago said we were starting experience global cooling. Or the intellectuals who said that the world couldn't support more than 2 billion people. Or, dare we mention, the people who claimed Y2K would matter.
...Canada will become warm and I can move there. GWB is doing atleast one good thing.
You ignorant fool, life doesn't ceace to exsist once you die.
How much is that in degrees Celcius? :)
Its 11 degree Celsius not Kelvin. 11 K is -262 degree C which does not make any sense.
Make one up!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
America was founded by homosexuals, and then taken over by the Elders of Zion.
Learn some history before you post crap like this, frog.
Give me a break.
Here is an analysis of the "documentation" included with Crichton's novel.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
The scientists behind climateprediction.net believe their project, because it is distributed to individual PCs, can help inform people about climate change - and that, in turn could bring political change.
I hate to say it but people wont care. Youd have to ask for drastic changes in the way things are done, ranging from moving to lesser polluting cars to stronger pollution controls......People are resistant to this kind of change, and the controls enforced in the First World often are ignored in the Third World (ie-China, India, etc) A life-changing event (akin to that of the movie The Day After Tommorrow (minus the horrible science)) would be the only surefire way change people......
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
So we previously thought we'd be 5,500 degrees hooter than we are currently? (That's half of eleven kay.)
The surface of the sun is about 5,600 degrees.
I know, lame joke, but teh degree symbol is a standard HTML object (°).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
And here I thought it was the Goatse.cx guy all along.
Ya, because the distruction of the twin towers on 911 was just a hoax.
Thank you for your trolling post. Move along now.
Life is not for the lazy.
It gets warmer. Plants start growing where they couldn't before, like in the arctic. They use up all of the carbon dioxide and make oxygen and we all live happily ever after.
Or we might have a nuclear war with the aliens. This will lead to nuclear winter, which will cancel out global warming. Presto-solvo!
"Stephen Byers claims to know that 400 ppm is the maximum 'safe' level; what we show is that it may be impossible to pin down a safe level, and therefore we should not focus exclusively on stabilisation."
Ok, so its impossible to pin down a "safe level" of greenhouse gas, so we already might be over the "safe level" or it might not be "safe" if there are only 200ppm, so what we need to do is build this huge CO2 sink that will draw down CO2 to nearly 0ppm, that will be safe right? It has to be!
This is the same logic that causes Superfund in the US to clean up toxins to lower than naturally occuring levels wasting billions of dollars digging tons of dirt and replacing it with new dirt just because arsenic is found in higher than 3ppb naturally in some area.
We don't know what's safe, but we know that at some level it becomes bad, so that means at any level it's bad right?
If you start with incomplete data and design the algorithm to follow preconceived theories what do you expect to get out? GIGO.
Okay when I read this quote:
"The scientists behind the project, called climateprediction.net, say it shows there's no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide. "
I can't take the rest seriously. We must get global CO2 levels down to nothing. You stop breathing!
I'd like to see something more than the handwaving arguement of, scientists made a model and it says the earth's temperature will melt. Could somebody point to a real story that includes some detailed description of the climate model, the data set input into the it, and real results, not just fantastic end of the world predictions
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Lrrr: We will raise your planet's temperature by one million degrees a day... for five days.
I make sure to never eat my vegetables!
Rules for simulations of complex, chaotic systems:
1. The number of CPUs in the simulation do not influence accuracy.
2. The number of variables in the model do not influence accuracy.
3. Accuracy is generally total crap, and no better than random guessing.
As it stands, we don't even know what caused the gross climate changes that we know definitely occurred (such as the ice ages), so why should we take a simulation like this seriously?
Just one little point...
Along with global warming is going to come an awful lot of drought - there're already more drought affected regions on the planet than at any other time. Add to this the fact that a lot of the dryer and/or more heavily populated areas are rapidly using up their underground water supplies through bores. Water is going to be a problem.
Of course, the thing that's been bugging me about the overuse of underground water is that no one seems to be talking about what affect, if any, all this extra water being put back into ciculation is going to have. Maybe it's just that it is negligable on the global scale, maybe it's just too hard to work out.
And while there are certainly parts of the world that will be happy with a 10 rise in average temp, the poor sods closer to the equator where temps are already nasty aren't going to like it much.
I honestly do not understand how anyone can doubt that humans cause climate change. First of all, it is a fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Nobody can dispute this: you can prove it with a very simple experiment, and of course the planet Venus is a very vivid example. Therefore, all other things being equal, increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the planet to heat up. It seems obvious that it's better to err on the side of caution than to say the future is too difficult to predict, and therefore we shouldn't do anything.
Have our approximation functions gotten that good such that the effect of small errors over 100 years' simulation time are not absolutely significant?
And of course, all of this is for no good if some major climate-changing event, up to the OMG-we're-fucked range, like this, were to happen. But that's not very likely, at least on the high end, riiight?
Until a model can take past data and accurately come up with conditions we have today, it's worthless other than as an interesting exercise in "what if?". More on this here.
Now climate prediction is complex and difficult, and I understand that you have to start somewhere, and that government-funded climatologists need something to do. But sensationalist media's penchant for crying "THE SKY IS FALLING!" and reporting these simulations as gospels of truth is not to be taken seriously.
Wow, I bet you believe your uploaded mind will be halfway to Alpha Centuri in your own personal picostarship by then too, right?
Nanotechnology might prove very useful for remediating certain kinds of pollution, making various types of industrial processes more efficient, etc., but counting on some kind of miraculous revolution to magically undue our mistakes is sheer chutzpah. No, it's stupidity. It's delusional.
Put away your Drexler books for a while and read Edward O. Wilson's The Diversity of Life, or Freeman Dyson's Imagined Worlds.
Stefan Jones
I hear the more PC's they added to the grid, the closer the answer approached 42. A little mouse told me. I swear.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Nice try, troll. Too blatant to be effective, though.
I think you are the one that
C an't
U nderstand
N ormal
T hinking
Take your head out of your ass, lighten up, and ignore bad humor.
All those Pentium 4's "Prescott" running sure are a threat for the future.
Sadly, many aren't aware that alternative cooling for the prescotts is strongly reccomended. Then again, many have no clue what's even in their computer casing.
I was around when speculation about a new ice age was a topic of pop-science articles.
The concern over global warming is not in the same category.
The "chicken little" strawman is yet another entry in the stream of sophistry, twisted facts and lies that gets churned out by the Cato Institute, the Global Climate Coalition and other fossil fuel industry front groups and bought-out think tanks.
Hers is a specific refutation of the "global cooling" myth.
Stefan
With 10 warmer within the next hundred years (on average), people would theoretically either burn more calories trying to stay cool, or stay inside more. The first would actually make the US smaller on average, while the second would probably bulk them up to a new obesity high!
I've heard the book...
Okay, great thanks guys for all the positive responses. If you ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK, you notice he has a huge section in the end where he explains this book is entirely his opinion on the subject matter.
I also find it humorous where some people label him as a wacko conservative, and other label him as a wacko liberal.
The climates models are computed using the BOINC platform (distributed computing in your PC, similar to SETI, etc.).
Please, help the project donating your idle CPU cycles, go to: the homesite of the project and download the client.
The client (BOINC) supports Linux, Windows, MAC OS, etc.
Well, in my part of Canada, the temp has not gone much above -20 all week. Raising the temperature 11 degrees is not helping much.
Too bad I have to wait 100 years.
We could all benefit from a few more minutes walking, a few less minutes driving, and a few less minutes using electricity each day. We all complain, let's personally do something about it.
Of course, you're forgetting the counterintuitive yet also highly likely result of global warming - an ice age.
Possibly just another one of those problems that we can deal with, but maybe not. At any rate, it debunks your argument that global warming is almost definitely a good thing.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
if there is more than one average rise in temperature from the globe, it denotes a change of temperature in a single location (i.e. from a single sensing station).
Had the article said "for the next hundred years", I'd have questioned its science rather than its grammar. Yes, it is confusing, but 11 Degress Celsius (as it is properly referred to) is still an outrageous increase, especially taking into account the fact that it is an average temperature. This means that the both the mean and extremes increase. Expect some very cold weather in parts due to "global warming". Also, expect scorchers. Of course, the significance is not so much the extremes as it is this mean temperature. Bird migration and plant budding schedules are already off-kilter. This isn't only an inconvenience for Dodo birds, its a serious hazard to the Earth's convenient biological balance. Watch for increased pollution in cities, species die-offs, catastrophic farming years, fisheries collapse, and increased natural disasters. It's in front of us right now. Those places least harmed by the full force of the tsunami had wave-breaking coral reefs and mangrove swamps in front of them. Without these, and many more, of nature's natural defenses, we're in major trouble.
It's not just "The Day After Tomorrow", people.
You totally missed my point, and it's obvious that you haven't read the book.
Ya, because the distruction of the twin towers on 911 was just a hoax.
Sure, it happened. What we don't really have is much evidence that it was anything more than a freak occurence. How many terrorist attacks have occured on US soil? How many attacks in the US have been foiled? Have you actually looked at any of those cases of "terrorist cells" in the US? They pretty much all either got quietly dismissed, or otherwise shuffled down and effectively dropped.
Exactly how big an organisation is al Qaeda really? I mean, besides what the administration has told you about a globe spanning terrorist network with amazing resources, what do you actually know about al Qaeda? Try digging around a wee bit and read material from people that were following Zawahiri and bin Laden from prior to all this. This article might be a good place to start.
If you look at the statistics, global terrorism has been in decline since the mid to late 80's. Aside from the occasional anomaly (9/11), the only growth area of terrorism in the last 10 years has been... Iraq in the last 2 years.
Countries in the Indian Ocean just suffered from an earthquake and tsunami that literally killed 100 times as many people as 9/11. Most people seem willing to accept that that was just a freak occurence. Sometimes bad things happen. It is possible that 9/11 was just a freak occurence, and in no way indicative of a vast and powerful global terrorist network. How can we know? The evidence for the vast network is surprisingly lacking if you actually look at it.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
the past week the daytime highs here in Ottawa Canada were -20 deg. Celsius. Normals for this period, according to Environment Canada http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_me tric_e.html, are daytime highs of -5 deg. Celsius. If the tempurature is going to be raised at most 11 deg. IT WILL STILL BE #$%*#$ COLD HERE!!!!
It's about the only thing the "global warming is our fault and it's going to kill us all" morons can agree with the "if the earth is warming why do we have record snowfall for the second straight year" idiots on.
There is still no certainty at all that a global warming is taking place. Refer to These skeptical documents.
I don't know if you joking, but maybe the meant 11 K (Kelvin). Kelvin is the same increments as C degrees but 0 is in a different place. 0 degrees C = 273.? Degrees Kelvin. Kelvin starts around absolute 0.
Maybe?
11 degrees is a HUGE difference in the environment. Were talking average here guys. To put it in perspective, most major ice ages are 9 degrees under the normal. We're saying that Earth will go 11 up the other way! And in less than 100 years! Certain plants need exact environmental temperatures to sustain themselves. These plants will all die off. As well, many animals that lived in some areas with those plants would be affected. You can't imagine the ramifications of a rise in 11 degrees - especially for homeostasis. The temperature in the environment is changing so quickly now that many scientists speculate that certain animals will be unable to survive, which will throw off ecosystems.
To hear slashdotters say that 11 degrees is nothing and that scientists should stop terrorizing the media is the wrong thing to say. Instead, we should get out of our NEW WORLD-OLD MIND way of trying to get as many reasources as possible without looking at how we will affect the area.
Put in the conditions for 50 years ago. Run the model forward 50 years. If the model correctly predicts the conditions today, report that. Then tell us what it predicts about the future.
Until you have a model that correctly predicts the present to a high degree of accuracy, shut up about the future..
It's actually not degrees Kelvin.
You only use degrees when talking about measurements in Celcius or Farenheit, not when using the unit Kelvin.
Look here at http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tempunits.html
Another day, another Slashdot scare item on global warming/climate change.
:9 6-9517-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDF
f
If you want a bit of history on the inherent bias, perversions of logic and ad hominem attacks preferred by global warmists everywhere, check out Scientific Americans "story" on "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (Bjorn Lomborg)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00000B
Note how even the title of SciAm's article was biased - "Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist". The SciAm's editor later admitted to purposely choosing the most outspoken environmentalists to write the piece - thereby voiding any claim to represent science (if such a thing is possible!).
Lomborgs rebuttal is also available from SciAm:
http://www.sciam.com/media/pdf/lomborgrebuttal.pd
Serious, too often ignored, questions:
1) Is it serious, i.e. causes big problems?
2) Is it caused by humans?
3) Is the cost of stopping negative effects lower than the cost of the negative effects?
4) Is there an alternative?
What is known now:
1) Who knows... worst case forecasts trumped up to guarantee continued funding for one's research projects are over-excited at best and morally bankrupt at worst.
2) Who knows... could be natural cycles or the sun.
3) Probably not...Kyoto would cost America $200-300B/yr for decades, and save little compared with money spent on research into alternative fuels or space energy mining.
4) Growth & Wealth
The real protection against nature is the wealth that arises from free societies. The third world would not only pollute less if they entered the first world, but they would also be much better prepared to handle any possible problems.
Compare the earthquakes in Iran last year to those in California. Or the system to prevent casualties from tsunamis in Japan to the non-existent system in nations recently affected.
The body count from the recent tsunamis is close to 300,000. Who are environmentalists kidding themselves to say potential global warming is a greater threat than other natural disasters, malaria, and poverty in general?
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Look, the one easy thing they could do to validate the model is run it for a hundred years starting at 1750 or so. We have reasonably accurate data for that time period, so we know what the model should produce. As far as I know, every climate model fails this test miserably, and it's not mentioned in this article. So what steps did they take to ensure the validity of the model?
The time to get excited is when we have a model that matches observed results. Until then there's no way I'm gonna support some kind of government action that'll bankrupt me.
In any event, we could fix any CO2 problem by going 100% nuclear power and running our engines off hydrogen. When the greenies support that option, I'll know it's serious. Until then, don't wake me up.
No, but the WMDs in Iraq are a hoax. Oh, so is Iraq being behind 911, totally false. Oh wait, you sound like someone who watches FOX. Whatever. Go beat off to Coulter and put a few more flags on your SUV, comrade! Hail to the chief!!!
C02 is not the major contributor to global warming, either now (yes, we have quite a bit of us as it is, which is why it ain't -40C outside), nor under the projections. Rather, it is water vapor that is the real greenhouse gas. The problem with the simulations is positive feedback, and anyone who has ever dealt with such a phenomena knows how chaotic it can be. The simulations that predict these really high numbers essentially get caught in a loop - more C02 = slight rise in temp = more water vapor and C02 = more rise in temp = more water vapor and C02, etc However, we have been hotter than this before. If positive feedback was really that easy, we would have already triggered it and wouldn't be where we are now.
To put things into perspective, the earthquake and tsunami in eastern Asia is like 9/11 over and over again, every day, for two years.
We should indeed allocate our funds to deal with serious threats.
Stephan
Celsius has parity with Kelvin. 1 C is equal to 1 Kelvin (no degrees in the Kelvin scale). To convert from Celsius to Kelvin, just add 273.15. Now from fahrenheit it's a bit more complex: (9/5)*XC + 32.
[QUOTE]The scientists behind the project, called climateprediction.net, say it shows there's no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide.[/QUOTE]
There are plenty of safe levels of carbon dioxide... how moronic. The actual quote from the scientists is later in the article,
[QUOTE]"However, with our current state of knowledge, we can't yet define a safe level in the atmosphere."[/QUOTE]
Ie they aren't certain what the safe level is, not that one doesn't exist. Yet more irresponsible journalism.
LetterRip
Teach me to /. in a state of near-unconciousness. When I first saw that I thought it said "11K" as in thousand not Kelvin. I thought we were REALLY in deep shit then! :)
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
book...I tend not to really take any of it that seriously.
It's called Fiction for some odd reason or another i've been told.
All your base are belong to Google.
Call me naive, but I don't think the human body was meant to survive temperatures of 11,000 degrees! This is serious, we need to move on this.
"...SIMULATIONS SUGGEST that over the NEXT HUNDRED YEARS we COULD see AVERAGE rise temperatures of UP TO 11K" ::Simulations are not reality. ::Suggestions are not difinitive. ::100 years is a great deal of time to extend a simulation over. ::Potential outcomes are not a certain path. ::Averages mask information. ::Upper bounds are misleading.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Does anybody remember how Chaos Theory was first postulated?
It began with a weather simulation computer model.
The operator halted the program to do some other work on the computer, typed in some parameter values that were close to the values present when the program was halted, and resumed the computation.
Low and behold, within a few minutes the pattern was completely different than it had been in previous iterations.
This is when they discovered that minor changes in the starting conditions could lead to drastic differences in the outcome. This observation was later christened the "Butterfly Effect."
The crux of Chaos Theory is that some systems will NEVER be predictable because there are so many variables that it is impossible to know all the starting conditions.
If a computer model can't even predict weather more than a few days out, how is it that it can predict weather a hundred years from now?
People who believe in global warming are religious zealots, true believers.
They don't require any scientific facts, just pseudo-scientific hysteria.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
The events of 9/11 certainly happened. Does that indicate that there was a significant, immediate ongoing threat?
Does it indicate that Iraq posed a significant, credible threat?
A threat so real that one thousand four hundred and eighteen (to date) American lives should be spent stopping (somehow) that threat?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I wasn't trolling i was pretending to be an American that's all.
Liberals are not the only ones who are concerned. Even populists like Bill O'Reilly have cast their vote in support of efforts to reverse global warming.
Yet, why is Washington doing nothing? Just recently, there has been talk of easing emissions standards on SUVs and other toys of the rich Republicans. In the end, SUV sales will be phenomenal as long as they are amphibious.
They are talking about a CHANGE in temperature, not a change TO a fixed temperature. They are saying the temperature will RISE by 11 degrees Kelvin, which is equal to 11 degrees Celcius. They are NOT saying the temperatue will fall TO 11 degrees Kelvin.
Now be honest, you weren't REALLY thinking when you wrote what you did, were you?
...we're gonna run out of energy one of these days, anyway, so we might as well encourage global warming, then get to work on efficent methods for converting the excess heat energy into a more usable form.
i e crowd?
Let's also not forget how the First Law of Cynicism in Science applies here: climatologists can most easily get funding for their research if they keep producing results sensational(ist) enough to merit front-page headlines on the NYT. Now who's gonna get the press and the money? The everything-is-fine-so-just-go-about-your-business crowd, or the oceans-are-going-to-boil-and-we're-all-going-to-d
You want to believe that they can predict the weather 100 years from now?
Yes, I do believe it, and so should you; it's far, far easier to predict something averaged over a wide scale, over a long period of time than it is to predict relatively minute, localized changes on a day to day basis.
It's sad to see so many people bury their heads in the sand and come up with all kinds of reasons to ignore this kind of data, simply because they don't like the implications.
It's been studied many, many times, and reported many, many different ways; massive ecological damage is occuring, and it could very well snowball out of control unless something changes, and soon. Ignoring it and coming up with baseless reasons to ignore the warnings isn't going to help.
Fight for something better: www.socialistalternative.org
If these scientists would focus their efforts on developing alternate energy solutions for replacing fossil fuels rather than whining about global warming, perhaps we would already have a solution. Creating treaties that cripple "developed nations" yet let "developing nations" skate is not a viable solution.
T(100) = 0x + 11K
T(100) is the temperature in 100 years.
x is the input data.
fuck your american lives, do you know how many children died there??? american lives..
That's just the CDC's estimate for the US. World-wide, it's 4 million a year and rising ...
Completely preventable. More than 100 times the casualties EVERY YEAR. So, why isn't the government grabbing the tobacco manufacturers and throwing them in jail? These guys make bin laden look like a wanna-be. More than 1000 Americans killed each and every day ...
The difference between kelvins and degrees Celsius is much the same as the difference between a vector and a point. The kelvin scale has a thermodynamically significant origin, namely absolute zero, and kelvin temperatures act linearly in some ways, such as twice as hot meaning twice as much vibration of molecules. Celsius temperatures, on the other hand, are measured from an arbitrary origin, namely 27315/27316 of the triple point of DHMO. You can't add temperatures in degrees Celsius, but if you subtract them, you get a difference in kelvins; hence the nonstandard term "Celsius degree" (distinct from "degree Celsius") as a synonym for the kelvin.
11,000 degree increase! yikes!
average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K...
Wow! I suspected that global warming might be getting out of hand, but 11000 degrees is pretty big increase if you ask me. I mean, the Eskimos will have saunas where their igloos used to be. Spit will sizzle when it hits the sidewalk. The children won't have a snowball's chance in Hell of finishing their popsicles before they melt! Won't someone please think of the children?!?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Seems to me that if cloud density's and thus the amount of light they reflect weren't put into the calculation, it needs to be redone. Global dimming could decrease or increase the effects of global warming by potentially massive amounts.
. stm
Global dimming:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591
Global dimming could go actually go away, may stay the same, or may increase. I doubt its going to stay the same, and i didn't see it mentioned in the calculation
If they are going to do the calculation over again they should also make a huge announcement asap so that they can piggy-back a request for more ppl to participate in distributed computing
...that we don't live in a computer simulation. Otherwise we would have destroyed our planet a dozen times already.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.
Climate Change is a euphamism marketed by republicans to confuse the issue. Whichever side of the debate you are on, what we are talking about is Global Warming.
I am far more convinced that Peak Oil is going to be the next big catastrophe to hit humanity. Peak oil has far more evidence going for it in that oil supply's have followed the Hubbert's peak model in many different areas where oil has been discovered. Of course if world oil consumption falls this means that Global Warming is going to be a non-issue 100 years from now and we are either going to be somewhere in between the scenarios where we'll all be living in a nuclear powered hydrogen economy utopia where fossil fueled powered engines are as common as horse and buggy or living in poverty with 1/5 or less of the world's population due to mass starvation.
A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.
when your results come out as radically different from dozens of other scientific studies, that's a good reason right there to question the validity of your results. Doesn't mean you're not right, but I'd sure as heck be triple-checking my conclusions and methods.
-Jay
Jeeze, what does BUSH have to do with it? You can't quote a negative statistic without mentioning Bush in the same thought? How about this: 3.2 MILLION AMERICANS WERE KILLED BY CIGARETTES ON CLINTON'S WATCH!!! Makes no sense, right?
It's because millions of workers would be out of their damned jobs (assuming they weren't in jail) and ready to vote the jerks "in the government" out of office, if not start outright rebellion.
Dude, get real. Every smoker out there made a concious decision to light up for the first time. My father died at 46 due to a massive heart attack, massively influenced by his two or three pack a day habit. His father died at 40 for the same reason. But I know whose fault it was --- both of them knew it wasn't healthy. Nobody forced them to light up.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
Reagan the mental midget of the 80's
Bush the mental midget of the 21st century.
At least until a better one comes along. The century is awfully young.
Wait: you don't actually believe that "Reagan was a great president crap"? right? ?
The upcoming energy crisis will help reduce some of our harmful emissions.
USA has WMD
USA is ruled by a religious fanatic leader
USA is one agressive nation
USA has no respect for international laws
USA is one opressive country ( saw somewhere that 4 worker where laid of because they are smokers )
I really think the USA should attack themselves if they really believe in what they are preaching...
This reminds me of something...
"Will the compensation payouts as a result of deaths and injuries caused by our car's tendency to exploade outweigh the cost of the recall and design changes required to fix the problem?"
I don't doubt it'd cost more to fix the problem than ignore it and deal with the consequences. I just don't think "the consequences" are something we'll *want* to live with.
That said, like you I want to see a few more people playing devil's advocate on both sides - especially global warming advocates attempting to find evidence *against* their theories (as they should do anyway).
As for the threat level, I think the issue is not so much how major a threat it as as its potential for *extremely* long term and widespread effects that could be essentially permanent, or at least last for *many* generations.
I, for one, am unwilling to write off the potential issues of coastline change and the resulting squabbles (probably wars) over terriory, starvation due to lost productive growing area, population displacement, oceanic ecology changes (and potential for displacement/loss of fish stocks), economic damage, etc. *if* sea level change happens as some think it may, it might make the recent tsunami look like a splash in a pond.
Nature is Nature; we just have to be aware of what it's doing and stay clear of the major risks (quake-proof buildings, stay out of low-lying areas and flood plains during hurricanes, etc). Terrorists are another matter; Al Qaeda has the avowed goal of killing as many Americans as possible. The damage they will do is limited only by their capability. If they laid their hands on a nuke, you can bet they'd use it. If they got Sarin, ditto. The only way to protect against terrorists such as Al Qaeda is to make certain that they do not acquire such capabilities. Unfortunately, such insurance is not cheap or easy.
For some reason there are people who don't even think it's "socially acceptable"; there are lots of people who will condemn you for taking the threat seriously, despite the indisputable history (embassy bombings, USS Cole, WTC, numerous public statements from Osama bin Laden declaring his intent). There is no way to have a reasoned argument with someone who denies historical fact.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Yes, but is that in 1024 = 1K or 1000 = 1K units? Sure we'll all be glowing plasma but 264 less would give me comfort.
I'm not sure what the original citation is, but Andrew Sullivan claims over 30 prisoners died at the hands of American interrogators.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Shucks, Team Slashdot is still running and their score is up to 55K! Those others are way behind!
A higher concentration of CO2 means that the plant doesn't need to keep its stomata open as far or as long, which limits its water losses. But if evaporation increases due to higher temperatures, it would not be difficult to consume all the water savings and then some. Less available water means less growth.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Big grin.
Garbage In...Garbage Out...
Enough said.
Yeah, I don't care if I'm burning Karma here. The parent makes alot more sense than the GP... it's sad that ideology is used as the basis moderation here, in place of science. This is evidence of impending catastrpohic ecological disaster here, not a pissing contest over gerrymandering. I weep to think that the capitalists and thier supporters are going to doom the whole world, using logic like the GP's to avoid ever having to make sacrifices or curtail thier exploitive behavior.
Fight for something better: www.socialistalternative.org
You don't get it do you? People need protection from themselves. No one has the right to put their life at risk when an addiction is involved. Your father and grandfather didn't make a choice. They were hooked. It was intentional. They were given a substance that made them crave more. of that substance A substance that was designed to make people crave more. That substance was designed to make money for the people who own cigarette companies. A few million dead people don't matter when you're making a lot of money at their expense. Right? They were forced to smoke due to the addictive nature of nicotine. If I gave someone who was curious a few free rocks of crack (a Slashdot moderator for example) and they got hooked. Then I charged them for all future crack rocks. I'd be making a pretty nice income. You can't say that those people had a choice. Using an addictive substance ceases to be a choice one it enters your body.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Read the grandparent post again. I think you missunderstood it.
....the planet will be fine ....
... they want to have super GOD like microregulation powers over every single man woman and child on the planet to save us from our imminent doom. In fact, they absolutely positively insist that super regulation is the ONLY solution, and nothing else will be "good" enough.
And we will be to.
In the last 100 years we have had 2 world wars, 100 military conflicts, created the bomb and nuclear power, landed a man on the moon and sent space craft to the far reaches of our solar system. The US the and USSR came within inches of total nuclear annialation, and we have effectively wiped out polio and small pox. Allot can happen in 100 years, allot will happen, and it never ceases to shock me how people make these kind of predictions, call them absolute and proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and then worst of all
Dare I suggest, maybe the people who are pushing this the hardest just see that kind power as the ends and not the means, and if it wasn't global warming - they'd find some other excuse.
And what happened on 9/11? The death rate in the USA approximately doubled for a day. And the politicians piled on to make hay, and stupid laws, regulations, and loss of liberties.
Have you ever heard about trade? That is when you barter goods, services and money for goods, services and money from other people.
A lot of the people that ctizens of the United States of America trade with live outside the United States of America.
If you attack your trading partners you and they lose money and everyone is worse off.
Where do you think the money that pays for the US army comes from?
no offense, but no one on this site has enough knowledge or understanding to talk about this subject.
it seems like there'd be less bullshit being posted if the topic were creationsm or some bollocks like that.
Its a choice weather to do the drugs or not. The first time and every time after that, its still a choice. Many people choose not to do them, many more quit after becoming addicted. Choice.
... move to china. Or keep voting for people like Bush.
People have the right to choice. Good or bad. You take away choice, you take away freedom. You wanna do that
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Sing it with me... "And the men who hold high places, must be the ones who start.. to mold a new reality.. closer to the heart."
Or, Perhaps...
AF2K.com (A Farewell To Kings), my Hypernovel, the kernel of which was written in 1990, before I knew what a distirbuted grid was, addresses this issue and quotes Rush along the way. In the novel, the simulation, SYnergistic Resource for INformation eXchange (SYRINX
Oddly, the 11 years to go from 378ppm to a "dangerous level" of 400ppm at 2ppm per year is 2015! Lucky guess? You decide...
What makes this post 'on-topic' is this quote from the article:
The scientists behind climateprediction.net believe their project, because it is distributed to individual PCs, can help inform people about climate change - and that, in turn could bring political change.
When one thinks about how to remedy the situation, you often end up with such resistance that the will to make it so causes "political change". That went to an extreme in the novel, trust me. The key was three-fold:
- Michael Gavon made then think
- Marena San Leoni made them feel
- Adrienne made them get off their a55s and do something
Perhaps we need to adopt this model as well. "Knowing the answer isn't all there is... you have to get someone to listen to you. And to make someone listen to what they don't want to hear, takes a gift..."starglider29a
author, A Farewell to Kings
http://www.af2k.com
Here in America more than anywhere we are oil, literally.
The people who run our government are oil. The oil industry staged a coup in 2000 and literally stole an election. But It's not just the repubs though, it's almost every politician in Washington, see Robert Baer's book, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Sole For Saudi Crude. Condi Rice, while working at Chevron had an oil tanker named after her and Haliburton's CEO is now the brains of our operation. Even the puppet man himself has deep ties to oil, albiet his oil company Arbusto failed, miserably. As a sidenote on the bush dynasty, all you Nascar loving Bush fans realize that Prescott Bush (JR's grandpa) did the banking for the Nazi's in WWII, right? Read House of Bush, House of Saud to find out why the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar has the nickname Bandar Bush.
All the plastics we use are made from Oil. Every tire uses 7 gallons of oil in it. All the fertilizers we use are made from natural gas. All the pesticides are made from Oil. Because we have raped our land, and it is nothing more than a sponge onto which we pour oil to make it arable again, without this production would drop from 130 bushels per acre down to 30 bushels per acre. Transportation of the food on the roads that take tremendous amounts of oil to build and maintain in trucks that burn oil to factories that burn oil to process the food and package it in plastic made from oil then shipped out in more oil burning trucks to McDonald's where we drive our oil burning SUV's through the drive thru and take it home and sit in front of a brainwashing device powered either by coal or natural gas, all so we don't have to conversate with our neighbors. It's an elegant Orwellian scheme really. Not only do we eat oil, we think it.
The fantasy is good for business, but folks, this way of life aint real.
Welcome to the desert of the real. Climate change, destruction of the biosphere, air pollution, water pollution, drained aquafirs, dead coral reefs, wiped out fisheries, no more rain forrests, overpopulation, massive trade deficit leading to more debt that will have to be paid off by your kids because you are an irresponsible fool, dollar collapse, housing bubble burst, pension plans gone, resource wars -iraq is but a prelude to what is coming-,diseases, and mass famine. Subsequent generations 100 generations down the line will hate us.
If you don't belive in the destruction of our environment to the point of not being able to sustain human life then I'll kindly point you to Peak Oil. The Saudi's have an expression for it. My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies in a jet, his son will ride a camel. Peak Oil is going to reverse globalization, yah everyone knows there is plenty of the stuff left in the ground, the problem is oil production follows a bell curve, be it a single well, or a nation's production. After you extract 1/2 of the oil production declines, forever, every gallon of oil is harder to extract and of a lesser quality. Net energy (energy spent for energy returned) gets closer and closer to zero and when it becomes 1:1, the well is put out of production, that is why wells never really get sucke
And the civil unrest in the Congo has killed about 10 times as many people as were killed by last month's earthquake and tsunami. There has been very little international outcry over those death tolls.
Somewhere between 20 million and a 100 million people died from the Great Influenza of 1918-20. A good share of the blame for the spread of that pandemic belongs to the Wilson administration's obsession with the war effort - the US would have been much better off letting the Europeans destroy themselves.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I always hear the same thing on Slashdot: "We need more mirrors!"
If we should need to solve the issue of global warming, it should be fairly easy:
- Set up solar reflection panels to direct concentrated rays of sun towards the ice caps, so that not only will the ice melt, it will evaporate as well.
- Set up a huge thermal vent so that evaporated water can waft up to space and out of our orbit.
- The planet will naturally start to spin faster as a result of reduced mass.
- A planet that spins faster will expose any given portion of the planet to the sun for shorter increments, allowing the sun less time to "heat up" the atmosphere.
- Furthermore, the evaporated water will freeze once it reaches space, making a nice little shiny reflector shield to block out some of the sun's radiation.
I honestly don't understand why no one consults me about this problem. Thank gosh I can share my productive fruits with the slashdot population.and the facts of what happened to temperature range in North America during the days after 9/11, when (almost)no jets were flying.
"The real protection against nature is the wealth that arises from free societies"
Protection against nature? the problem isn't "nature", it's the distinctly unnatural effects of dumping billions of tons of extra carbon into the atmosphere.
The deepest irony is that right now in the US we've got a sweet deal, climate-wise, in the status quo, with our temperate climate and fertile breadbaskets. From purest self-interest, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we continue to perturb the system. On a geological time frame most of the time the earth has either been incredibly hot with no ice caps, or frozen in ice ages; our current temperate, interglacial state is the exception, not the rule, and while it won't last forever, we still have a huge vested interest in keeping it that way as long as possible. It's true that we really don't know how the system works, but dumping tons of carbon into the air is equivalent to blindly conducting a major climatological experiment. While it's theoretically possible that we could introduce enough "dimming" from particulate pollution to counterbalance greenhouse effects, the presence of many positive-feedback systems (melting ice sheets releasing stored CO2, forests switching from carbon sinks to carbon sources, etc) make that rather unlikely. It's like saying that the best way to good health is to drink lots of beer, lots of coffee, smoke lots of opium and lots of crystal meth because they'll all cancel each other out, instead of not doing any of them and maybe get out of the house every now and then.
This happened before with CFCs--the scientific community pointed out the harmful effects of CFCs on the ozone layer, the world acted to reduce CFCs, and it appears like we might have acted in time--the ozone holes seem to be shrinking.
Maybe we'll act in time for climate change. Or perhaps invading Iran would be a better use of our time.
Is the model at all accurate? Before anything should be asked based on the results, we need ot establish as to why we should believe the model. People tend to put a bit too much faith in computer models. They hear the term, and assume (since computers are such logical devices) that the results MUST be the truth. The computer doesn't lie!
Well, no, computers on't lie, but garbage in, garbage out. I could design a model that shows that the sun is going to turn purple next year. I could have this bigass simulation with all sorts of data that gets processed and a nice set of stastics and graph that show the progression of the purpleification of the sun. None of that, of course, has any bearing on if the sun will actually turn purple or not. If my model shows it will, clearly the model is flawed. I'm processing the wrong data, processing it in the wrong way, making invalid assumtions, and so on.
People need to understand that because something was modeled on a computer is no bearing on it's accuracy or precision. You can model anything you want on a computer. If the results are useful and accurate depends on how good your model is, how good the data you give it is, and how correct your assumptions are for the data that isn't known.
11 thousand degrees! Whew that'll be hot.
True. But then, there's no oil in the Congo. That's why the US hasn't set up a dictatorship there that they can later remove under the banner of "liberation".
This is the big argument for the bloody nanny state: "people need protection from themselves." Go ahead, extend the argument; why stop with tobacco? In fact, extending the principle is essential, because PEOPLE ARE DYING OUT THERE!
I have a wonderful idea! Why not prohibit manufacture and importation of alcohol? It's addictive, isn't it? Booze kills thousands of people a year, too, doesn't it?
News flash, dude: it's been tried. Didn't work with booze! It wouldn't work with tobacco, either!
So go ahead: put the tobacco company owners in prison; close the factories; burn the crop (no, wait, that might not be a good idea); throw everyone in jail who won't quit smoking.
That's the way to turn an unfortunate addiction into a new illegal substance problem, as if we needed another.
The only way to stop tobacco addiction is to effectively educate people as to the perils of the activity. But guess what, some people just won't stop, and some who don't smoke will start.
Go ahead and tax it to death, too. Next thing you know people will be growing it in their bedrooms instead of pot, and the black market price will be only just a little lower than the taxed price. You may think that people need protection from themselves, but creating a totalitarian state for the purpose of your oh-so-noble cause will demonstrate to you that those people won't be at all grateful for the favor.
Besides, it's not so addictive that people can't quit if they want to bad enough. My sister quit after 30 years of puffing away, one of my brothers (who started when he was 6, for cryin' out loud) quit finally at age 40, the other one quit at 55. I never started, thank heaven.
Finally, you say "No one has the right to put their life at risk" ? BS, buddy. You want to live my life for me? Addiction or not, it is my life to live, and I REFUSE to allow you or any other Hitler-Stalin-Mao wannabe the power to take that away from me.
Ooops. Sorry for the heat -- got a little ruffled there for a moment.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
As Patrick Moore so aptly said "Nobody's going to listen to you if you say the world is not going to come to an end, but if you say that the world is comming to an end, you get headlines." It's just another case of only bad news being news.
Now this specificly applies ot research in the form of being able to get money to do research as well. If you do a bunch of careful research and simulations and it shows that know what? Humand have jack diddly impact on the planet, wether we are fine or not is all at the mercy of mother nature, we should just stop worrying, well you are pretty much out of bussiness right there. No more work is needed then from you. Just need to see if your work survives peer review and they you can pretty much pack up your shit and go home, since studying the climate for how humans impact it is pointless if they don't.
So this creates an additonal incentive to have disaster scenarios. Disasters scenarios = headlines = research money.
It's sad that things like this influence scientists, but they do. In all fields of science you can find scientists skewing their results because the outcome is likely to lead to the termination of the flow of money, either because it shows there's nothing more ot research in that area or because it pisses off a sponsor and so on.
It's even more tricky in climate research since it's all speculation and computer models. With physics, it's a question of repeatable fact. I believe I've discovered a relation in nature that is described by theory X. I test it, find out that's the case. Others then test it, see if they find it's the case too. Simple. If I make shit up, they'll be unable to replicate it and it'll be pretty apparant.
Well with climate research, it's all based on computer models, which are all based on incomplete data and assumptions about things we don't know. No one can say which, if any models, are close to being right. There's none out there that are complete enough to do something like predict the weather on a daily basis for an extended period of time or anything.
Well, that makes repeatability hard. Sure I can re-run your simulation, but that doesn't mean anything. If the simulation is wrong, doesn't matter how many times I run it, the result is still wrong. I can design my own simulation, but then we are back to square one. Just because two wrong simulations agree doesn't make either one more right.
It's very difficult to do any sort of empirical testing of things relating to climate research, given that we don't have a bunch of test Earth's sitting around to do it on. Thus it's easy for a researcher to tinker witht their model until it gives them results they like, and it's hard for anyone to call that out.
According to Google, the natural death rate in the U.S. is 0.121879864 hertz. What this means for humanity at large, I couldn't say.
The simulations suggest that over the next hundred years we could see average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K, more than twice what was previously thought.
What I find shocking is that someone previously thought the temperature could rise as much as 5,500 degrees! No wonder there is so much concern about this Global Warming thing!!
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Which leads us back to the original topic of the thread: Global Warming. I know you all appear to have forgotten that, since the whole thread seems to have been hijacked by empty-headed Bush-ite cheerleaders,
The point is, the US is not going to be able to just "babysit" the rest of the world as temperatures and sea levels rise. Like it or not, the US is going to have to deal with the environmental situation it helped cause, along with everybody else.
I would be very much interested to see the details of the proposed chimera creation by Mr.Weissman. The article sugggests that he plans to re-create human brain organisation in mice by injection of human neurons.
This sounds like an extreme oversimplification. For once a straight injection of neurons does not gurantee that the correct architecture will be recreated. Even if the human and mouse stem cells are combined in early developement stage (so that human progenitor cells are destined to become neurons)the mouse development pathways differ from humans. The cell maturation signals during foetus development will not result in the formation of human equivalent (alebeit smaller) brain. Then of curse there are the issues of the differnces/incompatibilites between human and mouse cells that may lead to rejection either at the embroy developpment stage or even later when neurons are injected into differentiated tissue.
So I think its too early to say that we can jump from 2% human to 100% human brain in mouse tomorrow. It will take some time. Meanwhile, since the issue is talked about, sensible laws should be laid down to prevent the abuse of these technologies.
At least we are talking about it and are not left facing with the fact already done.
You really had me going there for a second. You should have tried harder on number 4, though, that one kind of gave it away.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Just to clarify for all you non-US folks that think the US Customary temperature unit is Celcius... (/sarcasm off)
We in the U.S. generally use a unit called a degree Fahrenheit. The big exception here are those in the scientific community. 0 Celcius = 32 degrees Farhenheit. 100 C = 212 degrees F. ( we mark the degrees with a superscript "o", so "32^o F" we'd use if you can imagine the superscipt there.)
Anyhews, so to further clarify for all parties:
The original poster was fine, though why they converted TFA's Celcius into Kelvin, I'm not sure. For measuring the change in temperature, 1 C = 1 K
For us (US,) a 1 C change is a 1.8 degree F change. So the 2-11 C difference is equivalent to saying a predicted change of 3.6-19.8 degrees F.
Man, at first I thought it was 11000, then I figured it must be in Kelving, but then I read the article. It's 11C, not 11K.
groan. If you believe this, I have a bridge in NY and a house in Bagdad for sale. I am very interested to see the current sunspot cycle and its temperature results. After removing the urban heat islands from the data, I think the last cycle (1990s into ~2002) will be a local temperature maximum similar to the 1930s. A degree up, a degree down - plenty complaints and blame will follow, I'm sure. Oh, yes. Sol is getting brighter even if we aren't.
A while ago I was inspired to create this blog, and ever since it seems to be writing itself. I have set up Super Scary Climate Blog. I've got an Instiki Wiki started there for the purpose of tracking climate variability. Please feel invited to contribute.
It is quite likely also the atmosphere will become unbreathable to humans.
I would love to see the study that gave a valid reason why THAT would be so.
Humans have shown a great ability to tolerate wide ranges of oxygen, what study claims that the atmosphere, even in worst case, will beome unbreathable?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The british often use Fahrenheit as well, and always use it when talking about the weather, except for the forecasters, who mix everybody up by using Centigrade. Some pedants in Britain also correct you use the term Centigrade, because they reckon it should be Celcius, but Centigrade was taught for years in schools, and nobody uses Celcius except for a few boffins. Also, only boffins use Kelvin, which is odd because it is named after a British scientist, (Lord Kelvin). The British generally use imperial measures (inch/foot/yard/pint/pound/stone/mile/gallon/furlo ng(!)) interchangeably with metric (or SI) units, so there is a generally air of confusion about the exact size of things in the UK. Multiple trips back to the hardware store are required to get the part you need.
The government has tried for years to make a conversion, but it has resulted in a kind of permanent half-way house situation. I believe the same thing is happening in Canada.
There was a case a few years back when a probe to mars hit the surface at 10 thousand miles an hour because of a units mix up between british and american boffins!
I stole this
This study is interesting as it posits that in fact the rise of CO2 levels really began 8000 years ago when people began clearing large tracts of land for farming.
That accounts for half of the CO2 changes from the norm; the last 150 years accounts for the other half.
He also notes that from climate models it seems the rise in CO2 has served to shield us from a large scale glaciation phase that was scheduled to hit long before now, and kept the climate more stable!
The study is rather interesting (full link to study in article, check end) as he really ties together a wide variety of data from different sources.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Fuck the revolution." - Bono, Rattle & Hum Video.
11 yrs of history lessons in the Australian school system gave me the knowlage that McArthur started our wool industry and very little else. History and Geography (as taught in govt schools) is mainly raw nationalisim. The story of how we ALL got to where we are now is OUR story, but I don't recall learning "the story of humanity" in school. We were taught that every nation has it's own history but "nations" have not really been around that long. Every culture does have it's own history but all the cultures are intertwined and can change rapidly or slowly. Here in Australia the natives have a culture going back 40,000yrs, we didn't hear about that in the 1960's. We were taught that they were all lazy drunkards, incapable of voting or raising children. The govt sometimes built corragated iron houses (kind of like a sweat box) and gave them "jobs". It only strengthened the govt's bullshit when the natives used them for antything but a house and went "walkabout" instead of working. This also encouraged child welfare to take thier kids away and give them to white people for adoption. People have treated each other like this for, well forever, we all think our particular tribe/culture/nation/footy club is pretty much the way things "should be". Many turn to religion in an attempt to have the authority of Gosh on thier side to help send thier "shouldn't be" opponents to heck.
Unfortunately because of this basic human trait I doubt we will be able to organise an effective response to the mess we have made off the planet. The industrial revolution (and thus modern civilization) will come to an end either clogged in it's own gunk or blown up by it's own weapons.
Mother Nature will put our species firmly back in it's place and she has no idea why child abuse is bad.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Anyway back to torturing Rag Heads standing between their own Liberty... and all that oil.
My parents got me addicted to food!
Oh God!!! I need protection from myself? And who the FUCK is going to decide what to protect me from? You?
If you believe that humans cause global warming, it means the evil Earth has won! Fight for your freedom guys! We must not let Earth destroy our freedom! It hates us for our freedom.
We don't get the brutal wind storms we used to get when I was a kid. It doesn't snow as much. Doesn't rain quite as much. And the summers are milder. Seattle is much more temperate than it has been traditionally. And given the growth of cities and their effect on the microclimates, one would have expected weather to be worse. But as we all learn in our pacific northwest history classes, for whatever reason, that's not the case.
It probably is getting slightly warmer all over. We're comming out of a cold spot in a very extended interglacial periord. I'm sure the explosion of thermometers, the increasing frequency with which they're monitored, the growth of cities, and the amount of weather data collected at airports (which are decidedly unlike virgin wilderness) all have their effects.
And while our contribution to it is something to look at, at some point maybe we should look at the fact that a century is a blink in geologic time, and we should be very careful what we read into what certainly amounts to a statistical cluster.
No one is saying that the attacks were a hoax, just that the organisation behind those attacks was actually small and ad-hoc, rather than some huge and highly centralised evil empire. The name Al Qaeda was actually made up by the FBI in order to make the anti-mafia laws applicable to the radical islamist movement, but they have since taken the name as their own. It suits their goals to pretend to be bigger and more dangerous than they are, and it suits the goals of the western politicians to have an identifiable enemy on whom to wage an unwinable war, because that gives them an excuse to weild draconian powers and it unites the people behind a sense of a God given mission to fight evil.
read up on it here and download the torrents somewhere. I can't find them now because of my employers damn content filters but I strongly urge you to get them somewhere.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
wow 11C in a hundred years, now if they could only predict the temperature for the weekend accurately
Anyway back to torturing Rag Heads standing between their own Liberty... and all that oil.
Thanks!
Yeah, I also learned from Chrichton that Japan is a nation of sadistic, murderous and xenophobic bastards bent on world domination who will own all of America by 2005, making us minority citizens and leaving the majority of the workforce starving.
The cute kitten cartoons are just a cover. Beware.
C'mon the if the trend is to attack a threat pre-emptively, then why is nothing being done? Or would that be too much like being productive?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
...that the models aren't very accurate. While some produce expected results of one to two degrees, others produce wild swings. It may also be that the large shifts are outside the standard deviation of the model, and represent a minority of the cases. Of course, there's not mention of the models that predicted cooling, or nothing happenning at all.
You must belong to the older generation, us youngsters think in celcius and get very confused when people start banging on about this farenheit thing.
As for the other units we are comfortable using both feet and inches or metres, weights are understood in pounds and stone and volumes are understood in metric.
Way to shove both feet into your mouth, jackass. Go back to sucking your uncle's asshole.
Not so much Bush, but I squarely put a large percentage of those deaths on the shoulders of the FDA.
As no one forced you father to light up, I wonder if there were a safer delivery system for nicotine, would your father have continued to smoke?
I note in Europe there is everything from nicotine drops to development of a nicotine inhaler.
None of these products will ever be introduced into the United States. Why? They present nicotine in a pure form without a bunch of carcinogens; they present nicotine as a drug (which makes it under the jurisdiction of the FDA, unlike tobacco).
Thanks to the prohibition mindset here in the States, such products will never be approved. Even as tobacco companies attempt to introduce safer products into the marketplace, they do so with the threat of coming under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
So they continue selling cigarettes, and the death toll ensues.
this is nothing more than bullshit. the grid systems with their crap models cannot even predict the tempurature readings anywhere 2 days from now.
My favourite fact was the Al Quaeda secret bases hidden in the Afghan mountains. They were constructed on 10 levels with the bottom level being given over to the generators and plumbing system, the levels above contained vast warehouses holding Al Queada's terrible weapons ( parcel cutters, paper knives etc ), satellite and internet communication floors where the Al Quaeda controllers organised their millions of foot soliders, dormitories for all the Al Quaeda staff and of course secret tunnels for entry and exit.
Al Quaeda doesn't just have one of these complexes, it has dozens ! Unfortunately we have yet to find any so that would mean the threat is still just as deadly, maybe even more so since they have obviously hidden these bases a lot more cleverly than we thought possible.
Not true WMD definitely exist, I think we are all beginning to realise now that not only did Saddam obviously ship all his WMD's to Iran but that Iran is also a much greater support of terrorism and evil than we previously suspected, after all what else would it buy the WMD's for if it didn't plan on using them it's self or selling them on to Al Quaeda.
I don't think that democracy will immediately sweep the middle east in a few years.
But if Iraq becomes a truly democratic country with a market economy, and people start living better lives, then in 20-30 years I belive there are VERY HIGH CHANCES for democracy to sweep the middle east.
I'm not an US citizen, and I belive that the US violated several important international rules when they invaded Iraq. However I belive the results in 20-30 years may be WORTH IT - I mean, if democracy will sweep the middle east, it will be a significant gain for world peace and also for getting rid of terrorists.
Well a lot of us are used to that new-fangled celcius/centigrade scale (1742) instead of the old-fashioned fahrenheit scale (1726). But if you were brought up in the 1730s (like the USA) I can understand why you'd be reluctant to modernise :-)
Nope--Canada has pretty much converted when it comes to temperature, weights, and distance. The only holdover is a person's own weight. For some reason we still hold on to pounds (more so when we get older!)
Maturity will come when it's good and ready.
I believe the same thing is happening in Canada.
...and we don't say "boffin". I couldn't even guess what that is.
Pretty much, except if you say "Centigrade" instead of "Celsius" over here, most folks will look at you like you're purple.
Who's going to protect me from the protectors?
Nobody forced me to start smoking. I did that myself. Some days I'm addicted, some days I'm not (or so it seems when I only light up one or two the whole day).
The great thing is that I can decide. Now I have people trying to make the decision for me? Life is full of dangers. Some of them are self inflicted, some of them aren't. Just deal with it. I'm not forcing you to smoke don't try to [get somebody to] force me to stop. Beyond that, lets not even go into the second hand smoke bit. When I (personally) blow smoke toward you then you can complain. If somebody else does? complain to them. I'll bet if you do it politely they'll even apologize. (certain jerks excepted of course)
Additionally, I don't believe addictions are instant. Addictions take at least a fairly regular repeat usage to take hold. I may be wrong (and often am) but I don't believe anything is a one shot addiction. Therefore the statement that it's not a choice once it enters the body is a really cool buzz-phrase, is in my personal opinion incorrect. It's an addiction when a person chooses to introduce it into the body often enough that their body no longer allows the choice. They still made the choice during the time their body was saying "Hrm.. what is this stuff?!?"
The world according to SComps
wow... did you guys get off topic or what?!
oh, oh, wait! i want to talk about something else to distract everyone from the fact that we're locking ourselves in our own microwave oven:
Q: why do you think W is straining to get to the moon?
A: because that's where he and "his base" are headed while us poor folk fry down here!
discuss!
The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic.
The term "prejudice" implies an irrational dislike. But our dislike of pollution (including many plastics) is quite rational: it has negative effects on our health and our quality of life.
The earth doesn't care whether we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, poison ourselves with pollution, or live in filth. People do care, though, and people have a brain that, at least in principle, lets them foresee and avoid those consequences.
Heh - I just had to poke tthe original poster for using the wrong units. But global warming is a phenomenon that has been studied and confirmed for many years now. The problem is that it is essentially too late to stop it. The political sphere has long been co-opted by big business and their only concern is those little green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them. There are several promising technologies though, like thermal depolymerization, spray on solar that's 30% efficient because it utilizes infrared spectrum, etc. I don't see hydrogen as being the answer. Right now there are but two forms of terrestrial hydrogen. The first is locked up in water molecules and could be extracted via electrolysis but would be woefully inefficient. The second is that the hyrdrocarbon cracking process produces copious amounts of hydrogen and for years the oil refineries have been venting it out and burning it on the top of the stack. I would be loathe to let the current infrastructure have control of the available hydrogen. That said, there is also an enormous amount of natural gas under the ocean floor but we just haven't figured out how to extract it yet. And on the far fringe, Titan has more than enough methane to keep us going for quite some time.
We don't know what's safe, but we know that at some level it becomes bad, so that means at any level it's bad right?
No, not at any level. But, when it comes to toxins, the conservative and prudent thing to do is to go far below the levels that we know are dangerous, because we already have seen many examples that toxins are dangerous at far lower levels than at those where we first observed toxicity.
When it comes to greenhouse gases, there isn't even a question: we are far above the emission levels that are safe. In fact, enough CO2 has accumulated in the atmosphere already, and it is persistent enough (halflife of the order of centuries), that anything we add is a problem, and any reduction we can make is going to make things better.
So, what you try to portray as fear and hysteria is the prudent and conservative thing to do, both in the case of toxins and in the case of greenhouse gases.
OK, you just lie there while I cut your arms and legs off - oh and hit you on the head so hard that you're in a coma.
So you're still alive... but...
Geez, both your arguments are just so off-base. No, an 11 degree rise in temperatures will probably not make the atmosphere unbreathable. Neither will it magically transform the tundra into farmland.
An 11 degree rise in average global temperature is, however, extremely serious: it would radically alter weather patterns, create far more weather related natural disasters than we have now that destroy cities and infrastructure, flood and destroy the coastal areas, where most people live, and destroy most agriculture without creating new arable land (other areas may eventually become arable, but that takes centuries or millennia). The result would likely be an end to civilization, although humans would probably survive as nomadic tribes with stone age technology.
Has anyone noticed that it seems like we are getting an abnormally large number of posts regarding global warming on /. lately?
from the article summary (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050124/full/05012 4-10.html)
The project's final predictions are based on the 2,017 simulations that were able to mimic the current climate. All predicted temperature rises. Most were about 3.4 C, the average value predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; many were far more severe.
I know that they have CO2 scrubbers for the Space Shuttle, but what about one that was the size of 4 football fields and placed at various places around the US. They would basically draw air in and clean the CO2 out of it. Just a thought...
The amount of CO2 put into the air by humans is by far the highest amount of CO2 put into the air by any other source and simply didn't exist prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Since the Industrial Revolution more and more CO2 finds its way into the atmoshpere every single year. At the same time, fewer and fewer plants are available to remove that CO2 from the atmoshphere, due in part to Rain Forest Deforrestation.
I would imagine that any human of average intellect would be capable of understanding with that, rather simplistic, bit of evidence that the world is heading towards a radically sped up Global Warming period that will result in drastic environmental changes and not for the better of humanity.
We, as a species, simply have nothing to lose by taking this seriously and have potentially everything to gain by acting upon the evidence pointing to CO2 production as being a source of Global Warming. To that end, we must cut down and nearly eliminate our CO2 production, stop the deforestation of the Rain Forests and seek other methods of removing CO2 from the air.
If that is difficult for you to understand, then understand that by researching and then implementing technology that not only cuts CO2 emissions, but also helps remove CO2 from the air, there will be another massive rise in the economy. Creating and building new technologies creates jobs, opportunities and economic boons.
In this case, it doesn't matter if people don't believe they need or should use such technology. Whether they like it or not, this technology will only be for the benefit of all humanity and help ensure that it is more likely that the human race will continue to exist, as we know it today.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
1418. Not that much. 56,000 Americans died in Vietnam for something that was just a policing effort, and never actually at war. 400,000 Americans died in WWII, and fighting for real reasons. 116,000 in WW1, and over 750,000 in the Civil war.
Anyway, seems the Americans are getting pretty good at fighting wars, and not actually having anyone die. Maybe in 20 years, they can just take over the world, and only 7 people will die in the process. 1418 is very few lives to lose in a war.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be satire... if it is it pretty good... if its not then you really need to read some SCIENTIFIC data on this... not just some absolute crap u made up along the lines of "vast corn fields in Canada"... like I said... I really hope this is a satire...
So I should have froze my ass off at -36 today, but thank god for the global warming it was only -25.
It's -1F here in Detroit area today, we have had lots of snow and lots of super cold days.. i don't think there is a global warming, it's just that the cold currents change over time... Bring on the heat!!
also it will help with the heating bills!
-b
Please, do the world a favour, and don't use that particular argument when criticising governments. It's seriously fucked up, and it merely advocates making the war on (some) drugs even more draconian, overbearing, and far reaching.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The simulations suggest that over the next hundred years we could see average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K, more than twice what was previously thought.
Ok, who else besides me read that as 11 Thousand Degrees, instead of the intended 11 Degrees Kelvin?
Come on, admit it!
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Global climate change won't make Siberia a new tropical destination. It will make climate more unpredictable, leading to famine and disease. It will melt the polar ice caps and cause the ocean to rise, leading to mass migrations from low-lying coastal areas.
Don't like snow? How about instead of getting a few minor storms a year we get one in April that dumps four feet of snow across most of the food-producing regions of the country just as they're gearing up for production? How about we get freezing temperatures in early September in Florida and destroy the citrus harvest? How about we totally shut down the entire Northeast for two weeks to dig out of a storm. What kind of effect will these things have on our economy and our well-being?
If you thought 9/11 was bad, wait until we have a massive hurricane flooding New Orleans and killing 10,000-30,000 people. Or maybe you'd prefer a heat wave that crashes the electrical distribution system and kills thousands of people from heat stroke.
This is the kind of effect we're talking about, not having spring-like weather in January. Our society requires that we can accurately predict the weather and have a steady climate.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Global warming - I've been saying for a while that we've already passed the "tipping point". If you talk to the people doing the research, they'll tell you that they have to be very conservative, because what hey REALLY think is going to happen will scare the living shit out of everyone, and be rejected as "too extreme".
We're going to see +50C days in the American mid-west within 20 years (possibly within 10). Crop failures, dustbowl conditions, cattle dying from the heat, people dying like cattle ...
... even then, I doubt that people will want to give up their canyoneros.
These results were collated from approx. 60,000 separate climate model runs. Here's a link to the actual paper published in Nature (PDF). ClimatePrediction.net passed the 50,000 run mark only a month ago, so it looks like participation is on the up. Kudos to everyone running it! Personally I've switched from SETI@Home to this project. (Of course, you may feel that cancer research into protein folding is more important. One of the nice things about the BOINC framework is that you can contribute to multiple projects at the same time.)
The 'eleven degrees rise over the next century' is of course the worst-case scenario. Of course, climate disruptions of that magnitude really would be catastrophic to human civilisation - for one thing, massive loss of agricultural production, the loss of large areas of expensive real-estate (many of the world's great cities would certainly be under water. I don't know precisely what magnitude of sea level rise 11 degrees would produce but consider that the Greenland ice sheet, which is already showing signs of increased melting, would produce approx. 7m rise - that's goodbye to London and New York and Amsterdam for starters.) Here's a chart from the IPCC's 2001 report showing the various scenarios they based their predictions on. As you can see, the worst-case they foresaw was about 5 or 6 degrees C. The significant thing about these results is that the upper bound of the range of possible temperature rises is shown to be about twice as severe as previously thought. Not only is more and more solid evidence being produced to back the fundamental prediction that human CO2 emissions are causing significant changes in our climate, but the magnitude of those predicted changes is getting greater and greater as time goes on. Note as well that the charts don't suddenly flatline at the year 2100...
Finally I'm looking forward to a discussion on RealClimate.org on this. I've found it to be utterly addictive to see discussions amongst actual researchers in the field, not only showing the areas of legitimate disagreement, debate and uncertainty, but also the solidity of the scientific consensus, as well as busting various common myths - the Crichton garbage, the hockey-stick stuff etc etc. Strongly recommended.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
This may or may not be obvious, but I have to say that not everyone in this country agrees with the Bush administration and what is going on in Iraq. I actually was impressed with his actions in regards to Afganistan initially. He seemed to be calculating and cautious before attacking them. Now I know he was just an idiot and didn't have a clue.
Bush obviously has some kind of complex where he has to prove himself to his daddy. Remember, you can't spell WAR without W.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Quoting the site http://climateprediction.net/info/part_faq.php/ ,
t ran90/ ,
"The programming and resources involved in running a full-scale climate model is tremendous, as well as the peer-review required over years of academics using something like the UK Met Office model. The UK Met Office model is not "open source" -- it is an extremely large, complicated system (something like 500,000 lines of Fortran; two miles of continuous paper if printed out and laid end-to-end). The UK Met Office has been superb in allowing us to bring it over to run on a Windows platform and distribute to the world. They are certainly not getting any money out of it."
I think they ought to disclose what Fortran compiler and what options were used to create the Windows executables.
According to http://www.meto.gov.uk/research/nwp/numerical/for
"The Unified Model was originally written in the Fortran 77 programming language with some low level routines written in C to aid portability. Now however, Fortran 90 is increasingly used to take advantage of its new features and to facilitate exchange of code between different international meteorological organizations. Some components of the Unified Model such as the observation processing system and the variational data assimilation system have been written entirely in Fortran 90."
Well, this is the problem.
I live in the UK where we can't even own a stick, sorry knife with a blade longer than 3 inches, unless it's a butchers knife or hatchet which is ok.
This is mainly because of a couple of mad people loosing the plot a bit and the politicians cashing in till the dollar signs bled out of there eyes.
Now most of the hard line liberals I know (the kind that get the riot police out every week end) would never use a gun, which is why all that happens every week end is the riot police come out, beat a few people and the press write about the litter that was left behind.
If they went out with guns and petrol bombs (like they did in Ireland) the liberals may have formed a power sharing government by now.
Ban guns == Prevent(or make it so hard as to be almost impossible) the government from being overturned by the people.
Every one of you who replied to my previous post is a complete idiot. Yes, I do believe in what I stated above. I also believe that if you don't understand what I said, then you are in definite need of protection from your own incompetence to handle your own life. That is all.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If we were to ban substances based on risk, tobacco would be banned, and booze would be encouraged (in moderation).
And for those who say that people knew what they were doing the first time they lit up, most of them started when they were still minors. Not exactly capable of "informed consent" when subject to peer pressure.
The first step is to make the packaging more unattractive, like in Canada
(warning - this one is rated by smokers as the most visually repulsive)
or this one
or the complete list
or policy paper
or as reported by cnn
If someone has inoperable cancer, we don't ignore the fact they have a hangnail. We take care of what we can, because that's what we do. "We" meaning humanity.
As for particulates, humanity has pushed more then enough particulates into the air through our industrial activities, which acts much like the particulates kicked into the air by volcanos. However, we have started to significantly decrease the emission of those particulates, but not CO2 and subequently have witnessed an increase in the rate of Global Warming.
We know the causes of the rise in Global Temperatures. That really isn't part of the debate. We have control over nee of the MAJOR Contributing factors of Global Warming, which is the production of CO2 and the destruction of CO2 cleansing forests. Both activities greatly increase the parts per million of CO2 in the air.
There are many factors that affect the temperature of the Earth. That is not in dispute any climate scientist will tell you that. There's nothing we can do about the increase or decrease of solar activity. What that scientist will also tell you is that CO2 will trap in heat and thus greatly increase the effect and speed of Global Warming.
Since it goes without saying that we do have the option of controlling our production of CO2 and do have technology available to remove CO2 from the air, we should do it.
Otherwise we may as well stop providing any other kind of medical care to someone that has been diagnosed with a fatal disease. What's the point in taking care of some medical condition we can control if the patient will succumb to something doctors can't control anyway? IN fact, since every human has been diagnosed with the eventually fatal disease of life, we may as well stop all medical care altogether.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Are you being sarcastic or callous?
The Americans are getting pretty good at fighting wars and not actually having any *American* die.
One million Vietnamese died in the Vietnam "policing effort" and estimates of 50,000 Iraqis have been killed so far in the conflict. Mostly civilians.
Main exports: Diamonds, copper, coffee, cobalt, crude oil
Tobacco companies specifically increased nicotine levels so as to make a more addictive product.
The only way my father was able to give up smoking was by coming down with pneumonia. It hurt him just to breathe. Smoking made him feel like he was dying. Combine that with peer pressure from our whole family, and he has been able to keep from smoking for over a year.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
More exactly, we've learned that changing that periodicity is a bad thing, from our having turned it too far down; turning it way up isn't good, either, in more obvious ways.
As an Analog SF editorial noted a few months back, fire may be considered analagous to a super-predator. It has a niche in the ecosystem, and removing it causes the system to unbalance in similar ways. Of course, over predation is a lot more obvious in its harmful effects. As a quick analogy, it seems plausible. Proof would be a good subject for a NSF grant research proposal-- perhaps even with the current administration.
While the original claim about double risk for 5 degree change is unsourced, imprecise (try "doubles the Erlang distribution frequency"-- which, yes, has several implicit plausible but unproven assumptions), and certainly has an elasticity range if you go 50 degrees either way, it's not inconsistent with what I recall an ex-GF prattling about from the forestry class she was taking at the time. The responding comments on "0%/100%" risk can be answered by reading about Erlang distribution stochastic processes.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So what your saying is: the system alreay has mechanisms for maintaining an equilibrium that constant enough for us to rely on? By definition during an ice age, global temps are down, so if global warming causes global cooling, then what's the problem?
"The original poster was fine, though why they converted TFA's Celcius into Kelvin, I'm not sure."
It's better to use K, because you can't perform calculations on the Celsius scale. For example, 20 C + 30 C != 50 C. It is in fact well over 300 C.
20 C + 30 K = 50 C, however.
My Sig: SEGV
They can't even predict what the weather will be like this weekend.
How are we expected to believe then with forcast that far out?
I think I remember hearing somewhere that some think that the great Permian Extinction, the greatest extinction of all times, may have been triggered by great volcanism (the Siberian Traps) which might have raised the global temperature by about 5 degrees (centigrades)... which in turn whould have caused the release of Methane from the sea, which would have caused another 5 degrees increase in temperature (or so).
An 11K increase in temperatures is therefore nothing to sneeze at. Of course, that all depends on the base temperature you are starting from, but I still hope we (or our children) are not going to see anything near that kind of global temperature change.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Believe what you want about global warming, it is hard to respect an article on climate change that begins by concluding there is "no such thing as a safe level of carbon dioxide."
There are many positive and negative feedbacks. My point was that the simulations that get really high numbers get caught in the positives. Having so much feedback is why it is so difficult to predict. I really don't put much stock in any of the simulations because of this. It is simply too complex to model. Instead, I look at the facts. Temperatures have increased about 1 degree C and sea levels haven't changed at all. I am not even sure that this is bad. I'd be surprised to see a global mean temperature rise of more than 2C. The effects of such a temperature change are not particularly bad and definitely not worth the enormous costs of putting the smallest dent in the increase. With the money Kyoto costs, for example, we could provide clean water and food to everyone on earth that doesn't have it, with billions to spare. Which is a better investment?
Yeah, I was referring to how Americans fight wars and no americans die. I wasn't speaking about the other side. When I hear on Fox news every day about how 3 or 4 americans died that day, I just can't feel sympathetic, as this is a very low death count for a war. 20 (on average) americans died every day of the vietnam "war". That isn't even that many.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Is not capitalized. You'd have a point if it was "11k".
FRA: STFU GTFO
I just don't understand the lackadaisical attitude conservatives have towards global warming.
"Is the planet warming up? Sure. But it's happened before."
"Are we responsible for it? Maybe. But nature could be too."
"Could we be laying the groundwork for a catastrophic climate change that wouldn't occur if we actively worked to eliminate our role in global warming? Could this result in millions of needless deaths, and destruction of the ecosystems we currently have? Possibly. But changing the way we live would mean I'd have to pay 10 cents more for hairspray! I won't do that."
Either we are contributing significantly to global warming, or we aren't. Since we can't tell unless we actually change what we're doing, why not change what we're doing? It's like they want to risk everything on a roll of the roulette wheel and hope it all comes out okay.
Dude, get real. Every smoker out there made a concious decision to light up for the first time. My father died at 46 due to a massive heart attack, massively influenced by his two or three pack a day habit. His father died at 40 for the same reason. But I know whose fault it was --- both of them knew it wasn't healthy. Nobody forced them to light up.
You see, years ago when tobacco companies advertised to children and those children subsequently thought it was soooo cool to smoke and then died from a massive heartattack at 40 - is *THAT* your idea of a conscious decision? At 7?
There was a fuzz made a couple of years back when the temperature in Brighton hit 100 degrees for the first time ever. I expect there was confusion about the scale in some quarters, although it was obviously Centigrade because the sea hasn't boiled over. Not yet, anyway!
I stole this
Those who took applied physics, chemistry and other things have now chance to lead themselves into new market that will emerge real soon. No one really talks about it as a market, but developing stuff, bits , even software about energy conservation is the future. VTEC is computer software/hardware by honda makes fossil fuel powered carriges more efficent. What will you develop? Patent it! You are one suppose to benefit from patents not patent holding corporations.
At any rate if you start slowly rolling company about something tangible like , house power management computer. Anything that prys ones dependance away from fossil fuels, you might strike rich.
Truth is , when people already talking about the market its already too late.
MIT's Magazine of Innovation: "A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics" http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_ muller101504.asp
http://www.techcentralstation.com/102704F.html
http://www.oism.org/oism/lecture/viewer/lecturepla yer.htm
http://www.john-daly.com/
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick rock!
My brother, who started smoking at age 6, thought it was sooooo cool that our dad was smoking, so he got into the stuff when dad was not around. He never saw a lick of advertising. His was a concious decision. Maybe uninformed. But concious. So he should blame our dad. Who died of a massive heart attack at age 46 -- but then he had a congenital heart condition, so the cigarettes might have merely hastened his death a little.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
From the Best of American Science and Nature Writing http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618 178929/104-5710845-6375915?v=glance2 00210 _terminal_ice_1.adp
Terminal Ice
http://outside.away.com/outside/news/200210/
There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.
2 0dioxide/CO2.html and http://www.mindfully.org/Air/CO2-US2000-DOE.htm US CO2 production is about 1.3 to 1.5 Billion tons each year. Given that the US produces about %25 of CO2, that means that Global CO2 production is at most 6 Billion tons or about 55 times as much as volcanic eruptions. Hardly anywhere near the 10,000 number you and they throw out.
If the above were completely true, humans would produce about 1 TRILLION tons of C02 each year. according to http://www2.biotech.wisc.edu/jeffries/faq/carbon%
Using the USGS All of humanity produces 22 Billion a year and volcanoes 130-220, that is 100-170 times the volcanoes, still much less than 10,000.
Now for large volcanic explosions such as Mt. Saint Helens and, Krakatoa? Still trying to find info on them, but has to be much more than their average.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
What's interesting is that this study does not include a very important greenhouse gas, DMS (dimethyl sulfide), which is responsible for cloud condensation among other things, and thus plays a major role in greenhouse effects. The degradation of oceanic DMSP (dimethylsulfonopropionate) to DMS is one of the major factors being studied in the two labs I work for. Actually I work for the SIMO project, which is a joint project between these two labs.
I'm sure there were other factors not incorporated into this model that would be of use to consider. Hopefully, as the average user's computer becomes more powerful, the researchers behind ClimatePrediction.net will incorporate more factors and a more complex model to help give even more likely results.
It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.
I will personally destroy this world long before you guys need to worry your pretty little heads over the climate.
The amount due to human influence is well understood. It is "most" of the warming. Read the IPCC report instead of bleating that you can't possibly understand.
Yup, bird migration and plant budding schedules are already different from what they were on the day we started thinking it would be good to know what they are. There's no reason to think that the observations back then are any more "correct" than today's. Back then was correct for then, today's are correct for today.
It's depressing to see how many people who will jump up and down and scream if someone so much as suggests that evolution might not be true, assume that all change ended the day science began.
The important thing is, what's this going to do to us, and what are we going to do about any parts of that we don't like? How do we need to adapt to our ever-changing environment, and (since we can) how might we adapt it to our requirements?
Antartica is, among other things, getting COLDER not WARMER. As for melting in the Antartic, the northern most tip, you know that thing that sticks out south of South America? Is the only part that is melting. The rest of Antartica is getting colder and the ice is growing.
2 0822.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/antarctic_0
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=192
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Just to put the "experts'" level of real knowledge on the issue of climate change in perspective, just look at how the expert predictions panned out for the so-called Y2K crisis. And to top it off, Y2K was a problem that could be assessed much better by surveying the existing software systems that were in use at the time. The "experts" predicted doom even with all of that real-world, real-time data available to them, but Y2K turned out to be a dud. Climate change "experts" are now attempting to predict something far more difficult with much shakier data available to them. Their predictions and models are no more than guesswork at this point.
You ignorant fool, you totally missed my point.
Typical
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I have never agreed SO MUCH with a "liberal democrat" in my entire life!
Thank you for your RATIONAL, CONTEMPLATIVE and EDUCATED analysis of the global warming "phenomenon."
I understand the passion of people that want to believe the we have the ability to destory our world so easily- and maybe we do. But just because the world is getting warmer (which it has done MANY MANY times over the 4 Billion years this ball has been circling the big chunk of plasma) that does not mean that we are the ROOT CAUSE.
11K(thousand) degrees? Ouch!
Hello world!
I will respectfully sidestep the evolution debate, as there is none to be had. As for the remaining poiints:
* It matters not only that the patterns have changed but also that they've changed in a predictable manner, in line with the measured results of human impact on particular ecosystems.
* Evolution is different from hybridization. The same forces are at work, but hybridization is on a far smaller scale. The famous example of moths turning black to match the soot-filled air of the industrial age was in an isolated area. Migratory patterns shifting this dramatically, observed worldwide is unheard of. We're not only seeing a difference between what they were 200 years ago when we began counting and what they are today, we're noticing a marked shift in a far more compressed time period. This time is too short to pin the label of "evolution" on. It simply does not happen that quickly. This is a direct result of human activity that could, ultimately, do us in.
*I listed several things this is going to do to us in a parent post. What we should do about any parts we don't like is change them back. This can be done, first of all, through the signing of the Kyoto climate treaty. How the United States can get away with saying that biodiversity and stable ecosystems are "too expensive"? What's expensive is our shortsightedness and belligerent politics.
*How can we adapt, though? That's a good question. On the personal scale, you can burn your fossil fuels to heat your home and run your air conditioner when required. But again, billions of people doing so only serves to speed up the downward spiral. On the global scale, assuming health is non-negotiable, the only feasible adaptation would be put into effect NOW.
In summary: It becomes very clear that this is not "normal" change when you realize that species are just flat-out dying. No significant evolution occurs in decades.
To date, has any published global warming model predicted accurately global warming in the future?
Scientists have been doing these models for several years, it would be interesting if one actually made an accurate forward-looking prediction.
Cigarette makers have been found guilty in a court of law of putting additives in cigarettes that makes them addictive.
Concerning addiction, not everybody is created equal. For some people quitting is easy and for others it is impossible. Many people started smoking while under the age of 18 due to peer pressure and then found themselves unable to quit later.
The point is to stop smoking may not be as easy as to choose the colour of one's car.
Anyway, seems the Americans are getting pretty good at fighting wars, and not actually having anyone die.
Reputable, independent sources estimate that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the current war. Nobody contests that more than 15,000 have died.
My favourite fact was the Al Quaeda secret bases hidden in the Afghan mountains.
You forgot to mention the ninja quarters, the shark tank, the giant laser, and the kung-fu army training grounds.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
The fear behind global warming sucks! The only answer to the human condition is advancement. The proposed answer to global warming is to constrain humanity. Put a brake on advancement. Do things the expensive way, slowing progress, with questionable benefits.
The planet will change. That is a fact. Humanity will be better able to deal with those changes if it is wealthly and advanced.
The best option is wealth and advancement, because if we are poor and backwards, we will not have the ability to do squat.
You may say that we are ruining the environment, but America is one of the cleanest countries because we are wealthy and advanced. We were only able to clean up past messes once we progressed more. If we had stopped, or slowed, development in the past, we would be a whole lot worse today.
Argue if you will, but the stronger humanity is, the easier it will be to survive whatever the planet throws at us.
PS - Why is the solution always more government control? Looking back at history, private property and freedom have led to the greatest acheivements. Looking back at history, government intervention has caused some of the greatest tragedies.
I herby instigate my trademark "Immediate Action Theory (tm)".
Case Facts Only:
1. I have a theory
2. The world may end based on my simulation
3. We have to take action now
4. Forget it's just a theory, we have to take action now.
The amount due to human influence is NOT well understood. Read the post again and answer his very specific questions, instead of blathering about re-reading the IPCC report.
damaged by dogma
I strongly disagree. It is my opinion that your body is yours, and you may do whatever you wish with it. Addiction does not surpass free will (if it did, a crackhead could commit a crime and say "I was high, it was the corporation's fault"). When one goes through the long and arduous process of ceasing use of an addictive substance, it is not for any other reason than free will. If free will causes someone to start using an addictive substance, and free will causes one to stop (cessation must be a choice), where is choice not involved?
I believe that your view on this is systemic of one of the problems that American society is facing. People want to blame everyone for their problems but themselves. It's a sad state of affairs, because we will end up with a nannying state, and freedom will continue its trend toward just being a bunch of government rhetoric. When I was addicted to nicotine, I took full responsibility. When I quit -- it was all me.
I also believe that the problem tends to be circular. The more that we take individual responsibility away, the more helpless people will feel. We will see more need for nannying labels and tort suits, and less common sense ("well the electrical socket didn't specifically tell me not to put my tongue in it...it's their fault for not warning me!"). Do we want to encourage dumb behavior, or smart behavior?
Give people the tools to do the right thing, and more often than not, I believe that they will.
-Turkey
I'm late to the game but, as a service to sanity, could the horde of kneejerk posters who have spewed variations on:
* Michael Crichton says its a con
* They were talking about an ice age in the 1970s why can't they get their story straight?
* Its all fluctuations in the sun's output
* Volcanoes produce way more CO2 than us
* They can't tell if it'll rain tomorrow, how can they talk about a hundred years from now?
* There isn't a solid consensus about climate change
* So what if all the scientists agree? Science isn't a popularity contest
* We'll farm the tundra
* The scientists are all in it for the grant funding
* Climate Change is an anti-american plot
and similar rants check out the relevant RealClimate.org articles so that next time they'll be a bit more informed on the subject.
Thanks.
Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h
I find it great that the side with the loudest voice for revolution also votes to outlaw the only tool that will allow said revolution.
Someday the Left will learn that change comes from bullets not protest signs.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Sensationalist headline due to a poor mathematical model.
Wow...those are strong words. So everyone who doesn't agree with your opinion is a complete idiot. I think that you were clear about what you said. I still disagree. I'd leave it there, but since you are unable to have a polite discussion without caling people who disagree with you an idiot, I just thought that I'd point out that this makes you an asshole. Good luck with that, kid.
-Turkey
I wish there were a -1 Absurd moderation.
You ALWAYS have choice. It's purely a matter of willpower. You're taking the absurd position that the choice did not exist because someone didn't have the willpower to make the hard decision. Both my parents smoked for 15 years, and they both JUST QUIT when they decided they were going to have children. Because they understood something that you don't:
THEY understood that they had a choice. It was their future children that didn't have the choice about being born, or enduring a pregancy under constant assault from nictoine.
Just because you REALLY want something doesn't mean your decision making capacity is gone. Check yourself into a clinic. Get help. Or use good old-fashioned willpower and STOP. The choice is always there. In fact, you make a choice every time you do something that you know is wrong or bad. Your first statement says it all:
People need protection from themselves.
That runs contrary to everything I believe in and stand for. People NEVER need protection from themselves. People do not need to be coddled or protected. Even children, who do need to be guided and taught, make decisions and should be held accountable for them. Children are people, just like everyone else. They may need more guidance and have less experience, but they still have the ability to reason right from wrong, and understand consequences. Addicts are the same way. They don't get a free pass to do whatever they want because they're an addict. They are a person who can make decisions, and that cannot be taken away. The first step to giving people the respect that they deserve is to hold them accountable for what they do. Freedom and responsiblity go hand-in-hand, and by taking away one, you necessarily take away the other.
There are those in the world that want to find a way to shed personal responsiblity at every opportunity, and there are those who take charge of their lives and claim responsiblity. Which are you?
I meant without having any of their own soldiers die
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
First let me preface what I am about to say with the fact that I used to be a mindless consumer too so I can relate to all you people who will refute this.
While I'm glad you are feeling superior to everyone here, and your fragile ego has been propped up for a while longer by demonstrating how you are so much better than us "mindless consumers", how much oil did you burn to post this tirade?
Computer with plastic case or parts? Check.
Silicon substrate-based semiconductors? Check.
Coal or oil fired power generation for your low-efficiency power supply? Check.
Did you convince even one person to amend their ways? I'm guessing not.
No they would never introduce something like that in the states!
In [the case of kelvin temperatures], we're looking at absolute zero.
In the other, we're looking at the freezing/melting point of water.
In thermodynamics, absolute zero is a much more fundamental origin for a temperature scale than the freezing point of water at 101 kPa. For instance, Charles' law states in part that a gas with twice the temperature in kelvins will take up twice the volume.
Hell, celcius was based on water.
Ultimately, other than that one specific planet is 70 percent covered by it, what's so special about dihydrogen monoxide? Besides, don't those freezing and boiling temperatures change somewhat based on pressure?
...and how did we know the stratospheric concentration of CO2 in the 1800's? Its things like this that make me call 'bullshit' everytime a new chicken-little prediction about global warming comes out.
I beg to differ - he most *definitely* saw plenty of advertising - whether it be on TV, in magazines, or in the form of your dad smoking. I cannot for a second believe that at the age of 6 kids know what's good for them and how to make a conscious decision. I know I saw the world differently at 6.
Simple restatment:
2 million Americans completed their slow suicide since Bush took office.
The tobacco companies did not kill anyone. They sold the product these individuals used to kill themselves. There is a fundamental difference there.
"I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way."
--Robert Frost
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Distinction: there is nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in the attempt to get you off of nicotine completely (generally by prescription only), and there are nicotine replacements (sold over the counter in Europe).
What is the distinction? NTRs generally are not designed to give you the equivalent effect of smoking (in essence, freebasing nicotine). They are designed to be poorly absorbed so you won't get "habituated" to them. The also generally cost x5 as much as cigarettes.
Nicotine replacements are designed to be smoking substitutes. They are quickly absorbed. Please note in ALL of your examples, the intent was to get people off of nicotine entirely. The two are not equivalent.
You might also look into the difficulties tobacco companies have had introducing new products.
Too little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
My parents quit smoking a couple decades back. I never heard that they had any difficulty doing so.
Same with my siblings, though they quit in the last five years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Damn. I keep forgetting that after this past election, I've decided to stop caring about people. It's so hard to just say "fuck you" to the rest of humanity. But I must. It's apparent that they don't need compassion for the stupid things they do individually and should instead be left to suffer for their own wrong choices. Oh well... old habit die hard. Thanks for reminding me why I despise 51% of America.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If there was a way for people who commit suicide to be punshied for their stupidity, I'd personally bring them back from the dead to do it. If there is one thing I can't stand it's people doing stupid things:
Smoking:stupid
Screwing lots of people without a rubber:stupid
Buying products from a company that is ruining small businesses and the American economy (Walmart):stupid
Suicide:stupid
Drunk Driving:stupid
Supporting big business:stupid
Supporting corrupt governments (Hello Mr. Cheney):stupid
Claiming personal responsibility when you don't do your own surgery, dental and financial planning at home while still having a real life: stupid
That's just a small list of things that are irrefutably stupid. That's what I dislike the most: stupid actions. Those actions, in my worldview make those who commit them: STUPID.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
That's part of the deal with freedom. With freedom comes freedom to be stupid. I'm all for it, as long as you're only hurting yourself.
-Turkey
I also have no problem with assisted suicide, if that is what the person truly wants, and is rational.
The sad fact is that many smokers want to quit, but can't. They don't want to kill themselves through smoking.
So, would you accept a paycheck from a tobacco manufacturer? I wouldn't. There's a moral and ethical problem there. It's the same as my choosing not to eat at McDonald's for more than a decade, before it was fashionable.
The founders of America were puritans. That's pretty much opposite to "scientists". Their descendants voted for Bush because of "moral values". America never really experienced an "age of reason", and it shows.
The Raven
Saddly, discussion on things like global warming is seeming (to me) to increasingly resemble those highschool prom orgizational meetings... You know: the ones where there are FAR too many people with different ideas and oppinions. The jocks want to crash the party (don't know really, never was one) the cheerleaders want it to be a miraculous event, someone wants it to be commemorative... whatever. Point is that nothing gets done because of the sheer volume of parcipitants.
My logic is along these lines: Science is (among other things) an amazing way to apply order to seemingly chaotic environs. Scientists can accurately control an SUV sized vehicle from earth to Titan... Their jobs are based on bringing order to disorder. --I'm sure that deserves a rebuttal or something, but whatever.
So the scientists are saying that things "may" be going awry in terms of climate? and they tell us that there "may" be dire consequences? And they've given us a list of things that may help or possibly even fix the problem? Cool beans!
So these guys no how to keep the party going... it's their job. But we have in the boardroom, Cheerleaders, religious people, jocks, Carrie... ect.
In the end, we already have an idea as to how this can be fixed, but practically no one but the scientists want to bother with/believe in best course of action.
So I think what will happen is that we stupid, stubbern humans will continue to do what we've always done. THen at some point, things will get bad and we'll turn to the guys who knew about the potential concequences all along and ask them to fix it...
or... yeah, Carrie goes haywire and kills us all at the prom.
um... ok, I'm done.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
I good friend of mine was addicted to cocaine. It was a stupid thing to try, of course, but that's what happens when you're a user. Anyway, it was a one-and-done with her. The moment she tried it, she was hooked. Even though she quit a long time ago, if you mention cocaine to her now, she gets a very far away look in her eyes and you can see the addiction is still there.
Yeah, there are shooting ranges that advertise in San Francisco papers. So you drive to the valley, no problem!
It's the new Michael Crichton book, and is an action/thriller as most of his are, except it deals with a band of ecoterrorists and the people trying to thwart them. What's interesting is how many graphs, charts, and footnotes he has in there that point to the idea that global warming really isn't occuring. I just got done reading it, and it was a pretty good story. Haven't had time to look at any of the footnotes first hand yet, but seems to present a pretty strong argument. One of the big points he makes in the appendix is that all these studies are biased in some way or another, and that unless there are true double blind studies done, it will stay that way. Industry of course wants to discredit global warming, and beaurocrats want to see reports like this. It's silly to think either end is going to be totally honest.
...maybe its immune system is simply trying to shake off the virulent infection called mankind?
One of my two parents quit, with little effort. The other wont quit cause he doesnt see the point, its his choice.
Not everyone has problems with addiction. Treating everyone like they have problems with it by trying to control what choices they make based on your opinion is no different than telling someone what religion to follow, what church to go to, what to eat, who to marry or anything else along these lines. Smoking is a nasty habit that can cause cancer and many other problems. That doesnt mean everyone is affected by its side affects, and it certainly doesnt mean you should try to play parent to the world and make anything that MIGHT cause a problem illegal. If you go down that road we wouldnt be having this conversation because the internet can be harmful, and addictive. It can also be used to commit crimes.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
A warmer planet will change the earth but will it hurt it?
It will good news for some. A lot of Canada and Russia will do better if this happens.
Not saying we should ignore it but for some places people and animals it will be good.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I know I am getting into this debate late, in terms of /. experience, but here is my personal take on the whole thing:
I actually sat down and downloaded the climate modeling software and put it on the computer that I am writing this reply on. I even ran it through a whole cycle and one of those "50,000" modeling runs was done on this computer.
I was willing to try and get it to do a couple more "runs" on my computer, but the software had a serious bug in it when you have a hard crash on your computer, like getting struck by lightning, or otherwise from a blackout condition where the computer shuts down hard and quick. Windows in general doesn't do too well when that happens either [yes, it is a Windows box... sue me if you like], but when that happened, I couldn't get the software up and going. I was going to delete and reinstall the software hoping to solve the problem, but I simple killed the software altogether after what happened next.
I spent some time on the message boards looking around at the basic assumptions behind the climate model being used. I also spent some time reading from the software designers, and really tried to dig around the website, asking a few very good hard questions. I've also spent some time studying climatology, and even spent some time helping to gather and input some historical weather data for the Utah Climate Center where we gathered weather data going back to the late 19th Century and put it into a machine-readable format. BTW, this is rather unusal to do this to have daily weather, temperature, and precipitation data going back that far. Most climate data used in modeling goes only back to the 1970's at best.
From what I saw on the website, it was politically motivated from the start to prove that there was global warming occuring. On the basis of all of the sensationalist news stories that seems to be coming out right now, it seems to confirm my theory.
There were legitimate items that were missed in the model, and ways to improve to modeling that may or may not prove global warming and/or cooling. Variations of things like increases in solar radiation, increased volcanic activity (over multi-annual periods of time), and assumptions regarding human impact on the environment were totally missed, or at least ignored and put into context of something that doesn't affect the climate. Some posters on the web pages proved that it wouldn't take that much additional processing to add these extra variables, and that is the point too: There are a bunch of variables that affect the outcome of the climate and for the most part these variables are just guesses in the dark. Even a true understanding of what the interaction between different things like how warming of the ocean off the coast of Chile affects weather in London is still not totally understood, even though there are some pretty good theories.
This whole idea was a nice try, but I am no longer involved simply because of the political angle that I got from reading the major participants, not to mention the leading researchers involved in this whole mess. In other words, I consider this to be bad science on the whole, and in the politically charged "atmosphere" of the global warming hypothesis, it is very difficult to keep a scientifcally neutral attitude regarding anything. From my experience as well, most of the schools also have professors that encourage the "solid" basis of human-influenced global warming, so it is very difficult to counter that culture if you are a student trying to study climatology that has a viewpoint counter to the prevailing attitude in acedemia. Simply put, if you don't publish a thesis or other papers that support global warming, you won't get a PhD.
This project, unfortunately, is an extension of that attitude, although I will admire a basic attempt to try and solve a difficult problem. The basic user interface for this software was cool, and it was neat to see a model of the Earth
It's hard to tell... do you know that "K" is kelvin in this usage and the "k" in "killobyte" (etc) is suppposed to be written in lower case (Modern Komputer mis-Marketing asside 8-) as in "640k"?
I bemoan the death of precision... and the fact that I am the kind of guy likely to use the word "bemoan" 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Uhm, assuming we keep having MORE & MORE WARS, the numbers of cold dead bodies laying around will keep environmental in balance. http://www.newpath4.com/01stsolutiontowar_binarypa thwayanswertoworldpeace.htm . Every cloud has a silver lining. We can learn the ways of Peace and die, or keep killing each other off in droves and enjoy the Bahamas year round.
And thanks to you, too! You remind me why I just have to keep watching my back, because 49% of America (your fellow travelers, I presume) want the power to run my life for me, if they happen to think I'm being self-destructive.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
I'd not thought of that, and it does make perfect sense! Thank you =)
You could, however, perform some calculations because it is a linear scale. For instance, the average temperature of a few measurements. ie, (20 + 30) / 2 = 25 C average.
in the contexts the poster used it, my guess would be "geeky scientist type person."
However, IANAL(inguist of British slang.)
Yes, I was simplifying my statement too much.
My Sig: SEGV
This might be Redundant, but definitely not Offtopic. Moderator, I mark you Unfair.
Wait, aren't we due to have a global ice age? It's supposed to happen the day after tomorrow if I'm not mistaken. According to environmentalist experts in Hollywood, it's more real than you think. Better move to Mexico everyone.
Don't laugh! Our forecast: eleven thousand degrees! Crispy critters, all
without line breaks, my
seventeen syllables will
not a haiku make
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I'd mod this up
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Humans annually consume 20 per cent of NPP generated on land (the models did not take into account ocean production). Consumption varies by region. Humans in sparsely populated regions place little demand on local production, however urban areas may consume 300 times what is produced locally. East and South Central Asia contains about half the world's population and consumes 72 per cent of the region's NPP.
--00--
The study found that humans, which represent roughly half of 1 percent of the total biomass on Earth, appropriate about 20 percent of this primary resource annually. In addition, consumption among regions varies widely. Western Europe and South Central Asia consume more than 70 percent of what their regions produce, while in South America just 6 percent is consumed.
--00--
I remember the club of rome in the 70s. THey predicted that by the turn of the century there would be no oil left, we'd be dieing of air pollution and water pollution by the billions and unless we implemented draconian communist restrictions on people we would be in a downward spiral. Well, these were MIT and other professors. They played with models in many ways and they all showed ridiculous results. Models are ridiculous. The IPCC models have been way off the mark. The 1990 model not only mis-predicted wildly the results from 1990-2000 it couldn't predict any climate before 1990. This is junk science at its worst. People who base their thinking on these models are going to look like idiots. Those who based their lives on IPCC models in 1990 look like idiots already.