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NASA Says 2005 Could Be Warmest Year Recorded
Ant writes "CNN reports that a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s." From the article: "While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part."
eh...
It will only be the hottest year on record for a year or so.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You apparently want Earth colder and Mars hotter. Make up your mind!
Sudden global climate change is a serious issue that should be dealt with, but it is interesting how on one side NASA feels it's possible to control and affect positive massive global climate change on Mars but fears comparatively tiny changes on Earth.
I'm a big tall mofo.
human-made greenhouse gases
I just made some of those myself.
Already in Canada, we have had some January temperatures of ONLY -35 C when normally we get some days of -37 C
Definitely warmer this year!
Girls with even less clothes, is not cool?
...we live on Earth!
Well... We've had one of our colder January's in a while here in South Australia - hardly used my swimming pool compared to last year.
Where the hell is global warming when u need it?
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
Just a one- or two-degree change in temperature can lead to disease outbreaks." -- Drew Harvell, Cornell University Marine Ecologist
Two planets meet in space:
First planet: "You're not looking too well! Are you ill?"
Second planet: "Yeah, I got homo sapiens!"
First planet: "Never mind, that's one illness that quickly runs out. You may get some fever because of all the greenhouse gases, but in the end, they'll just wipe themselves out..."
We should think of the future, and of the planet we'll be leaving to our children. Clearly someone should take out all the environmentalcases, so that our kids won't have to put up with them.
I find Americans to be, on balance, very intelligent and well-informed. They tend to hold views similar to those of intelligent, well-informed people of other countries, with two exceptions:
(1) Gun control. Way more smart Americans believe in the right to carry a weapon than smart non-Americans. Most of the rest of the Western world thinks the US is kind of insane on this issue, actually.
(2) Global warming. It is near-universally accepted outside the US that this is happening, and that humankind is responsible. But many smart Americans doubt this.
I resist the urge to inject my own views here because I simply wanted to point this out. It's odd.
I should buy some cement.
the coldest year on record
the wettest year on record
the dryest year on record
the fewest storms on record
the most storms on record
Depending on where you live, your exact location could have any of these conditions. It's funny how the most generic weather predictions can always be proven true.
All in all, 2005 looks to be pretty scary. I wouldn't go outside, based on NASA's findings.
---gralem
It's interesting that the year following a strong earthquake or tsunami is usually slightly warmer than average. I wonder what will people do when thanks to foolishly burning oil and coal we will have no polar ice and ozone keeping us cool. Isn't it time to use hydrogen as fuel? Hydrogen + oxygen = pure water. Simple as that. Is there any other reason than shady business in the middle east that stops us from using clean and cheap energy today? Is it more profitable for certain people to start wars and control oil than to do something good for the entire humanity? I blame people who vote for immoral politicians. In democracy people can have exactly the government they want. So I ask: why do people want wars? Why do people want the greenhouse effect? This is something I seriously cannot understand.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Frequently asked questions about the science of climate change
I find it very helpful.
i'll give you a week in my nome timeshare for a week in your timeshare in boca raton
come to think of it, nevermind... 50 or so tropical hurricanes are forecast for this year
in alaska
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We have a government that does pretty much what we tell it because we have two guns for every three citizens and a tradition of cleaning house when needed. You can forget that self defense and sporting use stuff you here - its all about keeping the state in line.
Global warming is deadly serious business and anyone with half a brain sees it coming. You're thinking of the Christian right behind Bush - they believe in this thing called 'the end of days' - this Christian prophecy makes it OK for them to ignore long term issues like global warming. We're hoping they're the first to starve when the troubles begin
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Do a little research on "Clean Hydrogen Power" Coal. All hydrogen for use in fuel cells is wrought from coal in the ground... It's a big anti-earth conspiracy of pig-men, just like in "Captain Planet" Blegh. I think we need to start transitioning, because eventually it may be possible to use sea water as a source of hydrogen, but with modern electrolysis, the process is more expensive than drawing the same from coal, or (I think) oil. And in any case, where do you get the electricity for the electrolysis? Nuclear, oil burning, coal burning power plants.... maybe coupled with a few solar plants, but even geo-thermic power is having disasterous short-to-long term consequences in Northern California and Iceland, the two places where more than a town's worth of power is geothermic.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish). And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Global warming can be a difficult concept to discuss because it can have such far reaching implications and primarily deals with what we, as humans, have a very difficult time understanding, the future. Barring some new technology that makes renewable energy very inexpensive, it seems nothing significant is going to change.
Here's a website I found with a good summary/organization of global warming impacts happening everywhere. http://www.odysen.com/news/Environment.php
If we have a 'day-after-tommorrow'ish' winter coming anyways then I want a couple years to sell my house and enjoy the warmer weather.
Nasa says 2005 budget could be lowest recorded.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
So, your argument is, since the Bush and his handlers and loony supporters expect good things from judgement day, they're not worried about looming disasters, in fact they welcome the end.
How is this sensible?
There may exist controversy around the topic of global warming and global warming may just be part of this planets natural way of evolving into whatever global climate is next. There were many types of global climates in the past and there is no proof that humans are the ones causing this temperature change.... and I read somewhere that termites and cows produce more green house gases than humans....
But if the fear of global warming causes people to adapt a cleaner and healthier lifestyle then so be it and i'm all for it and infact there should be active participation by all people to keep the enviornment clean.
People should, however, learn to share their concern about global warming with other global disastors happening.. or waiting to happen.. Illiteracy rates, population explosion, terrible health care for people, etc.. should all be taken care of and they all pose a huge short term risk which is much greater than the risk of global warming.
We know the temperature rises, we know know earth changes. - We think we might have something to do with it.
It won't be the hottest year on record for long.
The only uncertain thing about global warming is when mankind will realize that the end of that development is to be avoided.
One can say "only a 1 or 2 deg. Celsius". In fact, first it is a mean temperature, second, the climate might turn out to on the verge of some major deterministic chaos state.
As an example, during the so called Little Ice Age the global temperature dropped by about 1 deg. C, but it caused the following: (from Wikipedia)
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
The chaotic nature of weather patterns might, in turn, hypothetically cause that some very small change causes a major switch, i. e. in sea currents. I do not know if anyone now either predicts or excludes for sure any such event, though.
So, concluding, I think that we do not really know how much serious to the climate the global warming is.
I seem to recall from many science books that the human form (not what it looks like now, but rather two legs, two arms, walking mostly upright, ugly features, lots of hair) has existed for the last 80 to 100 thousand years. I also read that the last ice age ended somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand years ago.
As a species we seemed to live through that ok. I think the anonymous individual above me might need to delve into a few of the geological sciences before spouting trash about Kyoto accords.
While I don't normally agree with the way America deals with world affairs, I think perhaps they are right about Kyoto being more about 'money making' than about the environment.
I make no claims about global warming in this post, simply because there is far too much conflicting evidence. I do, however, try not to pollute as far as possible in my life.
There's no denying that global warming is happening (at least in the short term). It's the cause that that's uncertain. The dinosaurs had much higher global warming but we have yet to find a single dinosaur factory or dinosaur SUV. Unless the dinosaurs ate a huge number of baked beans, I don't know how they could be responsible for generating a significant amount of greenhouse gases..
Are you stupid? There is no longer any doubt that mankind is at least largely responsible for climate change. Let me give you some more perspective on some of your other idiotic comments:
Please feel free to show the evidence that the U.S. government is significantly more scared of its populations than other national governments. Feel free to work in references to legislation such as the Patriot Act, where appropriate. Or any legislative issues where gun ownership made a difference.
CNN's crediblilty has been on self destruction for the last year or so. Their stories have been filled with hype and falsehoods on the hope that their ratings will not continue to fall.
There are always options, never failures.
Bolt is just a paid troll who gets his money by saying what retards want to hear. Good for him! But don't expect me to believe his blatherings - because they ain't science.
Vote Quimby!
an accurate forcast for two days out in Oklahoma, and not in the middle of the summer with a high presure sitting on top of us (upper 90s, sunny, 70% humidity), then I will believe them.
Forcast: Partly cloudly and a high of 41
Actual: 1 inch of snow, high of 33
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
How about a "nuclear winter"?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
-- Governor George W. Bush, Jr.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Keep your pants on there fella, these 'scientists' can't even agree amongst themselves how the dinosaurs died out. Some look at the dirt and see a big old black stripe that might indicate 'volcanic' activity, some interpret it as a big chunk of rock smashing into the earth causing a massive dust cloud around the globe.
I think most of the more valid science places the blame on several major catastropic events occuring in close proximity (time, not distance) - enough to shift the balance. Some also seem to say that the dino just wasn't suited to such a rapid change in environment.
Don't just scream without some justification for the noise.
- How many degrees? How does this compare to the immediately preceding 100 years?
- Likewise, how much glacial melt has there been, comparatively?
- Sea level rise?
- Is there a direct proportional correlation between the CO2 content of the atmosphere and these factors?
Keep in mind that we need global numbers for these, not a few hand-picked locations that illustrate a point. Climate is extremely geographically variable.The fact of the matter is, you don't have to be a "retard" to have questions about the validity of the global warming rhetoric that is continually bandied about. I don't discount that there are things that humans do to our environment that are bad, but I don't blindly buy into all of the rhetoric either. I want some real scientific proof, not just theories and extremism.
We could easly reduce our greenhouse gasses very simply. Just a few little things like better insulation, solar heaters, and this http://gfxtechnology.com/ little gadget here to recycle waste heat from drain water. If everybody got one of those, we'd reduce our CO2 by about 1/3, not to mention the cost savings on heating.
Keep your pants on there fella, these 'scientists' can't even agree amongst themselves how the dinosaurs died out.
They can't agree on the cause of the climate change, but they do agree that whatever caused it, the climate change was comparatively slow; this is known from the fossil records. The dinosaurs took over a million years to die out.
hand in hand don't they?
Where I live crime went down and continue to stays down because of concealed weapon permits and a requirement that all homes should have a gun on the premises (people can get exceptions for that). Gun control only puts the control back into the hands of the criminal. However that is another argument.
Global Warming is happening but what defines global warming isn't agreed upon. So we have 50+ years of good recordings and they consider that a baseline? Just a few years ago they were attributing the drought like conditions here in Georgia as part of Global Warming, up until we started going back over our rainfall average. Now this upcoming predicted wetter than normal Feb is also because of Global warming?
Who the hell would buy such malarky?
El Nino's and similar oceanic events have drastic and measurable affects on the weather. If it moves we can see a nearly immediate effect. Man "might" have a similar strong effect on the environment but it cannot cause rapid shifts in the weather that changes in the ocean or the effects of the sun.
I agree that we cause changes in our environment. I do not agree that we do as much as most politically charged scientist think, let alone the bash-Bush/America crowds that infest the Global Warming debate.
Having had relatives who visited Eastern Europe I suggest Europeans look in their own backyards for some of the worst abuses ever recorded. If they were in that condition in the 90s I cannot imagine what some areas in Russia are like. Follow up with visits to certain Asian cities which have such pollution the air is hard to breathe yet mysteriously Kyoto barely mentions curtailing them.
If you want America's cooperation then apply the same rules worldwide. Do not attempt to single out America just because its more successful than your country.
I think we're going Waterworld today. It is "cool" and "pop culture" to say that our esuvees are causing the destruction of the earth, because we all hate the rich people who buy them.
I personally am waiting for the satisfaction of the prediction from the 70s that we're entering a new Ice Age. I want more skiing, damnit!
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
I want some real scientific proof, not just theories and extremism.
Do you really want real scientific proof? I mean, really? Because if you do, why are you only asking on slashdot? Why don't you go and read some peer-reviewed science journals that publish studies about climate change and other climate studies? There is now an overwhelming body of real science on this issue to be read if you just go out and look for it. If you can't find it, the only reason for that would be if you aren't really looking, and are more interested in hearing things that reinforce your existing worldview. Slashdot is not a peer-reviewed science journal, and is not the place to ask for answers on such important matters. The answer to all your questions above are researched and published.
Thanks, you are definitely correct - my point was meant to be in reference to the cause - at least that was what was in my brain at the time. Didn't come out that way though. Messed that one up.
I am in the middle of reading Michael Crichton's book State of Fear. It is a novel but based on solid science. In the book there is an eco-terrorist group trying to create some disasters to make its point that dramatic climatic change is going to destroy the world. The good guys point out that while while the average air temperature at the Earth's surface has increased by 0.06 C per decade during the 20th century, and by 0.19 C per decade from 1979 to 1998, the average temperature in Antartica has decreased and the thickness of the ice there is increasing. See article in Nature. This is important since Antartica has 90% of the world's ice. Greenland has 4% and the rest of the world combined has only 6%. So even if the world's temperature rises, there appears to be no danger of the sea level rising dramaticly.
Crichton overall message is that the scientific evidence for global warming is thin and that the environmental movement, ignoring science, has gone off track. He thinks we live in a 'State of Fear,' a 'near-hysterical preoccupation with safety that's at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism'.
Personally I think there has to be a balance where we work to protect the enviroment but do not have to tramatize our kids with scary tales of the world ending in their lifetimes.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I don't seem to see anything in my post about 'monkeys' - I'm talking about Neandertal looking beasts - though there are plenty of universities and other organisations saying that our DNA is not related to them either. Who the hell knows.
What do you suggest? I believe in some mythical entity instead? That the Earth is only 6000 years old?
Evolution is where I'm at.
Further to that:
http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/news/Neandertal.html
Says it better than I can.
I know this because George Dubya (&Co.) has
told me so. And I have it on good authority
that he gets his info directly from THE MAN.
Anyway, what is the problem with NASA? Aren't
they supposed to present a unified front of
THE party line, like the rest of the Executive
Branch? Do they really want to jeopardise their
funding (or risk another SST being used for
target practice by US Space Command)?
Come on, NASA! Toe that line! Tote that bale!
Get onboard the Bush BS bandwagon, or you'll
get "Bush-whacked"!
Thank god the air conditioning works in my H2!
> The Earth's 'normal' temperature isn't what we are used to anyway. Our civilisation has developed entirely in the aftermath of an ice age, and the Earth is still warming up after that.
I don't know what the concensus of scientists is on that, but I've read several articles lately that say we would already be freezing up again, if not for anthropogenic global warming. The problem is, we're warming things up too much, so in additon to neutralizing the onset of an ice age we are actually warming things up compared to what we had in the Neolithic.
By chance there's an article by William F. Ruddiman in the March Scientific American (arrived yesterday). His position is that you can model the long term fluctuations of temperature, CO2, and CH4 on the basis of several astronomical cycles, but something has gone awry in the past 8,000 years. Apparently early agriculture and the associated deforestation started driving the CO2 up about 8,000 years ago, and the invention of wet rice farming started driving CH4 up about 5,000 years ago. Each had been declining on the curve predicted by the astronomical cycles up until then, but suddenly started increasing when the should have kept on decreasing. (The article has some interesting plots; look it up if you get a chance.)
The astronomical cycles also predict that reglaciation should have started about 5,000 years ago, but instead the temperature remained essentially flat from then until the start of the Industrial Revolution. (The global warming increased as agriculture spread, fortuitously keeping temperature flat when it should have been dropping - until the Industrial Revolution kicked in.)
Thus at the start of Industrial Revolution things were already warmer than we had any right to expect, and then we started really driving it up from there. Regarding the present delta between actual temperature and expected temperature, Ruddiman attributes about half of it to historical agriculture and half to the Industrial Revolution, though like most other scientists he expects the I.R. component to keep going up (until we run out of cheap fossil fuels).
In a side bar he makes an interesting suggestion that the major cooling periods of the past 2000 years have followed plagues and depopulation of the Americas, both resulting in farmland reverting to forest (a CO2 sink). Frankly his graph for this effect doesn't look as convincing to me as the ones supporting his main thesis, but perhaps we'll be hearing more for or agains the idea in the future.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The same people who can't get a 90 day weather forecast right - claim that we little ants can change - the change that's happening for the past 50 or 60 billion years. There's no proof that we humans are causing the warming.
"As a species we seemed to live through that ok."
We, as a species, almost died out when the Toba volcano erupted bringing on dramatic climatic changes.
How close? Some scientists say that we were down to a few thousand in population. I wouldn't call that okay. I would call that shit luck. Alot of other animals died out.
I don't think a lot of people understand exactly what kind of energy your talking about it comes to global warming. A change of 1 degree world wide is equivalent to thousands of nuclear weapons.
Do you really want to take the chance that we aren't contributing to that kind of energy buildup? Where will that energy go? What will that energy do?
I mean seriously. We don't understand to what extent our pollution is affecting the environment, even without considering global warming.
~X~
~X~
CNN reports that a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept
It should be 'CNN reported', not 'CNN reports' because we all read this 2 days ago on CNN. Honestly Slashdot, can you at least keep up with the news. Even if it isn't great news, the whole point of reading the news is to get CURRENT events instead of LAST WEEKS events. I know, North Korea was telling us they had nukes on the same day, so everyone probably missed this one right?
There is now an overwhelming body of real science on this issue to be read if you just go out and look for it.
However, it mostly says "Maybe. We're not sure. Oh, and here's a few other theories, and we're not sure about those either. One of them could be true, or none of them, ask us again in a couple hundred years".
Nobody has any answers to this puzzle, just a whole bunch of questions.
The dinosaurs took over a million years to die out.
There is no evidence for such a long die-out. The latest evidence suggests that it was practically instantaneous, which fits very well with an asteroid impact.
We should consider passing environmental legislation over every volcano currently active because of the amount of smoke, gas, and ash they release into the environment. Seriously people, do these things think only of themselves?
Esoteric reference.
The only sports that will ever be popular in the US are those that have frequent breaks in play, during which commercial advertisements are shown.
Football is a 90 minute game (four 15-min qtrs, one 15-min halftime, plus 15-min of misc bullshit) interlaced with 90 minutes of ads. Basketball and baseball are no better. Hockey has less interruptions. Soccer (football to the rest of the world) has almost none. In fact, I've seen some pretty neat methods for displaying ads around the pitch while the game is in process (a much more passive way to get the ad in there). But this is why hockey and soccer will never be more popular in the US. The only redeeming feature of the stupor bowl is the ads.
I'm sorry, did you just ask how Bush's belief in judgement day is sensible?
What kind of question is that?
You seem to be missing the point.
Try here.
user@host$ diff
Human activities are making a significant contribution to the global climate change? I think our species may be having delusions of grandeur here.
Probably excellent if you live in northern latitudes (like central cancada or finland)....but probably BAD if you live in Florida or Mexico :(
OK, so you don't have a US keyboard. We don't care :-)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Talk about global warming as if it was a bad thing... BKm in South Dakota.
That's funny, the communist governments in Eastern Europe and the USSR used to control the voting process too...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Thanks for pointing us to that site...it is very information packed.
How about in Athens, Tennessee in 1946?
What that should have said in order to be meaningful was "simulating nuclear weapons". But you knew that. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
how Americans flatly refuse to accept the blindingly obvious (and what every government in the world apart from the USA knows) that human-made greenhouse gasses are to blame for global warming.
_ energy_grid) for Carbon emissions per citizen per year in metric tons:
I suppose its hardly surprising when you realise that US citizens per capita are the higest polluters in the world, and the president is totally owned by the oil corporations.
Here's some figures (from http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national
USA: 5.51
Finland: 2.8
Germany 2.7
UK: 2.5
Spain: 2.1
France: 1.83
Why is this not under politics.slashdot.org
--
Global "warming" isn't going to just raise everyone's thermostat by 5'C. It's cranking up the chaotic fractal dimension of the atmosphere. Some places will get colder. Like when the Greenland ice melts, flushing fresh water into the North Atlantic, it will push the "Thermo Haline Circulation" farther south, making the warm Gulf Stream flow more directly from America to, say, France, instead of warming the Baltic. The UK will plunge into an arctic climate like northern Scandanavia, along with the rest of northern Europe. Other places are likely to also freeze or drop, though the average will be higher, meaning some places will become hellishly hot. And the kinds of storms we'll see in the ongoing transition will make hurricanes look like mist.
--
make install -not war
Until then, football on television is just one more motivation to sit down and read a book or go surf the net.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In Phoenix we've had record cold so far this year, and rain out the wazoo. The mountains are actually turning green. GREEN. Maybe it's warmer somewhere else, but not here.
The asteroid theory suggests a much sharper environment change than millions of years in regard to the demise of the dinosaurs.
As for the last few hundred years, you have a real problem in the limited range of data. Go back a thousand years or so and Greenland supported a farming & livestock lifestyle. Over the last million years, the vast majority of time was spent in an Ice Age.
The climate change in the last 150 years (since widespread records started) isn't important unless you can show that it's not related to longer time scales. Since we know that it's been somewhat warmer, and much colder, you bear the task of showing that what changed in the last few hundred years wasn't caused the the same things that caused changes in the previous few thousand years.
Over longer times, the real worry would seem to be how to fend off the next Ice Age.
Cherry picking your data line to prove a point is generally considered dishonest. Of course, if you don't realize that is what you did, it's called something else.
I'd be more careful about calling people retards, if I were you.
Having just arrived in the Pacific Northwest this year, I was disappointed when the Cascade Mountains received little to no snow and my wife and I couldn't go skiing. At least I didn't buy a season pass like many did. How unfortunately for them.
These guys are a little off the mark. Global warming is a combination of very-long-term weather cycles and the earth slowly dying.
"First fact to consider is just one lone volcano in an eruptive phase releases more of these toxic gases in a single day then mankind has in its species existence"
The problem is that there are more volcanic eruptions. Volcanic activity is increasing very fast and is a major symptom of the planets approaching death.
Maybe they should fast track the terra-forming of Mars.
sqribbles.blogspot.com/.
Some so-called "statistician" had the gall to tell me that the odds in roulette are stacked in favor of the house! He mumbled some nonsense about "probability" which I was too stupid to comprehend and told me that while I "might have short-term, unpredictable changes in winnings, the long-term trend favored the house by several percent."
But I don't believe him anyway (we all know there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians). I asked him what number the ball would land on next, and he didn't know! He just gave me some lame "forecast" with a bunch of percentages. I may not understand this "probability," but I've been around the block a few times and know a quack when I see one.
How can he claim to predict what is likely to happen to my money in the long term if he can't even predict exactly what number the ball will land on next?!
Alright, croupier, I've got my kids' whole college fund to invest here, so let's start with a thousand on black! Wooo!
The scientists at NASA only had to call up the folks at Princeton, since we all now know that random number generators can predict the future. You heard it here first.
Slashdot: Conspiracy for Nerds, Stuff that Matters
At least the war on the environment is going well
It just has to be the humans, doesn't it!?
One thing I hate about this is how much they (anyone waving this flag) ignore (intentionally) external influences on earth. Look at this quote:
Remember the Little Ice Age. Why did it happen? Lower solar output. Today, higher solar output. Hmmm, notice any corralation?
I'm not ignoring the fact that we could be influencing the global climate, but what we are doing might only be 0.1% compared to external inputs to the system.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
You REALLY need to get some facts straight.
"healthful" - bullshit. Despite what even some doctors claim, circumcision does not bring any health benefit. It is also potentially lethal (by related hemorrhage and infections) and monstrously painful.
"better sex" - just the opposite. The foreskin is extremely sensitive erogenous tissue. Circumcision seriously decreases man's capacity to feel sexual pleasure.
"more women" - and in certain parts of the world a woman can not find a husband if she is not mutilated. American women prefer circumcised men because they were taught that this is normal, so it is just a matter of teaching them that it is NOT normal!
: Dude, its not even a choice. - that's right, in a way: helpless babies have their body integrity brutally violated - and are never given a choice. Anyone who performs circumcisions - be it a doctor or a jewish mohel, each driven by equally preposterous and disproven myths - is a child abuser a hundred thousand times worse than any Michael Jackson.
Circumcision is child abuse.
That's just typical. It takes the arrogance of some NASA rocket scientist to proclaim world shaking doomsday scenarios based on a single transitory fluctuation like 30 years of data. President Bush says we don't know enough to be able to make predictions about the changing climate one way or the other. And who are you going to believe? A man who told us that 'God talks through him' or some ivory-tower egghead who studies weather satellite data all day?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Still the establishment and early years of the US is probably the most significant event so far in the history of democracy especially given that it can be tied fairly neatly to the changes and turmoil of the 19th and 20th century.
Since El Nino affects only the tropical Pacific regions, will the regions other than these be affected too? Is there an inter connection between the ElNino and other ocean currents?
An interesting question is how the emissions break down, and especially why particular countries differ from each other.
Like (examples, just guessing) perhaps the US number is greatly increased by the heavy use of cars, Finland's number is increased by heating, France is fairly low due to significant use of nuclear power etc.etc.
Are you saying that every place but the United States has dropped politics as a function of science, subset ecology? Which place is that? Where is this "other place" that has no politics associated with science/ecology? Name it if you can.
I don't see it, albeit just looking on the web. It appears to be a universal phenomenon that science/money/politics has always been an intertwined mega endeavor, looking back in history, looking at todays events, and then extrapolating, i don'tthink politics is being removed from ecology any time soon. Anyplace.
I don't think you even could separate it, humans being human.
Cultural jingoism sometimes makes random selected human/tribe/nation think their "way" is perfect, yet from another's viewpoint it isn't. The old expression that fits is "you can't see the forest for the trees".
Here's the obvious example, even the assertion that other nation "x" has separated "science" from "politics" is a political assertion from just the way humans use language. Because once you make something an absolute, a statement, a declarative, you are implying that every possible variable has been accounted for, and there are no exceptions.
In some small matters,extremely small,say very basic maths, probably there is little to no debate,but once you get beyond the trivially obvious, I think you will find there's still debate, and hence politics will enter. In fact I'd say the "scientific" community is one of the more highly politicised communities, in all nations.If it's not, I'd like to see the nation that doesn't have any legislation in their written/coded laws that pertain to "ecology". If they have laws, then that's political, it hasn'tbeen separated, it's been politicised.
To get back to ecology, this is such a broad subject, and the modeling required to actually finalise some conclusions is so hugely complex, that I would think it's safe to say there will be debate and therefore poltics involved for quite some time to come. The reason why-perhaps- it might seem like the US has more, is merely from the fact that the US is very large in many diverse ways and the center of the worlds attention all the time in the news. The US currently controls and influences so very many things because of our actions it's just easier to look at and point at, that's all. Say for instance one day we decided to just end our political involvement with "science" and become totally insular. that would mandate our dropping of support for any other nations or exteernal treaties or collaborative effort in 'ecology". We could just 'declare" a carved in stone group think policy and say "debate has ended, this is so, it is scientific fact, and no other viewpoints are valid, our science has determined such and such and that's it".
That in itself would be a rad political move, yet it would fit the requirement of removing politics from the discussion-at least as regards any other nation, and they would be left to their own endeavors in their "perfectness".
Anyway, to get back to basics, I'd like to know by actual names which nation or group of nations have no politics associated with the loosely defined groupings of scientific explorations that might fall under an "ecology" heading.
Yeah sure, like we had all these kind of problems when we where in balance with nature ,like not overcrowding earth surface.
Mod whatever you like, being AC says enough to me.
Notice that Earth and Mars are different planets. Mars is 142 million miles away from the Sun whereas Earth is only 93 million miles away from the Sun. Consequently, the intensity of the light from the Sun on Mars compared to Earth is only 93^2/142^2 = 43.0 % That's a lot less light. less light => less energy That's why its a hell of a lot colder on Mars than it is on Earth. And that's why we would need to make Mars warmer for it to be habitable.
This year though, I was wearing shorts before January was out.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
> The article has some interesting plots; look it up if you get a chance.
Here are two of the plots showing the unexpected reversals in trends for CO2 and CH4. (The one on the left expects methane to more or less track solar radiation, and certainly not to make a u-turn like it does.)
Unfortunately, I can't find an on-line version of the summary plot for temperature vs. expected temperature over the past 10K years, so you may still find it worth reading the magazine article.
Not everyone agrees with Ruddiman, of course. Here is a discussion thread at RealClimate, revealing a range of views about his proposals.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nice comparison. I love a great punch-line.
SUVs are not bad, they are the result of quite a lot of evolving engineering that has revolved around peoples needs and wants. You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second? I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you? I think anyone with a gram of brains should own some, and if they don't they are evil and stupid. Whoops, sounds elitist doesn't it? I advocate people do, but I wouldn't say they are evil and stupid if they don't. I'm still on a computer that most slashdotters would chunk in the rubbish, an old pp200, yet it fits my needs enough I don't have to junk it or pollute to get a larger/faster/ more energy hog one at this second. That will change obviously, but everyones needs are different, yes? So what is "evil"? what's stupid really? Is it because it's just different? Glass houses and stones.
People will naturally switch to practical alternatives once they are, to use the expression, "on the shelf' for purchase. Practical is the keyword there. Some of the hottest best selling vehicles in the US are the hybrids now, including SUV hybrids that are just now hitting the market. You look at what is hot at the car shows, look at what is being demanded at the dealers. I'll tell you if you haven't looked, Hybrids are hot, besides in small cars like the Prius, they are coming in the SUV design and pickups, and new design high mileage cleaner burning diesels are hot and coming on strong in the near future, as well as the increasing interest in such things as biodiesel. Those are the two really large trends now you can readily see with a little research.
We are such a physically large nation that mass public transportation is not near as practical as in other nations, so we use roads and private vehicles more, just the way it is and no amount of complaining is going to put light rail to everyones doorstep or back yard mr fusion reactors in everyones aprtament or home. The tech and money isn't there yet for that. Neither. Nor would it even be remotely practical, that's why it isn't being done, there's little demand for it, because it just plain wouldn't work. It would be a humongously impractical polluting expensive lame idea to try and put some sort of light rail everyplace that humans need to go to.
We have "cars" of various types. that is what suits our needs in the US presently as a universal general concept in transportation. Primarily this is what we use. Those few areas and niche markets that absolutely can be better served by light rail or walking, ARE being served with light rail and walking right now, daily millions commute on light rail, IF it serves their needs, and everyone has different needs. When I lived urban I frequently took the commuter train, except when it didn't serve my needs, then I drove the approriate vehicle, or occassionaly rented a large truck, say when moving.
It's just how we socially evolved, and those sorts of SUV styled vehicles are practical for a lot of people, millions and millions of people. SUVs caught on because they are just a latter version of the old "family station wagon",just with even better features, and more useful features. These got popular because they filled a "needs" niche so well, people (a lot of people, not all but a lot) needed a "universal" designed vehicle that could function to get dad to work (a commuter vehicle), haul the family to the beach(a very large car or van to fit all the family and their gear), bring home the lumber and bricks and bags of cement for the back yard weekend patio project (some sort of truck), and etc. You can buy three specifically designed vehicles for those purposes, or one vehicle that covers all the needed uses. If you don't believe it, go to any Home Depot on the weekend and look at the parking lots. You'll see huge numbers of SUVs packed with stuff that would normally
First, let's look at the article that CNN stole their story from.
Notice the end of the article, where it says: "But compared to the previous five years, the United States as a whole was quite cool, particularly during the summer."
This is not what you might expect from your presented data...
[tongue in cheek] This is obviously due to Bush and his stepping away from the Kyoto accords and environmentalism. So, it seems that the US is cooling off due to the amount of carbon emissions, which weren't shown in your direct link, from it's citizens. Yay for the USA! [/tongue in cheek]
If you made 32k per year and put the 12% of your earnings in the stock market instead of social security, you would retire a millionaire and get 100k per year in retirement. Instead, it goes into fund the goverment debt making little money. The reality is that the government is living off the backs of retirees. Sure, it's going to cause problems when you take it away.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I think one key indicator that may wake people up will be the upcoming hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. The last two years were exceptionally bad. If for a third time, we have more major hurricanes, it's going to be hard for the mainstream with their heads buried in the sand to ignore, especially those in Texas, Florida and other red states on the Gulf.
When you hear the US talking about a "war on [fill-in-the-blank]", you have to realize that the main philosphic drivers of the attitude are a belief that a zero-sum game is in play. The US has excelled, in the private sphere, at pareto-optimal games, but politically, has never gotten the hint.
I forget what 8 was for.
http://www.vhemt.org/index.htm
Can you imagine how America will respond when a tsunami wipes out a quarter of a million Americans? - don't worry I'll do my bit, I'll try my best to find that telephone number to warn them.. now where did I put it...
The little year that could.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Human's are a virus? then get some Antibiotics
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
Didn't know we had human created global warming before the industrial evolution...
"We" the human species have the choice how to influence our world, for the good or the worse.
Blaming your genes you couldn't resist doing the obviously bad thing sounds a bit silly.
We are smart enough to be the dominant species but with this comes the moral obligation to keep the world as healthy as possible, otherwise it wouldn't take "mother" earth to give another species dominance.
My bets are on the cockroach btw.
Thanks for the interesting link.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Interestingly enough, we probably don't have to do all that much to stop our rush to ecopocalypse. Manhattan itself could capture the solar energy that actually falls on all its rooftops, at the 20% efficiency we've now got, to completely supply all its electric demand - and have the same amount as that to sell to all the surrounding smaller cities which didn't convert. The recent dire warming projections reported last week in England show that dropping CO2 production below Greenhouse-building levels would cost something like 1% of industrial output, or delay the projected quintupling of "wealth creation" over the next hundred years by about 3 or 4 years.
This choice is especially interesting, because those alternatives would both skip the wars we've got now, and stop the eco destruction. It's interesting because the wars are generally to produce more pollution, both in perpetuating the petro economy for which the wars are fought, and in the destruction of the wars themselves, with their vast polluting industrial infrastructure, their wasteful fuel consumption on a grand scale, the pollution produced by destroying cities, especially those which include oil refineries, and the pollution from the vast artillery unleashed. Just switching to sustainable energy will save our species in innumberable ways.
--
make install -not war
I was planing on moving to Phoenix to finally get out of cold ass michigan but I dont like the idea of the warmest summer in AZ this year
...to dictate/mandate by law/ what all peoples needs are, but be prepared for a pretty nasty rejection of that effort. Just because your needs a met with vehicle A, doesn't mean other folks needs are met with vehicle A, they prefer B, based on THEIR ideas of what is important to them or not.
That is a very slippery slope to go on once you start deciding for other people what their needs and wants are. You complain about people using a Hummer, swell, bet ya a quarter I could come to your house and see quite a few things you are personally doing that don't need to be done and cause pollution and for which alternatives exist, but guarantee you you wouldn't like being forced into changing by law.
Don't go there friend, don't advocate it on others, your way is the way of fascism, however well intentioned it might be. We are all individuals, we aren't clones yet.
I'm a big alternative energy enthusiast and advocate, as well as a long time environmentalist, but I will NEVER advocate throwing out our freedom baby with the bathwater of this years version of being politically correct. Never, not going to happen. You have a prius because there was enough interest in it to make someone build them and sell them, that's how it should be. You got to pick and choose a vehicle that suits YOUR needs. YOUR needs. It just might noit suit someone elses. I looked at the prius, it wouldn't serve mine as I would need something that could haul more weight and large articles. I would rather have one of the newer hybrid pickups coming on the market that also have a built in household voltage plug option to use the vehicle as a standby generator. See? Suits my needs much better, although the prius would get better mileage. If I had to choose, and my only options were a hummer or a prius I would have to choose the hummer, as it would suit more needs and wants, whereas with you it wouldn't. But I think it's GREAT it suits your needs and wants, and I heartily like to see modern engineering improvem4nts, to give folks CHOICE. See the difference yet? Don't try to take that human option away from others, don't even advocate it, that's a dangerous slippery slope to be on, IMO. Where would you like to stop? Mandate x-square feet per person in any residence as a maximum, make illegal anything else? How about clothes, you may only have two sets of clothes, style and design and color mandated by someone else. How about food, the calorie inspector comes by once a month and takes measurements and weighs you, determines what your proper diet is, and you have to fgollow that or it's illegal? Absurd, sure it is, just as absurd as mandating what people want for a ride or how to build their house or what they should wear for clothes or what music to listen to or....
Nope, we don't need to go down that authoritarian road any more than we have already. If you want to advocate like this "please consider getting an alternative vehicle, if you need a large one look into xyz model because..." and do it that way, it certainly comes across better. Just picking something out and telling that person they are evil because they aren't exactly like you with their choices is kinda bogus. And doing it by law is dangerous.
You're not serious that you don't "GET IT" are you? The evidence is overwhelming. And those who trot out some trumped up fiction that refutes the majority are mostly politcally motivated, or funded by oil companies. There is really buig bucks at stake to these people, at least for them. But if the planet compromises it's long term future, what have we done? Look at this month's "Discover" magazine; or any simple searching dregs up tons.: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2001/04/13/MN211246.DTL
http://home.earthlink.net/~cevent/11-10-04_solid_e vidence_gw.html
http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatec hange/globemail4.11.97.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/19/en vironment.report/
http://www.ehleringer.net/Biology_5460/Projects/cl imatedata/globalwarming3.pdf
http://www.climatesolutions.org/pubs/pdfs/gwih.pdf
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/2nd/statto ce.htm
http://www.mmmfiles.com/archive/gw2001.htm
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3970 _ConferenceBoard.pdf
http://www.colorado.edu/pwr/occasions/salliebaliun as.htm
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-1/p13.html
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Planting carefully selected tree crops and supporting undercroft also reduces evapouration (and topsoil) losses due to wind, and alters the local microclimate to be more rain-friendly. The soil under rainforests generally sucks, being of limited fertility and stability. It's the forest itself which attracts the rain and holds the soild together. On top of this, the trees actually collect considerably more water from dew and fog than lands as rain.
The answer is not to turn into tree-hugging hippies, because they're generally as thick as two short planks and highly destructive in their own way - but to go on being blindly industrial, producing hopelessly inefficient meat crops and hopelessly destructive, vulnerable and chemical-dependent massive monocultures, is just suicidal.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...where it goes over 120degF every summer. The kangaroos don't seem to mind much.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Russ' biggest blooper is that he distinguishes by racial, not cultural grouping.
Here in Australia there's a massive "Aboriginal Industry" which consists of two classes of people: greedy men happy to walk on the backs of others, and the lazy men that the first group "farms" for money, power and perks.
It's a cultural thing. Most of the above are half-castes, some of whom are whiter than I (mostly Pommie descent, big chunk of Austrian, smattering of other things), but there are many full-bloods in it too. But not all Aboriginals have fallen prey to this (I believe) handout-induced turpor. I know both half-castes and full-bloods who live and think like "proper" Aboriginals and others who are culturally indistinguishable from me.
There is indeed a problem, and it has nothing to do with race.
That the problem is recognised within the races in question is indisputable. The TIs (Torres-strait Islanders) call their problem children "coconuts" because they're only dark on the outside, and the mainlanders use the term "rainbows" because they're not sure what colour to be.
But yes, having someone that simplistic in OSI, and unwilling to recant, is a bit of a worry.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...but generally not for more than about 2 or 3 hours.
Melbourne is definitely female.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You know you won a fight on Slashdot when you don't get a response, just a new freak. My new freak writes just like the parent AC, e.g. very few question marks in his posts. :)
You should do what I do, keep a grudge and wait a while before adding a foe. You give away details about yourself when you add foes too quickly.
And what's wrong with question marks anyway? Aren't they teaching proper punctuation to you libertarian geeks down there in Alabama?
I just read the committee's report on the book and the author's response. There is no evidence that the author committed fraud (i.e., intentionally falsified data)--the committee says so. What he did do is advance a controversial thesis based on sloppy data collection. That warrants a harsh response in a professional journal, no more. Instead, the guy got torn apart by the gun lobby, who got people like you to believe that he committed fraud.
Whether his theory is true, we will never know, because no other historian is going to spend any amount of time collecting the data again, only to risk his job and reputation when publishing the results.
Hmm, warmest year in roughly 200 years... Not counting the previous 5 billion years. I wonder what that means?
...but not the politics.
Dubya's economic policies are generally money-driven and old-boy-network-driven rather than theology driven, but the mutant version of Creationism used by some of those old boys is terrifying to both Materialist/Evolutionists and what you might call bona fide Creationists as well.
The basic approach is to ignore the reams and reams of Biblical instruction about responsibility and us being judged on what we've done with this world - and after tossing that over their mental shoulder, reason as follows: "Since Jesus is going to destroy the Earth by fire and renew it when He returns, it doesn't matter what we do with it in the mean time". They just don't "get it" at all.
Unfortunately, the politics of his opposition are just as dumb and scary in different ways, and also for religious reasons. Abortion is a classic. If you can follow the reasoning that makes murder legal as long as it's in utero, you'll get a feel for it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...US schools are effectively mandated to teach a theory believed to be entirely true only by a minority of the population, and they are so mandated for religious reasons - specifically, they are mandated in support of Materialism.
At least after mandating ID as an alternative teachers (and so by extension students) will have a choice of religious mandates to select amongst.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Do you have any way of Correlating manufactured good per carbon emmisions.
Last I checked we had a bit larger Industial base than Finland.
Though our production of lutefisk was signifigantly lower.
Okay, so consider weather to be a big RNG, why don't we do what the global conscioussness project does, and have a seansce to control our weather?
Philosophistry
A warmer CLIMATE will mean more extreme variations in WEATHER, the faster the rate of climate change (up or down) the more extreme the weather variations will be (ie: Boil a pot of water in a very short time and it will appear to explode). As some other posts have noted the weather here (in Victoria) has also been bizzare in the last few weeks. A full 25% of our annual rainfall in one day plus our coldest Feb day ever in the same year is kind of extreme.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Nice to see NASA go the political rather than the scientic way.
Maybe they are hoping to cash in on the political well founded and scientifically less so global warming hypothesis.
...do people need reminding that CLIMATE != WEATHER.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
really..that the best you can do? They gonna take away your troll apprentice badge for that feeble attempt. So, uh...dude....mr anonymous coward, I drive various pieces of heavy equipment for a living. I terraform, dig it? I got chunks of machinery around here could *squish totally flat* one of those tiny trucks you are creaming over. OK, cool, they are nice as far as city boy trucks go, but that's about it. Those are near the size of the *smallest* truck around here. You need to try again on the insults. I don't play video games, I drive real things made out of steel that burn lotsa diesel and that weigh beaucoup multiple tons and I shoot real guns of the large caliber for sport, not imaginary space blasters in some jackoff kids computer game. Grow up and at least get a handle to post on slashdot or get a clue who you are posting to. If you think I am a yuppie, man, the expression is "wow, you must be new here".
Besides that, nice troll for an amateur, thanks for playing and no I don't mind responding even if it was a troll. All the points I made are still valid.
Oh No. The Climate is changing. Just like it always has and always will. The sky is falling, the sky. BTW, shouldn't NASA be working on rockets instead of meteorology. If they have fucking climatologists on the payroll that money came out of improving orbiters. Sure, share any usefull data, but leave the analysis to others and build space hardware NASA.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
I'd rather watch rugby. For you Americans, it's kind of like gridiron, only the players don't wear all that nancy-boy body armour, nor do they stop playing every three or four seconds.
That said, I'd _much_ rather watch Australian Rules football. At least they actually kick the ball instead of just throwing it to each other all the time.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
self-reliant
Stolen almost everything from the native americans....
distrust central authority
We call it "wild west manners" - and it isn't a compliment.
make use of available resources
Destroyed tall grass and buffalos in the process....
I live in Venice. In recent years we have seen the "acqua alta" (flooding due to unusually high tides) phenomenon becoming more and more frequent. While my house has been flooded only twice since 2000, it is obvious that when we get to a point where 90% of the city is flooded more than 30 days a year, it becomes impossible to carry on normal activities that make a city "alive" as opposed to "pictoresque ruins".
We had a strong subsidence effect in past years, but it stopped when we (actually, some criminal industries) stopped pumping water out of the ground. Contrary to a common misconception, Venice is not "sinking": it's the sea that is rising.
The problem is very real and frighteningly fast for us. Just moving elsewhere is not a solution I would welcome, as I know this place is really unique. Not the same as moving from average Minnesota small town to average Kansas small town (both nice places, I'm sure, but you get my point about uniqueness).
You can find some data about past trends of flooding here.
Nuffsaid
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
It's true: we have to consider the total energy budget of any alternative, compared with our current consumption. I haven't been able to find the cost (in joules) of manufacturing & distributing today's solar cells. Have you got the data?
--
make install -not war
yes its an interesting question, but the point remains that no matter what the excuse is, each US citizen is producing WAY more cabon than anyone else, WHICH HAS TO BE STOPPED, regardless of exactly why they do it.
"As Richard Eckard, the science leader with the project at the Department of Primary Industries in Gippsland's Ellinbank explains, 95 per cent of the methane produced by a cow comes from breathing and burping. " "Each cow produced about 130 kilograms of methane a year, he said, helping the agriculture industry contribute one-fifth of the greenhouse gases emitted by Australia - equal to the entire transport sector. " http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/19/10979 51695871.html?oneclick=true
As well there are 1.5 billion cows in the world (Nature oct 04) - so 1.5 billion times 130 kilograms per cow = 195,000,000,000 kilograms of methane ("green house gases") each and every year!
Do these experts tell us to kill all the cows? Or to stop barbecueing steaks? Or to stop eating burgers? Or to stop drinking milk? ...Eating icecream?
It's all about university tenure and research money to hire TA's.
Here is another analysis, and a comparison with a pro-gun academic who fabricated data...
Quote from the article:
""There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, based in New York."
Since NASa obviously believes there is a link between recently warming trends and greenhouse gas emissions, can we expect to see less postings about how "the earth is always going through warming and cooling treands that expand over 1000s of years so these scientists don't know wtf they are talking about"?
And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
One could also argue that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from todays academic orthodoxy is a reflection of another long-standing tradition in America (and other countries, too, BTW) of anti-intellectualism.
In fact, if you look closely at recent culture in three of the greatest superpowers: America, Russia and China you can see threads of this same movement, in some cases actually used by the government as a propaganda ploy.
In China, cf The Cultural Revolution.
In Russia, consider the crackdown on the intelligentsia and, now, on independent media.
In America, corporate media is inundated with right-wing pundits putting on a show of ridiculing and reviling intellectuals in academia and the "liberal media elite". The "elite" woudl be "them" while "we" are "folks with common sense".
Academics have come out with many propositions and some of them are silly; but the debate and the discourse has degenerated away from logic into some kind of entertaining spectacle designed to draw in listeners and viewers just as much as "professional" wrestling.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I think, on the whole, we do see eye-to-eye, but I wanted to make a couple of comments.
You used this analogy:
You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second?
I wanted to point out the hole in that analogy. I use a Via C3 processor in my workstation at home. It uses 1/2 the energy of a '486DX4, and exhibits 9 times the clock cycles, and about 4 times the computational power per clock cycle, thus making it a more efficient device. It is not as fast as a Pentium 4, I grant, but a Pentium 4 is much more computer than I require, and probably more computer than most of us require.
Cars fall into this idea also. If you can make an SUV get 40MPG, then you should be able to get a sedan to go up to 70+.... and that is how the technology would (in my opinion) be better applied in most cases.
I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you?
I congratulate you on achieving what I am currently striving to achieve. Remember, though, that every dollar spent on efficiency saves about three on RE generation hardware.
Back to SUVs, we have half a year of inclement winter weather in the US,people still need to get from point A to B, so in a lot of places all wheel drive is practical, at least having the option. Many europaen cars have that as an option as well, because it works for that purpose. And in other places where you need to drive might be on still not the best of roads, again, 4wd is practical for those situations. This is why SUVs are just so popular, they fill a niche that so many millions have. If it didn't, we wouldn't see them out there in such numbers.
This is an excellent point, because I live in an area that does get lots of snow. AWD is a wonderful thing. Counterintuitively, though, a well-built AWD sedan (Such as Subaru's offerings) will work better in snowy, slippery conditions than an SUV, due to lower mass (reduces inertia, making steering and braking easier and requiring less torque to start up), and a lower center of gravity improving the stability of the vehicle. The only SUV I can think of to have that kind of stability is a Hummer, which gets it from its wide gait, rather than a low center of gravity.
www.wavefront-av.com
The classic example of US citizens bearing arms against their government was Waco. Needless to say, despite various people's interpretation of the consitution, the government won.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Kangaroos jump. You'd be better off with the reindeer.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...in that they are both downward bound. Natural selection can weed out the losers, and mutation can produce more losers, by degrees or in lumps, but there's no mechanism for producing winners.
None.
Destructive mutations accrue much faster than anything which could be considered helpful overall. The inevitable result is ever-increasing basic illness and incapacity, which will eventually overcome hygeine advances and even miracle drugs and lead to extinction for all, not to new and fitter species.
That's science - or more specifically, that's the path which observation points us down, as opposed to the glories of esoteric thought experiments labelled "science".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing