Arctic Warming Drying Up Lakes

kingofalaska writes "An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published the journal Science." From the article at the LA Times: "About 125 of the 1,170 shrunken lakes disappeared altogether, and most are now considerably smaller than the study's baseline of 40 hectares, or about 99 acres, the researchers found. If Arctic temperatures continue to rise, the scientists said, many of the lakes in high northern latitudes, where they are ubiquitous, could eventually disappear."

Comments

This != Global warming

[treff89]

Before the advocates pipe up, global warming most likely did not cause this. Why? Global warming barely exists! There has only been a small (0.5, 1cm) rise in seawater levels since the 1800s, as much as the zealots would have us believe otherwise. No, this was likely caused as a result of regional discrepancies, not global worming. (Pre-emptive :P)

Re:This != Global warming

[gowen]

There has only been a small (0.5, 1cm) rise in seawater levels

Damn, if the floating ice shelves really were melting, surely the sea-levels would rocket!

Except, you know, to the extent that Archimedes Principle says that they won't. Oh, and the fact that in the last ten years we've watched some of the largest ones in existence disintegrate.

[Off to Norway tomorrow for a conference on Ice Shelf Processes]

Re:This != Global warming

[treff89]

Your tone implies a negative reply, and yet your argument agrees with me.. Perhaps you had better re-read the post? What I meant is, global warming is not the worldwide effect people shape it up to be, and further, local incidents are just that - local and individual. Antarctica goes through cycles every hundred/thousand years (I am sure you, being such the expert on ice shelves, would know this); if anything is "wrong" at all, it is yet another of these processes.

Re:This != Global warming

[bcmm]

No one is claiming that sea levels have already risen masively; rather it is claimed that they will rise significantly (several meters, possibly flooding areas like Manhattan) if the Antarctic ice cap melts, which is obvious.

More important is the temperature anomaly (which is global and indisputable), the effects it is causing, such as El Nino and the slowing of the Gulf Stream (not to mention the increasingly weird weather here in Britain), and the likely effects if it continues, such as total distruption of the Gulf stream causing ice caps to form across most of Europe.

Re:This != Global warming

[m50d]

Keep sticking your head in the sand and pretending it's not happening. Of course it will go away if you ignore it long enough.

Re:This != Global warming

[gowen]

What I meant is, global warming is not the worldwide effect people shape it up to be

While those atmospheric temperature changes (which are believed to be anthropogenic) tend to be localised, the effect of them need not be. The earth's climate is probably the most complicated non-linear system ever studied in any depth and any argument discussion of it based on global averages of anything is extremely unlikely to be very rewarding.

Antarctica goes through cycles every hundred/thousand years

It does. That's not actually a very good reason not to care about inducing a cycle artificially, and one a much shorter timescale.

Re:This != Global warming

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

You got it all wrong. What he was saying, is that the absence of the sea level rise is NOT an indicative that the polar ice isn't melting away.

Gosh, he even said we were observing some of the largest floating ice formations disintegrate. What do you think made them do so? Ice drilling polar bears?

Re:This != Global warming

[gowen]

Ice drilling polar bears?

Actually, that's what it was.

But climate scientists are covering it up because as everyone knows, there's a lot more money to be earned scaremongering in universities than reassuring multinational oil companies that everything's just dandy.

Incidentally, here's a groovy NASA animation of the Larsen B ice shelf breaking up and floating out to sea.

Re:This != Global warming

[peragrin]

And how do you know it's a temperature anomaly, instead of say a natural rise and fall in the planets temp? You are judging the entire planet's weather on a 100 years of data. At the last birthday party I attended for mother nature she said she was some 4 billion years old.

That's like saying you were a lean child and can't figure out why your fat now.

the earth is constantly changing. slowly over time. What happened when the asteroid took out the dinosaurs? The earth recovered from that. It will recover from us. If it has to kill us to do so then so be it. We are way over populated for this planet anyway.

Besides all of that, we will run out of fossil fuels in another hundred years anyway. After that we won't have to worry about global warming. As we won't be putting them into the air anymore.

Re:This != Global warming

[t_allardyce]

Well I look at it this way - in 60-odd years i'll be checking out, so as long as it stays fine until then I don't give a shit.

I swear I heard that somewhere before, maybe my grandfather... oh well.

Re:This != Global warming

[tesmako]

I don't know about the rest of you, but this whole going extinct thing is what I am worried about, the earth continuing along after we are gone or not is a much lesser worry.

In the same vein, if a climate change that would kill us is "natural" I really don't care for natural. Better learn and figure out how to get a more unnatural but more friendly result if we at all can.

Re:This != Global warming

[Winkhorst]

"global warming is not the worldwide effect people shape it up to be"

What you are missing is that the effects of the small global rise in temperature are not evenly distributed! There are, in fact, even regions that get *colder* as a result of this worldwide increase in temperature. Global climatic conditions are complex and unified, but they are NOT uniform. Hence what *looks* like a local phenom can actually be a direct result of global conditions. Think El Nino, for example.

Re:This != Global warming

[hey!]

Except, you know, to the extent that Archimedes Principle says that they won't.

The thing is, if you've been reading scientific literature and science news sources, rather than political news sourcs, you'd know climate scientists are quite aware of this. They aren't concerned about melting ice shelves raising sea level, it's Anarctica's terrestial glaciers they're concerned with.

Oh, and the fact that in the last ten years we've watched some of the largest ones in existence disintegrate.

100% of the ice shelves could disintegrate and according to the physics of bouyancy sea level wouldn't rise one mm. While the retreat of the antarctic ice shelves may be evidence of global warming, they are not linked directly with other expected results of climate change, which, if they happen, will unfold in their own time. So you can't logically use the fact that sea level is not rising proportionally faster as the ice shelves disintegrate faster as evidence that global warming is not happening.

Sometimes I think it would be better to represent our models of this sort of thing by a Bayesian belief network. They are intrinsically honest when weighing evidence, whereas human beings tend to be dishonest with themselves. We all start with our ideas of a priori possiblity, which appriopriately affects our interpretation of evidence strongly at the initial stages. People who are convinced of global warming would need very little evidence to make them completely certain, whereas skeptics are just made a bit less certain at the outset. The thing is, as evidence mounts one way or the other, humans seldom revise their beliefs even to the point of becoming uncertain, unless there is social pressure to do so.

Re:This != Global warming

[hey!]

More important is the temperature anomaly (which is global and indisputable), the effects it is causing, such as El Nino and the slowing of the Gulf Stream (not to mention the increasingly weird weather here in Britain), and the likely effects if it continues, such as total distruption of the Gulf stream causing ice caps to form across most of Europe.

ENSO -- the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, is probably a natural, long term feature of the current climate equillibrium and has been for probably hundreds of years if not longer. So, while it is associated with anamolous weather, the occasional appearance of anamolies is normal.

Evidence has to be weighed in the context of other evidence and a reasonable linking them. The theory of anthropogenic effects on climate stability is twice removed from any kind of measurable parameter: first the proposition of climate change has to be established (at this point the preponderance of evidence), next the link from that to human activities must be established. The theory has, in a sense, fared well thus far, in the first phase. The second phase is a still ahead, I think.

Re:This != Global warming

[gowen]

So you can't logically use the fact that sea level is not rising proportionally faster as the ice shelves disintegrate faster as evidence that global warming is not happening.

I know. In fact, this was precisely the point I was making.

Re:This != Global warming

[hey!]

Well, then I apologize for misreading your point.

Re:This != Global warming

[MonkeyOfRage]

In the same vein, if a climate change that would kill us is "natural" I really don't care for natural. Better learn and figure out how to get a more unnatural but more friendly result if we at all can. Anthropogenic climate change NOW!

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly fakes. Those mountains change bitween frames - there are some on the last one that aren't there before.

Re:This != Global warming

[FidelCatsro]

Doesn't Ice have a greater surface area than water anyway , so wouldn't it kind of balance out

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus notice those polar bears drilling.. They cast no shadow. tsk-tsk.

Re:This != Global warming

[aklix]

I have a question since your a geoligist or whatnot. If global warming really is happening, why is it still 60 degrees in New York City on June 05? That's colder than I can remember.

Re:This != Global warming

[gowen]

I have a question since your a geoligist or whatnot.

I write CFD codes for polar oceans, so I can only answer your question in broadest terms.

i) Climate is not weather
ii) The climate is exceedingly complex, and global warming does not mean a uniform temperature increase across the globe.

Re:This != Global warming

[JohnWiney]

Far be it for me to contract such an expert but according to The CfA Sea Level Homepage, sea level is rising at a rate of about 2mm/year. It might help your claim if you identify the sources of your "facts."

Re:This != Global warming

[Xyrus]

Before you go spouting off inane nonsense, this has nothing to do with rising sea levels. Nor is it mentioned.

The lakes are being absorbed by thawing soil and evaporation. The article does not say anything about sea-levels.

And for clarification, a 1cm rise in sea-level is billions of gallons of water.

~X~

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a large sumo wrestler, and throw him into a large empty swimming pool. Originally, the pool being empty has hardly any waves on it, and water levels everywhere are the same. But, by throwing the sumo wrestler into the pool, you have addded energy to the system.

Consequently, some parts of the pool have higher water levels and some have lower water levels.
This is despite the fact that the extra mass should increase the water level all around.

A practical example is the relationship between water temperature and hurricanes. If the water temperature exceeds 80F (27C), high cloud columns can form, and lead to a hurricane. Below this temperature, no hurricane forms.

A small change in temperature can lead to a major change in atmospheric behaviour.

Re:This != Global warming

[Hobbled Grubs]

Wha?? what about ice core samples and data taken from other sources like trees? Judgement is being made on much more than a hundred years of data. The fact is that ice that is tens of thousands of years old is currently melting. It hasn't been this hot for tens of thousands of years.

If it has to kill us to do so then so be it.

If you want to die, fine!
I am just pissed about you killing me at the same time. It is amazing that there are people who still believe nothing is wrong.
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0409/featu re1/

Re:This != Global warming

[mnmn]

It certainly is happening. There are various seasonal cycles, glaciation cycles and others we dont know about because our history doesnt go back far enough. The neocene should be over by now, the next ice age is due. So we have no idea what to expect... its been 12000 years since the end of the pliestocene.

So all that means the Earth was never constant. There were forests in Saudia, a great desert where forests are currently, a lush ecosystem in the middle of the Antarctica. Surely humans didnt change that, we didnt exist. We only very recently became powerful enough to make big changes in the global system, but since its all constantly changing so much, our effected changes are lost. Think of the Tsunami. Could we do that? That was weather dear friend, it showed us how our effects are completely dwarfed by mother Natures'.

I dont think we can make lakes disappear yet. The greatest change we have been able to make is putting dams on rivers, and the heat of cities raising its temperatures by 2 celsius. Apart from that, things have always been changing, and will always be. My hometown used to get 10ft snow every winter 'back in the days', while now it didnt snow for a good 5 years straight. Legend has it that its always been getting warmer there, and such temperatures are to be expected.

Its certainly Global Warming, but not manmade.

Re:This != Global warming

[Winkhorst]

Of course, if the swimming pool were truly empty, the sumo wrestler would simply make a large crater in the bottom, kind of analogous to an asteroid hitting Earth. ;-)

Re:This != Global warming

[Metasquares]

The fact that we are seeing these trends over 100 years is precisely the problem. Natural climate change doesn't happen that rapidly.

Re:This != Global warming

[Rei]

Antarctica goes through cycles every 100,000 years

This is the worst argument I've ever heard, and opponents of global warming just keep citing it, over and over, often associated with the Vostok ice core data

The resolution on that graph is a little over a thousand years. The most dramatic change on the graph is 20 degrees over 10,000 years. The arctic and antarctic have changed 5-7 degrees in the past *200 years*, and the rate seems to be accelerating. Of this 5-7 degrees, about half of it has occurred in the past 50 years alone. At the current rate (ignoring things like the rapidly expanding industrialization of China), it would implement that fast 10,000 year change in 250 years.

Furthermore, the Vostok cores drive home an additional point: The temperature is almost always correlated with CO2 concentraions. CO2 concetrations are rising rapidly, and completely predictably. We consume >80bbl per day; that's 12.72 trillion liters, which is about 10 trillion kilograms. Assuming heptane as the average length, that's 7 carbons and 16 hydrogens, about 63% carbon, so 6.3 trillion kilograms of carbon per day (i.e., 6.3e12 kg CO2). In 50 years, that's 1.15e17 kg CO2. The mass of the entire atmosphere is 5.3e18kg, and a current (already high) 0.0353 percent CO2, that's 1.87e15 kg CO2. I.e., at our current rate alone, we would put *61 times* more CO2 from oil alone into our atmosphere in the next 50 years then are in our atmosphere currently.

Now, if you want to look at the balance of how quickly that CO2 will get eaten up and compares to natural generation, we can do that calculation, too - I just wanted to point out the fact that the amount of CO2 we're adding is really quite huge in comparison to what's in our atmosphere.

Ok, well, what if there's some rapid changes in historic temperature that are too high resolution to show up on the Vostok cores? We have much more detailed methods for the past two thousand years - here's the graph for that period

Any questions?

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I look at it this way - in 60-odd years i'll be checking out, so as long as it stays fine until then I don't give a shit.

t_allardyce - who doesn't give a shit about school girls or anyone else who isn't him.

Saudi Arabia - where school girls are prevented from leaving a burning building because they have no head scarves on>

Well, I look at it this way - they're a long way away from me. So long as things are okay around here, I don't give a shit.

Re:This != Global warming

[Martin Blank]

I'm a skeptic of man-made global warming, but I'm willing to listen to evidence of anything, and then weigh the evidence myself. We have fairly precise global data going back only a couple of decades. We have reasonably precise data going back less than 50 years. We have some data from scattered weather stations going back perhaps a century before that. And most of the data relied upon has been from very regional items like ice and tree cores. Different teams have reported different results for the data; Mann, et al, is the most famous, but von Storch, et al, and Moberg, et al, have both produced results with much more variability.

The trouble is that we simply don't have clear ideas of the climate over much of the world for the past 1000 years in precise terms. Satellites are just now getting the capability to accurately measure atmospheric temps at different altitudes.

I'm all for making changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as long as they are not induced by panic (such as requiring massive cuts to emissions in too short a feasible time), and they are not sending the entire world economy into a downward spiral. Nuclear power is the most promising method right now IMHO, but if you can get wind or tidal or solar to be as inexpensive, reliable, and long-term, then by all means implement it. I, for one, think the massive wind farms that I periodically see off the highways look majestic.

Re:This != Global warming

[0111 1110]

More important is the temperature anomaly (which is global and indisputable)

No it is not indisputable. God, this is so tiresome having to show the same points over and over again. When you actually look at the evidence for global warming it is not very convincing, at least to an unbiased rational observer only concerned with facts. A global tempurature rise of 1 deg celsius over an entire century is nothing. Maybe next century we will have Global cooling of 1 degree based on the same kinds of measurements. Also, the temperature measuring stations around the world are not accurate enough to show such a small temperature change. And when you consider the modern urban heat island effect everything just falls apart. Which is why for many years during my lifetime Global Cooling is what we worried about. A lot of people thought we were headed toward another ice age. And no, it's not because the whole world was stupid at the that time. BTW, if this anomaly were due to global warming, then why haven't all lakes dried up? Although I am not certain how a infinitesimally higher than "average" temperature can cause lakes to dry up anywhere. Wouldn't lack of rain cause that?

While I do think Global Warming would be great (I live in a cold climate), and much better than Global Cooling, there isn't much that can be deduced from our very shaky evidence. I am no more convinced by said evidence (and yes I have actually looked at the data offered as proof) than by the evidence that was presented for Global Cooling. Perhaps 25 years from now everyone will be laughing about our silly belief in Global Warming since it is so obvious (except to rich oil comany executives of course) to everyone that we are on our way to another ice age.

Re:This != Global warming

[JebusIsLord]

Ah, but those things normally happen over geological timeframes (tens of thousands of years), not decades.

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's worse than I stated: I forgot to factor in the oxygens on the CO2. Carbon is only 27% of the mass, so in 50 years, at current rates (i.e., no chinese or other growth), it's ~225 times the current amount of CO2. Again, this doesn't meant that there will be 225 times more CO2 in the atmopshere - the rate of current CO2 addition and consumption by the biosphere and how this will change is critical. Nonetheless, it makes it obvious that we're easily talking about a world-altering amount of carbon.

Re:This != Global warming

[falconwolf]

I have a question since your a geoligist or whatnot. If global warming really is happening, why is it still 60 degrees in New York City on June 05? That's colder than I can remember.

While the global average temperature can and is rising that doesn't mean it will rise everywhere. An area may have a microclimate where it's cooler instead of warmer.

Falcon

Re:This != Global warming

[Nilmat]

Four things:

1. Climatologists accurately accounted for the effect of urban heat islands on temperature data more than a decade ago. Mean global temperature still shows substantial increases. In fact, the urban heat island effect is without a doubt the best-understood phenomenon in climatology.

2. Climate change isn't just evident in increasing temperatures. If it were an isolated record like that then, yeah, I might be skeptical too. However, record after record from biological, atmospheric, hydrologic, oceonographic, and cryospheric sources show effects consistent with increased temperatures, particularly in the Arctic.

3. The lakes discussed in this article, on which my advisor is lead author, have very little to do with precipitation. They are maintained by underlying permafrost which prevents the water from infiltrating beyond the active layer. When this permafrost melts, the lake goes away. You might want to note that increased permafrost temperatures and decreased extent are two of the records I mentioned above.

4. However poor you think the state of climatology is right now, you have to admit that we know a whole lot more than we did in the 50's and 60's when global cooling was de rigueur. We have vastly more data from both observed and proxy records as well as much more accurate climate models. Not perfect, but a whole heck of a lot better.

Look, you'd be hard pressed to find a reputable climatologist anywhere in the world who will say that global temperature increases aren't pretty ironclad. And don't give me any conspiracy theory bs. If a scientist found credible evidence that global warming was not, in fact, occurring it would be published and he or she would become a scientific rockstar.

Re:This != Global warming

[m50d]

Water dripping on a stone. We may not be able to make as big individual dramatic events as the tsunami (though I think the world's nuclear weapons put together could cause a far bigger one quite easily, if we were willing to) but humans clearly have the ability to change climates on a dramatic scale over time. Most of Europe was covered with forest, in a matter of centuries humans transformed it completely into a landscape of grasslands, bogs etc.

Re:This != Global warming

[Bush Pig]

Now, everyone knows there's no polar bears in Antarctica, so _that_ must have been caused by ice-drilling Emperor penguins ...

Re:This != Global warming

[Bush Pig]

It still hasn't rained a significant amount in South Australia this year, and it's now winter. Fuck! I'm still wandering around in shorts and a T-shirt.

But of course, this has nothing to do with global climate change ...

Re:This != Global warming

[bcmm]

I've been to Australia (NSW/Queensland border) a few times in the last few years as I have relatives there, and I second the claim that the weather is now extremely weird there, including lack of rain in the wet areas (Australia has rainforest as well as desert).
Not good for a country that depends partly on agriculture. IIRC there was a farmer being interviewed on ABC news who commented that his three year old son had never seen rain.

Re:This != Global warming

[0111 1110]

1. Climatologists accurately accounted for the effect of urban heat islands on temperature data more than a decade ago.

No. They inaccurately accounted for the effect in their favor.

In fact, the urban heat island effect is without a doubt the best-understood phenomenon in climatology.

Argument from Authority. What method is used to alter the raw data to account for an increasing heat island effect over time. How is the ratio of change calculated. I am suspicious of curve fitting. What is the algorithm? I'll take that in C code or psuedo code if you've got it. I've read that it was just by population. Ahem. I hope that is not actually true.

Climate change isn't just evident in increasing temperatures.

Well thank god for that because at some weather stations for some time periods the temperatures actually decreased by quite a bit. I know because as you might have guessed, I browsed through online weather station data for hours. Just for fun. The results are not exactly convincing to a non-believer.

However, record after record from biological, atmospheric, hydrologic, oceonographic, and cryospheric sources show effects consistent with increased temperatures, particularly in the Arctic.

So they were doing these measurements in the 19th century as well? Again, you are not presenting any real falsifiable data. You are just saying that the evidence from all these sources is convincing TO YOU. Forgive me if I am not immediately converted from heretic to believer. How about citing some actual evidence. And not just of Arctic warming. Although that would be a start.

We have vastly more data from both observed and proxy records

Can't disagree with that can I?

as well as much more accurate climate models.

More accurate? How do you test for that exactly? Are the models better at predicting... well something. I guess you would have to recalculate global warming annually from all the available weather station data and see whether the computer model accurately predicts the changes. No matter how accurate the models they still don't prove that human combustion was the cause.

Look, you'd be hard pressed to find a reputable climatologist anywhere in the world who will say that global temperature increases aren't pretty ironclad.

I agree with you. By definition. Any scientist who criticizes the Global Warming religion would be labeled a crank and would soon lose their job. They would no longer be "reputable". It wasn't always that way. Now critics of Global Warming are hard to find. And yet the temperature records have not changed. And there really is no better way to measure temperature changes over hundreds of years. Melting permafrost doesn't prove it anymore than any other local temperature variation would.

While there may be some evidence that is suggestive of a global warming effect in the past century, it is anything but irrefutable. It is anything but ironclad. The debate has been politicized. It isn't even about science anymore. Because most climatologists believe in it does not make it true. Because most people believe in it does not make it true. The case for Global Warming has yet to be proven. The case for Global Warming caused by human combustion and leading to major catastrophy has yet to be proven. And it will never be because it doesn't need to be. Nearly everyone is already convinced of it without evidence. Based merely on a scientific consensus. Why bother gathering more evidence when you can just take a poll?

Re:This != Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been to Australia (NSW/Queensland border) a few times in the last few years as I have relatives there, and I second the claim that the weather is now extremely weird there, including lack of rain in the wet areas.

Come on people no need to get all upset about this, after all Sydney still has a good 18 months of water supply left, so we don't need to do anything for at least another year or two.

Mebbe...

[JustOK]

the earth just sucks.

Re:Mebbe...

[JustOK]

flamebait??? C'mon now.

Tropical

[RocketRainbow]

On the other hand, it's great that we'll all be living by the seaside with lovely warm weather. Seriously, it's so easy for people to become complacent, thinking the warmer weather's going to be lovely, and who cares if the beach moves a little closer to the fish and chips shop? Perhaps it's time to change the message to: "Just a half a degree change means that all your food will be laced with horrible poisins and chemicals and millions of less fortunate people will die" but then, so many people happily chow down on poptarts and hamburgers, and who cares what happens to a few africans? People's lack of imagination and forethought is quite frightening sometimes.

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just a half a degree change means that all your food will be laced with horrible poisins and chemicals and millions of less fortunate people will die"

Back this up. Horrible poisons and chemicals as a result of climate change?

Re:Tropical

[RocketRainbow]

Sorry, I should know by now to use a few more steps.

*Temperatures rise
*Wilderness starts to die
*Crops become harder to grow
*"No worries! Just chuck a bit of this on it! We think it's safe, and you'll improve your productivity and hence income by 500%. You'll need to renew your patent license again next year."

Re:Tropical

[ocelotbob]

Maybe you should eat a steak every once in a while, help get some badly needed protein to that undernourished brain of yours. Hyperbole isn't going to solve this problem; do you want to use the same tactics that bush uses to speak, or do you want to be an intelligent insightful person that people will respect the opinion of. Yes, global warming is a big problem, but your shrill voice makes you easy to dismiss. Yer either wit' us or agin' us, right?

Re:Tropical

[RocketRainbow]

I had minestra for lunch. My brain is fine. I'm not trying to use hyperbole, rather I'm inviting comment on ways to encourage people to consider the impact of their decisions. For example: Next time you consider eating a steak, I invite you to consider that the average vegan uses half the water and a tenth the land used by an average meat eater.

Re:Tropical

[TERdON]

Except those guys living in the Netherlands, Bangladesh, or on a southern pacific island, among others. They will living by the seaside, sure. On the side with seawater all over it.

Re:Tropical

[Colin Smith]

"Crops become harder to grow"

Evidence? Where I live, warmer weather increases the length of the growing season. Crops are easier to grow.

Re:Tropical

[ocelotbob]

Of course, as a counterpoint, cattle rangeland, as opposed to plowed wheatfields, can help slow global warming. Plowed lands can send stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while well-grazed lands can actually help return carbon dioxide to the ground. Balance is the key here. So help save the earth, eat a steak every once in a while.

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

"*Temperatures rise
*Wilderness starts to die
*Crops become harder to grow
*"No worries! Just chuck a bit of this on it! We think it's safe, and you'll improve your productivity and hence income by 500%. You'll need to renew your patent license again next year.""

Sorry bub, but that's just retarded. You can't substitute "horrible poisons and chemicals" for water in a drought. The other nutrients (not that they would be affected by climate change) can and are supplied without horrible poisons and chemicals."

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

Drought... although I don't doubt that some areas will actually get more precipitation as a result of global warming.

Re:Tropical

[nightgeometry]

Which proteins? I ask as I have been a vegetarian for awhile, and I don't take suplemants, nor each much manufactured food, so I would actually be interested in knowing.

This sounds like I am provoking, itching for a fight, which really really isn't how it is meant. I am always interested in how my choice of diet may affect me in future years.

And I'd like to know what I have to thank all the bugs I have eaten for :)

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

When Mount Kilimanjaro erupted in 1912 it released more CFCs into the atmosphere than every county released during the entire industrial revolution.

Look. Im all for saving the planet, i recycle, i bought and use a Hybrid car and live in Berkeley California. Not EVERYTHING is caused by global warming. Our Sun, our Planet does a whole lot on its own. Into Astromony? Ever notice the ammount of coronal mass ejections has dramaticly increased in the last 50 or so years? Which cause upwards of a 9 degree temp (F) here on earth? Or various other factors.

Stop blaming everything on 'Global warming'. The earth changes all the freaking time. (Look at the problems with the mississippi river. The earth evolves, changes. Yes we put more than our fair share of toxins into the world and it needs to be stoped or lessened, but in no way can things like lakes drying up be blamed on Global warming.
Ever heard of Death Valley? Ever know it use to be under water Hunderds of thousands of years ago? Hmm it dried up too. Oh wait, No Global warming then. What about the entire central valley of california, its all freaking swamp land. Its dry too, long before mass ammount of non-native humans arrived. Not to mention the middle-east, Iraq in paticular, use to be a Lush tropical paradise (according to fossil records). It too is now a desert.
Stop blaming every small thing on Human influence. You humans think too highly of yourselves.

(Posted as anon due to im not at my home computer ;)

Re:Tropical

[RocketRainbow]

The protein thing is a few years out of date. Consider a vitamin b12 supplement, though. You can get your vitamin b12 by growing bacteria in a cow and killing and eating it, or by growing bacteria in a lab then extracting the vitamin. I take a little floravital, which also has liquid iron (useful for a woman my age) and a few other goodies.

Re:Tropical

[terrox]

That works when the land usage is equal, but the vegan is using 1/10th of the land remember, so he can spare 9/10ths of his land to be anything he else and therefore win this debate by a long shot. Or we can go comparing apples to oranges.

don't forget that most of the meat industry is not interested in this proper grazing, they want maximum throughput and use cheap grain as food - otherwise there is no possible way at all to maintain cheap meat to massive countries.
people want it, I want it and no one is giving it up until it kills most of their friends.

Re:Tropical

[ocelotbob]

Except when you consider that well-used grazing land is more beneficial than land which is sitting fallow and not being used for grazing. Yes current methods are bad, but again, properly used, mixing cattle grazing with cropland helps remove co2 from the atmosphere. Or do you not care about the facts when you spout your meat baaaaad rhetoric.

Re:Tropical

[Hognoxious]

The Mojave is warmer than the midwest.

Which area is better for agriculture?

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotsa farting cows obviously fasten the global warming.

Re:Tropical

[nightgeometry]

Ahh, i have always loved Marmite, which has a reasonable B12 content, so hopefully that covers me there.

I considered Floradix for awhile (which I guess is similar to floravital), but I asked the nurse last time I gave blood, and my blood seems to have more than enough iron, apparently.

Must be why I am so attracted to magnets (boom-boom)

Re:Tropical

[caino59]

Darn - shame I just used my last mod point...

Don't you know that the dinosaurs caused global warming that eventually dried up those lakes and killed themselves off?

Seriously - we may be able to slow or speed up the evolution of the earth (ULEV vs mass deforestation) but ultimately - we aren't going to really be able to stop it.

What about possibilities of things not on this earth - some big rock unexpectedly slams us from outer space - wouldn't that be a bitch?

Re:Tropical

[MonkeyOfRage]

Which proteins? I ask as I have been a vegetarian for awhile, and I don't take suplemants, nor each much manufactured food, so I would actually be interested in knowing.

I don't know about any proteins, but I'm about 90% sure the amino acid lyseine doesn't occur outside of animals.

Re:Tropical

[nightgeometry]

Apparently lysine is prevalent in legumes according to here

That 10% always gets you...

Re:Tropical

[digitaltraveller]

Disclaimer: I am not a climatologist and this is not my area of research.

When Mount Kilimanjaro erupted in 1912 it released more CFCs into the atmosphere than every county released during the entire industrial revolution.

Do you read alot of Rush Limbaugh? He wrote something similiar in one of his books.

As I understand it the flaw in that argument is that the chlorine spewed from volcanic eruptions is water soluble, and washes harmlessly out of the atmosphere. Man made 'chlorofluorocarbons' do not.

According to this website, temperature differentials resulting from volcanic eruptions injecting gases and particulate into the stratosphere are temporary and last only 1-2 years.

Re:Tropical

[JDevers]

I call bullshit. There is no way that a volcanic eruption released CFCs. I don't think you were making BS up though, I think you meant to say greenhouse gases.

While it is true that volcanic eruptions release huge amounts of greenhouse gases, that is all part of the natural cycle. Us directly adding to the amount breaks the cycle out of its normal boundaries.

Think about this analogy. Every year the sun directly delivers a hundred trillion watts of energy to Earth (I'm making numbers up because the numbers don't matter to the analogy), so that means that as long as we release under 99 trillion watts of chemical and nuclear energy then we are having less of an effect than the sun and so are insignificant. That is obviously complete and total bullshit, the sun supplies just enough energy to get us from near absolute zero to the nice climate we have, supplying nearly the same amount of energy over again would be completely insane.

Even if humans aren't the single largest cause of global warming, we are a contributor and if we don't like the changes that would accompany it then we should change our lifestyles.

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

Drought... although I don't doubt that some areas will actually get more precipitation as a result of global warming.

Yep, I think we need to get cracking on nuclear/solar desalinization technology. =)

Re:Tropical

[Colin Smith]

Scotland is (just) warmer than the arctic. Which is better for agriculture?

Re:Tropical

[trixillion]

With no due respect. On the issues of volcanos and CFC's - you are completely full of it and talking out of your ass.

For an informed history of this piece of misinformation, see:
http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/search.php?di splay_article=vn504ozoneed

You seem to intelligent to be repeating such an obvious canard. In the future please double check EVERYTHING you hear a certain oxycontin addict tell you.

Re:Tropical

[ToasterofDOOM]

people also need to stop mixing up globaal warming (which is a theory) and the greenhouse effect (a proven fact). If it weren't for the greenhouse effect we wouldn't exist and the average surface temp would be about 60 degrees colder than it is now

Re:Tropical

[Afrosheen]

Well you can always irrigate the Mojave. Then again, crops don't like sand too much, they like rich topsoil.

Re:Tropical

[Afrosheen]

But the benefits to grazing land are nullified by the enormous amount of methane gases the cattle release on a daily basis. Vegetarians are gassy. ;)

Re:Tropical

[Lars T.]

And the water you take from the molten former permafrost.

Re:Tropical

[Oligonicella]

Bullshit. Those cattle are merely replacing the now defunct bison herds. It's a push there.

Re:Tropical

[Foobar of Borg]

There is also the fact that all the chlorine and carbon dioxide was released at once. This would basically saturate the reaction. In any chemical reaction, atmospheric or otherwise, reaction rates are important. Just pouring a ton of stuff into a reaction at once simply causes a great waste of reacting chemicals, whereas slowly putting the chemicals in at a slower rate (such as humans slowly spewing C02 and other chemicals into the atmosphere) will have a much more pronounced effect.

Oh, and if he is thinking of Rush Limbaugh, it should be Mt. Penatubo (sp?). And yes, considering that all Limbaugh does is blab his opinions into a microphone, his understanding of atmospheric chemistry is probably - how shall I put it? - less than up to par with people who have spent years studying and working in the field.

Re:Tropical

[Martin Blank]

The Mojave is also deprived of precipitation because of the cold water currents that come down from Alaska, and because it sits behind a barrier of mountains that blocks most of the storms that do come in from the ocean. That desert can bloom into some pretty spectacular colors when it does get enough rain. I've seen it. It's not a carpet of greenery by any stretch, but there's plenty of life there.

Re:Tropical

[Dirtside]

I invite you to consider that the average vegan uses half the water and a tenth the land used by an average meat eater.

So what you're saying is, for every vegan we get rid of, a meat-eater can feel content with his use of resources? :)

Re:Tropical

[PsiPsiStar]

You're mixing issues here.

There are crops capable of growing in all the warmer lattitudes. So long as wild strains of the various cash crops are preserved, new seeds can be developed for the new climate.

Rising temperatures and unstable climate can cause problems, yes. But increased pesticide usage? Increased requirements for fertilizer? Um... no.

No worries! Just chuck a bit of this on it! We think it's safe, and you'll improve your productivity and hence income by 500%. You'll need to renew your patent license again next year

Care to elaborate what "this" is? What is the precise chemical that will be used more often if global warming occurs?

Farmers don't 'renew their patent license' on anything. There are people producing seeds who patent them. Is that what you're going for? Corporate ownership of these cultivars is a problem. Hybridization can work as a type of patent and so can patents, with the result being that farmers have to buy more seeds each year, forcing dependance.

If we really wanted to stretch things to reach your conclusion, maybe we could paint this scenario;

"the change in climate would destroy local crops forcing native farmers to use corporate sponsored monoculture which, because of its homogeneity will require more pesticide usage.

That's the closest I can get to what you're trying to say.

But it seems that you're not articulating particular issues in this post so much as regurgitating causes and effects of random environmental problems without knowing which connects to which and by what mechanism.

Re:Tropical

[Bad D.N.A.]

"Into Astromony? Ever notice the ammount of coronal mass ejections has dramaticly increased in the last 50 or so years?"

First of all "Astromoney" or astronomy as us non-Berkeley folks like to say, has nothing to do with CMEs. The proper field is space physics, very different than astronomy.

Second your claim is dead wrong. Ice core samples have shown that the current space-age is in a relative lull when it comes to solar activity. I have seen the presentations from a scientist in Australia (Ken McCracken... cant find the publication so perhaps it's not out yet but I did see the presentation of the observations at a number of conferences). Anyway the presentation shows convincingly that hundreds of years ago the sun was much more active than it is now. Since your right at Berkeley go talk to Bob Lin, I'm sure he can educate you further.

Re:Tropical

[PsiPsiStar]

This 'factoid' is a little simplistic.

Granted, subsidizing food like we do, and meat especially may be a bad idea. It would be better to let the market reflect the true price of things.

But have you ever been to Colorado? You can raise cattle there. Cash crops would be a lot harder and more inefficient.

I agree that stall feeding cattle grain and soybeans is very inefficient. The question, though, is not whether people eat meat or vegetables, but the manner in which meat is raised. Feeding animals crops that humans could consume is inefficient.

Not all land is suitable for raising wheat and corn.

There's a reason why there are some cultures that let animals graze, even cultures without the abundance of food we have. Herding makes good sense in certain arid or rocky terrains. If there's enough water, you can carve a mountain and grow grapes or coffee on the slopes. But that's very labor intensive, which brings a whole new set of problems.

Re:Tropical

[Floody]

When Mount Kilimanjaro erupted in 1912 it released more CFCs into the atmosphere than every county released during the entire industrial revolution.

What in the bloody hell are you talking about? Kilimanjaro has not erupted (or at least it hasn't been noted) in recorded history. It's considered "active", but it would seem that you pulled this 1912 eruption straight out of your ass.

Perhaps you meant the Novarupta Eruption of 1912? That would, of course, be in Alaska, nowhere near Kilimanjaro.

Volcanoes release almost nothing in the way of chlorofluorcarbos, by the way. Not that they don't release large quantities of other noxious chemicals (yes, causing climatic change, I know), but CFCs are not significant in that list.

Re:Tropical

[HiThere]

Desalinization should properly be a solar based technology. You might want to check out some work done by the Israelis...I heard that they had gotten it cheap enough to use for intensive agriculture. (Of course it requires glass and plastic and a few other things...it's not something you could set up without technical support, and it needs maintenance. It's not cheap, but it IS feasible. And working a decade or so ago. [Of course, that might just have been a PR piece. I didn't investigate it seriously.])

Perhaps the ideal is something like this:
take 1 large piece of styrofoam (floatation and insulation)
On such, errect a SHORT greenhouse.
Shade one side of the roof, and arrange it so that any condensing water will drop into a collection bucket.
Put a shallow pan in the bottom of the greenhouse, and a slow, wave powered pump to pump in new water as the water level drops.

Use some of the concentrated brine that collects to make salt from, and perhaps refine it for a few other minerals (Iodine? Bromine? Potassium?)

Note that this process is a SLOW one, but quite energy efficient...IF the materials don't deteriorate.

Re:Tropical

[myowntrueself]

"or by growing bacteria in a lab then extracting the vitamin."

My God! What kind of vegan would kill and eat living bacteria!?!?!?!

I wouldn't have thought a vegan would use miso for that matter...

I suppose you wear leather shoes too... or use plastics that may contain the remains of dead dinosaurs?

Shame on you

;)

Re:Tropical

[khallow]

With arguments like this, it's amazing anyone listens to your side. None of the points imply the next one in the sequence. And frankly, if there was some magic combination of chemicals that would increase food productivity by 500% then environmentalists should be thankful for it. Because that means overall land use for farming goes down by around a factor of six. And farming is the number consumer of land in the world.

Re:Tropical

[falconwolf]

"Crops become harder to grow"

Evidence? Where I live, warmer weather increases the length of the growing season. Crops are easier to grow.

Warmer weather can also mean reduced rainfall and draught in some areas thus causing desertification:

• Desertification and Drought
• Web resources on desertification

Falcon

Re:Tropical

[swv3752]

We were in a minor Ice Age up to about 1850. From what they can tell, the sun was not radiating as hotly. Sure you gort the right time frame there? A thousand years ago the planet was significantly hotter.

Re:Tropical

[0111 1110]

then we should change our lifestyles.

But how? As a species we are pretty reliant on comubustion at this point. We are all pro-nuke here right? I guess we could try to go all electric for everything and rely completely on nuclear power. Next we need nuclear powered airplanes. Although, unless I am mistaken, the supply of uranium is not inexhaustable either. Eventually we will run out of that too. Although perhaps not in 40 years as with fossil fuels.

Re:Tropical

[jadavis]

whereas slowly putting the chemicals in at a slower rate (such as humans slowly spewing C02 and other chemicals into the atmosphere) will have a much more pronounced effect

CO2 does not need to react with anything to cause a problem. In fact, if it reacts with something, it's no longer a greenhouse gas.

It would seem to me that putting the CO2 in the atmosphere slower would be better, since it would result in lower atmospheric concentration, and therefore less greenhouse effect.

Re:Tropical

[Bad D.N.A.]

No, I'm not sure about the time frame. From what I recall the core samples that showed the increased solar activty were from 100-400 years ago. The timeline went further back than that and showed significant fluctuations all of which were consistent with our current space-age being at a lull.

I wish I could find that reference as I'm currently writing a proposal and I wanted to plug that work but for the life of me I cant find it ( and I have looked).

Re:Tropical

[TapeCutter]

Talk to the Farmers in Australia, esp in NSW. Crops such as wheat need the right amount of rain at the right time or they are fucked. Rice needs flooded plains, but the dams are down to 30% capacity and people are already on tight water restrictions.

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice burn!

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. Your poor marijuana plant will survive. I could spot that type of flawed reasoning anywhere.

Lay off the happy weed, or lay off the public forums.

Re:Tropical

[MonkeyOfRage]

That 10% always gets you...

Not always, but often enough. When in doubt, qualify!

Re:Tropical

[JDevers]

Uranium will eventually run out, but eventually the free energy available in the universe will become zero. Right now fission is a better tech with more life in it than combustion. We wouldn't have to completely rid ourselves of combustion overnight. If we eliminated the pollution caused by cars, oil, coal, and natural gas power plants we would have a FAR smaller impact on our environment even if planes and exotic use vehicles still depended on fossil fuels.

Eventually we will have the ability to use fusion in a productive system and we will be able to abandon fission...even that won't happen overnight.

It's important to realize that I wasn't directly condemning pollution, instead I was condemning the apathetic attitude TOWARDS pollution that the OP (and a LOT of people at large) had. Just because there are natural sources of something, doesn't mean that we can throw as much as we want into the system without tiping the balance of that system. I am not a Green Earth guy who thinks that we should all abandon everything we have and go back to being a hunter-gatherer. Instead I think that the modern world is a pretty nice place, however if there is a way to do something that gets 90% of the results for 125% of the costs but with only 55% of the impact on the environment the choice should be easy. I personally don't think that we will be able to continue down our current path for very much longer. We will have to change, a major part of that change will be reducing our energy demands significantly or changing the energy source to something more environmentally friendly. That won't happen until the people who SHOULD want it to happen (staunch eco backers) realize that they SHOULD want it to happen instead of protesting it. Even then it won't just happen, it will take time for them to undo the damage that they have caused to the general public's psyche in the realm of nuclear fission. They have spent years telling people the nuclear power is bad, so they can't all of a sudden switch sides and have everyone believe them. An analogy is rumored to be happening today in the world of PCs, Apple has spent years telling their customers that PPC is better than x86, they have been creating charts and graphs and using that info to sell Macs. Now, if they decide to go x86, they will have to convince their own believers that it is not only a good thing but that they were wrong all along. Also, just like the really far left eco types, the Mac vs PC thing has approached the level of religion (especially in some Mac circles) where convincing someone they are wrong isn't as simple as showing them data. It takes time.

Re:Tropical

[Anonymous Coward]

So where would you be able to grow the most wheat, on a sustained basis, year in year out? Thought so.

Re:Tropical

[zopisgood]

Yes, certainly everything changes. I think the point is over what time frame. How long did it take for Death Valley to go from wet conditions to today's?

Changes that occur over millions of years can't be compared to changes that occur over hundred(s) of years.

Re:Tropical

[Mycroft_VIII]

I originally heard the details on a science friday program on NPR around a year ago. Unfortunatly most of the names of things the expert (doctorate in one of the bio-sciences) they had on gave were polysylabic (twenty or so letters each, nice mix of dead languages and letters and number, etc.) and I don't recall them.
It's possible I may have missed a few details but I do recall him stateing flat out that human body could not survive purely on the products of the vegetabtle kindom and our own biochemical know-how. I had heard this before, but usually from sources as vague as admitedly I've been and few of them with a clear bias.
And of course humans are clearly omnivores.
However my understanding is that vegetarians do eat some animal products (such as milk and cheese, sometimes fish, the definition as a bit flexable) and probably get what they need that way. It's the Vegans that are fooling themselve if they think thier diet is 100% animated critter free (impossible, you swallow some bugs in your sleep for starters).
As far as which protien/amino acid (not shure) that it's just possible you can get the trace amounts of from bugs I don't recall, I just recall the Expert on Science friday being really pushed by a caller if thier wasn't some way for people to get the items he was talking about without going to 'factory' animal sources (the caller didn't like the whole mass production of animals for food thing) and the guy admited that one of the items needed not present in flora was needed in such tiny quantities it's just possible that some might get enough through the small amount of bugs and possibly animal contaminations of mass produced foods to be all right. The protien or whatever wasn't used up by the body, but used more as a catalyst for some function or rather IIRC.

Mycroft

Re:Tropical

[nloop]

nutritional yeast contains rediculous amounts of B12 and makes a pretty good cheesy sauce imitation.

Also glaciers

[SensiMillia]

Not only lakes, also glaciers are drying. They even pack them in foil to protect them from melting.
Glacier wrapped in foil to stop melting

Re:Also glaciers

[Garion Maki]

what struck me as kind of funny in there:
"Environmentalists from WWF International, Greenpeace and other groups protested as the glacier was covered.

They dismissed the foil as a short-term solution. The worldwide problem of melting glaciers can only be addressed by cracking down on greenhouse gases and other things that contribute to climate change, the environmentalists said."

seems like those environmentalists are protesting the wrong thing there.
even tho giving a glacier a nice shiny coat isn't gone solve the problem on the long term, it will extend the glaciers life a bit, giving those environmentalists time to find and sort out the real problem.
So why the hell are they protesting it?

btw, I personaly think that the people who did the wrapping in did a good job, it might not make a big difference right now, but in the end, it's allot of such small changes we'll need.

Re:Also glaciers

[nihilogos]

even tho giving a glacier a nice shiny coat isn't gone solve the problem on the long term, it will extend the glaciers life a bit, giving those environmentalists time to find and sort out the real problem. So why the hell are they protesting it?

Because the whole idea is stupid and indicative of the developed world's approach to climate change: spend money so that rich people can still ski in Switzerland.

Enviromentalists can't sort out the real problem. Every single person on the planet has to take responsibility for it. But we won't. And we'll vote out any government that tries to make us change.

Re:Also glaciers

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be stupid. It was the company that did it - it's their money to spend, and as they are not actually harming the environment by doing this, those environmentalists should bugger off.

Lets go over this one more time: It's not stupid because a company is taking steps to protect its interests, and IN THE PROCESS HARMING NOBODY. What is the fucking problem?

Re:Also glaciers

[Tlosk]

On one level you are completely correct. The potential issue here is when you consider the bigger picture.

If I have bone cancer and my legs hurt, I can take an aspirin and feel better today. But it allows me to ignore the pain that is indicative of a much more serious problem that if not taken care of will negatively impact me months or years down the road.

Similarly, some people view local mitigation efforts this way. To the extent that they remove the immediate problem they allow people to ignore the bigger picture and delay the actions that need to be taken (often expensive and effortful, just like chemotherapy) that are needed to resolve the problem long term and avoid the big nasty consequences later on.

If the person was seeing a doctor and had a serious treatment plan scheduled, there'd be no problem at all taking an aspirin. But if you see the person not taking any of those steps, can you understand why a bystander might consider taking the aspirin a bad thing?

Re:Also glaciers

[AutopsyReport]

So why the hell are they protesting it?

Because that's primarily what their good for: protesting.

Full-time protestors are a bitch.

Re:Also glaciers

[Interrupt18]

I don't know about Switzerland, but in Canada, it's my understanding that ~50000 years ago, much of the country was covered in glaciers. These glaciers began to recede without human intervention and continue to recede today.
I don't want to comment on greenhouse gas related climate change, but it seems to me that humankind may not be solely responsible for the glacier melting.

Re:Also glaciers

[garett_spencley]

It's actually much, much worse than the cancer analogy with ecological issues .. because many people understand that if humans ever do make the world uninhabitable for themselves, it won't be during their life time. Life is much too short and stressful to spend it dealing with things that are only going to affect people that we will never even meet because we'll be dead.

The problem that I see .. is that saving the world takes too much effort. As a parent of two who runs his own business, life is stressful and busy enough. Yes I'm one of those people who slashdotters always bitch about because I just don't care as long as I get my American Idol and Survivor.

If people really care about the environment and the future of the planet a hundred years from now and they want people like me to change our lifestyles and make a difference.. then saving the world better start getting damned convenient and rewarding.

<rant>

A few examples of why I don't partake in saving the planet ...

1) Recyle boxes should be free (we have to pay for them here).

2) No sorting or separating or anything of the sort should need to be done. In fact, I should be able to throw everything away from chicken bones to styrofoam right into my recycle / trash bin and the people who care should be doing the sorting and recycling.

3) Don't up my taxes for a recyling program.

4) Want me to drive an electric car ? Better make it as fast and as macho-manly as any fuel combustion car.. and it better cost the same or less in terms of fuel and the vehicle itself. I drive to increase the size of my balls .. not to save the planet.

5) Save the rain forest if you want to but if the price of my home goes up even one penny because we can't get cheap lumber anymore then sorry you've lost my vote.

6) Want me to take public transportation ? Lower the prices of bus fares rather than raising them by $0.20 every year and start following your own damned schedules. Honestly, who is gonna ride the bus when it's -10 deg. C outside and they have to wait for 1/2 hour because the earlier bus was 10 minutes early and they missed it?

</rant>

Re:Also glaciers

[teh kurisu]

Agree with you on points 2 and 6. Points 4 and 5 I can accept. Disagree on 1, 3 and your spelling of 'recycling'. If you're not going to pay for recycled boxes per unit or through taxes, how are you going to pay for them?

Re:Also glaciers

[ipour]

This whole business is such nonsense. We have seen lakes dry and then grow and then dry again, glaciers have grown to cover the earth and then shrink again. So why is someone hyperventilating about Siberia? This will happen no matter what. Just get over it!

Re:Also glaciers

[ajs]

"Enviromentalists can't sort out the real problem. Every single person on the planet has to take responsibility for it. But we won't. And we'll vote out any government that tries to make us change."

Bravo! I'd really like to see some responsibility in this whole mess, but it's not going to happen. Too many people feel too strongly, and at best you'll get tin-foil-hat responses like lowering CO2 emmissions (when we know darned well that CO2 is one of the least effective greenhouse gasses, and most plans to combat it release far more effective gasses, such as water vapor).

That's right, if you're planning on switching to hydrogen cells as soon as they're available, you're going to be HARMING the environment (though probably not by much, as the likelihood that you'll put a dent in solar-induced warming is about as serious as the likelihood that you'll reverse the last 10,000 years of glacial melting).

Re:Also glaciers

[AWoroch]

If you're not going to pay for recycled boxes per unit or through taxes, how are you going to pay for them?

I'm going to assume that if someone is getting my recyclables for free, and is probably making something out of them, even if its just raw materials for other industries, that someone, somehwere is making some money on this venture. Thus, they should certainly be able to provide for collection if they're getting all of their inputs essentially free.

Re:Also glaciers

[teh kurisu]

You're assuming that the cost of the logistics involved coupled with the cost of the recycling process is less than the value of the produced goods. I can tell you that the company responsible for paper and card recycling in North Lanarkshire pulled out of the scheme because this was not the case.

Re:Also glaciers

[Qzukk]

5) Save the rain forest if you want to but if the price of my home goes up even one penny because we can't get cheap lumber anymore then sorry you've lost my vote.

And to think there are people out there who would form homeowners associations and evict little old ladies to make sure the cost of their houses go up!

Re:Also glaciers

[HiThere]

Yes, you are a perfect example of the problem.

And yes, you may well be in the majority.

But I'm *NOT* a puppeteer. Being in the majority doesn't make you sane.

Re:Also glaciers

[HiThere]

It *IS* about the environment. Of course, it's also about money and power, but what isn't?

If you live in Canada or Siberia, you may have some reasons to hope that the warming trend will leave your area of the world more habitable. Many areas, however, will be less habitable. And movement of people between the areas is a bit restricted. (To be honest, not more so than in the days when one had to travel on foot...but that's not exactly significant. Those who died then are already dead.)

That a (nominal) Texan should be supporting global warming is a true irony. Texas will (probably) become much less habitable as global warming progresses. So will any place near sea level. (This doesn't mean all costal areas...but some hills may turn into islands.)

I periodically wonder how high the seas will need to rise to recreate the Tethys Sea in the San Jouquin Valley.

OTOH, expect global warming to be a transient phase...followed shortly be a new ice age. I can't project how far south the glaciers will reach this time...but here's the mechanicx.

1) Glaciers form when more snow falls in winter than melts in summer.
2) During the warm periods the sea heats up. (This is already in process.) The sea is a HUGE ballast of heat, so it takes a long time to either warm or cool.
3) Warm water evaporates more quickly than cold water.
4) When more water evaporates, it both increases cloud cover, and percipitates in larger amount. (Note that it won't always fall in the same places it used to, because temperature change also affects wind patterns in not predictable-by-me ways.)
5) White reflects more heat then green or brown. So when the snow melts, then heat is more readily absorbed, with it persists, then more heat is reflected.

These are the main factors. The cycle is:
1) something makes things start getting warmer.
2) Snowcover decreases
3) Things start getting warmer (go back to 2?)
4) The ocean starts warming up
5) Evaporation from the ocean increases
6) Percipitation increases ==> more snow in winter
7) A random cold year happens (Chaos)
8) Snowcover increases
9) Things start getting colder (go back to 8?)
10) Glaciers begin to form (go back to 8?)
11) Glaciers grow, and the oceans start getting colder.
12) Endure until 1 happens again.

Note that this is a long term cycle, with lots of factors affecting each step, most of which I don't know. But that's the basic outline. Where is the Earth in relation to it's percession about the sun? Perhaps this will be a very mild glaciation. (It almost certainly will be if the CO2 level stays high.)

As far as an individual human cares, the most important thing is that during the changes in the cycle the local weather becomes a lot less regular, and the climate becomes less predictable. This translates into an increas in crop failures, speedier desertifactaion, and lots of other unpleasant occurances. (OTOH, where I live it will [appearantly] mean milder winters and rain later into the spring...a benefit except that it will increase the fire danger in fall.)

Lots of local species that can't move when the local climate shifts can be expected to go extinct. And thick inhabitation of people generally means that species CAN'T move their "homelands" just because the climate changes. Oops! Nothing we're doing directly or intentionally, but it's still something that humanity, as opposed to any individual person, is doing. (We are likely also forcing ths pace of the climate shift, but that's NOT what I'm talking about.)

Yes, climate shifts happen with or without us. But we appear to be forcing the pace of this one. That may result in a milder shift, like throwing a dynamite stick at a steam boiler with a stuck valve. You still get an explosion.

Re:Also glaciers

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it. The company is not some sort of environmental agency, and moreover no effort that they could make would stop the melting, ergo if they wish to stay in business (or keep their business successful) they have to take direct action against the *specific* problem they face: that specific bit of ice that's melting. NOT against global warming as a whole (they'd go out of business even if they did have some meagre effect, and that wouldn't help them or the rest of the world to any non-trivial extent).

I say again: it's not hurting the environment and it's not taking money that would otherwise help the environment so QUIT BITCHING ABOUT IT!

Re:Also glaciers

[DNS-and-BIND]

Anyone ever stop to think that the energy expended creating that aluminum foil was far greater than the potential loss of glacier?

No...enviros never think like that. Motto: If it feels good, do it!

Side note to actual people who give a shit about facts (i.e. non-environmentalists): Aluminum takes a SHITLOAD of electricity to refine. During the California energy crisis of years past (caused by California not building any new energy plants for 20 years, otherwise Enron would have had no opening) there were aluminium plants that closed down, idled their workers at full pay, and simply made money from selling their allotment of electricity on the open market.

Re:Also glaciers

[shutdown -p now]

And why should I care that you don't care? Not all people want to pay taxes, sure. If they don't, we jail them. I don't see how it should be any different in this case.

Re:Also glaciers

[falconwolf]

Anyone ever stop to think that the energy expended creating that aluminum foil was far greater than the potential loss of glacier? No...enviros never think like that. Motto: If it feels good, do it!

Guess you didn't read all of it, it was those "enviros" who were against the idea, they weren't for it.

During the California energy crisis of years past (caused by California not building any new energy plants for 20 years...)

Did you hear about the wind farm that sat idle in California because they didn't have the cables in to carry the power? I'll say Governor Arnold has some thing there with his Million roofs drive.

Falcon

Re:Also glaciers

[TapeCutter]

2030: "Grandpa, do I have to eat my Soylent green, I liked the red, why can't we get red anymore?"

Re:Also glaciers

[CptNerd]

#6 presumes that the increased precipitation falls as snow. Nothing to prevent the precipitation from falling as rain, since the average air temperature will be higher for longer.

Re:Also glaciers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not about the environment and never has been. The environment is the sugar used to make you a willing accomplice in surrendering your freedoms.

Do not Worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus will come back soon to save us, so pollute away!

Re:Do not Worry

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what? No Christian thinks like that. I have on the other hand heard a lot of talk about it being our duty to consider the future we're leaving for our kids coming from (gasp) Christian authorities. That whole "love thy neighbor as theyself" bit, ya know?

Any person who spouts this rubbish is an uninformed bigot.

Re:Do not Worry

[Anonymous Coward]

This article begs to differ:

An Excerpt:

Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are landmines. One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues that the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is pointless to fret about environmental degradation.

James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." The enduring appeal of End Time musings among evangelicals is reflected in the phenomenal success of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic potboilers, which have sold more than 60 million copies and are the best-selling novels in the country.

Lakes drying up

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be a serious blow for the Siberian Tourist Board.

Re:Lakes drying up

[accidental_1]

Maybe all that samp land I bought will be worth something.

It's dead Jim!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care much to say the truth. The earth is already in deep shit and well.. once the big problems start (and they start for sure) till then I am probably a dead person laying around in a yard already... So why bother for things that one individual can't change ?

Re:It's dead Jim!

[Hamstij]

It's attitudes like yours that have caused this whole mess in the first place!

Re:It's dead Jim!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know and I would agree. But I have by far to much other problems like unemployment, family, private stuff to solve than thinking about what will happen with the earth in 100 years or so. Once I get a new job and have my private and family related things cleaned up I can start to worry about earth and world peace.

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

... let the global warming deniers begin

Ok, I deny it.

I'm George W. Bush, and I approved of this message.

It goes in cylces...

[ed_the_sock]

I find that every August it feels several degrees hotter than in January. I think this merits further data analysis to find the exact cycle of this global warming thing...

Re:It goes in cylces...

[JustOK]

Huh. I've got a friend in Australia that says January is warmer than August...

Re:It goes in cylces...

[Frogbert]

You know its the weirdest thing, over here in Australia I get the exact same effect... only in reverse.

How strange.

Re:It goes in cylces...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's caused by the water going the wrong way down the plughole, you stupid convict.

Re:It goes in cylces...

[legirons]

"I find that every August it feels several degrees hotter than in January. I think this merits further data analysis to find the exact cycle of this global warming thing..."

Scientists in Australia and New Zealand were unable to reproduce your findings -- it must have been an experimental error.

In Soviet Russia only?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was reading a story a few weeks ago about a lake in Russia just being sucked into a sinkhole and disappearing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/03/AR2005060301524.html

Russian lake disappearing into a sinkhole
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0604russia- lake04.html

Re:In Soviet Russia only?

[AutopsyReport]

Here's the picture of the Church on the lake, but any pictures of the lake afterwards?

Nevertheless, interesting story!

Fuck global warming!

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need water, plants, or life to have a good time, do we?

Re:Fuck global warming!

[TapeCutter]

Don't need life? What does your blow-up doll think about that?

Re:Fuck global warming!

[northcat]

Fuck water and life, but dude, weed is necessary to "have a good time".

Re:MSM HYPE

[October_30th]

Ah, so in your opinion we should just keep on polluting the environment, because there is no consensus on the existence, causes and effects of global warming? Pollution means profits, right?

you don't know what you are talking about

[cahiha]

The short-term concerns about global warming aren't about huge absolute increases in temperature, they are about changing weather patterns. Global warming may well mean a new ice age for Europe.

As for the rise in sea levels, so far, the main consequence of global warming seems to have been increased thawing of ice around the north pole, which will not raise sea levels. A second consequence has been thawing of glaciers, with already serious consequences.

Sea levels will rise significantly when the antarctic ice sheets thaw. We have been lucky so far that increased thawing around the edges has been balanced by increased precipitation in the interior, but that won't last forever.

People like you are about as fringe and ill-informed as the people who deny that HIV exists or that HIV causes AIDS. Unfortunately, in this case, you endanger not only your own miserable life with your hostility towards science and reason, you endanger everybody's.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Decaff]

In fact, but the standards of the past couple of millennia, this is quite a cool period. The early medieval period was warmer than this by some way, from about 1000-1300. In Roman times, the climate was much warmer - in fact, grapes were grown as far north as York in england. However, there was a cold snap from about 1600-1850, from which we are now recovering to much mroe historically normal levels.

No. These were not global effects. There have been local variations in climate over the past few millennia, but overall the planet has been warming over that period; fastest of all during the past century.

When people - few of whom seem to be "experts" at all but rather people with a political agenda and little knowledge of science or history - claim that we are absolutely and definitely sleepwalking into global disaster the likes of which the world has never sen before and omg it is all the fault of Mankind, it is time to get sceptical and call bullshit.

No. Sceptical does not mean calling 'bullshit'. Sceptical means saying 'I don't believe this so I will get myself educated in climatology and review the information myself'.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[gowen]

Fact is, the ice caps aren't melting at a rate anywhere near fast enough to cause disruption to the gulf stream. To say otherwise is a blatant lie.

Peer reviewed journals have printed article after article, written by people actually in the Polar Regions, taking measurements, that say that it's quite likely that the ice caps are melting fast enough. Few climate scientists express it in the Manichean language of Greenpeace, but most people who've studied the data believe it to be a definite possibility.

Now -- excepting your regurgitation of received opinion -- where's your data?

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[cahiha]

When people - few of whom seem to be "experts" at all but rather people with a political agenda and little knowledge of science or history - claim that we are absolutely and definitely sleepwalking into global disaster the likes of which the world has never sen before and omg it is all the fault of Mankind, it is time to get sceptical and call bullshit.

We fully agree on that point: nobody knows "absolutely and definitely" whether there is global warming or, if it exists, whether it is due to human activity. That is just the most plausible explanation of what we are observing right now, and given the scope and magnitude of the consequence, that is enough to act decisively.

The irrational bullshit comes from people like you who demand absolute proof before acting. You prefer sticking your head in the sand until it's too late. Because, by the time we have "absolute and definite" proof, it will be too late.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

A new ice age for Europe?

That'd be cool!

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[AussiePenguin]

Are you saying that we should just continue with belching out green house gases as though there's no tomorrow?

The political messages and such from greenpeace may be strong but perhaps that's the only way to get people to listen. But so far no one has been listening. So much for countries like the US and Australia pulling out of Kyoto.

Our climate is fragile so we do need to look after it. Even if these changes can occur naturally.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[elbobo]

nobody knows "absolutely and definitely" whether there is global warming or, if it exists, whether it is due to human activity.

Actually I think it's not at all in dispute as to whether we're experiencing any global warming. I believe that's been conclusively established. What some still heavily debate are the causes of said warming.

There's a strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 and warming and well understood atmospheric interactions of CO2, but some try to point the finger elsewhere or back to natural patterns.

What's truly astounding is the massively increasing level of outright propaganda on the subject. The scientists appear to be being left behind and the propagandists (sponsored by private industry) are taking over the show. Do a google for "CO2" -- it's a real eye opener.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, gotta act before you get the smoking gun. That's why we invaded Iraq, right?

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[krunk4ever]

IMO environmentalism is a form of religion. It is well known in sociology that if you try to suppress some deeply rooted cultural phenomena, it just pops up in another form. So we have environmentalists sayign that we, Man, used to be in a state of bliss in a Garden of Eden, but then we ate from the tree of knowledge and fell into a state of pollution, AKA industrialism, and will face a final apocalytpic reckoning unless we subscribe to the beliefs of the environmentalists, when we can save the world and go to heaven, presumably. Whatever. You're all a bunch of superstitious irrationalists.

that's like saying anything we believe in where there's no hard physical proof is a religion, such as evolution, 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics, and conservation of energy and matter, and a whole bunch of other laws today's science is founded upon. you can argue there's many cases that show this is fact, but proof by example is not a proof. just like how we can show that CFCs destroy our ozone and how there's a hole in our ozone layer, and how that hole has been shining at our glaciers.

some may argue that we're worrying too much, but personally, besides economic and financial disadvantages (both human creations), i see no harm in trying to help the enivornment by stopping what we believe is causing the damage. if it wasn't us, then there wasn't anything we could've done in the 1st place. But if it was, then we've saved future generations from what could be disastrous or the even the externmination of all humanity.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Hognoxious]

A new stone age would be better.

That'd rock!

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

... Global warming may well mean a new ice age for Europe.

Oh, I didnt realise there was only a single ice ridden pole on this planet.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was because you smelled oil.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the 21st century approach to science. Make up a threat, then threaten anyone who wants to examine the evidence with hellfire. Kinda takes me back to the 1200s!

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[quarkscat]

I have to agree, entirely.

Just because there is insufficient data, and insufficient understanding of the forces at work to make the claim (absolutely and utterly) that global warming is the basis of climactic changes in Siberia and the Arctic as a whole, common sense should be a factor.

When the Dubya regime rejects the science behind global warming in order to justify rejection of the Kyoto Treaty, it is rejecting both civilian and US military studies that trend changing regional weather patterns on a global scale. This stubborn anti-science position does preserve the "status quo" for some short term political advantage, in exchange for increased liability for future generations to deal with. (Not unlike the USAs' going from a $500 Billion USD surplus in 2000 to a $2.5 Trillion USD debt in 2004.) Both the Canadian and US Navy are projecting forward the need for men and ships to patrol the open Artic seas in 10 years where there was only pack ice 10 years ago -- what's wrong with this picture?

Slightly OT, but this very same attitude has been used to justify the ramp-up in construction of nuclear power plants in the USA, as part of Dubya's "energy plan". Nuclear energy (fission) is cheap, just so long as you don't factor in the total manpower and environmental costs for the duration of the created radioactive hazards out 50,000 years. Simple math and simple minds and simple solutions -- if the total costs projected out 50,000 years cannot be calculated for dealing with highly radioactive waste, then it is (at least politically) not a factor and can be safely ignored.

Of course, many of the same politicians believe that the Earth is only 5,000 years old, which makes any projections out 50,000 years far outside their conceivable universe. IMHO, politicians that go out of their way to ignore science are far more dangerous than any "martyr strapped with explosives". Their narrowminded viewpoint effects millions of people for thousands of generations, truly walking, talking WMD.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. Isn't saying that most people who have studied the data believe in global warming just the same regurgitation of received opinion that you are complaining about? You need to cite papers.

And the papers have to be good science. Look at the Mann scandal. This is what the global warming school are relying on.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Xyrus]

"What some still heavily debate are the causes of said warming."

Which is ludicrous in light of the fact that global warming is happening.

There is a grwing number of scientist who already say that there isn't much we can do to stop it anymore. It's already too late. They're advocating preparation.

~X~

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[gowen]

Look at the Mann scandal. This is what the global warming school are relying on.

I've looked at the Mann scandal. It's not scandalous. The methodology of Mann's critics were far, far dodgier than those of Mann et al. The only scandalous part about was that Mann's critics were able to generate far more uncritical publicity than their work deserved, simply because it supported the pipedreams of the Bush administration.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[zenneth]

The early medieval period was warmer than this by some way, from about 1000-1300.

Of course, duh! They didn't have air-conditioning back then... well, maybe evaporative cooling, but have you ever tried cooling the world that way? I've tried cooling it by leaving a door open when I run the AC, to help combat global warming... but I don't guess it's working... yet.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than having Europe covered in an ice sheet? You bet: even a stone age beats that.

Fortunately, we aren't faced with that choice: we can keep our standard of living with a small fraction of current energy usage.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear energy (fission) is cheap, just so long as you don't factor in the total manpower and environmental costs for the duration of the created radioactive hazards out 50,000 years.

Two words: subduction zones.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[CptNerd]

Global warming may well mean a new ice age for Europe.

I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again: How can Europe freeze with massive glacier growth, when Asia and North America at the same latitudes are experiencing melting of permafrost? How can it be globally so warm that glaciers are disappearing, yet it will be so cold that European glaciers will not only stop shrinking, but will start growing back?

And if it's all because of the Gulf Stream shutting down the warm air, how is it that major land masses far from the Gulf Stream are also warm enough to prevent glaciers from growing? How will Europe suddenly become colder than the Arctic, where pack ice is disappearing?

I expect to be modded down and ignored, but at least this post will be in the database somewhere...

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Close your door and study thermodynamics 101.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Oligonicella]

I don't believe he is. And, we aren't. The higher the technological level, the less we do so. Mostly because we discover recapturing methods that provide us with otherwise wasted materials.

Some listen to Greenpeace et.al., those who suspect the screechers don't. That would be me. Whenever anyone demands that I listen to their side and ignores me, I suspect their motives and goals.

The reason to withdraw (as Russia, Italy, Canada, and others have, are, or are contemplating doing) would be the following:

Kyoto is, according to Europe's Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, designed to "level the playing field for big businesses worldwide" (quoted by The Independent (London), 19 March 2002, p. 14).

It's not about the environment, it's about crippling certain nations.

"Our climate is fragile so we do need to look after it. Even if these changes can occur naturally."

This is the unfortunate conclusion that many on the environment's "side" come to. That natural changes need to be "looked after".

The motive and goal of the far-left environmentalists is not actually the protection of the environment (which continually changes), but the protection of their status quo. In other words, don't change my world as it is now, I'm comfortable.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Oligonicella]

"that's like saying ... shining at our glaciers."

Just how in hell would you provide a proof? Please be specific if you can.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[mothz]

Close your door and study thermodynamics 101.
Close your thermodynamics book and laugh, it's a joke.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[HermanAB]

Well, H2O is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. So the best way to reduce warming would be to ban agricultural irrigation...

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[uncadonna]

The new ice age for Europe won't happen, but the serious concern is that something like the Younger Dryas even will recur. Start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

mt

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[lionheart1327]

You do realize that the coal we are using creates much more radioactive material, that is actually sent directly into our atmosphere, every year than any nuclear power plants would.

It is brainless greenies like you who complain and complain about 'nucluar' stuff and don't realize that its actually the solution to your problems.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[0111 1110]

The irrational bullshit comes from people like you who demand absolute proof before acting.

The problem is that the only actions that would actually change anything involve a forced (meaning by armed government officials) return to 1600s techology. And not just be any one country. EVERY country on the planet would have to agree. Unless you want to talk in terms of world wars to convince the few skeptical countries not willing to go along. Think everyone driving a Prius or taking a train to work is going to do it? Think again. Life will be much much more uncomfortable for all of us and the lives that we do have will be shorter. Not to mention all future tech advancements will be stopped completely or at least kept 'underground'.

So, yes. I would like to have indisputable proof not only that Global Warming is happening but that it is happening due to our actions, that it is irreversible, and that it will in fact cause the 'end of the world', the destruction of the planet, the end of all life, or whatever it is that is supposed to happen. A rising sea level alone is not enough. If it happens, people on the coast have more than enough time to get out of the way. Or are you claiming that the additional water (from what used to be the Antarctic ice sheet) is in fact going to arrive as a tsunami?

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have more credibility if you didn't use the term "Dubya regime."

Think what you want, but when you talk like that you're preaching to the converted. That seems to go against your goals.

Also:

"Their narrowminded viewpoint effects millions of people for thousands of generations, truly walking, talking WMD."

a) you're overestimating their numbers and their influence, and

b) not accounting for the fact that those suicide bombers are going to help keep that murderous hatred going for generations to come

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[0111 1110]

Kinda takes me back to the 1200s!

Which is funny because if what they are claiming is true that is the only real solution, the only way to sufficiently reduce further CO2 production to stop the calamity. We might even be allowed to burn a little bit of wood. Hopefully we will have quota exemptions for the burning of witches and heretics, because humans are large scale 02->C02 factories. Presumably the loss of this C02 would balance the additional C02 created in burning the wood (and their bodies).

It would be interesting if we could all declare a few years of total non-burning. Just to see if it is a viable option. No burning of any fuel, not oil (not even vegetable oil) or gas or wood. No transportation except by pure electric vehicle or horse or bicycle. No electricity except by wind/solar/hydro/nuclear. Even minor violations like posession or use of matches, cigarettes or candles would be punishable by slow torture and violent death.

Air travel would be impossible except maybe for military fighter jets. So most people would travel by sailboat (or nuclear ship) for the few international trips.

Horses would again become the main form of transportation. Along with bicycles, including new four wheel, multi-person ones. The rich would be driving electric scooters. The super-rich would drive electric cars and heat their super-insulated homes with electric heaters. The rest of us would travel by horse and buggy or occasionally on expensive nuclear-electric trains (probably only for long distance travel between cities).

Electricity would become so expensive that only the truly rich would be able to afford it. Ironically people would probably be forced to move away from the poles toward the equator. Equatorial areas would become super-densely populated, every building an apartment building, every inch of land with a building on it, every tree cut down.

It is true that even today the cost of living is higher where there are cold winters, but after the first burning ban, workers would no longer be able to afford any heat at all. With electricity at $107/kwh even super-insulating the buildings would not be enough to pay for electric heat. And there would be no other kind.

The price of photovoltaic systems for homes would skyrocket. Even among those who could afford them, few would be able to afford the whole-roof systems made with the newest tech, and with enough power for electric resistance heaters. The northern cities of today would be thinned out. Only the rich could afford to live there. Although it would be extremely expensive for those remaining.

The only stores remaining open would presumably be general purpose ones providing food/necessities for the rich but being so expensive that the workers themselves could not afford to buy any of it. They would have to bring all their own food from the equatorial cities.

No manufacturing of any kind would be able to survive. All goods would have to be imported from the equatorial regions where the workers can actually afford to live. Obviously these warmer climates could not be within commuting distance. The only way for a cold climate economy to work would be to increase worker salaries dramatically. Enough to cover the ludicrously expensive electric heat or enough to justify being cold all the time. More likely the latter. Either way the salaries to work in the north/south would skyrocket until an equilibrium were achieved.

Most stores would not remain open all year round. Only in the summer and early fall/late spring. Because most workers would require huge salaries to justify having to be cold all the time.

It sounds like it would result in an interesting economy. Of course if we converted all of our power plants to nuclear before the ban, the cost of electricity would not rise so drastically and very little about our lives would change except for a higher risk of nuclear disaster and a lack of civilian air travel or long distance private car travel. All long distance trave

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[0111 1110]

but most people who've studied the data believe it to be a definite possibility.

Wow. Those folks sound really certain. Sounds like they have absolute proof of human CO2 induced Global Warming. So where is it?

Peer reviewed journals have printed article after article

Strange that they are never cited in discussions like these. I wonder why.

written by people actually in the Polar Regions

Well I live in a pretty cold climate too. Does that give what I am saying more weight?

taking measurements

Huh? The only 'proof' that pro-GW folks have is based on 20th century weather station data. Unfortunately using that data to reach any kind of conclusion is shaky at best. Current measurements can only help to show warming effects a decade from now. You can't actually measure what the temperature was last year or 10 years ago etc (unless you have a time machine of course).

that say that it's quite likely that the ice caps are melting fast enough.

That's what it always comes down to in these arguments: Argument by Authority. My expert is better than your expert! All of your experts have been paid by the oil companies and are cracks/whakos! All of our experts are currently employed. NONE of yours are!

I will admit that it is nearly impossible these days to remain an "expert" and also be skeptical of human induced global warming scenarios. I will admit that most of the experts on our side are now working at Walmart as cashiers or pumping gas instead of teaching at a university. So no one really cares about their opinions anymore.

In any case some people who have studied the data do not reach the same conclusions that you have. So who is right? We may as well be arguing about the existence of God. Oh wait...

One more thing. Let's assume for a second that your model is the correct one. That everything you say is true. What do you intend to do about it? And is the cure worse than the disease? Otherwise all this talk is just so much wanking.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[0111 1110]

When the Dubya regime rejects the science behind global warming in order to justify rejection of the Kyoto Treaty,

Sorry but the Kyoto Treaty is an embarrassment. Have you actually read the thing? It is fracking ridiculous. It is a tiny, tiny, drop in what would be a huge ocean. It is worse than doing nothing because it makes everyone feel like they are doing something or taking it seriously.

Instead of getting mad at some idiot leader of only one country? Why not be angry at the morons who came up with the darn thing in the first place. Instead of coming up with the only realistic way of halting the alleged end of the world: an outright ban on all burning. If the chemical reaction known as 'burning' is in fact going to result in boiling oceans and the 'end of the world as we know it' then it would need to be outlawed by all nations on earth.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

We were confiscating it. Before it could be used to create still more C02.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[krunk4ever]

Just how in hell would you provide a proof? Please be specific if you can.

i think you misread my intention in that paragraph. that was my question to the parent since he wanted exact proof. i was just giving an example that if we can't trust our predictions base on knowledge and 'partial' proofs, then there's no point in believing in science at all.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

It has one advantage in my eyes, it increases the pressure to develop more energy efficient technologies, which interestingly enough sometimes even give competitive advantages, but that is beside the point further. The point is namely, that how less large you can make your energy expenditure, how less difficult it will be to try and convert to an alternative.

So in that regard it is actually useful and there the oil and such will eventually run out, conversion to an alternative isn't really a choice. So I think overall it atleast helps prime the system for a change.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Eleven words: leaky containers and decades sitting at the bottom of the ocean.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Nilmat]

I don't have the full citations on me at the moment, but I think most of these came out of Science or Nature. Shouldn't be too hard to find: Manabe and Stouffer (1995) Dickson et al. (2002) Curry et al. (2003) Peterson et al. (2002)

That should give you a start on reputable articles suggesting that increased freshwater input to the North Atlantic could (and maybe is) lead(ing) to a slowing of the Gulf Stream.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Nilmat]

Actually, your post is refreshingly valid and free of political vitriol. Nicely done.

So here's the basic explanation: Europe wouldn't actually enter a new ice age. It would just cool down a whole bunch. If you look at the latitude of parts of Europe, the climate just doesn't match up with areas at similar latitudes elsewhere. For example, Southern France is at the same latitude as parts of Maine and North Dakota. So basically, because of the Gulf Stream Europe is kept anomalously warm. If the G.S. slows down, this source of warmth goes away and Europe (and parts of Eastern North America) get cooler while the tropical Atlantic warms up because there's less meridional heat export.

Feel free to ask more detailed questions if this doesn't answer your first one.

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[Bush Pig]

He's not overestimating their influence. Their numbers aren't actually relevant, given that one of their number is, effectively, the ruler of the world (even though he's probably a puppet controlled by others).

Re:you don't know what you are talking about

[jnaujok]

While it may provide pressure to develop more "energy efficient" (Read: environmentally friendly) technologies, at the same time, it squashes the means to do so. The financial outlay for the United States has been estimated at 6 Trillion dollars. That's 3 years of the entire federal budget and nearly 30% of GNP.

That kind of expenditure will cause wide-spread unemployment, famine, and basically destroy the economic engine of the nation. In return, it cuts U.S. emissions by less than 10%.

Of course, all those unemployed people won't be able to buy the new "green cars" and will be running old and poorly maintained vehicles, heaters, etc. They won't pay for more expensive "green power" and will turn towards cheap "dirty power" instead. The overall effect might be to actually *increase* overall emissions.

Oil will eventually run out. As it does so, the price will increase and it will become less and less attractive as a power source. When that happens, alternatives will become more attractive and more money will be spent to develop them. In other words, as the oil runs out, we'll work to find a way to replace it.

All without Kyoto.

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

/golf clap

OP

Re:MSM HYPE

[TheOzz]

No...I am saying that you should come up with some real hard facts (Globally over a few thousand years) to back your claims before trying to take action. If it really is not broke, then why should we try so hard to fix it?

perfect from Bush's point of view

[cahiha]

such as total distruption of the Gulf stream causing ice caps to form across most of Europe.

Well, for US global warming deniers, that solves two big problems: sea levels won't rise because the ice sheets will just move from the antarctic to Europe, and "old Europe" will be too busy shoveling snow to still interfere in US world domination. :-(

Maybe that's Bush's secret master plan after all...

Re:perfect from Bush's point of view

[bcmm]

Of course, the country that benefits the most from the Gulf Stream is Britain. You need us to lend legitimacy to wars.

Re:perfect from Bush's point of view

[hapdiddesigner]

Sorry Mate, We don't need you anymore, our citizens bought this last one OK, so the newly free and democratic Iraq's legitimate support will do just fine in the future. And the weather will be nicer there once Europe becomes a massive air conditioner.

Re:perfect from Bush's point of view

[bcmm]

Seriously though, wasn't Afghanistan one of the members of the "Coalition" this time around, even though the only army it had was American?

Ignore the man behind the curtain!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the Great and Powerful Oz! There is NO Global Warming! Gia is not pissed! There Earth is NOT trying to exterminate us in order to survive! Go back to work, consume and Spend SPEND SPEND!!!

Re:Ignore the man behind the curtain!

[Zonnald]

I think it is "Gaia", and if indeed pissed, Gaia will find a way to bring back a balance to the environment.
This might cause 100's of millions of humans to be wiped out, but it is a small price to pay.

Re:MSM HYPE

[Eskarel]

This is not an argument against reducing pollution, there are thousands of entirely verifiable reasons why we should do this. Just the harm the pollution does to human beings, let alone the rest of nature is reason enough to stop polluting as much as is possible.

The point of this argument is that we know diddly squat about what actually goes on climatewise on this great orb of a world. Over the course of even the last few hundred years the world has been both substantially hotter and drier and substantially colder and wetter than it is now, and most of these changes occurred before our ancestors had even worked out how to poke things with pointy sticks, let alone burn large quantities of fossil fuels.

In all likelihood a climate change is coming, but how much of that climate change can actually be attributed to humanity, how much impact can we really have?

Re:MSM HYPE

[October_30th]

I don't think it really matters whether the global warming is real or not. My point was that every nation should work towards more environmentally friendly societies simply because pollution is, in general, harmful to us and the nature. Global warming is just one (alleged) symptom of pollution.

And even if this was only about global warming, I think that the most prudent course of action would be to assume a worst case scenario and work based on that. There's nothing wrong with working on such assumptions instead of unobtainable "real hard facts" and erring on the side of caution - engineers and politicians do it every day.

(Off-topic: Is anyone else getting this? "Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between... It's been 13 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment". A bug or a new feature in Slashcode? Damn annoying.)

Oh Please.

[King_of_Prussia]

When will the blatant adverts masquerading as stories on slashdot come to an end?

Come on, the story is submitted by the user "kingofalsaka". I'm sure that could be explained by coincidence. It is coincidence too that within the summary exists a link to a "blog" named "Alaskas King"? I think not.

More likely is this king of alaska has seen a quick way to make a buck for his country by blogging about some fictional or statistically normal climate change and having the gutless slashdot editors post it to the front page. For shame slashdot. I used to read this site for the technical articles by impartial experts, not sob-stories from cash-strapped monarchs. The whole damn thing reads like a nigerian 419 scam.

I propose a new section called "slashvertisements" into which the editors post all paid for articles, giving users the opportunity to filter them out. Perhaps they fear users leaving in droves once they see how few would escape this section?

Re:Oh Please.

[EuroChild]

I didn't realise that international relations between the Prussia and Alaskan royal families had become so strained...

Re: Re: Oh Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Re:Oh Please.

[Xyrus]

Um...Alaska isn't a country. It' part of the US.

~X~

Re:Oh Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I saw this article elsewhere first, I was about to say "I forgot where", but now I remember. It was on Fark. (Posting anonymously now) It actually is a rather big deal. "rather" because I don't care. To people who do, it's huge, I'm sure.

Re:Oh Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

My money is on Alaska. And there has been a succession movement there since the time of statehood, which barely made it anyway. I can see "The Soverign Nation of Alaska", especially after reading the Kings blog. In fact, I might move there and join up.

Re:Oh Please.

[core plexus]

It's easy to see why some people would be confused, as the supposed news programs show it as a small island off the coast of Mexico, when it is really larger than Texas cut in half.

But, it's barely a state. We are treated like a pit for money to fund the small states.

-cp-

For every animal you don't eat...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I'm going to eat THREE.

Sponsor a vegetarian!

I for one welcome global warming

[Colin Smith]

Y'know just 4 or 5 degrees would do it. It'd have no effect on food, I don't know where you get that one.

The Africa problem BTW has bugger all to do with global warming. US/EU agricultural subsidies and trade tariffs are the cause and at least the EU is changing it's agricultural policies so that farmers are paid for doing nothing instead of being paid for producing. It has also pretty much zero rated African imports.

Re:I for one welcome global warming

[ToasterofDOOM]

Yes it would. The average global temperature today is only 9 degrees hotter than the height of the last ice age, so 4-5 degrees would make a huge difference. The temp now it about 1 degree hotter than at the turn of the 20th century. yes, I took meteorology last semester

Re:I for one welcome global warming

[Martin Blank]

Don't forget the corruption rampant in so many African countries. Zimbabwe's agricultural production has plummeted since the farms were "reclaimed" from their white owners, because they knew how to handle crop rotations, plan the planting, irrigation, and harvest, and how to deal with various pests that would invade. The people that have taken over the farms largely have no idea how to run any farm, let alone the large ones that made up the lion's share of the production, and the fields have since gone to waste.

Bored with making crop circles...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the teenaged hoodlums decided to dump hundreds of tons of silica gel into Siberia's lakes.

Since when was Alaska a country?

[LBt1st]

I think there's some foil left over, how about you make a hat?

For anyone who is planning on reading ahead...

[mas5353]

Warning

You are about to read several assinine comments made by geeks who did not get their degrees in environmental science, geology, oceanography, or evolutionary studies.

Please forgive them for their pretentiousness and understand that the various contradicting figures they offer as evidence for their claims are probably read from dirty pages left in the cache of their brain.

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny

Increasing?

[Zonnald]

To quote a paragraph from tfa;

By contrast, the scientists found that in Siberian areas where the ground below is still permanently frozen, the number of lakes actually increased by about 4% and total lake area grew by about 12% over the last three decades.

Interestingly they neglected to indicate how many hectares this 12% represented.

I guess that wasn't as dramatic a headline.

Arctic Warming Is Drying Up Lakes, Study Finds, but some lakes actually growing

Re:Increasing?

[forand]

The point of the article is that there is change occuring due to global warming. The exact size of the problem is irrelevent as is whether or not some lakes are getting bigger. The big news here is that permefrost areas are unfreezing which is having an effect on the landscape of the artic.

Re:Increasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

And thanks to globlal warming, Cannadian Geese now taking up residence in southern united states instead of travelling back north. No, wait. That doesn't make sense at all. Oh, thats right, Georgia is now experiencing longer cool periods and a shorter hot summer period. Global warming. Bah.

Re:Increasing?

[kisak]

Isn't it natural than when the permafrost is melting in the neighbouring areas, that there are more water to fill the lakes where the permafrost is still present?

This isn't about preserving lakes, this is about figuring out what the global warming caused by us will mean for our common future. The early signs appear most dramatically in the artic regions, glaciars in mountain areas in Asia, Africa and on the water level influence on islands in the pacific. But if the melting accelerates, which it probably will, we better look at these examples to see how fast changes are happening and plan ahead.

Re:Increasing?

[uncadonna]

No, the point is that *even though* the Arctic is getting wetter the lakes disappear as soon as the permafrost melts. Since the permafrost is in retreat, that is expected to dominate.

Both the warming and the wettening of the Arctic have been anticipated for about twenty years; the abrupt decline in lake area is new and unexpected.

Yes, your headline is less dramatic, but it also is less descriptive of the main new information.

The purpose of a headline is to summarize, not to tell the whole story. That's why there is text under the headline.

Re:Increasing?

[Hognoxious]

Georgia is now experiencing longer cool periods and a shorter hot summer period. Global warming. Bah.

The premises, even if true, don't lead to the conlusion that there's no global warming. No Georgian warming, perhaps.

Re:Increasing?

[Lars T.]

Your hair is getting thinner, but at least you've got more growing out of your nose and ears.

Re:Increasing?

[Oligonicella]

What makes you think that the permafrost has not thawed and refrozen many times? That would make it not "big news", but an iteration.

Re:Increasing?

[HiThere]

I don't think Canadian Geese need to fly to get away from the warm summers. My guess is that they originally flew because either they needed to escape predation, or because their food supply diminished. Locally, however, the Canadian Geese have gotten too fat to fly far. It's an effort even for them to fly from the grass in the park out to thier island refuge.

It's probably just as well that they no longer need to be migratory, as most of their rest stops along the way have become either too dangerous, or have just disappeared. (And the new ones have never migrated, so with one of them as a flock leader, who knows where they might end up.)

Re:Increasing?

[Nilmat]

The point that Smith et al. are making is that the process happens in two steps. As continuous permafrost warms, a deeper active layer and the creation of thermokarst causes an increase in the number of lakes. However, as permafrost disappears entirely, lakes underlain by it are drained. The logic is consistent.

Re:Increasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that the permafrost has not thawed and refrozen many times?

To be snarky... what part of permafrost do you not understand? Do we have to go into the roots of the word?

what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok dumb question here; how does the arctic melting cause flooding?

It's a giant chunk of ice floating in water.

Think back to elementary school when you did the experiment with the full glass of water & ice cubes. When the ice cubes melted the water didn't over flow the sides of the cup. One ice cube displaced the same volume of water whether solid or liquid.

Why would this be an differnt?

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

a clue

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ice in antarctica is actually on top of land.

That is the clue your are missing.

Re:what am i missing?

[Zonnald]

You are absolutely right, go to the top of your class.
Problem is the GP said artic.

But we should certainly worry about the land locked ice in antartica.

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

well i specifically said arctic (as this article is about the arctic).

As for the Antarctic does any one know where there is info about how much ice/snow there is at any given time in the Antarctic? it would have to be a considerable amount to cause global flooding (keeping in mind there is indeed land under it)

Re:what am i missing?

[October_30th]

One ice cube displaced the same volume of water whether solid or liquid.

Actually that's not true when you have a freshwater ice cube melting in saltwater and then, as others have already pointed out, Antarctic ice has formed on land.

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It said arctic, though, not antarctic.

Re:what am i missing?

[CmdrGravy]

I quickly looked at a map and it appears that Antarctica is about the same size as the Isle Of Wight so I'd guess there is certainly not enough ice on it to cause any rises at all.

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

But even a tiny change in water temperature will cause water to expand and take up more volume...

Re:what am i missing?

[piinkfloyyd]

"One ice cube displaced the same volume of water whether solid or liquid. " then why is it my ice cubes in the tray are larger than when i filled them with water? Although its been 30 yrs, in high school we were taught water expands when frozen, and contracts when thawed (heated).

Re:what am i missing?

[Zontar The Mindless]

> ok dumb question here; how does the arctic melting
> cause flooding?

> It's a giant chunk of ice floating in water.

Ever hear of Greenland? Its icecap is not floating on water.

(The "green" part may be old Viking propaganda, but the "land" part is true enough.)

Re:what am i missing?

[RebelWithoutAClue]

But Ice floats. Put an ice cube in your glass of water.

The water level stays the same as the ice melts.

This is because the ice displaces as much water as it weighs = the amount of water it turns into when it melts

Re:what am i missing?

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Look up archimedes principle or buoyancy. Im surprised you didnt learn this in school. :)

Re:what am i missing?

[CmdrGravy]

Maybe but studies on the Isle Of Wight glacier would seem to conclude that rather than causing water to expand upwards tiny temperature changes simply depress the sea floor more and exert a greater pressure on the water lower down.

Re:what am i missing?

[Mspangler]

So, if the Greenland glaciers are melting, then there is a lot of "new" land available for use. This land is owned by the government of Denmark? Can you buy from them? Do you have to be a Danish citizen? How does one emmigrate to Denmark? How does one become a Danish Real-estate agent? How do you Market retirement homes and estates in Greenland?

Come on people, opportunity is beating down the door! Less wailing and gnashing of teeth and more ambition is what you need.

Re:what am i missing?

[stevelinton]

Um No. You have misread your map.

The Antarctic icecap is in two pieces: East and West. The West is much warmer,
and does seem to be melting faster in recent years. If it melts completely sea levels rise by about 6 metres (20 feet). Melting the East antarctic icecap would eb a lot harder -- it's much colder and higher and further from the sea -- but if it happened sea levels rise about 60m (200 feet).

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but if it happened sea levels rise about 60m"

I sincerely doubt that. Show the source?

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, it is at its most dense at ~4 degrees Celcius. Above or below that it expands.

Re:what am i missing?

[stevelinton]

It seems I was over by a factor of 3. I remembered the number of feet and reported it as metres. A quick google for "icecap volume" found this in a course handout from a course at UIUC.

Most of Earth's ice is found in Antarctica, where permanent ice caps cover approximately 0.5% of Earth's total surface area and are 3km thick, on average.
[ Earth's oceans cover roughly 70% of our planet, to an average depth of 4.0km. Assuming that water and ice have roughly the same density, estimate by how much sea level would rise if global warming were to cause the Antarctic ice caps to melt. Comment on the effects the melting of the Arctic ice cap (which floats upon the Arctic ocean) would have on sea level (hint: you do not need to know how large the Arctic ice cap is to answer this question). ]

The calculation is then easy. If you melt this icecap it is spread 140 times thinner, so will be about 20m thick,

I should remark that no one expects significant melting of the East Antarctic icecap in the forseeable future.

Re:what am i missing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man. It was a fracking joke! Jesus.

Permafrost + Global Warming

[NemesisStar]

Tempafrost?

Re:Permafrost + Global Warming

[tiptone]

Now that was funny. Thanks, you made my Sunday. :)

Re:MSM HYPE - mod parent up

[knewter]

I'm sorry, this certainly seems as on-topic as ANY of the comments above this, all of them referring to global warming. This guy is on topic considering the discussion, the discussion is on topic considering the article, and no matter how much you dislike the comment it doesn't change the fact that 'Off-Topic' is just a dumb use of moderator points to attempt to censor someone that's, hrmm, 'On-Topic?'

Re:Here we go again...

[insert cool name]

I'm also waiting for the flood of global warming denial posts from people who have managed to see what all those foolish climatologists have missed - it would mean SUVs are a bad thing so cannot possible be true.

We have a similarly inspired great thinker here in Britain by the name of David Bellamy. He was a sort cuddly beardy bloke who used be on tv a lot in the 70s and 80s hiding in bushes and getting excited about birds.

Up until last year he was a well respected environmentalist having set up half a dozen environmental organisations and been invited to the board of half a dozen others. But he has a weakness.

He likes birds.

A lot.

His logic when it comes to global warming seems to be.

Global warming = must use less fossil fuel
less fossil fuel = more renewable energy
more renewable energy = more wind farms
more wind farms = more birds killed by turbines
dead birds = bad thing

Therefore global warming does not exist. QED.

So figuring that his credentials as a ornithologist made him fully qualified to dismiss any arguments put forward to the contrary by people who'd merely studied climatology he wrote piece denying global warming for the Daily Mail that was based on a load of psuedo science he'd found on random web sites.

George Monbiot did quite a nice job of demolishing him here :-

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-sc ience/

If you manage to find a copy of the debate that Channel 4 news ran between George and David it's well worth seeing.

Re:MSM HYPE - mod parent up

[knewter]

of course by 'Off-Topic' I meant 'Troll'.

I am dumb. That is all.

Residents of Arctic region already feeling effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Please see The Arctic: Earth's Early Warning System "The Inuit are already suffering dramatic changes to their Arctic environment, warns a native leader... unpredictable weather, melting of permafrost and glaciers, decreasing sea ice, as well as the presence of new species such as barn owls, robins and mosquitoes never seen before by the Inuit people."

Careful...

[Mayor Pedros]

With Berman altering the timeline, you may even dig up a couple ice thawed Borgs. http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/ENT/e pisode/128643.html

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

You geeks should be praying for global warming. The warmer it gets, the more clothes females will take off. When it gets hot enough, you may just see something you've never seen - a real live naked human female!

Eat 'em fast, though; you don't want to wait until they're cooked!

Global Warming is real

[Das Auge]

it's just that it started 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, and not just 50 years ago.

UNMOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should not wait until it is too late etc., but the OP has a point that dramatic climate changes have existed before. Even if (s)he is wrong, at least provides some interesting information. Modding this down is as much 'putting your head into the sand' as denying human causes for the warming.

Re:MSM HYPE

[mickwd]

Did you actually read some of those links ?

From this link:

What mankind is doing is moving hydrocarbons from below ground and turning them into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.
Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, prosperous, healthy, productive lives. No other single technological factor is more important to the increase in the quality, length and quantity of human life than the continued, expanded and unrationed use of the Earth's hydrocarbons, of which we have proven reserves to last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death would be the result of Kyoto's rationing of hydrocarbons.

Hardly seems a considered scientific opinion to me. You may, of course, think differently.

And considering this link:

Try reading something about the person who wrote it, in his own words, on the same site, here:

My esteem for my peers became replaced by contempt, and planted the seed of suspicion in my mind that my whole community was of the same calibre foolish cowards. A notion that experience rarely confounded but often confirmed, so insensibly I became a social exile. This was just as well, for in a declining community any citizen who retains respect for the truth must become alienated from the majority of his fellow citizens because they hate the truth.

Is this really the sort of considered scientific opinion you consider valuable ?

When will the world realise...

[Flaming Death]

It doesnt matter whether you think global warming is happening or not. It is time however to realise that our rates of pollution will result in some resulting effect - regardless of any scientific theory.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/env_pol_car_di o_199

The US needs to curb its pollution _now_.. and lead by example, rather than act as an ignorant, "we can do what we ant" monolith of corporate greed.

Re:When will the world realise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only the US?

Re:When will the world realise...

[Flaming Death]

Have a look at the link.

Having 4 times the carbon output of Russia surely means they have the ability to have the most profound effect - and can _lead_ by example. It is only an ignorant person who cannot see the sheer insanity of the pollution the US is creating in comparison to all other countries. Surely being a free democratic nation full of intelligent people, it makes it obvious to try and curb waste and pollution?

If you look at any pollution statistics on the US (even plain garbage) there is no justification for _not_ doing something to reduce it.. and make for a good example..

Re:MSM HYPE

[Ogman]

" There are no solid conclusions among all scientist"

Uh-huh. This is how the wacko right pulls this off: they get a few of their idiot minions with online Ph.D.s (or some isolated rejects from the tenure pool) to call themselves scientists. Then they completely ignore scientific method and start polluting the scientific pool with untestable hypotheses. Soon, it's difficult to get a consensus "among all scientist" because a percentage of them are not even legit scientists.

All your lakes are belong to U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we are taking your artic lakes.

Fight Nature

[nounderscores]

The earth tries to change all the time, but we are in a position to do something about it. Once we know what the causes of climate change are, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. We need to maintain our food source, or get off planet and live elsewhere.

If my sun is trying to kill me, I'd like to do anything I can to survive.

We can do it, have a little more faith in the species. Look at all the other things we've done.

Hopeless

[rctay]

It doesn't matter. This civilization lacks the technology to reverse a century of industrial pollution. No government will act until economic pressures demands, and by then any large scale actions like seeding Antarctic waters with iron may make things worse. All you can do is let the planet heal itself and reduce the carbon burden as much as possible. I can't understand why some people get so upset when this species doesn't behave rationally. When has it ever?

Global warming & the sea rising

[Anonymous Coward]

Frozen water takes up more volume than liquid water. Even when the ice caps melt, the levels of the oceans will probally remain unchanged.

Re:Global warming & the sea rising

[Glock27]

Frozen water takes up more volume than liquid water. Even when the ice caps melt, the levels of the oceans will probally remain unchanged.

The floating ice shelves off Antarctica and the floating Arctic ice shelf melting wouldn't raise sea levels at all. If the ice on the Antarctic land mass and Greenland were to all melt, sea levels would rise 500 feet.

Such drastic melting is a long ways away, and I think the problem will be solved long before things become critical, either by man's ingenuity if civilized progress continues, or by a nuclear winter.

Re:Global warming & the sea rising

[Martin Blank]

If all of the ice melted, it would cause a rise in sea level of only about 250 feet, so please stop spreading your FUD. :)

Re:MSM HYPE

[FhnuZoag]

Wow, we have a few unverified, unpeerreviewed websites in opposition. How terrifying a display of academic disagreement!

Bush Co.'s next environmental strategy...

[aloeppert]

It'll be called the "The Healthy Lakes Initiative" where by every lake in the United States* will be preserved in Dasani(TM) and Aquafina(TM) bottles. It's part of our ownership society program. * excluding Ohio, Florida, Wyoming, and California (now that it has a republican governor)

Re:MSM HYPE

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, even they all were qualified scientists, we must realize the difference.
Scientist A has a theory that it seems that gravity happens because of X. Scientist B argues that it's not that clear, Y may also be the cause. All is good.

Now, scientist A says it seems that human action is causing nasty stuff to earth and we should do something about it. Scientist B says, no, there is indication it could also be natural cycle and there's nothing we can do about it.

In the first example, it really doesn't matter which scientist is right, the gravity is still there and keeps us firmly in the ground.
In the second example, you are deciding about your fate.
If A is right, but we follow B, we're fucked.
If A is right and we follow A, we're ok.
If A is wrong and we follow B, we're ok.
If A is wrong and we follow A, we're ok (perhaps not all of us, economically)

If A and B cannot shoot themselves down using scientific measurements, it's logical to follow A. In this case, I have a feeling they just can't.
It's not like if B disagrees, A is automatically wrong (or vice versa).

Re:MSM HYPE

[Xyrus]

Guess all those meteorologist out there who have tracking the global temp averages moving up must be smoking crack then.

And all those glaciers that are melting in the Andes mountains, the Himalayas, and Alaska are just a coincedence.

And the rise in ocean temperatures across the globe. Guess it mus be faulty equipment.

Environmental scientist take samples from all over the globe and try to get an accurate picture of what's happening.

And the data they use go back a lot farther than 100 years.

~X~

I know where Permafrost is!

[Laebshade]

The Barbarians of Halas are glad it's finally defrosting.

In other news...

[mangu]

There are no solid conclusions among all scientists on the shape of the Earth. You can look here, here, here, and here to see the lack of consensus on this subject among scientists.

The claims of a round earth are nothing more that a main stream media hype of one guys opinion to try to invoke fear in the general population.

Anyone can single out and focus on one area of the planet and come to a conclusion that would sound devastating if it really did apply to the whole planet.

Re:Residents of Arctic region already feeling effe

[deanj]

Tell that to these guys:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/531/5438282.htm l

They planned a trip for more than 2.5 years to highlight global warming, and .... it failed because the weather conditions were too cold and bitter to continue.

Re:Lakes drying up = FEWER MOSQUITOES

[Dale549]

Last time I was there in the summer, swarms of sparrow-sized mosquitoes feasted on people and small animals. Maybe fewer of those puddles will alleviate the insect problem without using evil chemicals ;)

Just speculatiing....

[TheCulturedRedneck]

This is just pure speculation, but I'm doubting the records kept of a region such as Siberia are very reliable over the last 100 years. How are we to know if this is unusual or not given the huge number of lakes and the remote location? What are the chances that the Tsars or the Soviets kept decent data on this to give it context?

Re:Just speculatiing....

[0111 1110]

Reliable? Are you kidding? Those russians had super-thermometers that were accurate to +/- .01 degrees celsius even back in 1892. They were digital too and hooked up to fancy computers with dual core processors so that the data could be automatically logged. It's not like we were relying on some guy to actually have to check the meniscus in a fluid filled glass cylinder everyday, making sure that his results were accurate to .01 degrees so that people a hundred years hence would not see his errors as some kind of subtle climate change that would eventually destroy all life on the planet.

BTW, can anyone point me to some atmospheric thermometers that are accurate enough to show me temperature trends of less than 1 degree celsius in my own house? I have been looking for one for years. Seems like the most accurate ones are total immersion glass-mercury ones in long graduated cylinders that only measure in a 20 degree range or so. Hardly practical.

Re:Just speculatiing....

[TheCulturedRedneck]

troll? that is a weak attempt at moderation my friend.

Re:Just speculatiing....

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider yourself lucky. In the past, especially where I live, you would have been burned at the stake while little girls and boys danced around you chanting something about the devil. Being modded down is a small price to pay for speaking up.

Re:Tropical - stupid link

[nightgeometry]

That link tries to make you print the article. The idiocy was on my part, not the web sites. Here is a proper link LINK

Sorry if that annoyed anybody.

America has finally got to us

[Anonymous Coward]

As seen on /. a while ago

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?typ e=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-05-19T171502Z_01_L1 9104638_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-RUSSIA-LAKE-DC.XML

Skepticism is called for

[jmichaelg]

There's a strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 and warming and well understood atmospheric interactions of CO2, but some try to point the finger elsewhere or back to natural patterns.

Before you assert categorically that global warming is anthropogenic, you have to explain why the data that shows it's a natural phenomenon do not apply. There are ample oxygen isotope data that indicate the interglacials have had a 100,000 year cycle for at least the past million years. We weren't around in any significant numbers for the last 9 interglacials that have preceeded this one. Why is this interglacial anthropogenic when it's on the same cycle as the previous 9 interglacials?

What's truly astounding is the massively increasing level of outright propaganda on the subject. The scientists appear to be being left behind and the propagandists (sponsored by private industry) are taking over the show.

Propaganda isn't the sole province of partisan politicians. Arthur Eddington was convinced Chandra's theory that black holes could exist was wrong and he browbeat anyone who disagreed with him. It wasn't until Eddington died in 1944 that any progress on black holes was possible. There's a story about Shapely erasing data that disproved his hypothesis that the Milky Way was the whole universe. At the time, Shapely was the director of Harvard's observatory. The point is, just because some scientist believe something to be true doesn't necessarily mean it is - no matter how reputable the scientist is.

You might counter "isn't it better to act than to wait until we're sure?" The answer is "it depends on the cost of acting and being right vs. the cost of acting and being wrong." Moreover, you have to know what to do if you choose to act. Don't look to climate models for guidance - they're not worth much. The salient quote:

Lorenz showed that with a set of simple differential equations seemingly very complex turbulent behaviour could be created that would previously have been considered as random. He further showed that accurate longer range forecasts in any chaotic system were impossible, thereby overturning the previous orthodoxy. It had been believed that the more equations you add to describe a system, the more accurate will be the eventual forecast.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[elbobo]

Why is this interglacial anthropogenic when it's on the same cycle as the previous 9 interglacials?

That's easy: the rate of change. It may be the same or similar cycle but it's not the same rate of change. It's accelerated change (I believe without precedent) that directly correlates with the CO2 build up in the atmosphere.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

Before you assert categorically that global warming is anthropogenic,

He did not assert that "categorically". Neither do the scientists who study these things.

What they are saying is that the most reasonable explanation of what we are observing is that the warming is anthropogenic and that other attempts at explaining the current patterns are less plausible.

You might counter "isn't it better to act than to wait until we're sure?" The answer is "it depends on the cost of acting and being right vs. the cost of acting and being wrong."

Quite right. And the conclusion is that we need to act.

Lorenz showed that with a set of simple differential equations seemingly very complex turbulent behaviour could be created that would previously have been considered as random. He further showed that accurate longer range forecasts in any chaotic system were impossible, thereby overturning the previous orthodoxy. It had been believed that the more equations you add to describe a system, the more accurate will be the eventual forecast.

I'm sorry, but you just don't understand what that means. What that means is that you can't predict whether it's going to rain on a specific day, say, 11291 days from now. It does not mean that you can't predict any kind of long term quantities.

By analogy, when commit to playing slots daily in Las Vegas, nobody can predict whether you are going to be winning or losing money on a day 17 weeks from now. But we can predict with near certainty that you will have overall lost money by that time.

In fact, it is simple physics to predict what the long-term consequences of current emission trends are going to be; there is no uncertainty about that at all. The only question is whether we are going to stop in time and whether short-term feedback mechanisms will make the problem worse or give us a few more decades to act.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[RebelWithoutAClue]

And what do we know about the "natural" rate of change, coming out of some other ice age ?

Zip, thats what

Re:Skepticism is called for

[RebelWithoutAClue]

The machines in LV are well defined, designed to be so.

It is unknown how much the temperature will increase. The models (are they even good ?) all disagree.

How bad (or good) will the change be, no one knows. There are just predictions of doom and gloom.

Then you expect everyone to go all out to prevent something that may or may not have good or bad effects ?

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

The machines in LV are well defined, designed to be so.

Yes, and in the long term, the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is also predictable--hence my analogy.

It is unknown how much the temperature will increase. The models (are they even good ?) all disagree. [...] Then you expect everyone to go all out to prevent something that may or may not have good or bad effects ?

Rapid global climate change away from our current state is always disastrous; it doesn't matter which direction it goes. And all the models agree that rapid climate change will be the consequence of continued CO2 emissions.

Even if there is just the possibility of rapid global climate change, yes, that is sufficient reason to expect everybody to "go all out". Because what you are proposing is to gamble with the lives of several billion people just so that people can drive around in SUVs for another few decades.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[jmichaelg]

What they are saying is that the most reasonable explanation of what we are observing is that the warming is anthropogenic and that other attempts at explaining the current patterns are less plausible.

Hmmm. Here we have the 9 prior warmings, around 100,000 years apart which are obviously not anthropogenic. The last warming was about 100,000 years ago and to my eye, it seems more plausible that we're on a "seasonal" cycle than mankind has caused the current uptick in temperatures. Hell, this warming started over 17,000 years ago. Just exactly how is that mankind's fault?

I'm sorry, but you just don't understand what that means. What that means is that you can't predict whether it's going to rain on a specific day, say, 11291 days from now. It does not mean that you can't predict any kind of long term quantities.

Lorenz had a simple climate model based on 3 non-linear equations. He had perfect data and perfect knowledge of his little universe. Nonetheless, his model was predicting hot winters and cold summers within a few years. Using your Las Vegas analogy, it was as if he ended up owning the casino. His point wasn't that his model was wrong. His point was that non-linear models are very sensitive to their input values and that they behave in unpredictable fashions very quickly.

None of todays climate models come even close to having the perfect knowledge or perfect data Lorenz had and yet they're making claims as to what the climate will be 50 years out. It's bullshit and you know it.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[RebelWithoutAClue]

How do you know that mitigation of the effects would not be better than attempting something like Kyoto ? It seems noone has looked at the possibility ...

C02 isnt just about SUVs, its about expansion and growth. Take a gamble so people can expand and grow, definitely. Progress needs excess resources. You dont see people barely surviving people doing research.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[0111 1110]

Because what you are proposing is to gamble with the lives of several billion people just so that people can drive around in SUVs for another few decades.

So your solution is to get rid of SUVs? Fine. I'm all for it. I hate the damn things. But if you think any resulting decline in CO2 would be measurable by anyone you are extremely deluded.

Let me give you a hint. Think nuclear and/or horses. You are pro-nuclear right? And don't mind having a nuclear power plant down the street from you right? And lots of horse manure in the streets.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

So your solution is to get rid of SUVs? Fine. I'm all for it. I hate the damn things. But if you think any resulting decline in CO2 would be measurable by anyone you are extremely deluded.

Look up "hyperbole" in the dictionary. Obviously, there are lots of things we would need to do in order to reduce CO2 emissions appreciably. However, as far as the US is concerned, they all amount to doing things that do not need to affect one's standard of living.

Let me give you a hint. Think nuclear and/or horses. You are pro-nuclear right? And don't mind having a nuclear power plant down the street from you right? And lots of horse manure in the streets.

A good start, as far as the US is concerned, would be to reduce per-capita energy usage to levels found in other Western nations. That does not mean either going all nuclear or relying horses, it just means simple energy conservation measures, public transportation, better city planning, etc.

Beyond that, I'm keeping an open mind. Nuclear is an option, although it would need to be managed differently from the current nuclear industry.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

How do you know that mitigation of the effects would not be better than attempting something like Kyoto ? It seems noone has looked at the possibility ...

How do you "mitigate" the flooding of Bangladesh, the Netherlands, or New York and New Jersey? How do you "mitigate" Alaskan winters in Britain or France?

And there is no way to reverse the emission: once the CO2 has been emitted into the atmosphere, it's going to stay there for a couple of centuries.

C02 isnt just about SUVs, its about expansion and growth. [...] Progress needs excess resources. You dont see people barely surviving people doing research.

The US clearly requires far more CO2 per "unit of research" produced than other nations, so that's an obvious first thing to address. That's not the overall answer, but it's a good start. Politically, that would give us the moral position from which we can begin to argue that China and India should adopt a different path.

Take a gamble so people can expand and grow, definitely.

There is no gamble, only certainty: continued CO2 emissions will lead to catastrophic global climate change; there is no uncertainty or question about that. It's elementary thermodynamics.

The only question is when we will reach that point at current emissions, and the time frames are anywhere from "it's already too late" to "maybe in a century".

Re:Skepticism is called for

[SA Stevens]

it just means simple energy conservation measures, public transportation, better city planning, etc.

I think you mean 'better central planning.' And we see where you are leading.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[0111 1110]

A good start, as far as the US is concerned, would be to reduce per-capita energy usage to levels found in other Western nations.

I don't care about a "start". Either you have a plan or you don't. And one (despised) country's plans are nearly irrelevant. As happy as it might make you to see something bad happen to the US it is still irrelevant. The whole world would have to agree on some VERY extreme measures if you want to stop our species dependence on combustion. I mean, not since the invention of fire has anyone tried to stop its use. It is a pretty fundamental task you are advocating: taking fire away from man. But I'm not sure that you appreciate that.

Either you are proposing a real solution to a real problem or you are just proposing some political solution that would make you feel good without actually solving 'the problem'.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a technical detail, which I won't blame you for not knowing, it really is a bit specialist afterall. But when an iceage ends and you get the interglacial, the highest temperatures are recorded at the very beginning of the interglacial and then over 10-20 thousand years temperatures start to decline towards iceage again.

This interglacial is an exception to the general rule and would have had a longer interglacial, but it still shows the exact same trend, just with a longer plateau after the initial warm phase. So we arn't warming up anymore, we are in stable to long term cooling phase of our interglacial.

On a different tack you didn't cover, you also have variations in temeprature in interglacials, sometimes even quite extreme. So it isn't totally unheard of, but the current event is a bit odd none the less, because usually such spikes in a interglacial are down, as in major cooling events. To put the current warming in perspective, you can see the recovery from the little ice age, which wasn't quite as local as we first though,but I digress, and then a small plateau and then another temp rise of equal size, I figure a few decades back you wouldn't have been able to definitively pin it down yet.

The new temp spike falls outside the usual variation seen in temperature as measured via varied methods, like looking at moving ecosystems, changes in plant leaves, that also react to temperature. Several radio isotopes and ofcourse trapped gasbubbles in the ice. As far as I can recall, the ones that can make recent predictions tend to identify the current period as abnormal.

Another point of concern is, is that our methane levels are atleast as high now I believe as they were when the iceage ended, and methane really is a much more potent gas, and we are quite sure this rise isn't natural either, consdering we bulldozered alot of the natural sources.

Overall I definitly think there is some cause for concern. There is nothing I could hammer in with 100% surety, but it's definitively a very unusual abberation that doesn't seem to belong there and any continuing of the trend might eventually lead us to further major climatic shifts. like what happened when the iceage ended. In this case mainly caused due to the melting of the greenland icecap. Which would happen if it got a few degrees warmer, and once you lsoe all that white reflecting ice alot more solar heat will stay in the norther hemisphere. The effect of this could be observed from geological records from before before the greenland icecap exited. Which show that the entire north was forested with no tundras at all, and subtropical forests in Europe. So it would be a quite major shift.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[Nilmat]

Which is why climate models come reasonably close to predicting a whole bunch of phenomena that have occurred over the last half century when input data from (say) 1957 is used. Go take a look at the ERA-40 climate model, which does a hell of a lot better than just predicting cold winters and warm summers, and tell me that our models are utterly useless.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[Nilmat]

Mod parent up despite AC status. Unlike most here, he or she actually knows what they're talking about from a paleoclimate perspective.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

I think you mean 'better central planning.' And we see where you are leading.

No, it means going away from the corrupt central planning we currently have. Right now, the US government takes a large chunk of our taxes and uses it to subsidize inefficient transportation and energy technologies that happen to be favored by political donors. If people had to pay the actual costs of driving, flying, and heating, they'd make more prudent choices.

But, like generations of right wingers before you, you hide your fascist and corrupt views by accusing everybody you don't like of communism. People like you are the enemies of the free market and a free society, not environmentalists.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

I don't care about a "start". Either you have a plan or you don't.

Of course, we have a plan: steady, gradual reductions of per-capita carbon emissions in Western nations, and caps for developing nations. The primary obstacle is the US.

It is a pretty fundamental task you are advocating: taking fire away from man. But I'm not sure that you appreciate that.

That's total bullshit, and it's the kind of extremism that keeps us from implementing reasonable solutions.

Nobody is advocating "taking fire away". We simply don't have to burn half a dozen tons of carbon per capita per year in order to maintain and improve our standard of living.

Besides, it's not a choice anyway: within about a century, we have no choice but to move to energy sources other than fossil fuels. The only question is how much we wreck our planet in the meantime.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[Bush Pig]

I'm glad you've mentioned Lorenz, as it's saved me the trouble. However, I don't think you've understood him. You only need a teeny, tiny change in, say, global temperature caused by, oh, I don't know, humans burning too much fossil fuel, to fuck things up completely. Because the system is unpredictable, and potentially unstable.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[SA Stevens]

Whoah. You spun sorta out of control there.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[cahiha]

Whoah, you just don't get it that calling people "communists" is offensive. And you just don't get how f*cked up and anti-free-market current US energy policy actually is. And you still don't get how serious this problem actually is.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[jmichaelg]

Go take a look at the ERA-40 climate model, which does a hell of a lot better than just predicting cold winters and warm summers, and tell me that our models are utterly useless.

I may not have made myself clear. It wasn't that Lorenz's model failed to predict the climate accurately, it was that his model failed to predict itself accurately. It wasn't a matter of choosing the wrong equations or data - it's a matter of self-referential, non-linear equations are inherently unpredictable. Bigger computers and bigger models don't get away from that problem.

I quote from the ERA-40 site: After 10 days of coupled integrations, the model drift begins to be significant.

It's exactly the same problem Lorenz had.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[jnaujok]

But the long term effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is not known. It's not as simple as CO2 x 2 = +4 degrees. There are dozens of feedback systems in the environment and none of them are fully understood. All of the climate models currently use the water cycle (cloud formation) as a positive feedback mechanism, assuming that as temperature rises, the water cycle will cause it to become even warmer.

This is *critically* important, because the water cycle represents 98% of the driving power of atmospheric temperature, while the total human CO2 contribution represents less than 0.26%.

The problem is, more and more evidence is mounting that the water cycle is a negative feedback mechanism and that, as CO2 increases temperature, the water cycle will reduce it.

In the Carboniferous period, the Earth's CO2 was in the range of 7000 ppm, and there were times that they bordered on an ice age, up to 12 degrees colder than current average temperatures. If the water cycle was a positive feedback mechanism, than the 7000 ppm of CO2 should have driven the earth into a run-away greenhouse. Instead it was one of the most lush, life-friendly times in the Earth's history.

And the idea that rapid change is always disastrous is also a joke. 6000 years ago the northern part of Africa went from lush farmland to dry desert. Was it devastating to those people living in that area? Probably. But that change also brought warmer weather to Europe and made the Roman Empire possible and all of European history.

We forget how common climate change is. In the 11th century there were 117 vineyards in England, with grapes growing around the city of London. 50 years later, after the end of the Medieval Optimum (which lasted 600 years) there were none. In fact the crop yields in Germany plummeted after 1100 and would not recover until modern planting methods in the 1800s raised yields.

The greatest still-existing sign of this is the "orangerias" in Berlin. These were built in the late 1600's because the new "Little Ice Age" was damaging all the beautiful groves of Orange trees in Berlin. Yes, Oranges in Berlin. Just like in Florida. That was the climate just 400 years ago. Guess what, it changed.

You say we must go "All out" because of the possibility of climate change. I'll tell you that it's the stupidest thing to do. Kyoto calls for protocols that will cost modern nations 50 trillion dollars over the life of the treaty, while stunting, starving, and punishing developing nations. Millions will suffer, millions will die, billions will be miserable. And if Kyoto were enforced, with every provision met, and every number matched, then we would delay the CO2 level that would be reached on January 1, 2100 all the way to October 16, 2100. Fifty Trillion Dollars for 288 days.

Now, if we put 50 trillion dollars into research for fusion, cold fusion, ZPE, or any of a dozen other theoretical clean energy methods, we'd all have Ronco Mr. Fusions powering our cell phones by 2100. Instead, under Kytoto, all this money would be used trying to scrub 9% of the CO2 out of 250 year old power generation methods. You talk about gambling with billions of lives as if "Day After Tomorrow" was a scientific documentary instead of the tremendous load of bull-droppings that it was. What if the temperature went up 2 degrees in Europe? What if Canada became the new "Breadbasket of the World"? What if "Oranges from Ohio" was the new slogan for orange juice? How does this hurt anyone? What if the Sahel once again became rain-forest instead of desert?

Kyoto isn't "gambling" with lives, it's a flat out guarantee to impoverish every industrialized nation on the planet, and that means every developing nation can forget about aid, and food imports and everything else they need. Kyoto is a *guarantee* that millions will die.

Thinking with your heart is great, thinking with your brain is better.

Re:Skepticism is called for

[jnaujok]

You mean, like Greenland and Europe was in the 1100's, at the end of the Medieval Optimum. Must have been all those SUVs in Atlantis...

Re:Skepticism is called for

[Nilmat]

Yes, but you're talking about weather and I'm talking about climate. While day-to-day predictions of weather lose accuracy after about 10 days, larger-scale trends in climate are often predicted quite accurately by ERA-40 and other models over the entire model run (1958-2004).

Re:Skepticism is called for

[jmichaelg]

Perhaps. Are you sure their model doesn't embed the data they're modeling? Did their model forecast the climate for 2004 in 1995 or did they have to wait until 2003 to do that?

I'm not trying to be argumentative - it's just I've seen so many models fall apart that when I read about Lorenz's work I came to understand why they'd fallen apart. What made me even more skeptical was my first job out of college I worked for an econometric model building firm. I saw things being done that we'd been specifically been taught not to do. The model builder was doing it because the legit model didn't cut the mustard and we had to have a deliverable. When a climatologist claims to have a model that works, I think of Lorenz's findings and my experience. I've seen first hand how models can be made to look much better than they actually are.

Re:MSM HYPE

[learn fast]

So, you don't trust the "MSM"

But your linkage indicates you trust "Junkscience.com" creator Steve Milloy. Tobacco lobbyist Steve Milloy.

Re:MSM HYPE

[RebelWithoutAClue]

I dont think your table is quite right.

If A is right, but we follow B, There will be some effect. Well, for argument's sake lets accept it to be bad. It will be a range, from mildly bad to fucked.

PS: No one knows how bad it will be. Theres still a range of possibilities

If A is right and we follow A, We might still be fucked. Maybe not as bad as the worst case above, but still resource constrained = less progress = bad. Also maybe its too late, and we cant avoid above possibility.

If A is right, there are other options than following either. For instance, mitigation is one of those options. Might mitigation be a better direction ?

If A is wrong and we follow B, we're ok. Yup.

If A is wrong and we follow A, we're ok. Not quite. Those who didnt follow A will have a huge economical advantage at this point.

Now, is the decision still clear ?

Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the invading mosquittoes can die.

Re:Here we go again...

[windows]

I wouldn't say the climatologists are particularly foolish. I am a meteorologist. Many aspects of meteorology are largely misunderstood by the media and general public. The concept of "global warming" is one of the most common misunderstandings.

Without a doubt, the climate of the Earth is rapidly changing. Records show this very clearly. This is not a point for debate.

Also there is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing. Once again, records of this show the change very clearly. This is not up for debate.

The problem comes up when showing a link between the two and establishing causation. It is impossible to deny that human activities change the atmosphere and have some effect on the weather and climate. The actual amount of effect, however, is unknown. There are many cycles which naturally occur in the weather and in the climate. While some of these cycles last only a few months or a few years, such as ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), some cycles may last decades or longer. We are aware of cycles such as ENSO because it only takes a few years for an El Nino to transition to a La Nina (which actually lasts longer than the El Nino phase) and back into an El Nino. There are probably many other cycles in the climate that we are not even aware of. Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible that we are merely in one phase of a naturally occurring cycle which will reverse itself at some point.

Many factors play a role in the climate around the Earth. These include the atmospheric composition, albedo, ocean circulation, solar output, and many other things. While changes in the atmosphere can cause climate change, changes in these other factors may enhance or oppose the changes. One of the most famous climate changes of the recent past was the little ice age. This period of cooling wasn't caused by human activity. Instead, it is believed that solar output decreased and had a very significant effect on the Earth's climate.

During much of the Earth's past, the Earth has been dominated by either tropical or polar climates. The period of balance we are in right now is actually somewhat unusual. Given the history of the Earth, it is hardly unreasonable to expect the climate would once again trend toward one of the two extremes. This has occurred for many millions of years without any influence of humans. There is no reason to expect that this behavior would cease because humans now inhabit the Earth.

Global warming is a very misleading term. There are many questions about how global climate change, if caused by humans, would actually occur. People have even speculated about possible global cooling. One theory, which some evidence seems to dispute, suggests that "global warming" will cause an increase in clouds. The increased albedo from the clouds will counteract the warming and might even cause cooling. This theory is disputed, but is one of many theories about how climate change, if caused by humans, might play out.

None of these arguments are meant to say we shouldn't scale back emissions. While we don't know if human activities are a major player in global climate change, we also don't know that they aren't playing a huge role in it. Furthermore, it is in our interests to minimize our changes to the environment and to the atmosphere because the theory of humans causing global climate change is plausible. It is in everyone's interest to reduse emissions, anyways, because many of the chemicals entering our atmosphere and hydosphere are toxic. I'm all for finding cleaner sources of energy and for cutting back on human activities such as clearing forested areas.

There are plenty of good reasons to reduce emissions and protect our environment without resorting to scare tactics. While you may have found an example of a "climatologist" making fallacious arguments, many of the climatologists disputing "global warming" caused by human activities aren't all that crazy.

Hlubulubulubuluha

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is of course a liberal conspiracy, as any devout Friend of Fox News knows. Haleluja, bless you Bill O'Reilly, for you set me free....

Just in case I may be wrong, I for one welcome our boat owning, water breathing overlords....

Don't worry...

[Kjella]

...global warming won't kill us. Because we'll wisen up? Nah. But there's simply not enough reserves to go around. Positive estimates suggest we have 50 years left of oil reserves, with maybe another 50 running on coal (assuming we have to replace all oil with coal). After that, we might want to polluate as much as we like, but there's simply not any left to go around. Geologically speaking, we're burning up the reserves of millions of years during a few short centuries. When that's done, you're going to want all the warmth you can get.

Re:Don't worry...

[couch_warrior]

Actually, there is serious research suggesting that so-called "fossil" fuels aren't fossils at all, but are pockets of natural carbon combined with water at high heat and pressure, that reforms continuously under the earth. Thereby giving us an inexhaustible supply. And it's a good thing too. Because without greenhouse gases we are overdue for the next ICE AGE. I'd rather have the ocean move in 100 ft or so along the coast, than have the ice cap extend down to Kansas.
Face it, Gaia doesn't exist, the earth is just a ball of dirt, and the only thing special about it is that we live here. What matters is that technology make humans as comfortable as possible, nothing else.

Re:Here we go again...

[MightyMartian]

There are plenty of good reasons to reduce emissions and protect our environment without resorting to scare tactics. While you may have found an example of a "climatologist" making fallacious arguments, many of the climatologists disputing "global warming" caused by human activities aren't all that crazy.

With the notable exception that not very many climatologists think global warming is detached from human activities.

Re:MSM HYPE

[Jafafa Hots]

junkscience.com is run by steven milloy. Steven milloy was a lobbyist who was paid by Phillip Morris to create a similar "group" to put forth the idea that second hand smoke is harmless.

Now he has this site up, and though he refuses to disclose his funding, he has in the past received money from oil company interests to lobby for them and do PR for them.

Re:MSM HYPE

[TheOzz]

That's right. You pegged me. I don't trust the likes of the LA Times and other members of the MSM any further than I can throw a truckload of their newspapers. My point in adding links to other sides to this argument is to show that there is another less liberal bias side to the argument that MSM tends to avoid. I am not convinced either way. I hope that you nor anyone else bases their opinions solely on what the LA Times reports. Equally as important is that you do not base your opinion on these subjects based on the information given solely by the likes of junkscience.com. The bottom line is that there is not enough evidence to have me worry about the affects that I have as one person on the global warming concerns. Oh, did we ever determine if there really are concerns to begin with? The LA Times and other MSM members are certainly not going to change my mind.

warming in springtime

[bziman]

It's funny... each year in spring, the temperatures begin to rise dramatically. Of course this doesn't concern anyone, because each fall, the temperatures go back down.

Now imagine this happening over a large period of time... we have these things called ice ages which punctuate the normal warmer periods.

Imagine if the dinosaurs had had knee-jerk media, they would have been spazzing about global cooling as the ice ages approached. (You'll also note that the prevailing theories on the dinosaur extinction do not concern themselves with ice ages as a cause, anymore).

I'm too lazy to look up references, but I recall reading that the average temperature over the lifetime of the Earth is significantly warmer than it is now, and that we are currently in a "little" ice age.

All that said, I'm all for clean, efficient, and renewable energy, not dumping toxins into the environment, and so on, but the alarmist media is sort of annoying... all creatures change the environment around them (hell, beavers have a dramatic impact on their ecosystems!), species of plants come and go, and everything adapts. If mother nature doesn't like what we're doing, eventually humanity will die out, and other creatures that are more adapted to the new landscape will take our place. This doesn't really bother me terribly.

I truly believe it is arrogent to think we understand the natural world so fully based on such a short record of observation. People need to learn to be responsible with the environment based on the merits, not based on knee-jerk reactionism in the media.

<end-rant>

Re:warming in springtime

[gmikej]

I am so glad you have said what you did... I was starting to go INSANE reading some of these posts.

I'll just chalk this up to another weekly installment of "The World is going to end in a firey ball because we are all horrible people that hate the earth and love oil!1!!!11!"

Let's take a geeky approach to this: What is the total volume of air of the world? What percentage of it is toxic? I could go on but the point is there is a lot about nature we DON'T know. Calm down.

Meh......

[electrosoccertux]

That means more rain for the rest of us....

Sure, the CO2 might rize some, but then our trees will grow faster and we'll have more big ones...and then they'll be fussing about not enough C02 in the atmosphere and how we're all going to freeze in 100 years.

I think its just a cycle, we have no evidence to conclusively say "this trend will continue".

Trying to increase energy efficiency has the negative effect of taking more energy. I still think we need to be energy efficient, but we need to find a cheaper way to conserve energy. It shouldn't take more energy to save more energy...that defeats the whole purpose.

Re:"Absolute and definite proof"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The irrational bullshit comes from people like you who demand absolute proof before acting. You prefer sticking your head in the sand until it's too late. Because, by the time we have "absolute and definite" proof, it will be too late.

Kind of the same argument that religious people have for their religion don't you think?

Personally, I'm hugely skeptical of both.

Re:Here we go again...

[cliffski]

Its good to see someone else slag off this idiot. Some people think because he has a beard and is a tv celeb he is somehow the definitive voice on the environment, even when miost of his ideas (like backing nuclear power as i recall) just show he is losing the plot bigtime.

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw. It'd be more like:

What them libruls don't git is that global climate change is good. It make more easy for our efforts in Alaska oil drillin by gettin rid of all that snow fer us.

I'm George W. Bush, and I approvilate of this message.

this comment is ignorant

[icepick72]

From a completely non-scientific point of view, I don't think we should get worked up because the earth is changing. The earth is not static. It will always change. Let's work with it instead of calling changes bad.

Everytime something changes on the earth somebody's trying to blame humans -- the green-house effect, acid rain, etc. etc. Even without humans on it the earth would continue to change. I think environmentalism has become too much of a religion today.

We humans are adaptable. Let's work with the earth, for the better, and not get all bent out of shape about everything the earth does.

Re:MSM HYPE

[Urusai]

My esteem for my peers became replaced by contempt, and planted the seed of suspicion in my mind that my whole community was of the same calibre foolish cowards. A notion that experience rarely confounded but often confirmed, so insensibly I became a social exile. This was just as well, for in a declining community any citizen who retains respect for the truth must become alienated from the majority of his fellow citizens because they hate the truth.

Sounds like half of Slashdot.

Re:Here we go again...

[windows]

My point wasn't to say that humans aren't causing climate change. I believe they are, too. There is, however, quite a bit of uncertainty about how much of an effect human activities have on the climate. There's a lot of reports coming out of imminent doom because of "global warming," and that's what I'm arguing against.

There's a lot of possible effects of global climate change due to an increased greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect works because carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and radiates it out. Some of this radiation is radiated back toward the surface. There are many other greenhouse gases in play, too. Carbon dioxide isn't a particularly potent greenhouse gas compared to water vapor. The reason a big deal is made about carbon dioxide, however, is because it has a much longer residency time in the atmosphere than water vapor. A warmer Earth due to an increased greenhouse effect may, however, lead to greater evaporation and a greater amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This is one concern that's worth mentioning.

It's probably incorrect to refer to this form of global climate change as global warming. What it is doing, instead, is unmoderating the Earth's climate.

It's a fact that the north atlantic drift is slowing. That's an ocean current that is a branch of the gulf stream. This current keeps the British Isles warmer than they would otherwise be for the latitude they are at. It is believed that the melting of some of the ice caps will release large amounts of fresh water into the ocean, changing its composition, and slowing or cutting off the north atlantic drift. This means that instead of warming, that part of Europe will become cooler.

On the other hand, many people believe (with some uncertainty here) that the center of some continents will become drier. I live on the central plains of the USA, which is already arid. Should climate change occur quickly, it may have a significant effect on agriculture in this part of the USA.

My two points here, and in my previous comment, were not to say global climate change isn't occuring or that humans aren't causing some of it. My point was to say that the rate of climate change caused by human activity isn't really known and to refer to the climate change as "global warming" isn't really correct.

Friendly neighiborhood grammar nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to intelligent to

I'm usually not one to comment on people's grammar, this being an informal message board and all. But you've repeated this exact phrase in several different posts, so I figured you might want to correct it.

In fact, considering the number of posts I've seen where you end with that phrase, I'm beginning to wonder if it's your sig.

But I checked some of your past posts, and apparently it isn't.

Re:Friendly neighiborhood grammar nazi

[trixillion]

I'm usually not one to comment on people's grammar

And I'm not usually one to feed a troll. However, a search will show that I have, in fact, never before used that expression on slashdot, present case excepted. Perhaps you have confused me for one of the billy goats gruff.

Re:MSM HYPE

[follower_of_christ]

" There are no solid conclusions among all scientist"

Uh-huh. This is how the wacko left pulls this off: they get a few of their idiot minions with online Ph.D.s (or some isolated rejects from the tenure pool) to call themselves scientists. Then they completely ignore scientific method and start polluting the scientific pool with untestable hypotheses. Soon, it's difficult to get a consensus "among all scientist" because a percentage of them are not even legit scientists.

Re:MSM HYPE

[Ogman]

Oh, almost forgot; they have almost no original thoughts, preferring to copy from others. :o)

global warming and farming

[falconwolf]

The Africa problem BTW has bugger all to do with global warming. US/EU agricultural subsidies and trade tariffs are the cause and at least the EU is changing it's agricultural policies so that farmers are paid for doing nothing instead of being paid for producing. It has also pretty much zero rated African imports.

Some of Africa's problems of growing enough food is due to climate changes though not all. Ethiopia for instance used to be a breadbasket producing more than enough food to feed the population and thus were net exporters. But draughts the last few years have decimated farms and they are now net food importers. One place climate change wasn't responsible for a decrease in food production though is Zimbabwe. Like Ethiopia, Zimbabwe used to be a net food exporter and was also considered a breadbasket. When President Robert Mugabe forced mostly white farmers off their farms and gave farms to his supporters, the farms went to waste and now the land won't produce nearly as much food as it used to if the farms are even farmed. But many have been left to fallow.

Falcon

and all that water goes to...

[Goeland86]

Clouds over sunny places! SoCal has never had this many clouds in a summer in all of history. Just this week we've averaged less than 5 days of full sun, which is abnormal for the season. Californians like their sun? Well then stop driving Hummers and prevent global warming!

Re:MSM HYPE

[follower_of_christ]

This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...

Oh, almost forgot; they have almost no original thoughts, preferring to copy from others. :o)

/. didn't let me... *sigh*

Zimbabwe

[falconwolf]

Zimbabwe's agricultural production has plummeted since the farms were "reclaimed" from their white owners, because they knew how to handle crop rotations, plan the planting, irrigation, and harvest, and how to deal with various pests that would invade.

Blame President Robert Mugabe for Zimbabwe's problems, going from a net food exporter to an importer. I agree more land should be in the hands of Blacks but forcing White farmers off their land isn't/wasn't the way to do it. Instead what could of been done was to have the government buy any farm being sold by Whites then allow Blacks to homestead, perhaps those who worked on the farms. On top of this the former White farmers could be hired to train new farmers. Instead what Mugabe did was force Whiter farmers out then gave the land to his supporters who didn't know how to farm.

Falcon

Even if you don't belive in global warming

[Bratch]

Regardless of global warming or not, you wouldn't sit in your closed garage with the car running for any length of time, would you? For the time being we are living in this enclosed atmosphere with million and millions of vehicle motors filling our breathing space with the same pollution that would kill you in your garage, plus all the idustrial pollution. It's only a matter of time before this catches up with us, one way or another. Even if the globe isn't warming, something still needs to be done about it. These lakes disappearing may only be an early indication of something far worse to come.

And sea levels rising because of ice cap and glacier melting isn't a problem, the problem is the massive amount of fresh water released into the polar areas and disrupting ocean currents that have a great impact on weather patterns. I'm sure things woould be much different in the NE US and Europe if the Gulf Stream slowed to a stop, or even reversed itself.

Re:Residents of Arctic region already feeling effe

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, their trip was thwarted by unstable conditions caused by an early warming.

From the Star Tribune article: "There are vast areas of thin ice and slushy leads too thick to canoe across and too thin to cross by skis. This, combined with the unusually deep snow has thwarted our efforts to go forward."
Dupre also wrote that "summer has hit this region early, making travel extremely dangerous at best."
He said he believed the weather extremes in the Arctic "are directly related to global warming."

Also reported by an Inuit (Eskimo) representative:
"Inuit hunters understand nature's rhythms and cycles. Their environmental knowledge is detailed and accurate, and is passed down from generation to generation. But many Inuit hunters now find the weather unpredictable and traveling over the sea-ice dangerous. Hunters are being lost through the sea-ice in areas that, traditionally, have been safe."
From Inuit Circumpolar Conference Plans Human Rights Action against US for Damage to the Arctic Caused by Global Warming

Aircar

[ZeroExistenZ]

Ok that's it. I'm buying myself an aircar

Well you can always irrigate the Mojave.

[falconwolf]

How long will the water needed to irrigate the Mojave last? Aquifers throughout the world are being pumped dry as it is, water is withdrawn faster than it is being replaced. The "Wall Street Journal" among others are calling water "blue gold".

Water, water everywhere -- but will there be enough to drink?

Falcon Falcon

Re:Residents of Arctic region already feeling effe

[0111 1110]

unpredictable weather,

LOL. What a hoot. Damn this Global Warming! Isn't someone going to think of the children?

In certain spots, the ice is above the waters.

[TheLittleJetson]

Glaciers or the tops of ice caps...

Not just permafrost is melting.

[Quikyn]

They're finding permafrost is melting. What's usually all year round ice beneath the lakes is melting. Lakes are getting bigger because of other areas of ice melting, and it might be the cause of the warming of permafrost. They at least appear to be symptoms of the same overall problem, a change in climate.

To quote from this article.

"As temperatures rise, ice and snow melt and put more water into Arctic lakes." and "They now believe additional lake surface brought on by melting is just the first part of the process. In the southern parts of the Siberia study area, the permafrost itself is believed to be melting."

So perhaps an accurate headline might have been Arctic Warming Is Causing Lakes To Grow Bigger, And The Drying Up Of Lakes Due To The Melting Of Permafrost. The Former May Be Causing The Latter.

Their original headline still appears perfectly accurate to me though and, while I'm no journalist, it also seems more effective.

more lies...

[sjs132]

Slashdot is propigating the lies of the left now... Proof? When I opened up the "read more", I got an add before the comments saying that Microsoft Windows had a lower "Total cost to operate" Than Linux...

I'm all for competative advertising, etc, BUT...

Personally, whoever is in the marketing department that selects the ads to run, should be fired.

Just my $.02 worth...

cash-strapped monarchs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, billions of dollars in oil, huge gold mines, the largest zinc mine in the world, billions of tourists dollars, etc. etc....did you even read the blog?

Yeah, sounds cash-strapped to me. That's 'rich', coming from the "King of Prussia". Is somebody jealous?

The Discovery of Fire

[0111 1110]

The primitive man who first discovered fire could not have known that his discovery would eventually destroy all life on the planet. Or did he? Was there someone else with him?

Re:The Discovery of Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

grasslands, cattle, CO2, and CH4

[falconwolf]

Of course, as a counterpoint, cattle rangeland, as opposed to plowed wheatfields, can help slow global warming [meristem.com]. Plowed lands can send stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while well-grazed lands can actually help return carbon dioxide to the ground. Balance is the key here. So help save the earth, eat a steak every once in a while.

The problem with this is that cattle emit a lot of methane, CH4, which is a greater greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, CO2. So while grasslands used for a range for cattle may soak up or store more CO2 the cattle will be releasing more methane.

Falcon

Re:grasslands, cattle, CO2, and CH4

[elrous0]

So while grasslands used for a range for cattle may soak up or store more CO2 the cattle will be releasing more methane.

Not if we harness that methane to power Bartertown.

-Eric

Canada

[florescent_beige]

Every time I talk to a yank they invariably make the joke "We should invade Canada ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha who's going to stop us ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."

It's real funny. I laugh. But anyway if we don't have the water any more to save LA from certain destruction, myabe they won't care so much.

To be ignored by the yanks is bliss.

Now if only we can directly pipeline all our oil to China they'll get off our backs once and for all.

water

[falconwolf]

Also we've got plenty of water and unused land. Though the land and water that's convient for mankind's use is rapidly being rendered unusable in many areas.

Yes, there's plenty of water but only a small part of that is fresh water. What sources there are of fresh water are rapidly being depleted. And with global warming some places will loose their fresh water. For instance those living on or near Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa depend on a glacier there for their water and the same is true in Peru, yet when global warming has melted those glaciers there goes these people's fresh water.

Falcon

Re:water

[Mycroft_VIII]

That's what I meant by 'convient for man's use'
We've got so much water available that 'running out' is a rediculous concept. However rendering that water useable is the hard part as most of it's salt water.
The poisoning of ground water is just stupid as it's a lot easier to avoid doing that than to desalinate the oceans.
The problem with effects global warming is having on some areas is that our media and the ill informed seemed to somehow think that global warming is all 100% mankinds fault. Yet when you look at what we know of the past thermal cycles of the earth it's actually quite normal to go through periods of warming such as we're having right now.
At one point where I live now was beachfront property, yet today the Gulf of Mexico is several hundred miles south of me (just south of St. Louis Missouri, USA).

Mycroft

vitamin b complex

[falconwolf]

I prefer to get my vitamin b complex from yeast, especially in a bottle of beer or wine. Gosh I need to start brewing again.

Falcon

Lysine

[falconwolf]

I don't know about any proteins, but I'm about 90% sure the amino acid lyseine doesn't occur outside of animals.

According to this, L-Lysine vegetables do contain L-Lysine.

I noticed the "L" and am wondering if Lysine comes in "L"efthanded and Righthanded versions... I guess not, I first googled "L-Lysine" and got a bunch of results then I tried "r-Lysine" and didn't get any.

Falcon

Re:Lysine

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have more luck looking for dextro- and laevo- :)
(Right and left-handed to those of us who don't use Latin). So that would be D-lysine.

You should be able to find details about handedness of molecules and biomolecules on an introductory chem or biochem website (alternatively go hit up wikipedia!).

Basically, however, essentially all of the natural amino acids are laevo- or left-handed. Using racemic mixtures (that means a mixture or both D- and L-) or D-forms of amino acids can have useful effects (for medical purposes etc), and some amino acids don't have a chiral form... but generally, biological organisms just use L-forms of amino acids for everything.

(Note - other biomolecules, like carbohydrates differ, and you can find natural generation and use of D- or L- forms where they have chiral properties.)

The Inuit are already suffering

[falconwolf]

The Inuits are suffering from more than just Global Warming, they also suffer from PCB and other toxins:

Consensus Statement: Atlantic Coast Contaminants Workshop 2000

...

Participants reported on potential endocrine-related effects and impacts in wildlife and humans resulting from contaminant- and noncontaminant-related factors. Natural ecologic influences such as marine mammal strandings were discussed. Methods and biomarkers of endocrine-related impacts were presented including those based on inducible genes; clinical parameters and population monitoring of bottlenose dolphins; probable risk assessment of reproductive effects; comparative biochemistry of species-dependent, Ah receptor-based assays; and contaminant interaction and mechanisms of thyroid hormone-dependent processes. Possible contaminant-mediated impacts on alterations in population health, reproduction, steroid hormone homeostasis and/or immunologic alterations were outlined for cetaceans from the Atlantic Ocean; native Inuit peoples from northern Quebec, Canada; bald eagles from the northeastern United States; St. Lawrence beluga whales; polar bears from Svalbard, Norway; scaup ducks from Alaska or Canada wintering in the northeastern United States; and a variety of birds, fish, and aquatic mammals from Arctic, Atlantic, and other marine ecosystems. The utility of humans and aquatic wildlife as sentinels and surrogates of endocrine-related effects resulting from contaminant exposure was also discussed.

Falcon

Inuit

[falconwolf]

Now that Inuits finally get Nunavut they're in danger of loosing it.

Falcon

Canadian water to LA

[falconwolf]

It's real funny. I laugh. But anyway if we don't have the water any more to save LA from certain destruction, myabe they won't care so much.

Didn't you know Big Water wants to build pipelines from British Columbia to California?

Falcon

You might have more luck looking for dextro- and

[falconwolf]

Thanks, though I knew it dealt with handedness I didn't know Latin was used for it. I googled "D-lysine" as you recommended and got two results, though I didn't find it on either page, and while it was there on the cached version of the second page it wasn't on the first. Unfortunately it's in French and it's been way too long since I've used French as well as didn't learn enough when I did learn it to understand the webpage.

Falcon

melting ice

[falconwolf]

There has only been a small (0.5, 1cm) rise in seawater levels

Damn, if the floating ice shelves really were melting, surely the sea-levels would rocket!

You know of course water takes more volumn when solid than when liquid don't you? If not take a glass of water, freeze it and watch what happens. The reason sealevel would rise is because of melting glaciers.

Falcon

Sea levels rise due to thermal expansion

[quokkapox]

No, the main reason sea levels will rise as a result of global warming is due to thermal expansion of the ocean itself. Water expands when it gets warmer. This is not as obvious as the melting of ice that is not already floating, but it will contribute more overall to rising sea levels.

Source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Global Cooling

[falconwolf]

for many years during my lifetime Global Cooling is what we worried about. A lot of people thought we were headed toward another ice age.

I'd say much of the worry or concern about global cooling was because of the Nuclear Winter.

Falcon

Re:Global Cooling

[0111 1110]

I'd say much of the worry or concern about global cooling was because of the Nuclear Winter [rutgers.edu].

No. It wasn't.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? what? he's a hornythologist?

Dubya rejecting Kyoto

[falconwolf]

When the Dubya regime rejects the science behind global warming in order to justify rejection of the Kyoto

In no way, shape or form am I a supporter of him, but when Dubya rejected Kyoto it wasn't because he rejected the science behind it. Instead he said it would put the US at a disadvantage with India and China, so I did some research and found out he was right. Kyoto puts no emissions limits on either country. The US puts out about 22 tons of CO2 per person whereas both China and India are closer to 2 tons per person. With a population of 300M the US puts out about 6.6B tons of CO2. With more than 2B people together if both China and India tripled their emissions to 6 tons, the US would have to eliminate all emissions just to stay at the same level of emission globally.

Now as for nuclear power, while I am against them, if a way could be found so storage of nuclear wastes like Dubya is trying to do at Yucca Mt isn't needed I might go along with nuclear power, oh I'd also demand that government NOT subsidize the industry which it currently does. Instead I'd rather see government push for conservation and alternative energy sources like PV and wind, and let the free market work.

Falcon

Sure you are a troll, but I will respond

[arcite]

The average temp in the arctic has risen 1.2 degress per DECADE. Truly ignorance is bliss. Its people like yourself who make excuses like, you don't understand climate change and you think the instruments scientists are using aren't accurate. Burry your head in the sand like most people do. :::rolls eyes:::

Re:Sure you are a troll, but I will respond

[0111 1110]

The average temp in the arctic has risen 1.2 degress per DECADE

Have any references for THAT. Although it still wouldn't prove global warming, just Arctic warming at one weather station. Seriously. Where can I find that data? Do you have an Arctic weather station I can search for data at GISS?

Or maybe some data I can request from CDIAC. Nice chaps. I'm sure they would be willing to help.

In any case, I was talking about GLOBAL average temperatures not arctic ones. Interesting that you didn't respond to that.

Truly ignorance is bliss.

ad hominem attack. You are calling me ignorant. You realize that you are acting just like the stereotypical environmentalist?

Its people like yourself who make excuses like, you don't understand climate change and you think the instruments scientists are using aren't accurate

Here's yet another semi ad hominem attack. In a roundabout way you are trying to make the whole idea of instrument accuracy as far back as the 19th century seem ludicrous. It is not. Go find me a thermometer that I can buy even in 2005 that is designed for measuring air temperature. You will see that most of them are only accurate to +/- 0.5 deg celsius at best and then only within a narrow temperature range (if you read the fine print). This is not accurate enough to detect temperature changes of only 1 degree. Remember we are talking about 2005 here. Not 1865. What were the temperature gathering devices like in 1865? Do you have to research it first? Who's the ignorant one?

Burry your head in the sand like most people do

Ad hominem. Why are you all so predictable?

For the love of Jebus, mod parent up!

[arcite]

Whatever you do, don't buy coastal property ;/

Re:Here we go again...

[Cyberherbalist]

Although I would have denied it a couple of years ago -- at least I would have said there's not enough evidence -- global warming does appear real. However, it may not be as bad as it is put out to be. In the March 2005 Scientific American there was an article suggesting that except for global warming we would be clearly headed into the next ice age. Go to your library if you don't have the March issue, otherwise you're forced to buy it online from SciAm, but here's part of the article's summary:

New evidence suggests that concentrations of CO2 started rising about 8,000 years ago, even though natural trends indicate they should have been dropping. Some 3,000 years later the same thing happened to methane, another heat-trapping gas. The consequences of these surprising rises have been profound. Without them, current temperatures in northern parts of North America and Europe would be cooler by three to four degrees Celsius--enough to make agriculture difficult. In addition, an incipient ice age--marked by the appearance of small ice caps--would probably have begun several thousand years ago in parts of northeastern Canada. Instead the earth's climate has remained relatively warm and stable in recent millennia.

So, all that CO2 in the atmosphere may be saving our butts from getting frozen off.

Re: You might have more luck looking for dextro- a

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I did a quick Google for it, and it seems D-lysine is only really used to form a surface for cell culture plates (as a polymer); it seems to work like collagen in encouraging cells to stick to the plates and cell culture flasks used in biochemistry etc. :)

euthanize the planetkillers

[Anonymous Coward]

2) No sorting or separating or anything of the sort should need to be done. In fact, I should be able to throw everything away from chicken bones to styrofoam right into my recycle / trash bin and the people who care should be doing the sorting and recycling.

3) Don't up my taxes for a recyling program.

I *know* this will get modded troll or flamebait, but it is a serious counter argument.

You DON'T see the contradiction you make in steps 2 and 3?? Hmm. OK

How about this then? Why do you even HAVE kids if you're selfishly fucking their future? So `someone can take care of you when you get old`? You already implied you don't care if the world you leave them falls into the crapper.

If the world goes to the crapper before YOU do, I hope you are euthanized and fed to the poor.

No wonder so many people hate Americans. You admit you don't care about pissing in the water supply. I would be less angry if you were ignorant, or repeated conservative views such `as global warming is a THEORY.'

Please, sir, if your children are old enough, show them your post. Let them know what kind of person you are.

Back In Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Kansas. Why the hell do I care if a bunch of baby-seal hunters get muddy feet? Or if island-hoppers have to get a new island?

I've got enough problems now that gasoline's TWO FREAKIN DOLLARS, dammit!