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Global Warming Past The Point of No Return
mad_goldfish writes "The UK's Independent is running a front page story today on a scientific report claiming that global warming is now unstoppable, after measuring changes in the level of ice in the arctic." From the article: "The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a 'tipping point' beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically. Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average." Either way, someone wins a bet.
According to wikipedia, the greenland ice sheet, if fully melted, will raise global sea level by 7.2 meters (23.6 feet). This would put large portions of many coastal cities underwater.
Fortunately, there are other factors that should mitigate this, such as increased mass of the antarctic ice sheet due to increased moisture levels. See sea level rise.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
No matter how much oil you personally burn, the total global human population will use a fixed amount of oil (we use as much oil as you can pump out of the ground, and we have reached the point where it is very hard to use more oil). So conservation does not help global warming, it just lowers the price so that the Chineese can burn more, and it discourages alternative fuel research. For the good of humanity, it is important that you burn as much oil as you can afford to, in order to bump up prices and encourage alternatives to oil. If consumption is really high, we will switch to other sources while there is still a lot of oil in the ground. Worst case is conservation that keeps the price of oil low enough so that we pump and burn all the oil available to us over the next 50 years.
There may be debate over the source of this warming (and from what I've read, I'm bending over backwards to be fair), but the evidence seems pretty clear that it is happening. What worries me is how fragile our current societies will prove to be in the face of big, (relatively) sudden changes like the ones described here.
... and the solar people predict that we're already on the downward swing to a new minimum which we'll reach around 2032, and it could very well be a *real* deepfreeze which makes the Maunder Minimum look like Maui in a heatwave.
Our society isn't as fragile as during the Medieval Warm Period when the Vikings settled Greenland and birch and willow trees grew there natively and treeline was several hundred feet higher in Iceland than it is now. So current temperatures are not even close to matching those already experienced in historic times, and we did just fine then. (Well, depending on your definition of "we". Some cultures were completely wiped out, some did great, in roughly inverse correspondence to how well they did in the Little Ice Age that followed it and we're still recovering from.)
In any case, give it ten years and this whole global warming debate is going to seem as ludicrously wrongheaded as debates over Lamarckian evolution do today, that's my call. See, I come down pretty solidly on the side of the solar-variability theorists and think the anthropogenic theorists have next to nothing in the way of evidence
I'd actually prefer the standard media runaway warming view, to be honest, because that I could address nicely for my expected lifespan by just moving to my new Ellesmere Island beachfront property and investing in the new Nunavut wheat fields. If the solar people are actually right like I figure they probably are, though, in a decade it's going to be pretty darn undeniable that the world is indeed getting sharply colder, and the four-five decades after that are going to REALLY. SUCK.
i recall reading Environmentalists in the '70s who would point to the Jimmy Carter gasoline lines and overpopulation, and claim that if we didn't Do Something Now (that generally included sending them money), the acid rain would kill us all by 1990. But I was busy with work and didn't notice the end of everything. How was it?
The Global Warming Problem was presented as a problem that was SO BAD we had to Do Something before we fully understood the problem. Then Kyoto came along and told us to sacrifice trillions on the altar of C02 emissions. NO, we must understand the problem before we can effect a solution thereto, otherwise we're no smarter than savages before a stone idol manipulated by its priests.
Environmentalism is not a new response to natural phenomena: "Behold! Moon goddess is eating the sun god. We'll all die unless you give me a sacrifice to appease her wrath." False prophets always run the risk of overplaying their hand. They get modest returns from modest promises and threats. Then they get greedy and escalate the promises/threats. But they feel control slipping from their grasp and then the threats become even more dire and their cries more shrill. All right, enviro-prophets, you've said the world shall surely end. Here's your haiku:
Rachel Carlson's
Jeremiad predicts doom.
Where are the Persians?
That failed to account for how much CO2 is being released by the earth?
Or is it based on one of those other flawed model that failed to take something else into account, only we aren't sophisticated to detect it yet?
Seriously, wake me when you have some useful information.
1. The energy stored in the Carribean has raised the sea temperature by one degree - and hurricane/storm strength is directly impacted by the heat storage in the sea/ocean.
2. Half of the damage - or more - is caused by the destruction of the surrounding wetlands around cities.
3. Much of the dollar cost of the damage is caused by the anti-environmental building policies that encourage the construction of expensive properties (like those of a certain senator) and their rebuilding after storms and hurricanes. As we provide economic incentives that override the normal economic disincentives, the wealthy move to the coast and build fancy developments that are more exposed, and sink more wealth into coastal areas.
4. The US population on the coast is growing faster than the rest of the country, while the empty areas that are in the middle are emptying out.
5. The quantity of hurricanes of significant level has not increased worldwide, but the strength of those major storms has increased dramatically (double).
6. The Carribean goes thru cycles of hurricanes - according to ship registries and historic records, we were in a lull for a while and now return to a long period of more hurricanes. Since the power of these is now double the usual amount (or more), and more property is exposed, and fewer barriers exist since many have been removed or the silt not permitted to dump on the land as used to happen in NOLA and coastal areas - well, basically we should expect a lot of massive hurricanes that we have never seen before.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Its odd that so many people think this isn't a big deal, siting issues like "we don't know enough" or "its happened before in our geological history"...
If you actually put some common sense into, that is the carbon cycle over millions of years has store sh1tloads of carbon away underground, and that in the next hundred years its very likely we will have put it all up in the atmosphere... and that carbon contributes to global warming, that has the side effects of unpredictable violent weather, and a general slowing of the earth on its axis (like Venus)... you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
An analogy is forest fires... forests have burned forever, contributing to the nitrogen cycle and carbon cycle. But now we're hell bent on putting them out. Sure, it means not-so-much carbon, but the result is a f4cked up nitrogen cycle and a build up of biomass just waiting to be a serious blaze. Why do we fight the fires then? Protect peoples homes? OR to protect the forestry industry?
So the ocean rises a few inches, and a bunch of well established species get extinct; just think of how many times we get to rebuild New Orleans, Miami, and such...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
But hell lets blame everything but the SUN. Which by the way has been getting hotter lately.
No it hasn't.
Not to mention have been in a hugely active solar flare cycle.
Which has absolutely no effect whatsoever, other than to cause intense aurorae - thanks to the Earth's magnetic fields.
But hell why would we take our main source of life and energy on the earth into account?
we have.
Because maybe you would have to deal with the facts...
Like all that human-produced CO2 in the atmosphere?
Maybe science can be twisted and used as a tool for the environmentalisst.
Or ignored by those who don't want to face the truth.
Well, if there was no need to be snide, then there there was no need in the OP to be drab.
Gosh, nobody can ever be funny around here. Do Slashdotters ever get out of their houses and lighted up? (Never mind. Forget I asked that.)
Our actions do have an impact, which I believe should be minimized.
Are we absolutely certain that we want to minimize our changes on the environment? I certainly agree that we want to make the environment as suitable for life as possible, but I'm not so keen on the idea of letting nature take its course. Nature is a rather violent thing that tends to destroy and remake on a regular basis. Even without our interference, nature is guaranteed to revolve through extinction and speciation cycles.
The difference between man and nature is that man attempts to control these cycles for his own benefit, and hopefully to the benefit of other life as well. Sure, we got a bit carried away with our technological prowess toward the turn of the 20th century, but by the end of the century we were more sensitive to the life around us. I believe that's a good thing.
But the solution to the Earth's violent and chaotic changes is not to stop meddling and hope it all corrects itself (because it won't, history can prove that), the solution is to change the world around us for the purpose of securing life for ourselves, and plants and animals around us.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"HUGE changes have occurred, yet the earth has always pulled back to an equilibrium point that has provided life."
That will be a comfort after we have gone ahead and made the Earth uninhabitable for ourselves even if temporarily...maybe this is the equilibrium you speak of?
What really sucks is when people who are sensible skeptical about controversial research also have data. Because then you have to actually put up some of your own instead of firing off snide comments about people whose views are inconvenient.
It doesn't take much effort to look at historical temperature readings and notice that there is a cycle of warming and cooling that the planet undergoes, and the modern industrial age happens to coincidence with one rather closely. In fact, the current warming trend started about 10,000 years ago. While I can't say with complete authority that auto emissions and industrial pollutants weren't present at the time, I feel comfortable in hazarding a guess that the small population of humans were contributing negligably to the planet's greenhouse gases.
What IS interesting is that this warming cycle, ramps up over about 10,000 years and then gradually cools. Repeated melting and refreezing of the ice caps appears to be normal and we do not currently know whether climate change causes greenhouse gases to increase or the other way around. Or if they both occur in synchrony and are caused by something else entirely.
The danger here is that the cooling mechanism has failed to kick in, and it normally would have begun LONG before American capitalism and human greed stepped in to fuck up the planet.
Doubtless that our own contributions to global GTG content is not helping any, but I do not believe that there is conclusive evidence that our planet's temparture is primarily or even partially influenced to any significant degree by the behavior of its inhabitants at the current time. Something is different right now, that's for sure. We may or may not be the cause of it. There's at least a few components at work here, however, that we are not responsible for and cannot do anything about.
Sadly, there's a vacuum of intellectual integrity in the global warming debate precisely because of smug shitheads like you.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
People think "the ice age" is a defining moment. There was a mini-ice age in the 17th century. There was one that ended maybe 14,000 years ago. Those are NOT the LONG TERM cycles that repeat on earth.
Those 5 CO2 peaks over the last 400,000 years came from the
Vostok Antarctica ice cores (about every 100,000 years). Our actual CO2 might be expected to go a bit higher based on the prior peaks, but then something repeatedly changes in the world's ecosphere in the past cycles and there is an ABRUPT drop in CO2 in the past history.
Why did it go up?
Why did it turn?
What long term sun cycles or sun spots only exist, which we have not detected yet?
Does a direct hit by a large coronal mass ejection/s offer a drastic change to the earth's enviroment?
Why did it go down precipitously?
Once you know what caused it, does it have so much power behind it that man can or can NOT change it?
If you look at facts instead of blathering, it becomes apparent that scientists and interested laymen yet today have no proof of what moves the momentum of the truely long term ecosystem's atmosphere.
I personally believe we will find that man is incapable of altering the long term climatic cycles, and at some point Canada & Northern Europe and Asia will again go under kilometers of ice, and man (just like the Vikings in Greenland), will only be able to look on in horror as the ice relentlessly takes over the land they used to work and live on.
You can easily see the CO2 charts on the web, but I won't post any URLs.
Bo
I think it is Hubris for humans to think that we can destroy the Earth. We certainly can make it uninhabitable for certain flora and fauna, including Humans, but we can't destroy it.
My friend, you sorely underestimate us. First off, do you have any idea of the power of our nuclear arsenal? The bombs that hit Japan at the end of WWI may have had yeilds of a dozen kilotons or so. Contrast that with the Soviet Tsar Bomba made less than 20 years later and capable of over 50 MEGAton yeilds. Do you really think that there hasn't been any further refinement in the 40 years since?
It is entirely possible that we could knock the earth out of it's orbit entirely from here. However, it that isn't possilbe, it's entirely possible to knock asteroids and comets out of their solar orbits. We have the math and technical ability to put them on a collison course with the earth. And then... KAPOW! That would be enough kinetic energy to send this little ball of water and sand into a decaying orbit. All it would take would be a little "team work".
I'm a gnu world man.
BZZT! Wrong Answer!
The correct answer is, "Ethanol has traditionally been more expensive than crude oil. However, with gas pricing rising, Ethanol blends have helped keep prices of gasoline down. Now the only issue remaining is to find a good method for phasing out gasoline rather than a direct cut over to Ethanol.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Sources, monetary and otherwise for conflicting studies...
Greenpeace: Global warming is in effect
OPEC: Global warming doesn't exist
PETA: Global warming is in effect
George Bush: Global warming doesn't exist
Kyoto Accord: Global warming is in effect...
There are many sources of studies and they definitively create two sides of the fence. I grew up in Estevan, SK and there are two coal fired plants within a ten minute drive of one another. Estevan has increased levels of skin cancer, and lung problems, lots of external issues like eyes and asthma and a perma haze over a town of 11,000 people. Not ot mention if you look out to the east of the city (Hwy 39) on google maps you'll see the wonderful spill piles from years of careless strip mining. While the results are in fact cloudy, you can't change the fact that what we're doing to the environment is having an effect in some way.
Mother nature is way more powerful than a lot of people realize (see: trying to control a hurricane). I agree that Earth will continue on it's merry way wether we manage to kill ourselves or not in the process of stripping it bare and filling the sky with garbage.
It'll all work out in the end, we only notice and care because we're the only ones aware enough to see the problems we're creating.
IANALOOA
I always heard the same thing about the name being a marketing ploy. Looks like you are spot on about the west coast. Wikipedia of Greenland
Not really. Just because the temperature rises doesn't automatically mean you have good soil.
Also, it's doubted whether the Saudis can actually keep their promises.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
A professor gave a presentation on Global warming in our company yesterday. One of the key points he raised was that we contribute 5.5 times carbon di-oxide as compared to the rest of the world. He also gave a statistics on what is the best fuel, turns out it is not Hydrogen but rather it is Natural gas. He painted a piture where by 2300 Toronto would be like A(Hot)tlanta. I hope Bush thinks twice before neglecting the Global warming. I hope he does not attribute it to some other Intelligent Design.
No matter the overall climatic changes, OUR activites have made it much worse and much faster.
We *still* don't know what the human contribution has done to the cycle - if anything. Most scientists agree that humans are having an impact on the speed of global warming, but no one - not any person, anywhere on the planet - can make an authoritative claim on the degree of this impact. It could be large, it could be small, it could be entirely unnoticeable compared to natural processes.
And that includes you. Neither you nor anyone else can make the claim that humans have made it "much worse" and "much faster" than it would've been without human contribution. You don't have a clue any more than anyone else does.
Ice is melting everywhere. Glaciers are going, Siberia is melting, releasing methane in a vicious cycle, villages in Alaska are disappearing in the meltoff of the land, we're getting four times the normal number of hurricanes in a year -- and they are stronger, for the waters are warmer than they have been in centuries. The Northwest Passage over the arctic ocean is opening up as the ice floes melt.
This is evidence of the events, not the cause. All of these things are true (except for the hurricane bit, which you got wrong); blaming them on humans as the major cause is a crock of shit. It could very well be true that these things would be happening if humans were still stuck in the Stone Age, albeit at (possibly) a somewhat slower pace. Only a massive infusion of cash and personnel into various related sciences (e.g., geology, climatology) will ever be able to answer this question; divine relevation via alarmist propaganda isn't a good subsitute for actual empirical evidence.
The only choice we have, in the short run, is whether we wish to mitigate the changes by cutting down greenhouse gases -- immediately.
You have no evidence whatsoever that this would slow down global warming. Best guess at this point is that *if* humans are having a major impact on global warming it's probably far too late to mitigate the effects. And forget about reversing them, we have no clue how to do that.
Even if it were true, the obvious answer is to replace coal-fired plants with nuclear breeder reactors, and IC engine-driven cars with hydrogen (as inefficient as that is). Think that's going to happen with extremist greenie fuckers pissing their shorts every time someone says the word "nuclear"?
Of course, the same industrial and financial firms who wished to maintain their status quo by resisting change and financing PR fake science will shift gears in the new warm world and find massive profit in the meltdown.
Ah, I see. Your whole argument devolves down to a pseudo-socialist rant that amounts to "It's the fault of the EEEEEVILLL corporations!". Please, get a fucking clue; if humans are to blame then it isn't the corporations at fault - it's YOU, asshole. YOU are the one to blame. So suck it up and take it like a man, rather than trying to pass the buck to someone else.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This is a synopsis of Crichton's views, what he wrote in the appendix of his book. The particular flaws in 'estimation science' (an oxymoron?) are detailed during the main book.
The quote:
A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues. I have bee reading environmental texts for three years, in itself a hazardous undertaking. But I have had an opportunity to look at a lot of data, and to consider many points of view. I conclude:
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -Berra
Couple of points...
I'll lump you in with others, perhaps unfairly, who seem to think that any attempt at conservation will DESTROY OUR ECONOMY, and therefore must be avoided until absolute evidence is found otherwise. Funny thing, it seems to me that energy is an *expense*, and perhaps in other less car-happy societies, it's a good idea to reduce expenses. I've done what I can do insulate and seal my house, or instance. When I buy a car, I take mileage into account. I buy incandescent lights, but that's because my wife doesn't like the color balance of the compact fluorescents. I drive to work, because I'm too far to bike, alone because I usually need time flexibility.
There are *many* things that can be done to reduce energy usage without compromising lifestyle.
There are more things that can be done without serious impacts to lifestyle.
Yet as a nation we practically refuse to do anything at all - perhaps because the terrorists will WIN if we do. (unfair remark, I admit) One thing from the past that really FROSTED me was when Reagan cut $5e7 from the budget to help people insulate their homes, to save money, then ran up gigantic defense deficits. The $5e7 wasn't even a pimple on the deficit, and would have done some serious good.
If our economy can't tolerate efforts to consume energy wisely, then something's wrong. In that case, we ought to be fixing it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.