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Failing Ocean Current Raises Fears of Mini Ice Age
Designadrug writes "This article from Newscientist paints a picture of a major climate control mechanism teetering on the brink:
"The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.""
I have a lot of trouble believing that global warming (however caused) will _decrease_ ocean currents. I would expect it to do precisely the opposite, increase them, as driving forces (temperature differences) increase. Or does someone have data that global warming is more at the poles than at the equator?
Yes, I'm confused too. However, it stands to reason that we humans are doing some really bad things to the earth, and predicting outcomes resulting from our behavior may be beyond our intellectual reach.
Free iPod?
You can't make anything that would work on that massive a scale without spending as much money as would be lost if South America suddenly vanished. Nature is much bigger and more powerful than us and is totally beyond our control through methods like that.
I am Spartacus
"They're the ones that refused to follow the Kyoto protocol."
Because obviously, following a treaty designed to economically punish the United States for a few years would have solved all of this.
if we spent 1/10th of the amount of mental energy we now spend playing the political blame game of climate change rather than just dealing with climate change, imagine what we could do
fact: the climate is changing
why?
who cares why! forget the blame game!
just deal with it!
whether 100% man made or 100% natural or any combination in between, it's about time we put our considerable skills of human innovation to task and simply endeavour to preserve the climate as it is now. or as it was in 1800. or as it could be if the sahara were a new amazon. whatever: the important part is to stop thinking we are helpess or to deny our effect on our environment, and just get on with fixing it, or, preserving it unnaturally in a state we like, take your pick, whatever sounds better to your particular political inclination. we need less of the politics
seed the dead zones of the ocean with iron, let the phytoplankton bloom, suck out the CO2, wait a few decades
we need to start thinking less about how we are hurting the environment beyond our control, we need to start thinking less about how we are helpless victims of climate change, and we need to start thinking more about what us human beings are: the stewards of this planet, for better or for worse
for better, i vote, so vote with me: positive action. not negative innaction or negative action
we need to tinker MORE with the climate, not less, with a full recognizance of the fact that we are the deciding factor on which way this planet's environment goes
the game is up, the planet is ours. we have our hands on the global thermostat. the solution to our problems is not to take our hands off the thermostat, or deny our hand is there. but to simply start fiddling with the thermostat in the direciton we desire
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your hummer is also half price if you own a large enough business, courtesy of the tax payers. Thank you Bush administration for this great transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich!
3. With ocean levels higher, the ocean is able to absorb more energy, which shuts down the warm ocean currents.
This statement is false, I'm pretty sure. Oceanic currents are driven by the Earth's rotation and some wind, as I've commented in this thread.
Also, your step (4) leads directly back to step (1).
m
Because obviously, following a treaty designed to economically punish the United States for a few years would have solved all of this.
Regardless of the economical consequences, wasn't the Kyoto protocol designed to prevent global warming?
Oh, but the moment it has any economical consequences, suddenly it's an evil plot to take money away from "our precious and beloved country!"
Sorry to crush you with this, but the world's needs are more important than a few enterprises' economical whims.
The reason that this is important is that it validates some of the predictions made by the global warming models (http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/climate_dynamics/cli mate_impact_webpage.html/). Pay specific attention to the section titled "Thermohaline circulation changes". Essentially, it states that with the arctic ice melting, more sweet water (non-salty) gets released into the Atlantic Ocean, which changes the density of the water there, which in turn disrupts the gulf stream that keeps Europe warm.
It seems the idiots are out in force today. All I see is stupid "The Day after Tomorrow" jokes and braindead comments about how they think that "the earth is supposed to get warmer, and now it's getting colder! Stupid scientists!". Sheesh. Apparently, science education has been going downhill long before Intelligent Design flap.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Sorry to crush you with this, but the world's needs are more important than a few enterprises' economical whims.
Yeah. But when your whole culture is just that, a few enterprises, it could mean a lot.
It can also mean your culture isn't very deep and that affecting these few enterprises' economical whims might actualy improve things around, but that's another story...
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
when you fall down a cliff and break your legs, you go back up and try again to see if it works better the second time?
no, when you break your leg, you reset your bones and you put them in a cast
what would you do? lie there helplessly with broken legs? that seems to be exactly what you are proposing
you seem to think that because it was stupid to break our legs, that realizing that is all that is needed to unbreak our legs. no, they are broken: we have polluted our environment, the climate is changing. now what? curse our situation and pout? or DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
why is it impossible for you to concieve that we humans can fix our environment, or that, accepting or not accepting that we can fix it, that we shouldn't try?
why is your helplessness a superior attitude about the environment than my desire for positive action?
too much of the environmental debate are these two camps:
1. negative action: we pollute, oh well, the planet will take care of itself: "the solution to pollution is dilution". the current hurricane seasons in the usa should make such people realize this situation is untenable
2. (you) negative inaction: we pollute, so stop polluting! go back to the stone age, stop driving cars, making plastics, etc. go back to living in caves.
what we need is positive action: we pollute, we can mitigate that to some extent, but we can also get MORE involved and start manmade processes that balance out our effects: we belch co2? ok, well then start some large scale manmade carbon sinks to counteract it... because no matter how much you minimize our co2 emissions, they are still there and unnatural... so BALANCE IT OUT
why is this so anathema to you?
so when you break your legs, don't you want to fix them?
or do you just want to lie there helpessly?
blame games and learned helplessness do not help our situation
your attitude is poisonous to the debate on the environment
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If the Gulf Stream isn't pushing as much water toward Europe, then the water is lingering longer in the Gulf of Mexico, which goes a long way to explain why so many storms churned up to Category 5 hurricanes as soon as they reached the Gulf all through this autumn. Doesn't sound like fun for North America either.
Although your point is well taken that humans are part of earth as well, I do think it would take more than a little ice age to end us. We managed to survive in Ice Age eras before, we can atleast by duplicating that success even if it may cost us the temporary 'hibernation' of high technology society. We'd make it through and eventually rebuild and do it all overagain. With modern technology, I think we'll do rather well. If we can keep men in space for years at a time, inhabit Antartica for periods, I don't think we'll see the last of the Homo genus dieing off from a little ice age any time soon.
Demented But Determined.
I don't know if the treaty makes any difference, but do you really think the climate change is not going to punish the USA economically?
Just off the top of my head, I would estimate that all the energy ever released by human activity, from the first cave man's fire to the Atomic Age, would still be many orders of magnitude less than the amount of energy needed to separate enough fresh water from sea water to affect current flows in the North Atlantic.
Just like the so-called global warming crisis is mere statistical noise when measured against the natural background of changes we know have taken place since the dawn of time.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
...nuff said.
If you steal this sig, the only people who will profit are professional criminals.
The second largest (by total, by country) producers of CO2 are the Chinese mainlanders. There are just so many of them. But Kyoto did nothing to stop them from producing CO2....because they were a developing nation.
And the only way we could have made Kyoto would have been to build a bunch of nuke plants. Good thing we have the tech - we have been exporting trouble free nukes to other countries for years. Built a bunch in Japan.
But we will never build one here because of all the green knee jerkers, and the endless mantras of "solar", "wind" and all the other more or less useless, non-working tech that everyone chants in response to, "Well, nukes would be cheaper, more reliable, and would pollute less".
Europe was much better positioned for Kyoto because they produce a lot of their energy with nukes.
Do you really think it realistic that huge, powerful, and rich environmental organisations would perform evil acts that only employees of sensible and socially responsible oil companies can save us from? Is it reasonable or realistic that environmental scientists, who in the real world are willing to forgo lucrative careers to take low-paid academic positions because they love and care about researching the natural world, would cause massive destruction of the natural world to score political points?
In the real world, who has the most money for public relations and the most political capital? The ex-chief executive officer of the giant energy corporation Halliburtons is the vice president of the USA for goodness sake. Could the head of Greenpeace ever hope to reach such an influential and powerful position?
All the local environmental fund raising events I've been involved with have been in conjuction with people that have very little financial resources but care deeply about recycling, local environment issues, etc. Very different from Crichton's own protagonist, who zips about the world in a Gulfstream Jet.
When was the last time you saw a vote so one sided in this country?
Let's see... how about back when everyone voted to invade Iraq?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
No, the reason "global climate change" is being used is because the enviro-wackos felt foolish after their fears of "global cooling" were disproven. Then, the dire predictions about Europe getting colder undermined the concern of "global warming". "Global climate change" is an ingenious attempt to attribute ANY change in climate to man, and bemoan how that change will be the end of life as we know it. Our climate DOES change, GLOBALLY. The jury is still out on whether man can really upset the balance and cycles irreparably through our actions. But we'd better all live miserable lives just in case.
Consider that the third world and much of asia is desperate to ramp up industrial production to help their economies grow. The way they look at it, they can either worry about global warming or the bigger fish they have to fry, i.e. poverty and catching up to the rest of the world. Are they going to spend huge amounts of money trying to clean up their industries? No. They're going to pollute the fuck out of everything while they manufacture all the disposable crap they'll be selling to the rest of us. Crap we ASKED them to produce, of course.
Consider that the first world has already shifted most of its heavy industry to the third world. The only thing most of US can do to reduce global warming is stop driving cars and use clean energy generation methods. Is this going to happen? No. Not while our self-absorbed leaders are so fascinated with the oil economy they're willing to overthrow other countries to increase their supply.
Conclusion: The situation is completely and hopelessly fucked. Everyone is acting in their pathetic selfish self-interest, and nobody is willing to give anything up to change anything. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
I think you nailed the real issues at work here and I thank you for that.
What's needed is a radical reaction, should we *really* want to curve the global changes about to kick our asses. But *who* is really ready to abandon some petty comfort to reduce his/her energy consumption? It's not a treaty or some tame government decisions that will truly make a difference if the global populace keeps expecting things to be solved without any effort on their side. Western societies are made of servile, assisted and selfish individuals who, for the most, expect others to solve the bigger issued without them ever lifting a finger (hey, that's what I pay tax for!).
Drive/ride a power-efficient vehicle (and less) or public transports when possible, use low-power lightbulbs, don't abuse the heating and A/C, put solar tiles on your roof (for hot water and electricity), properly insulate your home (VERY important if you live in temperate/cold regions), etc. Just these few technical changes and some behavior adjustments would already make a HUGE difference in the yearly domestic energy bill of any country, which means less CO2 (and other crap) released in our collective environment. But also less taxes paid over oil...
Industries comply more and more with environmental regulations and since energy has become more expensive it has become a concern to use it as efficiently as possible, since in the end energy saved = money saved. But I don't see individual homes being targeted by energy-saving regulations, incandescent lightbulbs taxed so people stop buying them, etc.
Unless there's a true collective initiative (followed by at least 80% of the population), what we now call "efforts" to address the true problems won't do much to reduce the impact of what Mother Nature is about to slap us with.
I think humanity is about to get its collective ass kicked in a proverbial way... Hopefully it will happen quickly enough for the collective memory to remain and be passed to future generations, so they won't repeat the process (hey, one can hope! It's free!).
Cheers,
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Actually, no. It was not. Kyoto was designed to slow the rate of global warming by a little bit as a first baby step and temporary stop-gap measure to get the ball rolling so that the world community could start talking about what to do as a real solution. Kyoto was never designed to solve the problem (and anyone who claims that is lying, probably trying to smear it with the tired "Kyoto won't fix anything therefore we shouldn't do it" line).
So what we are seeing is the right-wing fuckers and the Bush administration crying like babies over the introductory step towards the problem. It took seven fucking years to get even the first hint of action, something that was only supposed to slow it and give us a little more time while we cleaned up our act for real. At this rate, the real solutions will never come. Many climatologists already believe we have passed the point of no return, the only question is how bad will it get before whatever fixes we do finally adopt take effect. But we know the next hundred years are only going to get worse, there is nothing we can do about that. Right now, we are fighting for the fifth or sixth generation ahead of us, whom we will never see.
Kyoto was not designed to fix anything. It was an introduction to real discussion. And we killed it, and with it any hope for our future for generations to come.
(While I'm at it, China and India both signed Kyoto, and they will both be subjected to the same restrictions that we would have been within ten years, for the restrictions ratchets up on them as their economies ramp up. And going by standard of living, both China and India are still third-world and will be for a while yet. They will be regulated as first-world nations when they will have barely reached second-world status. "Economic catastrophe for the U.S.," my ass!)
Thirteen years means nothing in a world where "climate" is defined as the weather over a thirty year period, which is already completely arbitrary in itself. Various patterns exist that take place over longer periods, including sunspot activity.
Also, is the thirty percent a decrease from some sort of primal mean value? Or perhaps from a peak period with softer weather?
It's impossible to make any meaningful statement on climate and climate variabilities, let alone climate change, without taking all those questionmarks and other factors into account. I'm sure this report will cause another hype amongst environmentalists. So be it. If people want to call a decade of colder winters a "mini ice age", that's fine by me, but I for one will not panic.
Less water the world over. Probably the 2 best countries with fairly good water will be America and Russia. In contrast, China and India (the 2 most populus nations) will have quite a bit less water.
Do you really want to live in a world where two other highly-populated nuclear powers face political instability because of a shortage of water while you apparently still have enough to spare?I would like to think that I have started to do my part. I drive a motor scooter to work for about a 10 mile one way commute. I consume about 1 gallon of gas a week.
I live in a very old house with windows that bleed heat and walls with no insulation. I have replaced all of the windows in two of the bedrooms. Also in those two rooms, I have installed insulation in the walls and upgraded the insulation in the ceiling. I have already noticed a significant change in my home energy bills. As soon as I have the funds to do so, I will finish upgrading the rest of the house.
Now, will this solve all of the worlds problems? No, I am only one person, and my impact on global energy consumption is not all that significant. But it definitely can't hurt. However, if more and more people did as I have done, then maybe things would start to change.
Suppose someone tries to make decisisions about how to handle their health from 2 measurements taken just seconds apart?
Really, depends if you're having a heart attack or not.
Medic 1: "Nah, look he's fine, his long-term yearly heart rate has only dropped 0.05%"
Medic 2: "But he's turning blue... and he's stopped thrashing about!"
Medic 1: "Look,long term averages show that this is just a minor blip. He'll be up and about in no time!"
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I would like to see more study and effort on the are of how to live with it. We have lots of population resources right along the sea at sealevel. Should we move as much of it as we can upland a little? Many of the climate models I've seen show much of the USA reducing average rainfall because of this. We have lots of necessary resources (food, farms) located in semi arid areas. Are we risking food supplies to possible droughts? Can we save them with improved water management? Can we move those to other areas with better climate predictions?
Lets hear some talk of climate change preparedness rather than prevention. There is too much infighting on that topic allready, with the money, blame, politics and everything else flying crazily in too many directions. With that much infighting, it is not likely we could accomplish anything even if we knew for certain what needed to be done. Hopefully we can come together better on ideas to live with it than we do for preventing it.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I think it is safe to say that for some species it will be worse while for some it will be better. Some species will find their native climate expanded, some will find it diminshed or non-existant, some will find it shifted geographically. Some mobile species will be able to move and adapt. Others that are less mobile or less quick to spread will suffer. There will likely be some decrease in biodiversity initially but life on earth will go on.
So how will this affect human life? As growing seasons and rainfall patterns change, again some will benefit and others will suffer. Food shortages, etc, will likely lead to famine, economic crisis, and possibly war. The population density has somewhat optimized itself (I realize this isn't universally true) to the availability of resources. It seems unlikely that a global climate change would be such that arid climates would suddenly get sufficient rain for agriculture, while no negative effects would occur in currently productive areas. Inevitably there would be some shifts in population density either through migration or "attrition".
Because they pollute less. Because they take less space, reducing the severity of traffic-jams.
There is no legislation in Europe which mandates people to buy small cars. People just realized that they do not need over 2 tons of metal around to move their ass around the city. and they realized that in small cars are much more convenient than humungous cars. We do have taxation on gasoline that makes small cars more attractive though.
Where exactly have I said that sales of SUV's should be prohibited? They are not prohibited in Europe either. The difference between USA and Europe seems to be that the government is actively pushing people to buy SUV's, by excluding them from fual-consumption and emission-regulations.
In this particular case: because Americans are wasting resources that
a) should not be wasted because it's a finite resource
b) they are harming the globe with their wasteful lifestyle
c) they could manage just fine without wasting those resources
If Americans were wasting their own resources and they only harmed themselves, I wouldn't complain. But they are wasting resources which is shared with others, and they are harming others while doing so. That is why I (and many others) complain.
And this isn't a case of "telling Americans how to live". This was a question of cutting down emissions. EU was willing to do it, USA was not. No-one was telling USA how they should cut their emissions, only that they should cut their emissions.
I grasp them just fine. What you don't seem to grasp is that most Americans don't live in rural areas. Finland's population-density is even lower than USA's is, and yet we seem to manage just fine.
Every single American lives in the "west"? I don't think so.
I don't give a flying fuck how Americans live as such. What I do care is that what they are doing to the globe. And I do get annoyed when they waste finite resources and harm the globe while doing so. If you had a next-door neighour that liked to burn old car-tires in his backyard, and the smoke spread to your yard, would you complain? If you did, wouldn't you be telling him "how he should live"? Same thing here: USA is wasting finite resources and they are harming others while doing so. They also absolutely refuse to do anything about it. And when other complain about it, you start to whine?
Many people perceive USA as being very selfish on this issue, and with good reason.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.