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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.""
But the earth isn't supposed to regulate itself! We're making it hotter! OH NOES!!!1 Seriously, who wouldn't expect something like this to happen. The temperature differential that drives that current has shrunk slightly and therefore as lost some momentum. Then Europe gets cold for a while, things even out, and everyone is happy. Except 50 cent. because his game is stupid.
cor blimey it's cold!
... but as always, scientists require PROOF before saying anything loud enough to be heard. How would you recommend getting more warm water? Maybe if you dump a bunch of X-Box 360's into the current, it'll heat right up again.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Thank you ocean currents!
Ocean is land, covered with water.
They could always create some device to push warmer water in to suppliment the lack of warm currents I assume....
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Wait,
First Microsoft, now scientists? Noooooooooooo!
Dashboard Widgets
If the current is pulling all that energy from the warm waters up north and dissipating it in the process, what will happen to all the excess warmth if the current stops? Will it find another way to go? Maybe create a new current or even restart the same current again? That heat has to go somewhere, it is water after all.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
...is the "price" of air pollution, well, you'll pardon me if I keep my old Pontiac. ;)
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?
I knew I'd seen this movie already. Don't anyone go giving away the ending!
Yes, I do believe it is now, officially OK. OK by me that is...
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Drive a Hummer.
(Plus it comes with a 12,000 LB wench, think of all the beer that could serve, Germany)
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Oh, what was it... oh yeah! Day After Tomorrow.
Is this supposed to be news? Because I thought climatologist have been talking about this potential for awhile. At least before "Day After Tomorrow".
What's next? "Scientist think that Birds evolved from Dinosaur like ancestors?"
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
That's it, I'm walking from Washington DC to New York City in 2 days to save my son, who would last out the worst of the storm with or without my help, safely inside of a library with a fireplace. But I need to go because otherwise this movie would be boring.
Well, more boring.
Here we come! Better grow some fur!
Is there anything it CAN'T do? Ice ages here, mega-deserts there... Besides, let's say the ice caps DO melt, and we lose a litle coastline. Big deal, over the ~150 years that takes, we'll clear the lower-lying cities out, plenty of time for that. Just think of the possibilities, though. Far more of the earth's surface might become habitable! The increased heat might spur mega growth of flora, turning the southeastern United States (and other areas) into tropical rainforests! Is all climate change bad? Varka
Depending on whom you ask, this could be a global warming issue. This is something I researched back in high school and got weird looks, but the logic goes like this:
1. Temperature warms up. Surface ice in the northern/southern reaches melt. This is something we've been seeing with the shrinking glaciers/nothern ice cap/Antartic icebergs melting.
2. Ocean rises, which causes a lowering of the ocean temperature from the influx of cold water.
3. With ocean levels higher, the ocean is able to absorb more energy, which shuts down the warm ocean currents.
4. Without the warm ocean currents, weather patterns are altered. Cold air that would have been warmed by the ocean currents remain cold. In time, the water that melted is converted into ice.
5. With the altered weather patterns and no warm air, the ice age comes into being. The more ice that forms, that more sunlight redirected back into space.
6. This continues until enough build up of ocean warmth.
Or - something like that. It's been a decade or two since I studied it, and I'm sure a meteorologist would do a better job. But what I do recall is that a good chunk of research shows this process can take place in as little as three years - which means it might be a good time to start buying some land down in Mexico....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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?
So if the climate is getting colder, now is a good time to invest in ski resorts and related realestate and businesses in that region?
original article in Nature
news article in Nature
If I recall correctly, The Day After Tomorrow was essentially an extremely sexed up version of scenarios written by the DOD based on climate change research that predicted this kind of oceanic current shift was possible.
This doesn't mean cities are going to flash-freeze and Jake Glyenhall is going to be attacked by wolves while trapped in New York. But if true, it does lend some support to certain predictions regarding climate change,
Tweet, tweet.
The article only mentions 5 data points over ~50 years, 1957, 1981, 1992, 1998 and now 2005.. which is not a lot to go on, likewise it mentions that the last time the current stopped was 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, and that it may have slowed down between 1300-1850 which was a "mini" ice-age.
I assume that the last 2 things were speculation, since the only way I could think of these things being measured is if it's somehow preserved in glacial layers etc.. could anyone who knows more explain what types of evidence back up these long term speculations? And if not, why we should draw any major conclusions from 5 data points over 50 years, when we don't know the variance of the system over hundreds or thousands of years, which 'seems' to be a 'normal' timescale for change?
I'm not saying this isn't a big deal, but the information in the article is woefully incomplete.
Whether or not this new finding is sound science, Europe has had a little ice age before. When is the last time you went ice skating on the Thames? Keep this in mind the next time you hear about climate change. It happens. A lot.
...I live in Canada; and well, all I see is Winter around me for six months or more. Mini Ice-Age? We just call that "Hockey Season" and grab a beer :|
7. ???
8. PROFIT!!!!
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
don't forget the grease in wendy's fryolaters! this is CRITICAL to survival
"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.
that'd be smart...plunge the us into an iceage to waste more energy on heating...producing more green house gasses...
i would prefer an iceage anyway, too hot right now
This isn't "the earth regulating itself". This is one of many local disruptions that make global warming so dangerous: some parts will get hotter, some colder, some wetter, and some drier.
Right now, it is still an open question whether there are global feedback mechanisms. If there are, they seem to be positive feedback, rather than negative feedback.
http://www.beyondcommunion.com/superstorm.html I've read this and many of the initial indicators are coming to pass like clockwork. Sensationalist, maybe. Eerie, definitely.
Right on brother! Rush Limbaugh and Ann "The Man" Coulter said we're not the cause so it must be true! I heard it on the AM Radio!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
...I'm confused. We're supposed to be going through global warning. Also, is anyone else thinking that we don't have enough data to determine how the climate acts, being the earth is millions of years old?
Doctor Ice Age says, "I shall call it--Mini Me."
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
freaking whales want to get revenge for all the sonar activity.
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I hate them both. Do a little research. Did you know we exited the "Little Ice Age" in 1850? Do you know anything about this book? Did you know West Antarctic ice is increasing at the rate of 26.8 gigatons per year? Did you know 420,000 years ago the Earth was warmer than it is today?
FYI, just because someone disagrees with a liberal doesn't mean they're Rush Limbaugh fans.
This guy is way out there
Not that Kyoto would do jack anyway.U p.htm
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Whats going on this week? The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
5 4803,00.html?gusrc=rss
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
This is news coming out this week to go along with UNFCCC, the Guardian story even helpfully has a link to UNFCCC. Its FUD.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,16
Global warming isn't coming the day after tomorrow. It is coming two days before the day after tomorrow. OH MY GOD THATS TODAY!
-Xen
You cannot find undeniable empirical proof for or against a phenomenon that isn't observable within your own lifetime (think evolution, jesus, pangea, etc.) Maybe it isn't happening, but I'd rather play it safe with a potential climactic cataclysm.
Yeah, but a glacier would have to plow over Canada to get to the states, and we DID sign the Kyoto protocol. Unless you just mean Alaska under a glacier, but would they even notice out there?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Has anyone done a study strictly on the impact of human heat generation, and how it might impact global warming? Leaving co2 and greenhouse gas questions to the side for the moment, human beings generate an awful lot of heat via our automobiles, power plants, homes, etc. Certainly the effect it might have would probably be very minimal, but if anyone could point to a paper or documentation on this topic I'd be interested in reading it... Varka
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.
Will this ice age kill those nasty migrating flu birds? Because I am just getting over the flu right now, and anything that will prevent me from getting sick again is OK with me.
True, ocean currents will still move. They're definitely chaotic system and often behave "counterintuitively".
b s/341318a0.html
But all that warm water goes so far north largely because of (cold) water with high salinity. This water is dense and sinks. This is called North Atlantic Deep Water formation, and possibly drives deep ocean currents around the world.
This salinity gradient is the key energy source that "pulls" warm water so far north, more than the thermal or momentum gradients.
This gradient broke down during "the Younger Dryas cold episode, which chilled the North Atlantic region from 11,000 to 10,000 yr BP." "[This] is postulated to be a turnoff [...] of the North Atlantic's conveyor-belt circulation system which currently supplies an enormous amount of heat to the atmosphere over the North Atlantic region. This turnoff is attributed to a reduction in surface-water salinity, and hence also in density, of the waters in the region where North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) now forms." Paleoclimate claims are supported by oxygen and carbon isotope studies on plankton.
see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v341/n6240/a
The closing statement reads as follows:
... oops, too late. There are a lot of models. When the latest ones are introduced, we learn how poor the previous ones were. And models are a really funny beast. That last link reveals that the new model "uses weather data from 1961 to 1985 and models of future weather from 2071 to 2095, which assume a doubling of the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide". Models using models must somehow compound errors, no? Less well known is that since potential variables are so numerous in climate studies, subsets are grouped and modelled linearly (via principal component analysis). This has the effect of reducing the dimension of the problem at the cost of accuracy. The latter is sometimes significant e.g. how many climate processes are linear? Frankly, climate models seem merely to be a way of currying favour with potential sources of funding using pseudo science and fear.
The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5C to 10C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London.
But consider:
a) The authors' believe their data is robust. Their sampling rate however is extraordinarily low i.e. 1957, 1981, 1992, and 2004. So there is no idea of whether this fluctuation is unique or cyclical and, if the latter, the frequency of its occurence;
b) FTA " Some climate models predict that global warming could lead to such a shutdown later this century."
So, the effect is categorically not understood, but with laughably meagre data a link is pronounced to events 12,000 years ago, bolstered with a guess to a period of recorded history experiencing a "sporadic" Ice Age. This is what passes for science in climatology?! Bunk! Pure bunk!
And don't get me started about climate modelling
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Many of the highly populated areas (read: Europe, US) that are most responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases will become essentially unihabitable. People will migrate to other places, e.g. Africa, Middle America, etc., stressing the ability of these places to produce sufficient food. This, combined with the expected disruption of agriculture due to climate changes, will decrease food supplies further.
In the end: fewer people left to make greenhouse gases, trees come back and start extracting excess CO2 because no one is left to cut them done, climate gets back to "normal", and finally some biologist trying to get tenure at Waterbuffalo University will do a study on the genetic bottleneck of Homo sapiens that occured during the mini ice-age.
Or we could stop using science from the 70's and realize that the climate changes and we're not the cause.
Glad you can make such a definitive statement, but the truth is nobody knows why it's happening. So we can either take your attitude, in which case we're fucked and there's nothing we can do, or we can say "maybe it IS our fault" and make an effort to curb the global climate changes.
Yeah, we're probably all fucked anyway. But it would be nice if we tried to hold on instead of shrugging our shoulders as we watch it all go to hell.
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.""
:)
Hurricanes == Earth oceans heat dissapation system (Determine the heat transfer method and you will be famous).
2005 == 16+ storms in the Atlantic which sucked up some heat (alot).
The Atlantic, as a result may be cooler (Yes I view the heat imaging satallite pictures), which is natures whole goal of having hurricanes. Suck some heat.
Is it natural? Yes/No/Maybe. I don't know, but during the 70's it snowed here in Florida. Am I speculating? Yes, but don't worry about it, I've only had eight beers tonight. Am I an expert? No, but I do know that France might surrender because of this, I just don't know to whom
Chill (pun intended), its a great planet. It was here before Humans, it will be here long after were gone.
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
It would have. Because you conveniently left out an important part of the punishment: "a treaty designed to economically punish the United States for a few years for being far more responsible for CO2 on a per capita basis than any other nation in the world".
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.
Hell yes they would notice, do you know how much oil is up there? Now if they would notice before it hit a pipeline or derrick, that is a whole other story.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
That's my left nut you're twisting - would you mind easing off, please?
I'm being bitchy tonight to friends and foes alike. Scientific consensus is building towards a warming trend, and that it's caused by humans in large part. More work is being done and more work has been done. That continuing research is tending to confirm the consensus. Increasingly the people who are in the minority have very obvious conservative political biases. Those people are not scientists, and their opinions should be disregarded without apology.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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
but action, no matter how imperfect, is still more useful
while the guy bleeding might appreciate the guy sitting there thinking laboriously about why he is bleeding, the bandages may be imperfect, but they are still appreciated more
so until the smart guy figures out that the bleeding guy has porphyria, which could take years, beyond which the bleeding guy is already dead, the bandages are keeping him alive
it's important to think, you realize that
you don't seem to realize that it's also JUST AS IMPORTANT, if not more important, to act
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Let's see... solar warming of the surface of earth, plus volcanic activity + other natural heat (including nuclear decay) + true wild fires, etc. >= sumof (humanity's stupid SUVs, and other stuff that seems hot...)
Again, stipulating "greeenhouse" gasses as a negative toward humanity, but that is probably arguable too. I just read where the Salton Sea burps up more Hyrdrogen Sulfide than all California industry combined. So much for that "wetland".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Sounds like someone wanted to validate the [bogus] science behind the moview "The Day After".
It's not just a moview. It's a documentary of the future.
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.
we both agree there is a problem
but you won't allow me to act until my actions are 100% perfect
you need to stop being brittle: we live in a world where every single action involving complex problems are open ended and imperfect and cloudy
you seek a level of certainty that simply doesn't exist in this world
you need to lower your threshold of certainty about the need to act on a problem if you hope to be valuable in any debate on any complex problem in this world: drugs, the middle east, health care, etc.
what are we to do? wait until you know for certain we are already frozen to death or baking alive before allowing us to act against the effect?
imperfect action trumps perfect thought, always, in every way, on any problem in the world
because the key ingredient is ACTION
welcome to reality
your time is limited
you don't have the luxury of waiting or experimenting or ruminating that you require
the certainty you seek is impossible
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Read below statement by me and maybe Google a bit or I can provide more references for you.
This guy is way out there
Well, we're fucked now. I am going to stock up on guns and antibiotics.
acting in such a way that might make things worse, but probably will make things better, is superior to not acting
because not acting is CERTAIN to make things worse
there is risk involved in acting, yes
and risking things when everything is fine is not acceptable
but when we are certain that everything is NOT fine, then 60% certainty that things will get BETTER by acting is an absolutely superior choice to the 100% certainty that things will get WORSE by not acting
get it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
OK, but I still disagree about humans having such a large impact on the environment and would be happy to debate it in a civil fashion or just trade links via our Journals sometime.
Of course, these political commentators offering this viewpoint are not scientists. Neither is Al Franken. Doesn't take away from the actual scientific facts however.
This guy is way out there
Along with most of the bioshpere.
Hrrmmmm.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The article went on to describe the states plans to back exploration of a "Northwest Passage" across the Arctic, in cooperation with a Finnish company. Apparently other countries are also working on plans to exploit the route.
I broke the dam.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Kim Stanley Robinson's new novel "Fifty Degrees Below" looks at the consequences of the North Atlantic Convery shutting down. It's not a great novel, surely not one of his best, but it's worth a read. Far too people die from exposure when D.C. gets a sustained period of -50F.
But wouldn't global warming just lead to Arctic storms being carried further south by the polar jet stream? I don't know it it's related, but I remember in '95, a chunk of cold air broke off from the North Pole and it was -25 F here in Ohio. We had nine inches of snow, the surface of which crusted over with a hard frozen layer. It was cold area of high pressure and the skies remained clear so all the sunlight just bounced off the snow and went back into space. The air itself was so cold, the sun was struggling just to make a difference in temperature.
i've seen that website before and i decided to run a few calculations on it. now while you might think that that is a miniscule mean temperature change in the atmosphere, when one multiplies that 0.001227436 C by the ~725(depends on exact density, doesn't vary much) joules needed to raise the temperature of mixed air by one degree centigrade and the 5.1*10^18 kilograms of air in the lower atmosphere one gets the net energy "loss"(this being entropic and useless energy that we don't want, and can do almost nothing with) of 4538444610000000000 joules
that's 4538444610 gigajoules
for comparison that's about the same as a gigaton nuclear bomb(heat and blast)
As usual there is a better discussion on realclimate.org.
As I understand it the situation is that the mechanism proposed for sudden climate change by Broecker some 15 years ago (and exaggerated beyond recognition in a silly movie lately) shows some signs of actually occuring. New measurement expeditions have reinforced the evidence in this direction. Though the evidence isn't absolutely conclusive, it's starting to weigh in that direction and the new evidence makes the case stronger. There is well-understood physics at work, but it involves delicate small-scale structures that are hard to capture in global scale models.
Though most scientific opinion expects it won't be enough to trigger a European ice age (unlike the YD event some 11KA ago) it could lead to a great deal more climate variability in our lifetimes especially in Europe and the northern reaches of the Atlantic than has been captured in most climate models, and in the extreme it may even cool Europe a bit as the rest of us get hotter.
mt
Well wouldn't there be lots of glaciers build up all ofer skandinavia?
Wouldn't than need a LOT of Water?
Is the Oceans level going to sink from that?
Is Holland kinda save again?
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?
The mechanism of the tropical storm system was worked out by the Japanese meteorologist K.V.Ooyama in 1964. His great fame apparently hasn't reached you, alas.
The fact that hurricane trajectories are routinely and increasingly effectively predicted by physical models pretty much proves that whatever else they are, tropical storms are not mysterious phenomena.
mt
Hey, Ive seen this movie!....or that southpark :)
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What we really need is to keep our albedo levels higher.
Quickly reduced salinity is also threatening the viability of a number of aquatic species in the area, including those commercial fishing depends upon.
...nuff said.
If you steal this sig, the only people who will profit are professional criminals.
It's all pointless at this point anyway. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen. Anything any set of countries tries at this point is going to be pathetically too little, too late.
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.
It'll be an interesting few decades while things settle down. I'm betting on the following:
1. Mini ice age lasting two hundred years or so, sort of like the last one, in all nations bordering the North Atlantic. Actually I don't mind this, I hate hot weather and I've always loved snow. Here in New York, things should be pretty nice, if a bit chilly. And blizzards are fun as long as you don't have to travel. It's an excuse to stay home and play Halo II on XBox Live.
2. Very hot weather and major storms throughout equatorial regions. Florida and the other gulf states, for example, are going to get the shit beaten out of them every year. I expect most people to get fed up and move inland to get away from the hurricanes, and away from the plains states to get away from "Tornado Alley". Lots of migration will produce new ghost towns along the coasts, not due to disasters per se, but to people getting fed up with having their houses knocked down biannually. Actually I'm endlessly surprised this hasn't already started.
3. Ocean levels might rise a bit, but this might be offset by increased ocean ice due to the mini ice age, so the whole "waterworld" thing is going to be a non-starter. Of course we knew that.
4. Everyone is going to completely freak out and run around with their hair on fire for years and years. We on Slashdot will argue about it endlessly, never arriving at any conclusion, but it'll be interesting and take our minds off the fact that none of us have been laid recently.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Some people say that the real "global warming" problem has to do with increased energy output from the sun. Good luck stoping that one.
Magnetic Poles May Be About To Flip
Earth's Magnetic Field Weakens 10 Percent
The New York Times On Earth's Magnetic Flip-Flop
Since there's nothing I can do to prevent the change that's coming, I'm getting ready for it. The ride gets bumpier from here on out, until about 2011 or 2012, which is the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar. As I understand it, their calendar cycles back to zero on December 21, 2012. (The universe has an "overflow bug" too!
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It's pretty clear that a reduced level of global coolness caused by a lack of pirates would result in increasing global temperatures, and we have in fact observed such a predicted upswing in temperatures. It's less clear how factors such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, reductions in solar output, or any of the other things driving Earth's natural warming/glaciation cycle might contribute.
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 i still have time to get good scuba gear, so i can scuba through mannhaton(sp?)
3. Ocean levels might rise a bit, but this might be offset by increased ocean ice due to the mini ice age, so the whole "waterworld" thing is going to be a non-starter. Of course we knew that.
Time for a review of archimedes principle. Ocean levels are expected to rise during warming because the antarctic ice cap and many glaciers (i.e. non-floating ice) will melt into the oceans. However ocean ice floats, i.e. displaces its own weight in water, and so its presence has no effect on water levels.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
If you're interested in seeing just how much coastline we would lose, here's a neat little applet...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
It's easier to solve a problem if you know what caused the problem.
True enough. Problem is that humanity is a long way off from being mature and intelligent enough to determine exactly what sort of climate change to expect, much less the root cause of that change. Does human activity cause climate change? Absolutely. How much and in what way? We have no friggin clue and we wont in any of out lifetimes. This is for a couple of reasons:
1. Humanity's lack of maturity prevents us from putting aside politics and self-interest. We try but in the end out efforts are nearly futile. Our best effort to date many might say is the Kyoto accord and it is doomed to fail. And no, it isn't the fault of the Americans--even if the US signed on it would never work. Why? Because Kyoto is just another political/economic shell game. Developing nations are pretty much exempt from making an effort at reducing CO2 emissions (including 800-pound-gorilla China). I don't care what reasons are behind such exemptions--if we want to affect global change the whole globe must participate. Second of all, there is "selfishness" involved. It is easy enough for the likes of Germany and France to look down their noses at the US and trumpet their wonderful CO2 reductions: France just throws up more nuclear generation and Germany gets to count all those communist-era east-German soot-belching factories in their starting numbers. Then there are nations like Canada, where the infrastructure is already quite modern and efficient for the most part and the cold climate and sparse population make it more difficult to meet targets legitimately--most of those reductions will be met by playing the shell game and trading pollution credits. In the end it means no meaningful impact on climate change.
2. To paraphrase a favourite sci-fi author: "The universe is mind-bogglingly complex". Scientists know almost nothing about the direction of climate change. They have pretty little computer models that make predictions and they can make vague (and often conflicting) pronouncements about the earth heating up or more hurricanes or ice ages and whatnot. In the meantime the good people at Environment Canada cannot even predict the weather two days in advance with any reliability at all. How can we get the "immature public" to buy into a more climate-friendly lifestyle with that kind of track record? The weatherman tells them it'll snow in two days with the accuracy of a coin toss. Big, smart scientists with expensive supercomputers tell us the world is heating up...no wait we are going into an ice age (which was the prevailing theory in the 1970s)...no wait we are heating up (1980s to now)...no wait...the world will heat up a bit, but some places will be really dry and others really wet...no wait...we ARE going to have a sudden ice age...because of global warming melting ice and cooling the oceans....what the hell? Our smartest people cant quite wrap their brains around it much less the general public (I like most others are pretty much mentally retarded on the subject though most like to think theyknow something about it).
I'm sure someone will argue the merits of Kyoto (maybe there are some--I just don't see how it'll change the world meaningfully). Others will argue that science is proving itself now (gee, look at all the hurricanes we had this year--never mind the fact it was only one or two more than the previous record set many decades previously, before we had the technology to spot those that didn't make landfall near civilisation). Thing is, the pronouncements we make and the justifications for Kyotot-like manoeuvring are so vague it is like proving Nostradamus was right.
In the meantime, bandages and maybe a makeshift torniquet is all we have to keep us from bleeding to death in terms of climate change. I figure we should put more emphasis on more concrete, proven environmental factors--like living sustainably (use less energy--get rid of the big old SUVs. Get your lazy ass out of the captain's
Is it just me,or am I the only one who realizes that this is EXACTLY why we need to step up the space program. I want to be off this filthy planet and on some sort of space station or Mars colony, or something. That way, I can laugh at how pathetic the rest of the human race is as they overcrowd AND freeze, whilst I am on a spacious Mars colony, suffering only minor discomfort at the slight chill (which is nowhere near as bad as Earth's mini-Ice Age)
I don't get why posts are limited to 120 characters. Seems unreasonable to me. I mean, just because I like having a real
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!
How is parent a flamebait?
We do not possess sufficient data to accurately predict whether what we are witnessing is a normal cycle, or not. Global warming is a classic example of science by consensus that's been going on since the 70s (and just as bad as Nuclear Winter).
Take a look at things like Maunder Minimums and at past ice ages and you'll see what I mean.
It's Europe so no Americans will be affected.
for comparison that's about the same as a gigaton nuclear bomb(heat and blast)
/ maybert.htm
Which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I quote from this website.
http://coop.co.pinellas.fl.us/TimeTweb/2001/may01
"While a hurricane lives, the transaction of energy within the storm's circulation is immense. The condensation heat energy released by a hurricane in one day can be the equivalent of energy released by fusion of four hundred, 20-megaton hydrogen bombs. One day's release energy, converted to electricity, could supply America's electrical needs for about six months. "
That's eight gigatons of energy released a day by a single hurricane. Now how many did we have this year alone? That's a lotta fucking energy by mother nature alone.
Life is not for the lazy.
Just because something is inconvenient for you doesn't mean it was designed specifically to pick on you. With the world's largest economy, punishing the US would be a very counter-productive thing for everyone else. Punishing the US for what? Jealousy? That would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
I say old chap it's a wee bit chilly on the willy.
7% of the world population, 27% of the world pollution. Won't even sign the kyoto protocol, whose little measures are not enough already. The world should get their act together and force them to stop polluting. But that goes against the sacred right to make more profit...
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Yea, that was the stupidest part of the movie. He accomplished nothing by going to New York but get his friend killed.
This ad space for rent.
Even if the gulf stream does change, Europe and the UK will not become as cold as equivalent latitudes in the US, because the gulf stream changing will, curiously enough, not change the position of the Rockies. It is the Rockies that divert warm air to Europe, and make 90% of the temperature difference. So before we all get too excited about this...think about what does what.
The one sided vote is not that surprising given how much of a whore the govt is for the corporations. Not one person in the senate cares more about the health of the ecosystem or the world their grandchildren will inherit then where they get campaign funds from.
evil is as evil does
Not if those enterprises are lining your pocket!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
By Steve Connor, Science Editor The Independent, 10 February 2003 Generations of schoolchildren have been raised on the belief that the mild British winters and cool summers are due to the moderating influence of the Gulf Stream, a warm ocean current flowing from the Gulf of Mexico to the shores of western Europe. Without the Gulf Stream, our teachers told us, Britain's winters would be as cold and ice-bound as a frozen port in Newfoundland and its summers as hot and stuffy as a Moscow August. But the textbooks have got it wrong, according to scientists who have just finished a study of what makes Western Europe cool in summer and mild in winter. The scientists found that Britain's moderate climate is due not to the Gulf Stream, but to the Rocky Mountains in the western US 4,000 miles away. Using weather data gathered over the past 50 years and powerful computer models to describe how heat is shunted around the globe, they discovered that the contribution of the Gulf Stream was negligible compared with the influence of warm southerly winds originating in the Rockies. These winds, they said, played a big role in explaining why winters in Britain could be anything up to 15C or 20C warmer than the same latitude in eastern North America. "Belief in the benign role of the Gulf Stream is so widespread that is has become folklore," said Richard Seager, the scientist who led the study from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York. The belief that the Gulf Stream is responsible for Britain's mild, maritime climate appears to have originated with the publication in 1856 of a book by Maurice Fontaine Maury, a lieutenant in the American Navy. "One of the benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to disperse it in regions beyond the Atlantic for the amelioration of the climates of the British Isles and of all Western Europe," Maury wrote. "This idea is one reason why so much climate research has been focused on the impact of changes in the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean," Dr Seager said. Several recent studies, for instance, have suggested that global warming might slow down or even stop the Gulf Stream which carries energy equivalent to 27,000 times the total output of all of Britain's power stations so bringing a far more variable continental climate to Western Europe. Dr Seager's study, published in the current issue of the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, suggests that the Gulf Stream accounts for no more than 10 per cent of the winter temperature differences between Britain and Newfoundland, Canada. The scientists found that the real reason for Britain's mild weather was twofold. First, there is a genuine maritime effect of being surrounded by a relatively warm body of water, but this has nothing to do with the Gulf Stream. Second, this maritime influence is bolstered by southwesterly winds bringing a warm air mass from the south. These winds would not blow if the Rockies did not exist, the researchers found. Even without the Gulf Stream, Britain would be bathed in prevailing westerly winds that bring in the warmth stored in the Atlantic Ocean. Water retains summer heat far longer than land, which is why the winter-summer difference in temperature is about 5ÂC over the North Atlantic and yet nearer 50ÂC at the same latitude in Siberia. Dr Seager said his study showed that this phenomenon which was independent of the Gulf Stream accounted for about half of the winter temperature difference between Britain and Newfoundland. The other half, he said, was due to the prevailing winds over the maritime regions of Western Europe--not westerlies, but from the southwest. Those south-westerlies brought additional heat to Western Europe. Their origins could be traced to a massive "meander" in the north-south wind patterns over North America, which was generated by the presence of the Rockies. "One such meander occurs east of the Rocky Mountains and brings cold air into eastern N
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.
How was it "designed to economically punish the USA"? By requiring USA to cut down emissions? Guess what Einstein? It required EU (among others) to cut their emissions as well! In fact, the requirements were higher for EU than for USA! And there's few things to consider:
a) In Europe, power is generated relatively cleanly (nuclear etc.). Not so in USA
b) Cars in Europe are relatively environmentally-friendly, when compared to cars in USA
c) Industry in Europe (steel among others) had already spent lots of money modernizing their plants, making the more environmentally friendly.
d) People actually use mass-transportation in Europe, not so in USA.
What does all that mean? It means that USA could easily reach the requirements of the treaty by doing the stuff EU already did. EU could not, they would have to find other ways to cut their emissions, since all the easy things have already been done (not so in the USA).
Even simpler: EU worked hard to cut down emissions. Then they were told to cut their emissions by 9% (IIRC) more. USA did jack-shit to cut down their emissions, and then they were told to cut their emissions by 8% (again, IIRC). So it would be relatively easy for USA to cut their emissions, while it would be considerably harder for EU.
"Punishing the USA" my ass!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Don't listen to me though - I'm an Australian, and Oral Roberts damned my entire country to hell - becuase his god does what it's told to by Oral Roberts.
Finally, a weird thought for you. The military did some studies about what would happen. Not all of it was published. One possible senario is that global warming may very well help America. Now, we are now not only not joining Kyoto, but we almost seem to be pushing GWing. We are giving huge tax breaks to coal and oil rather than to nukes and alternatives (or even to energy storage). Makes me wonder.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
All the pieces of the ice age puzzle are being put together.. global warming, conveyor belt stopping... next is an ice age. This is troubling to say the least.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
...and so totally vindicates scientists who warned of the consequences of global warming. It is vital people realise that the Earth is no different than an animal with ticks on it's back. We, mankind, are becoming a nuisance by interrupting the slow but effective evolution of this planet into a life sustaining entity. If we mess with things, not through any unseen intelligence, but simply the laws of physics / nature, we will trip the switch. And we have. Oops. But we cannot say we were not warned.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
... even if Europe does cool, the Health and Safety mafia surely won't allow us to hold any frost fairs nowadays. We'll get cold, but won't be permitted to enjoy it...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"At first, nobody knew what caused the dam to break, but now, shocking new evidence has indicated that the flood in Beaverton was caused by... global warming! It now appears that... all rumors of global warming were true. We were warned this would happen and ...we didn't listen! We didn't listen!"
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!)
Iraq is nothing more than a mechanism to channel the wealth of both American and Iraqi citizens into the pockets of American companies. So as far as the political leadership are concerned it's a good thing because the companies can now afford to provide more extravagent perks for politicians.
For the tin-hats amongst us, all this climate change is for the benefit of our corporate overlords. Think about it... extremes in weather always cause pensioners to pop their clogs. Here in the UK, we awake in spring to find lots of old biddy popiscles in their front rooms because they haven't been able to afford the heating bills. And when it's hot... well, just look at the cull that happened in France's 2003 heatwave.
...
With neither governments nor corporations able to meet future pension commitments, climate change is a god-send.
Yes, for the humour impaired, its a joke.... well, a half joke.... probably... possibly.
The laws intent was to help rural people, as in farmers. However as with a horrid system of taxes that the US suffers from a loophole was found. The law did not originally specify what "types" of vehicles qualified for the discount. It merely stated over 6,000 pounds. This normally would have been the domain of vehicles used mostly on farms and some small businesses.
It is the tax system which is at fault for most disparities. It allows the rich to dodge payment as they can buy loopholes from Congress. It is their lawyers and lobbyist who work to keep the system in place. By making sure to keep a near majority of people from paying income taxes, and worse actually paying the least capable of those, they have created a system which actually allows them keep more of their wealth. They prey on the middle class and the poor by misdirection and deceit.
All these tax dodges have to get paid for. The usual means is to pass it off to business. why? Because it is easier to portray businesses as evil and uncaring. Trouble is no business actually pays any tax, they are merely collectors for taxes. That is why people don't notice it. When the price of their favorite items goes up they blame the business, ignoring the effects of tax laws and abuse of them and how the resposibility for paying those taxes got mysteriously moved.
Blame Bush is the cheap way out and exactly what these boys want you to do. Blame anyone but the right people and they continue their game unharrassed. Convince people who already distrust whomever is in power to blame those in power is the easiest part of the game.
Fortunately once the abuses were figured out they did get shut down, the new side effect of the internet and such was that people who would not know of the ability to abuse the law suddenly had an abundance of information provided on how to do just that.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
In the meantime, China seems to be the only large country that's actually working on decreasing CO2 output. I don't believe the EU countries are going to make their targets, too much rhetoric and too little action.
In a few years, we'll be forced to switch to other energy sources anyway, because peak oil is more or less here. We'll see what happens then.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
77-23 in Senate and 296-133 in House is as one-sided as 100-0 or 99-1?? That's a clear majority, but not quite "one-sided."
The US consumer economy emphasizes the tactical over the strategic; politically, economically, socially.
Now, before getting too frisky with accusations of shallowness, please cite a few examples of cultures that were significantly different. Hmmm. Ancient Egypt, in a way.
Beyond that, what sort of structural changes do you recommend? Doubling all federal term limits, so the cunning hams we elect so frequently get to eat more of their own slop?
Stripping authority from the Fed, al la O'Rourke "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys"?
Ignore the problem--all cultures grow old and die eventually?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If you were a billionnaire and would lose 1% of your capital and a poor person would triple his capital by stealing an iPod, would that mean you were a failure and he was successfull economically?
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Back in the mid to late 70s, possibly early 1980s, I saw a REALLY REALLY interesting paper on climate that I wish I could find again. It pointed out that we were about to enter (or had entered) a period of NATURAL rapid global warming, which would rapidly lead to the northern icecap shrinking, leading to some artic ocean water mixing with Atlantic and Pacfic waters - which would distrupt this exact current, which would VERY rapidly lead to the next (overdue) Ice Age! The paper was on what causes an Ice Age (NOT on Global warming etc), and it was the ONLY model this guy could come up with that fit
To sum it it - Ice Ages are actually triggered by the global climate getting above a certain temp, and it SUDDENLY changes to cold - almost a sawtooth pattern - and that we are overdue for an Ice Age....
Hummmmmmm
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
It would seem to me that our attitudes (in the first world) to climate change will have far more impact than any direct measures that we might take to decrease our carbon emissions.
Sure, I might use the train rather than driving to work but next to China building 1 new coal powerstation PER WEEK anything that I actually do seems rather irrelevant.
Living in the UK, we had a notable cold spell in the 80s. When I was growing up snow was common during the winters, yet during the late 80s and through most of the 90s it was almost entirely absent. Indeed, the five inches of snow we had earlier this year was the first time I'd seen more than an inch on the ground since early 1997 - there were kids who'd never seen enough snow to build a snowman, or have a decent snowball fight! The November just gone was a below average month temperature wise in the UK, the first one since July 2004. I believe global warming is happening, but damn it - I'd still expect to see a few below average months a year even if temperatures rose a degree or two, but it's a rare event to see a below average month at all these days. The problem has been the jet stream ploughing away to our north, dragging mild air across much of Europe over the past few winters - it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Coincidentally I believe the USA hasn't seen anywhere near as much warming in the last 20 years as Europe has...
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.
Sadly, I totally agree. Whatever happens, it is not going to be pretty. I remember an article in New Scientist arguing that the estimated temperature increase would not happen because we would run out of the oil to feed it. That is the optimistic view.
For America I don't know. I don't think there are going to be many "winners" out of this. Just think of the colder North and the hotter South ... man the storms are going to be awesome, hate to be growing crops between the two. For my own country, Australia, I just remember Jared Diamond claiming it has the most random weather in the world ... does this mean any change will be better ... somehow I don't think so.
Bitter and proud of it.
Goddam lameness filter.
OK. When I read the New Scientist and Nature (news) articles earlier today it was clear that there is more data, I just didn't understand why it was not available. BTW, these data "points" are from my understanding a transect so lots of data associated with each "point". the parent is talking about why we haven't seen more about this before.
Bitter and proud of it.
Thank you! Doubt the meta-mods will catch it though.
This guy is way out there
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?... How moronic the typical slashdot comments are for climate change. The arrogance is spectacular. I suppose technologists are the last people to understand that there will be no techno-fix for this problem that actually works. As the ice-caps melt, methane (in the form of methyl hydrates) is being released in quantites that dwarf man's production of greenhouse gases. Methane is 500% more effective as a greenhouse gas too. (Cue stupid comments about cows farting etc). This process already appears to be in 'runaway mode' so even curtailing our carbon emissions will not prevent the icecaps from melting (which is causing the 30% slowdown in the gulf stream already). Ultimately this will ruin much of the world's agricultural land and has already caused drought and famine in Africa to devastating effect. It will spread to other continents and we will begin to run short of food - particularly as food production is so dependent on natural gas (methane: the irony!) to produce fertilisers - a declining natural resource. It will affect everyone and is worth thinking about instead of the reflexive denial I see here. So flame away, whatever, I care little about that. But please start thinking with your good brains - it's what they're there for.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
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.
The timing of these doomsday predictions is rather suspicious, with the post-Kyoto greenfest going on in Canada. Treaties like Kyoto cannot manipulate climate in any controlled or favorable way. And they ignore the economic development needs of much of the world that lives in poverty. I hope the US continues to reject these efforts.
an ill wind that blows no good
The sky is falling!
The sky is falling!
Run!
a) In Europe, power is generated relatively cleanly (nuclear etc.). Not so in USA
Yeah, in France. I seem to recall that quite a few other nations (Italy, Germany) have the same problems with deploying nuclear power (NIMBY and unjustified fear of anything with the word "nuclear" in it) that we do in the US. In fact, didn't Italy recently decommission the last of their nuke plants?
Cars in Europe are relatively environmentally-friendly, when compared to cars in USA
I've seen SUVs on the road in Europe. They might be a richer pursuit over there and not a "soccer mom" status symbol but they are still there.
c) Industry in Europe (steel among others) had already spent lots of money modernizing their plants, making the more environmentally friendly.
The problem would seem to be more related to energy generation (power plants) then the factories where that energy is used. In the United States billions of dollars have been spent upgrading existing plants to reduce harmful emissions. Nobody ever gives us any credit for this though. About the only thing that comes out of a modern power plant is CO2 -- and the last time I checked nobody has solved that problem yet -- though many are working on it.
d) People actually use mass-transportation in Europe, not so in USA.
I'm tired of hearing about that. Europe's urban character makes this feasible. The United States is a lot more suburban and rural. Care to explain to me how I should take mass transit to my job? I live in a town with a population of 3,500 and work in a town with a population of 900. I carpool as often as I can -- that's doing my part.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, for every molecule of CO2 added to the system,
you are subtracting one molecule of O2 to the system.
So, humans are running out of oxygen far faster than they need to worry about freezing to death.
The Global drop in available oxygen is under reported, most likely to prevent widespread panic.
The Oceans Primary Oxygen Producting Plankton levels have been dropping radically since the 1980s (they make more than 50% of the oxygen you need) and the green space of trees and plants continually gets reduced by urbanization, suburban sprawl, slash and burn, and ongoing desertification in Africa and elsewhere (They make the rest of your O2).
Reseachers have linked the real cause of mass extinction events not to just some rock falling from the sky, but for the worldwide drop of oxygen from 35 percent down to 15 percent of the atmosphere. The Giant Dinos ran out of air.
With the ongoing death of land plants and primary oxygen producing plankton, VERY few humans will survive the upcoming drop from the current 21 percent oxygen levels down to only 9 percent oxygen levels.
Here are some sources of the biggest coverup in human history: 'The Oxygen is vanishing.':
LONG-TERM ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN DECREASE
- AN UNDERESTIMATED FACTOR FORCING THE PERMIAN-TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION.
O. Weidlich (1), W. Kiessling (2) and E. Flügel (3)
(1) Inst. f. Geowissenschaften, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel,
(2) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
(3) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg (ow@gpi.uni-kiel.de/Fax: +49-431880-5557)
direct link: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/05406/EAE03-J -05406.pdf
Referenced and Link Located on:
List of Accepted Contributions -
CL32 Phanerozoic history of atmospheric gases (co-sponsored by BG)
EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly. Nice, France, 06 - 11 April 2003
Copernicus Online Service + Information System
http://www.cosis.net/members/meetings/sessions/acc epted_contributions.php?p_id=38&s_id=779
Vulnerability Assessment of the North East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change
West Coast Energy Limited. Trevor Baker, Project Manager August 2005
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Monitoring the Earth from Space with SeaWiFS
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/s anctuary_7.html
Decline in Oceans' Phytoplankton Alarms Scientists
David Perlman - SF Chronicle 6oct03
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2003/Phytoplankton- Decline-Ocean6oct03.htm
Ocean primary production and climate: Global decadal changes
Watson W. Gregg, Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA
The impact of humans on our environment is actually quite a specialized field, and I seriously doubt that either of us has the information and education required to make up our own minds on the topic. We can read about it, and understand what we are reading, but we should not kid ourselves that we are equipped to judge the worthiness of the scientific consensus.
Of course, you could be a PhD climatologist specializing in the appropriate fields.... Anyway, that's why I'm not attempting to argue the merits of the scientific consensus. I'm just saying that it's there, and it appears to be strengthening based on the continuing evidence. I think that trusting the scientific consensus is not an irresponsible thing to do, because off the top of my head I can't think of any other time where the scientific consensus was wrong and *remained* wrong in the face of overwhelming additional knowlege. Can you think of an example?
I know a lot of things about a lot of things. In this case, I also know a lot of things about limits to what I know.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I heard on the radio just this morning about this story that scientists do NOT believe this is the effect of Global Warming. But hey, it sure get's those believers stirred up, so who cares about intellectual honesty! This is global science, not objectivity.
For those who read the article, notice that we had just come out of a mini-ice age. Most say it lasted from the mid-1300s to about 1850.
Here's the question: what caused it(it being the forementioned oceanic conveyor), and what caused it to stop(in less than a decade)? The problem is, everyone has a theory and very few agree. Some say it was increased volcanic activity caused it, some say increased salinity of the water, some just don't know.
Those in the volcanic camp say the reason it stopped is the greatly reduced amount of volcanic activity. Here's an example of how volcanoes affect GLOBAL climate. In 1815, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted. It was 100 times the magnitude of Mt. St. Helen's in 1980. The amount of ash and sulfur ejected into the atmosphere lowered global temperatures up to 3 degrees C, and caused the "Year without a Summer" in New England(where crops froze during all of the summer months, and there was 6+ inches of snow in June).
This mini-ice age led to numerous important historical events. The French, which in the 1700s, subsisted on cereal grains(wheat, barley, etc). However, in the years prior to 1789, the harvests were meager, due to the colder temperatures. Having no food, and not wanting to learn how to grow potatoes like Germany and Spain did, they decided to riot and steal whatever stores of grains they could find. This lead to the French Revolution. Still in French history, 1812 Napolean has marched his troops into Moscow. However, supply lines being incredibly weak, the cold, harsh Russian winter beats Napolean. Of the 600,000 troops he takes into Russia, less than 4,000 make it out, and less than 1,500 make it back to France. To Irish history, the Irish, unlike the French, learned to grow potatoes. To the Irish, the potato became their staple food, however, they only grew one low maintenance variety called "Lumpers". When the blight came, it was easy for it to propagate, as there only one variety to kill off. Had their been multiple species, the famine wouldn't have been so widespread. So, millions of Irish died due to starvation, and disease.
So, while some of you sit there saying, bring on the snow...remember, all of our civilizations have existed based on expectations. We expect farmers to be able to raise grains, vegetables, meat, cheese-producing animals, etc to feed the rest of us. However, how would we survive if global climates change and once fertile fields dry up(think U.S. Dust Bowls of the 1930s)? We could have world wide food shortages. Imagine if the rice producing areas of China dried up? Then the Chinese would go looking for land/food. The lion would be out of the cage.
Virtually every paper about the atmosphere or environment in the premiere British science journal Nature says their results supports global warming and it will have dire consequences, when in fact that is a long stretch for these papers data. I genrally agree these studies are important, but the politically-correct editorializng has no place in most of these papers.
Although its an interesting result, it is hard to tell from the very short data history in this paper whether this is a natural fluctuation or serious trend. There are several couple decade long cycles in the Atlantic that come and go and this could be one of them. One of themost important cycles is the salinity level about 40 years long as correlated with hurricane activity. Unfortunately for the USA its in its at its peak for the next ten years.
Not long ago I saw a show theorizing that the collapse of Mayan civilization around 820 CE was the result of a severe drought (the scientists in question were examining fossil remains of tiny lakebed creatures that get laid down annually like tree rings) correlated with the loss of this Atlantic conveyor of the Gulf Stream. IIRC, there were periods of severe winters in Scandinavia, but the recorded severe winters in Europe with sometime in the 1400's. Not sure if the historical records of severe European winters went back to the 800s.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Why do you keep typing "economical" when the correct word is "economic"?
:)
Because english is not my native language? Thanks for the info, tho
"Economic, economic, economic..."
Before you spew vitriol at Bush and America perhaps you would like to know that American greenhouse gas emissions had gone down by 0.8 percent under Bush"
Although some European countries have managed to reduce their emmissions, most have *not* met their targets and only the UK has exceeded its targeted cuts. In fact, "Eleven have reported increases since 1990, with huge rises seen in Spain (41.7 pct), Portugal (36.7 pct), Greece (25.8 pct), Ireland (25.6 pct), Finland (21.5 pct) and Austria (16.5 pct)" as reported at Forbes
So perhaps you should try talking to your European brothers living in glass houses in Spain and Ireland before you start casting rocks at the US. Making promises in a treaty is nice, but not keeping them yourself and then critizing those who never made the promise in the first place is hypocrisy of the worst sort.
This story shows that someone did watch the movie "The day after tomorrow".
In the meantime, China seems to be the only large country that's actually working on decreasing CO2 output.
There are some grass roots changes happening elsewhere that are very hard to measure, let alone assess the results. Although the USA federal government rejected Kyoto, several states have adopted Kyoto goals for environmental policies (example: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware have created the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative). Some USA municipalities have made significant changes in their infrastructure to comply with the Kyoto Protocol (example: Portland Oregon has met the first Kyoto goal of rolling back CO2 releases to pre-1990 levels. Other USA cities are beginning to recognize that encouraging their residents to adopt better habits wrt recycling, transportation, and so on not only generates lots of warm, fuzzy feelings but improves the local economy.
The Kyoto Protocol has been having a significant effect on public policy even within nations that didn't sign it. I'm personally pessimistic about whether any of this will avert the coming catastrophe (somehow the 6 billion people on earth today has to be reduced to the 2 billion that seems to be the earth's sustainable carrying capacity-- call me Malthus). But on the positive side, those who survive the next 50 years are likely to have habits wrt to reduce-reuse-recycle and mass transit that will be as significant in their new world as sanitation facilities are in today's cities.
What's the big deal? It happens before and it will happen again, every 700 years we have mini ice age.
Oddly, I happened to have read the Wikipedia article on Extinction Events recently, and was intrigued. I see myself as fairly well educated, engineering degree and all that, and always curious about science. However, I'd always assumed that extinction events were the result of drastic sudden changes, or catastrophic events, such as meteors and the like.
But not only is that not necessarily the case, extinction events are apparently much more common than I'd ever imagined. It put a different perspective on things, and I think most people are completely unawares that extinctions aren't the end of the world, or Earthly Life... only the end of certain types of it. There's a long history of it happening without human existence, so why is it that we think it shouldn't happen when we're alive?
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
You're a fucking moron. Choke on my cock.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
In the meantime, China seems to be the only large country that's actually working on decreasing CO2 output.
I would be curious to see stats backing up this claim. I do not dispute, I just find the topic intereresting and I do not have much information outside of what we do in Canada and the pro/anti american sentiments. I know my country Canada makes noise about Kyoto and helping the world blahblah but I can't say for sure anything we're doing really is going to make a difference (other then get the current government re-elected)
An extremely simplified possible outcome but it would be great news for US business if the european economy is crippled. Despite how stupid the US administration appears this has probably been considered.
If the Gulf Stream is slowing, bringing less warm water to the North Atlantic, wouldn't it also be bringing less cold water back down to the equator? And not carrying warm water away as fast? In which case we get warmer equatorial seas, and stronger hurricanes. Hmmm...
"Debugging" by Dave Agans - the perfect gift for your favorite imperfect engineer.
Yes, environment is important so don't shoot me. But seriously. First it was El-Nino, then La Nina (or however that stuffs spelled). Bad snow, bad heat, hurricanes, no hurricanes, hurricanes again. We already have a word for this. I like to call it weather.
"Actually I don't mind this, I hate hot weather and I've always loved snow. Here in New York, things should be pretty nice, if a bit chilly"
Little chilly eh? All i can picture is when bruce willis goes above ground in 12 monkieys/
infact heres a picture
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
You've got it backwards. The US overthrew the country to decrease the oil supply, so that prices would increase, and boy did it work out well for the oil companies.
See Iraq was dumping oil on the market to buy food. The US tried to keep Iraq from being able to sell oil for food but the UN approved it. This drove oil prices down. So the Big oil guys tapped the boys they paid for in the White House to fix it.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
1. Kyoto doesn't apply to non-industrialized nations, therfore their "economic development needs" are not affected.
2. It's already been pointed out that simple volcanic erruptions, localized to a single area can have a lasting effect on the world's climate. To suggest that effects of the world's sustained economic production do not (as is the Bush Administration's posistion) is simply ludicrous.
France is big on nuclear (although Finland is building more nuclear power as well). Norway is big on hydroelectric. Danes are ramping up their wind-generators. USA seems to generate their energy with mostly coal, and that's just about the worst possible way of generating energy.
So what? Does your observations somehow dispute what I said? While there are some SUV's in Europe, they are nowhere near as popular as they are in USA. And if you have been in Europe, you have propably seen those subcompacts (Smart, Peugeot C1, C2, C3, VW Polo, Renault Clio etc.) which are practically unheard of in USA. And then we have the question of engines. While Europeans seems to do just fine with around 2-liter engines or even smaller, Americans seems to absolutely need some 3-liter V6 even in regular family-cars. And those large engines consume more fuel and pollute more. And then we have the ultra-efficient diesel-cars in Europe, which are very rare in USA.
That's because while European steel-mills seriously upgraded their plants, Americans left theirs to rot. And when American companies found out that they can't compete with those modern mills, they went crying to the government.
Too bad, it's still true though.
Are you saying that there are no cities in USA? Why is it that everyone living in LA insist on driving to the city, instead of taking the bus?
77% of Americans live in cities. That percentage is higher than in France (76%), Norway (75%), Switzerland (67%) and Italy (67%). With 77% of people living in urban areas, you seriously claim that mass-transit would not work in USA? It works wonderfully well in Finland, and only 59%& of Finns live in cities. Of course you can't have mass-transit system in every small village, but it would work just fine in cities.
And Europe is not? Most people in Europe do not live in downtown, they live in suburbs. Hell, I live 40+ kilometers from Helsinki in a suburb, and I commute every day to work. I know people who live 200km from Helsinki, and they commute every day to Helsinki.
It's not a question of "it wouldn't work here!". It's a question of "I don't wanna do it!".
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
In July 1999, the United States Senate voted 95-0 to pass a resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Hagel (R-Neb.), which stated the Senate would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases.
I was slightly off in my initial guess. I'd still say it was completely one-sided.
Side note to the people who moderated me down: A differing opinion does not make the comment flame-bait or a troll. That's such a "berkeley" attide, "We don't want to hear what he is saying, so we will call him names instead of arguing the issue." Whatever, kiss my ass.
-- Will program for bandwidth
You beat me to the punch. Thanks for posting.
To make a bad pun out of a stupid statement, that argument simply doesn't hold water.
The point he was trying to make was that the ice currently on land will be the ONLY ice that affects global warming. The ice already free-floating will have no effect on the ocean level.
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
"Punishing the USA" my ass!
In Soviet Russia, USA punishes YOUr ass!!
(In many other places of the world, too)
So what we are seeing is the right-wing fuckers and the Bush administration crying like babies over the introductory step towards the problem.
They know very well that "temporary" and "introductory" mean "decades" and "permanent".
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Yea, food and medicine. That's what Iraq was buying with that oil...sure.
Regaurding less heating, the human body is more adaptable to cold than people often realize. Last night I slept fairly comfortably in a 45F bedroom using a not so good blanket. By the dead of winter I'll be comfortable (again) at 32F wearing nothing but shorts and a tee-shirt as long as it doesn't get too hot again here (Florida). It is just a matter of allowing yourself to be moderately uncomfortably cold for a few weeks so that your body undergoes whatever changes it needs. Prolonged warmness, as in a heated house, will quickly un-adapt the body. I doubt I'd ever be comfortable naked at 20F, there are limits, but my point is the thermostats can be set lower than most people do, perhaps 35F-40F for normal healthy people. I once even talked a normally chilly friend into trying it one winter and he adapted. I think it could save quite a bit of energy, especially since most people need to lose weight anyway. Clothing is another possibility:-)
It doesn't seem as easy to adapt to heat. Even working for hours every day in a 130F greenhouse never helped me be comfortable at 90F and 80% humidity. One of many reasons I want the heck out of Florida.
http://www.marxist.com/
. . . why would global warming lead to ice ages? And wouldn't the ice ages solve the global warming problem i.e. stop the warming? and if we can warm the planet, then wouldn't we be able to warm ourselves out of the ice age?
France is big on nuclear (although Finland is building more nuclear power as well). Norway is big on hydroelectric. Danes are ramping up their wind-generators. USA seems to generate their energy with mostly coal, and that's just about the worst possible way of generating energy.
The United States isn't blessed with the hydro resources of Norway. The state that I live in (New York) is has a lot of hydro resources -- but they are all maxed out (unless you purpose shutting off Niagara Falls to generate power). In our case we also have to share about 50% of those resources with our friends in Ontario because most of them are international water ways.
Nuclear power (which I personally would love to see replace coal and gas) runs into the NIMBY problem. Unless you purpose trashing the concept of democracy and forcing it on people then I don't see how you solve that problem in the short term. In the long term it should solve itself because we will eventually hit peak oil and gas -- and I don't see any renewable that will be nearly as cost effective as nuclear. People will get over their fears about nuclear power when they face the threat of paying $0.40/kWh for power.
So what? Does your observations somehow dispute what I said? While there are some SUV's in Europe, they are nowhere near as popular as they are in USA. And if you have been in Europe, you have propably seen those subcompacts (Smart, Peugeot C1, C2, C3, VW Polo, Renault Clio etc.) which are practically unheard of in USA. And then we have the question of engines. While Europeans seems to do just fine with around 2-liter engines or even smaller, Americans seems to absolutely need some 3-liter V6 even in regular family-cars. And those large engines consume more fuel and pollute more. And then we have the ultra-efficient diesel-cars in Europe, which are very rare in USA.
So Americans should have to accept smaller cars, because, why exactly? We don't have the European knack for legislating what people can do. If you'd read my comments in the past you've probably heard me lamenting the fact that nobody will build the type of car I want -- a small compact 100% electric vehicle. But nowhere in those comments will you see me suggesting that the government should step in and prohibit people from buying SUVs.
And your ideas about American "family-cars" seems to be a bit of a stereotype. Most of the people I know that have families drive minivans with 2-liter I4 engines.
Are you saying that there are no cities in USA? Why is it that everyone living in LA insist on driving to the city, instead of taking the bus?
Why is it that everyone living in Europe insists on telling Americans how to live? And if you going to point out an American city, then why not New York? All of the friends I know in NYC don't even own cars.
77% of Americans live in cities. That percentage is higher than in France (76%), Norway (75%), Switzerland (67%) and Italy (67%). With 77% of people living in urban areas, you seriously claim that mass-transit would not work in USA? It works wonderfully well in Finland, and only 59%& of Finns live in cities. Of course you can't have mass-transit system in every small village, but it would work just fine in cities.
You don't seem to grasp the distances involved and the (lack of) population density in the rural areas of the United States. I grew up a rather small town in upstate New York. If you needed anything besides food it meant a 30 mile trip to the nearest moderately sized city (Binghamton). The town that I grew up in had a population of less then 800.
Why don't you explain to me exactly what kind of mass transportion system would be economically feasible in such an environment? And that example is nothing compared to the low population and distances in the American west.
Why is it that everybody gets all offended when they perceive the United States to be forcing our way of life on other cultures but they turn around and try to do the same thing to us?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Foul!
Does it matter how many gigaton bomb equivalents it is? I don't think so.
It seems to me that you are trying to distract readers from the essential fact: So far, Kyoto may have lowered the global average temperature in 2050 by 1/800th of a Celsius degree.
If you would like to dispute the methodology or conclusions of the Junk Science site, feel free to do so. But converting an estimated (not measured!) temperature change into a scary unit (gigaton bomb equivalents) adds only heat to the discussion, and no light.
(Sorry about that, but the "heat with no light" cliche' is just too irresistable in this kind of discussion.)
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
Sorry if it wasn't clear...The vote numbers I posted were from the authorization to use force in Iraq approved by Congress on Oct 11, 2002 which I thought was an unfair comparison to the Kyoto vote.
Either:
We don't really have a crisis yet, now do we, let's be sensible here, you're doing too much modelling on not enough data, let's gather more evidence implementing those measures have real economic costs.
OR
It's too late now, such small baby steps that take decades to take affects cannot save us, we're all doomed.
Most posters on Slashdot threads have moved from "too early" to "too late" on global warming in the last year. Sigh.
That doesn't change the fact that he still got modded down.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
>>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?
If oil goes to $250 per barrel, do you really think heavy industry will remain in the third world? The US will produce it's own clothing again since trans-pacific shipping costs will be exorbitant.
Minor point on energy consumption-- I think a lot of Europeans don't realize the high and low temperatures experienced in the US. For the most populated areas, EU climate is mild and therefore heating/cooling requires less energy. Side comment-- I was reading a totally unrelated article in Outside magazine about sailing near Alaska. They described shipping lanes that existed through the arctic 150 years and made a point to mention that no ice crushing shipping were around then. The climate was warm enough that ships could pass. That's not true today, yet when we hear that arctic ice may be disappearing it's seen as a global calamity. Really? I have to wonder if that's really the case. Was there man-made global warming back then?
You said:
"We will never build one [clean nuclear powered reactor] here because of all the green knee jerkers".
Perhaps this is also a bit of a self fulfilling reaction? It might be a matter of education about how "green" nuclear is compared to burning fossil fuels for electricity -- or how "green" nuclear power is compared to rolling "brownouts".
Just hire a new spin doctor, some good marketing and PR types, some lawyers. Just market fossil fuel as "dirty"/polluting/brown/black energy and have bright green-glowing nuclear power shown as the new green energy and how long would it take to change the mass's impressions?
Heck, we can bill going nuclear as patriotic too! That might still have some cachet as well. We better be sure we know what we are doing as we do this though...
-lpq
I'm with you on this 100%. My prediction is that even if things go totally sideways and everyone panics, it's already too late to do anything about it and we're going to have a dual "ice age up north, hot as crap down south" situation. Ah, well. I have a nice parka, looks like I'll get to put it to use.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The problem is, oil won't go to 250 a barrel. Long before it hits that point, there'll be a gory war that'll drive down prices. It's fucked up that the world works that way, but it does.
And there is no will whatsoever to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Corporations have committed to a certain way of doing things, mostly sending work to countries without worker protection laws (the cheapness of labor is a side effect, not the real point). That won't change.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I don't buy it. I think what Washington wants is a captive puppet-regime selling them vast quantities of oil on their terms, plus peachy contracts for Halliburton et al. Remember, when supply goes down, prices go up and demand goes down.
Look at it this way:
If oil supplies increase, gas prices drop; people buy more gas, leading to higher profits, and they're willing to travel more (which means more shopping, more tourism, MORE fuel purchases, more of everything that drives the economy). Confidence goes up, stock prices climb, and the economy chugs along like a good little locomotive.
BUT, if the oil supply decreases, gas prices rise; people are scared into conserving, they buy smaller and smaller cars, travel less, spend less money on worthless crap at the mall... They think about the economy and layoffs and start to hoard money, they don't take risks on stock... The economy flattens out a bit, confidence drops, stock prices fall, and the rich lose money.
Get it? It ain't just about gas prices.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
So... Do I get an inflatable suit?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Thank you... :)
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Now, that's a lot of coal plants. Looks like China is going to look like nineteenth-century london soon (i.e. black soot everywhere, acid rain, skies overcast with coal smoke)...
;)
Hey, I wonder if their moths are going to change color? Maybe that'll shut up all the "intelligent design" folks!
Sorry, obscure reference.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
When I was living in Michigan, we used to say "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes". Imagine what the swings are going to be like now...
Attractive housewife type, in bathing suit: "Honey, isn't this a beautiful day! I'm so glad we came to the beach."
Brawny young husband: "Yes, isn't it? I'm so glad we HOLY SHIT IS THAT A TIDAL WAVE?"
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
If oil demand far outweighs supply, the price will be exorbitant despite a war. Unless you're saying oil is not running out, which is atypical of those advocating the other position on global warming.
Oil is NOT running out... Yet. And it'll take too long to run out to prevent the more immediate problem (climate change).
Here's what will most likely happen:
1. The price of oil will fluctuate up and down, "training" "consumers" to pay more for gasoline, but it will NOT rise so fast that people will be shocked into changing their behavior. This is very well organized and the oil companies know EXACTLY what they're doing. Don't for a minute think they'll EVER allow your scenario to occur.
2. Whenever the price of oil gets too high, some middle-eastern nation will be declared the Enemy Of The World and everyone will gang up on them, in an attempt to "liberate" their oil supplies from the "nasty dictators" who were charging too much or not supplying enough or (insert offense here).
3. In a few decades, when oil finally DOES run out, we'll all switch to another resource that can be controlled in the same way -- natural gas. We will NOT go with clean fuels or power generation methods because Those In Power simply can't make enough money that way (in their opinion). Of course, one day natural gas will run out and they'll have no choice but to figure out some novel way to force controlled scarcity on us.
4. Interesting possibility: Certain technologies, like fuel-cell tech, have the potential to get out of their inventor's control. As William Gibson said, "The street makes its own uses for things". It's entirely possible that some free-thinking geeks will repurpose some technology into a homegrown power plant that can be mass produced and sold. Who knows what the future holds? But even if this does happen, Those In Power will never let it become mainstream.
That's how the world works, man. The rich want to stay rich, and are willing to fuck all of us over and destroy the planet to do it.
They're not going to let a silly thing like oil prices screw things up for them.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Right on... and don't forget to think about the energy it takes to produce the products and situations you make decisions about. Yes, you can buy an "energy efficient" refrigerator, but don't forget about the manufacturing and distribution costs (in energy, which is not adequately reflected in price).
Best place I ever lived had a refrigerator made out of a cooler. Filtered gravity-feed water line (from nearby stream) comes in through a hole, does a few circuits in copper pipe, goes back out. Wipe it down once a week (five minutes) for the condensation and no problems... and no need for supplemental energy input.
What we need is more people thinking every day.
[|]
Note to Clint Slashbotwood - we're not cavemen! Yes, a classic Slashbot tough guy - doesn't like that we have to take the precaution of testing medicines before he takes them, or cars before he drives. Our ancestors would have been pretty goddamn psyched if they could be sure that what they ate wasn't gonna give them tuberculosis, even if that did make them "pantywaists".
Let's just deploy this untested application as it is, cause neither we nor our users would want to be accused of being pantywaists. You're brilliant, dude. Remind me to hire you to manage FEMA.
Suppose you had 1000 Chevy Suburbas on a freeway. Each Suburban is about 5.5 meters long, so lets assume that each Suburban takes 6 meters of space. That 6 kilometers of cars. Now, replace those Suburbans with Smarts. Each smart is 2.5 meters in legth, and lets assume they take 3 meters of space in total. So that's a line of cars 3 kilometers long: half of that with Suburbans. In other words: you can fit twice as many Smart-cars in same length of road as you can with Suburbans. And that would result in less traffic-jams.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Let me clarify, when most people write "oil is running out," they're really mean, "cheap oil is running out." There's a lot of oil that can be extracted by very expensive means.
By the way, cheap natural gas is predicted to "run out" in under 30 years anyway, so number 3 is wrong.
Still I stand by my statement that if demand severely outstrips supply, the price will escalate regardless of whatever war you want to start. I don't see how your arguments dispute that fact.
Hey asshole: why do cars stand still in traffic-jams? Because they are TRYING TO FIT TOO MANY CARS IN A LIMITED SPACE! Comprende, you damn idiot? There's only certain amount of space available, and if the cars take all that space + 30% more (for example), you will get traffic-jams. But if the cars only took 70% of available space, things would be a lot nicer. How could you achieve that? Well, either you have less cars (the ideal solution), or you make sure that the cars don't waste space. Or you do both.
This is not rocket-science, but it seems to be too much for you pea-brains.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Wars are meant to open up supplies that have otherwise been restricted, or otherwise change the economic landscape. It's all about the control of resources.
Your scenario isn't going to work out. Be with it.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't believe there is a supply that the west isn't already accessing which you could change with war. Even Iran's oil is already being consumed by western countries, so it's already in the supply line. Within the last year, oil producing countries were already at or near peak production.
And I'm not describing a "scenario" that may or may not work out, so your comment is weird to me. I am saying that as population and industrialization increase around the world, so will demand. Are you seriously contesting that statement?
The best argument you can make is that increases prices will motivate oil companies to find new sources of oil which will increase daily world supply thus keeping prices down.
Look, we can get into a big weird conversation about this that ties us up for days and days. My position, and I'm not going to give it up any sooner than you're going to give yours up, is that the people in charge aren't about to let a little competition for resources wreck their profits. They'll ask for (and get) any military action they require to secure exclusive access to whatever resources they feel they need to make a profit.
YOUR idea, which is naiive and touching, really, is that all countries are going to compete fairly for oil reserves, and that demand will drive up price. That's silly and simplistic.
MY idea, which is more cynical and likely, is that the most powerful nations are going to use military force to ensure that THEY are the only ones bidding for the oil reserves. They'll be able to do this, and UNFAIRLY control the price to suit their "needs". Those who don't have enough military power to force their way into the game will be on the outside looking in.
THAT is how it works.
Ok, tag, you're it.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
And you are a fucking moron. Allow me to explain this to you using simple words so that even you understand, OK?
Suppose you had those 1000 Chevy Suburbans taking 6 kilometers of road. What happens when you approach that group of cars? Well, when you reach those cars, you would end up standing still. What would happen if those cars were Smarts taking 3 kilometers of space? You could keep on driving for 3 more kilometers before you reach those cars. And you seriously claim that that wouldn't have any effect of traffic-jams? According to you, I would be standing still. But pure logic dictates that there would be lots more free road ahead of me if the cars took less space. The fact that you don't understand that, just underlines the fact that you are a fucking moron. What if each car took only 1 meter of space? Would you still seriously claim that it would have no effect on traffic-jams? What if the drivers left their cars home, and walked on the freeway (while obeying the traffic-rules). They would take a lot less space, but according to you, there would still be "traffic"-jams.
If you have 50 kilometers of road, and you are trying to cram 10000 cars that each take 6 meters of space, what happens? You get a total gridlock, since those cars simply would not fit in that space. But if those cars took 3 meters of space, you would get heavy traffic, but it would be radically different when compared to situation where you have bunch of SUV's taking up the space. Or how about cities? There's only limited amount of space between intersections. If you have SUV's, you could either
a) Only have few cars between the intersections standing in the traffic-lights
b) You have more cars that block the roads that cross the other road, creating a gridlock
I guess even you understand situation B, but how about A? In that case the flow of traffic would be less smooth, since only few cars at a time would be moving. But if the cars were smaller, things would be radically different. Again: this is not rocket science.
You only have certain amount of space on the roads. If the cars you are trying to cram to that space consume too much space, you will have traffic-jams. But if those cars take only 50% of the space, the severity of the jams would be seriously lessened. But I guess that asshats like you don't want to hear that that humungous SUV of your might not be the ideal car for traffic-congested roads.
Like I said: this is not rocket-science. But I guess some people simply refuse to accept the truth, because they are unwilling to face the facts.
Come back to me when you have developed even a trace of intelligence and common sense. Until that happens, continuing this discussion is pointless. And in the future, have the guts to NOT post as an AC. But what else can I expect from spineless asshats like you?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
http://www.transact.org/Ca/congestion1.htm
Here is a another link to the Federal Highway Administration of the US which states that the leading cause of highway congestion is lack of capacity.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/congestion/congest2.htm
It is generally accept by traffic engineers that the ability of highways to sustainability keep up with increasing vehicular demand is not feasible. While smaller cars may be a short term solution to reduce the total lane-miles of cars on the highway , a long term solution would be to give up cars and use improved mass transit systems. The difficulty of the small car solution for the short term is getting people to give up their large cars in favor of smaller vehicles. The difficulty of the long term solution is getting people to give up their cars completely. Now this long term solution is not expressed outright in the linked articles but I think we can agree that it would be the ultimate goal in traffic reduction.
So from the information presented in the above links it is clear to see that traffic congestion is a complicated issue with no easy solution. But as long as people keep thinking about the problem maybe some solutions can be thought up to ease the situation. And for the AC, next time you decide to bash a persons ideas you should really have a better idea to present.
>My position...is that the people in charge aren't about
>to let a little competition for resources wreck their profits.
I'm not disputing that.
>They'll ask for (and get) any military action they
>require to secure exclusive access to whatever
>resources they feel they need to make a profit.
There are none to aquire.
>YOUR idea, which is naiive and touching, really, is
>that all countries are going to compete fairly for
>oil reserves, and that demand will drive up price.
>That's silly and simplistic.
That's not my position. (And what's with the attitude?)
>MY idea, which is more cynical and likely is...
I already demonstrated that there is no oil being kept out of the supply line. Having said that, and knowing that oil production reached or nearly reached capacity in the past 12 months, then your ACTUAL position is that the US, western nations, or whatever will seize oil fields as needed and keep it for themselves.
Sure that's possible. I don't think I disputed that. I just think it's more far-fetched than my position is "naive" as you say.
You haven't successfully demonstrated anything. You merely asserted it. As you should well know, even here on Slashdot "because I said so" is NOT a logical proof. It's not even a logical statement. I think the Irish call it "blarney". Or is it "blather"?
You're simply wrong on many levels. There are large amounts of oil that haven't been tapped yet. Oh, look! I just demonstrated something! It must be true. And if that mystifies you, please look up "irony". Hint: it's not "like silvery and goldy, but made of iron".
I'm touched that you were surprised that I gave you back some attitude. It was cute, and made me smile. Now try not to be so pedantic while you rant your unsupported, silly theories, or I shall "attitude" you again, you silly English Kniiiiiiiight!
P.S. I'm smiling as I type this. I am envisioning my joy floating over to you through the aether. Lighten up. This is a very funny conversation on some levels.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Look. I've been waiting for one simple response from you. Name the country that is not putting oil into the supply line, the country that the west can invade to "secure exclusive access" and bring down oil prices. You haven't. I don't know why since that's the crux of your stated argument. You also seem to ignore the fact that the resulting political instability would inflate oil prices regardless of supply. I also didn't say I had proven something. I wrote, "I already demonstrated that there is no oil being kept out of the supply line." Since you apparently think that's untrue, please provide your counterexamples. The logical burden is on you since you're asserting a positive. >There >are large amounts of oil that haven't >been tapped yet. I don't see how that supports your claim about invasions. That quote is also not at odds with anything I've said. IN FACT, *I* am the one who wrote, "The best argument you can make is that increase[ing] prices will motivate oil companies to find new sources of oil which will increase daily world supply thus keeping prices down."
Look. I've been waiting for one simple response from you. Name the country that is not putting oil into the supply line, the country that the west can invade to "secure exclusive access" and bring down oil prices. You haven't. I don't know why since that's the crux of your stated argument.
You also seem to ignore the fact that the resulting political instability would inflate oil prices regardless of supply.
I also didn't say I had proven something. I wrote, "I already demonstrated that there is no oil being kept out of the supply line." Since you apparently think that's untrue, please provide your counterexamples. The logical burden is on you since you're asserting a positive.
>There
>are large amounts of oil that haven't
>been tapped yet.
I don't see how that supports your claim about invasions.
That quote is also not at odds with anything I've said. IN FACT, *I* am the one who wrote, "The best argument you can make is that increas[ing] prices will motivate oil companies to find new sources of oil which will increase daily world supply thus keeping prices down."
Thanks for clearing that up! Just go ahead and keep adding layers to your scenario to the point that it's so hypothetical, I can't imagine why you brought it up. Now there has to be some kind of hypothetical climate change event, either a much hotter planet, or a mini ice age, or increasing sea levels, or no increase in sea level, or just people freaking out about what might happen, plus there will be an oil shortage, and countries withholding oil from the US whereupon those countries will be invaded, oil seized, and somehow brought back to the US. Whew!!!
On second thought, I should never have you taken your claims seriously in the first place. Your cynical first posting enumerates conflicting theories about the future, and all of these predictions are simultaneously supported by your one premise? WOW THAT'S AMAZING! If bet on every horse, you're bound to win, eh?
It's hilarious you think *my* comments are the ones that are "unsupported, silly theories" and a "naive" "scenario [which] isn't going to work out." You're really at odds with yourself. I try to challenge very specific points, and you totally avoid them, taking an ad hominem approach instead. Then the funniest thing is that you scold me for being pedantic in a debate, when you're completely obtuse. Good luck with that.
It's the precautionary principle crowd who are the extremists, not me. The advance of civilization depends on trading off one set of risks and benefits against another.
The PP nuts reject all trade-offs and demand that all societal progress come to a complete halt until perfect safety and stability can be assured. This is madness, the ideology of the graveyard. But it is music to the ears of government bureaucrats and environmental hysterics.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
1. Yep, you were still trolled. The fact that I've been right all along has just made the troll much more delicious for me.
2. Your pet scenario is still stupid and trite, and totally unrealistic for all the reasons I've been going over again (and again, and again -- boy, you're thick).
3. I can keep going forever, like the energizer bunny of passive aggression, trolling you endlessly. I'm amused. Are you amused?
Tag, you're it, my little trout sniffer!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Are you in love with me?
You only think they love you.
Looks like you're the pudgy bowl cut with triple thick glasses and stubby fingers. Look, Eugene, it's not MY fault your parents don't love you and nobody wants to cook you delicious foods. Hell, I feel for ya, buddy! If I thought you knew how to eat with silverware, I'd even invite you over for something tasty. Sadly, I think you're culturally limited to finger foods, and my delightful family doesn't keep cheetos in stock.
Don't worry. Perhaps you'll be spending the holidays alone, trapped in your basement hovel, banging on keyboards desperately trying to "score", but there are worse fates. Why, you could be a bitter slashdotter, pathetically trying to insult the family life of someone who turned out to be much smarter than you... Oh, wait...
Well, still, there's no need to kill yourself. I'm sure a vasectomy would benefit society equally, and you ARE providing a service in a way. You ARE extremely amusing, after all.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Are you so upset because I've right about everything from the start?
But, my dear cheeto-fingered competitor! I am NOT angry with you!
In fact, much to the contrary, I'm finding you terrifically amusing! But I do wish you would quit with the one-liners. It feels as though you're not even TRYING. They're so dull. And you're even screwing up your grammar. It seems like you're missing a "been" there somewhere.
Tsk, tsk. You're just not up to snuff, my fellow slashdotter!
But perhaps I can motivate you with a poem!
There once was a slashdotter named rrgg,
whose bladder was tied to his speech,
he'd whip up a rant,
and once it was sent,
in his pants the poor devil would pee!
Isn't that cute??? Now you try. It'll be more interesting than those stale one-liners.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Congrats! You've provided an incredibly efficient yield for several days now. With just a few words from me, you'd repeatedly respond with an upsetting page or more. What a beautiful harvest it's been. You have been trolled. Touché.
Ah, but it was a mututal troll! So I guess we're going to have a baby troll soon? When are you expecting?
By the way, what exactly did you find upsetting about my posts? I thought they were rather charming...
You DO know that these public forums are pure BS, don't you? And "not to be taken seriously"?
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
My dear rrgg, you just aren't putting anything into this relationship. I do believe I shall have to leave you, and seek satisfaction elsewhere. Although I will miss you, and will think of you fondly, I must bid you "adieu".
Farewell!
(Weeping quietly, folds a parasol and boards a steamship).
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!