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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.
... 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.
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. ;)
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!
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
You can't make anything that would work on that massive a scale without spending as much money as would be lost if South America suddenly vanished. Nature is much bigger and more powerful than us and is totally beyond our control through methods like that.
I am Spartacus
Indeed, this was in the press before the movie. Discover posted the original article on their website when the movie came out.
original article in Nature
news article in Nature
Yes, i have seen that in several articles, that global warming is happening at a MUCH faster rate at the poles than at the equator. :(
Sorry dont have any links tho
Actually the movie was based on info and theories from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They just added a bunch of bad science for plot devices. Take a look at these two links: Little Ice Age and Abrupt Climate Change
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
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.
http://www.wunderground.com/education/abruptclimat e.asp
Here is the part I wanted to reference: "Since the Great Ocean Conveyor belt is driven in part by differences in ocean water density, if one can pump enough fresh water into the ocean in the key areas on either side of Greenland where the Gulf Stream waters cool and sink, this will lower the ocean's salinity (and therefore its density) enough so that the waters there no longer sink. The Atlantic conveyor belt and Gulf Stream current will then shut down in just a few years, dramatically altering the climate. "
Also here is a write up specifically dealing with the "science" of "The Day After Tomorrow."
http://www.wunderground.com/education/thedayafter. asp
"I'm in it to win it, and no limit is my home." - Snoop Dog c/o PvP Online (July 12th, 2006)
"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.
It's something that real climatologists are considering... but they're certainly not of the opinion that it will suddenly and dramatically flip the global warming to global cooling... unless you consider a decade or two fast.
They're not even suggesting a "flip" to "global cooling". What is being suggested is that despite gloablly getting warmer, locally eastern North America and Northern Europe are going to get colder. That just means all the extra heat is going to get pushed elsewhere (the suggestion seems to be warmer weather for Central and South America and Africa).
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
There's a pretty good article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_war ming
Everyone but you is telepathic.
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
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
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.
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
Sorry to crush you with this, but the world's needs are more important than a few enterprises' economical whims.
Yeah. But when your whole culture is just that, a few enterprises, it could mean a lot.
It can also mean your culture isn't very deep and that affecting these few enterprises' economical whims might actualy improve things around, but that's another story...
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
when you fall down a cliff and break your legs, you go back up and try again to see if it works better the second time?
no, when you break your leg, you reset your bones and you put them in a cast
what would you do? lie there helplessly with broken legs? that seems to be exactly what you are proposing
you seem to think that because it was stupid to break our legs, that realizing that is all that is needed to unbreak our legs. no, they are broken: we have polluted our environment, the climate is changing. now what? curse our situation and pout? or DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
why is it impossible for you to concieve that we humans can fix our environment, or that, accepting or not accepting that we can fix it, that we shouldn't try?
why is your helplessness a superior attitude about the environment than my desire for positive action?
too much of the environmental debate are these two camps:
1. negative action: we pollute, oh well, the planet will take care of itself: "the solution to pollution is dilution". the current hurricane seasons in the usa should make such people realize this situation is untenable
2. (you) negative inaction: we pollute, so stop polluting! go back to the stone age, stop driving cars, making plastics, etc. go back to living in caves.
what we need is positive action: we pollute, we can mitigate that to some extent, but we can also get MORE involved and start manmade processes that balance out our effects: we belch co2? ok, well then start some large scale manmade carbon sinks to counteract it... because no matter how much you minimize our co2 emissions, they are still there and unnatural... so BALANCE IT OUT
why is this so anathema to you?
so when you break your legs, don't you want to fix them?
or do you just want to lie there helpessly?
blame games and learned helplessness do not help our situation
your attitude is poisonous to the debate on the environment
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nature is much bigger and more powerful than us and is totally beyond our control through methods like that.
Except the problem may have been caused by our activities, so the idea we can generate focused activity to alter something we set into motion isn't that far off?
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
What we really need is to keep our albedo levels higher.
...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
Regardless of the rest of your argument, it is definitely the case that global warming is expected to warm the polar and subpolar regions more than the tropics, decreasing the temperature gradient, and it is also definitely the case that the greatest effects so far have been in high latitude continental interiors, specifically the interiors of Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Now it is starting to show up in the high Arctic and the edges of the great ice caps.
There are two phenomena at work, one subtle one which I've never figured out about radiative equilibrium and the vertical profile of temperature in cold vs warm places, and one very simple one; the ice-albedo feedback. The latter one says that as ice and snow cover retreats, the ground gets darker for more of the year, reflecting less sunlight and absorbing more. That causes warming or cooling trends to be enhanced at ice and snow boundaries.
mt
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.
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
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
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!
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.
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
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.
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!)
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."
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.
Less water the world over. Probably the 2 best countries with fairly good water will be America and Russia. In contrast, China and India (the 2 most populus nations) will have quite a bit less water.
Do you really want to live in a world where two other highly-populated nuclear powers face political instability because of a shortage of water while you apparently still have enough to spare?I would like to think that I have started to do my part. I drive a motor scooter to work for about a 10 mile one way commute. I consume about 1 gallon of gas a week.
I live in a very old house with windows that bleed heat and walls with no insulation. I have replaced all of the windows in two of the bedrooms. Also in those two rooms, I have installed insulation in the walls and upgraded the insulation in the ceiling. I have already noticed a significant change in my home energy bills. As soon as I have the funds to do so, I will finish upgrading the rest of the house.
Now, will this solve all of the worlds problems? No, I am only one person, and my impact on global energy consumption is not all that significant. But it definitely can't hurt. However, if more and more people did as I have done, then maybe things would start to change.
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.
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.
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
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.