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More Bad News About Global Warming
IZ Reloaded writes "A UK govt report says that greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts that previously thought. Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. From BBC: The European Union has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two Celsius. That, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees being enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.... A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause:
* Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world
* Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia
* Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification
* Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage
* 97% loss of coral reefs
* Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus
* Spread of malaria in Africa and north America"
La La La La LA!!!!
Can't hear you! Not happening! No consensus!
Love,
George
[George W. Bush appears by kind co-operation of Exxon, Inc]
Eh. Worse things could happen. I'm only half-joking. If they had to resort to "extinction of the polar bear and walrus" for a seven-item list of "what could happen if there's global warming," we're not in such bad shape.
All those problems, but whats on the mind of most people here is - will it affect my WoW ping times?
liqbase
Even with the best will in the world (and that is sorely lacking
from certain countries - and thats not just a pop at the US, I'm
talking china, australia, india etc) we can't suddenly all switch
to nuclear and wind/solar/wave power overnight. CO2 will continue
to be released and the temperature is likely to go over the 2C
rise this century. I suspect the writing is on the wall for a
large part of the next generation of people on this planet , and
possibly us too if we live long enough.
are you telling me your name is really Adolf Hitroll?
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
Global warming is happening right now . Purely from an economic point of view, it would be both wiser and less costly if we apprehend the problem in the present and not postpone.
....bush says in his State of Union address that Niger provided yellow cake to Iraq, so it too must be "democraticized" forcibly. ....another analyst resigns from bush admin and joins Chevron after being identified as a "watering down specialist" who watered down reports related to global warming. ....aw.. forget it. Its Monday evening, and am bootin' for Home.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I suppose Mr and Mrs Hitroll are proud of their son as well.
liqbase
How much more proof do we need before those that believe in "intelligent design" finally accpet the affects of global warming.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
So, I hear republicans and big oil business folks still call this a theory.
We, north of that country, just barely (and fortunately) elected a government who feels the same way.
We're having a winter heat wave here in Southern Ontario while our summers have been bloody unbearable with bad air days...weeks, high humidity and high temperatures while massive flooding and totally untypical weather hits different parts of the world.
Exactly, what are these folks not seeing when it comes to denying global warming?
It's inevitable, just what we were wanting to hear. Now we don't have to bother changing our ways, we can just sit back and wait for it, with a newly-invigorated sense of nihilism. If you were hesitating to buy that SUV you wanted, well, now, you may as well get it.
For a while I thought there would be the danger that we would have to do something....phew!
ntxt
No, Chicken Little, the sky is not falling. That's just rain falling on your head. Acid rain, maybe, but rain just the same.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Did you really just Godwin this thread in 6 posts??!
"...collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference..." In other words Hand Picked without controlling for bias. Where is the link to the actual studies that were used? What was rejected? Looks like more media based science.
"You have no right to damage the Earth! It's not yours."
[joke]
The hell it isn't. We paid for it.
[joke]
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Don't you know better than to post anything that is not uber-liberal under your real nick? This is Slashdot, where uber-liberal groupthink is cool and anything else is anathema. There are many evil children here, some armed with mod points. They think liberalism is cool, so nuke anybody/thing that is uncool.
In future, use the AC option. It is cowardly, but it is survival.
Er ... if you read TFA closely, the report doesn't actually say what the headline seems to imply -- i.e., that greenhouse gases have been demonstrated to be more effective in causing global warming than previously thought. It says that the effects of global warming have been modeled to be more drastic than previously thought.
This is a subtle but vitally important distinction that the writers of the article themselves don't seem to grasp. To quote from TFA:
But Miles Allen, a lecturer on atmospheric physics at Oxford University, said assessing a "safe level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was "a bit like asking a doctor what's a safe number of cigarettes to smoke per day".
"There isn't one but at the same time people do smoke and live until they're 90," he told Today.
"It's one of those difficult areas where we're talking about changing degrees of risk rather than a very definite number after which we can say with absolute certainty that certain things will happen."
Given that CO2 is naturally found in the atmosphere, and was so long before humanity came on the scene, and is essential for the continuation of plant life on this planet, Allen's comparison of it to an external disease-causing agent is a very odd statement.
I'm waiting to see a study on global warming that actually takes into account the fact that we are still coming out of the last ice age (or out of the Little Ice Age); that the planet (and our species) has survived far more drastic climate change in the past; and that such climate change had nothing to do with human action. When those facts (and they are facts) are taken into account, how much actual evidence is there that the current climate change is due to human causes? Is there any at all?
I don't intend this as a troll. Seriously, if anyone can link to studies that take those facts into account, I'd very much like to read them.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Since August 1989 I've worked as a programmer for a group of meteorologists and climatologists. Not a one of them talks about global warming. [...]
We have some of the best and most extensive data anyone has,
That is very interesting. It would be even more interesting if you could give a name of this group so the data would be up for verification, mr AC.
Why is there one pseudo-science article after another claiming global cooling does not exist and some that even claims the opposite. Whether the cooling trend is going to continue or now is still an item open for debate.
Are you perhaps confusing global dimming with global cooling? For a while scientists had problems reconciling global dimming and global warming, but these days it is pretty much accepted that polution caused the former (the dimming), and the former masked the latter (the warming).
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
This is why we need to act now. Even if we don't do much and we only reduce the our CO2 emissions by an extra 1% (for illustrative purposes not actual figure) by doing easy things like turning our TVs off at the wall rather than putting them on standby, walking to places near our houses, not leaving our computers on all day while we are not at home etc. Then at least we will be giving our selves more of a chance to sort out this mess.
I am angry that countries like America, Austraila and China will not sign up to the Kyoto treaty as they are some of the largest contributers to CO2 emissions, and the other parts of the world that are doing thier bit to reduce emissions are then getting short changed because the good that they are doing is being made almost pointless because places like America are still polluting lots and the whole world will suffer not just America. The world is a "team game" we need to work together on this one. America (and the others) should stop thinking about thier oil centric economies and think about the future of our planet.
I am also irritated and scared that the American electorate keeps voting Bush in, he really is a moron, how can the American people trust such an idiot to run thier country. It would be much better to bring Clinton back in my view.
Michael-m.co.uk - Home of Michael Mulqueen
I don't know where the hell your getting your "data" from but as a programmer with a physics degree I am able to pick up these supposed "pseudo" scientific journals (you many have heard of Nature for example) and understand not only the data presented but the scientific arguements surrounding the conclusions. 2005 was the hottest year since accurate records began so where the hell is the cooling?? Arguing whether global warming is actually happening or going to happen has long ended, however there is still a chance someone will believe the we're coming out of an ice age go about you business ploy.
C3PO - We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.
In Russia we are having one of the COLDEST winters in history!
It looks here that not a global warming, but a global permafrost is coming!
we experienced -15 F here! and some experienced -20!
What exactly is "tripling of poor harvests"?
We'll have poor harvests that are three times as big as previous poor harvests? We'll have poor harvests three times as often as we do now? We'll have harvests that yield only one-third as much as we do now? Or something else?
And how is "poor harvests" defined?
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Is it even possible to reverse global warming? If every bad emission was to stop today all of a sudden, would it take hundreds of years to start having an effect?
Hopefully, something can be done to slow or stop its progress. I don't see the world stopping all its emissions suddenly, maybe people will have to directly see its negative impact for them to start caring/thinking about this problem.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
From what I've read about peak oil, and the latest news about Kuwaits reserves, I can't see how this will be a problem. Surely we don't have 1000 years worth of fossil fuels to burn?
Greenhouse gases [...] is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable
Well, if the rate of warming is "unsustainable", global warming will slow down soon. Isn't that good news???
In future, use the AC option. It is cowardly, but it is survival.
You would have to have a pretty fragile ego if you equate getting negative mod points with death...
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Um ya, a lot of us know that.
There is an article in The Observer about some scenarios considered by Pentagon. One (?) of the scenarios deals with some dramatic changes in very short time scala:y /0,6903,1153513,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/stor
I'm in the very small minority who believe that global cooling is the more likely possibility in the near future; warming won't continue much longer.
...
:)
So relax and enjoy the warmth while it lasts
I know I will be today with temperatures over 20F above normal with the high temp expected to be around 60F in the Reading, Pennsylvania area
Ron
that you have to hold the whole world liable for the fix. Kyoto did not do this and that invalidates it. The Western world countries have gone to great extents to clean up their environments, the US is nearly a whole different country in regards to the environment since the 70s. Places where pollution was obvious but ignored are now safe.
Blaming the issue of non-compliance on oil and republicans is just playing stupid politics. If anything it is the standard lame attempt to make it appear one has a valid point but in fact doesn't.
With both China and India gearing up their economies nothing we do in the West is going to have a measurable impact. China is coming up like the old Eastern Soviet states did, ramping up without regard for the environment or people around them. You want to find the worst abuses of the environment go look towards former Soviet states. Some of those were frightening. Going on a trip and being told to stay physically away from rivers is not a great way to encourage tourists to return.
We have NASA ice cores that show more wild swings in our temperatures and more extremes than we see now. We constantly get contradicting reports about the speed, effect, and even the cause of Global Warming. I fully expect within a month or two if not sooner to have another report laying the blame on some new man made source we "just noticed". Perhaps a report claiming even more dire issues or a faster occurence of them?
After a time it gets old. What sinks the Global Warming cause more than anything is that even the GW side cannot agree on all the causes let alone all its effect. The latest report/study/article always seems to be the one with issues most glom onto while they totally ignore past articles. Heaven forbid any article that attempts to refute any GW "theorey" as the writers will be villified. There is no allowance for the other side in this argument and that by itself damages the pro-GW side even more. People have to come to understand that when one side consistently paints the other with hostile terms, actions, and name calling that the side doing so isn't telling the whole truth.
Get the whole world involved or blame the whole world. Singling out the US gets very tiring. All the world done in the US and elsewhere over the last 30 years fixing the enviornment are going to be lost as long as China and the East are ignored.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
What about that water shortage? So the ice is melting, yet, we are going to have water shortage? Someone care to explain that phenomenon?
---
Don't let the fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
It's not only greenhouse gases, but also the effects of soot that appear to be modulating the climate: http://search.nasa.gov/nasasearch/search/search.js p?nasaInclude=soot&x=0&y=0
Yeah! We don't need to argue the counterpoint by providing supporting evidence. We'll just call the other side liberals and leave it at that. Who needs scientific investigation, careful analysis of collected data or a theory based on that evidence? Every right-thinking person knows we're correct anyway!
If the "liberal garbage" is to claim the sky is falling, then the "conservative idiocy" is to stick your fingers in your ears and hope it all goes away.
Seems like we're lucky to be alive, considering how a 2 degree climate difference will mean the end of the world.
Fewer people equals less people using things that emit greenhouse gases. But the environmental movement in the US nixed that idea.
Yah, I'll get right on that. First I'll write my congressman, who'll never see my letter. The assistant that *does* see it will go to the folder in file cabinet relating to the environmental stance of the congressman and'll stuff an envelope with my address on it. I'll get this letter in about 3 months. Start a protest? The democratic party to which about 200 million people belong can't even block the nomination of the judge who anchors a rope in a tug of war in favor of religious zelotry, and you expect some rabble rousers to influence an entire nation to twist our industry and infrastructure to meet the demands of a profit hitting protocol. You need to wake up and smell the tripe your typing.
By the way, we're not damaging Earth, it'll do just fine without us. The only things we're damaging are the things we need to survive. Once we're gone, a steady state will return and the two-headed lions will take they're seat at the top of the food chain.
Ta-ta chap-er-ino.
Haven't you read Mickael Crichton's "State of Fear"?
Global warming is only a huge conspiracy...
By the way, Mickael, where are the dinosaurs?
> Re:Nice agenda Slashdot!
And we have yet more proof that the activists don't care about science or data. They only care about pushing their agenda. So, a post that talks about actual data is marked as a troll. Nice work Slashdot. The moderators here have shown their true colors again.
A good question is why are the political activists pushing their agenda so hard lately? Is it because the emperor has no clothes? They don't have science to back them up so they attempt to drown-out the discussion with their shrill hate.
Proud AC since Oct '98
Actually, that would be China. Better than 70% of their energy is gained by the burning of coal.
-- You can have my SUV when you pry it off of your cold dead run-your-assover-left-tire-marks-on-your-back corpse.
I really wish that we would search for solutions outside of prevention. Breaks are nice, but if they fail, I would like a seatbelt, an air bag, a crumple zone, and a roll cage. The simple fact of the matter is that I honestly don't think that the world has the will to slow its green house gas output.
The US is not going to relocate its populace into central locations and build a massive public transport project. China (or any other developing nation for the matter) is not going to tell 1.3 billion people that are always on the verge of a violent revolution to come out of poverty slowly so that they don't dump green house gases with their inefficient industries. Hell, even the modest targets set up by Kyoto are going to be a struggle for most nations to reach. Simply put, the world is addicted and the addiction isn't going to stop. If the threat truly is sever and looming, hitting the breaks as hard as we can muster is a nice first step, but it sure as hell shouldn't be the last.
Billions of people are coming out of poverty and starting to really consume for the first time. These people simply well not accept being told they can't live like the people in first world nations do. Older first world nations like the US are already built on an infrastructure that is both physical and political that precludes massive societal alterations to truly reduce green house gas output. Even the EU has limits as to how far they can cut back. Combine these factors and it is pretty clear we can't back peddle. We can slow and delay which are good first steps, but with 3-4 billion or so people coming out of poverty, that is about all we can do.
I think we need a three fold strategy.
First, we need to delay. Reducing output and gathering climate data is something that has already been initiated. This is a trend that needs to continue in so much as far is possible, but it can't be the only thing that is done.
Second, we need alternative technologies to that can maintain our standard of living while reducing emissions. Perhaps more importantly, we need to have these technologies in place such that they can be transferred to rising third world nations. 1.3 billion Chinese can not live like Europeans, much less Americans, and have the same inefficiency that they suffer with now. Fusion, fissions, clean coal technology, hybrids, all of these things are steps in the right direction.
Third, we should seriously consider the possibility that the first two steps are not going to work and seriously consider methods to terraform Earth to maintain the status quo, or at least to blunt serious and dramatic changes. If we can say with some level of certainty that our climate models are good enough to link humans to global warming and foresee serious consequences in the future, we need to take those same models and predict ways to offset those changes. I find it hard to believe that we have enough power to warm the planet, yet lack the power to cool it. If this really is a grave concern, money should start being funneled into global climate control now. An international treaty organization should begin hammering out the framework for altering the global weather in a manner that is agreeable to as many as possible.
In my opinion, it isn't enough to simply demand the insane and expect 3-4 billion poor to rise out of poverty, but do it such that they do it without creating a global impact. The wave is coming. If we truly have convinced ourselves that it is upon us, we need to recognize the fact that 3-4 billion people going through an industrial revolution is messy at best, and prepare in ways that recognize that environmentalism alone isn't enough to stop what is coming.
Did you read "State of Fear" by Michael Chrichton?
oh you mean the two countries that produce more carbon emmisions than us? oh wait they dont produce more carbon emmisions than us. hmm so maybe we should do something about that. Ahead in env sci? HA dont make me laugh, advancements in env. sci can be as stupid as 'lets tame the everglades thats the smart thing to do' to as smart as 'damn we fucked up the everglades lets fix it', how advanced we are in env sci depends on your point of view.Even if we are the most advanced nation when it comes to env. sci. it wont matter if we dont apply some of that science in usefull policies.
Oh you are working on it? let me know how that goes and good luck.
China signed AND ratified the Kyoto protocol.
The US signed the Kyoto protocol, but did not ratify it.
Australia signed nor ratified the Kyoto protocol.
or in other words the cuts suggested during the kyoto summit is not all that much useful ? it would lead to economic downturns but will not cause any significant improvements to the environment ????
oh..and the third world/devoloping nations that fought for and got a break for thier polluting setups are going to get it bad ?
The US population is aging and having fewer kids. The European population is aging even faster and having even fewer kids. Except that the European Arabs are young and having lots of kids. Mix it all together and let me know if you figure it out...
I18N == Intergalacticization
try RealClimate.org and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
I've read all the papers (a few in summary form only) from the conference on which this report is based. The BBC report accurately reflects what I have read.
"Theres lots of studies and they all say different things, so we're going to listen to the one which makes us the most profit".
I'm not sure if I feel sorry for these people or myself. These people will be dead in 30-40 years so not see the worse of it, I on the other hand have another 50-60 if I keep myself in a good condition. If the current models are correct I should exprience quite extreme weather by the time I get old enough for a brisk cold to be quite risky for my heatlh..
Profit comes before damage if you're not going to live to see the damage it's self.
I like muppets.
Oh no! You didn't close the [joke] tag properly! Everything you've said or typed since you wrote this post has been a joke!
Close it quick!
As the CO2 is increasing, the O2 is decreasing.
So when it gets 4 to 7 degrees C warmer, and Florida and many islands vanish,
that's bad - but what do we do without oxygen?
The bigger problem with fossil fuels is they are competition, not just a tool.
It might be a good idea to stop using technology that kills of all the microorganisms,
photoplankton, and trees and plants that produce the free oxygen we need to survive,
or homo sapien will be the next endangered species.
SpaceBalls wasn't a joke - it was a prophecy.
Check out picture #7.
s .bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1715000/images/_1716436_bulgari a9.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi /pictures/galleries/newsid_1716000/1716436.stm&h=1 80&w=300&sz=7&tbnid=gunL8iagL2ND2M:&tbnh=66&tbnw=1 11&hl=en&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfrozen%2B%2522 black%2Bsea%2522%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26 sa%3DN
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://new
Ask this guy about the problem. :)
Heat and technology it's a bad misture.
Here in New York (USA), the energy sector has been decentralized, so we can choose our suppliers for electricity. I've chosen one that is entirely based on wind and hydro power. Sure, it costs me an extra $10-$20/month, but it is one small thing that _I_ can do.
We keep looking to governments to impose a change on us, but what are we doing about it for ourselves?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
The question is not whether or not the Earth will survive. It is whether or not my future grandchildren will survive. It is not whether or not life will continue, it is whether or not our lives will continue. It's not a question of whether or not global warming causes are natural or not. It's whether we can do anything about it.
Slashdot, liberal? Well, possibly, but not in the modern sense of the word. I read posts here and I find the consensus to be of a broadly right-wing anarchistic bent. Something approaching the world of Snow Crash seems to be the ideal here. Government, according to /. groupthink, should get the hell out of people's lives, and not interfere either by (a) overextending copyright terms, (b) taxing people beyond a bare minimum, (c) telling us what programs we can and cannot create, or (d) going off on hugely expensive and completely unnecessary wars.
Furthermore, what does the issue here have to do with any party-political agenda? This is a scientific issue, no more susceptible to political ideology than was genetics, and look where Lysenkoism led...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
In my opinion, this is an area that we may have to put our faith in science to develop fixes for society's mis-management of the environment.
Rather than wait for governments to agree on how much they should
reduce energy consuption (and possible reduce economic output) - which
could be a long wait...it may be better to invest more time/money/resources
into think tanks on developing future technologies capabable of reversing
the effects on our planet. IANAES (I Am Not An Environmental Scientist), but one possible
theory is nanotech devices that target constituent molecules of GHG's and convert
them to less harmful (or beneficial) elements?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
You have a good point, but then when you look at fossil fuel use and what the air is like around cities, global warming isn't the only reason to "clean up".
I live in the countryside, if I go into a city I find it difficult to breathe because of the fumes. Just think what that permantly does to people's bodies. Let alone smaller animals like birds and such.
I like muppets.
Once again various aspect of a huge and diverse issue are conflated...
Many studies (including anylising ice cores which contain atmospheric records going back millenia) have shown that CO2 has risien since the industrial revolution and temperatures have risen too. The evidence it there go and read the papers.
It's not just about survival of the species, if we as a species just wanted to survive we would still be living in caves. We are intelligent, which means that we are aware of others, society and some kind of collective good.
The fact the we and the planet have survived worse is no excuse for engendering flooding on a massive scale, extreme weather and a range of other effects that will kill millions, cause wars and famine (sorry, sounding a bit biblical here...). Surviving is not enough, we as individuals and as a species seek to better our lot, and now it is turning out that that is much more closely coupled to the rest of nature than we ever imagined.
Many civilisations have risen and collapsed, some partly due to environmental changes. Have we come this far, taken our first steps into space, decoded the human genome, to say "Bring it On" to the next major global environmental change? Whilst we may survive, much of what we have achieved will be lost and if you think it can't happen the ancient Greeks - 2000 years ago - knew the Earth was spherical and it's diameter. But 500 years ago people believed the earth was flat...
Art is the mathematics of emotion
Time to move to Colodaro and buy a few acres of land and buy stock in bottled water companies.
Alrighty Yall, quit yer bitchin. Ain't nothin gunna happen, Texans survive in this weather and we likes it! I just want to be able to enjoy this nice hot Texan summers and cold Texan wintars everwhar I go! An I'm da President so I said so! -Bush
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Certainly the facts are inconclusive. A bold statement, I agree, but:
Interesting. On the facts above, it's sheer hubris to claim that anything that we do now can damage the planet in the short, medium or even long term. I mean, looking at it, was there a hole in the ozone layer before we could measure it? Antartica certainly was not always covered in ice (although that could be location, not climate).
Then you look at the other side of the argument, which is mainly common sense
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Well, saying that we are doing nothing is not entirely true. We have been bringing down the CO2 level over the last 5 years due to our "lower economic level".
Besides, we helped the other day; we bought up some of the EU CO2 certificates and took them off the market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't disagree. I moved away from the city some years ago partly for that very reason.
But my question remains: How much evidence is there (that takes those factors into account) to support the idea that humans are responsible for global warming, or that we have any power to alter its progress?
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Give me a break. Start worrying about things humans do control, not the things they wish they controlled. The more you beat your chest about global warming and how humans are causing it, the more silly you sound. Do the science. It's like pissing in the ocean and saying you killed the whales. As much as we wish we were that powerful, we are not and, hopefully, never will be.
I'm not saying let loose the smog filters on coal plants (PLEASE NO!) We may need to start a program to block out a percentage of solar radiation via some means so as to allow polar ice to reform. As in Large scale orbital polarization filters and so on. It would work, and a slight decrease in daytime brightness (back to early 20th century levels) would be nowhere near as bad as what we're looking at now.
OK, I just did, actually.
147 GT total carbon emitted annually (all sources)
5 GT carbon annually comes from combustion ("human and natural") - let's be generous and blame it all on humans (data from Cunningham et al. Environmental Science textbook, p. 68 in the 9th edition; Ricklefs' Ecology has similar figures)
Kyoto calls for 5% (or so - hell, let's make it 10%) reduction of anthropogenic emissions - that's 0.5 GT
Conclusion: in the grand scheme of things (assuming greenhouse gases ARE to blame), Kyoto protocol amounts to a 50 cent rebate on $150 - only to get that rebate, you need to do 20 pushups, send forms in via certified mail and swear off meat forever. Still sounds like a good deal?
On the other hand, boosting biomass sequestration globally (by chopping down "old-growth" forests and replacing them with tree farms) by lousy 3% will fully offset ALL human carbon emissions. Sure, I propose that with a tongue in cheek, but the idea is still sound.
And has anyone calculated carbon emissions for dollar GDP for U.S. and China, which is curiously exempt from Kyoto? I'll bet anyone $20 that China emits a whole lot more on per-dollar basis.
We humans think that as it is now is the norm.
Before the big bang theory, we thought all the stars are where they are now and have always been that way. What a wake up the expansion of the Universe was.
The Earth has cold periods and we have warm periods.
Some mountain areas in South America are thawing out revealing a rich amount of plant life frozen for the last 5,000 years. Well, why was it warm enough for the plant life to thrive before 5,000 years ago? Why did it get cold all of a sudden and freeze? Maybe warm IS the norm for the Earth and the unusual cold we are exiting is the problem.
How quaint that the word image for posting is "unproven"
These Brit eco freaks. Silly, always inventing new jokes. There is no, and there will be no global warming. If the temperatures are rising a little, it is always in range of normal statistical variation. The American Way of Life is more important than those non-sensical pretensions, this why we do in Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere in the world where Oil can be democratized and property can be transferred to Halliburton, Exxon or other companies of the Holy Crusade for Freedom and Against Terrorism. Go, take a ride around the block, for to save America As It Is.
Have you read Horton Hears a Who? by Dr. Suess?
Just when did being liberal become a bad thing?! I'm getting damned fed up with this word being used as an insult or being blamed for everything wrong with the world. It's going to end up demonised like the word 'communist' in America - peopel will forget its real meaning and just associate it with 'evilness'. Gah.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
By 2050, industrialized nations will be emitting little CO2. By 2100, if necessary, we will be pumping it back into the ground. These projections consistently assume that emissions are going to go up, up, and up. They won't.
The only things that are going to go up up up are petro prices. The only "tipping point" we are approaching is the point where renewables become cheaper than dino power.
Yes, the world is going to warm a couple of degrees, and sea levels will rise a few feet. No, this will not be the apocalypse. Simply put, adaption is cheap, while prevention is hideously expensive at the moment. In twenty years, it will not be.
It's not a question of whether or not global warming causes are natural or not. It's whether we can do anything about it.
Agreed; though these are not really two entirely separate questions. If we have caused it, then most likely we can do something about it. But if we haven't -- if the system is too large and complex for us to affect -- then it's quite possible that we cannot do anything about it, except damage control. But before we run off altering everything we do, shouldn't we first understand to what degree the things we're upset about are under our control? Otherwise action amounts to little more than superstition, and that guy's superstition about appropriate environmental behavior has no more support than my superstition about it.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Regardless of the fact that climate change occurs naturally and that we do have ice ages and what not, we are producing more CO2 and toxic pollution than any other lifeform in the history of the planet and at the same time are deforesting the planet at a level never before possible. Do you think that will have no effect on the planet?
http://crimespree.ca/ - photography, mountain biking
-You're trying to kidnap from me what I've rightfully stolen.
-We seem to have come to an impasse.
Citizens of the US: It's time to make your government take actions to stop global warming. You, the US, are the biggest contributor to global warming. In spite of this fact, the US does nothing. Join the EU and the rest of the world.
I'm going to ignore your silly troll, that got modded up, and provide some truth admist the $EMOTION-mongering:
Here is the data (mostly from 2002): Greenhouse gas emissions. As a point of information, while the US totally dominates total greenhouse emissions, we aren't #1 per capita, we are just #6. We are behind Paraguay, Luxembourg, Jamacia, Belize, and Australia. And before Canada gets all high and mighty, we are at 23.35, and you are at 23.11. And, for the record, the US has done alot to cut back on its GHG emissions, despite the fact that it is not part of Kyoto. Therefore, the quote "In spite of this fact, the US does nothing." is catagorically false. You may decide we haven't done enough, and I'd probably agree.
You have no right to damage the Earth! It's not yours.
Tell that to Luxembourg. Har har.
How much is hype and BS encouraged by the mass, liberal media? How much is hype on the other side by the oil companies? Fear and panic sells!
You should visit this site: http://www.junkscience.com/
Some of the graphs are very interesting -- http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/warming_by_d
which shows that if you include ALL the recorded data, some areas are getting cooler, but the graphs you typically see: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/csci/ show an increase.
You should read Crichton's book State of Fear -- it will make you really think about this in a new light: http://www.crichton-official.com/
You might actually begin to take a critical view of what you read in the press.
Also, you should read http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm -- what are they really measuring -- how are they cooking the numbers to mislead you (about most everything). Remember, bad press sells.... Death sells.... CNN had great ratings during the Gulf War. Many more watched the news following 9/11 and Katrina. Death and destruction and fear sell.
Is global warming real? There are many indicators that it is. But there are those that show some places are colder and that overall it is actually getting colder. We need more accurate data, more research, and more CRITICAL thinking, not mass fear and suppression -- ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ISSUE.
After 9/11 happened all air traffic was grounded and the contrails that are created by airplanes dissipated. Temperatures went up but at night were generally cooler because the clouds trapped heat inside.
So if ONLY air traffic were to cease you would already see a difference in climate. I'm not an expert so I don't know whether or not this is good or bad, but seeing as this is a human created phenomenon I'm assuming that it would improve the balance of the earth's climate.
That's nothing. My computer simulations indicate that even a one degree C temperature increase will cause the entire frickin planet frickin explode into a billion pieces. And if that's not enough, Clinton just said that it's the biggest problem ever, and Gore said he was going to write ANOTHER book about it, so... try arguing with that. What we really need to is trigger a new ice age to counteract this. Anyone who doesn't agree with me is stupid and probably believes in creationism.
You paid for the Earth? Really?
;)
Wanna buy a bridge?
"Some estimates suggest the Chinese fires could be accounting for as much as 2-3% of the annual world emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels."
Link
Fact is, if you clamp down on US carbon emissions, the manufacturing sector will only accelerate its moves to other countries that have no such limits. If you make it so every KWH of electricity costs $100, then suddenly it becomes economically viable to build transmission lines from China. Without very harsh controls on everything, the economy will simply ooze into another direction that is not so heavily taxed or controlled.
I do environmental work all day long, guys, and guess what, there *is* no consensus. Climate changes naturally, the sun has a variable output that changes through time, and it's been hotter than it is now during recorded history (the Medieval Warm period). The data, in fact, says that it's been a lot warmer than this in prehistoric times. Ask a geologist.
The global warming problem is that there is so much advocacy, bias (in favor far more than aganst), and indeterminacy involved that this issue has stopped being about science and become political. Until the shriller of the global warming advocates stop their shrill Chicken Little tone and stop coming across as hippies/Leftists/Karl marx with a political agenda and start coming up with more hard data and working models - which, by the way, I tell you as a scientist that they are very, very weak on - this issue will go nowhere politically. (This is not to say that there aren't some very scientifically talented and very professional advocates out there, because there are - but their voices are being lost in the chorus of the horde of shrieking Leftist Chicken Littles who are demanding exceedingly expensive politcal solutions RIGHT NOW to a problem that many scientists and many politicans have very good reason to believe is not as it is being presented.)
The people advocating political and economic change because of global warming loudest are, sadly, the very ones who have killed it by their shrill advocacy and lack of scientific detachment.
Oh, well, off to another day of trying to protect the enivronment. It's a sad truth that often the worst enemies of the planet are its own advocates and not those who don't care about it.
Of course we did! Have you seen our national debt lately?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Anyone read about a thing called the Ice Age? what caused that, and why arent we still in it?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It seems to me we are basing what is normal on a sample of
Does anyone really think one can determine what is normal in the life of a person, or anything, with little data?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
This report is simply the conference notes for the Met Office/IPCC scarefest last year. It contains no new science (although lots of climate models, which aren't science but look like it) and lots of scary rhetoric.
See this eyewitness report on what this "scientific conference" was really about
In the 1970s exactly the same fun mix of lower crop yields, desertification, drought, plague, famine, pestilence and war was confidently predicted for "global cooling". Then, warming was seen as a good thing.
Plus ça change...
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
"Just when did being liberal become a bad thing?"
About 1976.
People like you are always demanding more and more proof that global warming is a problem and that pollution and waste is a problem. Prove to me that it isn't! Prove to me that fresh water hasn't needed to be more and more treated and refined to make in potable. Prove to me that toxic air in the cities haven't caused health problems, prove to me that acid rain hasn't had an affect on the ecosystem, prove to me that pesticide use has killed multitudes of wildlife and poisened ground water and rivers, prove to me that it's okay to keep raising acceptable limits for toxins so we don't have to change the way we do things. Even if you discount global warming there are a score of other reasons for people to smarten the fuck up and stop polluting the planet. What level of toxic water and air are we willing to live with today in order to live our McLifestyle? And how does it affect our children?
http://crimespree.ca/ - photography, mountain biking
Rush! Good to see you back at the keyboard. How's the OxyContin thing treating you? Still got the shakes?
Let me get this straight - I go from a zone 5 to a zone 6, the whole world has crop problems - making food crops (an iowa specialty) more valuable. My property value skyrockets (as I won't be underwater anytime soon). I can visit the arctic sea without fear of getting eatan by a bear or tusked by a walrus . . . and all I have to worry about is changing the propane tanks on the mosquio killers so I don't get malaria? GO GLOBAL WARMING!!!! YEAH!!!
Finally, someone with an intelligent response to all this gloom and doom.
I would like to thank Slashdot and the conservative article poster for getting the Liberal-bait article up this early in the day.
Now that the Liberal's have burned all their mod points in a orgaism of self-rightnesous, shooting down any view opposed to *their* religion (Atheism, Anti-Bush, and Global warming a.k.a. Scientology), the rest of the day will be free from their WikiPedia-esque form of censorship. e.g. If you don't like it, erase it.
So, tomorrow, lets get something about SUV's not being deadly to the planet. That should really bring them out of the woodwork.
Ta TA!
--
def Liberalism: The religion of having no religion. The Art of making things up and calling it the "will of the people". To believe in the killing of unborn babies while wanting to keep cold-blooded killers alive because they 'wrote a childrens book'. A dying breed. See Also: Whig Party
You forgot to mention that simply signing a treaty does nothing - most of the member nations who signed it years ago have failed to meet their obligations. It's simply a pointless treaty.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Theres evidence for and against, it just depends on how much you value it. But global warming is the general mish mash of several problems with have.
Fossil fuels are limited in the long term, smog and general urban build up is becoming a problem and basicly we need to fix all these problems and one of the easiest ways is to just be cleaner. I mean would you let your dog live in it's own filth? Why should we do it?
It may or may not be warming up, but again at the same time, the red light may just be on because iit's set to, or it maybe a car is about to cross. Do you risk an accident or play it safe? That's the situation we're in.
I like muppets.
Your raving makes no sense. If reducing pollution is somehow going to destroy the world economy, wouldn't that provide sufficient "adversity" to motivate exploitation of other energy sources?
And how is it that no previous fuel transition caused such catastrophic results? By your alarmist thinking, Londoners should still be heating their homes with soft coal -- "Burn coke? Might as well just hand the Empire over to the French!"
Mind the Gap
You want to take that up with the mice? We all know they are the ones that had Earth built in the first place.
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. Reg
But before we run off altering everything we do, shouldn't we first understand to what degree the things we're upset about are under our control? Otherwise action amounts to little more than superstition, and that guy's superstition about appropriate environmental behavior has no more support than my superstition about it.
Right, but we do know that we are emmitting gases that would not normally be in our atmosphere in the quantities they are. We know that as a fact. We also have observed that the rate the globe is warming has dramatically increased symptomaticaly about the time the industrial revolution came to be. Now, I'm not saying they are connected in a force-reaction way, but is it not wise to alter our impact on the enviroment in terms of gas emmition just in case they are connected? We do have the technology, all we need is the political will. This is a far better cause than the war on terror...
Look at my other post on this topic... we use a higher percentage of renewable resources than you do in the EU. Read some facts before you say there is something wrong with the US.
Canada is a lot higher north than US too. So we spend more energy on heating. (I guess we also spend less on A/C. I guess I don't really have a point)
Many studies (including anylising ice cores which contain atmospheric records going back millenia) have shown that CO2 has risien since the industrial revolution and temperatures have risen too. The evidence it there go and read the papers.
First off, I have read the papers.
Second, as you may have heard elsewhere, correlation is not causation.
Third, while the CO2 rises from those studies are large, they are not accompanied by a correspondingly large rise in global temperatures. In fact, I recall at least one study that expressed surprise at how small the temperature rise was compared to the rise in CO2 levels.
Fourth, the rises in temperature since the onset of the Industrial Revolution are significantly less than those (documented in those very same studies you mention) from various periods in pre-industrial and in pre-human times.
So my question remains: What evidence is there that takes the factors I mentioned into account that supports the idea that humans affect global temperatures?
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
100-yr trends are for herdsmen. here's a 440,000-yr trend.
try finding 1985 on this one.
But it ain't about science.
It's about implementing global socialist policies that nobody would ever agree to.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Citizens of the US? Why is everything our fault? Have you ever been to Cairo? Istanbul? Mexico City? The pollution there is clearly worse than LA, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, DC, Phoenix. How is that the US's fault? How is that W's fault?
Bill Clinton sat on his dead ass, letting interns suck his dick for 8 years, and W is the problem? I think your left-leaning politics allow you point the blame easily at W and "big oil". Frankly, Europe has had as much trouble with politics and corruption. Look at France and Germany. They both had under-handed negotiations with Saddam in the "food (weapons) for oil (and cash)". Yet we never hear about France and Germany as part of the problem.
We just hear the 14 year old communists whining about W and USA's "policies". Why isn't this a UN problem? Kofi Annan should be able to handle this, shouldn't he? Ooops. I guess he and his son are too busy swindling money from the UN (and the US.) Sorry, forgot about that one.
Why the hell do you think we spent all that money making the moon out of cheese?
I'm nto trolling, or trying to flamebait anybody here, but blame for pollution can't be laid at the feet of any one country. It's an issue we all have to deal with.
Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, covers all of this very nicely. One point often left out of the media reports, but that is in the UN's own IPCC report is that the majority of warming has occurred in the winter and spring seasons, and that it has mostly influenced the minimum temperatures, not the maximums.
antipaucity
Malaria in NORTH america?? ...?!
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
The US touts itself as the last Super Power, a world leader. It's not about how much you pollute or not. It's about how you set the agenda. By not signing to Kyoto, that's a huge signal to the rest of the world that "you" (the US) don't give a rats arse about it and are quite happy to ride that SUV into oblivion.
thankyou and goodnight.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
The chinese wont do anything about their shit until the US does it.
Doesn't seem like a moron to me.
don't ya know
It is irrelevant wether global warming is caused by CO2 or not. Oil is a finite resource, we should be swithing to other forms of energy simply for that reason and use the remaining oil sparingly.
Not only that, but since global warming IS happening, we should be preparing for lower crop yields, flooding and other horrible disasters.
None of this is economically possible right now -and that I believe is the problem.
So you see, the whole CO2-causes-global-warming-debate isn't worth even getting in to.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
No, that's not the way things go.
Joking aside, it usually is the USA (and UK) that shoot/destroy the world, and the rest of Europe/world that ends up paying for it either in hard valuta or in suffering.
cfr Africa, South-East Asia, Balkan, Israel/Palestina, the Middle-East in general just to name a few in recent decade(s).
anytime someone farts in your general direction, you have to blow them up (or 'back to the stoneage') along with the country he/she is in, and
in the end, it is Europe that has to pay the bills for your companies that 'rebuild' the country.
frankly, this idea is beginning to form rather harshly in the public opinion of a lot of Europeans.
kind regards
What really concerns me is the manipulation of climate science for political ends. When a politician talks about an event 1,000 years away as "shocking", it's time to look at what their intentions are.
Socialism failed. So, the advocates of the command economy adopted environmental science, and are trying to blind the populace. The message has become that individuality is bad, but instead of being because it makes others poor (because that got busted), it is because it is damaging our planet.
This means more nannies in charge of us, because we can't have that free market taking care of you. More regulation of people's activities, more government jobs to centralise activities to save the planet. Lots of unionised jobs for the boys driving park-and-ride buses, more rail and making an extra "green" refuse collection (even though the park-and-ride is less environmentally friendly than the same car use).
mind you, I wasn't linking it to 9/11 with that fart part!
You know, I had never thought about the moon being made of cheese in that way, does that mean that the moon is a vacation get-away for the true rulers of earth?
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. Reg
that this is not new News. As the BBC makes clear: The report, "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change", collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office in February 2005. All this is, is a report from a conference a year ago; and there wasn't much new at the conference either.
Allen's comparison of it to an external disease-causing agent is a very odd statement.
No it isn't. Jeezus, even in the little snippet you quoted he explicitly specifies what aspect of it he is comparing: not the external deisease-causing stuff, but the fact that the dangers must handled as a case of risk management, not as clean cut, provable "will definitely kill me"/"will definitely not kill me", beacuse proof in cases like this can never be available until it's too late. In that respect, the comparison is quite apt.
that the planet (and our species) has survived far more drastic climate change in the past;
Well, some of us like to aim a little higher than the survival of the species. If you are not one of those, you are basically saying "who cares if billions suffer and die as long as humanity doesn't go extinct?". I'm sure you will forgive me if I don't harbour much respect for that attitude.
The case for taking action against climate change is not based on the spectre of extinction, and pretending so is a straw man. The point is the incomprehensibly massive human and economic cost that large scale climate changes will cause. And yes, even though such changes can and do occur naturally, that does not mean it is impossible to provoke them, or add to them, and the best models available indicate that we are in fact contributing in a serious way.
sudo ergo sum
At least during the winter, warmer temps mean LESS energy consumption
This is great! Higher demand for basic survival will do wonders for our Q3 profit margin! Please, arrange a conference call with our off-shore consultants that will be in desperate need of sustenance. Hell, we maybe be able to pay then in soy beans! They have no choice but to renegotiate! Noah, you are great!
I'd like to see the source code for the models sometime. Predicting something 1,000 years away sounds downright silly to me, and as open to abuse as someone trying to tell people to vote for them because of what their party has planned 25 years from now.
Someone should produce a model based on 5-10 years. Then we can test the hypothesis.
I'm awake! By the way the Earth is mine. I'm an American and damn proud of it!!!
I'm sick of you jealous pussys and Godless hippies bellyaching over global warming. The Godless hippies in America need to allow America to build windpower and nuclear power plants - but they stand in the way of every action we take. They want the Earth to go back to a time when people and goats were more intimate and slept in the same house.
Why can't we work together to build a world where all people can have a 6000 sq. ft. home plus attached maids quarters and 3 SUVs in the driveway? A world of clean power and good jobs with low taxes so everyone can enjoy being American. It's so much fun lounging on my strato-lounger, drinking a beer and watching the big game. You should try it instead of pissing and moaning all the time.
Rise up slaves of european socialism and demand low taxes. Tell the state to stop thinking for you. Tell them to lower your taxes and enjoy economic freedom. It's the only way out of the Matrix. Tell your taskmasters that power comes from the people to the government - not the reverse! Refuse to take the test in 8th grade that dertermines your place in the socialist machine. Remember, if Einstein had knuckled under to the european wet-dream he'd had stayed a patent clerk his entire life or perhaps a street sweeper.
How come most Slashdotters claim to be fans of science, but about 20% reject science when it comes to creationism, 50% when it comes to dark matter/energy, and 80% when it comes to global warming?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I remember watching documentary called Phenomenon: The Lost Archives about how from Florida to south of texas would be underwater, california gone too. And yes, a huge world population drop between now and 2050. At the time it seemed like the ramblings of a crack head but to day it is very plausible.
Therefore forget the instant freeze of "The day after tomorrow" and prepare for the instant flood.
Companies have only one goal:get rich quick.
Nobody would build a hybrid with a 120V socket capable to drive power tools and a microwave. That's because it would kill some of the same company's other business: Portable generators, regular cars, trucks and SUVs. (Not to mention the housing business since you could live in your car in style!)
You won't see a solar rechargeable Cell phone/MP3/Flashlight/am~fm radio/garage door openner/Car key for at least 40 years. Why? because it would kill the disposable battery business. (BTW: did you know that a AA has more juice than a C or D cell! look at the specs on the rechargeables.)
It's all about creating waste to for us to consume more to drive profits.
Were all gonna drown for these assholes' profits.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This is funny, until the 90's the US had stricter emissions laws than the rest of the world. Our aggregate contribution is much lower than everyone elses taken individually. They were still selling leaded gas in Europe 3 years ago too. Global Warming is a product of aggregate emmisions over time, not a current activity type of thing.
Oh yeah, cause Germany never did such a thing. And please try to recall that the US is only 200 years old! Do you seriously suggest that the lions share of destruction is propogated by a country that hasn't been around more than 1/3 of a milleneum?
Go find some history books.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Sounds like another Michael Crichton Novel!
http://www.crichton-official.com/
Picard/Locutus: We are changing their atmosphere. Plus 4.5% Celsius, 93% humidity and increasing their CO2 levels to aid our drones.
Bill: Very good, the attack can start when the Vista sphere arrives...
N/A
This is the piece of ammunition that I've been waiting for. Now I have scientific reasons for why we should turn down the damn thermostate to be UNDER 72 degrees. "Honey, we will destroy the Earth if we turn it up too high! Think about the children!"
And they said zombies weren't real!
And if that's not enough, Clinton just said that it's the biggest problem ever, and Gore said he was going to write ANOTHER book about it...
And Fox and Rush Limbaugh will continue to report on all of this in a rather, shall we say, selective manner.
Do you silly twits have to bring in Clinton and Gore (both of whom have been *ahem* private citizens for some time now) when you have nothing else to offer?
In case you're wondering, the damage we're inflicting on the environment isn't hype. The sustainability of our way of life is hanging by a thread at best. We'll need three Earths to continue on our present course, and six to allow everyone on the globe to enjoy the living standards acceptable in the West.
The source of this observation? The commie pinkos at the Harvard Business School.
(I don't have the back issue of HBR, sorry; talk to any B-school student to get it if their department deals with "sustainable enterprise". Trust me, it's more informative reading than Michael Crichton.)
And that's without global warming entering the picture.
Kids, I don't envy you. You'll have to deal with problems on a global scale, far more so than any previous generation, and if the current sociopolitical climate (all puns intended) is any indication, you'll be lucky to make any progress. Idiots like the OP won't help either.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Anyone who quotes those sources is a fool, and in the pay of the big Environmental lobby, who's avowed aim is to bring us all back to the Stone Age.
USA govt.: "Oh my god, our economy will SUFFER if we sign Kyoto, those liberal hippies will make us all staaarrveeee!!!!!1111"
Facts: "As of December 2005, 157 countries have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, aimed at combatting global warming."
Newsflash for the USA's govt.: There won't be any FUCKING ECONOMY to suffer if you keep putting your heads in the sand much longer. 157 other countries signed and ratified the treaty, their economy doesn't seem to be collapsing, does it?
I'd let your own stupidity kill yourselves, but unfortunately global warming is _global_, the CO2 YOUR COUNTRY is dumping into the atmosphere doesn't stop at the borders. It is messing with MY part of the planet aswell!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
You ignore that the industrial age has pushed CO2 levels way Way WAY beyond anything seen in the past 400000+ years, and that CO2 correlates very well with temperature over the same timeframe. Natural variation is one thing, but these huge man-made changes worry the $#!+ out of folks like me.
Tell that to the folks in Poland and the rest of Europe. 60+ deaths in Poland due to record cold weather... yah, it's global warming alright.
But "per capita" doesn't stop America from being so damnbig, and therefore significant in the debate.
... and then they built the supercollider.
>A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause:
>* Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world
>* Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia
>* Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification
>* Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage
>* 97% loss of coral reefs
>* Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus
>* Spread of malaria in Africa and north America
Do you think that 99% of the first-world, particularly the people of the US, care one whit about any of those bullet points?
NO!
You want to know the average American's response to all of this?
Gosh! The developing world won't have any food. Shit, they never have any food.
Darn! Those Europeans and Ruskies won't have any good crops, either. Whoop-tee-do.
Oh No! Those Africans will be displaced by deserts. Wait! You mean Africa isn't already a desert (see bullet #1).
Water shortage? As long as you turn on the tap or can reach into the fridge and out comes water, who cares.
Only those rich scuba divers care about coral reefs.
Oh No! The polar bears and walruses will die! Seen any lately?
More disease for Africa?!? Aren't they always dying of some disease there? Can't happen here.
You want to see Americans get concerned about global warming? Tell them Disney Land will be under 20 feet of water. Until that happens, most won't care.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
50 posts and nobody calls "FUD" on this?
- 600x283.gif it is certainly convincing that there is warming going on. No question. But all of these graphs seem to start in the 1800s. I've seen other graphs showing longer spans in which the current temperatures, while high, are still well within the normal deviation. How is it that we KNOW that *this time* it's going to go higher? All the models I've read about that project this sort of thing are so full of assumptions and broad variables that they are pretty much useless.
Can someone please answer the following questions concisely and clearly?
- If I look at a graph like http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gat2005
A rise of two Celsius, researchers conclude, will be enough to cause: * Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world
- Don't plants prefer warmer, higher-CO2 atmosphere? Wasn't it much warmer than +2C at intermittent periods in humanity's past, as well as in more ancient geologic epochs?
* Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia *
- What does this even mean? I presume they mean a tripling of the FREQUENCY of bad harvests? Last time I checked, Europe and Russia were not the major food producers of the world. Wouldn't increased temperatures open up large swaths of North America to cultivation more intensively than before? This shift of 'main agricultural region' northward also sort of neatly solves the issue about soil and water table exhaustion in the Central US too, doesn't it? Also, don't most of the tests of increased-CO2 environments show an increased growth, increased CO2 absorption using LESS moisture? That sounds pretty good to me?
Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification *
Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage *
- I don't see how global warming is going to affect this? As far as I can see, the 'global warming' crowd is also predicting increased frequency and increased intensity weather events (ie rain?) which will be recharging aquifers faster than usual. Personally, I think there are just way too many people living in way too crummy of areas.
97% loss of coral reefs *
- Please. This one is utterly incredible. Maybe 97% loss of CURRENT coral reefs? But as far as I know there have been coral reefs all the way back to the Cenozoic, in conditions of FAR higher global temperature. Basically, if one area gets warmer, other areas that were previously too cool for reef formation will then be warmed into the reef-friendly climate range. Coral reefs are neither static nor permanent.
Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus *
Again, FUD: assuming the polar bear and the walrus are entirely unable to adapt to changing conditions. Yes their conditions will change, but with the warming of arctic waters mightn't an increased seal population lead to a BOOM in polar bear populations? I sincerely doubt that polar bears and walrus will vanish.
Spread of malaria in Africa and north America
- Great! Now maybe we can go back to using DDT which was the victim of FUD (Silent Spring) 30 years ago but which has since been proven NOT to cause the terrible results illustrated in that book.
"... when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." -Alston Chase
Personally, every time someone raises a doubt about global warming, the reporter attacks the questioner as a tool of big oil or somesuch. Anyone ever question the motivations of the people proclaiming global warming? Their credulity, their histrionics, and their repeated chicken littling (first it was overpopulation, then we're going to run out of oil about every 15 years, then it was going to be a global ice age, now it's global warming....) all cast HUGE doubts on their credibility with THIS particular disaster.
-Styopa
Yeah, I'm most certainly too late to have any hope of being modded up.
Anyway, and I'm not protesting that there is a global warming going on, the Earth's magnetic field has decreased by 10-15% the last 100 years. The magnetic field is shielding us from radiation from space. Given that this field is weakest at the poles, this might have something to do with the missing ozone layer at the north and south pole.
Further, the planet is bound to be getting warmer with less shielding. Now why won't anyone take this into consideration? Because it's not spectacular enough? This just in: The global warming may not all be man made?
If there is some global warming going on due to greenhouse gases, there is the possibility we are speeding it up without our knowledge. The last 100 years or so, the air has been polluted by smoke and particles creating what's called global dimming.
What's happened is that we're getting very good at cleaning away this pollution. Catalysators on cars and cleaning systems for the industrial smoke. Again we see that more sunlight hits the earth, making it a warmer place.
My point is that there are more factors than populary taken into consideration. Man made global warming is without a doubt a possibility. What if we're only speeding up the inevitable?
Doesn't mean they produce the majority. Plants are thought to generate between 15-20% of the Methane in the Atmosphere, that leaves 80% to other sources, most of which are the results of human industry and agriculture.
Regardless of the underlying cause of climate change, we need to focus on treating the symptom by the fastest method. Lowering co2 is important long-term but short term we need to focus on whatever method will reverse the loss of the icecaps. Consider:
- CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. Water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane are other greenhouse gasses. We could spend huge money to lower CO2 (which could take 30 years to mature which is more time than we've got) and find out that all the methane and nitrous oxide is still causing too much heat retention
- There are many promising technologies for artificially reducing co2 and greenhouse gasses but we are a long way from deploying them. Planting massive forests would also do a good job but it will be 10-20 years before we see the effects.
- There's significant evidence (tree ring studies and other sources) to show that the earth goes through heating and cooling trends due to the sun. We are in a heating trend, and we are compounding it with greenhouse gasses.
In other words the only sure-fire way to reverse global warming is to prevent some energy from being absorbed by the atmosphere. There are several ways I can think of to do this:
- prevent light from reaching the earth's atmosphere. This is not as far-fetched as one may think at first. The closer you get to the sun the smaller something has to be to block a larger area on earth. A small satellite close to the sun could cause a full eclipse. Other ways to do this could be to blow up asteroids or comets to create dust clouds, use a strong magnetic field to deflect photons away from the earth.
- Artificially increase the earth's albedo, meaning reflect more light away before it can be absorbed and released as infrared (ie heat). Clouds reflect light, some aerosols reflect light (pollution, ironically, is one of the reasons the earth hasn't heated up more because of greenhouse gasses. See Global Dimming), and materials reflect light. Simply covering a large area with tinfoil, or painting everyone's roof white could go a long way toward slowing down climate change. A wide use of solar panels would help. Other ideas are to use lots of large mylar balloons (or millions of small mylar balloons) to reflect light.
My point is that we are focusing on reducing greenhouse gasses too much instead of the real problem. Greenhouse gas reduction is the cure, we need a bandage to keep the patient alive! Who cares what the cause is, or who's to blame? We all are, and nobody is! Let's fix the problem.
Talk to the 28 million people in Iraq and get back to me on the completely unnecessary war. Liberals are some of the crulest people in the world.
We must eliminate the #1 and #2 sources of greenhouse gasses. The sun and all of the plant life on earth. yea, that will cure all of our problems!
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
You have to give the global warming people some credit for somehow advancing their theory as fact and proclaiming such horrendous future consequences to it to get so much attention and funding. However, just as it was a consensus once that Earth was the center of the universe this may be just as wrong and the establishment has just as much a backlash to those who are skeptical of their assertion.
9 1.shtml). There are also a theory that the warming is caused more from water vapor than CO2 and that reducing CO2 emissions will have a negligable effect on it. (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/iris. html).
l t.aspx?ID=101). When you are talking those kind of consequences and costs there better be a more definite understanding and more dire consequences than less than a degree temperature change in 100 years and a theory that points to only one main cause seems a bit simplistic anyway in an ecosystem as complicated as ours. I think our energy and money is better spent on cleaning up other kinds of pollution and fixing helping with some of humanities social problems and human suffering - many things will have a much more real and substantial impact in our lives and well-being.
I think that there is consensus that there has been a slight warming (0.6 +/- 0.2 C in the past century; 0.1 C/decade over the last 30 years) but there is not a consensus of the cause, there is not a consensus that it will continue and there is not a consensus that it is serious enough for humanity ecologically and economically to put the kind of resouces that some are calling for in the order of Trillions of dollars. There certainly are many things that we are more sure of and affect us more that we can and should be focusing on instead of this.
There is a theory that the warming trend is about to reverse itself and is more tied to Pacific Decadal Oscillation than to C02 emissions. (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL0151
There is not enough certainty here for humanity to do the things that are being called for and I believe that reducing CO2 emissions to the levels and extent called for will have a disasterous effect on many of the world's economies. For example, this was a report prepared on the costs for Denmark to meet Kyoto standard(http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Defau
Yes it is, please leave.
Pssst.... this is a climatology-related political discussion on slashdot. You are NOT supposed to make sense here.
But, hell, yeah - I'd like to see the supposed liberals here on slashdot, too. The GP nicely demonstrates the batshit-crazy rightwing mindset of seeing an evil liberal conspiracy at work everywhere - LOOK! THERE COULD BE A COMMUNIST UNDER MY BED!!!
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1. The earth has been much warmer than this for the majority of its history
2. The earth is coming out of a ice age that ended 10,000 years ago
3. Climate changes radically throughout the geologic record
4. Mammals, including 6 billion people and 100 billion livestock, exhale CO2
Various groups advocate, to stop the climate from changing, the banning of fossil fuels, forcing consumers to use only items produced within 100 miles, stopping the export of food, products, medicines, forcing populations out of mega-cities, and ending global distribution of goods.
The end result of which is the total destruction of the worlds economy and the loss of roughly one half of the world population and its livestock. Bingo.
The fact is the climate changes. Rather than waste effort in a vain attempt to stop it, goverments should be planning on how to adapt to it.
What we actually need is more pirates. We all know that a study showing the decline in pirates over the past couple centuries has been directly linked to the rise in the global average temperature. Less pirates, higher temperatures.... it seems so obvious now, doesn't it?
-Da3vid-
And this is exactly the goal of this rightwing spin campaign.
It is not so much american politics that disturb me - it is the incredible low at which the political discussion culture in the US seems to be at the moment.
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Yeah, well get ready for the "Super Power That Doesn't Give A Shit" about the rest of the world. Between Bush getting us in up to our eyebrows in Iraq and donor fatigue from domestic disasters I think you're going to see the U.S. looking inward over the next ten years.
I'm still cracking up reading an old headline about the French "being concerned" about U.S. disengagement from Bosnia. Maybe the EU can get some heavy lifts assets from Belgium or maybe they can get China to step in with its military on behalf of human rights.. har har har.
As far as Kyoto goes, it was a wrong-headed document from the get-go. China and India should get NO special treatment whatsoever. But.. but.. but you big bad USians are already developed and so you should set the example! Screw that. They (China and India) don't even have a real power infrastructure in place in many locations (when compared to the 1st world) so it is actually easier for them to do the right thing by installing efficient technologies NOW in places where they have little or no infrastructure.
We on the other hand have to rip quite a bit of existing stuff out and replace it. Couple this with the Chinese artificially peg their currency to the dollar instead of letting it float and the fact that China and India's "competitive advantage" is a huge population that they can work into the ground eighty hours a week and I see little reason to place the U.S. at any more of a disadvantage. Give us a document where everybody takes the hit equally and maybe it'll get some consideration.
Sorry kids, this socialist wealth redistribution scheme isn't working. Thanks for playing!
Ask yourself these questions: Where did polar bears come from in the first place? Why do they exist? ... then please please jump off a cliff.]
... put it back in the hole --- let those mf'ers in the future worry about it.
[If your answer to this happens to be out of the ark, two by two
Nature is about change. We can't control nature.
If you feel differently, then talk to people in New Orleans or Indonesia.
When we talk about "preserving" the earth, we are really talking about preserving it *the way we like it* or *the way we think it should be*. It is a selfish endeavor, and we should admit that. We are animals, and our lifestyle impacts the earth just as the lifestyle of any other living thing on the planet does (albeit in our own special way). Changing our behavior might be a good idea if we'd like to save ourselves, but the "save the planet" concept is laughable. The planet is doing just fine. I'd like the dinosaurs back, and the wooly mammoths --- but it ain't gonna f'n happen, so get used to it chump. And maybe if you live near the coast, buy yourself a boat and keep it gassed up.
Here's an idea: let's stop putting our garbage into the ground. Studies have shown that it just sits there happily for years; we should be incinerating it. What's that you say? The CO2 emissions will destroy the world? Oh, ok
According to the description, our present rate of increase in temperature is unsustainable. I suppose that means that no matter how hard we try, we are not going to be able to continue raising the temperature at the current rate.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Communist is a bad word, if only because of the people who have used the term to describe themselves in the past. The same has become true for "liberal". Liberals are not the liberals that Thomas Jefferson, a liberal in his time, would proudly side with.
Whether you believe humans are causing global warming, or don't effect it.
g as.html
_ biotec.htm)
:p), but we as humans can and have been speeding up the process.
It's going to happen, so instead of bitching about it we can actually adapt to it.
Volcanic venting releases more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/vol
We can begin to breed crops that are more resistant to drought and heat (which we already do anyhow http://www-saps.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/articles/broad
Of course plants being more resistant to drought and heat would happen naturally because the plants that weren't would die leaving room for the ones that were to take over the land (natural selection
Also no massive tidal wave is going to just overtake our coastal cities; we will have plenty of time to move out of the way of the raising water.
One street that can be looked at as well is with higher global temps, there will be higher global evaporation, which in turn will raise global precipitation.
I was wondering if anyone would care to comment as to how much of a contribution the direct heat output of the human race has affected "global warming" ?
Im not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination just curious.. The population of the world has increased dramatically over the past 100 years, from under 2 billion in 1900 to over 6 billion now.. along with the increase in population comes an increase in heat output in the form of electrical devices such as lighting/computers/etc.. would this have any affect on things?
Has anyone considered that as the earth warms reefs won't be destroyed because they will expand out further from the present belts of temperature where they presently survive?
We'll have more coral not less. The fastest growing species will colonize areas further away from the warm spots.
Also has anyone considered how we light the planet? If a vast majority of energy radiated from lightbulbs is in the form of heat and we have many of them going 24/7/365
how do you think this contributes to heating the planet?
I mean the continents GLOW FROM SPACE for godssake!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
It's one thing if the rest of the world suffers, but me, a United States citizen getting Malaria? That's terrible! Blahblahblah, I am the center of the world, blahblah blah............
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the only way to fight flamebait is with MORE flamebait.
PR firms are noted for producing bovine excrement. They are really good at polishing it to make it look good, but it doesn't change its essence. If you want to know where climate scientists stand, you should read stuff written by climate scientists.
Sorry, but that's an outright lie. See Myth #1 (and read the rest). You can find the Keeling curve and atmospheric composition data derived from the Vostok ice core (going back 650,000 years) at The Ergosphere.Sustainability and energy independence essay
This is a serious issue, about which there is real disagreement. There is so little
.... ).
data, some excellent research, and an enormous amount of hype.
Why do we have to put up with:
Politcally inspired science, state the conclusion required,
justify it by any means neccesary
(data dredging, change acceptance criterea for hypothesis
Government type agencies frittering away their credibility on scientific issues.
This damnable 'knee jerk' response to arguments: "Who paid for the research/study."
rather than answering the questions raised, particularly when referred to
statistical analysis.
Treating modelling output as though it were data.
Data analysis which lacks any confidence just having the words 'may' and 'might'
added, so that the lack of knowledge is hidden.
Major details hidden down in the subscripts while speculation and hype get the
headlines.
>> In Russia we are having one of the COLDEST winters in history!
... the balmy UK winters will start to look more like those of Siberia.
It's only the planetary average temperature that will increase with global warming, and not by a lot.
In contrast, local temperatures will both increase and decrease in a far more complicated pattern across the world, and by comparatively large amounts. Although simulations vary quite a lot in their predictions, the areas of major change are quite clear.
Northern Europe seems quite likely to suffer the largest downward changes, because an early consequence of the melting of the Greenland glaciers and surrounding ice shelves will be that the "Atlantic Conveyor" (a closed circuit of ocean currents) will grind to a halt. The Gulf Stream is already slowing, and there is absolutely no way to reverse this trend. The inevitable result will be that the quite warm climate in the coastal European countries up at around 50-60 degrees North will plunge towards the deep continental average
Likewise, the equatorial hot spots are expected to rise in temperature by a lot more than the planetary average, with quite appalling consequences for their populations. Anyone who thinks that "2 degrees of global warming" will be barely noticeable in Africa is confusing "global" with "local".
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Impending disaster makes our otherwise dull, ordinary lives much more exciting.
Second Comings, Population Bombs, Nuclear Winters, and now Global Warming.
We are all doomed (always have been) and we couldn't be happier.
What?
Why shouldn't China sign it? It required nothing of them, and the CO2 reductions required of the signatories would shove industry their way. (Industries less efficient than the ones displaced from the West, plus the finished goods had to travel further to market thus burning more fuel in shipping. Kyoto is really stupid on a number of levels.)
Sustainability and energy independence essay
By the way, when the Krakatoa volcano exploded in 1883, the entire globe felt the effects in a matter of days. I'm pretty sure there were no SUVs and a whole lot fewer factories back then. But, of course, to the moonbats of the left, facts don't make good arguments.
Read it here
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
So when its global warming you want us to set an example as a "world leader" but when we want to do something on our agenda we are called a bully. No one wants one country to have so much power and influence so take it to the UN.
A good seven years ago I had a conversation with the president of a well known think tank I had worked with shortly after college about global warming, in which he delivered the opinion without the slightest hint of doubt that we were just about done with the "oh, we can't be sure that it's really happening" phase of the public conversation (of course there will always be a few wingnuts espousing any idiotic view you could imagine) and would shortly be entering the "oh well, there's nothing we can do about it at this point" phase.
Hmm, what a brilliant man, I think to myself now, even if he was not at all fun to work for. Sorry, I'm just going to jump offline for a moment and try to weep as quietly as possible over my sleeping infant's crib.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
How would you like to suck my balls?
Signed,
- An American
I've often wondered how our CO2 output compared to others countries when exports were excluded and imports were included. Seems like we might look even better after that is factored in as well as our reforresting rate. Would be a shame if people starved to death in africa so the US can get their "per capita" CO2 emmision in line with the rest of the world.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"Only those rich scuba divers care about coral reefs."
"Tell them Disney Land will be under 20 feet of water. "
You've got a point. We don't want those rich scuba divers having all the fun!!
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
For all those who are looking for studies done on global warming. http://www.odysen.com/news/Environment.php
I don't think the cause is what we should be concerned with. Whether it is man made or natural, there is a change occurring. So assume it is natural, then everybody is happy. What does the evidence then say is the worst that can be expected if it is just after effects of the last ice age, or what have you? The point is that there are some changes occurring, might we not have to cool the planet down no matter the cause?
...
Thanks for all the fish.
(aimed at the article in general, not any one person :)) Time to make a change. Get off your asses and do something, instead of SIMPLY telling people what the problem is.
This makes us sad to know that because nobody gives a s*** our world is depleting--big surprise!
When will people wake up from the dream and take control?
I'm having some real issues with this article. And I'm having some greater issues with everybody's attitude here. Some of you don't seem to understand that something like global warming is still within the reach of humanities control. Many of you have given up hope, some of you live in a fairy tail and "don't believe" (as if Global Warming were a religion to be believe in). Let me break it down for you: This thing can be stopped. Whoever tells you otherwise is probably not the most trustworthy source.
;-)
Example: One method of stopping global warming is to kill off half of the world's population. Yes, it's possible, but not very practical. However, I'm just illustrating a point, there's no reason why a solution cannot be made to this problem. All we lack is the technology, and that we can create. Stop your pansy-ass whining and go become a scientist or engineer, or just STFU and play your WoW, at least don't bother the rest of the world.
Oh, and whoever modded the parent post as "Overrated", you sir, are a moron, and that is not a matter of opinion.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Your domestic oil supply has peaked and is in decline and you are now a net energy importer. That just happened. Of course the guys in charge will be doing more about that now, and a switch to (large scale) renewables and nukes will be occurring. The big energy companies are in the energy business, in the long run they don't care what form that takes, as long as you continually open your wallet to them. The last thing they want though is for normal energy consumers to be producing their own. They play act at supporting that notion, they really want to keep energy centralized and in the hands of the current cartels.
I agree that we can and should pump carbon back into the ground, and I've proposed a way to do it. I just don't think we will absent a radical change in direction.
Coal isn't affected by the depletion of oil and gas. There's 1 trillion tons available in conventional mines, and an estimated 3 trillion tons discovered by Norway under the North Sea. Renewables are not guaranteed to be cheaper unless we tax carbon emissions. Prevention will never be cheap unless we develop the technology to do it. Nobody will develop the technology unless it is profitable. The only way it will be profitable is if we have a world-wide treaty which taxes carbon emissions and pays for net removals, otherwise industry will just go where it isn't taxed (like China).Sustainability and energy independence essay
"We can't figure out what's causing it so we are gonna ignore it? Stop throwing this "we don't even know what causes it" smokescreen around and spend some time thinking about what we do agree on"
Ok let's try.
"It is happening"
Ok, I'm with you.
"no matter what else, that is NOT a good thing!"
Nope. This is the point where the argument becomes dogma and not science, and sadly, you fell for it.
Global warming is neither good nor bad, it simply IS. Some of the consequences are bad, but why do we never hear about positive consequences? Have you asked yourself that, why you never hear anyone predicting positive outcomes from global warming? ANY positive outcomes?
Surely it's not possible that the only consequences will be negative, so at the very least there is a good bit of biased reporting, and worst intentional obfuscation.
Why are we always getting the negative, earth is doomed side, and how does that bias change the credibility of the reporting?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The real reason everyone keeps ignoring the problem is even these "alarming" articles don't really sound very for lack of a better word, alarming.
"It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to rise by seven metres over 1,000 years."
So after 1000 years the water will raise less meters than it takes to make a first down in football. The damage would be enormous but if it's going to be expensive and cause problems shouldn't they talk about how much it's going to raise in the next 50 years?
"The thing that is perhaps not so familiar to members of the public... is this notion that we could come to a tipping point where change could be irreversible,"
This part right here is the real source of eye rolling for me. They'e talking about change over one THOUSAND years and they somehow have a crystal ball telling them what "irreversible" will mean then? No doubt the eco system is fragile and nature is amazing and all but will humans 1000 years from now even NEED an eco system? Irreversible is just way too strong a term for the time frame they are talking about.
Personally I just can't buy into it. The short term damage may be bad but the concept that humans might have long term ecological trouble just sounds like baloney in light of the increasing rate of technological advancements.
See for example: James E. Hansen at NASA
Censorship is bad. It's not only in China. It's here (US) too.
"No-one can really predict exactly what is going to happen,"
Ok, I agree
"but it's pretty certain it won't be good for most people."
Wait, what happened to "No-one can really predict..."? Is it one, or the other?
What on earth would allow you to conclude that a phenomenon is unpredictable, yet allow you to predict that it's results are "pretty certain"ly ANYTHING?
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Also do something about the draining of peat bogs in Indonesia, so they don't catch fire. They could have emitted as much as 2.6 billion tons of carbon in 1997-98. There could be as much as 50 billion tons remaining to burn.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
And soot reduction is starting to happen with coal burning power plants - one thing the epa has not caved to. But you know, the power companies usually don't block envirnomental upgrades when the technology exists and they are able to implement it without huge rate increases.
"The US is not going to relocate its populace into central locations and build a massive public transport project. China (or any other developing nation for the matter) is not going to tell 1.3 billion people that are always on the verge of a violent revolution to come out of poverty slowly so that they don't dump green house gases with their inefficient industries."
"Billions of people are coming out of poverty and starting to really consume for the first time. These people simply well not accept being told they can't live like the people in first world nations do."
Don't make the mistake that this is a negotiation. It is not. Those people will do the things you say, or they will die. It's as simple as that. Mother Nature does not negotiate. Politicians cannot spin the laws of physics, and stupid humans who cry "but it's not fair!" and refuse to change their ways will die all the same.
Some people seem to assume that its about money, or political balance or national ego. No, it's about life or death for millions, and many assume that it won't be them. But it won't be just the third world countries. And in times of such crisis, a strong government tends to rise, fascist or martial law or police state, call it what you will. But in desperate times when the people panic or fight for resources, your "rights" will go out the window.
Freedom will be the first casuality in this crisis, for the sake of preserving life. But what a life...
I wish the original poster had included a link to the original survey itself. I think it's nicer to be able to read the original document, rather than the distilled media copy.e /adcc/index.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/presasoffic
I hope someone can explain this a little better for me.
These two things from the article don't seem to add up:
"sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries"
"Greenland's current net ice loss is equivalent to an annual 0.008 inch sea level rise"
This suggests that it takes 30,000 years to get a 20ft rise in sea level (from Greenland's loss).
To do 20ft in 1000 years would require the Antartic ice loss to be 29x's as great as Greenland's. Looking at a globe, it just doesn't look like there is that much ice in Antartica.
Can someone explain this a little better?
To be honest, I don't have a position yet in this debate. Mostly, because I (personally) haven't analyzed enough evidence for either side. I accept as obvious our *potential* to change things on a global scale. I also consider dumping crap in the air and water a *bad* idea.
My problem is when I see both sides of the debate throwing out crazy numbers, I tend to just become more skeptical.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I have a cousin who was invited to a summit about global warming and polution. He saw first hand that the way the US gets around implementing policy for change is to help 3rd world countries reduce emissions. I don't know the details, but this gives the US govt points towards the global country rating in reducing GHGs.
So in a nutshell, the US is using a loophole to get around implementing better polution policies.
All I know is it's almost 50 degrees Farenheight in Detroit in Januarary, we have no snow, and come April it will probably be cold as hell.
Get up!
Does anyone else find it upsetting that so many educated people would just ignore any evidence opposing a theory with such huge implications?
Further reading just brings up more questions.
If shutting down the atlantic thermohaline circulation ("conveyor belt") causes Greenland to cool. And, studies show it is slowing down. Then why isn't the ice *increasing* in Greenland?
From the wording in the article, it seems it could just be the way this is being reported. These items seem to be collected by the reporter and not the idea of the scientist being interviewed.
?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I'm sure I will be safe in my Hummer.
Bloody stupid thing to say.
Like "when I give money to charities, you call me a philanthropist. When I take money from charities, you call me a thief!".
Let's say I roll dice with the normal six sides numbered 1 to 6. You can't predict any one roll, but you can do very well at predicting the distribution of results of 100,000 roles, presuming the dice aren't loaded. So "predicting the weather in five days" you'll be very poor at, but "predicting the long term weather" you'll be fairly excellent at.
Now let's load the dice. Let's put an off-center weight in that makes them 50% more likely to come up 6s than anything else. If you know how the dice have been loaded, you'll still only be negligably - if at all - better at predicting the roll in five days (although if 6s are considered "hot," the odds are a bit better for a "hot" outcome, and you can bet on that and win over time, although it's uncertain for any given day). But knowing how the dice are loaded, you'll still be able to do as excellently as before at predicting the long-term results.
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 30-40-50% loads the dice. (When I went to school the logic of rolling dice was taught by 8th grade. With a post like "but we can't even predict the weather in 5 days" I have to wonder: Are you lacking basic math education, or do you know better and just expect to sway the uneducated people who've modded you up?)
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I suppose it is easy to make fun of someone without really understanding that person and what they stand for. Bush's energy policy is not about oil, it's about funding for development in new technologies that will solve the polution problems, and incentives to use these new technologies when they do become available. New ways to produce ethanol, research in Hydrogen, new clean burning coal powerplants, tax credits for hybrid vehicles, solar power, etc. None of these things happen magically through the world barter system setup by Koyoto, it requires dedicated people who are willing to invest the time for a better tomorrow.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.
Sweet! If it's unsustainable won't it just peter out on its own? The self-healing earth is a wonderful thing...
...in other news, Exxon Co. posts the HIGHEST ever profit EVER made by any company in US history. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060130/ap_on_bi_ge/ea rns_exxon_mobil
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Don't make the mistake that this is a negotiation. It is not. Those people will do the things you say, or they will die. It's as simple as that. Mother Nature does not negotiate. Politicians cannot spin the laws of physics, and stupid humans who cry "but it's not fair!" and refuse to change their ways will die all the same.
Yes, we are about to throw more wrenches at the climates inner workings. No, this does not mean that the world is going to end or that people have to change their ways. Simply put, people will not change their ways drastically enough. Impoverished people will not accept being locked out of a higher standard of living. If left unchecked, this might very well lead to chaos and death. That said, it is hardly a foregone conclusion. Mankind is exceptional in his ability to manipulate the environment to suit his own needs. New York City is a hunk of land that absolutely was never meant to hold even a tenth of a percent of the people it holds today, yet it does. If 500 years ago you had told a Native American that some day they would need to fit a few million people in the New York city area, he would have claimed the sky was falling too.
The sky might be falling, but that is hardly a reason to rolling over and accept it or make demands on humanity that it will never give in to. The solution is to harness technology to solve our problems, both from the angle of reducing polution output, and developing methods to counteract the effects of the polution that we do output. I ardently refuse to believe that through technology we can accidently muck up the weather systems, but can't possibly right them by intentionally tyring to fix them.
Certainly there is no promise that we can correct what we might have done in time, but there is no reason to cling to the belief that it is too late.
if our species can create people with so little foresight to doubt global warming then we need to go extinct. It's just sad that we take polar bears with us.
Hope the next abstract-thought-capable tool using critter that evolves after this kills the children that can not understand the ramifications of theiractions before they can breed. These people who doubt global warming, why can we put them in boxcars and send them to gas chambers.
Sorry to be nasty, but don't we need to do that with members of our species that have such deficient brains that they can not see obvious predictions?
Reading these posts was not what I needed to wake up to.
Euthanasia for the dumb.... another fine higher concept lost in democracy...
sad thing, I don't really joke when I say that anymore... gas chambers for all you bastards... or maybee even just a pneumatic spike like they use for cattle. We just need to be put out of the misery of them. And it is them or us... they made it that way.
Fair point about co2science.org. But to be equally fair, realscience.org's main contributors seem to be Mann et el. so I wouldn't expect objective criticisms of MBH98.
Does it matter if we read the Yadav summary at co2science or here?
I think you misread me about MBH98 being a "cornerstone". Whatever it might not be, it certainly seems to be the cornerstone of the IPCC Report. Everything stems from MBH98. Without its 20th century anomaly there's no anthropogenic CO2 correlation.
realscience's answer to myth#1 is figure 1., of which four of the curves are other mann models so they're not from "other groups" at all. And anyway, the graph really tells us nothing about whether the temperature anomalies are natural or not.
I started out believing there was a link between warming and anthro CO2. But after I started digging a little I found it wasn't as easy to establish as I thought it would be.
I have no problem with the Vostok ice core CO2 data.
These goodlife trolls give me the creeps.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
Tell that to Luxembourg.
Well if you had the slightest idea about Luxembourg, you'd know it's not only a very small country, but also one which has about half of it's workforce come into the country across the borders every day. If you added those people into the calculation, per-capita consumption would be much much lower. The same goes for tobacco and alcohol btw. And yes, those foreigners do buy their stuff in Luxembourg, since it's much cheaper there than in their own countries, due to lower taxes.
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm from Luxembourg
Obviously the increasing capitalist penetration of China, India, etc. is a major acceleration factor for global warming...
A just compromise whereby US/EU/ other Kyoto signatories commiit to further strong reductions,
AS A MATCH to a significantly strong commitment from these 'developing' countries (China, India...)
would show a willingness to 'share the pain' for the long term good (long term = more than 10-20 years)
If the US gets on board, there is less economic-imperative for these countries to NOT dedicate themselves to
a CO2 reduction path... and a path towards global CO2 reduction can be taken...
It also seem tied into the global domination level,
where a global commitment to ensure proportionate shares of the energy pie to all of the world
would provide reliability assurances
(i.e. instead of jingoistic rattling of 'containing' China, etc, etc...)
(what every happened to nuclear disarmament anyways?
oh yeah, ask the 'christian fundamentalist' fascist generals in their bunkers under Colorado...)
"Some of the consequences are bad"
"Yes, like how it will cause exinctions that will skew the food chain."
Is that positive or negative? How do you KNOW that such a change will be negative? You don't, yet you act like you do.
"Like how it will cause sea levels to rise."
We think.
"Like how all this and more mean serious trouble for humanity."
YOU think. How is that science? How is you determining what it WILL mean in any way scientific? It's not, any you know that.
"There is remarkable agreement on this one point in the field."
That's just a lie, and why you think you could pawn it off is beyond me.
"We only care about how it will affect us on the whole. That effect on us is a net negative. Ask a real climatologist and he will explain it to you."
AND THAT'S WHY YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER. Is a climatologist an evolutionary biologist? A chemist? NO, they're a climatologist, and they are credible on climatology. A REAL climatologist wouldn't predict lthings they're not qualified to discuss. You should know that.
And I love the "real" climatologist, which I'm assuming you mean "climatologist who agrees with me". Fuck assuming, that's what you really mean, and you're too much of a coward to say it.
"Who give a crap what the reporters say?"
Well, since they frame the public debate, I do. Since they can direct public opinion, I do. Since they have more influence by biasing the science than the scientists themselves, I do. Why you don't is a result of your ignorance to human behavior I guess.
"I'm a guy who doesn't want to see his coastal home (Virginia Beach) flooded out as the coastline changes"
And there it is. You've allowed your petty concerns to be influenced by the apocalyptic reporting.
"GW is a net negative for the human race."
HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS? WELL? You don't, yet you're so arrogantly convinced of the superiority of your sources and analysis that you have assumed it to be true.
All you've done is illustrate my point, which is if the sheep are willing to be led like you are, then it doesn't matter where you lead them.
Congratulations, dupe, you've swallowed a line.
Science isn't what you, or even leading scientists agree with. Why you think otherwise is fascinating, but it doesn't make you any less wrong.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The problem is that Bush is ACTIVELY ignoring the problem and actively stifling those who would
give voice to the reality of the problem. I'm sure the fact that the fact that Exxon Mobile
has had record profits this year has absolutely nothing to do with the Exxon's perspective on global
warming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/30cnd-e xxon.html?hp&ex=1138683600&en=ed7ac90463244e93&ei= 5094&partner=homepage
I'm also sure that the secret meetings between Bush and the energy sector in the start of his first term
has nothing to do with Bush's disinclination to treat the issue of global warming with any kind of thought that it deserves.
The Bush administration has not placed any priority on climate research. It as if President Bush
doesn't really want to explore lines of research that might discover a link between various climatic
events and the possibility that these events have their roots in man made causes. Disputing various
reports about global warming is one thing, actively derailing avenues of research is another.
1. The Global Precipitation Measurement project has been delayed. This project would have helped us understand what is happending to our climate.
2. The Glory Project has been canceled. This would haved studied the behaviour aerosols in the atmosphere.
3. Our system of "system of environmental satellites is at risk of collapse." warned the National Academy of Sciences warned in April 2005. This happened in an unscheduled report, which underscores the importance that the National Academy of Sciences views this. Of course, the administration will conveniantly use the National Academy of Science when it aligns with their preconcieved notions but ignores them when it doesn't. When the Bush administration asked the NAS to find weaknesses in climate studies to justify their climate policy the commision's report didn't come back to their liking. So they dropped that report and used a study funded by the American Petroleum Institute (an independent unbiased organization fund by GUESS WHO: Exxon). So the Report on the Environment ended up with something that reflected Exxon policy instead of science.
4. Even relatively inexpensive systems like the Earth System Pathfinder missions and Explorer class satellites have been eliminated or subject to prolonged delays.
From
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/archives/2004/04-1 0-08.html
"To prove that he took the issue of global warming seriously, Marburger shamelessly cited a study that President Bush had commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. The administration had asked the NAS to find "weaknesses" in climate science studies to justify their efforts to derail an international global warming treaty. When the commissioned report instead confirmed human-induced climate change and mentioned fossil fuels as a major culprit the EPA decided to replace the findings in its Report on the Environment with a discredited study funded by the American Petroleum Institute"
You remember who the American Petroleum Institute is funded by, right?
"Maybe this is a feature of global warming, but maybe not," Polyakov said of the presence of warm Atlantic water in the Arctic Ocean. "We should think about what's causing this, but it's just as important to monitor it."
http://www.sitnews.us/0605news/061205/061205_ak_sc ience.html
Powerful ocean currents are grinding slowly to a halt, raising the possibility of a catastrophic climate "flip" that could chill Europe and warm New Zealand, startling new evidence sug
This post does not mean that I buy the gloom and doom scenarios put out by those who warn of global warming, nor do I reject them (I do not think the climate is understood very muchat all) - I believe in clean energy, preferably for now, nuclear and wind power.
_ id=2736
I believe in pollution being a problem, but to think that the activities of people or volcanism is more important than the activity of the sun or the earth's magnetosphere is really not very smart in understanding the Earth's climate.
Recently, Mars has been observed warming up.
Lets say everyone (including those in Russia, India and China which will *never* happen) go to 100% clean existence and we regress to simpler medieval times sustenance farming and making the Sierra Club happy is the new religion and then the earth CONTINUES to get warm, then we are in a real pickle - no technology to try and bail out the human race and the same problem as before.
http://www.ncpa.org/newdpd/dpdarticle.php?article
MARS IS WARMING
Daily Policy Digest
GLOBAL WARMING
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
The planet Mars is undergoing significant global warming which supports many climatologists' claims that the Earth's modest warming during the past century is due to a recent upsurge in solar energy, says James M. Taylor, of the Heartland Institute.
For three Mars summers, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet's south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress, says Taylor. Furthermore, documented changes from 1999 to 2005 show that Mars' climate is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago.
But there are not a lot of anthropogenic gas emissions on Mars, so what internal dynamic is warming the planet and what does it mean for Earth? According to researchers:
At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities.
The problem is that Earth's atmosphere is not in thermodynamic equilibrium with the sun; the longer the time period that the Earth is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, the stronger the effect will be on the atmosphere.
Therefore, greenhouse gases would still contribute to warming, but not as strongly as once thought.
Furthermore, the warming of Mars adds another level of uncertainty to claims that the Earth's modest recent warming is a result of human activity, says Taylor.
Source: James M. Taylor, "Mars Is Warming, NASA Scientists Report," Environment and Climate News: Heartland Institute, November 2005.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
and read the text with it:
Antarctic Ice Core Data
and
A Closer Look
Get the whole world involved or blame the whole world. Singling out the US gets very tiring.
The audacity of these statements is breathtaking.
WORLD TO USA: STOP BURNING UP ALL THE FUCKING ENERGY.
"no measurable impact"... that is just... wow. I am agog. We all know about China's rise, but do you really, truly think that nothing the US does will make a difference?!
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Global warming is not an issue in WoW, so why would I care about it? :-)
I think parent comment summarizes (in the proverbial nutshell) peoples reactions to major and potentially catastophic events.
Ignore it long enough, and it will "go away".
Well, it won't go away, but ignore it long enough and our window of opportunity to do anything about the problem will have vanished - and we're all powerless and blameless.
Sorry kids (and grand kids, and great great great grand kids etc.)! We fucked you with our own greed and short-term thinking.
Sorry 'bout that,
Pops!
Last week we experienced a temperature of 43C (109F) here in Brazil, and the humidity was very low.
Take that you filthy walrus!
When burning dead dinos (oil, gas, coal) costs more for 1 week than 10 years supply of food, solar power and windmills will look might good to everybody.
Mmm.. So what do we plan todo about it? Other than collect data, bitch, moan and use it for our political adgendas. We really are not in control in this situation, we are here subject to all that mother nature really intends for us. Stop pretending science can save the world, and realize that the world does not need saving, it will have no problem in killing us. Besides, I'm happy with the sunny weather in the U.P. of michigan every now and then.
What good is a polar bear? You can't eat them. And ask any polar bear and I'll bet he would tell you he would rather live in a zoo and be fed every day without having to work. And speaking of work, look at all the jobs that are being created by those factories that are generating all that beneficial smoke. Those jobs with their ever increasing salaries wouldn't even exist if the government insisted on unnecessary pollution control. If we can sacrifice the polar bear just this once, no american will ever have to worry about finding gainful employment. We are creating so many jobs under this president that we have send many of them overseas just to keep up with demand. As the tundra thaws and factories pop up all over the previously frozen wasteland we will be getting rich making crappy little plastic and electronic things that every kid just has to have. And the best part is that Dubya has made it so that we don't even have to build those plastic and electronic things! All we have to do is get a patent on something that sounds vaguely similar or appears to be related and then collect royalties when some actually produces something. We don't even have to be able to actually build what we are patenting anymore. Just doodle some futuristic looking junk on a cocktail napkin. Cha-ching! God Bless America and death to all bears.
The entire body of literature of oceanography and atmospheric science for the past 10 years isn't enough? I smell obstruction.
No facts here to support an argument, but I do know two things. Cooling has happened very rapidly in the geological past, but global warming to the extent that we are seeing has not. The other thing I know is that it is insane to think that we have no effect on the environment and that what we are seeing is nothing more than a natural process.
In less than 50 years the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has gone from 270ppm to 375ppm. That is a huge impact that is directly attributable to us and has increased in step with industrialization. It is absolutely definite that we are causing accelerated warming. It is as definite as the fact that Venus' atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide and, as a result, the surface temperature is nearly 500 degrees Celsius.
I get a little upset, I must admit, when people even consider attributing change we have created to natural causes. Look at the deforestation occuring in the rainforests. 1.5 acres per second. What once covered 14% of the planets surface now covers 6% and at the current unabated rate, it will be entirely gone in less than 50 years. We did that.
Desertification of midwestern United States? When the first settlers came to North American and displaced the indigenous populations, they also pressed west and destroyed the currently existing ecosystems (buffalo were entirely eradicated in mass slaughter events). Then we used our burgeoning cattle industry to overgraze thousands of acres of land and brought about the desertification so prevalent in the western states. We did that.
The list goes on and on, if you just take the time to look. It is insane to think that 6 billion human beings are not responsible for the tremendous changes we are all experience in a timespan less than a century which is less than a blink of the eye to the Earth. If you grow plants in your own home, you will know that just a few plants can have a profound effect on the air quality in your home and they have a significant effect on the humidity as well. Well, 6 billion people have a profound effect on the Earth.
I appreciate people taking the Devil's Advocate perspective and trying to curb the alarmism that some people fall prey to, but there are real and serious problems that we are creating. 50 years from now we may pay a terrible price for that, and if the chances of that are even 50/50, or even 20%, we are insane to not act quickly and decisively to do the right thing.
that waterworld wasn't really such a horrible movie, it should've just been released about 25 years later, so that more people could relate to it.
Like "when I give money to charities, you call me a philanthropist. When I take money from charities, you call me a thief!".
Except it's nothing like that at all. He makes a perfect point that when the US doesn't take the lead with something that aligns with your political point of view, you bemoan them. When the US does take the lead with something that doesn't align, you bemoan them. Then you can catagorize what you agree with as "giving money to chairty" and what you don't agree with as "taking money from charity". And you set up an awesome logical fallacy of your own construction...
You appear to think that science is a political party or cult, which has an orthodoxy and sticks to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientists tear each other's theories apart mercilessly, beginning in the peer-review process. The only restriction is that criticism as well as theories must have a foundation in fact. Research is often funded and conducted with the goal of determining which out of a set of conflicting theories is actually correct.
Theories which have already been proven incorrect by the existing data need not apply. That already includes "our activities aren't doing anything".
Pardon me if I have difficulty believing that a person who cites a pseudo-scientific front created by a PR firm is an informed observer with no other interests or biases in the matter. There is a certain lack of credibility which goes along with naming co2science.org, kind of like citing William Dembski when talking about the origin of theropods.Sustainability and energy independence essay
Like in the "scientists" paid by the US oil companies still denying this against pretty much all the climatologists around the world?
There will always pepople disputing things, but there is a point when the evidence is so overwhelming that they should be regarded as if they were inisisting that the Earth is flat.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Where is the public transit in America? That would be far more effective than the private solution of more cars."
Unless the population is so spread out as to make public transit wasteful and inefficient.
And sicne that accurately describes the US, I wonder how you could ask such a question if you'd genuinely done any research on the subject.
And sitting around your dorm smoking blunts and bitching about the "man" isn't research.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
Why the hell did you let Harper get elected? Hopefully, he'll have his hands tied. The world doesn't need another George Bush. Plus, what's the deal with missile defense for Canada? That could be the most retarded thing I've ever heard.
"You do realize that "co2science.org" is run by fossil-fuel PR flacks, don't you?"
"If you want to know where climate scientists stand, you should read stuff written by climate scientists."(realclimate.org)
So co2science.org is evil liars to be sneered at but realclimate.org is completely objective with no agenda?
Do a whois on them and you will see thier physical address is the exact same as the address Fenton.com which is a left wing PR firm that represents liberal organizations including moveon.org.
No matter where you go, there you are.
"Do you risk an accident or play it safe?"
It depends. If I've got an injured child in the car, and I have to get to the hospital, I'm going to look both ways and gun it. If I'm just heading to the grocery store, I'll chill out.
Similarly, if I have to throw a massive monkey wrench into the economies that make us all able to eat, I'm going to make damn sure I'll solve the problem before I throw that wrench.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's much worse than that! It's actually been a joke within a joke. The [joke] tag needs to be closed twice.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Once the nuclear exchange with Iran happens, the amount of reflective dust thrown in the the upper atmosphere will cause enough "nuclear winter" to counteract the "excessive" CO2.
I have a feeling with their help and resources, Google will be ONE of many of Earth's crucial saviors.
Just a feeling..
Thank you big gas-hog SUV and Hummer owners.
Pretty much all nuclear plants are economically unviable. The French goverment, the greatest proponent of nuclear power in the Western World, pretty much is broken due to subsidies given to the nuclear industry.
The same goes for the nuclear industry in the US, UK, Japan and let not mention China, they still use socialism and communism in many instances, power supply is one of them (i.e. entirley subsidized by the state).
Our only salvation lies in changing our attitue towards energy:
-We have to save energy: we waste far too much of the enrgey produced: oil producers burn gas as a byproduct of oil production, people waste energy at home in household appliances that are on standby, a lot of power generated gets lost on the transmission phase (consequence with our love of centralized megaporjects).
-We have to descentralize the production of energy: why is it that every single new house is not fitted with solar panels to produce elcetricity and a small wind turbine? Why do we keep insisting in building megaprojects (oil, nuclear, that is immaterial). were the transmission lines are going to consume most of the generated power instead of looking at smaller scale local projects? Why is that governments are not taxing cavalier waste of energy? (yse, you SUVs are an energetic abomination).
-We have to use renwable source of energy: Brazil is showing the way here, but it is not the only possibility.
Why not? Well, simple, look at the leadership of the most poluting country in the world. That pretty much explains everything.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
most Americans are taking their lead from their president. That'll be sure to save us all.
It has been proven beyond any doubt (specially analyzing ice from the poles, that keep CO2 for millenia, but other different studies suggest the same) that the tremendous rise of CO2 in the athmosphere started more less at the same time as the Industrial Revolution.
The increase does not coincide with any previous one ever studied, the magnitude of the increase is far too big for it to be a cyclic event.
The change is that we are producing CO2 in a far more "efficient" manner that neither breathing or burning wood (a very inneficient way of producing CO2 compared to the combustion engine or the steam machine, or power plants more recently) could have ever done.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Is this the sort of thing you are talking about?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Ain't that when they take away your MCSE?
WE DIDN'T LISTEN!!!
* Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world
This is inaccurate. Yields are 100 times what they were 100 years ago.
* Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia
300% times what? Collectivization anyone?
* Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from desertification
This started happening 10K years ago when the region turned from green and temperate to desert.
* Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage
What? shortage is already here due to overpopulation and failing countries
* 97% loss of coral reefs
Reefs are already doomed for other reasons. Increased sea levels will simply finish the remainder off.
* Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus
Only to be replaced with growth in population of more general climate bears.
* Spread of malaria in Africa and north America
Huh. Malaria has been endemic in every tropical climate for ever
I think we need to be careful not to uncritically label scientific studies as "news." There is obviously a broad scientific consensus on global warming and our effect on it. But Bush and his oil industry pals can still find a few scientific studies from which they can selectively quote a few sentences to argue for what they want us to believe. (Just like Hollywood can find quotes like, "The Cave is ... a great movie"!) We should aim at a higher level, and actually try to determine what the science says. We should be careful not to emphasize overly papers which are too far from the consensus (which I think this paper might be), and then just quote the few sentences we want to hear (as this slashdot article does).
So you are saying that the hottest thing in our solar system is getting slightly warmer / more active and that has an effect on Mars and Earth, gee, who would have thought!
What I hate is these fucks blame SUVs but dont care about coal burning for power. Or these fucks in San Francisco who rideon clean air busses that get power from burned fossil fuels 50 miles away.
And these critical mass fuckers with the bikes they ride with RUBBER TIRES, GREASED CHAINS, and ELECTRICALLY CHARGED BULLHORNS.
All this makes me so sick. I do agree with you, we must have nuclear power EVERYWHERE coating the earth with nuclear sub like reactors that CANNOT MELT DOWN and make power a DISTRIBUTED SOLUTION for a DISTRIBUTED PROBLEM.
Nobody gets it. They want a magical fairy to tinkerbell wand them power and not think about how much energy it takes to melts ROCKS into BIKE METAL.
All the power needed (causing Greenhouse gases) for development manufacturing and running the worlds technology is also causing huge output in gases from power stations smoke stacks and the emissions in producing the metal, plastics, and chemicals that go into all devices. Not to mention the coal stations spewing carbon to power your computer right now. Look at China. The worst air anywhere. I couldn't where my contacts there because the pollution was so bad.
Log into Slashdot and you are contributing at this moment in unseen ways!
I believe our species survived the ice age by moving south by half a continent. It might be just a bit costly to move billions of people away from coastal cities and encroaching deserts, no?
Mind, Katrina cleared New Orleans fairly painlessly (compared to the recent earthquake in Pakistan or the tsunami in 2004) and it cost less than the invasion of Iraq.
And you won't mind buying your bread from Canada, once the Midwest turns into desert, right? Details like that don't mean anything with regard to the survival of the species, but they can feel rather inconvenient to the billions of individuals involved.
Is an interesting read on the topic of Global Warming and governmental, media and corporate coverage of it.
Tell them Disney Land will be under 20 feet of water.
Disney Land??? Why did you pick Disney Land? Who cares about Disney Land?
eMelody Web Directory add your site today!
"is not sustainable" Stopped reading there.
"Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable." Oh, good, I'm glad it will have to stop.
Climate's the year-in-year-out trends. Weather is right now. Even with global warming we'll get cold snaps.
We've (almost certainly) caused a climate crisis, which may exacerbate weather crises a la Hurricane Katrina. Not because the climate's "worse" but because, overall, it's changing too fast for us to adjust.
Not really related to your post exactly, but I was a little surprised to open a copy of New Scientist a week or two ago and find an editorial penned by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (paid link, summary only), talking about what his administration has been doing about climate control. Schwarzenegger is a Republican who appears to have bought into global warming wholeheartedly. I'm not well-versed enough in his policies to really be able to analyze whether his views are all just smoke and mirrors, but New Scientist is not really all that well read in the United States vs. the UK. As such, I just thought it was interesting.
Breakfast served all day!
I opted in for all green power here in Pasadena, California U.S.A. (home of the Rose Parade/Rose Bowl) about seven months ago. It's about $5-$10 a month extra. I'm not naive enough to think there's a magic switch that channels only green power to my grid, I just think of it as the energy I use and pay for comes the portion of the of overall energy pool which is generated by green power.
Anyway, people in Pasadena should consider it if you can to assuage environmental concerns - plus they give you a free package of hallogen lightbulbs if you convert to using all green (or at least they did when I signed up).
Some of the increases in the CO2 level in the pre-industrial times corrolates to burning off of the forests to make farmland. You will see an increase and then a slight decrease as the bruning stops and people get farming.
But really I don't think you care about any logic or facts. You simply presume that all the scientists who have been studying this phenomenon all their lives are stupid, inept, communists, or are out to get you somehow.
I mean only you are smart enough to take into account fluctuations in the CO2 level pre-industry, those communist scientists are too stupid to take that into consideration right?
evil is as evil does
It's actually much worse than that! Everything everyone has read or written after the unmatched [joke] tag has been a joke... Quick, someone close the [joke] tag before the joke reaches instability causing uncontrollable atmospheric heating due to equally uncontrollable laughter.
Do a whois on them and you will see thier physical address is the exact same as the address Fenton.com which is a left wing PR firm that represents liberal organizations including moveon.org.
They addressed that almost a year ago. Why they wouldn't be more cognizant of the appearance of conflict of interest, I don't know.
The long parent post is correct in that species will adapt to change. But it will take thousands of years. And many species cannot adapt, as we've seen by the numerous extinctions already caused by man. We're still waiting for the plants and animals that are well adapted to living on an interstate highway, or inside an office building. Mainly viruses, I suppose.
Meanwhile the only species conscious of what's going on -- well, speaking for some of us, at least -- in fact isn't adapting. Ironic. So, absent human adaptation as rapid as the changes, we'll have a large die-off, just like the coral. Many Americans don't seem to care about this because they assume, probably correctly, that the world's poor will the ones to die, not themselves.
This is matter of ethics. Those who deny global warming and its impact are immoral. Their denial is affecting the well-being of others, and in a life-or-death way. Giving up my SUV may affect my well-being, but not as much as flooding farmland in Bangladesh affects that of the peasants who live there.
I personally hope there IS Global Warming, at least during this time of year. We need it.
Where's China and India on that list? Curious by their absence they are.
The future looks good 1000 years from now there will certainly be none left but the 50 to 100 year outlook is not so good
And how is that is a bad consequence?
Please sea levels are only going to rise like 2 inches in the next hundred years. besides, were going to have another global ice age in like 800 years. so all this global warming mumbo jumbo is pointless. Instead of stocking up on shorts and sunblock, you should be salting meat and buying fur coats...Ha Ha Ha, ill be the only one to survive!
First, why are you assuming an air of superiority when I'm the one still asking questions, and you're the one drawing conclusions on a subject that ALL scientists agree needs more research
and
Second, if you have a consensus, then your facts should be easy demonstrated. Simply point me to a place where I can see "All scientists agree all consequences of global warming will be bad" and I'll shut up.
But you won't, because you can't.
"Then the respected and peeer reviewed journals Science and Nature are also lying"
NO, you're just lying about what they said. Not hard to understand, except perhaps for you.
"That's an impressive logical leap. Is that the sort of logic you used to come up with your views on GW in the first place?"
What views are you speaking of smart guy? Tell me what views I've espoused that you're questioning. Oh wait, I haven't discussed my views, so is that an example of how you came up with the "facts" you have about GW? Making shit up out of thin air?
Oh, and you didn't deny it either, and we both know why. Because it's true, and you can't.
"You mean to tell me that you are gonna say that my desire to not see the coastline change is a petty concern?"
Yes.
"Your preoccupation with reporters "
Check again Mr. I say-stupid-shit-without verifying. YOU brought up reporters. Check it, then come back and apologiize. I was discussing "reports" originally, and was RESPONDING TO YOU when you brought up reporters afterwards.
But what else should be expected from you.
All you've done is repeat the same garbage over and over. If your point is so solid, and it's easily discerned from EVIDENCE that Global Warming will be unequivocally catastrophic and destructive, with little or no positive repurcussions, then that shouldn't be too hard for someone like you to demonstrate.
Unless of course you've just accepted the reporting as fact like you have.
Luckily there are people like myself who insist on actually doing RESEARCH before assuming we know what the fuck is going on. I suggest you try it, instead of jumping to conclsions.
Lastly, you've demonstrated quite clearly that you're incapable of the necessary level of reading comprehension to continue this discussion.
Perhaps when you're able to discern the difference between "reports" and "reporters" we can continue, but I'm certain (at least, as certain as you are about global warming) that if you reach that level, your improved comprehension will allow you to notice how ridiculous you sound, and you won't need me to correct your flawed thinking anymore.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
In other words, we don't know what the amounts are.
"Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes."
Just an estimate. Not based on measurements. Many estimates are way off when actually verified by observation and measurement -- sometimes by 150 times or more.
"This is a conservative estimate."
Of course it is. Had they used numbers at the other end of the spectrum, it would show much higher levels of natural emissions and that would argue against the conventional wisdom.
"Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."
So if we just guess at a number and use the lewer end of that guess, we get a number that is 150 times smaller than the levels of man-made emissions. Golly gee. Imagine that.
Actually I've seen indications that increasing CO2 levels from where we are now (350~380 ppm) to the point where it would be difficult to breathe (1000 ppm) would have surprisingly little effect on warming. Because CO2 only absorbs specific frequencies of infra-red light and it has limited Q , the relationship between CO2 concentration and IR absorbance isn't linear. The steapest is from 0-100 ppm then from it falls off a bit from 100-450, from 450 to 1000 the adsobance falls off to flat. We would get much more warming when incresing from 100 ppm to 350 ppm then we would from increasing from 450 ppm to 1000 ppm. This suggests a strong hysterisis loop so if global warming is due to CO2 levels it is WAY TOO LATE, because the turn-off point is much lower than the turn-on point.
My hunch is human activity plays a minor role, vulcanism a major role and insolation the most
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If it wasn't "natural" then what technology did the dinosaurs use to get the higher CO2 levels and then what technology was used (and by whom) to reduce those levels to present day numbers?
Yet Hummer sales are still on the rise. www.fuh2.com
The main problem is that people fail to grok that Global Warming, while it indeed implies the increase in global mean temperatures, the melting of the ice caps (see Canada's new PM sending Canadian ice breakers to protect their new summer trade route thru the formerly impassable Arctic Ice Cap that Canada owns, giving Bush an abrupt change from Yea-They-Won to Uh-What-Happened), and indeed the expansion of Malaria (which kills about 2.5 million kids every year worldwide and infects many more) to North America - does not just mean warming.
When the balance is shifted, it can lead to sudden massive temperature and climate shifts on the order of 10 degrees Celsius (that's 22 degrees F, for Yanks) within a period of LESS than 10 years.
And while it heats up, if it turns off certain ocean escalator currents, that could mean Europe freezing while North Africa turns into verdant grasslands with monsoons.
But, hey, stick your heads in the sands, that sure worked well. Meanwhile, the South Polar region and North Polar region are melting so fast we have songbirds from Washington State showing up in Alaska and Northern Canadian territories.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If you were a capitalist, like me, you'd have read the news in the Wall Street Journal of a major shareholder forcing GM to kill off the Hummer line.
until Ford, GM, et al grok that the world has changed, and the market realities of $80 and $90 bbl oil (as Davos was discussing), they'll keep bleeding red ink and overpaying their execs.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We must stop global warming, if only to prevent the world from being populated by aquatic Kevin Costners.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
The new LCD laptop screens use way less energy than the old ones did, and the monitor is about half the power draw of the box.
And my new laptop, 2.6GHz AMD 2600, uses way less power than my old 333 MHz Intel chip computer ever did, and since I run it off green electricity made from wind farms (yes, I pay for that, it's cheaper than oil or gas power), I create FEWER emissions.
Some of our old biochem labs used to get toasty warm from our racks of PCs, but since we swapped out the monitors and got more RAM in machines, we find we have to lower the cooling requirements, cause we don't generate half as much heat.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Looks like someone in the UK was having a bad case of the Mondays.
how ice core samples give any idea of what conditions were like globally?
Ice core samples have a built in bias...they only show local conditions where it was cold enough to freeze.
From the global warming evangelists, we know that global warming may result in colder temperatures in some areas, but warmer temperatures overall (global mean temperature). People that say, "we'll, it was colder this year where I live than last year" are making the mistake of taking a local experience and applying it to a global phenomenon. Scientists that take ice cores and plug the data into a model are making the exact same mistake. They don't have climate data for areas where ice wasn't formed. Even the trace atmospheric composition is a local phenomenon, as local methane composition varies heavily based on the foilage in the area.
The global mean temperature is extremely difficult to capture. It takes us thousands of sensor stations, satellites, and other devices to do it today. But we're supposed to trust some scientist's estimates of global mean temperature from some ice cores pulled from Greenland that carbon date to 600,000 years ago as an accurate indicator of global warming? If so, you're talking religion, not science.
But.. where's the clever insightful satire?
(rimshot)
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I thought we were entering an "Ice Age"? and they stopped calling it global warming?
I thought the following events are in play:
1. Ice caps are melting causing the ocean currents to slowdown
2. Slowdown of the currents means the system will fail to moving warm water north.
3. Europe, will get cold and the Ice caps will start icing over again.
4. Warm water trapped in sub tropics will fuel violent storms.
Extraordinarily render Al-Qaeda.
Thanks and have a Bush_Cheney_Rice_Rumsfeld-free week.
Regards,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
Funny enough your link does not include China nor India. (nor Pakistan) The list also only shows CO2 as a greenhouse gas. What about methane?
Nothing regarding this global warming issue makes sense. Where is the link that it is we humans and our CO2 emissions that causes the warmer climate? I have seen curves and statistics but as everyone knows there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The earth is not a static system. Ofcourse it will get warmer or colder. Someone have seen some statistics or graphs showing some global changes and concluded "it must be my (and my fellow humans) fault!". Did humans cause the hurricane Katarina? No! Nor did a butterfly. Can we cause global change of the climate? I do not think so. Some people do and I think they are mad. People think that they are sooo important and that the earth will become a desert just becuse they use the wrong detergent. I think this whole issue is a psychological issue. People want to feel more important than they are. "Hey, I drive my SUV countless miles and boy will we get a hot summer!" The only way I am going to feel any heat from a SUV is if it crashes and burnes close to me.
The Kyoto protocol does not make sense either. Especially not emissions trading. If the US gives a big bunch of money to Russia for its emission rights how will this help the environment? And why are the absolutely biggest countries excempt from the Kyoto protocol? India and China? It does not make sense. If the Kyoto protocol was for the environment it is obvious that the countries with the biggest populations must be targeted. But they are not.
hundred yards over the course of a century, then I would say we were doing humanity a favor by weeding these people out. Of course, such ignorance does not exist.
Note that I am talking about 44 and 94 years out. That is a very long time. Poorer countries are going to leap-frog a large number of technologies and will never pollute to the degree that modern industrial countries did.
lot more worried about arsenic in my drinking water than the sea rising a few feet over the course of the next century.
Justify this:
Your plan: Spend trillions to prevent some Bangladeshis from being forced to move due to rising sea levels
My plan: Invest a few billion to provide clean water to all Bangladeshis, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
It should be a no-brainer which we choose. And don't be childish and ignore trade-offs, please.
>Those people will do the things you say, or they will die.
Who? Americans? Keep dreaming. There's very little global warming can do, ocean-rising-wise, that the Army Corps of Engineers can't build its way around. Now, BANGLADESH might find itself permanently submerged, but I wouldn't count on Manhattan, L.A., Washington, or even Miami being permanently flooded under the sea anytime soon. Hell, the sea couldn't even keep NEW ORLEANS flooded for a whole month, despite wholesale incompetence, corruption, and sheer stupidity everywhere in that area. If creaky, hundred-year-old pumps can dry out a flooded area as vast as New Orleans in ~3 weeks once the leak was plugged, Mother Nature doesn't have a chance in hell of succeeding either.
As for food... well, as long as wealthy foreigners are waving fistfulls of money at multinational agribusiness entities, it'll be the farmers who end up malnourished. What? They'll revolt? And who, exactly, will sell them new farm machinery if they don't have money (from selling most of their crops) to buy it? Or the parts (and expertise) to fix it? Do you really think a poor rural farmer with minimal education has the slightest chance in hell of fixing a tractor whose fuel injector is DRM-protected to stop working after 3,000 hours of operation unless the spark plugs are replaced with new, kill-chip equipped replacements and the correct 1024-bit unlock code to match the new oil filter is entered into the computer?
whines about.
The big temperature increases sometimes found from these models arise from several implausible assumptions, such as huge population and emission growth that will not happen. Worse yet, the models are inherently full of feedback in their mathematical equations, which causes output to be more unstable than one would like. Small changes to initial assumptions or parameters make big differences in predictions. Garbage in, garbage out. The big temperature rises are predicted when the computers get caught in a positive feedback loop that I find implausible, precisely because with billions of years of history we haven't yet triggered such a loop (and been hotter than we are now). Therefore, I find the low ends of their ranges most plausible, the middle slightly plausible, and the high end pure fantasy. In other words, more than a 2C increase is quite unlikely.
It is in a constant state of flux and you can never go back to where you were. Organisms will live, die, and move. It will still be nature.
The sea level rise could be less, could be more. So far, it is sure failing to live up to expectations.
Consensus does not make truth. This articled has claims involving numbers that can be checked.
Would a melted Greenland ice sheet raise the sea level by 7 meters?
"Scientists Say" is not good enough here on Slashdot. Save that for the Fox News(TM) channel.
What is the volume of the ice?
How much of the ice is already below sea level?
Water is some what denser than ice. How much would the volume be reduced with a phase change from solid to liquid?
What is the surface area of the Earth's seas?
This is what I see most:
These facts are false because they are stated by an Oil Barron. The Oil Barron says 2+2=4. Logically since we don't like Oil Barron's 2+2=4 is false. Classic Logical Fallacy.
Rant{
It all reminds me of those Truth(TM) anti-smoking commercials. For those of you that have never seen one. These are commercials on American television, where a bunch of jerks run around screaming rubbish like, Cigarettes contain methane so Cigarettes have shit in them. I don't smoke. It causes cancer with long term exposure. I have seen people I love destroyed by them. But these commercials assume we are too stupid for a rational argument.
}
Lets find get links to real measured data on these matters and actually put them into perspective.
This is my take on the situation:
The climate will change due to varying degrees of the following theories and hypotheses:
-Change in concentration of CO2 / Greenhouse Gases.
-Changes in solar output.
-Macroscopic cycles in Ocean currents.
-Volcanic Activity.
-Macroscopic Cycles in magma beneath the Earth's Crust.(Perhaps the Earth gets heated as magnetic flux passes through the planet's core during solar flares. Hey, let me know if this is crap.)
-Other (A wizard did it.)
Find links to supporting measured data and analysis there of. Not Scientists' say.
I have just bothered to read real analyses of the costs and benefits, and come to the conclusion that we have better investments of trillions of dollars. This should be obvious, really. Start by reading Bjorn Lomborg's "Global Crises, Global Solutions".
For a tiny fraction of the price of putting a dent in global warming, we can save millions from AIDS or malaria. Which is the better choice?
We can spend trillions to barely slow global warming, or we can spend a few billions to provide micro-nutrients to poor people around the world, saving millions of lives.
Which do you choose? Don't be immature and ignore trade-offs, please.
We are at least number 8. The chart you linked to left out China and India. How many other major polluters did that chart leave out?
Soilent Green is people!!!
Since you believe that the increased CO2 levels are a serious problem, I'll give you a simple solution. Add fertilizer to the blue water ocean to boost the phytoplankton population.
Out past thhe littoral waters, the ocean is blue rather than green because there are no nutrients in the first ten feet or so where the sunlight can penetrate. If you introduce nutrients, you will get plankton blooms and the plankton will consume the carbon dioxide.
The easiest and cheapest way to add nutrients is to run pipes to carry the effluent from the sewage system out far enough to sea and spray it on the surface. What the heck, do this in some third world cities and you will cut down on their rates of cholera.
One of the byproducts of inducing plankton blooms is that you will get a population boom among the local fish.
[/][/]
There we go.
Anonymous close tags
apocalypse-preaching enviromentalists. The rise has been somewhere between 10 and 25 cm in the last hundred years, and the predictions are 10 to 90 more in the next century (via IPCC).
Annoying? Yes. A problem that is worth spending hundreds of billions per year to only slightly mitigate? Not even close.
This guy puts forward a good case.
You Slashdot group think mod-bots just add credence to his argument.
Here in the northern midwest it has been 20 to 30 degrees fahrenheit warmer than a typical January. I'm pretty certain it will be a record for average temperatures for the month, We haven;t even had one day below 0F.
The problem with this is that while it seems simple, we don't understand ecology nearly well enough to guarantee that this would be safe.
It's not that I don't agree there are scientific solutions. Of course there are. But any biological solution is going to have side effects. For one, can the ocean ecosystem handle the excess injection of nutrients? Can it handle the additional dead material when the nutrients stop? Are the risks worth the savings in cost from more direct, controlled measures?
It wouldn't be the first time we tried to fix an ecological disaster with ecology, only to have it backfire (violently) in our faces.
And of course, it's all completely pointless unless the carbon emissions are curtailed - trying to maintain an artificial equilibrium like that is completely untenable. Plus the issue that we're not sure where 40% of the carbon is going, so it's a little dangerous to assume that since it doesn't go into the atmosphere, nothing bad is happening.
In short, the scientists say "there is a problem". The economists say "the cure is worse than the disease". So both left and right are wrong on global warming, according to the experts.
There are some things that we should do that will mitigate global warming, but we should not do them because they will mitigate global warming. For example, as you noted, we should use nuclear, which by any rationale is safer than burning coal and spewing all sorts of toxic and radioactive goop into the atmosphere. We should also tax the piss out of gasoline for the same reasons. However, if you feel inclined to add an economically-efficient carbon tax on top of that, you will find that it is a drop in the bucket ($10/ton, perhaps, is justified) relative to the pollution taxes. In short, we should quit subsidizing petro (and car transport). These two things will do wonders for our emissions profile as a side benefit.
would it be impossible to shade the polar icecaps to cool them down? could'nt NASA come up with a simple method for that. if it works, tax the whole planet
And then there are a handful of us who majored in environmental science in college who think that computer models are as susceptible to subjective modelers as computer benchmarks are to industry types trying to sell you their latest processor. Large majority eh? Got any relevant links? I'm not going to pick on you specifically MightyMartian, because there are a lot of people here racking up +5's with nothing but rhetoric. Here's why I think this global warming business is a sham.
The soil releases an order of magnitude more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the fossil fuels burned each year combined. No till farming in America could take as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as taking half of all the cars in America off the road. A full 40% of the Earth's arable land is being used for agriculture and most of it is being severely degraded by tillage. Why aren't you people up in arms about that? Hey, burn the f'in farmers right? They're greedy evil bastards.
Studies have shown that fertilizing plankton with iron sulfate could significantly reduce atmospheric CO2. (IronEx II is a notable success.) "Oh teh Noes!!11oneone1eleventyone! After 500 years it wont teh wurk anymore!?ONE" Well gee, we'll be out of fossil fuels by then. So why aren't you guys who are belly aching about global warming doing it? Afraid you'll have egg on your face if CO2 drops and mean temps continue to rise? What you say? Your models might be flawed?
Wow, the Sun IS getting hotter, and Earth's temperature correlates directly with it.
And as for plastics, we can make most of that out of corn and it's more environmentally friendly. Most of the crowd around here loves parroting each other with this global warming chicken little horseshit, but I personally am sick to death of hearing it. Produce something besides a BBC article written in layman's terms that says the sky is falling, PLEASE! I thought this was news for nerds, not drama queens.
Would anyone like to provide a little evidence to the contrary that is not entirely based on a computer model?
You are putting words in my mouth and making very widely incorrect assumptions about my motives.
I have made no presumptions, nor did I say or imply anything disparaging abou the scientists who have been studying this phenomenon. What I said was that I have not yet seen any studies that took those factors I mentioned into account and still showed clear indication that human action causes global warming. I asked for links to them and said that I would very much like to read them.
I fail to see how on earth you derived your bizarre caricature of me from those statements and requests. How precisely does asking for studies to read demonstrate that I "don't care about any logic or facts"? I would have thought it demonstrated quite the opposite.
If you know where I can find the studies that show the correlations you mention, please link me to them or point me to a citation I can follow. But please refrain from making any further unwarranted generalizations about me.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
It is not my intent to obstruct anything. It's not that the "entire body" (an overstatement, as I understand it) "isn't enough" -- it's that it's too much to go through. Quite frankly, I lack the time and the access to the scholarly literature to peruse 10 years' worth of literature in oceanography and atmospheric science (which is, from what I have managed to read, not altogether unanimous on this issue -- although the majority does indeed lean strongly toward the human-action explanation).
The studies I have managed to get my hands on do not generally take the factors I mentioned into account -- or if they do, they are using computer models of climate prediction as if they were hard data; and I have little faith in computer modeling of such a complex and chaotic system as our atmosphere. Perhaps you recall reading of an instance in which several computer models of climate prediction, when given historical data only up to a certain point in the past, failed to model even our present climatic situation accurately.
However, my failure to get my hands on studies that meet the criteria I mentioned does not mean that they exist. Thus I am asking for links to such studies. This is not obstruction, it is a request for information from people who I hope may be more familiar with the body of literature you mention than I can be.
In response, I have received a lot of browbeating, a lot of inaccurate second-guessing of my motives from people on all sides of the issue, a lot of repeating of common sound bytes, a few unwarranted pats on the back, and -- so far -- not one link to a study that meets the criteria I set out.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
"hat I said was that I have not yet seen any studies that took those factors I mentioned into account and still showed clear indication that human action causes global warming. I asked for links to them and said that I would very much like to read them. "
Well it's not my responsiblity to make sure you have read all the studies. Neither is it my responsibility to present the links to you so you can do the research. Even if I gave you the links I highly doubt you would read them let alone have the proper background in physics, mathermatics, meteorology, or statistics to be able understand them.
The vast majority of the people on this planet are incabable of reading or interpreting proper scientific papers and this includes climatology and meteorology. At some point you have to admit that you lack the background and have to accept the word of experts. That's all to it.
I would not fix my own TV, I would not fix my own plumbing, I do not demand to be taken to pluto so I can see it with my very own eyes before I believe it exists.
So if you want to read the papers yourself go right ahead. They are on the web, scattered around. There are lots of web sites which have gathered this information for you as well.
While you are at it you should also do some reasarch into whether pluto exists or not. There is no sense in taking the word of mere scientists on this matter.
evil is as evil does
You complain about co2science by using realclimate???
realclimate is run by the same PR firm(Fenton Communication) that gave up the alar scare and many more of that nature. They use to just hire people make up stuff like realclimate, but people starting pointing back to them so they got smart.
With realclimate they run the server but the don't send a paycheck to the people who put up the info, instead those people are get money by being hired by to give speaches, testify,etc. If you can get a job with them to put up web site content for free do it, the money will roll in.
Most? Try all. The exception would be countries like China who have made thier levels because they had no levels to make.
Germany is the closest to making it because they got to count all the old factories that operated under East Germany and with the unification most of htoses were closed down and the ones that are open have been upgraded. Even with all that Germany economy will need to loose alot more jobs before they can have a chance of meeting thier requirement.
that's a fair point, but just using your example: suppose you spend millions and succeed in providing clean water to 5 million people. Then in 10 years time, the supply of clean water for 4 million of those people becomes submerged / inaccessible / polluted by rising levels of the sea and tidal rivers.
clean drinking water is a goal to work towards, yes, but you can't ignore other things just because one goal is worthwhile and achievable. imagine if new orleans had just spent 50 million dollars on public transport infrastructure before katrina; a great investment before the hurricane, but 50 million dollars on improving flood defences would have been money spent much more wisely.
[/joke][/joke]
Everything anyone has said since this post has been a doublejoke!
Same bogus accusation made in older sibling comment, and refuted by responder.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
lol... long ago i was told sotries of an ice age, which is over. Therefore logic would tell me that it's possible for Earth to warm up without human industrialization.
and may I say "You sir are a heavy-handed leper" The suns output moves in 11 year cycles (on average) The most noteable feature of this present cycle (which is nearly over) is that is is relatively un-noteable. For example there was a hot summer in the 1800's that coincided with an unusually low sun spot count. There is nothing to tie global warming with the Sun. And, - last year 2005 - was the hottest year in recoded history.
I read the same article. Seems that "scientists" have opinions and focus on ONE area of research affecting everything.
agree with? That's exactly what you shouldn't be doing. I have looked at both sets of data carefully. They are both full of uncertainty. The economists, of course, are forced to make uncertain projections based on uncertain scientific data, which is difficult. On the other hand, the conclusions don't vary that widely - doing something about global warming with current technology is at best a wash and probably costs more than it is worth. The obvious solution is to develop the right technology (at the right cost), and then implement it.
On the other hand, the conclusions don't vary that widely - doing something about global warming with current technology is at best a wash and probably costs more than it is worth.
No, that is certainly not a widespread opinion. For example, a move to nuclear technology uses current technology and would have a dramatic impact on CO2 output. It would also hugely lessen requirements on hydrocarbon supplies from increasingly politically unstable areas of the world.
The obvious solution is to develop the right technology (at the right cost), and then implement it.
That is not a solution - that is a dangerous postponement, as we have no idea how long that would take, and we have no idea what technology to develop!
They are the roadblock on that one. Yes, it is a reasonable short-term fix, though it is not nearly as cheap as you think, and by the time we get new reactors online it probably won't be the cheapest, either. There is an absurdly-long lead-time before you can construct a new nuclear plant even in the best case.
I don't need to know exactly what technology will develop. I only need to know the trends. Falling wind and solar prices will eventually undercut petro power - probably in about ten to fifteen years. Falling ethanol (see Brazil) and biodiesel prices will do the same for the transportation sector. The pace of adoption for such technologies is growing very quickly and shows no sign of slowing. Why should we spend absurds of money now to implement costly technology now, when in ten to fifteen years we can do the same thing at a profit? There is a huge difference between being an early adopter and buying the $700 DVD player, and being the person who waits a few years and buys it for $20 at Wal-Mart. As much as I am sure you want to solve this problem, paying the big fee to get what we want a few years early simply is not justified by the benefits we would be getting in exchange.
What we need now is a big R&D push to cut the price from $700 to $20. This can be done by 2020. By the way, you should really look at the case history of ethanol in Brazil, which is catching on like wildfire. Decades of government mandates there failed to accomplish this, yet as soon as the market made it beneficial, people started buying the multi-fuel cars like crazy. We cannot solve our CO2 problems with mandates without serious disruptions to the economy. However, we can do it the other way - create the right technology at the right price. People will then solve the problem for free.
Now we'll never know if the Cylons got to Earth or not. ... ;)
I mean heck
They'll get here and the planet will be a big ball of water.
If this is so inevitable, why bitch about it? Fire up the blender, and contemplate your move to northern Canada, or Finland or someplace. I don't know about you, but I've sold my house each time one of these stories. I am getting tired of losing $$!
User MUST show picture ID
Per capita output is the biggest load of bollocks ever.
Greenies use that excuse to say that we in Australia are one of the top polluters in the world. That's bullshit, America has 300 million people and Australia only has 20 million. China and India have over a billion people so they can put out more than 20 times less per capita than Australia and still be bigger overall polluters, especially when you take into account population density.
Kyoto is fucked because of this. They should have set a kg/km^2 cap that is constant for everyone and allows for a decent standard of living. But then, if the world doubled the use of nuclear power and made a big effort to switch over to biofuels for transport we'd have the problem significantly licked.
It's not me calling the US a world leader: it's your own sweet neo-cons. That's who's taken on this mantle. I want the USA to live up to its own billing. I want it to be a player in the world community rather than someone who goes around bullying nations. I want the US to be a part of the UN rather than under-funding it.
Being a world leader means a tad more than doing what I say; it means persuasion, magnanimity, diplomacy. It means less ideology - and believe me Bush is sounding more like Brezhnev every time I hear one more Lysenkoist announcement- more pragmatism.
Of course, pursuing your narrow self-interests will inevitably lead to people carping. Pursuing your narrow self-interest to the extent of invading countries will lead to a lot of pissed-off people.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
let's give this a try. Ice core samples have a built in bias...they only show local conditions where it was cold enough to freeze. Nope, they show the temperature of the source from which the water evaporated, to form atmospheric vapor which subsequently snows to create ice. IOW, in large part, ocean temperatures. This is basic to the theory; if yo dont know this, then you dont have a clue what you are talking about. From the global warming evangelists, we know that global warming may result in colder temperatures in some areas, but warmer temperatures overall (global mean temperature). People that say, "we'll, it was colder this year where I live than last year" are making the mistake of taking a local experience and applying it to a global phenomenon. Scientists that take ice cores and plug the data into a model are making the exact same mistake. They don't have climate data for areas where ice wasn't formed. Even the trace atmospheric composition is a local phenomenon, as local methane composition varies heavily based on the foilage in the area. - Ice core data from vastly separated parts of the globe TRACK EACH OTHER for periods of hundreds of thousands of years. This gives pretty good confidence that they are reporting global phenomena. BTW, areas where snowfall is compacting into consolidated ice with fossil air inclusions, such as ice domes, do not have nay local foliage. Also the ability to make accurate BLIND predictions of one half of the CO2 / Temp pair given the other half, through three ice age cycles that are DIFFEREENT in form from the three that we previously knew and from which models were partly derived, and to do so accurately, is REALLY strong evidence that the models are valid. The global mean temperature is extremely difficult to capture. It takes us thousands of sensor stations, satellites, and other devices to do it today. But we're supposed to trust some scientist's estimates of global mean temperature from some ice cores pulled from Greenland that carbon date to 600,000 years ago as an accurate indicator of global warming? If so, you're talking religion, not science. - The ice cores are not making global temperature determinations, they arent saying what the average global temperature is. They are showing relative temperature VARIATIONS from an arbitrary baseline, of water evaporated from the precipitation sources for the consolidating ice field. BTW, the 'some scientist' statement, implying thi s comes from some small limited aprt of the ocmmunity, once again demonstrates that you either are clueless about this field, or being intentiionally dishoinest. As is the 'carbon dating' comment.
First, recommendation: break out your comments from my post...helps to read.
Secondly, I commend you on your ability to be insulting without actually responding with any facts to buttress your insults.
Again, how do ice core samples show any but the most basic temperature data (obviously, 31 C or lower to freeze)? Aside from it having to be 31 C or lower to freeze, I don't see how any temperature data is recorded. And please, try to refrain from using a computer model as your basis.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.