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Cleaner Air Adds To Global Warming
shmlco writes "In the "You Can't Win For Losing" department, an article on the BBC web site is reporting that reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appears to be adding to man-made global warming. Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth's surface.
Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse. Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
Didn't jerry pournell explain how the world escaped an ice age in the appendixes to his book, "Angels Down"?
Mike
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Never have understood the whole argument, when one the one hand, yes we are polluting everything and need to clean things up, but on the other hand what about volcanoes, cow manure and all the other natural things we can't control? They contribute far more to global warming than cars do. Although, not to be outdone by lowely mother nature, mankind will surely find something to really fork up the atmosphere.
I think I speak for most of humanity when I say, ahem, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?"
This message brought to you by the Upright, Sensible People Department.
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
Uh-uh. Last time I tried that on Sim Earth, my planet was overtaken by sentient robots. Of course, the robots eventually get taken out by carnivirous plants, but is that really much of an improvement?
Damed if you do, damed if you don't.
I for 1 can use a little bit more warm weather, not too warm though.
Marked increase in SMUG. Damn you, George Clooney!
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Kent: So, professor, would you say it's time for everyone to panic?
Professor: Yes I would, Kent. 1F09
Air pollution kills people anyway, so its not exactly a 'solution' to encourage air pollution surely?
Cue lots of 'hilarious' ironic tabloid newspaper columinsts suggesting that we all fill up the SUVS to 'do our bit' though.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I've seen a (semi) serious suggestion that the best way to deal with global warming is to put a thin film of dust in between the earth and the sun. This wasn't from some internet hack either, but a rather senior physicist.
...dihydrogen monoxide before it is too late. Call your representative now!
I wasn't under the impression that air pollution was getting better. Are we not still horrendously more polluted than we were a hundred years ago, when the temperature shifts started getting nasty?
Hopefully somebody can explain this in simple terms. Also, hopefully that somebody isn't on somebody else's politically-based payroll.
"set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down"
By the time my kids are my age that may be the only option.
And it may not be a bad one
The U.S. has some nice large yield hydrogen bombs that are "clean" well as "clean" as a thermonuclear device can be.
Where is the question, would sea level blasts in the arctic work ? or maybe mid atlantic, shit Bikini Atol is still crapped up from last time maybe thats a good place
A "PURE" fusion device would be ideal.
Maybe we could create a "Dust Pump" to chock all that shit upwards, or better yet, figure out how to trigger about 5 large volcano blasts. A volcano produces MUCH more ash and reduces temperatures much more than a Nuke....
Say bye bye Mt. St Helens....
1. Create huge heat-powered laser
2. Shoot the beam to outer space
3. Profit!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1003
oh the despair ;)
Have no fear, global warming that this generation of scientists are sure is happening will meet head on with the new global ice age that the previous generation of scientists were sure was happening and the net effect is we'll all have weather like San Diego.
Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse
s/make things worse/change the environment/
Maybe we should just realize that we live and therefore we affect the world around us, and that the environment is ever changing. Oh, and things evolve. And it's not a good idea to build a dream home on a sand dune.
Actually, the pollution was (or 'is', in southern Asia and China) *masking* the effects of increased warming at ground level. Cleaning up the air doesn't add additional forcing; it merely keeps it elsewhere.
I don't think I can bear to read the following hundreds of ignorant "I've heard it's all due to the sun getting hotter" crap we always get on Slashdot AGW stories. If you think that, you don't know what you're talking about. Go away and read Real Climate or, for a comprehensive refutation of all the trolls we can expect to see attached to this story, please refer to this excellent debunking of so-called 'sceptic' canards, lies and deliberate mis-statements of facts.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
What this really means is that global warming is already even worse than it appears, because it is being offset somewhat by temporary smog.
As for the water vapor, water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas. When the earth gets warmer more water vapor is in the atmosphere. The reason we don't know exactly how warm it will get is because we don't know exactly where the water vapor sits in the atmosphere yet. However, just because water vapor is a greenhouse gas doesn't mean that humans aren't causing global warming. Far from it. Water vapor is just a magnifier of human activity, and is the reason why relatively small increases in CO2 in the atmosphere are having such a huge effect on global temperatures.
In short, this article == full of shit.
... in laymens terms:
YOU CAN'T WIN
so sit back an enjoy the ride. Be true to yourself. Do what you need to do to sleep at night, and dont give a f*ck about what they say about global warming. Its been hot, its been cold, and we only have accurate weather data spanning about 100 years. If you think we can make accurate preditions based on 100 years of data (a piss in the bucket compared to the thousands or millions or billions of years this world has been in existance, depending on who you asked) then I have oceanfront property to sell you in Wisconsin, which was very cold last winter.
we cannot affect the earth's climate. we can pollute it, clean it up, do what we please, and we havent' the power to alter it. an ice began in the early 14th century and lasted until the 19th. it wasn't started because of man, it didn't end because of man. the earth is warming (or so some claim) on its own, and in time, will cool, again on its own. nothing we can do will stop it, slow it down, or reverse it.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Let's complicate this a bit further. The solar output is not constant. In times of increased sunspot activity the solar output is slightly higher, and the effect is felt on Earth. So, if we're going to clean up or pollute more, we should get the approval from Helios first.
Scientists Blame The Sun For Global Warming
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
I nominate Idaho for Nuclear Whipping Boy
That said, I'd rather see something a little more organized like, say, a large solar shade positioned between the sun and the earth. It would be harder to implement, sure, but it would also be vastly easier to fine-tune -- if the scientists were a little bit off on their estimates of how much sunlight needed to be kept from reaching the earth, it's easier to retune a solar shade than to vaccuum up a lot of dust (or live through an accidental ice age).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Look - while the Bush Administration may think Global Warming isn't happening, it's pretty obvious it is. BUT, the scientific debate about what's causing it, and how much of that causation is manmade still goes on. The Earth has cycles of its own, and we seem to be caught at a time when it would be warming up, anyway (and also getting drier in certain parts, unfortunately for those of us who depend on hydropower for cheap electricity).
The important part of the debate -- for me -- isn't so much global warming - I doubt we can do anything about it - but is more about a CLEAN environment. Less toxins = shiny happy goodness. If we emit fewer greenhouse gases at the same time, hey, bueno, but I'm far more concerned about toxins in the environment at this point.
Besides, I've got my eye on some land in Nevada that would be _great_ beachfront property. Yeah...kickin' it Lex Luthor style!
Also, melted polar caps will be fantastic for the mapmaking business. Won't anyone think of the mapmakers?
Just start making the every roof and road reflective. Start floating giant Mylar blankets in the middle of the oceans. Problem solved. :)
Actually the reflective roofs would be nice here in Florida
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I say we carry on as before. Clean up the environment, sure, but for more immediate reasons of beauty and health: nobody likes to walk a littered beach, or suck down the smoggy L.A. air, after all.
In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
Nowadays, global warming is the new scientific fad. And not only does it appear that global warming is much greater in scope than any amount of anthropogenic factors can account for, it also appears that there's not much we can do about it anyway.
On top of all that, I suspect that the smarty men, for all their expert and well-intentioned efforts, still haven't mastered the climate change models to the extent some of us would like to think.
So I say we carry on as always: sometimes building, sometimes tearing down. Sometimes exploiting, sometimes preserving. Sometimes making a mess, sometimes cleaning it up. And always refining and improving our methods and priorities, not based on the current socio-scientific fads, but based rather on the traditional motivations: the ebb and flow of human desire, expressed individually and collectively by various means.
I mean, if we don't even properly understand climate change, and can have only a measurable but insignificant effect on it, then how can we possibly make good decisions about what sacrifices to make and what goals to pursue in relation to climate change?
There are plenty of other more sensible, more practical, and more meaningful reasons to change some of our behaviors. I, for one, would like to see more arguments for ecological responsibility based on those, and less arguments based on voodoo climatology.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
Wasn't this the plot of the Dinosaurs series finale?
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
How many other instances exist where scientists can identify the mechanism of a large-scale change, explain it, model it, have their predictions borne out, reach almost universal agreement in the scientific community and still have a large number of people yelling "That's unpossible!"?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Seems to me the best route would be to build very large (i.e. scalable) radiation filters that can also insulate. Eventually, farms will only exist inside massive greenhouse like enclosures, and people will spend very little time in the real outside. Even "outside" will actually be "inside". Perhaps the technology developed in helping us live on our current planet would help create side effect technologies that would help us live in less friendly environment, such as the moon or mars.
Not to mention that the first generation of people that only knew life "inside of the bubble" would also be better adapted for living in the same kind of environment on other planets.
I think the sooner people consider global warming as something that's inevitable and start working on creating ways to live in the new environment, instead of trying to put more pennies on the track in hopes of derailing the approaching juggernaut, the better off we'll all be.
Just my 2c.
RFC2119
I'm fairly sure the "nuclear winter" thing was "proven" (as much as it could be without, you know, testing it) to not really happen. Can't find anything about it at the moment, so maybe I'm making that up. Still, even that might not save you. :P
:P
Nonetheless, geologically speaking we're not quite out of an ice age yet, so it's to be expected that things are warming. As far as the planet is concerned, things like "snow" in the Northern Hemisphere anywhere south of extreme northern Canada are just part of a temporary phase it's going through. Just because we've gotten used to it like this doesn't mean that Earth cares about us.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
On this news, I have changed my mind... I think it's better to buy that Escalade, and reprogram the fuel mixture to run rich all the time. For the good of the planet.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
it's all solar flares. the rest of "global warming" literature is academics trying to get published / make a name for themselves. if you can't predict the weather for tomorrow with 100% certainty you can't begin to predict global weather 30 years into the future.
Don't worry about ANYTHING ANYMORE! Not the environment, not the government, and not the virii.
Trust me, you will live a happier, longer life.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
No it isn't.
If we can cause the problem, we can fix it. The only question is, will we?
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
There was a study done (don't remember by who) on the concept of global dimming a few years ago. They have been measuring the amount of sunlight that hits the ground, and they compared those measurements to the amount of sunlight that hit the ground on the week or so that airplanes were grounded after 9/11. The planes being grounded reduced the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, resulting in a marked increase in the sunlight hitting the earths surface... Pollution actually reduces the amount of global warming by causing global dimming. I think that the earth is supposed to be a much brighter place, er.. maybe smarter is a better word.
- smoke 'em if you got 'em.
Joe
Example: the "little ice age" (think: dark ages) coincided precisely with the "Maunder minimum" (a period of virtually no sunspot activity which lasted over a century).
Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse.
Kyotoists state both the reasonable and ridiculous with equally fanatical conviction. Truth is not their goal but the rejection of modern consumerism. Ask yourself is such people should have influence over global politics and economy.
an ill wind that blows no good
About seven years ago, I was reading an astronomy magazine that discussed the effect of increased solar output on the environment. The helio physicist in the magazine said the effect would depend on the response of the strong greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. The most significant gas he was most concerned about was water. He wasn't much concerned about any of the other gasses.
When you look at it, water vapor is far more powerful than CO2 and far more plentiful.
Maybe it is time we look at the effect irigation has on the environment. We might (or might not) be able to substantially reduce global warming by banning lawn sprinklers. It would be truly ironic if our quest for a green lawn, using grasses that only seem to survive natively in England and Kentucky, were the cause of global warming.
Let's see. Scientists seem to have a pretty good idea that heating and cooling of the planet has been cyclical, even before man burned his first lump of coal. Why is it surprising to anybody now? We blame farting cows and SUV's, maybe this would have just happened from forest fires, pine trees and volcanoes?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
No, really, it is.
Each gas that comprises the atmosphere has the capability to act as a greenhouse gas, and each one blocks different wavelengths of infared radiation. Some of then trap it when the sunlight passes through the atmosphere, some of them capture it when the radiation bounces off the earths surface back into the atmosphere.
C02, Methane, and *gasp* water vapor all contribute to heat retention in the atmosphere. It's basic Geography 101 shit that everyone learns.
However, since water vapor is, you know, an integral part of the atmosphere and several cycles on earth, we really can't do much about that. Better to worry about all the other gasses we up dump into the atmosphere that we can control.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
Why don't we just fucking nuke the middle east already and get rid of those oil hoarding terrorists while we simultaneously save the environment?
Yup, editors do need to do a better job. TFA only says that both burning fossil fuels and burning "clean" fuels increase global warming. now where in the article "cleaning up" is mentioned. switching to cleaner fuels will not solve the GW problem. it will only solve the pollution (toxins in the air) problem.
with fossil fuels the particulate matter was blocking some of the energy coming to earth. cleaner fuels will in fact increase global warming because more energy reaches the earth and lesser escapes (CO2 + H2O).
The solution would be to collect CO2 and H2O from vehicles instead of releasing them and reusing them elsewhere. we have millions of uses for DHMO but still have to figure out how to manage all the CO2 that is produced.
Space based solutions sound pretty neat but considering the outlandish costs of getting something out of our gravity well, I think surface based solutions are a better approach. After all, land in the middle of nowhere is cheap, reflective material is also cheap (or free if you scavange) and you can bounce sunlight back into space at 1kW per square meter.
So you can spend $1 to bounce a kilowatt or you can spend thousands to do it in space. Seems obvious to me. Isn't Navada mostly federal land anyway?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Seee... Everything we eat is bad for us. What once was good becomes bad. Everything we do, causes cancer.
This isn't news! Its expected! But oh well.
snowulf.com
"The conclusions presented here present two major challenges to the research community.
i n/pg_diy.jsp?CNTTYPE=PROD_META&CNTKEY=misc%2Fsearc hResults.jsp&BV_SessionID=@@@@0364476222.114442512 9@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdfaddhhhdeggfcgelceffdfgidgjm. 0&MID=9876>
"One is to find ways of extending experimental investigations into the oceans and the developing world.
"The second is to integrate them into computer models of climate, something which is only just beginning to happen. "
So when someone says that we need "more research" into climate change, they may not just be a lackey of the oil companies, but they may actually be concerned that the science on this isn't really done yet.
And yes, climate models suck:
"More recently, and as a result of the fact that the 2004 summer monsoon season of India experienced a 13% precipitation deficit that was not predicted by any of the empirical or dynamical models regularly used in making rainfall forecasts, Gadgil et al. (2005) performed an historical analysis of the models' forecast skill over the period 1932-2004. Interestingly, and despite numerous model advancements and an ever-improving understanding of monsoon variability, they found that the models' skill in forecasting the Indian monsoon's characteristics had not improved since the very first versions of the models were applied to this task in 1932."
http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS/EN_US/diy_ma
This doesn't mean that we can't take steps now to stop spewing crap into the air as a precautionary measure, or to improve the general welfare of our population, but it does mean that these changes may have unintended consequences, and not take all possible actions at once simply because we're SURE that the Earth is doomed if we don't do this.
We're not sure.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182152&cid=150 58098
See my commentary as indicated above... no point in repeating myself.
And it won't work now. That is unless some strange aliens come along and start chopping everyone's head off saying that "THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE" and then you have to have connery come through a portal from the other side of the galaxy to save our asses. But then, the odds of that happening are probably pretty slim, don't you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Captur ing.2FExtracting_CO2 [wikipedia.org]
In the reference above, there are several ways to remove/adsorb/absorb CO2. The most productive remover of CO2 is the ocean, but not enough of it reaches the surface to interact with the atmosphere to reverse the trends. The second most productive is plants (so yes, plant a tree). However, I read on Slashdot of a third mechanical means of removing CO2, and that with a concerted effort we could do it ourselves. I can't recall the method, but I remember it produces a toxic by-product. Why not focus on getting the public involved in a solution? We can all bitch and complain until our trousers are soaked but if there's a solution to global warming, shouldn't we be focusing on that? Maybe we can convince a member of our congress that the toxic by-product will be benificial to the military machine and it would receive funding.
Namaste
Global climate change will not make things harder for all life on the planet, on average. It will affect humans and their habitat negatively, but it will better the habitat for many other non-human organisms. In general it will make things hard for some species, easier for others. So, unless you are a hard-on humanist, you may be content to know that life will be better for many or most species on Earth and happy to know you are 'sacrificing' your moderate habitat to enable moderate habitats for other species! I applaud your benevolence toward non-human species. Most life (on Earth)likes the high temps.
Two words: Blame Canada
Isn't that a solution to everything?
As well all know it's man fault what ever happens. Only solution is to wipe out mankind.
If I write my comments in BOLD does that make them more true?
And where true environmentalists diverge from the animal loving wacko communities is that the greens don't really care about the earth. We could dump toxic waste all over the planet 1,000 times over and when we're long dead as a species life will indeed recover on our planet and begin again.
Eco people don't care about saving the planet, they just care about saving the planet for people.
"I don't think I can bear to read the following hundreds of ignorant "I've heard it's all due to the sun getting hotter" crap we always get on Slashdot AGW stories."
Can you bear to read all the "We must get rid of fossil fuels/SUV's/coal RIGHT NOW!!!!" posts, because there will be just as many of those. And they're just as ignorant.
What this study, and many others, actually show is that we have a primitive understanding of what is happening in the atmosphere. Trying to fix it without understanding it is a bad idea, but seemingly a very common bad idea.
Of course, now I'll get the "You're one of those wackos that don't believe in global warming" response. Nope, I'm one of thos wackos who believe in knowing what the hell you're doing and not making assumptions based on incomplete information.
You know, a scientist.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
I've always wondered what would be the effect of letting off a nuke (or two) somewhere where there's loads of ice covering land.
Like Greenland, or Antarctica.
Any ideas?
I am going to get modded down for this, I'm sure, because it's an unpopular POV on what's going on with our climate. But it needs to be said.
Perhaps this is just a natural phenomenon, the likes of which our planet has seen several times before, and will see several times again.
We humans are the only species on this planet that are self-aware. As such it is in our interest to do all we can to survive. Destroying our environment, promoting disease and famine, are not in our best interest as a species. We shouldn't change because we can, but because we know we should.
I like the fresh smell of burnt plastic in the morning. You make me want to go outside and burn some plastic! That's it, I am doing it.
You can't handle the truth.
Is it me, or are the article and section headlines of the BBC article unrelated to their sections?
In particular the one at the bottom, "Satellites and ships", which don't mention satellites or ships at all in any way.
Aside from that, I don't find anything in the article tying cleaner air to increased warming. In fact outside the headline and picture caption, the word "clean" appears only once.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
And then my cities were surrounded by mind worm boils! They were everywhere! Where did they come from? Did they not like me replacing their fungus with my pretty tree farms? I don't know, but they were pissed off. So I convened a meeting with the planetary council and got the vote to um raise sea levels and uh... Um, sorry what were we talking about?
Maybe this guy has the answer after all; reduce the human population by 90%! http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3 769650.html
Point of reference is the key here and we can't even find scientific agreement on origins. This stuff (global warming) is such bullshit. It's like the food studies. Yes, we know everything we eat is going to kill us. NEWS FLASH: No one is making it out of here alive. I promise.
So one thing that may help global warming is to produce less gasous beans.
In that way people will be producing less gas to muck the atmoshpere.
Bean producers could charge more for the enhanced beans.
Its a win win situation.
Butt then some people may miss the ring around their uranus.
Some one pull my finger, this post has made me feel bloated.
Of brokering of greenhouse gas credits among the "polluters". Remember, that is what the Europeans are doing and I'm sure "realclimate.org" folks are all over that.
But... please. If you think for ONE f'in minute that is going to get the Chinese and Indians in line, you are sadly mistaken. Your "political pressures" mean ZERO to them.
You made a sign error. There are several human perturbations to climate. CO2 is the biggest one, and on a global scale it contributes to warming. Dust is the next biggest one, and on a local and regional scale it contributes to cooling.
Dust, largely from pollution, has a short residence time, and CO2 a longer one. So remove the dust, (which you want to do for health and aesthetic reasons) and the local and regional temperature goes up. Remove enough dust in enough places, and it makes a warming impact on the global temperature. More clearly, it reverses an existing cooling impact.
Please note that ANY large human perturbation changes the climate in detailed ways that are hard to predict; though we have a good sense of the global changes, local changes are much harder, and may have a lot of year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability. So while it is possible to cancel ever-increasing CO2 with ever-increasing dust releases as far as global average temperature goes, this will not actually prevent the climate from changing in disruptive ways other than mean surface temperature (notably moisture and wind). It might cure "global warming" but not accelerating climate change.
mt
So if we clean the air, temps rise. Kind of suggests a natural rise in temps, doesn't it? Now watch as most of the media completely ignores this news piece.
I suggest everyone here read Michael Crichton's essay, "Environmentalism as Religion". in it, he says environmentalism is the religion of urban atheists, and posits that environmentalism is a remapping of Judeo-Christian religion through the following comparison:
1.) Both preach of a romantic, natural Eden in the past unsullied by Man then destroyed by the folly of Man.
2.) Both preach of a return to that natural Eden through prayer/worship/recycling/naturism.
3.) Both preach of a judgment day whereby those who didn't adopt the tenets are judged--either by God on Judgment Day or by the world when a natural disaster strikes.
He goes on to describe how there never was an Eden and that naturism doesn't work and that there has never been some mythic symbiotic relationship between man and nature. In fact, nobody actually wants to experience real nature.
It's really quite an interesting read, and it's funny to apply this religious mapping to other movements, even OSS. Perhaps this return-to-Eden mindset is hard-wired in the brain, as Crichton suggests.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Global warming? Global cooling? Its all relatively LONG TERM stuff, atleast 100 years away. If however we can reduce the pollution we make now, replant all those forests we have chopped down, and protect some of what is left... it will impact everyone's standard of living NOW. Cleaning up the waterways and oceans would be good too. I am of the opinion that people who deny overpopulation or overreactions about pollution have never travelled outside their tiny town in NOWWHERE USA. Go to India, or China, or Africa even, then you will truly realize what we humans are doing to our one and only planet.
Sucks that I don't have the karma to post this non-anonymously
>If we can cause the problem, we can fix it.
Boy, I'd like to be able to agree with you on that one. But I can't.
Aside from the question of unified will, which is big enough, we get to the point of physical possiblities. We're learning a lot about climate, weather, modeling, etc. But I suspect that the experts will be the first to admit that they're not experts. Engineering a climate is a far different thing from trying to decypher what is happening with one. We also know that some of these processes are very-long scale, certainly longer than quarterly profit reports or even election cycles, which only compounds the unified will problem.
What if the North Atlantic Conveyer stops? (for a theatrical example) Let's presume we want to restart it. How do we do that?
What if defrosting permafrost releases CO2 that dwarfs what we've released? How can we possibly compensate?
What if the Earth really WAS headed back into an ice age before we got going with the industrial revolution? What if global warming is what's keeping the climate friendly?
What if this is all so danged nonlinear? What if a friendly climate is NOT the norm? What if the Earth is *normally* encrusted with ice, or a hot jungle? What if our entire development as an intelligent species has been during an unusually friendly inter-ice-age?
Enquiring minds want to know.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Has anyone even thought that perhaps underwater volcanism is what is contributing to the heating of the oceans, therefore releasing more moisture into the air and increased ocean temps?
Currently theta testing the prototype "Event Horizon" server-scaled desktop box with a 50 Gigameg of Ram.
And even if they suck and we all have to wear itchy potato sacks for clothes and live in boats, at least we'll know one way or the other, right?
"1. Create huge heat-powered laser
;-). You know what this solution goes against the logic of physics: with entropy and exergy laws of thermodynamics, life, such as trees, is transforming the sun's energy into complexity and life and thus flattens temperature, on the other hand, we're cutting trees all over the world...
2. Shoot the beam to outer space"
That sounds similar to reflecting solar radiation with mirrors (well... HUGE mirrors
Animoog.org
"The second is to integrate them into computer models of climate, something which is only just beginning to happen. " A few questions about computer models of our climate: How many FLOPs of computing power do we need to accurately model our climate in a reasonable amount of time? Ok, assuming perfect parallel scalability, how much energy would this parallel computer use? So, in the end, how much heat, carbon dioxide, and other particulates do we put in the atmosphere by performing our computer model?
Also, it's in most alcoholic beverages, the (usually rather strict) "Bayerische Reinheitsgebot" even lists it as an essential ingredient in beer! "Light" beer is said to have even more of that stuff than the normal or strong variants! And it's by no means limited to beer, EVERY SINGLE alcoholic drink I know contains at least traces of it.
Time for a ban. Better now than later! Think of the children!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Global warming is such a load of crap! The temp has gone up what 2 degrees in 100 year??? Who cares! Maybe earth is just in a cycle and will cool again. Maybe its still just naturally warming from the ice age. Anyway, why waste tons of money to make the hurting auto industry reduce emissions? Its not the issue!!! I think that its just warming cause of more heat sources. IE...the number of cars actually running now is like what 1000% more that 100 years ago. Have you ever put your hand on an engine? Its freakin hot!!!!! Let it run in your garage all day (don't stay in there!!! ;^) ) I bet ya it will warm up. Science way over complicates everything!!!!
Besides, I could handle florida weather year round in ohio!!
In some way evrything within Universe is Natural. Natural forces/physics created it. With this definition "Natural" becomes a quality of Everything, and "Artificial" is the quality of Nothing. I think this is not a very useful definition. We can throw away those void adjectives.
There is another definition: "Artificial" is anything (directly or indirectly) created by any technological capable being. (e.g. Modern Humans). And "Natural" is everything else. I consider this a more useful distinction.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
First we have the smarts to realize that global warming is happening. Not suprising when we have records documenting the last 400,000 years showing temp. cycling up and down up and down. We were somewhat suprised to see methane and other gases that show strong correlation with global tempature, but we see that they do. Methane, Co2, and temperature have and will continue to cycle as long as time marches on. For the people that think humans are natural in nature you should see this as a reason to do all you can to "stop" the cycle. For the people that think humans are not natural, it would only make sense to do absolutely nothing about this as any intervention by unnatural humans would be influencing nature. Even if this is done with trying to solve the problem of global warming it would eventually lead to more problems caused by the unnatural humans.
Thanks to all who remembered the real title of the book. I haven't found it yet, but I do remember that one of the appended notes claimed we missed a "mini-ice age" during the 18th or 19th century because of all the smoke produced by the blossoming Industrial Age.
I remember thinking this would be something cool to model (oops, no pun intended!) using System Dynamics. Unfortunately, the best System Dynamics software is not free, and I have not gotten around to writing my own version yet.
Mike
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
A Chemistry Prof of mine back in the day brought something along these lines up. His argument went something like this (I've shorthanded it for those who don't like to read paragraphs):
Pollution = Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse Effect = Increase in global temperature
Increase in temperature = More water evaporating
Vapourous water = Clouds
More clouds = Less sunlight getting through
Less sunlight = lower temperature
The point being that there is a sense of balance in place. Yes, we're messing things up, but there are some checks and balances that lessen the impact. That's not to say we should keep on polluting, but that the situation IS reversible if given time.
His other big environmental statement was that he'd wish the "Save the Rainforest" people would spend more than 5 seconds looking at their arguments. The fact is (again, according to him) that the rainforests are NOT the "lungs of the Earth." They actually do a small minority of the CO2->O2 conversion compared to what the oceans and seas do. Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3 = Limestone) in the oceans does much more. Plant life in the major bodies of waters (ie.- algae) also is a significant contributor (in relation to rainforests). But there is almost no major coverage of the damage we've done to the oceans through shipping, dumping and other pollution.
Interestingly, the tie-in between the two lies in the algae and plant life. An increase in temperature can lead to an increase of plant life that can convert the polluting gases into O2... as well as other pollutants.
The problem isn't necessarily that we're polluting the environment, it's that we're doing it faster than nature can balance it. This used to be due to ignorance, but now it's willful and due to monetary pressures and laziness.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
>> Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
Possibly, except nuclear winter is even bigger bullshit than global warming.
From the USGS website:
The contribution of volcanoes to global warming and cooling is very mixed. On the one hand, they spew small amounts of greenhouse gasses. On the other hand, they fill the air with particulates that result in solar dimming and global cooling. On the other hand, they add soot to snow which slightly affects it albedo and contributes to global warming. At any rate, the CO2 contribution of volcanoes is chump change compared to mankind's contribution.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
No they didn't.
Yes, yes, they did. Perhaps you're too young to remember the scare, but I very clearly remember being terrified after listening to a scientist explaining to the viewing audience that we were all going to starve to death in the near future. Your link is quite convincing, and I'd probably believe it if it weren't for the fact that I was there and I remember what was said.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
From the article:
Between the 1950s and 1980s, the amount of solar energy penetrating through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface appeared to be declining, by about 2% per decade.
then later:
"During the solar dimming we had really no temperature rise. And only when the solar dimming disappeared could we really see what is going on in terms of the greenhouse effect, and that is only starting in the 1980s."
Every single time I've ever pointed out the global temperature drop from 1942 to 1975, a number of liberals jump at my throat and claim I'm making it up. Now here's a climatologist making the statement that temperature didn't rise from '50s to the '80s. The liberals will never buy this; that one statement of his invalidates the entire study in their eyes.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/20 02105397_volcano01m.html
Actually, scientists are finding that even sulphur poor volcanos like Mt St Helens put out more polution than all the industry and cars in the state. And that measurement was only for a partial year. Moreover, they have to guess at the upper range because you can't meter the output of a volcano effectively.
This means that volcanos are hardly considered 'chump change' when it comes to adding to 'global warming'.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Yes, yes, they did. Perhaps you're too young to remember the scare, but I very clearly remember being terrified after listening to a scientist explaining to the viewing audience that we were all going to starve to death in the near future.
You were watching the scientist in the media. What the media thinks and what science actually thinks are two totally different things.
The media was convinced that cold fusion was real. Science was notably more skeptical.
Now, if you're trying to say that global warming is just "science in the media" again, that's a valid criticism - but it's also wrong, as many of the studies on 'is there scientific consensus regarding global warming' have shown.
Had you done the same studies in the 1970s, you would not have found the same result regarding global cooling. See the link. They specifically quote papers that say "yah, we don't have a clue."
I saw a special on Nova or Discovery Channel a while back about the cycle of ice age to non-ice age and back that the Earth has. It was amazing how fast the Ice age ended. Glaciers sometimes receded as fast as 2 feet per day. How do we know that global warming is mad made and not just part of the Earth's natural cycle?
When are the environmentalists going to admit that it's not "Global Warming" they're trying to prevent? It's all about DESTROYING industrialization.
That's like saying, "People who want to ban violent video games need to admit that it's all about establishing THEOCRACY." People who don't understand a viewpoint and are opposed to it tend to paint all who adhere to it as being the same as the most ridiculous extremists that they can find. Such views have no bearing on reality and do little towards helping debate to bring forth the most reasonable conclusion.
You yourself point out that the skies are cleaner now than they were 100 years ago. Was that the work of people trying to "DESTROY" industrialization, or was it done by people who thought that industrialization could be done better and with less harm for the same or greater benefit?
How is supporting the use or renewable resources for power generation and ending a form of pollution that risks destructive changes to the world being against all industrialization? Personally, I think industrialization would be well served by now having viable land-mass swallowed by the seas and having less destructive high-energy storms. I think it would also be well-served by having more arable land to support the populace and by not using up our best resources for the production of plastics and lubricants for wasteful fuel purposes.
I see GW control efforts as pro-industrialization, even if they're not in favor of industrialists who care more about short-term profits than the sustainability of industry as a whole.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
No they didn't.
Don't know how old you are hawkfish, but I distinctly remember that they did. The phobia of the 70's was distinctly the other way. I remember my parents arguing about climate cooling at the dinner table. My mother was convinced that an ice age was imminent. My father was very skeptical. The argument revolved around how well science could predict climate. My father was convinced that since he couldn't get accurate weather forecasts, that climate forecasts were even more suspect. Here we are, 35 years later and the same arguments are still playing out.
Engineering a climate is a far different thing from trying to decypher what is happening with one.
Lesson #1 on why we need to move off-planet: because it will give us other systems to actually work with. It also won't allow us to fall back onto an ecology that 'works' - it'll force you to 'make it work, or die'.
I've said to many people, if I was born right now, I'd go into ecological engineering. Not for money purposes - I couldn't care about money - but in terms of 'global need', ecological engineering is the one thing that we suck horrendously at.
It's naive to believe that we can't engineer ecologies/climates, but you are also right that we have no experience doing so. Our attempts at engineering climates and ecologies have so far been essentially unqualified disasters.
Or fucking wait until the clouds start reflecting back some of Sol's energy?
How about planting some god damn trees in the rainforests?
Or for that matter, find the Europeans (and soon, Americans) some alternative to biodiesel?
(many South American countries are chopping down rainforest to grow soybeans, which are shipped to Europe to be converted into biodiesel)
-----------
The answer is to put the carbon back into solid form.
Engineer some algae that produces carbon nanotube meshes, in the ocean, that can serve as a base for coral reefs. So all those oxygen-depleted pockets in the ocean would start supporting coral.
Picture someone with a credit card problem, who says: "Never have understood the whole argument, when one the one hand, yes I am spending too much on DVDs and Videogames, but on the other hand what about Income Tax, Medicare, and all the other government expenses I can't control? They suck up far more of my money than my buying a new laptop every three months."
What kind of a moron would you consider the latter person?
(By the way... nice troll.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
But you're the guy who claimed he read the Star Wars kid article and flamed me because I didn't.
And if you had read the article, you would have realized that what you claimed was stated in the article clearly isn't, and in fact the opposite is stated.
So this guy might not be citing his sources, but you're a liar.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Would massive surface mirrors be a more feasible solution? Many floating mirrors in the oceans, on roofs of buildings/houses/etc. That Time magazine scare piece on global warming had me wondering about that as one of the things mentioned was that a massive diminishing ice surface is a feedback loop. As it gets warmer, ice melts to water and as the surface area of the ice decreases in favor of non-reflecting water, the Earth absorbs rather than reflects more. If scientists stating decreasing ice surface area has an affect are correct, it stands to reason that adding more surface that is even more reflective would have the opposite effect. Sure it is within the atmosphere and therefore would mean the atmosphere sucks up more than the extra-planetary sort of solution, but it would be much more in reach without affecting solar output for everyone across the world (and by extension reducing the prospect of solar energy where applicable).
I would think a mirror surface that is completely reflective would be most effective, but light colored surfaces would have some effect as well.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You said: "Actually, scientists are finding that even sulphur poor volcanos like Mt St Helens put out more polution than all the industry and cars in the state."
The article you linked to said:
Compared to man-made sources, though, volcanoes' contribution to climate change is minuscule, Gerlach said. Mount St. Helens produces between 500 and 1,000 tons a day of carbon dioxide, he estimates. Nothstein, of the state energy office, says the Centralia coal plant puts out about 28,000 tons a day. Statewide, automobiles, industries, and residential and business heating systems emit nearly 10 times that amount.
Did you even read it?
Actually, scientists are finding that even sulphur poor volcanos like Mt St Helens put out more polution than all the industry and cars in the state. And that measurement was only for a partial year. Moreover, they have to guess at the upper range because you can't meter the output of a volcano effectively. This means that volcanos are hardly considered 'chump change' when it comes to adding to 'global warming'.
Did you even read your own link? The polllution in question is sulfur dioxide, which is not a greenhouse gas, but does contribute to acid rain. As for carbon dioxide, the article itself has this to say:
Talk about a selective filter on reality! Your own article says that man made sources output 280X-560X the measured C02 output of the volcano. Read that again. 280,000 tons vs. 500-1000 tons.
Drop. In. The. Bucket.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you'd like to run a NASA global climate model yourself, EdGCM is a port to Mac or Windows, and wrapped in a GUI so you can point-and-click your own climate simulation.
Space and Computers.
Did you even read my post, or are you just the seventy-millionth monkey?
Please refer to my Post regarding global warming of yesterday.o ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=15076834
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=182378&thresh
This AGAIN proves my point. Scientist (much like doctors, but thats another arguement) are grasping at straws. One day its global warming, the next its global cooling, then its global warming causes global cooling. They don't know crap, they guess and hypothisize and pounder but they do not know.
Here are the real facts. Humans, and most species adapt to thier environments or move to better ones. The fact that the global climate is changing means very little in the overall sceme of things. It will change, as it has since the begining of this insignifigant little ball of rubble floating in space.
Here is another thought...Maybe global warming is caused my asphalt and concrete. So the more roads we build the more heat that is stored during the day. These heat sinks then release the heat during the night which doesn't allow the area to cool properly....oh wait sorry i started to make sense there for a minute....
There are arguments that Humans change their environment and that we are the only species which does so in a destructive manner...BUUUUZZZZ spin again Vanna lets look at the beaver...they wipe out thousand of acres per year of lumber and grassland. Or how about fire ants that devour acres of woodlands only to move on when it can not longer support the colony.
Lets try a new approach....lets do nothing and adapt as needs be. Its what we have done since we crawled out of the primortal ooze.
I am so sick of scientist claiming that they have the answers to everything, and later discovering that thier answers have only caused more or have intentsified problems. The really frustrating part is that a great deal of people actually believe these over educated bastards.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
It is a real shame that this debate has been taken from the laboratory and instead fought on the floors of legislatures (probably the courts eventually). The media's sensationalist coverage only makes things worse. As a whole, the media does a crappy job at covering science news. Now people don't know what to be believe as it has become such a politicized topic, and the lose trust in science to bring us real answers and say something to the affect, "I can always find a scientist to support any viewpoint I want, so I can't trust science for anything". A couple things really need to change. First, the media needs to be more responsible in its covereage. It needs to communicate when there really is a significant scientific debate and what specifics are actually being debated. For instance, scientists aren't debating that global warming is happening or even that humans are having an effect, it is how much of an effect. And there is more consensus on the latter than most realize. In other topics that are far from fringe science and well-established (evolution and the idea of an old earth especially), the portray a social debate as a scientific debate, even though there isn't much of a sceintific debate. Part of this could be because of teh mantra journalists are taught that there are always two sides to a story and that they want to be "fair". But science isn't about being fair. Good theories are strengthened, bad ones are discarded. All theories are not created equally, and science is NOT a democracy. However, I think more often the media is just catering to their audience, hoping not to offfend someone, or just trying to make the news more sensational. The other major problem is with politicians. There really needs to be a politically neutral (i.e. one where the governing party can't appoint their favorite bureaucrats) science advisory board for Congress. Instead, what they do is have somethign liek a science court where they pit some people representing the majority of mainstream scientists against some fringe scientist or fanatic. And the give equal weight to to the one or two fanatics and the rest of the scientific community. Nothing gets resolved, they say we have to wait for more evidence, and nothing happens. Well, enough of my rant. The politicizing of science is a real pet peeve of mine. Politicians must make decisions based on science and other social and economic factors, unfortunately, they aren't getting the sound expert advice they need, and things are just decided by party lines. It isn't that I think there is no debate in the global warming research, there is some, certainly more than other areas, but it is still plagued by these problems.
If both polluting and not polluting are correlated to global warming, is it not sensible to investigate whether or not NEITHER is causing global warming, and the correlation is indeed a false correlation? I mean, if A -> B and !A - > B, then one is tempted to conclude that B happens regardless of whether A happens or does not happen. And if that's the case, B is going to happen no matter what A does, which further means that B isn't influenced by A's behavior.
Now, I'm not so naive as to think that it's really this simple. I've long held that enacting crippling policies to "combat global warming" at this point is silly, and that more research and data collection is necessary before we can even set realistic and helpful goals. When research like this comes out, I feel that it bolsters that stand. But research like this also bears further investigation before we accept it at face value.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
It isn't very accurate though. There are "natural" and "cultivated" pearls, "natural" death vs. accidental/disease, "natural" integers vs. integers, "natural" notes vs. sharp or flat notes.
By your flawed logic, everything is natural, natural doesn't mean anything, so we just need to move to another word. I kinda agree, it is awfully overused.
But Natural does not mean everything in the universe. Unless you can't tell the difference between B-flat and B-natural, in which case I'm not buying your cd.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Just a consideration.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
please send this email spam bonus@pula-pula.rg3.net moderador@brtgsm.cjb.net
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
They set off hundreds of 'em when I was a kid, so many that they collected our baby teeth to see how brightly we glowed in the dark (looking for strontium 90, iirc).
So no, they know that a few air-blasted nukes like the hundreds (thousands?) they set off in the '50s and '60s isn't going to cause nuclear winter.
Maybe if they can get that a few big volcanos to go off...
(It's been 58 minutes and I still can't post. Does somebody hate me? =(
So your parents were scientists or they got their info from the media?
If it's the latter, then that is exactly the parent posts point (if you bothered to even glance at the links).
The media reported an Ice Age was imminent. Peer-reviewed scientific journals did not.
Contrast that with today, when after a review of 981 ISI science journals, 75% of them were found to either explicitly or implicitly accept that global warming is occuring and that it is the result of human processes.
None of them were found to support the idea global warming is not occurring or that it is not the result of human processes (see here for details.
1. Earth's coastlines may be flooded due to global warming. 2. Mars needs water for human habitation. 3. Profit!!
I don't like your arrogant assumption that you or the things you believe in know exactly why the climate is the way it is. Chandra observatory scientists and others have been noticing a huge increase in the output of the sun.
_ id=2736
Also, no one should speak about this problem unless the propose a solution that is realistic. Asking China and India not to pollute is going to be impossible, and if developed countries let them "catch up," well, let me put it to you this way, the Chinese aren't going to sit around and think about how bad things are for the environment. Ever. So developed 1st world countries must continue to grow so that technology to deal with a more difficult future actually comes to fruition.
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 much at all) - I believe in clean energy, preferably for now, nuclear and wind power.
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.
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
Of course, if we actually have to do that, I doubt anyone will remember that. I think I posted it to the Space.sci general news several years ago.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
then yes, by setting off nuclear warheads inside of active volcanoes you could create global cooling.
Of course, if that happens, most of humanity will probably die within the 4-5 year global cloud cover, and the ones that don't will probably have nightmares for the rest of their lives.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Are you talking about Paul R. Ehrlich's prediction of global starvation on the Johnny Carson show and other popular shows?
Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, in which he claimed that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation.
So your memory is decent, but your reasoning is faulty. Your memory of one scientist in the 70s talking about global starvation due to overpopulation has nothing to do a few scientists talking about global cooling back in the 70s.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
That may be, but the scare went on for most of a decade (right alongside nuclear winter and overpopulation). When the airwaves were packed with scientists explaining that we're facing certain annihilation, you can't handwave away the memories by saying that the real scientists didn't actually believe that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I don't think *some* scientists *speculating* is quite comparable to the vast *majority* of scientists testifying as to actual *data.* But hey, believe what you want.
// This is not a sig.
it's Global Extreme Temperature Variation.
Most alterations in global temperatures (setting off warm or cold periods) are sudden massive shifts to very hot AND very cold temperatures, oscillating wildly, before setting into a new pattern.
But Global Warming is what we call that, in this case. Although it can trigger another ice age, which could occur in a period of 4-10 years (and has in the past).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fry: "This snow is beautiful! I'm glad global warming never happened."
Leela: "Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter canceled it out."
Because it's stupid. Really very stupid.
There are different types of pollution, you know. CO2 or other greenhouse gas pollution increases GW. Smoke, particulate matter, sulphides etc cause cloud formations or darken the sky, (temporarily) reducing the effect of global warming. It's not a case of making no difference either way, but one of reducing one type of emmission whilst continuing to produce another would cause problems in this specific area. Your statement is like saying that because voting republican or not voting democrat would both get a republican president in office, your vote doesn't matter.
Hell, the article isn't even news. We've known about this for ages. The point in the end is that dust and so on don't hang around long in the atmosphere. In the long term, a strategy of polluting and hoping it all cancels out will always fail.
And crippling policies is according to those with vested interests. According to many studies, regulations enacted properly will in fact encourage growth - whilst the already stagnant and declining fossil fuel sector would suffer, the developing renewables sector would have new incentives to develop.
"Let's see, the earth is warming due in large part to the effects of human beings spewing crud into the atmosphere."
There is absolutely no evidence of this. You base your entire statement on junk science. Talk about specious reasoning. What do you have for us next? A message about how strong anchors might save sailing ships from oblivious as they sail off the edge of the earth? A treatise on the proper application of hensbane elixer to convert lead into gold?
i was a little confused at first, but this makes sense.
In the 70's and 80's, we were reducing the overall energy input into the earth ("system"). The reduction due to particulate matter on it's own would cause a cool down of the system. however, due to greenhouse gases and their insulating effect, night time temperatures remained warmer, creating an overall balance.
realizing that we are spewing junk in the air, we do our best to clean up the particulate matter. however, we don't make any significant inroads in the removal of the insulating gases. Thus, during the day time there is a higher energy input into our system, but during the night less of the heat is radiated back into space due to our gases.
Tus there is an overall increase in the stored amount of energy in our system.
This will in the "near" term lead to an increase in global sea temperatures. Rising sea levels are certainly a concern however, the biggest threat comes from the expansion of birthing zones for hurricanes and cyclones. The zones get bigger, the storms spawn sooner, last longer and have a higher intensity.
*clap*
When the airwaves were packed with scientists explaining that we're facing certain annihilation
I believe there's a name for trying to flood information channels with information that's not actually true, but that you would like the population to believe. I believe that name is "propaganda."
you can't handwave away the memories by saying that the real scientists didn't actually believe that.
Why not? You can prove what real scientists actually believed with a little research.
What's forcefed to you by the media versus what actually happened are two totally different things. Which is exactly what that link is trying to say. It's unfair to judge real scientists by propaganda that was produced by people completely unrelated to them in the past.
which is increasing at ten times the prior rate, according to a recent Arctic and Pacific expedition that returned to Seattle this past week.
face it, we're already in for a world of hurt, it's just how bad it's going to be before we get a cluestick.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No. In fact, I don't remember much about the overpopulation speculation. I was referring to the collapse of food production systems that was surely inevitable whenever the climate grew too cold.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We're all gonna die, no way to avoid it.
If we don't kill ourselves, Nature will do the job for us.
Accept this fact and start living every day like its your last.
And, yes, I did reach middle age not long ago.
Why do you ask?
What?
And Yet now here we are. with Scientists "IN THE MEDIA" talking about global warming. I could set up a website too that pointed to papers with scientists saying "yah we don't have a clue" being published today. The fact remains that the grandfather post's point still stands. Lots of hysteria, over what may in fact be nothing.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
"Apes use twigs to fish ants out of anthills."
You mean termites.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
No, it's more likely time do try achieve cleaner air *and* reduce CO2 levels.
All this says is that cleaning are alone by reducing pollution isn't enough, thanks to other problems in effect that many believe are more or less in part due to human influence.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
that if I buy a 69 Dodge Charger and drive it everywhere I get a tax break for helping the environment?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I am not old enough to remember warnings about global cooling.
I know from reading and documentaries that Ehrlich's reasoning was widely hailed, and he was a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson show. The link provided claims that there was only concern about an impeding ice age in the popular media -- not scientific journals.
In other words, why should I trust your memory? I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but from the documented evidence, it seems to contradict your memory. Could you possibly be confusing two memories? Can you give the name of the scientist who scared the bejeesus out of you with the global-cooling-mass-starvation scenario? Was [s]he on the radio or TV? Is is possible that it was a show host or some non-scientist who was making these claims?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Sorry, but the world has weathered greater problems than man in the past. Ice age? Axed it. Huge flood? Survived it. Giant dinosaur-killing asteroid? Kept it together. Selfish consumption of fossil fuels and natural resources? Perhaps that one hasn't been around before, but you know what, I'm not too worried about what the planet will do about it. Besides, these are only the warmest temperatures in RECORDED history. Who knows what other circumstances have befallen our little blue marble in aeons past? I'd be less worried about global warming and more worried about a natural phenomenon inevitably in the works at this moment: the reversal of the magnetic poles. Without the magnetic field's deflection of radiation, cancer rates will rise like crazy, and unfortunately it takes upwards of 6 MILLENIA for the magnetic field to stabilize again. Forgive me if I balk at the validity of global warming.
Everyone "knows" that our problems are the fault of "the rich", but they don't seem to want to notice that the trend for the past 30 years or so is that "the rich" tend to have fewer children than "the poor", especially outside the U.S. Those who qualify as "rich" in this country are often childless, or only have one child.
Sure, there are exceptions. But most of the growth in population comes from the "protected" group, collectively known as "the lower classes". The population explosion in the "third world" makes the U.S. birth rate look pathetic, as any a quick Google search will confirm. Most of the U.S. population growth over the past 20 years has been from immigration.
Since the "educated" are already limiting their birth rate, how are you going to curb the birth rate of the "unenlightened masses", short of forcing them to stop screwing around?
That can't be true. Cleaner air allows more radiation to be retransmitted back into space. That's what we learn from looking at venus as an example. High ammounts of carbon dioxide trap the heat within the atmosphere. Yes, as a result of cleaner air, more water vapor will be in the atmosphere, but it will not block the radiation, merely holds it. Water vapor is clear and transfers heat fairly well.
Think of it this way. The higher the heat, the more water that air can hold. The more sunlight, the more evaporation. However, it's not always sunny at every part of the planet. The water loses it's energy, becomes mist/rain whatever.
In a system where you have high ammounts of carbon dioxide, you get heat that's trapped. This heat builds up and does not release as much overnight.
Clean air is always the way to go.
No they didn't.
Wow! I've never seen such obvious revisionist history. This is actually kind of scarry.
I have a "earth science" book from a public school that I picked up at a garage sale. It was published in the '70s and I bought it specifically because it had a whole chapter on the comming ice age and I thought that was amusing.
I thought that everyone knew that back in the '70s everyone was worried about an ice age. I just took that for granted (because it's true! Everyone did think that!) You are the first denier that I've ever seen and I am literally in shock.
Balance is missing in global warming journalism:
It would be hard to avoid the conclusion that we are a society comprised almost entirely of battered wife's, drunk drivers, molested children, humiliated ethnic groups, exploited workers and other groups despised for their sexual preferences or cultural attributes, all festering in a spoiling environment. The reporters, editors and headline writers do not have a clue about "global warming" except that it scares the hell out of readers and sells newspapers and or other types of media. Keep in mind that we have reached the point where human induced global warming is proving to be absolutely impossible because the theory insists that CO2 (comes out of your mouth), not pollution is the cause. Media suggests that it is a pollution issue despite the under reported fact that our pollution controls have resulted in our atmosphere being cleaner now than in the 1960's as the atmospheric community, not the media affirm. Those in the scientific community that do endorse human induced global warming are the same bottom feeders as those in the media, social activism and politics that are all competing for the same audience and money.
Why is Canada spending almost as much on new icebreaking ships for it's "melting" arctic as it is spending on Kyoto?
"There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."
Newsweek Magazine, April 28, 1975 an article about the "Coming Ice Age".
Canada's American neighbors to the south saw snowmobile sales increase by 13% in 2003.
A new record of 57.6 million skier visits to resorts was set in the 2002-2003 season in the United States.
Reduced air pollution adding to man-made global warming.
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website, in Vienna
Canada's Polar Bears were indigenous to as far south as Minnesota USA 300 years ago. (called Yellow Bears due to the summer coats they retained longer but still the same bear)
Record Breaking Low Temperatures Sweep US, Canada
'Deep freeze sweeps US'
The Sunday Mail, January 18,2004
Science Magazine (Dec. 10th 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age." The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool." Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age." The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1976.
The Energy Information Administration estimates that United States energy consumption for home heating will increase by 34 percent between 2004 and 2030.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is comprised almost entirely of concerned citizens, not scientists at all. They took my money with no questions asked besides; "Will that be credit card or check"?
Thousands of global warming protestors marched in Montreal Canada last December and seven of them required treatment for frostbite injuries.
Why does Toronto Canada annually have twice as many cold weather alert days as smog advisory alert days?
The Niagara grape growers in Canada received compensation for winter storm damage to their vines in the harsh winters of 2002 and 2003.
Canada's Inuit are seeking c
Bad link, sorry. Can't edit, too bad. Here's the correct link.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Too bad that I have no mod points just now, else I would mod you up.
If one is a 'materialist evolutionist', then all judgments about what humans are doing to the ecosystem, the planet or the universe must, of necessity, be essentially and solely aesthetic.
We can make no statements about whether our actions are good or bad/evil, for the reasons you state. The only way one can make a value judgment regarding our actions as a species is to invoke a higher law - an argument from faith in a universal absolute.
If we manage to wipe ourselves out, them's the breaks. If we manage to wipe out all of what we generally call 'nature', and change the planet into a single global mall, then that will be the new ecosystem, how is that different from what an African termite does, on a different scale? Inside an ant hill or termite mound, an entirely 'artificial' ecosystem exists, with numerous species that depend on and are endemic to that restricted environment. If humans turn the entire planet into a huge, concrete-covered mall, that will be just as 'natural' as the termites' hill building. It may not be what we, with our aesthetic, would like to live in, but those who live in it will be just as comfortable as we are with our lifestyle.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
This title wasn't phrased very well. Anybody involved in climate science knows that smog reflects (some) solar radiation but they wouldn't tout it as a way to curb global warming. As someone else pointed out, a lack of nuclear winter would also add to global warming. The fact is that excessively polluted air isn't the planet's preferred mechanism for temperature regulation. Saying -- or even implying -- that air pollution is beneficial because it reflects some solar radiation is like saying amputation is an effective means of weight loss. Only someone piss-ignorant or with a big financial stake would take such an absurd stance to justify something.
Things like the Chapman Cycle (ozone photodissociation in the stratosphere), (water) clouds, snow cover, acid rain, and photosynthesis driven carbon cycles are a few of the planet's dominant (time tested) mechanisms for managing solar radiation, temperature, and atmospheric composition. One thing people don't realize is that the atmosphere is mostly inert nitrogen gas and the major players in the chemistry (nitrates, sulfates, organic compounds, ozone, etc) are only present in parts per billion or parts per trillion concentrations.
The fact that humans are causing major changes in these concentrations is well established and the results are being documented by the scientific community. Concrete long term predictions aren't exactly easy though since this is the first time there have been such acute human-driven changes in atmospheric composition and scientists studying it. It would be nice to exercise some restraint as a society and err on the side of caution when it comes to anthropogenic emissions though. The fact so many people are eager to exploit is that we really don't know exactly what will happen.
To twist a well established fact into a title like this is Fox News-esque. I can't wait till I see an editorial in a student newspaper trying to discredit an emissions regulation arguement with a statement like that title.
Sorry
I don't care what any link says. When I was in elementary school (70's and early 80's) they preached the coming ice age. They also taught that we had 10 years of oil, and that food from the sea could feed everyone in the world if we would just eat more of it!
I am not saying we should not cut back on oil, we should!
I am saying that "they" don't have a clue what they are talking about, and now "they" are revising history.
Did you miss the point where I said that several studies have indicated that there is no significant amount of disagreement in literature about this point?
If you had done this then, with global cooling, that would not have been true.
While you could certainly set up a website saying whatever you want, you could not do a review of peer-reviewed journal articles and conclude that the majority of climate scientists do not believe in global warming.
Your argument is a valid one however you have a unnecesary negative humanistic perspective on the topic. Yes we are natural as are the things and circumstances we create. That does not mean it is the correct course of action. Four thousand years ago with the advent of agriculture humans made the decision to remove themselves from evolution violating a natural law. The law stating that you must not take more than you need in order to live in harmony with all other life. This choice has caused our multi million year legacy on this planet to come towards a drastic conclusion in what is relatively to us a long time but relative to the planet but a moment. WE have the choice to follow the laws of nature and live in harmony with the planet or continue our course of domination until we have destroyed it and ourselves. What are you going to choose? I suggest reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn for a much more eloquent and insightful explanation of what is natural and where it is taking us.
-Mogur
Time to whip out the good ol' Buick!
I am Spartacus
I remember this. It was a "hot" topic on the elementary school playground. That it got attention at that age level should indicate something of the popular beliefs of the time.
Or maybe the Weekly Reader was just stirring things up....
Does this mind anybody else of the last episode of "Dinosaurs"?
Fran: "We understand, Earl."
Baby: "Understand what?"
Earl: "Well, little guy, your daddy got put in charge of the world, and he didn't take very good care of it, and now it looks like there's not going to be much of a world to live in for you and your brother and sister."
Baby: "Are we gonna move?"
Earl: "Well, no, there's no place to move to, this is the only world we got."
Robbie: *to Baby* "But no matter what happens, nobody's going to leave you."
Charlene: "That's right, little guy."
Earl: "Yeah, it'll be allright, you'll see. Dinosaurs have been around for millions of years, and it's not like we're all gonna just...disappear."
I think there's much more evidence and much better models with regard to global warming as opposed to global cooling, however I like where you're going. The local environment is also disrupted by car emissions, trash, urban sprawl, and toxic dumping and all of these things affect human beings whether it's increasing rates of asthma or cancers. And, in many ways, by dealing with local problems we deal with national and international problems, and thus we may save the environment while acting selfish.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
That's the very 1st tab the our Global Warming Sceptics Bingo sheet.
The truth? It's a myth.
Yes, the media pushed to the front the loudest and whackiest "global cooling" scientists, but they didn't represent the median scientific view.
Is there a coal plant in Centralia? I don't know, but I suspect not. I do know that if there is, that it processes a lot less than 28,000 tons of coal a day -- No 10 plants in the world combines process that amount combined. According to this site: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
in 1982 (a year in which more coal was burned than 2005) the entire world processed 2.8 billion tons, but you'd have us believe that one plant in Centralia output 1.2 billion tons of Carbon Dioxide in a year from processing coal? If that's true, it'd explain the dismal overcast over western Washington most of the time, but if you're right, most of it didn't come from coal.
Since I decided to look up statistics, I decided to find out, and yes, there is actually a coal plant in Centralia, though it's a model of efficiency and low environmental impact:
http://www.power-technology.com/projects/centralia /
According to the site, it provides roughly enough power for all of Seattle.
You can't keep using that same link in a self-referential loop to prove its own validity.
Yes, the media pushed to the front the loudest and whackiest "global cooling" scientists, but they didn't represent the median scientific view.
Whether that's true or not is immaterial. The reality is that everyone of age in the 70s remembers the dire warnings and bleak predictions broadcast on every TV and radio station. You can't blame the public for remembering what we all heard, or for being skeptical of new global warming claims coming from the same media sources that used to promise the opposite.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
One of the scenarios for the next ice age is a warming which causes the ice to start melting. Cold fresh water disrupts the ocean currents, which prevents warm water reaching northern latitudes. This allows arctic style weather to prevail over the northern hemisphere, and the ice marches south.
I know this is basically the plot of The Day After Tomorrow, but it was a scientific theory first.
Add that to the fact that we know that ice ages are cyclical, as is the precession in the earths axis, and the variabilty of the suns output.
The climate is changing, it always has been, and it always will be, as long as there's an atmosphere. As previous posters have pointed out, global warming isn't a problem for the planet, just for us humans !
The moral of the story is, build a house on a mountain, near the equator. Seriously, the problem stems from the fact that we are monitoring things so closely these days, to such subtle degrees, that we are over anticipating the outcome. To transition to an ice age could take a couple of hundred years, but the media reports it like it's going to happen next week.
My personal suspicion is that this whole thing is just a sideshow, to distract and spread dissention while whatever is really happening goes forward unopposed. Bread and circuses has become FEAR and tv. Terrorists, global warming/cooling, HN51, AIDS, Illegal Immigration. They're all out to get you.
As long as you don't ass-shag an illegal immigrant from Iran with a chicken in an SUV , you'll be ok !
Elementary school children also thought the Spice Girls made good music.
I doubt many would suggest that was the scientific consensus.
But wait, there's more!
Higher temperature -> faster decay of organic material (don't believe that? Unplug your fridge and see) -> more CO2
Higher temperature -> ice melting -> less reflection -> more sunlight absorbed -> higher temperatures
On the other hand,
Higher temperature -> longer growing seasons -> more CO2 absorbed.
Higher temperatures -> more evaporation -> more precipitation -> in still-cold climates, more snow -> more reflection -> less sunlight absorbed
Climatologists already know about all these. They've spent man-millenia putting numbers on them. Effects like these are a big reason that Global Circulation Models are complicated. Effects like these are why intuition doesn't work well for predicting climate change, and why it's only been in the last decade or two that scientists have reached (partial) consensus.
Here's a little bit about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#1970s_ Awareness
Dark Reflection
Hey guys, now that we've started to realise the EPA and others are full of *expletive deleted, rhymes with grit* can we stop legislating motorcycles out of existence and going down to Arlen Ness and WCC (that's Jesse James for all you Discovery Channel watchers) and confiscating their "polluting, earth destroying" machines?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
We always talk of human rights. But what about planetary rights? I think that if we came up with guisde lines for sustainability that human rights would follow. Because the factory conditions that people would have to work in would be better. The smog problems in cities that cause all kinds of skin problems would diminish. Basicaly if we worried about the planets rights first than human rights would follow. I think we got our priorities fouled as a human race. We are so self centeredly worried about ourselves that we may kill ourselves off neglecting the greater responsibility that comes with the kind of self awareness where a species starts to create their own invironment, where a species changes the earth. At the point where a species drasticaly changes the earth at the moment that it become self aware of its own effect than it should take action not just for the sanctity of the earth and all the other animals but for humans. if we were looking out for number one than we would worry about a sustainable society and that would mean a lot of americans might have to chhange their behavior patterns and belief systems. It is time for us to stop thinking about imdiate gradification and move on to long term sustainability. Oh but my oil stocks keep racing up. You know what happened with eron. Well dick Cheney did the same thing to halberton but sense he got into government and gave them no bid contracts on iraq they didn't go bankrupt. These rich fucks, when they know oil is going down are going to liquidate again I am sure. So at some point pull your money out of oil. My opinion of course, michael
There are roughly 280 to 560 times as many active volcanoes in the world as Mt. St. Helens.
No, not really. The exact number of active volcanoes varies based on your definition of "active" and of "volcano," but an estimate of 50-70 each year is more accurate.
Even if there were that many volcanoes and they all put out the same amount of CO2 as St. Helens, you'd have matched the state of Washington with all the active volcanoes in the world. Now add Oregon. Now add California. Now add the other 47 states of the Union, and then add the other 191 countries in the world.
I repeat: Drop in the bucket.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Let's just say that if bullshit was the cause of global warming, this article would be a major contributer
(great-grandparent):In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
(parent) I distinctly remember that they did.
OK, here's a 1975 summary of the state of knowledge, from the National Academy of Sciences: "...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate...".
An article in the December 10 1976 _Science_ was a little bolder, saying that under certain assumptions "the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate ".
A month-long 1970 MIT conference estimated 2 degrees C of warming but called the estimate "very uncertain".
There's a bibliography of "global cooling" articles at http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
Lack of clouds causes temperature extremes. So yes, the temperature was higher in the day, but it was also colder at night.
Pick places already messed up beyond all hope:
New Jersey
New York state
San Francisco
Chicago
It really doesn't matter how many digits you can manage to get.
The way you compute, the numbers would be bigger if Earth were bigger. Would the numbers be any worse? Hell no.
It is indeed the temperature that matters, not the total energy.
Canada and Russia ought to be doing their very best to cause global warming. They have lots of land. You could move there. Personally, I'd love a tropical USA.
Exactly.
And by focusing on localized problems whose inputs and outcomes are well understood, and whose immediate impact is readily perceived, we stand a chance of actually making the world a better place, community by community.
Trying to derive universal principles from our nascent understanding of chaotic systems is a recipe for disappointment, waste, and failure.
I'm confident that one day, after much more research has been carried out, whole planetery climate systems will be "localized problems", well understood and readily perceived. Until that day, though, think and act locally.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
All of us have ancestors who were led by religious leaders who told them what God wanted them to do or else they were going to hell. This dynamic is still alive today in the more uneducated parts of the world. Since most of us are much more educated (and much more arrogant) we are being scared by "scientific" evidence that we are destroying the world with our wicked ways. When I was a kid we were taught that we were entering a new ice age. When I reached high school was when all the Global Warming crap started. Sure the polar ice caps are melting.. Mars is having the same issue. Could it be the sun is getting hotter on it's own? As long as you have jealoous people who need to tear successful people down, you will always have leaders and 'experts' that will exploit the hell out of them. Go out and drink some beer, get laid, and live your lives. geez...
Individual rights always trump group rights, even if it means that an individual's right to pollute and consume means, collectively, a damaged ecosystem and climate many generations down the road.
I've seen that episode of Futurama! No mirrors for me, thank you very much.
Comment of the year
You're right that we tend to fail at it, but I don't know if we suck at doing, it...or just suck at funding it correctly/getting the political will to follow through with a plan.
Personally, I'd say that it is overpopulated.
Clean up your act, and you make things worse. Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
We only have to destroy the planet to save it! Lets do it!
Hydrogen is a greenhouse gas... The concensus is that we will go to a Hydrogen based economy..., but every time we apply Hydrogen, we lose some percentage of this gas. And Hydrogen is a greenhouse gas, it immediatly deteriorates the Ozon layer. So even though we mean it well we are destroying our environment. -> active intervention is dangerous and unpredictable If we look at our history, London (read: and the rest of Europe) during the Industrial revolution had enormous problems with smog in the 1800's, and the effect (taking in account our current knowledge) should have had enormous impact on the greenhouse effect. Are the greenhouse effects we see now a result of the smog at that time... well if so we were/are not able to change the effect... or did the earth adapt itself to the new situation, or were we lucky... (all options are open) Mature forrests (like the current rainforrests) do not deliver oxygen but Carbon-Dioxides.... Large mature forrests do not deliver Oxygen.... check this please... these forest producing Oxygen is a big mythe... In the end they start to rot and produce even more CO2... Man interferring and cutting down these tree's and replacing them by young trees in fact creates Oxygen..... and decreases the greenhouse effect!!!!! Greenhouse effect has been registered in the past without humans even being present, so who do we think we are, that we are able to change global wheather. The effect of the Sun on the weather has never been really sufficiently been studied.... Not enough to make the final conclusion: we or the Sun are the most influential factor on the greenhouse effect!!! The planet Mars seems to have dried up cause of a green house effect... no man present at the time (I presume). -> active intervention is dangerous and unpredictable My point: Let's just make a sur place and first think and then act!!!! It is ok (and necessary) to think on the impact of our doing, but do not overdo it.... It might be that the earth (as a system) adapts to our presence (we simply don't know, but the Industrial revolution sure proves so - the latter is as much science as hockey stick theory). Every active infringement on our beloved earth (being positive or negative to our thinking, has an unpredictable effect on our environment). ------------ FYI: I work as Senior Consultant for a large International Consultancy Agency and I (as many other people) do not like the chemical contamination of our living space.
I'm calling bullshit here... Even this hand waver says 1.2 acres... Personally, I think that's quite unrealistic. I've been poor, lived rural, and survived with a family of four on what a 20' x 60' (0.028 acre) vegetable garden yielded for 6 months. I'm guessing the extra acreage is to account for all those burgers you guys are eating.
China currently survives on about 1/4 farmed acre per person, and what they do hardly qualifies as modern intensive agriculture. Simple energy calculations will show you that plants capable of turning 1% of sunlight into calories would require only 30 square meters, 8 hours a day, to power the average human. That's less than 1/100th of an acre.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Now, are you seriously going to sit there and suggest that we should just keep on pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere until we know exactly how things work?"
Did I say that? No I didn't, so why are you resorting to straw men? Why are you putting words in my mouth?
"Maybe you should think about it the other way: that we should stop pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere until we know how it works!"
Where did I make any suggestion at all about what to do? Why are you resorting to straw men? Why are you putting words in my mouth (again)?
You're the classic example of the wrong person to discuss this. Someone who has made up their mind. You think that you know the answer to the problem, but you don't, you're just incredibly fucking arrogant and assume you do.
The fact is that we have an incomplete understanding of what is happening with our atmosphere.
I don't want self-important fools like you dictating the course of events here. Our goal should be to figure out what the hell is happening and make corrections based on solid science, not on ignorant self assured ideas about what is happening.
Every time a study like this comes out, someone spouts off about SUVs and oil, and coal, and then dozens of others spout off in agreement.
And not a single one of them admits that they don't know what coal, and SUVs and oil are doing to the atmosphere.
And you're one of them.
If you REALLY care about the environment, if you REALLY care about the future of the earth and the human race, you'd be responsible enough to admit that our focus should be research, and that any talk of intervention is premature and irresponsible.
But you won't.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?
Nature's already working on that.
Couple of probs here:
1) On this mountain, where do you work?
2) How many neighbours will you have
3) How far is it to the shops?
And the one thing that WILL get you is time. HIV infested iranian not withstanding.
I don't think *some* scientists *speculating* is quite comparable to the vast *majority* of scientists testifying as to actual *data.* But hey, believe what you want.
I've been trying to get a better idea about what the nature of the consensus is, at least beyond what's reported in the media. And a bit of reading is bringing up some disturbing issues. The IPCC "summarised" the consensus view in a more confident and certain way, a way that isn't supported if you read the whole report in detail. There's also questions around the methodology in the data, particularly the so called "proxies" where you get a tree to tell you what the temperature was a thousand years ago, and somehow do this by ignoring the changes in other variables like moisture, that also affect growth. Scientists "hand pick" certain sets of tree data because they think these are the ones that accurately reflect temperature, while ignoring others. And I couldn't tell you how they *do* that. Then there's the statistical techniques which some statisticians and mathematicians claim are being misused. Tree growth is non linear, but the stats methods being applied assume linearity. Also some of the stats methods actually mine the data for "trends"; they don't just take averages. They also splice together different portions of different data sets, and all this goes undocumented, making reproducing the studies near impossible. But what you do get to see at the end of it is a pretty graph that makes our current temperature seem abnormal. Meanwhile modern satellite data (not trees) is showing a small modest temperature increase across the globe, which may be consistent with the fact that we're still coming out of an ice age.
http://www.vhemt.org/ I think the concept is amusing, but naturally defeatist, to say the least.
Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, in which he claimed that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation.
I give you Africa.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/
I guess I should'a suspected such a development >t secure21.htm + http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm will look good in the prosecutor's corner. I've pushed, shoved & invented myself into a Jail Cell. A Just Reward for having learned how to drive a big rig. Well, tell you what their Br'er SlashDot Readers & Fellow He-Man Master of the Universe wannabees, it's like this:
http://free.seekon.com/NonNuclearFusionEngines + http://www.newpath4.com/millenialdawnpowerandligh
When I win all my millions from Bank of America maybe I can buy myself a ticket out of the Jail Cell prepared for people like me from the Dawn of Time in the Nick of Time for my truck driver safe driving award watch to Quit telling Time >
http://www.newpath4.com/buildingabankofamericabett ermousetrap_april062006woodrowrileykeepingthechang e.htm
http://www.newpath4.com/buildingabankofamericabett ermousetrap_april062006woodrowrileykeepingthechang e2.htm
And that's about all I have to say about that.
Woodrow Riley April 08, 2006 At Your Command Warden.
Some symantec customers found that by installing Norton Internet Security 2006 they also installed more spy ware, root kits, and malware.
Technabyte - Read my tech news blog.
Remember humans are ugly bags of water! and there are billions of them, their pink skins oozing moisture like it was water. Breathing in, breathing out. Bathing.... bodily functions.... messy. Waste of Water.
Sig Hansen?
Figures that people so scientifically illiterate that they'd believe in global warming would still believe in nuclear winter too.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Remember all the dire predictions of "Nuclear Winter" some years ago? Supposedly when the nuke powers launched Armageddon, the dust kicked up and the burning forests and buildings were going to enshroud the planet with an impenetrable cloud, after which no crops would grow and we'd all starve. Well, maybe the answer to our global warming problem is a controlled mini-geddon® or what I like to call Nuclear Late Afternoon: just enough destruction and burning to raise the Earth's albedo to balance out man-made global warming. The scientists who have so accurately modeled global warming should be able to tell us exactly how many megatons it'll take to compensate.
Wacky rotation? So it's a bit longer than ours. (24.622962 hours) Big deal. Please mod parent down.
Research presented at a major scientific meeting???
How about a list of the sponsors? The petrochemical industry spends millions each year on FUD. They can afford.
Clean air causes global warming! Right... Tobacco is good for your health!! Right... Only the Business Software Alliance can save us from Communism!!! Right...
I just noticed your reply. I'm not sure where you stand still based on your first paragraph and your last paragraph.
Your point, is that we should try to prevent global warming, so that WE don't die. My point is that its more important now that to help improve OTHER people's living conditions, so that they don't die. Global warming or not.
Actually, my point is that we should try to prevent global warming so that all of us (as in the sense of everybody in the world and not just the US) won't die. I agree that we need to do more to improve life in Africa. Boy do we ever need to do more. Just think how much the money going to Iraq could do to fix up the majority of the continent if spent wisely.
However, I do get the impression that you're saying that stopping hunger in Africa is more important than fixing global warming to which I respond that the problems are in no way separate problems and must be looked at together. You cannot ignore GW when trying to deal with the declining fertility of Africa's breadbasket. The problems are inexorably linked and until Africa is capable of feeding itself it is going to be extremely hard for it to build up the industry to produce goods that could pay for food from other regions.
It's a bootstrapping problem.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").