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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?"
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
> 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.
Right, your religious faith sustains you through anything, especially anything as puny as logic or facts that don't support your beliefs. Dude, anybody that belives Global Warming is both a) established as a fact beyond debate and b) that the CAUSE of such warming is also established beyond debate is an ignorant savage deserving of exactlt the same attention of reasoning beings as Pat Robertson, Usama Bin Laden and the rest of the religious fanatics bedeviling the civilized world.
The sun IS burning hotter. NASA is detecting upward temperature trends on Mars and I really don't think that is amendable to human intervention. The temprature on Mars doesn't depend on our CO2 emission levels, whether or not you drive a hybrid car or if we ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
We desperately need to get the religion and green politics out of our science so we can answer the questions that matter. Is the earth warming? Is it cyclic? If it is dangerous to us and our civilization, what are the options for solving the problems? For instance, assume the Earth is warming in a non-cyclic pattern. Is the answer to destroy industrialized civilization in order to save it or is it possible to use our science to offset the bad effects?
But to the small minded intolerant political types like yourself there are no questions and the answer was the same as before the reason was global warming. To a socialist the answer to every problem is always more socialism. Global Warming is just this week's excuse because you guys decided fear might sell better than greed and class envy.
Democrat delenda est
The sun IS burning hotter. NASA is detecting upward temperature trends on Mars and I really don't think that is amendable to human intervention. The temprature on Mars doesn't depend on our CO2 emission levels, whether or not you drive a hybrid car or if we ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
uh, mars has some very complicated warming/cooling trends due to it's wacky rotation. you can't just point to mars' weather getting warmer as proof that its the sun's fault.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
This is probably the same guy that says drive an electric car save the enviroment, when you boil it all down to generation losses, power generation polution, and envirmental damage from toxic chemicals used in the batteries an electric car is about TWICE as polluting as a modern compact.
That's a commonly held misconception.
1. Modern batteries for hybrid cars are recyclable.
2. Power generation from most current power plants, even coal burning ones, are less polluting per watt of power output than an internal combustion engine. The automotive combustion engine trades a lot of efficiency for the ability to be mobile, quick to start and stop, and run at a broad range of RPMs.
3. As more solar/wind/geothermal/tidal/whatever else environmentally friendly power generators are used, the electric car can use the power they generate without modifications.
The real problem with electric cars is the same problem we had with them at the beginning of the 19th century. Battery tech just hasn't improved enough to give them a long range.
>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.
Wouldn't it be a whole lot cleaner to build a bunch of nuclear power plants?
You are spot on. Whether you believe we are inducing unnatural global warming or not, the proper answer is not to overreact trying to fix it! What this article tells me is there is much of the equation that we still do not fully understand.
We've seen time and again that messing with the environment can have devastating repurcussions. A smaller scale example of this is the attempt by the US Army Corps of Engineers to drain the Everglades. Now huge amounts of money are being invested trying to fix what was done. And this is minor compared to the implications of trying to modify, one way or the other, the global climate.
It's good to clean up our environment and be good stewards of it, but at the same time, we can't halt industrial progress, nor should we. What happens if, a hundred years down the road, we discover global warming really was only a natural cycle of the Earth's climate? Now, what happens if current industrialized nations have strangled the ability of their economies to produce goods in an attempt to divert a coming 'disaster' that never materialized?
Already, punitive regulations and taxes are in place on industry making it very hard to profitably do business in the United States. This is a primary factor behind the outsourcing that people wring their hands over. As I said, behaving responsibly toward the environment is good, but we have to also balance the needs of being an industrialized society and not overreact against a threat we don't really undesrand.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
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.
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.
So you're saying if we pollute our waters, destroy cultures, destroy the landscape, and etc. its somehow better?
Excuse me while I puke.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Fuck that, I got your Mid East peace aid package right here!
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Sorry, but it is the educated, not the rich. The rich are, of course, overrepresented in the ranks of the educated. Another important note, education is not intelligence, uneducated people can be intelligent.
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