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Another 150,000 Years of CO2 Data
An anonymous reader writes, "We've known since 2004 that the past 440,000 years have shown atmospheric carbon dioxide levels varying between about 200 and 300 ppmv, the difference in extremes being the difference between advancing ice sheets and our current clime. In 2005 the data were analyzed back to 650,000 years and were found to be much the same — Al Gore was proud to be able to show that then-new analysis in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed, and the data show much the same pattern, according to the researcher: 'When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range' — to 380 ppmv."
You can "colonize" Mars all you want. Without precious foodstuffs and volatiles from Earth, what are you going to eat when Sol 3 goes under?
I bet there's still plenty of people out there that will deny this.
They're probably the same people that believe oil supplies are limitless because of some retarded mechanism like Abiogenesis or whatever it is called.
The fact that what might happen naturally in 1000 years has occurred in the past 17 years should be a wake up call, but I bet the same old people will claim that maybe it happens that quickly, and averaged out over 1000 years it would be the same, with lots of sudden peaks and troughs.
In 100 years time, when the sea is a few foot higher, and we're building sea defences, they'll still be there - it's all natural, not our fault, you can't prove it 100%, it is God's will. They'll then drive off in the future's version of an SUV.
We need to start working on carbon sequestration right now, unless you want 140 degree summers across the entire midwest belt. And we need to use carbon taxes as our main source of governmental revenue, not stupid things like employment taxes.
I really think that unless we do something immediately, the habitability of at least half the landmass on Earth will be be jeapordy.
True leaders will rise to lead the people ahead of a crisis, and not just react. In the world arena, I do not see any one nation or leader that can motivate human kind into action to reduce CO2. Therefore we will have to endure severe devestation, and then with the pain and suffering that it brings, people will THEN react to rectify the problem.
Seeing as how Mars' atmosphere has a lot of CO2 in it, and photosynthetic organisms do pretty well in such an environment, I'll probably eat a lot of green leafy things.
And since Mars doesn't appear to have a history of complex life, it's exceedingly unlikely that there's any coal or oil there.
And since there's not much oxygen there (on account of there being not much in the way of plant life at present), a gasoline powered engine is gonna be pretty useless.
Rest easy, secure in the knowledge that future Martians will never despoil their environment by using fossil fuels!
if companies, and the products they produce, were to pay for the damage they cause ...
few, if any, companies would be able to afford to pay such excessive salaries
just exactly how much longer can we afford to pay big bucks to exploiters and wasters?
So, you can certainly grow things there, but you'd need everything from electrical power to a large number of skilled colonists in order to do it on a large scale. Better start preparing now if you want to start living there in the next hundred years
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
If you are going to claim that as CO2 went up, the climate changed, and vice versa, then you are stating, unequivocally, that CO2 drives climate. So, the question then becomes, if the CO2 varies from 200-300ppm over the last 800,000 years, then what drove those changes?
s un.html and http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/milankovitch.html
9 /5613/1728 Although the folks at RealClimate like to just sweep this little fact under the carpet as unimportant. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13 To them, apparently, man made CO2 causes instant warming, but natural CO2 takes up to 800 years to have an effect.
Once again, this article confuses correlation with causation. If you are going to state that CO2 changes cause climate change, then you must also demonstrate a mechanism for the changing CO2. If, on the other hand, climate change causes changes in CO2 levels, then you need only explain climate change, something which has been adequately explained by solar cycles. http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/var
In fact, it's more correctly stated that CO2 levels tend to lag behind climate changes by up to 900 years. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/29
Again, be very careful about assigning cause and effect in a system as complex as the atmosphere.
In other words, this extra datum is nice to have, but it changes nothing in any ongoing debate.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
It seems that politicians want you to think it's as simple as "CO2 makes the world hotter." But humanity is not the climate's keeper. For instance, the oceans dissolve tons of carbon dioxide and slowly deposit it in rocks. The hotter the climate, the more carbon dioxide can be dissolved in the water. And I am still waiting to hear how much volcanoes pollute, because we certainly don't control them and they look like they might be contributing to the contents of the atmosphere just a tad. Yet nobody is trying to find out how much the oceans help regulate the atmosphere, nobody is trying to defame volcanoes. There just isn't any money there. First you scare people by threatening the apocalypse, or even worse: change! Then you have something to base your campaign on, or something to get grant money with.
Esoteric reference.
So the question I have is: WHAT THE FUCK WAS AL GORE DOING TO COMBAT THIS WHEN HE WAS IN POWER? For Gods sake, he was the number 2 man in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth. So why didn't he attempt to turn it all around back then? Was this some sort of new relevation to him? According to the data, during his reign the CO2 levels increased tremendously.
Also, I live in DC and to call Gore and environmentalist is a joke. The guy drives around in limo's and has a couple of mansions, one of them in an environmentally sensitive area.
while i recognize and respect your sarcasm, i think it's important to point out the biggest myth about 'global warming' of all: that it always means a warmer climate.
witness northern newfoundland. the area around norhtern newfoundland has gotten significantly colder in the last thirty years. why? global warming. increasing average temperatures at the poles have caused accelerated ice melt in the spring and summer. glacial melt water is frickin' cold and that water, travelling on currents to northern newfoundland, has caused a noticable drop in average temperature there.
to extrapolate this even further, if the changing climate patterns caused by 'global warming' result in the gulf stream grinding to a halt, the climate of northern europe could experience a dramatic freeze up. so, general warming can cause some localized cooling.
that's why i call it 'climate change' instead of global warming.
2 1337 4 u!
I believe in global warming, I believe CO2 plays a part.
I'll even accept that it is quite likely human behaviour is a contributing factor.
However AFAIK there is no solid proof that human activity is a major or even significant factor in the changes over the last 200 years.
This claim has been made many times, but so has the claim that human activity is only responsible for some tiny fraction of global CO2 emissions.
I haven't seen anyone link this apparent discrepancy, or prove/disprove either statement.
I would like to see someone prove their answers to the following.
1. Our current cycle of global warming isn't natural. Note "hasn't happened before" isn't proof.
2. Human activity is a major factor in global warming.
3. Identify the other factors influencing global warming. If it was ONLY human activity there wouldn't be other factors to cause a positive feedback loop, then we wouldn't hit the tipping point "soon"
#1 is unlikely to happen because it really doesn't matter. Natural or not global warming could be disasterous. Plus many experts rely on panic for funding. This is why expensive cause of the day gets all the attention.
#2 This is actually possible.
#3 This is possible, but someone other than anti-* environmentalists will likely have to do it.
>But now, with all theses numbers, what should I do ?.. What should we do ?..
Until the rich are gasping for air alongside the poor, nothing will be done.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'm glad he has said things like this on national television - it can only help the cause.
Occasionally O'Reilly says something reasonable or admits a progressive cause(conservation, actually is historically a conservative cause, hence the name), and we should applaud him for doing so.
Likewise, we should applaud a thousand monkeys with typewriters when they write occasionally write something reasonable.
Evolution needs positive reinforcement.
Sometimes they tell the story better.
I care. I would wager most other humans care too.
The human race may be ultimately insignificant to the universe as a whole, but it is pretty important to human beings, and since we just happen to be human beings (most of us, anyway), we should probably be a little concerned about this.
Now, as always, we can cue a horde of astroturfers and deluded followers, rushing in to tell us all how global warming is a myth, and that the shocking recent rise in CO2 levels is somehow not demonstratable, or not significant, or something.
Well, that's okay: Now that the Siberian permafrost is melting, along with Antarctica, it looks like the Earth's processes have been pushed into a region within which global warming will continue, even if humans reduce their carbon emissions, which itself isn't likely. So congratulations, guys: you won. You kept us from doing something about the problem until it was too late, and now we're going to be stuck with it.
You "skeptics": in twenty years, when the problems caused by global warming make Katrina and heat waves that kill 35,000 people look pretty trivial, are you going to look back on your postings on slashdot -- and whatever else you're doing to spread the idea that global warming can be ignored -- and feel ashamed? Are you going to feel partly responsible?
Probably not.
"taking care of mother earth is very important and we should do everything in our power to preserve it."
Too true.
I've heard a lot of people talking about colonising Mars and mentioning the 'because earth will be ruined soon' argument.
The BIG problem with this is that if we as a species are so stupid that we wreck this planet, moving to another one won't help in the slightest, we'll be just as dead, it'll just take a little longer.
Also, though many seem to forget this, we are the evolved product of a complex ecosystem. You can't just send humans to a new planet and expect everything to be just fine. Mars has lower gravity, so our current shape isn't so apropriate, we'd revolve to a shape better suited, making Earth inhospitable to our new form (possibly taller and frailer, certainly lower muscle mass and bone density)
Plus we need a whole bunch of bacteria to keep ourselves healthy. Those are constantly replenished from our environment. That wouldn't happen on Mars, so guess what, we've evolve further to cope with this or die off. That means our entire digestive system, exposed mucosa (mouth and stuff), and skin would undergo fundamental changes.
Or we keep Earth going by sorting it out, and give Mars time to be properly terraformed (taking around a thousand years I beleive, from estimates I've heard), so there is a comparable and stable ecosystem there. We cope with the lower gravity by accepting that we will end up with two, possibly distinct species of human. They may even not be able to interbreed after a few thousand years.
I do beleive that we need to expand out to mars, but not to escape Earth. Instead I think we should do it so that if one planet gets properly spanked by an asteroid or comet, humanity, and hopefully a fair bit of earths current flora and fauna would survive.
Staying one one place is just asking for it....
Granted, a chart at wikipedia that doesn't include this new data.. but..
Many people look at the data and charts like this one and say, "see, CO2 levels seem to correspond with increased n temperature.. there, it's a fact that global warming is being caused/increased by humans!" But really, look at the chart. reading from right to left (since it's graphed today on the left and goes into the past as you go right).. I see what look like more cases of the temperature rising (or falling) before CO2 levels rise or fall. This would seem to indicate that perhaps CO2 levels are effected by temperature, not the other way around (or more likely, there's a symbiotic relationship). Notice that most of the highest (and lowest) points of temperature deviation are to the right of the corresponding CO2 points.
I still think that, while humans are having an effect on global temperatures, I don't think anyone has truly proven that we're the main (or even a significant) cause of global warming. There are plenty of people that have worked in climate fields for 40-50+ years that think the same way (like William Gray and many of his colleagues. Why I should listen to their opinions on things like Hurricane predictions yet ignore other things they're saying is beyond me. Most articles I've read where human induced global warming proponents try to get you to ignore people like Gray, simply dismiss their claims, or try to claim they don't know what they're talking about (despite 50+ years in the field), seemingly because they don't consider them "true" "climate scientists" vs meterologists.
What it really comes down to is that the global climate is a very complicated system, and I don't think we truly know enough about it to be making claims as fact regarding things like human induced global warming.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
Increased CO2 levels trap more heat in the atmosphere making it *warmer*, not colder. And what do you know! consistent with this prediction, the the global temperatures are on the rise and the glaciers are melting. Why don't you learn a little about the issue before opening your mouth?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Before we go to Mars I'd like to see a self sufficient groups survive 500 feet under the ocean for 1 year. Living underwater at least has easy access to water, food, and air(by breaking down the water). That seems lots easier than surviving on Mars. If we could do that then we'd be OK even if all the ice caps melted and the average temp at the equator was 150 degrees. If we can't do that, then it seems highly unlikely a group could flourish on Mars.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I take it you make a lot of assumptions about people without actually knowing anything about them and sprinkle smiley faces into your comments to make it seem like what you are saying isn't a thinly-veiled(or not so thinly veiled) invective.
I used to watch the O'Reilly factor with one of my conservative friends. He lost me within the first five minutes. I'm not sure if it has changed since then. I can't stand how the text on the right side of the screen mirrors what he says. I can't stand how he sucks out a lot of the nuances and complexities of issues to make them match his (in my view) simplistic moral world-view. In short, I think he's full of crap most of the time.
He's a bully. He doesn't let people speak if he disagrees with them - even if he says that he's going to give them the last word. He lies, often blatantly("I've been in combat!").
His show is definitely not the no-spin zone it is billed to be and he is definitely not an independent.
You disagree, obviously. You have your O'Reilly world and I have my world, where just telling someone to shut up does not win you an argument, and does not promote a reasoned, bipartisan discussion of the issues. We'll just have to agree not to cross each other.
Problem: they've weaned themselves off dead dinosaurs, and on to TOPSOIL. Before irrigation, Egypt was green. GREEN! Now it's a fucking desert. The same is in Brazil's future if they elect to continue to overproduce sugar cane in order to make ethanol out of it so that they can use it to make fuel.
The simple fact is that agriculture should be kept at a bare minimum, to preserve topsoil which takes up to hundreds of years to build, so that we can use it for food production - if we must. Ideally, ALL agriculture would go hydroponic at some point. Brazil is only growing economically and if they continue to expand, then they will end up with a soil crisis, where we have an oil crisis, and peak soil is a fuck of a lot more serious than peak oil.
Don't point to Brazil as a positive example. They're currently in the process of destroying their country. The only way they're superior to all us oil-guzzlers is that for now, they're only hurting themselves, as opposed to our "stomp around the globe in heavy boots" tactics of securing oil.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, higher CO2 levels are great for the biomass movement. Libertarinism brings little to the climate change debate other than skepticism and pragmatism. Reducing carbon emissions by 5% at a cost of trillions of dollars will accomplish nothing. The benefit, if it exists, isn't worth the cost. Most Libertarians expect oil and coal and natural gas to run out eventually. In fact, as predicted, high gas prices have really jacked up the biodiesel and ethanol movements. Likewise, we've also seen an increase in wind, solar, and nuclear power generation as well. People are buying fuel efficient cars without government mandate or tax incentives. Golly, how could that be?
Then you've got the other side dancing, as you say, in the opposite direction. The reports always come out doom and gloom and the sky is falling, because otherwise, if you say things are fine, no more grant funding and you have to find a real job. I'm not sure what, if anything, could have been gained from another 150K worth of ice core samples that wasn't in the 440K they already had. Apparently, it was nothing, but they stressed how important it was and how they needed to do more research. I'm still waiting for something usefull to come out of the global warming crowd. I think I might be waiting for a while.
With respect to the first knock yourselves out. With respect to the second pull your heads from the magical oil sands.
But for the third here is what you can do: Contact your reps.
Those of you in the U.S. will find that election day is fast approaching. The Mid-term congressional elections as well as many state elections are next week!. Now is the time to call, write, and fax your elected reps. Quote this data to them and demand to know what they will do telling them, in plain form, that they will forefit your vote and your money if they do not make you happy.
Don't just focus on the federal politicians California recently showed how a state can aggressively (start) limiting greenhouse gasses. States also control the vast majority of funding for public transit and are in charge of monitoring many polluters. Local Govenrments can do more as well by tackling transit issues as well as local pollution control efforts.
Right now many of them are desperate and worried. Now, more than ever, they can in should be bombarded with calls and moved very clearly in the right direction.
I know that it's fun to sit on
Those of you in other countries do the same thing neither whining nor lunatic dreams of carbonless oil will get us there.
Karma is not action.
We're currently approaching a minimum in solar output (end of 2006) for the current 11-year cycle. The high was more than 5 years ago. 2005 was the hottest year on record.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Now I would admit that human action is probably responsible for some of the CO2 build-up. But what if it's only 80, and not 300? What if the Earth was already moving towards a 'hot spell'? And 800,000 years is not that much time, along geological time scales.
What bothers me is how so many people (including Al Gore) are -so sure- they understand this stuff!
I'm waiting for someone who can explain the "Little Ice Age", and ice ages in general, which seem to have been happening long before there were significant amounts of fossil fuel combustion.
I don't doubt global warming, I just have a lot of skepticism that we really understand climatic processes on geologic time scales and in particular the human contributions to same.
dave
Yeah, it's starting to look like it's already too late for Brazil. It's amazing that people can go through school, learn how trees work, and then forget entirely when they go into politics :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is that there is so much BS from various 'environmentalists' that a rational person has to question the validity of what is being reported. Just listen to how often the comment 'What right do we have to exploit Mar's environment?' comes up. There is a very large contingent of Neo-Luddites who feel that post ~1960 tech is evil and will destroy the world. (mind you the exact date moves around a bit) These people often have fancy titles, and sometimes even legitimate education. It does not stop them from making dishonest statments for the benefit of thier religious beliefs.
There are plenty of examples of fake "good guy" industries that make a lot of money by spreading fear. It keeps the funding coming. Given most peoples limited resources to do world wide, large scale research, not taking the word of someone with a financial incentive to push an idea irrelevent of whether it is true or not, is not a irrational.
You intentionally (it seems) misinterpret the information provided. There are very few people who actively disagree with the concept of global warming. No, the disagreements are threefold:
1) The rate at which the warming is occuring.
2) What proportion of it is due to human activity.
3) Whether spending several trillion dollars trying to prevent it is a worthwhile activity.
My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted. Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right, and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions - when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?
Sorry, that's no way to spend a few tens of trillions dollars.
Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
to be fair, there is still a lot of argument over precisely where oil comes from, and I don't feel like getting into it. But I disagree with you. Simply using land for agriculture results in losing it. See, when it's covered with dense plants, usu. native grasses, it's protected both from being washed away and blown away. When it's got a looser planting on it, then it's protected from neither. It ends up in rivers, where it washes out to the coast and creates anaerobic conditions there; this kills sea life, especially in harbors, river mouths, bays, et cetera. This also harms the community of plants along the coast, and it's one of the reasons why New Orleans got run over by the weather last year - the natural windbreaks are pretty much nonexistent today.
If Brazil does make it up to "first world" standards, and they don't do the intelligent thing and do everything in their power to eliminate all possible private transportation and improve the public transportation system to the point where it can handle people's transportation needs, then they will destroy themselves. You can quote me on that. :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem is *complete* industry needed for a self-sustaining, potentially expanding colony.
Want an example? Lets look at one single raw material: steel. We need mining equipment (possibly including blasting, but I won't go into that). Lets be nice and say that they're electrically powered, so we'll need power. We need a crusher and a ball mill to powder it. Well, look at all those moving parts! We need lubricants and probably hydraulic fluids as well. Lets skip them for now.
So, we take our crushed iron ore. And we're going to reduce it.. how? Certainly not with coal/coke; that's not present on Mars. No, the best process seems to be to recover the sulphur as sulfuric acid (we can't get sulfuric acid as readily as we do here on Earth -- from the petrochemical industry -- and it's such a vital industrial chemical) through superheating it in the presense of oxygen, then in a separate chamber mixing it with steam. The temperatures involved here and in the next step are hot enough that you can't rely on a nuclear power plant's heat directly, so it's going to be wasteful. Anyways, the gaseous sulfuric acid is going to need to be regeneratively cooled, channelled, and stored. Of course, you'll need proper equipment for all of this.
Now we've stripped out part of the sulfur. We need higher temperatures now in the next step (which we'll have moved our ore into, hopefully without wasting its heat) to melt the iron oxide. We'll then need to inject syngas (CO + H2) to rob the iron oxide of its oxygen. Naturally, we need to produce both of those elsewhere. We'll also need fluxing agents to isolate the other impurities, such as silicon -- we're looking at needing calcium carbonate, fluorspar, possibly others. Better hope that we can mine them!
Now we've got our steel and slag, and we need to get the carbon to the right level, or it will be horribly brittle. So, we bubble more oxygen through it until it's reached the right point. Now we have to skim off the slag, which we'll work into other useful products like rock wool for insulation (we already have a hot, workable substance; why waste it?). Of course, we'll need to regeneratively use the heat (notice that I keep mentioning this. 1) heat is hard to get on Mars, and 2) it's hard to radiate as well. Thus, reuse is critical). Then, we need to get our molten steel into moulds and recover the heat from it as well as we can, then cool the rest radiatively (probably with some convection as assistance). Now that we've got raw pieces of steel, we'll need to shape them, cut them, move them, and weld them. Each of these processes presents huge problems on Mars.
Just a few things that I skimmed: Electric power. H2 and O2. CO (made from CO2, which you have to refrigerate out of the sparse atmosphere) (nitrogen is even harder to get, but thankfully we don't need it for *this* material). Fluorspar. Calcium carbonate. Any other fluxing agents. Hydraulics and lubricants (yes, you need an entire petrochemical industry -- I was nice and didn't make that the example "product". Your entire petrochemical industry needs to be based on the Fischer-Tropsh process using the CO2 that you refrigerated from the atmosphere, reduced to CO. Horribly wasteful). Raw heat. Water. And, of course, hundreds to thousands of tonnes of high-maintenence industrial equipment.
Don't even dream, at this point, of chip fabrication or things like that on Mars (i.e., true independence).
Think "steel" is even a fraction of what you'll need? Think again. Most basic industrial chemicals require at least one of the major industrial acids to manufacture -- sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric, and hydrofluoric. Each of these requires specific ores and dozens of steps to make and refine. The nitric (from ammonia, also a critical chemical) is especially hard to make, as nitrogen is so rare on Mars -- yet if you want many chemicals (most notably, explosives and fertilizers), you need your nitrates. Your petrochemical industry is a nightmare because, s
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...
Which process do you think is easier?
Lech Walesa once said something to the effect that it's easier to make a fish soup out of an aquarium than the other way around. He was referring to Poland, but he could have been referring to the whole world as well.
mt
So, apparently you can go carbon neutral via large amounts of money. For those of us who are not millionare members of the liberal elite, how shall we make this change in our lives? Gore still rides SUVs and airplanes, and lives in a huge house. I'm not seeing the solution for the common man here.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Any reason why we couldn't "learn many skills that we will need to unfuck Terra" right here on Earth?
^Many scientists^There exist scientists who
E pluribus unum
The credits aren't magically created, they're achieved by reducing one's own pollution levels. So even if the US joined and bought trillions of dollars worth of credits to cover its mess so it wouldn't actually have to clean up, the resulting cleanup of all the other countries would still make the world a better place.
Now, there is the issue of the inequality of credits since the system is based on "% of pollution compared to 1990" instead of actual comparable numbers, so paying Elbonia half a trillion dollars to reduce the pollution of their one plant by 1% wouldn't have nearly the positive effect of the US cleaning up 1% of its mess.
We produce all sorts of ethanol, too. We just consume, FAR FAR more oil. We also don't have a lot of rain forests to chop down to replace with cane plantations.
The "Brazillian model" is absolutely irrelevant to the US, unless you expect three quarters of people to give up their cars and for us to rip up most of the national forests and parklands to plant fuel crops.
Seeing as how Mars' atmosphere has a lot of CO2 in it
... I'm confused.
If we can exist on Mars with high CO2 levels, then why are we moving away from earth because it has high CO2 levels?
Mars has been proven to be a harsh enviornment.
I would rather stay in our harsh environment here while others may choose to travel to a harsher one because ours is harsh
Los Angeles had 118 "stage 1" smog alert days in 1975 (lowest threshold). After strict emissions controls were put in place, the number dropped down to 7 by 1996 and 0 by 2000 (http://www.arb.ca.gov/html/brochure/history.htm)
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
These aren't really fair comparisons. Overpopulation was a concern, if population growth had continued along trends current at the time. It's still a concern, as someone else pointed out, in areas like India and China where the population is still growing. What came as something of a surprise here was that economic prosperity is the chief indicator of zero population growth.
Over-pollution was indeed a problem. You're probably too young to remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire, and how hazardous it once was to come into contact with the waters of the lower Hudson River. (The river itself was a Superfund site!) It stopped being a problem because we put significant pollution controls in place. Again, had current trends continued the problem would have been serious. It became less so because we did something about it.
There is a food problem in much of the world. Count yourself fortunate that you don't live in a place where this is so. But for unanticipated technological advances in farming, even the US would be a tad hungry right now.
Global cooling theories were creations of the media. They never represented the consensus opinion of climatologists.
The lesson here is not that problems go away on their own, but that we have it in our power to do something about them when they arise. We did it for the ozone layer, which is now recovering thanks to the banning of the substances that were damaging it. If a significant proportion of global warming is in fact anthropogenic, then what you have really shown us here is that not only should we do something about it, but that we probably can.
And the brethren went away edified.
*sigh*
So
I'm seriously scared by your argument that because science is sometimes wrong, we should pay absolutely no attention to anything that science says and claim that we happen to know better, even if it's in the face of all the evidence. Do you also do your own surgery, because sometimes doctors make mistakes and you, of course, are much smarter than they are? I simply don't know what to say to this line of reasoning - it's an attitude that just appals me.
Now that's still a defensible position - most climate scientists agree about the approximate magnitude (several 2.5-4 degrees C) and timescale (a century or two), but not about the intermediate path to that, and certain not about localized phenomena.
Yes, by definition. When a scientific community comes to consesus, whatever it presently concludes is accepted as correct until it's proven wrong. That's how science works. If you don't believe the climate science community, you don't believe science.
A signification proportion? Let's be realistic here - we're talking about taxing emissions at the level of a sales tax. That's what we've always been talking about. While we've been sitting on our thumbs, gas has increased in price far more than any proposed carbon taxation would have done. And shockingly, the sky hasn't fallen.
Why should you wear a seat belt? After all, there's no evidence you're going to get in a crash today, and you're a safe driver. The reason is that the risk is non-negligible and the consequences are extremely severe. And nobody forbids you to drive on account of the risk, just to take some mitigating steps by buckling up. That's what the climate science community is saying - take mitigating steps: reduce emissions as quickly as is feasible, without draconian economic measures (e.g. bans on oil) or other measures that might shock the world's economy.
As it happens, most human infrastructure on the planet has been developed in an extraordinarily short period of time, and hence we have felt approximately zero climate change on our timescale. So maybe, just perhaps a good place to start protecting ourselves from global warming is to stop causing it in the first place. Like, ya know, if you're slipping on the ice out front, maybe turn the hose off or something.
So, apparently you can go carbon neutral via large amounts of money. For those of us who are not millionare members of the liberal elite, how shall we make this change in our lives? Gore still rides SUVs and airplanes, and lives in a huge house. I'm not seeing the solution for the common man here.
Well, if all of the rich -- including, especially, those who own and run large corporations -- made a commitment to being carbon neutral, then there wouldn't be much left for the common man to do but buy fuel efficient (and hopefully eventually non-gas-burning) vehicles. The vast majority of environmental damage is done by industry, not consumers (directly anyway), so if those industries spent their own money to undo the damage they cause then that's pretty much all that needs to be done.
But of course this would be very expensive, and the money to do it would have to come from somewhere. Take a guess whether it would come from:
A) The 5% of the population that controls 50% of the wealth (I.e. themselves, by reducing their own salaries)
B) The 95% of the population that controls the other 50% (I.e. the 'common man', by increasing prices of goods and services).
I have a guess, myself.
But what this means is that Al Gore is setting an example. He is setting an example for his peers. An example that were they to follow, it would reduce the burden on us.
The enemies of Democracy are
Try not to use absolutes. It paints you simpleminded.
and go first. Unless you are one of a very small minority (generally having no children and living in one of a few select metro areas), having a car is a necessity in the US. In the future, cars will be changed, not eliminated, as a response to rising fuel costs. However, this will take years. Far fewer Brazilians have cars as compared to Americans, and for various historical reasons, have much smaller ones. Therefore, their cane crop can cover a lot of their fuel use.
Studies have shown that biofuels, with currently available technologies, can only supply a small fraction of our fuel use, even if we plant every inch of even semi-arable land in the country. Of course, technologies will improve, but for now, biofuels are still going to be a bit player in the US.
If you pollute the atmosphere in a habitation bubble on Mars, the air will get dirty so quickly you'll either all die, find a way to filter it out, or stop polluting. I'm guessing one of the latter two.
:-S
On Earth, pollution can keep happening until the whole enormous bubble that is the atmosphere is really polluted and there's bugger all you can do about it. At least that can't happen on Mars.
== Jez ==
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