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2006 Was the Warmest Year Ever
kpw10 writes "Dr. Jeff Masters from Wunderground has a great summary of this year's rather abnormal weather (his blog is the best source on the net for in-depth weather analysis). The post discusses some of the cyclical climate forces at work this year and compares this year's record temperatures to records from the past. There are some interesting differences, particularly in the extent of the northern hemisphere seeing record highs this year." From the article: "December's weather in the Northeast U.S. may have been a case of the weather dice coming up thirteen — weather not seen on the planet since before the Ice Age began, 118,000 years ago. The weather dice will start rolling an increasing number of thirteens in coming years, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summertime by 2040 is a very real possibility..." Here is the The National Climatic Data Center's report announcing the entry of 2006 into the record books.
are either closed or operating at significantly reduced loads. Hell, some of the places in Austria are suggesting hiking trips instead of skiing this year. Here in Bavaria, we had(so I'm told) one of the coldest winters in the past 20 years last year, and this year I have only had to deal with frost twice(which is nice because I am on a bike)
Meanwhile Colorado seems to be getting more snow than the rest of the world combined(I'm only being a tad dramatic there). They probably have the best skiing in the world this year, but the airports are always closed so nobody can get there!
Monstar L
one of the side effects of global warming could be more extreme weather : colder, warmer, drier, wetter, for longer periods of time.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
As, probably, the most powerful country on Earth at the moment I'd like to see the US taking much more of a lead in the process of dealing with climate change.
/. and elsewhere that the problem is in the hands of not only the US administration but also the US citizens who need to all grow up, face their responsibilites and the damage they are responsible for and begin to put things right.
It is after all them who have benefitted most and contributed most to global warming in order to build up their industries and economy.
Other, not so advanced countries, such as China and India are still developing and shouldn't need to be as active in reducing greenhouse gases as the US should.
Whoever takes the lead in developing the new technologies and processes required to in this new environment will gain an invaluable lead when the rest of the world goes through the same process.
It seems to me, from comments posted on
You know, Michigan's upper peninsula. "Normally" we get about 200" of snow in a winter season. So far this season we've had one major snow storm, leaving us with approximiately 18". That's all. In December 2005, 77.5" fell. I would be surprised if we got a 1/10 of that in 2006.
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While I will agree with nearly all of it, the one point that MAY be wrong is that this is man-made. It is possible for this to be a natural phenomenon. Now, with that said, I would rather err on the side of caution and assume that this is man-made and at least try to back out our damage.
If it wasnt for Global Dimming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming this would be worse. However, since particulate pollution is being cut more than C02 global dimming is falling behind global warming.
Could this really be avoided? Is it still time to revert those climate changes?
Shouldn't we be preparing for the worse yet?
Instead of deciding whether or not it's really happening ?
I just watched "An inconvenient truth" yesterday. It was the creepiest film I ever watched, way scarier then "The Shining" or "The Ring". I hope most of you out there, have seen it already... I the film Al Gore shows multiple graphs illustrating the drastic changes in the climate - due to our smoking and scorching of Earth - in the last few decades. 2005 was the warmest year, now 2006 bits that questionable record. Are we all running towards the flames of self-destruction? I would say we are all to blame here - It's true, we can all contribute something to the cause. Drive less, own less - endorse global warming awareness in our community. But that will solve a fraction of the problem - America has to wake the hell up and say no to all those fat corporations and say (in the words of the great wizard) "You Shall Not Pass". I mean - we have the technology to turn into cars and motors running on alternative types of energies - we had that technology more than 20 years. Why is the fat fuck the suit - always louder than the suffering masses? Voice out people - let's start our own revolution here - make our children proud of this spineless generation.
Locksmith
Not for me: 2006 UK Temperatures or for some time 1998 Temps
There may be a trend there.......
Unfortunately I couldn't find the wind speed data for this year but that seems to be significantly higher than usual.
Hmmmmmm
In the Victorian Alps (south eastern Australia) the ski season was a dismal flop due to lack of snow. Due to the drought there wasn't enough water for snow making either. But on Christmas day (which is summer here of course), there was a large snow storm up in the mountains: more snow than there was during winter. My entirely unscientific impression of the recent weather is not just that it's getting hotter - it's getting weirder.
Think about it...Hot Eskimo chicks in BIKINIS!!! Just give it ten years.
First, the standard reply to your standard questions. global warming is about an average. But the locals will vary wildly from the norm. There will be many warmings, but there will be some cooling.
As to the hurricanes, Dr. Grey and his center noted after the downgrading that they did not know about the on-going el nino. Both El Nino and La Nino always has an impact on the current year.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
worst case scenario: end of the world
prepare for the worst: try and get some end-of-the world-petty-sex
So long, suckers!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
That was an argueing point years ago. Before this was widely studied nobody honestly knew if it was our fault or not. The jury is in, we know what is causing climat change and its us. Now to be fair there is a real and measurable increase in global temperature that is natural but that barely accounts for the *ahem* tip of the iceburg of climate change. The natural "cyclical" climate chance is blown out of the water by the unnatural, unhealthy, and unexpected speed of human caused climat change.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
That's quite a strawman you've got there.
and there are loads.... okay one... decent scientist who says it isn't Man made or true or nothingExactly correct. Everyone knows that the present of a specific scientific principle is decided by a central committee and then approved by the electorate at large. It's an excellent system, look how the Catholic church managed to keep us at the centre of universe!
Well said, refreshing to read that.
/.er to see past the techno-fix as this is the general mindset here.
I just read in 'Revenge of Gaia' that this period of warming may take 100,000 years to subside. R'uh-oh.
A critical fact in Al Gore's film: after compiling the results of 1,100 serious scientific papers about GW not one suggests that it is anything but man's fault. The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%.
That's where this argument stems from I think. That and big oil sponsored research. Additionally It's very hard for a
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
For me at least, your first paragraph hits the nail on the head. Climate change is happening - but it has always happened. The arrogance of man is to presume that the current climate is one which would remain stable were it not for our interference. The climate has always changed, it is a dynamic system, and will always change. Why should we presume that the climate that we currently have is the natural balance for the Earth?
It is a complex and ever changing system and our understanding is really very limited. There could be factors at work that come into play as the temperature rises which then tip the Earth back the other way and heading for an ice age.
Idha khatabahum lijahiluna qalu salaman
Temperature in the UK has apparently been tracked for 350 years and last year had the highest average temperature of those 350 years.
yeah, in the early days of this planet there were years which were damn hot.
I think you take the word 'ever' a bit too serious. It is overstating, but we can be quite shure about the last couple of hundred years.
Idha khatabahum lijahiluna qalu salaman
Quoting from http://www.junkscience.com/ on this article:
"s it happens we're just reformatting the thermometer graphic to give people a better idea of global mean temperatures and trends. Using a thousand less-urbanized sites from the METAR database suggests the last year (calendar date to calendar date, in this case) was about as near average as can be expected, within a tenth of a degree of the calculated mean without any enhanced greenhouse forcing.
Is the world really hot and getting hotter? That's a very good question but one to which no one has a good answer. The urbanized record is a little warm but that doesn't mean very much. The planet? Well, that's an open question as yet."
Dammy
This just shows that people don'r really understand what global warming means. Sure, temperatures are going to be one or two degrees higher ON AVERAGE, but that does not mean warmer winters and hotter summers in general. It means that the system as a whole will have more energy, so weather phenomena will be more intensive and fluctuations will have higer amplitude. Think of more powerful storms, more destructive hurricanes, etc. Cold winter 2005 and warmest year 2006 is a nice example of such fluctuation.
You are half-correct (maybe more than half). Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the onyl way to solve the problme but we cant feel helpless and give up takign any measures becuase the problem is too big. Kyoto is flawed becuase it won't SOLVE the problem but it is a step that is crucial for our future. The CO2 is not a zero sum system. Not only the oceans absorb CO2. Plant growth and other "natural" CCS system are working for us but at the same time that we are removing rainforest we are burning the trees which releases the CO2 theyb absorbed to grow and replacing the trees with most often cattle. The cattle create methane which is 23 times more powerful than CO2 as a green house gas.
As i said before Kyoto is not the solution and neither is the saving the rainforest. There is no magic solution here, the only possible way we can pull out is by taking care of the environment everywhere. We cant seperate the important of different life support systems on earth and think we can do away with some of them.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I wonder why people start to worry about our environment now, when even 20 years ago it was obvious that something like that will happen.
But now, when it begins to get really expensive (think about damages caused by hurricanes, floodings etc.), people start to care. Before that, the attitude was "Uhh, greenhouse effect? Doesn't concern me, as long as I can live like I used to."
It's almost too late..
As always, were talking about _global_ warming. It means you can neither confirm nor infirm it by saying:
"Oh baby, It's cold outside!" in a given location at a given time. Though scientists can forecast global trends, they cannot tell you for sure "It's gonna snow in August in Alabama".
And global warming doesn't mean warming in every place on earth either.
Poles and winters will get more affected than summers and tropical regions.
You know what? Even the sea level can rise in some point while dropping in another.
Yes thats the point, the US and other modern countries ( UK, Russia, Germany, Japan ) have in the past had huge industrial output with the attendant pollution and contribution to Global Warming.
It is because of this industry that they are in the position they are in today and why they can afford to cut back on their industrial output ( through outsourcing to less expensive countries ) in order to clean up the pollution in their countries caused by their industrial legacy and enact laws to curb the kind of worst excesses of industry which is still undertaken.
Without having this industrial base and without causing the pollution they did the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Russia would not occupy the powerful positions in the world which they do.
Up and coming countries such as India and China ( where a lot of our production and industry have moved to ) can make similar gains through industrialisation to become more wealthy and improve the standard of living of their citizens, it is unfair to penalise them for their current industrial output as much as we penalise the US, UK, Germany, Japan etc since we have already caused an awful lot of the global warming problem before being able to do something about it.
Thats not to say China etc don't need to do their bit to prevent Global Warming but since we caused the majority of the problem it ought to be down to us to provide the majority of the solution.
I do pretty much. The film isn't doom and gloom really - have you seen it? The levels of CO2 are real, the data verified. The links between CO2 and global temperature are well correlated for hundreds of thousands of years. Plenty of people watch films where everything's ok - feel good movies will always be popular. I'm not a political supporter of Gore (or anyone else for that matter) but he doesn't strike me as a doomer. He's trying to say that it would be possible to start changing the situation and that all is not lost.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Global Warming is a difficult subject because it can be difficult to understand, primarily because of the lies in the media about it not being our (humands) fault. I like to think myself an intelligent person, im not a genius however I am not an idiot. Since I was 18 (in 2002) I have been reading about GW as much as possible. I have tried my best to educate myself from scientific information that is unbiased however that can be very difficult because of all the rubbish printed in the American press. I am not really surprised that a lot of people do not believe in GW because all that they have read about it has been lies. Not many people will go out and educate themselves independantly like I have done. Now to the point of my post :) When I meet someone who does not believe in GW I always tell them the following -
60 years ago you had some doctors saying cigerettes caused cancer and others that didn't. Now it was difficult to get the truth back then because of all the lies spread by the tobaco companies. However what was the intelligent thing to do? Was it to blindly believe some doctors who said it was fine or was it best to quit smoking anyway "just in case"? The same is true now for global warming, you can believe the newspapers who saying global warming isn't man made and continue as you are however what if you are wrong, is it not best to try and reduce our emmissons "just in case"? Sure it will have an economic impact however that is nothing compared to the global impact global warming will have if we continue to pollute the earth like we currently are.
What shocks me is the number of people who just brush off what I havd just said and reply with "well i won't be alive in 100 years anyway so what do i care". I am totally disgusted by this attitude and I am sorry to say that I know a lot of American's who think just like this.
Now I applaud Al Gore for his documentary/movie (even if the bits about him are very boring) for his efforts but I wonder to myself how we are ever going to make any progress when so many people in the worlds most powerful country do not care about the continuation of the human race anyway. Global warming to them means changing their lifestyles just a tiny bit but they won't have any of it.
Now to be fair I have singled American's out here however they are not the only guilty party, I know a large number of people in the UK (where I live) as well who do not believe in global warming, thankfully the majority do and our government seems somewhat competent in this area (although they need to do a lot more).
i want to remark that we have better technology now, so China needn't pollute as much as we did, and go straight to windpower/solarpower instead of using coal.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
The way that the warming effect manifests itself is in the spread of the regions, that is. towards the equator we have an hot arrid region, at the poles we have cold frosty regions and inbetween we have somewhat of a gradient in temperature but also the crucible of interaction between the two. This is how weather is "made": in the interaction between the hot and cold air and water of the equator (solar heated) and poles
Heat up the planet and the hot,dry band around the equator expands, initially the temperate zone is squashed, concentrating the effects of the cold/hot interaction and producing the "extreme" weather we are seeing.
Which is how a globally hotter climate can cause colder weather events in temperate areas.
basically the hotter the global temperature the steeper the gradient of temperature increase is from the poles. the poles themselves recieve little to no solar heating so will continue to sit there stubbornly trying to remain icy cold. steeper temperature gradient = wilder weather with greater extremes
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Well, come on... 2005 was the warmest year on record. Sure, it was the hottest our planet has been for thousands of years, but what year held the previous record... 2004! Which in turn beat out 2003!
Oddly enough, with the combined effect of the El Nino and the extra warming this year this 2007 is pretty much a lock to wipe out the 2006 record now established. However, it might actually be so warm as to make 2008 fail to take the record.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Hey those reduction things don't apply to China or India so they are just costing us jobs, sure people say we are worse, but we won't be forever and being only in the top 3 worse isn't so bad they just want to cripple our jobs, its a conspiracy from pinko liberals trying to bring down America.
Even though I am one of those pinko liberals this is one point I've got to give to the right. Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer. As many others have pointed out, global warming is a fact and it is going to take a lot of money and knowledge to survive it. Simply cutting back on emissions is not going to solve anything.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
And the reason the ozone hole now (and has for 15-20 years) covers Tasmania and other southern regions that have perfectly normal day/night cycles is..?
I speak as a Tasmanian who's seen the rise in skin cancer and seen all the alarm stories over the ozone hole.
So..?
Firstly the hurricanes were dwarfed by the El Nino effect. This wasn't known at the time the predictions were made. As for the question about the deep freezes that's a misunderstanding. Global Warming is a misnomer, a more accurate name would be Global Climate Change. On average the earth is warmer, however in the short term you are going to end up with more extreme weather. You will end up with places that deep freeze, other places that face rather sudden flash floods, as well as extreme winds and drought. On average there will be less rain fall, but when the rain falls it should be extreme and sudden.
You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
You show some ignorance on the subject. Most importantly, scientifically it is hard to prove something without putting the numbers in. If you want to prove a correlation, you use your best theory, and compare the expected results with the measured results, and determine the accuracy of your estimate.
In this case, science has concluded that there can be only one explanation for global warming, which is the rapid accumulation of greenhouse gases in the past century. It fits the data, and there are simply no other explanations that fit the numbers.
To clarify this for you: suppose you see this climate change as part of the geological shifting of climate, for example the ice-age cycle (I hear this argument a lot). Then you must consider that timescales are important. Consider that the ice-ages occurs every 100,000 years or so, while the global warming we now see has mostly occurred in the last 50 years. That's a totally different timescale, which explains why the two are not related.
What amuses/terrifies me is the people that argue that global warming isn't humanity's fault, and as such we don't have to do anything about it. I mean, the apocalypse may be coming, but if we didn't cause it, no point in us trying to stop it *shakes head quietly*
Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer.
Whilst it would be desirable to have a solution to climate change that does not involve hurting the economy (and I believe this is certainly possible), we should get our priorities straight. I would not want a bigger television at the expense of living in a filthy polluted desert.
Nah.
That's the one thing that really bothered me about that movie. I realize that they were going for a general audience and that's why they put the CO2 charts in there because they are dramatic. But for me it hurt the movies credibility.
The first thing I thought when I saw those charts was 'correlation doesn't equal causation'.
with records that go back barely more than a hundred years...
Those are interesting charts. But what part has say El Nino played in them, given that it has an effect on global weather patterns not just those localised to the Eastern Pacific, especially since it's not caused by global warming. What's their correlation?
no, ok, I accept that. It would be scientifically wrong to imply causation from that data in the absence of a theory to explain why the two variables seem to be linked, but we do have that theory ('greenhouse effect').
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
The first thing I thought when I saw those charts was 'correlation doesn't equal causation'.
You're joking right? Correlation does not *necessarily* imply causation but it gives you the right to be damned suspicious that it does. And this is a very good correlation, with a known scientific model that points to causation.
Speaking of strawmen, never mind that the lack of observable stellar parallax made stationary earth models scientifically more tenable. See the discussion of Tycho's observations here: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/b
I'm asking because there have been a lot of environmental scares (Genetic modification, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, damaged fragile food chains causing crops to fail, the build up of toxic chemicals leading to mass sterility) that were not true and have wasted a lot of time and money. There are several claims that much of the data suggesting global warming has been massaged (e.g. a climate scientist trying to remove evidence of a Medieval Warm Period when temperatures were as high as today - paragraph ten).
I don't personally doubt that there is a small global warming effect caused by CO2- about 1 degree per century judging by the last 30 years. What I am uncomfortable with is that scientists who oppose the consensus seem to get a lot of flak (ever heard of Bjorn Lomborg - all he did was write a book - that's supposed to be a good thing).
I'm not saying I believe my own theories, but these are just gray matter excersizes. I'm torn between "we didn't know!" and "climate changes are natural" and at this point will just assume (a) since we can all affoard to use less energy in our everyday lives. What if the human civilization looped? I mean what if humans pre-pre-big-Ice Age actually had working systems that were destroyed by the ice age and that caused said global catastrophie? Those mysterious "springs" found in uninhabited Russia. The steps found deep in the Jamacian seas where no land was thought to ever exist. The fact countless tons of crushing ice and rushing waves from the big meltdown would have destroyed a civilization if it was placed in just the ~wrong~ area. A lot of coincidenses. I know in the end scientific evidence proves this theory entirely false, but its just a brain excersize to get us thinking and nothing more. A fable or parable. On another note: bad architecture and buildings (i.e. poor energy unefficient designs and material types) account for MOST of the problems, or so I've heard recently. Too many studies with too many results. *sigh*
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Personally, I never subscribe to the "we can't possibly understand it" argument. That also explains my deeply atheistic beliefs.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Exactly. Kyoto would buy our children time to figure out and implement more technologically-advanced, cheaper, and less-painful ways of altering their world.
Coincidentally, Kyoto has not been ratified by the same country where "lower taxes!," i.e., lower taxes for me and higher taxes for my children, is the one political rallying cry that always works.
Why the party that campaigns on lowering taxes and refusing to ratify Kyoto hates the world's children has yet to be determined.
Despite the fact that this is the warmest year since we've started keeping track, I do believe we are still geologically below the average temperature of the earth overall. I would never argue that we don't contribute to the warming of our current era, but to what extent is and probably always will be pretty inconclusive. We should be careful when we make these comparisons, and realize that even without our help the earth will be both warmer and cooler than it is now at different points in the future. So the penguins and the polar bears were going to be soggy toast eventually anyways, just perhaps not so soon. Besides there are plenty of other reasons to want to do something about our pollution problem. For example I just read on bbc news that there were 3600 deaths attributed to smog in Iran just last October. The problem with the Global Warming band wagon is that its hard to quantify, but who can deny air quality problems in urban settings. It seems to me that perhaps Global Warming is over emphasized in comparison to things it might be relatively easier to get people to care about. People are generally short sighted, and pretty much only care about what is right in front of them right now, not whats going to happen in 2040. Trying to get a signifigant portion of the earth's population to change their ways is probably a lost cause no matter how you present it, and the looming spectre of global warming definitely won't be signifigant enough in the herds mind until its way way to late. The problem should be attacked from a different angle. Thats my $0.02 anyways.
Global warming is making everything hotter, ice is melting, seas are rising. We're all in deep doodo. Now, back in the 80's we were all panicking about Nuclear Winters which would freeze us all in the case of a nuclear war (as if the radiation and big holes in the ground weren't enough hassle).
I notice in the news that Israel is thought to be preparing a nuclear strike on Irans nuclear facilities with Neutron bombs. That ought to kick of a nuclear war quite nicely so we're all saved!
Well, it sort of makes sense...
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
The thing is... we're making the relatively high concentrations of low-level ozone, it's not a natural occurrence. It's produced as a by-product of pollutants interacting with oxygen and sunlight provides the energy.
So the choice is:
1. Try. Make the environment cleaner in the process and more friendly to other species. Develop technologies that will also help human survive the hotter environment as a side effect.
2. Don't try. Either hope maybe - just maybe - it's not happenning at all or that all the effort is useless anyway. Blindly carry on as far as possible without inconvenciencing oneself and either get *really* lucky and all the statistical data was just an error, or die happily as one of the two hundred last humans on the Earth.
Well... I guess it's a question of personal values and philosophy.
(The bottom line is: how does it matter if humans actually were the major cause, and how does it make it bad to try to reduce human environmental impact? So if it's 50-50 (very optimistic for you) we still have answer that works great in _both_ cases, so why still argue against it?)
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
exactly. It's a large logical flaw in the debate. But, it is what happens when you run into denial.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
That movie was soooooooooo good, I cried when Gores kid got hit by a car. That was soooooo sad. Gore must be a really good father, the way he stayed at the hospital. That really changed my mind on the issue of global warming, I'm behind Gore 100% on this issue. Barf!
It has been ridiculously warm here in New York this winter. It is NEVER warm in new york in the winter. The last few days it has gotten mildly cold, but up until then, it has been almost spring like. It is simply amazing how different the weather has been this winter here in the north east.
This is the warmest winter i've ever experienced here in NY in 30 years.
Correlation does not prove causation. Yes, this is skeptical, and I am for environmental protection, but I must add that even 118,000 years of data does not even begin to understand the climate of an Earth that is millions of years old. There is no way to truly test global warming as variables cannot be isolated. ------------- What would a longitudinal study to test global warming entail?
You mean the model in which when you heat up water the solubility of CO2 decreases, so warmer temperatures would cause CO2 levels to increase?
Or the one in which CO2 increases cause a greenhouse effect so increasing CO2 levels cause warmer temperatures?
Whilst it would be desirable to have a solution to climate change that does not involve hurting the economy (and I believe this is certainly possible), we should get our priorities straight. I would not want a bigger television at the expense of living in a filthy polluted desert.
You are missing the point. More bigger, or at least expensive, televisions being bought mean more taxes being paid both directly from sales and indirectly from the income of those who build them. Besides, TVs are a bad example as the newer, more expensive lcds and plasmas tend to use less electricity than older CRTs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...how about both of them, since feedback processes seem fairly fundamental to this whole discussion.
In which case, the additional forcing of CO2 levels by human civilisation can be magnified by the positive feedback process you just outlined. Reality isn't either-or, you know...
The boss of Chrysler is questioning the climate change
From the article he attacks the ""quasi-hysterical" policies that smacked of "Chicken Little" politics - referring to the US children's story where Chicken Little runs around in circles saying "the sky is falling"."/i>
The point I would like to note on this subject is that in the uk (london) the workers struggled to put the christmas lights up arround the tree that would normally be leafless were still in full leaf. In my garden plants that haven't shed their leafs (but should have) are starting to bud.
The Forest Research people have a survey that notes that plants are starting to be affected and there is a consern that trees which are deciduous(sp?) will start dying off as they cannot shed leafs - and therefore will end up poisoning themselves!
Jaj
This post has been made with my current understanding of the problem; if a more informed person can correct me wherever I am wrong, I'd be grateful.
Ok. You use the logical fallacy "straw man" twice. "this is the fallacy of refuting a caricatured or extreme version of somebody's argument, rather than the actual argument they've made. Often this fallacy involves putting words into somebody's mouth by saying they've made arguments they haven't actually made"
For instance. You imply that "green eco-activists" say that CFCs are (solely) responsible for the antartic ozone hole. Most of us do NOT say that. We KNOW that ozone degradation occurs naturally. And by the way, ozone is not decayed by lack of sunlight. UV radiation breaks down oxygen molecules, and ozone molecules, so it both creates and destroys ozone. Cold however, accelerates the breakdown.
The problem is that the degradation was accelerated to dangerous levels.
And the same thing is true for global warming. We know climate goes through natural fluctuations. You are again using a strawman when you say the claim is that it has been caused by "the U.S., industry or humanity".
That is not the claim, the claim is that human activity has caused a huge increase in the rate of change.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Where the fuck did they grab that, I had some of the coldest days and night I've ever experienced in So.Cal this winter - sure do wish global warming would hurry up already.
The atmosphere of Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, if I remember correctly. The melting of the polar ice caps of Mars and the melting of the polar ice caps of Earth are unrelated.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
This is what happens when you come out of an ice age. I've been expecting this since I was in 6th grade back in the 60s.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Exactly correct. Everyone knows that the present of a specific scientific principle is decided by a central committee and then approved by the electorate at large. It's an excellent system, look how the Catholic church managed to keep us at the centre of universe!
If only that were so, then science would be so much easier. Unfortunately science is judged by hundreds of independent journals and through the review of thousands of scientists, many of whom are competing for the same funding you are and so are motivated to find holes in your work. Anyone who thinks science is a friendly group of like-minded souls all patting each other on the back really hasn't a clue.
I know that, but I wasn't arguing against global warming. It just bothered me that instead of framing the model it was more like o my look at teh charts!. Or did I miss all the evidence of causation that they put in there?
Ozone in the troposphere also acts as a mild green-house gas. However it is the CO2 that gets all the fame because of the dramatic rise.
No one on slashdot is disputing that the climate has shifted in the past. What people on slashdot are saying (in general) is the the Earth is absorbing more heat and reflecting less into space, mainly due to human activity in the last 150 years (CO2 production).
According to the ice cores drilled in Antarctica, we have ALOT more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last 800000 years. During that time, the climate shifted from warm to cold and back again in correspondence to CO2 levels. There aren't any other known sources that are pumping as much CO2 into the atmosphere as we are and there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature increase.
The evidence is pretty high that we are driving this climate change, as according to the "normal cycle" we would be entering a cooling period by now.
~X~
~X~
This new "the whole ozone hole thing is a fraud" movement is downright creepy!
The reason the Montreal protocol was signed so quickly and enacted so forcibly was precisely because the scientific evidence was (and still is) so overwhelmingly robust.
The process is very simple - to "destroy" stratospheric ozone, you need chlorine ions, particles of some sort (i.e. ice crystals), and UV radiation, all in the stratosphere and all at the same time. Although Cl is a very common element, it and its natural compounds are either water-soluble or reactive or both, and never make that high into the atmosphere. CFCs however are inert (hence their usefulness to humans) and so are not scrubbed from the troposphere, allowing them to reach the stratosphere unharmed where they are eventually split apart by UV radiation and release their chlorine.
This was predicted by atmospheric chemists long before the Antarctic hole was observed, and has since been validated by pretty much every experiment thrown at it including by flying stratospheric aircraft through the ice clouds and sampling the process as it happened.
But if you really want to believe any of the various wacky conspiracy theories going around (which have gone far beyond the usual "the scientific establishment is rotten to the core and they made the whole thing up to get more grant money") then I rather doubt anything you read here or anywhere else is going to change your mind on this one.
And lastly - "green eco-activists believe in the ozone hole, but being stupid green eco-activists they are wrong, therefore CFCs can't destroy ozone," to paraphrase the parent post's argument, is enough to get modded up to five?!?
Canada -- you know, the land of ice, snow and the Eskimo has been unusually warm this year. We are having the hottest winter on record (we hit 12*C in January when we are normally around -30*C). Not only that, but the East Coast is getting nice balmy climates as well. All of our ski hills in this area have been closed down and people are actively biking. I gotta say -- while I fear we might be running into the flames of our own self-destruction, we will be nicely tanned!
(Oh, and CAPTCHA: flushes)
Let me rephrase what you said
Leaning tower of Pisa will fall -- It has always been falling.It's mans arrogance to presume that the tower will remain stable if it were not for our interference. Hence we should not try and stabilize the tower.
Or , I eat food from a tree in my garden. I know that the tree will die. Hence I will cut it today!!!
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Amen to that!
Last weekend after a night in the town, going home I realized it was quite warm - 7 degrees celcius, it isn't exactly weather for shorts and t-shirts, but this is Denmark in the middle of the winter. You should be freezing waiting for a cab/bus.
I even heard that some of the colder places in Europe is experiencing temperatures 13 degrees above normal. This can and will end in a global disaster, and I fear it will come sooner than anyone predicts.
Not to mention all sorts of fun deceases you are not used to. Warmer weather means some of the insects will migrate carrying fun stuff like malaria or sleeping sickness.
It's going to be real fun trying to survive in a few decades if we don't deal with the problems right now.
"The jury is in, we know what is causing climate change and its us. "
Is the planet warming at the moment? - we aren't sure, but probably yes. We have a fair bit of data about temperature variations, though interpretation and comparison is still a problem. The Southern Hemisphere, in particular, does not seem to be warming noticeably.
Is the planet hotter than at any point in the past? - certainly not. We know the planet's temperature frequently varies. It has been going up since the last Ice Age, and in particular going up since the last cold snap in the 1880s. The last time it was warmer than this was Medieval Warm Period, back in the 1300s.
Is the cause primarily mankind's actions? - we do not know how climate drivers work. We have models, which are guesses, which can be made to react to human CO2 inputs, but which equally could be made to react to other drivers. Given the small size of human inputs compared to natural forces it would be surprising if mankind's actions were critical, but we really do not know. No one has been able to propose a definitive experiment, so all we have to go on are model guesses.
Is there anything we can do about it? - this is the biggie. Even assuming the models are correct and the small human input is critical, humanity would have to collapse its current economy (and probably loose 50% of its population) to have an effect according to the models. This assumes that we approach the problem only by cutting CO2 emissions. Other, much cheaper technical fixes have been proposed, but are invariably ruled out, seemingly on the political grounds that if technology causes an (alleged) problem then technology should not be allowed to play any part in the solution.
This is why scientists characterise the 'cut carbon emissions' lobby as a religeon rather than a science. This doesn't make it wrong, just that it requires faith rather than proof to accept that mankind is the guilty party.
Where I'm from (Finland) the average temperatures for January range from -6 to -14 (depending on where you live) and it can often get as cold as -25 to -30 (all degrees in Celsius).
Currently it's a nice and balmy +5. If it wouldn't rain so much, I'd like it very much. Today is sunny and I can almost imagine the spring is here (for the record, January and February are the coldest months here).
Yes, I know. It's about as stupid as it gets to say: "I like the weather, let's ignore the warnings". If the gulf stream, which warms us up would stop as a result of the changes in the Great Conveyor Belt, we'd be pretty much screwed. If you look at the arctic circle, you can see it's not exactly the warmest region to be around.
Dude... that's going to more awesome than watching somebody get kicked in the balls!
I'm going to have to start summering in Antarctica.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Did you have something to bring to the discussion other than putting words in someone's mouth?
I don't see the part of his post where he said it MUST be false, nor did I see the implication.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The arrogance of man is to presume that the current climate is one which would remain stable were it not for our interference.
Yes, the mindboggling arrogance to suggest that an additional 7 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere might actually have an effect. How do the scientists have the nerve?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Warmest. Year. Ever.
Nope, just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Summation 2
Everyone seems to go on about whether or not Global Climate Change is happening. Some (like myself) think it irrefutable. Others, prefer to take a more cautious stance. Regardless, I think it is reasonable to say that most people would agree that global energy consumption is sky-rocketing and it's causing problems everywhere. One of these "problems" is the advent of a new ice age in the imminent future (under 50 years if An Inconvenient Truth is to be believed). So what is to be done? What can we little people who don't affect governments or corporations in any meaningful way actually do? Write to your local member of government? Nah, no point - nothing ever gets done that way. The real answer lies in your choices of things to do in your day and what things you purchase. I'm going to get hammered for daring to suggest practical changes to others lifestyles, but some people may want some pointers so I'm going to step up to the plate and say my piece. * Reduce your air flights - take the ferry or train instead if you can * If you live in a city use public transport instead of your own (ideally walk) * Avoid buying gadgets just because they are the latest thing * Avoid buying excessively packaged goods * Think before buying something: do you really need it? OK, just my 2 penne'th.
Like the man says
I know I shouldn't allow this stuff to get to me, but the attitude of these multi-millionaire fat-cats who think that their poxy little business and the freedom for people to be as selfish as they want is somehow more important than the entire planet make me really pretty angry.
Deep breath.
lol
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Depending on the legitimacy of this chart
--
Ron, we smell poniez: http://www.techp.org/
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
"You can expect deep freezes and heat waves, no snow and blizzards. On average it will be warmer and dryer, but you can pretty much get anything day to day."
Why dryer? Warmer air holds more moisture. Some of the hottest places on the planet are rain forests. Yeah, some are deserts too, but I think that saying "dryer" is an assumption which may not be true. Maybe the entire planet will experience a monsoon season. I really don't think the models are accurate enough to work that out.
There is a nice recent RealClimate post on the anomalously warm U.S. winter this year, discussing whether it can be attributed to El Nino or to global warming. (The short answer: El Nino plays a large role this year, but global warming is still making winters warmer on average, although you can't really attribute anomalous warmth in any given year to climate change — due to statistical fluctuation, you can only see its definite effect over longer time periods.)
For those who point to the Colorado blizzard as evidence against global warming, they also note that Colorado temperatures have also been warmer than usual. You don't need very cold weather for a blizzard; you just need freezing weather — which will continue to happen even with global warming — and a lot of moisture in the air. Interestingly, warmer air carries more moisture, so some regions may experience more precipitation on average as the Earth continues to warm. However, a particular storm certainly cannot be attributed to global warming.
Just the fact that they aren't known doesn't mean that they aren't there. Are there any researches trying to find any? Besides, CO2 is heavily used by plant life, plancton included. It would be logical to expect that once its availability increases, we should see a boost in oceanic life. Do we observe it? If not, then why?
Sources please? The predictions of the reports concerning this question I have read vary from "now" in terms of a human life to "now" in geological terms; that is at least four orders of magnitude.
I'm often amazed these short timescale, personal effects don't have more impact on people believing in global warming. It's hardly scientific proof but that doesn't usually have the same level of impact on what people believe compared to their own experience. One day between Christmas and New Year, I was driving home at 11pm and the car thermometer said it was 14 C.
I've always lived in northern England, around the same latitude (~53 degrees). As a kid, 15-20 years ago, I remember almost every year there would be decent amounts of snow for a few weeks each winter. That just doesn't happen any more. There's a bit of slush around for a few weeks and probably never enough snow to make a snowman. Snowball fights would only be possible one or two days.
I couldn't find any records of how much snow fell per year, but I'm fairly sure that there's now substantially less snow than in my lifetime, and I'm only 26.
The main reason that there always was and will be an ozone hole over the Antarctics is that ozone decays in the lack of sunlight, and it's pretty dark half of the year out there.
How could this account for the accelerated growth of the ozone hole that exactly correlates with the period that human beings started using CFCs?
A critical fact in Al Gore's film: after compiling the results of 1,100 serious scientific papers about GW not one suggests that it is anything but man's fault. The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%.
This is an extremely important point. From reading regular articles, many people believe that the scientific community is evenly balanced on the question of whether human activity is causing global warming.
There's a trap in journalism that can cause this. In an effort for scientifically untrained reporters to report "fairly", they may try to get both sides of a story, even if the other side is not scientifically valid. This leads to the disproportionate number that you quoted above.
That said, there are enough reports that news articles and supposedly scientific studies have been influenced by corporations that I can't blame the journalists entirely.
AFAIK the industrial economy of the USA is heavily subsidized by the government, especially the heavy industry, like metallurgic plants.
With such subsidies, industries tend to invest less on their infra-structure, use less than optimal processes, be less productive and pollute more.
I think that the real problem here is that the USA don't want to pay the price that everybody else already payed to be able to compete on the global market. Take for example the metallurgic industry, here at Brazil we have the most competitive, and efficient, plants... yet the Brazilian steel has a hard time to enter into the USA market because of the subsidies.
If anything, investing on more modern equipment, that pollute less and is more efficient, would drive the USA industry forwards and probably increase the number of jobs. But its easier to rely on governments subsidies.
Just my $0.02
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Far too many people ignore the real world and listen to the fairy tales they wanna hear. And far too many people think they know more about the climate than thousands of full-time researchers with MENSA memberships.
Now shut up, while I listen to some Bill Hicks. You got me in the mood.
Stop the brainwash
>The earth has ways of regulating itself, and that is just what it will do.
Oh the Earth will be fine no matter what, pretty much. It's us human's that are going to have a real bad time. Well, for a while anyway. After that we'll be gone except for the few that live near big hairy animals for furs & lunch and nice caves to shiver in.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I don't see any data from the period before 1979, so I have nothing to compare with. Have there been any measurements before this period? If yes, why aren't the results included into this graph? Once again, I'm not saying that the ozone hole isn't growing [nor that it is], etc, but the practice of only taking a suitable data sample and saying 'oh there it is!' is a little annoying.
I'm looking at you Microsoft.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
January is the coldest month in Finland. Usually we have had snow cover by November/December. This year, there has been one freak snowstorm in the beginning of November, and right now it's raining outside. No snow cover for two winter months. Not your typical winter in Finland where temperatures in January can be -20 to -30 degrees Centigrade.
Disclaimer: I know weather does not equal climate.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
"Correlation doesn't equal causation"
No it doesn't. Thats not how science works. How it works is that *NON*-correlation equals *NON*-causation.
Scientists try to falsify various theories by finding a NON-correlation with the observed facts. The thing is, climate scientists are failing to falsify the theory that we're causing the warming, and succeeding in falsifying all the competing theories.
Except for "pirates" (or lack thereof).
(BTW I'm pretty sure that the pirates theory could be shot out of the water too if somebody could be bothered to pay it -- ooohhh -- a few thousand times more attention than it deserves. The reason it doesn't deserve it is because nobody has proposed a plausible *mechanism* for the pirate die-off causing the warming. Other theories -- eg the sun warming up explaining it all -- *have* plausible mechanisms, *have* recieved attention, and AFAIK *have* been falsified to the satisfaction of the vast majority of scientists in the field).
Actually we are currently at the LOW END of the solar cycle with activity
at a MINIMUM. (the 10 meter ham band being dead most of the time these days).
The pattern I see from those in the denial business is not one of serious honest skepticism, but of cheap shots, hazy generalizations, unsupported assertions, cherry picking research data out of context etc. There is no new facts that they wish to present. They only wish to undermine the facts of human influence on climate change.
To counter information about melting glaciers they will point out that certain parts of Greenland has accumulating glaciers, but they leave out the information that this was predicted as the edges of the glacier melt more rapidly and result in more snowfall inland. The also leave out that there is still a net loss.
Another ridiculous claim was that 1998 was the hottest year and we have not been getting hotter since and therefore climate models are broken (I saw this in a newspaper article in the last few months) It neglects that 1998 had a strong El Nino and thus was somewhat anomalous, and that 2005 was as hot or even hotter than 1998 (depending on data, google hottest year on record) or that 2006 was quite warm and turns out it will now have the record.
Bottom Line: We dump billions of tons of C02 (heat trapping gas) into the atmosphere annually and it is accumulating. How could this not be having an effect? Wishful thinking?
I think we owe to future generations to at least make an effort to slow the damage we are doing.
Higher energy taxes, more renewables, more nuclear plants, higher CAFE standards would be a start. The climate deniers will whine that this might cost the economy $$$, but seriously do you really think it will be that much of a net cost, how about the Trillion dollars spent on misadventures in Iraq? Would it cost more than that?
Consider the trade deficit benefits of importing less oil, the price for oil would probably drop along with this further improving the deficit. Conservation efforts will have offsetting economic benefits. Putting money into locally constructed nuclear or renewables is money kept in country and not sent out to purchase oil from volatile regions.
Until we find Earth 2, we need to treat Earth 1 with a tad more respect.
The matrioshka brain will disassemble earth anyway.
Launch pads get scorched, its part of their use. Our goal should not be to preserve the earth but to make sure we don't blow up on the launch pad.
Ok that was the inflammatory part to make up for the over assertive confrontational nature of the parent post. I do hope we as a species upload and forget all these meat sacks eventually, but I grew up in the country and do appreciate the beauty of nature. My nihilism aside, the only thing that bugs me about the original post is that it stresses the Northeast this year as an anecdote for climate change. Thats the sort of thing you'd expect to see from people who deny global warming. One region in one season does not a trend make. The folks in Colorado would be yelling ice age otherwise. TFA makes it clear that there was an average change for the entire continent this year, which is somewhat more meaningful... somewhat, its still just one year.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Think of it as Evolution in action.
Bye the end of this century we will have successfully evolved our way to extinction.
That or we'll have gills & flippers.
--- This meme is memory intensive
It's a multipart question, and the people who either have a vested interest in the answer or a political motivation (ie because they enjoy attacking Republicans/Bush, usually forgetting it was Clinton that refused to sign Kyoto...) cheerfully build strawmen to ignore this.
1) is there climate change?
2) is it caused to a significant degree by human activity?
3) is the result of climate warming bad?
4) can the human activity be changed such that the effect is altered, and what is the opportunity cost for doing so?
(each question is followed by an "if yes, then...")
Few people debate 1; as the poster(s) above pointed out, climate has *always* changed, and is changing. It appears to me that only eco-nuts are claiming that climate should somehow be static from here forward (apparently to remain convenient for humans, ironically). Yet eco-nuts nevertheless like to claim that the 'neanderthals' of the Right are constantly denying 'global warming'. No, as a likely member of this cohort, we don't deny the warming we merely deny your nutball hysteria and most of your solutions, swampie.
2 seems likely, although I haven't seen conclusive proof. We're putting a LOT of heat out, as well as large amounts of CO2. So anecdotally it seems credible to me. But the earth is a BIG system. Almost inconceivably big. Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up. It's NATURAL for humans to try to correlate events and their own actions - that's how we got dryads, superstition, and arguably, God - but that doesn't mean they are actually connected causally. Further, it's not impossible that something happens for the first time; it doesn't mean that the observer somehow caused it, no matter how politically convenient he'd find it.
3 NOBODY seems to know, although we managed to live quite successfully at lower tech levels and higher temps at regular periods in our history.
And 4 is what's really under argument. Environmentalists stamping their sandal-clad feet and crying that "we have to" is unpersuasive. And a report claiming that global warming is going to cost X is (nearly) meaningless unless it's compared to the Y cost of mitigation.
Environmentalists' arguments are only going to convince the choir until they first acknowledge that their history of 'global prediction' is really quite bad. Have we run out of clean water? Space for landfills? Food? Trees? Oil? No. None of the 'sky is falling' predictions have come true, so pardon me if I am somewhat skeptical of your latest crisis cry.
-Styopa
Simply cutting back on emissions is not going to solve anything.
Actually, that is the only thing we have to do: cut back on CO2 emissions - problem solved.
Troll. No legitimate climate scientist thinks that climate change is solely man-made.
Troll. Climate change on a geological time scale and climate change on a human time scale are not the same thing, but I think you already know that.
The best arguments for preventing global climate change - regardless of its cause - are that it messes with us and our food supply. So we are all agreed.
Ozone is poisonous. Does it surprise you that chemicals can be both important as a shell for maintaining the biosphere and damaging if inhaled? Again you hold up the 'kooky environmentalist' straw man. Stop it.
False. There is an ozone hole at the south pole, and a 'dimple' that occurs over the north pole in spring. The situation is not symmetrical. The Antarctic ozone hole spreads as far north as Australia and New Zealand, which receive 40% more UV radiation than similar latitudes in the northern hemisphere, and have the highest skin cancer rates in the world despite the fact that solar radiation generally increases as you approach the equator.
Where did you get that idea from? Read ANY reference on the Antarctic ozone hole and they will tell you that it was formed by the release of CFCs mostly used in aerosol cans and refrigerators. CFCs have no natural source, and they definitely catalyze ozone, and the ozone hole increases with their concentration in the atmosphere (after a delay while they are dispersed into the upper atmosphere by the wind currents in Antarctica).
The Ozone hole absolutely did not always exist, and it grew dramatically in the 80's. Due to reduced CFC emissions the ozone is expected to regenerate, but it certainly won't be back to normal until after 2050.
The north pole has the same day/night profile as the south pole, but no corresponding ozone hole. I shouldn't have to point out that the entire world is 'pretty dark' for half the year. We usually call it 'night', it's just that it doesn't last for six months at a stretch.
Dude, you've heard all the issues, but have them almost completely wrong. I'm guessing that somebody was lying to you about this, at
.evom ton seod gis eht
Same goes for the Netherlands. Monitoring started in 1706 and last year had the highest average temperature since that time.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
Is the planet warming at the moment? - we aren't sure
This is just not true. Spreading FUD and lies will sure make people THINK we aren't sure but that doesn't mean that an informed and educated person can be as sure about climat change as they are about the "theories" of physics which we can safely rely on despite being "just a theory".
Is the planet hotter than at any point in the past? - certainly not.
Your arguement is a textbook case of a fallacy of logic called the appeal to tradition, if i remember right. You try to make it seem like the fact that this is not THE HOTTEST it has ever been means that it's not getting any hotter.
Is there anything we can do about it? - this is the biggie.
The only way we won't be able to do anyhting about it is if enough people are stalled with partisan rhetoric about how this is a polical issue that people need to take sides on based about political values. The energy companies managed to exploit the fact that we are a divided country and they simply chose a side to be against (liberals) and they got the other half of the country aon their side becuase of it.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
I think GPs larger point is that there are two ways to "solve" global warming. The first way is to revert is to reduce our output of green house gases immensely. The other way is to find a technological solution. Now, some times these two solutions go hand in hand. A solar panel both reduce green house gas output (over time at least, you still need to build the damn things) and it is a technological solution. A large government tax on gas might reduce total output, but have strong negative economic and technological consequences.
It is like, imagine if during the industrial revolution everyone saw how ugly coal power was and decided not to use it for the health of the planet. Where would we be right now? We would still be in a preindustrial society utilizing primitive windmills and water power. Humans would be living much shorter and far more miserable lives that don't reach much farther past 30 years. Now, you could claim that this be a prettier world, but it wouldn't be a better world to live in for humans. It took an ugly and messy industrial revolution to get us to the point where people expect to live into their 70's and giving birth to a child isn't a game of Russian roulette.
I am all for reduction of our green house gas output. I think things like the Kyoto protocol are not a bad idea. The answer isn't reduction though. Reduction and self restraint is a temporary measure that delays bad things from happening. The final solution is a technological one. If we recognize that as a society we can't/won't reduce enough to 'solve' the problem and that there needs to be a technological solution, regardless if it is some form of terraforming, better solar panels, fusion, or all of the above, then we need to ensure that the steps we take in reduction don't stunt our future ability to actually solve the problem.
Well the attitude I've heard from several creationists is why worry about the environment when God is coming down to destroy it anyway and take us away to heaven?
Morons...
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Look, I'm all for blaming global warming for the spring-like January month we're having, but we *don't* "usually have -30". We get -30 on special days when it is very very cold.
perception is reality
when you screw with weather patterns all sort of things happen. global warming changes the way heat is distributed on the planet.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Normally we have around -15C to -25C and 50 cm deep snow here in Sweden in the winter. This winter we have no snow at all, and the temperature is around 5-10C. I have never experienced something like this in my whole life. I have never experienced a christmas without snow, except for this one.
You need to put a new battery in your sarcasm detector.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Eh, no, sorry, not quite. All that Kyoto buys is more coal-powered plants for third world nations. If anything Kyoto is more likely to harm the environment, and is, in any event, more of a wealth redistribution scheme than it is an environmental management plan.
It's also funny to note that the country which "hates the worlds children" has made bigger strides in combating GHG emissions than several Kyoto signatories.
But hey, who needs facts and logic when you can get all your opinions from the "down with HaliBusHitler" maniacs, eh?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Actually, that is the only thing we have to do: cut back on CO2 emissions - problem solved.
Not true. While that may buy more time it won't reverse the damage that has already occurred.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
As the AC pointed out, both effects happen and enhance each other. Greenhouse CO2 makes the Earth warmer, which releases more CO2 from the ocean, amplifying the warming trend, which in turn releases even more CO2, in addition to the continuing increases in atmospheric CO2 due to human emissions (under business-as-usual scenarios).
Without even reading the article, I feel that I have to question the title. I mean, can 2006 actually be the warmest year ever? What about all those years when there were no ice caps? Does this author really mean the warmest year since the last unusual freezing of the planet? or since records started being kept? or since accurate records were maintained?
Anything you say will be held against you.
The Earth is 4 Billion years old. This talks about the weather over the last 120 thousand years.
That is 0.003 percent of the age of the Earth.
Maybe they should look a little farther back. Maybe 4 Million years. Of course, if we want to look at the last 1% of the age of the Earth, we would have to look back 40 Million years.
The fact is, the climate over the last 120 thousand years could be the exception and not the rule.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I think we should start with your company.
The polar caps have been shrinking overall, if by "shrinking" you mean "occupying fewer cubic meters in volume". Whether they are also shifting is another matter.
Coincidentally, Kyoto has not been ratified by the same country where "lower taxes!," i.e., lower taxes for me and higher taxes for my children, is the one political rallying cry that always works.
Why the party that campaigns on lowering taxes and refusing to ratify Kyoto hates the world's children has yet to be determined.
You seem to be suffering from a rectal-cranial inversion, let me fix that. In 1998 the US Senate(the branch of the US govt. that ratifies treaties) voted 95-0 against the treaty. Now in case you don't know there are only 100 senators in the US senate. So before you go think one party or another voted against the Kyoto treaty, actually it was both. How you managed to achieve rectal-cranial inversion has yet to be determined, but hopefully this little factoid will help reduce its occurance in the future.
As we all have been taught in grade school - glaciation occurrs when show build-up exceeds snow melt over a significant period of time.
What's this have to do with global warming? Well, to get enough increase in snow build-up to trigger glaciation on an ice age scale you need to have an abundant supply of liquid water in the polar latitudes. Liquid Arctic sea surface in January and February constitutes an abundant supply of liquid water in polar latitudes.
Think of it as an airplane increasing its angle of ascent until it stalls. If global temperature is compared to angle of ascent you get a very scary feeling that we're gonna get warmer for a while, then very cold.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
- Most air pollution, CFCs included, is produced in the Northern hemisphere as far as I understand. Which atmospheric currents are responsible for collecting all of that stuff over Antarctics? Why not the arctic area?
- One of the replies to my original post says that the amount of CFCs produced correlates with the ozone hole size in the discussed time frame. But have there been any chemical or spectroscopic measurements of the amount of CFCs in that area?
Regardless, my initial post seems to be way overrated. Thanks for the info.But there is no way to do that.
This "economy vs environment" debate is full of shit. Ever heard of the term "dysfunctional production"? Let's use an example:
Some company builds a house in a foreign country. Jobs created, lotsa money. good. Then, the weapon industry lobbies another country to go to war with the other foreign country. Lotsa money, lotsa jobs. good. End result? House is destroyed, bombs are consumed, nothing *useful* have been created in the end, but in the balance sheet, everything is positive, GP is raising (and everyone likes it when GP is raising). All it did is to redistribute some capital from the taxpayers to the weapon/housing industries, for a nil end result.
We have to change the way we see economy.
perception is reality
you're an ass you know that?
...
it's gonna come to the point where iceskating, icehockey, skiing, snowboarding and all
the other arctic activities will become an expensive synthetic exotic rarity
not only that you'll have to tell your children and grandchildren stories about
simple things like snow, ice, winter, different kinds of birds, butterflies,
heck most small kids today haven't seen a pig in real-life
some of them don't even know what it is nor know what it sounds like
not kidding here, i'm talking about 1 grade junior kids ~ 6-7 years old
it's these small things that you'll grow to miss one day.
"The above was a transcribe of the standard "educated" response to climate change on Slashdot. One data point does not make a series... but we already have a series which has yet one more data point."
you forgot: Hey, we can all save money on winter coats... I never liked winter anyway.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
No - someone needs to boost their sarcasm generator. In order to be effective, sarcasm has to push beyond the extremes of what people say. Unfortunately, many climate change deniers have the view expressed.
Actually there was consensus among the UN 'experts' that there've never been WMDs in Iraq.
On the contrary, most of the world's climatologists believe global warming is taking place and is manmade.
Questioning 'experts' is good, but denying facts isn't.
:(){
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
And by "Ever" we mean since the 1860's, which is the limit of accurate records. If you try to estimate temperatures based upon other data (gases in ice core samples, tree rings, etc.), there were years warmer than this one including the medieval period and a time when the arctic circle was tropical, long before SUVs.
Humans absolutely can and have effected the environment on a global scale, as I pointed out when I (fairly comprehensively, I think) replied to the parent. Everybody knows that climate change occurs on a geological time scale, but now it's fairly clearly happening on a human scale, for human-caused reasons.
Your post is a classic climate-change-denier appeal to apathy and fatalism, in the style of talking down to poor benighted eco-loonies who don't know any better. The position that 'we humans are so mere and lowly that we couldn't possibly harm Mother Nature, and Mother Nature probably likes it warmer anyway' is the standard line from apologists for polluting industries who would have their business model damaged by emissions standards. The fear-mongering of causing an ice age is specious - pollution controls stop making the situation worse, they don't push it back in the other direction.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Warmest ever? Get real. Greenland was named by the Vikings because it had a temperate client and was so full of vegetation. When the ice melts from Greenland you may have a better argument.
we've saved this winter because of "global warming"....heating oil prices are way down this "winter" because it is so warm. Just the opposite was true in the winter of the mid 70's, when the media & scientist said we were headed to a new ice age. LOL
::wave:: gotta get back to my boathouse on arizona bay.
Living With a Nerd
The jury is in, we know what is causing climat change and its us.
I don't know what jury you're listening to... perhaps the one that found O. J. not guilty. No, actually I think you're listening to the jury that has convicted capitalism to be guilty of every crime imaginable. While we might be having some impact on climate, it is by no means a certain thing that we're causing climate change to any large degree.
I'm certainly willing to look at unbiased evidence, but so far that's been scarce. In most cases the "evidence" is tainted by the anti-U.S., anti-capitalism, anti-progress political beliefs of those presenting it.
Just to address a couple of points in your ill-informed confused rant:
We're putting a LOT of heat out, as well as large amounts of CO2. So anecdotally it seems credible to me.
The amount of heat we produce is negligible. The major concern is the CO2 we are producing which is trapping the sun's heat.
But the earth is a BIG system. Almost inconceivably big. Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up.
This is completely wrong. This is, to the best of our ability to measure it, the fastest increase in CO2 levels (and, not conicidentally, temperature) in the history of the Earth.
There seems to be a common theme in arguments against taking action against climate change: Just Making Shit Up.
I demonstrated in the 1970 Earth Day and for over 36 years I did all that I could do to conserve energy. I recycled and I did most of things that I thought that I should do to be ecologically kind the planet. All of the conservation and ecological efforts that I have made during the past 36 years have made NO difference. Although many of our waterways have been cleaned up and the air quality in some cities has gotten better; overall the Earth is MUCH worse off now than it was in 1970. I am getting older now and have maybe 10 to 20 years left -- I don't give a fuck any more what happens to planet Earth, why should I?
I like warm weather during December and January. I like the fact that food and energy are relatively cheap, even though I can afford to pay more for food and energy if I have to. I doubt that the environment will have gone completely to hell in the next 20 years. Sure, I will still do the conservation and ecological things that are habits, but those habits will fade over time. I won't be buying an SUV, but my home's thermostat will be a few degrees warmer in the winter and a few degrees cooler in the summer. I won't feel guilty using more paper towels than I really need to, or washing only a half load of clothes. I won't make an extra trip back to turn off a (high efficiency compact flourescent) light that I left on, why should I?
From what I've read, it's more along the lines of foreign competition, union wages, and required emission control updates if they upgrade their plants that is keeping our metallurgic plants down.
Basically the plants can't afford to update because then they'd have to add all sorts of emission controls to stop them from polluting*. They aren't making much money because union wages are often literally 100 times what foreign plants pay their workers, putting the US plants at a disadvantage.
*My solution: Stop grandfathering, start fining or even paying for the mandated upgrades.
I don't read AC A human right
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
small things you miss...you mean when you can't remember what happens when you stand in a meadow at dusk?
Living With a Nerd
But there is no way to do that.
Fifty years ago there was no way to go to the moon, but motivation, research, and yes...money solved that problem.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
>> a case of the weather dice coming up thirteen
/.ers (or a 19 if you're old-school).
That's like rolling a 21 for
New England is way too cold anyway, and think of the convenience of being able to freely navigate the arctic. I love global warming.
What was the temperature of the Earth for the first Billion years? It must have been colder than 2006 or the headline would be misleading. Maybe the headline should be "Warmest average surface (not atmospheric) temperature in the last couple of hundred years (for which we have accurate records).
And for all we know, you are an automobile industry employee busy spreading FUD so they can continue to make loads of money.
Cmon, who do you think have the biggest FUD machine? Do you seriously think that this is these green weirdos? BTW, how's the smog going in your city? Is this also FUD?
(If this was a sarcastic comment, forgive me for thinking you were stupid enough to make such a comment, but you forgot your tag.)
perception is reality
We had other years back in the 80's were it was warm. It fluctuates. I feel, however, that their is only certain amount of decay the earth can recover from and we'll soon see affects.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
We have to change the way we see economy.
Changing the way we see the economy might be nice in the long run, but the effects of global warming will be appearing in the short term.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I am sure eager to see the scientific proof!
Well, the facts after I did some research seems to be that the world climate is a complex system and it is far too complicated to model. But it doesn't matter anyway cos we know that global warming is due to carbon dioxide in the air.
This probably the best logic for global warming that I had read in this discussion so far! Too bad I have no mod points.
The only way?
Why not build giant umbrellas in space to make sure that less sunlight reaches the earth?
Or build a pump to pump all the carbon dioxide into space?
Or put giant aluminium sheet around the world to reflect the sunlight out of earth?
There are ways and ways to cool down the world temperature. There is never one way!
And every scientist knows that you need a crisis to get funding? No?
Not true, the first mercury thermometer was invented in 1716 ( or sometime close to then ) but other types of thermometer exsisted for 200 years prior to this although with any standardised scale.
it's gonna come to the point where iceskating, icehockey, skiing, snowboarding and all the other arctic activities will become an expensive synthetic exotic rarity not only that you'll have to tell your children and grandchildren stories about simple things like snow, ice, winter,
From what I understand that's not exactly true. Once most of the ice in Greenland melts, it will cool down the north atlantic enough that it will disrupt the flow of warm water from the equator that normally keeps northern Europe warmer, and then Europe will likely have some sort of mini ice age to contend with.
Dude, how do you EVER make a decision? :)
Blar.
You are not serious about stopping global warming. Drinking carbonated drinks adds to the cardon dioxide in the air. At least says me!
While the Northeastern US has had a very warm winter so far (I like it ;-)), the mountain states in the west have been having near record snowfalls. I don't present this as evidence but merely an anecdote.
Let's say that instead of climate change, a large meteor was headed for the planet in, say, 2029. Would we argue for twenty years over whether mankind's radio emissions (or whatever) caused the meteor to near the earth or would we try to think up ways of doing something about it?
I personally think that climate change is caused by increased CO2 emissions from human industry because all of the theory supports it, but it honestly doesn't matter. We have a major problem. We can either point fingers endlessly like a bunch of 5 year olds, or we can try to solve it before it becomes a catastrophe.
The atmosphere of Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, if I remember correctly. The melting of the polar ice caps of Mars and the melting of the polar ice caps of Earth are unrelated.
...
You missed the point the Anonymous Coward was making
The fact is that no one knows what is causing Global Warming on Mars but we know for sure that it is not caused by Martians driving around their SUVs. There are several theories and some speculate that recent solar activity (the high levels of sun-spot and solar-flares) are having an impact on Mars even though there has been no increase in irradiance; being that Mars is further away from the Sun than Earh is it would be foolish not to assume that any impact from Solar activity on Mars would impact Earth.
The fact that you didn't even look into this before you dismissed it as "unrelated" demonstrates a blind faith which should never be associated with science.
Environmentalists' arguments are only going to convince the choir until they first acknowledge that their history of 'global prediction' is really quite bad. Have we run out of clean water? Space for landfills? Food? Trees? Oil? No. None of the 'sky is falling' predictions have come true, so pardon me if I am somewhat skeptical of your latest crisis cry.
But it isn't just the environmentalists who are saying it now.
Against the Mars canard:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192
If you're one of those who don't trust realclimate.org (after all, it is biased in favor of climatology!), feel free to follow the references. If you're someone who trusts junkscience.com more, then I guess you also think that smoking is healthy. (I'm just covering my bases here. I seriously doubt that you trust junkscience over realclimate, but there are those who do.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Almost inconceivably big. Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up."
This we simply do not know. There is no way we could get 40-50 year resolution on prehistoric CO2 or temperature levels.
How are we to believe anything you say if you are willing to pass on your guesses as facts, when it suits you? This can hardly be an honest mistake.
Did anyone notice that the EU seems to have different priorities than us (US)?
+1,000,000,000
a r/
Can't be said enough. There is irrefutable evidence that we are going to destroy the atmosphere, which in turn will destroy the planet. Gore has just summed it all up nicely for the layperson to understand. The most troubling thing (ya know, besides the imminent end of the world) is that the oil, auto, and other capitalist lobbies goddamn well know it - and instead of doing the right thing; innovating for leaner, cleaner products, they fud the hell out of it in the interests of padding their already astronomical bonuses.
If you haven't checked this one out, it makes a nice compliment to An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectricc
This is an excellent point, but it cuts both ways. As you've pointed out, the available evidence during the Middle Ages made an Earth-centered universe viable. Thus, it was entirely possible to rigorously follow the scientific method and still conclude we are at the center.
Rigorously scientific, and quite wrong. This is something that's overlooked all too often -- Science can never promise Truth. The best any theory can hope for is to be very well verified. Please don't get me wrong -- the Scientific Method works better than any other method known to us. We can never know with absolute certainty that our conclusions are true, but using any other method is much worse. I'm not advocating that we replace Science with something else; I'm just pointing out that the conclusions are never absolute.
This is something to keep in mind with the current global warming debate. The evidence suggests that human burning of carbon fuels is a big part of the problem. A strong majority of Scientists across multiple disciplines are convinced we need to do something about it. But they could be wrong.
I believe that the data to that point (as measured since the 1920s) is too dull to chart. I don't have time to chase this down. Why would I waste my time when there is near universal consensus among scientists, laymen and politicians? I might as well spend my time chasing data to prove that the earth is round.
What? This is everyones planet, we all have an interest in taking care of it. To say that this or that country should do something first is nonsense. Everyone needs to do what they are able to do. Yes, the US should take the lead, especially in research given our position. But that doesn't mean the rest of the world should wait around for some miracle technology to solve the problem.
Since I feel like preaching to the choir for a bit (arguing with ostriches can wear a person out), here's an analogy:
Will a bullet fired at your heart from a .357 kill you? .357s and lived. Those that die after being shot probably just died from other causes.
We're not sure. Several people have been shot at by
Will a bullet from a .357 travel faster than from every other gun?
Certainly not!
Is there anything we can do about it? - this is the biggie
No, because if you cover up your heart they can just shoot at your head, etc.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The percentage of journalistic articles suggesting that it may not be man's fault: 53%.
They do suggest it may be woman's fault, don't they?
A week or so ago it was gleefully "announced" on Slashdot that
Exxon is funding the global warming debunkers. Now we'd like
to know who is funding the proponents!
ENSO is the El Nino Southern Oscillation. If you'd like to simulate global warming and El Nino / La Nina cycles yourself you can do some of the experiments discussed in the article. The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
From the National Weather Service: The average temperature of 34.5 degrees tied 1996 as the second warmest December on record. The warmest December was 34.8 degrees in 2001. In contrast, the coldest December was in 1989 with an average temperature of 14.1 degrees. Normally December has as average of 27.6 degrees.
[...]
The average high temperature for the month was a record 43.3 degrees. The old record was 42.8 degrees in 1953. The coldest high temperature was 24.7 degrees in 1989 and the normal December average high temperature is 36.4 degrees.
[...]
The average low temperature for the month was 25.6 degrees, warm enough to be the 3rd warmest on record. The warmest average low temperature was 27.8 degrees in 1996 followed by 26.8 degrees in 2001. The coldest average low temperature was 3.4 degrees in 1989 and the normal December average low temperature is 18.7 degrees.
[...]
The temperature never got below zero degrees in December. In fact, the coldest reading was only 9 degrees and that didn't occur until the last day of the month.
[...]
The warmest temperature for the month was 61 degrees on the 1st. I'm going to have to move to Canada if I ever want to see a white Christmas again.
rewind to 1990
cue Montreal Protocol
fastforward 15 years
So, we haven't fixed the problem, but at least we're not making it any worse. Cutting pollution, recycling and being more energy efficient may not fix anything, but if we can get by without making a mess than shouldn't we at least try.
That point, like numerous others in Gore's film, is incorrect. In attempts to reproduce the study Gore mentions, less than 2% explicitly endorse the " consensus view". This website lists the 1,117 documents and abstracts Oreskes (Gore's source) claims to have analyzed in her paper. You can see for yourself that there is not a scientific consensus, at least in the ISI databses.
Having just seen the movie yesterday, I thought that I would point out a couple things while they are fresh in my mind. Firstly, the film didn't claim that all "however many" of the peer reviewed scientific articles on global warming said that global warming was man made, or explicitly endorsed the "consensus view" of anthropogenic climate change. The claim in the film was that zero of those reviewed articles were in doubt of the causes for global warming. You see, the study was in response to the claim of "isn't there some debate about whether global warming is real or what causes it?" The study that Gore cited demonstrated that there wasn't any scientific debate on the subject in peer-reviewed scientific journals (zero articles doubting the cause of global warming), and that the only articles that were published in doubt of the cause of global warming were in mainstream media articles (53% of articles doubting the cause of global warming). Think about it though, you're debating whether or not articles have been written debating the "consensus view." Why do you think that they call it a consensus?
More to the point, even without the study about who is publishing articles doubting global warming, if you look at all of the studies regarding the earth's temperature, it very clearly is getting warmer on a global scale. That simple fact can't be argued. If you look at the data it becomes obvious that the degree to which the earth is warming is far in excess of what has previously been seen in any cyclical warming, and that the largest uptick in warming has been in the past 50-75 years. All of this is well established fact.
Now the anti-global warming people claim that there is doubt as to whether or not mankind is responsible for the increase in warming. This is what we know about it.
1. We know that the higher the level of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere, the less heat can radiate into space. That's why they call them greenhouse gasses.
2. The less heat that radiates into space, the warmer it gets here on earth.
3. The level of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere has been steadily increasing in recent years.
4. The average temperature of the earth has been steadily increasing in recent years.
5. The average temperature of the earth has increased in roughly the same pattern as the level of greenhouse gasses, and in fact the increases on both sides match the predictions of environmental scientists who have studied the phenomenon and have tied the two processes together.
Now inevitably someone will say here that correlation != causalaity, because they always say that on Slashdot. But that isn't really a valid argument in this debate, because there is a scientifically well documented principle here (the greenhouse effect) that very clearly demonstrates a cause and effect relationship between greenhouse gasses and increased temperatures. So I guess my question is this: what is in debate? What isn't understood? When you actually sit down and look at the numbers, it is painfully obvious what is going on. Arguing about the methodology that Oreskes used in her study of how many scientific articles disputed the causes of global warming is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
And every scientist knows that you need a crisis to get funding? No?
No, of course not. The vast majority of science (including climate science) is extraordinarily dull, but gets funded because of the quality of previous research and ideas.
http://env.chass.utoronto.ca/env200y/know/ozone.h
And to answer your second point:
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=11427
For those who are interested, Wikipedia tells me that the area of the United States is a tad under 10 million square miles - so the Antarctic ozone hole is three times the size of the US.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Oh really? You know, in the 15th century there was a 'near universal consensus among scientists, laymen and politicians' that the world is heocentric, and the Earth is flat. It's so good that Galilei, Copernicus, Bruno, Brahe, etc [and later - Planck, Dirac, Heisenberg, Landau... the list can be long] do not share you social and scientific attitude.
Yeah, I don't think Nanpa was being sarcastic either (you'll notice the difference in authorship between the OP and the one claiming you missed the sarcasm), but perhaps I'm just not feeling very optimistic today.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Certain of the measures are what we need to do anyway, and are potentially extremely good for economies (well, most of them) - devising ways of saving energy, finding new non-oil energy resources. We should be doing this anyway, for economic and political reasons.
The grandparent post is correct. Correlation is not causation.
Look closely at Gore's CO2 chart and you'll notice that the CO2 levels can lag the temperature rises. If CO2 was *causing* temperature to rise, CO2 level rises would precede temperature rises.
CO2 is a heat trap as your post suggests (known scientific model...) but water vapor beats the hell out of it in that regard. Rising temperatures lead to more water vaporizing. When water vaporizes, it forms clouds which increase the earth's albedo which reduces insolation which reduces temperature. Climate change is a hell of a lot more complicated than "rising CO2 levels equal higher temperatures."
The climate modelers want you to think they understand earth's climate. But their models have huge lag times between modeling and verification. Contrast the climatologist's problem with the meteorologist's. Both run models as to how the atmosphere is going to behave but the meteorologist's models are constantly being revised in the face of Nature doing something other than what the models predicted. Hell, Katrina hit New Orleans a few days after 6 out of 7 models said she'd harmlessly veer into the Atlantic. It's impressive that even one model made the right call about Katrina but the fact that 6 out 7 "scientific models" were wrong on that particular hurricane should make you cautious about believing forecasts. Climatology models run on much longer cycles and so get much less feedback as to their accuracy. Moreover, climatologists are building their models on very sparse, inaccurate data.
The number of weather reporting stations reached an all time high in the early 90's. When the USSR collapsed, a lot of meteorology stations shut down due to lack of funding. What's interesting is that their data was suspect because due to the USSR's central planning mechanism of allocating fuel based on where the temperature was the coldest, weather stations had an incentive to shade their temperature reports. "Ivan - you wouldn't believe how cold it was here yesterday!" "How cold was it Boris?" "Cold enough to warrant another lump of coal..."
Despite fewer feedback cycles and lousy data, Climatologists claim to be able to forecast global temperatures to the fraction of a degree. It's nonsense and yet a good number of slashdot denizens seem to believe it.
Even though I am one of those pinko liberals this is one point I've got to give to the right. Any proposed solution that involves hurting the economies of the nations with resources to actually deal with the problem is not the answer. As many others have pointed out, global warming is a fact and it is going to take a lot of money and knowledge to survive it. Simply cutting back on emissions is not going to solve anything.
First off, this "economy is a sacred cow" thing is a pretty crappy guiding principle, since whatever you end up doing will have some impact. If people were allowed to use "think of the economy" as an excuse, then pretty much every single piece of environmental legislation of the past century would not exist, including those banning DDT, CFCs, and creating national parks, since all of these have had impacts.
Second, climate change isn't an all-or-nothing thing. If the U.S. and Europe had to "go it alone" that would still help. And it would create collective political pressure to apply to the "cheater" nations. If 90% of the American public actually believed human-caused climate change was happening, then any country that was an "emissions cheater" would have a bad rep and this would impact on trade deals and outsourcing. And, as history will tell you, trade is the cheapest and probably the most effective way of exerting political influence on foreign countries.
The reminds me of last Sunday when happened to drive by the church that my family attended when I was a kid. (I haven't attended in my adulthood years; I never bought into the whole religion thing, but that is a different story.)
To get to the point, there was a Hummer parked in front of the church during the service. It made me realize that I have a different set of moral standards than that person with the Hummer. I don't know what it will take to push the moral zeitgeist along to include crimes against posterity. Perhaps the Pope or someone could put forth a modern moral position with regard to global warming, but I'm sure he's too old to understand the gravity of the situation.
Sam Harris often talks about how 44% of the American people believe Jesus is coming back in their lifetime or their children's lifetime (or something like that). I don't know what it will take to convince these people that it's not true. Even if Jesus is indeed coming back, it would be necessary to assume that he wasn't. It is clear to me that the Second Coming is merely a license to not give a flying fuck.
My brother went to France last week.
2 days of sunshine and 20-22 degrees Celcius.
Right now, here (Belgium) it's 12 degrees Celcius.
That's an interesting takeaway from that movie. Me, I was more struck by the graph of historical atmospheric CO2 levels vs. average temperature and the graph of projected CO2 levels. But different people bring different things to that movie and likely take different things away. I'm guessing you wanted to find reasons to hate Al Gore. Me, I was looking for solid evidence that atmospheric CO2 levels were really an issue.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'm not from the US but I think you are being a tad harsh with the "all" qualifier, 50% of all climate research has been funded by the US, much of it well spent on collecting and interpreting raw data via sattelites. OTOH: The current US Administration and the current government of my country (Australia) are both guilty of deliberate obstructionisim, willfull ignorance, and have actively engaged in anti-science propoganda to garner serious financial benifits for a select few at the expense of everyone else. Here in Australia our weather has been so bizzare this year even the prime minister has started back peddling as fast as he can, alas the US Administration still seems to be "caught in the headlights".
IMHO all countries should operate under the same rules for carbon emmissions and the vast majority of corporations are looking to government to set up "the rules" so that they can invest in 30yr energy projects with some degree certainty about their future ROI. Developed countries alone are responsible for what is occuring now and what will occur over next 50yrs or so due to the time lag in the climates reation. It is not only our moral responsibility but it is also in our long term self intrests to compensate nations such as China and India with the technology and resources required for them to "leap frog" fossil fuel technology and I applaud the publicly stated aims of the US/India/Australia deal to supply nuclear fuel to "leap frog" India's energy infrastructure into the 21st century.
China is said to be bringing one "city sized" coal fired plant online every three weeks, the sooner every nation in the global energy bussiness sits down at the table in good faith and agrees on a scientifically based plan of action the better. To do otherwise will just continue the exponetial growth in what is otherwise known as "the tradgedy of the commons".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The arrogance of man is to presume that the current climate is one which would remain stable were it not for our interference.
Who has made that presumption? Name a single climatologist who has ever said the climate would remain stable if it weren't for our interference.
Why should we presume that the climate that we currently have is the natural balance for the Earth?
You, and people like you, just don't get it. There is no natural balance for the Earth. What we're talking about is the natural balance for US.
Everyone knows global warming isn't really, jesus you guys. Ok, now stop laughing/crying and check out:
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
Is there any reason we couldn't invest in this and solar RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW?!?
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
It was not globally the warmest year ever.
It may have been, in North America, the warmest year, by a small amount, for a couple hundred years. Its a bit different. We have also the Holcene Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period to worry about, before pronouncing last year the warmest ever.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but headlines like this do not help convince anyone.
Re: the title... it wasn't the warmed year "ever". It was the warmest year on record. :)
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
If this is what rolling a 13 is like, what happens when the world rolls a critical hit?
Well, the truth is that cutting back on CO2 emissions will almost certainly help the economy in the long run, not hurt it. Reducing dependence on oil helps the economy by removing dependence on a volatile commodity who's price is increasing as it becomes scarcers, and reducing our dependence makes it easier for us to ignore the Middle East. Reducing emissions almost always involves increasing efficiency which results in lower costs.
The problem is that it requires large investments for long-term gain. The forces we've set up in our capitalist system strongly discourage that kind of investing. Companies care how they do from quarter to quarter far more than they care about how they do from year to year even.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Yes, climate change has been going on for as long as there has been a climate. However, it doesn't advance the discussion, and only shows your own ignorance, that the best arguement you can make is to call those who disagree with you "dumb."
This is essentially correct. I think what really happend was the Senate defeated a resolution of support for the treaty as Clinton signed it but wouldn't ever submit it to the Senate where a 2/3 majority would be required for ratification.
All in all, you are 100% correct about the inversion deal though.
No matter where you go, there you are.
- Fact: Humanity is producing a considerable amount of greenhouse gases.
- Fact: Greenhouse gases cause more sunlight to be converted into heat.
Here is where the discussion usually breaks down into fisticuffs. We do know that this unnatural stress on the environment (global warming) will cause the global climate to change. However, we do NOT know exactly what will happen in response to this stress. In the past, global warming was a gradual process, as flora and fauna produce greenhouse gases naturally at a much reduced rate. This time the stress is acute, and we have no real past historical basis to predict what will happen.
Personally, I'm with the scientists on this one. (That this is most likely a "bad thing".) Earth has a nasty habit of responding with mass extinctions whenever it gets hit with something big and bad. However, there is a slim possibility that the earth will just "get warmer", which is not entirely a bad thing, but would make dwindling fresh water supplies a real cause for war and conflict.
So to sum up, "global warming" will most likely cause "global climate change". However, we don't know what exactly will change, but it's likely it'll be bad for us.
I think there are some dinosaurs who would disagree with that if they hadn't died a gazillion years ago.
The point to that is that if it's not our fault, it's likely not an apocalypse. After all, everything nature does is good and right, if you care to do as little thinking as possible. But mass extinctions happened before people. Climate changes happened before industry. The retraction of each Ice Age was a period of global warming similar to the one we face now, just with a different starting point. We do not have enough data points to know that this isn't a cyclical process, and we do know that drastic temperature changes have not killed off the planet, or even our slightly less hairless ancestors. The Sahara is a desert because the Atlas mountains block rain. The Andes, the Rockies, and the Ural mountains do the same thing to other deserts. I'm not here to claim that we didn't do it, it's not our fault, let's just leave it alone. I'm claiming that we don't know, and it's irresponsible to try to cure a disease when you don't know what disease you're curing.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Except that window power and solar power impact the climate directly, instead of indirectly like fosil fuels.... and they take heat out of the climate, which is a lot more dangerous than adding heat.
"While I will agree with nearly all of it, the one point that MAY be wrong is that this is man-made."
It is not a binary situation as some would have you belive but man is causing the majority of the accelerated warming observed since the 50's, the question most people now want answered ishow much CO2 is too much?".
The link contains detailed attributions for the multitude of forcings and feedbacks involved in the observed warming. Suffice to say that without man's input the planet would have cooled very slightly over the last century as opposed to what we are experiencing now, ie: looking back millions of years to find other examples of similar (yet slower) rates of warming on a global scale.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes, but when scientists "across multiple disciplines" are all weighing in on what the right conclusion should be on a question of climate science, that's a pretty good indication that something other than science is going on.
But then that wouldn't add the weight of "118000" years and an appeal to the ice age to the argument for "global warming". What a crock.
"To work for libertarianism -- to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual -- used to be
how do they know what the daily temperature was every day since the ice age in every single part of the globe? Aint no way. True its been warmer but I really am getting sick and tired of all these so call experts who claim they know what the exact temperature was years before man even had a way to measure the temperature.
And before someone says it, there is scientific means to estimate the temperature but there still the plus and minus factor thats a part of all estimates.
"China is said to be bringing one "city sized" coal fired plant online every three weeks"
I've been hearing that China built 117 licensed (and plenty more unapproved and not recorded) coal plants in 2006, or about one every 3 days.
For years the Right in America tried to argue that there was no global warming. Finally, what was merely overwhelming research showing that there was indeed warming became impossible to argue, so now the Right tries to argue that "OK, there's global warming, but it's not our fault".
People who are trying so hard to pretend that there is no harm at all in fouling our environment can no longer be taken seriously by the rest of us. We're trying to patiently explain to these knuckleheads that there has to be something done to turn around the damage we're doing to the environment, and while we're arguing, nothing is being done. China will soon (maybe a decade) have a bigger economy than ours and how are we supposed to tell them to back off from all the growth so we don't destroy our environment when we can't even get our own act together?
The Right-Wing in America is being used by multinationals to stall on any sort of effort to change things, so for the foreseeable future, it's going to be more of the same. There's just no more time to waste trying to convince people who believe the Earth is 6000 years old and that Jesus is going to come any day now to take them home that we have to act to protect the world for our grandkids.
I mean really: "What about the Martian icecaps?"?? Is that the latest Investors Business Daily meme to try to keep record profits flowing into the coffers of Shell?
You are welcome on my lawn.
OK, so we all agree that GW is caused by an increase in planetary heat... AND the planet gets its heat from.... the Sun. I think everyone on the planet would agree that there is no way that anyone on earth is effecting the Sun. We also know that there has been an increase of sunspot activity in the past 20 years. There have even been cases of satellites being effect by the increase in radiation. No one really knows what the effect of those increased bursts of radiation are having on earths weather. Scientists can't actually physically measure the ozone layer... not with a measuring tape anyway. However they figure that it is weaker (thinner) IF they measure an increase in radiation (from the Sun) they can postulate that the protective layer must be weaker... However it might just be that increased radiation is coming through due to increased radiation coming form the Sun. Now think about this....What if we wreck the economies of the world, and millions of people die from starvation, thinking that we can save the planet, when in fact the problem does not actually stem from human activity? AIT only documents effect, not cause.
"All that Kyoto buys is more coal-powered plants for third world nations."
Those coal plants being built in China are going to be built Kyoto or no Kyoto. If anything, if Kyoto reductions are achieved by reducing fossil fuel usage, it will make gas and oil cheaper and will help make renewable energy more mainstream, so China might be a little less inclined to burn coal when it realizes its citizens are choking in the exhaust.
Sorry - that is complete rubbish.
Many countries' steel industries were forced to modernise over the last 30 years of cut throat competetion - the US industry was compartively protected. As a consequence it is 20 years behind in efficiency and cost - the safety standards, environmental standards and salaries are no higher in the US than in the UK, Germany or Japan, yet American steel is more expensive and worse quality. This is why the WTO had no issues in finding the US steel tariffs illegal.
It still doesn't fit in with the observed motions of the other planets. Why would Mercury never stray far from the Sun if it's going around the Earth? Why does Venus get larger and smaller as it moves around?
A good theory fits all data, not just a little bit of cherry picked data.
"The Southern Hemisphere, in particular, does not seem to be warming noticeably."
I am sitting naked in my spare room in Melbourne Australia, it is about 2:30AM and simply too hot and muggy too sleep, there is the smell of smoke from extreme bushfires that started two months early this year. Tasmania has had to import electricity from the mainland due to a lack of water in their hydro scheme, 62% of our grain harvest (~17,000,000 tons) has been lost,....oh fuck it, it's too hot to argue with an AC ludite.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The ice ages were global events of dramatically colder climates. The glaciation was most dramatic in the northern hemisphere, but it was a global phenomenon. The global climate has been in a state of flux for as long as it has existed.
True, but remember that many scientists were talking of "global cooling" which was man-made back in the 1970's. A new ice age was being predicted with temperature graphics to show it. Also, it went as far as to have people thinking of off the wall solutions to the problem.
The big "visible" difference between the 2000ish global warming and 1970ish global cooling? One wasn't being used to fuel political campaigns and the other is
However if you RTFA, despite the snowfall, Colorado still experienced temperature 1 degree Celcius above average.
"I'm in it to win it, and no limit is my home." - Snoop Dog c/o PvP Online (July 12th, 2006)
Exactly. If my three year old intentionally spills a cup full of milk on the floor and then my two year old only spill a little, I am going to make them both clean it up equally to teach them not to spill their milk.
"discussion where accurate data is critical?"
By definition, a discussion on Slashdot is anything but accurate and about as important as a discussion of Brittany Spears' underwear (or lack thereof)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Trouble is...this isn't just a happy world of cooperating peoples. It is made up of countries in competition for everything! Competition for land...resources...food....economic power. Until there is some kind of one world order (God forbid), this will be the way of things. If something, while good for the world at large, will be detrimental to a country economically, then, it won't be done.
I don't personally see the 1st world countries willingly sacrificing their lifestyle and world position for the 'greater good'.
No one claws their way to the top, just to willingly let go and slide back down, no matter what the cause....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Gasses become less soluble in warmer water. That's why you get bubbles when heating a pot of water even before the water reaches boiling. Those bubbles are O2, N2, and CO2 (among other gases) that were dissolved in the water.
These guys really like to ignore the Medieval Warming Period, where temperatures globally were much warmer than they are today. They also like to ignore the fact that the current warming period started in conjunction with the end of the little ice age. Scientific theories are great when you include all of the facts, but poor when you sensationalize findings and ignore entire eras to make your case.
Dorpus, It's OK to have a -1 moderation on occasion. On some subjects in Slashdot, if you don't agree with the group, you will be modded down considerably. It doesn't matter if some of your arguments have merit. And I do remember the prediction that 2006 will be a "record year for hurricanes". And it was suggested that global warming was part of the cause. If it had been a record year, one can be sure that proponents of GW would have remembered the "record year" statement and used it as an argument. Obviously, some were hoping for massive destruction so that they could have more support for their ideas.
Does anybody remember the "ozone hole" problem that was prevalent in the late 80's and early 90's? No one talks about it much anymore. It went something like this: Because of the massive amount of air conditioning fluorocarbons being released into the atmosphere, we are making an ozone hole in the southern hemisphere. This hole will soon grow so large it will eventually cover most of the planet and we will all get sunburned and have skin cancer. The proving scientists showed that freon did indeed break down ozone, that humans made freon, therefore humans made the ozone hole and would have to take action to close it. Laws were passed. Selling older Freon refrigerants was strictly regulated in this country and replaced by newer refrigerants that broke down. Air conditioners were replaced by units that ran the newer refrigerants. According to a friend I knew in the AC business, the companies that made freon and similar products were about to do a massive lawsuit and expose on the whole idea stating that their scientists could show that most of the stats were pure bunk! But then they sat down with the government (and other insiders), and when they realized that a can of freon would go from $.99 to about $21.00 and how much money they would make by complying (and how much it would cost if they fought), they went along. Low and behold, a few years later, a scientific study showed that volcanoes released chemicals in quantities that would be thousands of times more effective in breaking down the ozone layer than freon. There was little fanfare or media attention as the cause was dropped. The laws stayed on the books.
Now I wouldn't want to stay in the way of progress or learning about the global climate, but let's cut the bull. A lot of scientists and their organizations will get a lot of kudos and make a lot of $money$ if Kyoto and future proposed legislation goes through. Why not hold these scientists LIABLE for these predictions. Money and status are big in scientific circles. If what they say comes to pass, why not reward them (if it can be proven by > 1 unbiased groups over > 5-10 years) that test their standards. If shown correct, give them $rewards and status. If not, kick them out of their scientific organizations and fine them.
Many managers in companies are held liable for their monetary predictions not coming true. They get bonuses or get fired. The fact that a person is smart or has multiple degrees is no proof of honesty. Truth is, it often shows that some of these people have cleverer ways of being dishonest. One should be suspicious if met with a condescending tone and an explanation of, "These are things only people with X number of doctorates can understand." Maybe. What I do understand is when predictions are made and don't come to pass and cost people $billions worldwide, someone ought to answer for it. If scientists had to sign contracts of reward/liability for predictions of gloom and doom, I bet a lot would walk.
Global warming has to prove (1) That it really is happening and will continue to increase(2) That People are causing it (3) That it is bad (4) If 3==True, then something [what] can be done about it. I've seen lots of controversy on #1, little proof on #2 - which is where the ozone hole theory collapsed, nothing but assumptions on #3 (On a global level, Canada and Siberia might benefit), and I'd hate to see the cost estimates on #4, when treaties and legislation is approved.
Feel free to mod according to opinion - no one will know, but have a nice day.
By "city sized" I meant every three weeks China adds enough capacity to it's grid to power a city comprable to this particular city, it's quite likely we are both saying the same thing in different ways.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you would do a little research, you would find that it has nothing to do with his "personal inabilities". There are many reputable scientists who share his view.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Well, I'll grant you that it's creepy. It's also completely full of s---. Now read "Climate of Fear".
"No, it is the opposite (which may seem counterintutive, since many things dissolve better in hot water)."
It seems highly intuitive to me. Gases have more entropy than liquids, while solids have less entropy than liquids, so it seems common sense to me that they will usually respond in the opposite way to heating the liquid.
It does seem that many people make this mistake, but I fail to see why.
The results from computer models show that it just isn't true. The effect of global warming will be larger than any effect from the disruption of the warm water current.
But if you modded the discussion, you wouldn't be able to contribute to it, and Slashdot desperately needs a healthy injection of dissent when it comes to discussing climate change. Your comments are valuable.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Climate is not weather. Despite fewer feedback cycles and lousy data, Climatologists claim to be able to forecast global temperatures to the fraction of a degree. It's nonsense and yet a good number of slashdot denizens seem to believe it. If it's nonsense, you have not presented any argument in support of that claim. To what quantitative extent are the model predictions sensitive to the size of the data set and of the error bars? That is why you have to sit down and crunch numbers, in the form of a sensitivity analysis, which is what climatologists actually do — things like running the models with mock data to simulate plausible observations that we could have gotten. As it turns out, global temperatures can be
predicted roughly out to a century — making assumptions, however, about how greenhouse gas emissions will continue — but the forecast accuracy at that time is not "a fraction of a degree", but rather a degree or more. Over shorter time scales, you can get fractional-degree accuracy.
Most of what I've read and seen indicates we're just near a peak of the cyclical process (or a low in the ice age, however you flip your sine wave). What they always seem to discount, though, is that 100,000 years ago when the world warmed up naturally (animal C02), there weren't 6 billion humans around with 2 billion+ (guess) mechanical sources of heat, C02 or fossil fuels. Most reports shrug human factors off as negligible. That fire ant mound of only 100k fire ants in my backyard is negligible, too, until they start multiplying.
What's really odd about this report is how inconsistent my local weather has been. The report shows Texas as recording many record high days. On an average over the year, yes, I guess we were, but this was one of the mildest summers and falls I've ever known in my 30+ years of living here. We had a handful (maybe three) days that hit 100 or higher, as opposed to a few years ago where we had over 100 consecutive days of 100+ temperatures. What's really been off is the lack of rain. Currently we're having an average winter of 50-60 degree days, but again it's not nearly as wet as it usually is.
With the GW what I expect over the next 10-20 years is that Texas will shift to a climate more like Central America (or northern Africa) and our Texas climate will shift to Nebraska and the Dakotas.
It's a definite concern that I feel many governments and the world have neglected for too long. All I can hope is that we'll be able to adapt like our ancient ancestors did to other "natural" disasters. I'm really hoping that I might see off world colonization in my lifetime. Get the people off the planet and let it return to a natural state.
Actually, I think it's a pretty good indication that almost anyone who understands science and the scientific method knows that this is a real problem. I find it odd that you think this somehow indicates a vast scientific conspiracy. (Yeah, I know you didn't use those words, but what else might you be implying by "something other than science"?)
Even those few scientists who denied it in the past seem to be accepting it now. For example, even Pat Michaels no longer claims that global warming is not due primarily to anthropogenic factors. However, he still believes that technology will automagically fix the problem so we don't need to worry about it. The fact that he receives most of his funding from fossil fuel companies has no impact on that opinion, I'm sure.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Look closely at Gore's CO2 chart and you'll notice that the CO2 levels can lag the temperature rises. If CO2 was *causing* temperature to rise, CO2 level rises would precede temperature rises.
But increased CO2 does precede temperature rises.
The climate modelers want you to think they understand earth's climate. But their models have huge lag times between modeling and verification. Contrast the climatologist's problem with the meteorologist's. Both run models as to how the atmosphere is going to behave but the meteorologist's models are constantly being revised in the face of Nature doing something other than what the models predicted. Hell, Katrina hit New Orleans a few days after 6 out of 7 models said she'd harmlessly veer into the Atlantic. It's impressive that even one model made the right call about Katrina but the fact that 6 out 7 "scientific models" were wrong on that particular hurricane should make you cautious about believing forecasts. Climatology models run on much longer cycles and so get much less feedback as to their accuracy. Moreover, climatologists are building their models on very sparse, inaccurate data.
That's an imbecilic argument. Long term trends are usually much easier to predict than short term ones. If you were to make 1,000 dice rolls I could predict to a fair degree of accuracy what the mean score would be, but I would not like to predict what the mean score of 2 rolls would be.
And if you did not come to that conclusion and told anybody, you could be burned at the stake for heresy.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Venus' atmosphere:
Earth's atmosphere:
Mars' atmosphere:
You can't infer any correlation between CO2 and temperature with the limited dataset provided above. From general knowledge we know that electromagnetic (and thermal) fields fall off with an inverse-square of distance, so we can assume that Mars would be receiving less heat input from the sun than Earth, and Venus more.
My point is that there are more factors affecting temperature than the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
There might well be factors other than CO2 affecting the temperatures here on Earth, such as: a possible shift in our orbit around the sun; a possible weakening of the Van Allen Radiation Belts (allowing more radiation input); deforestation (trees help to cool things as well as absorb CO2 and product O2); Urban Heat Islands (ok, I don't buy this one myself since satellite measurements do actually show increases in some places away from urbanized areas and cooling over some others); and probably a whole bunch we haven't identified yet.
All we know for certain is that the global average temperature is increasing, but we don't actually know for 100% certain what's causing it. CO2 is just the most-likely suspect at the moment.
I'm not trying to troll here, I just honestly don't understand something:
In the list of the 25 warmest years on record, dates from the 20s and 30s have prominent positions (3rd, 5th, and 6th). How is the theory of global warming reconciled with data that shows comparable weather 80 years ago? The article groups years into pentads, but I don't see any explanation as to why years must be grouped to get results that support their theories. Any help in understanding this would be much appreciated.
All your snow came down in Denver. Normally we get almost no moisture at this time of year but instead of we have a few feet of snow and fairly cold temperatures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"I can still have gas at $2" I don't know where your living but its been a long time since I could get a gallon of gas for 2 bucks. 2.60 at the pump last night.
On the contrary, there was no scientific study of the heavens during the Middle Ages. There were old texts based on belief from which to base present (at that time) beliefs upon. But belief alone isn't science. Once scientific method came into play, it immediately invalidated the existing beliefs on the matter and caused an uproar within the existing belief-based oligarchy.
;)
In ancient times, some things were examined scientifically, and some were not. Just because the scientific method existed in its primacy then did not mean it was always used. Some of the "scientific" conclusions like a geocentric universe were not based on continuous observation and validation though observation, but on existing cultural tenets.
That having been said, this doesn't invalidate your point that scientific conclusions does not equate to Truth and that science is merely the process through which we arrive at a pragmatic truth. That is to say, global warming exists. Our planet is getting warmer. When average annual temperatures consistently drop, global warming will cease to exist. But until then, it cannot be denied. There's a definite correlation between industrialization and global warming. As well, causation is so probable it is almost certain and definitely probable enough to be considered certainty.
But who knows, it could be that some extra terrestrial put the planet into a giant, invisible microwave and turned it on. Or it could be from the organized expelling of copious amounts of gas from hitherto unknown cow tribes in a bid to rid the planet of humans and take over the world for themselves. Hey, you never know...
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The best predictions of the effect of the Kyoto treaty are that it would postpone the amount of warming felt on January 1, 2100 to...
November 1, 2100.
It's economic impact, globally, has been estimated at five trillion dollars (US). Is that enough time for "the children" to fix the problem? About 250 days?
And by the way, the party that cries "Lower taxes" wants lower taxes for everyone, not just the current generation. The party that cries, "Raise Taxes" knows that the only way to leave the social security system as it currently is, means that our children (those working in the year 2035) will be facing an 80% tax rate to support the baby boomers on Social Security. Now who's taxing the children?
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
If 2006 was the warmest year "ever," then we can rest assured that global warming is over, since no year will ever be as warm as 2006 in the entire future of the planet!
My Quadra 950 can beat up your honor student.
Oh, a *sarcasm* detector. Oh, that's a *really* useful invention!
I apologize for the harsh bluntness of this following statement; but hopefully those included in that "Better us" will not include the hypocrites such as yourself.
First of all the planet can easily sustain a populous double our current size, if people would just use the grey matter known as our brains that we have been greatly blessed with. There is plenty of arable and forest-able land left that we can continue to grow our overcrowded cities and support them. Sure, if everyone would just farm their own materials and become self-sufficient then the world would be a small fraction of our current population, but can you not imagine how inefficient AND how bad that would be for the human species?
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect, but you are unquestionably the most promiscuous people there are. That is like saying that we should all stop eating, yet you continue to grow in girth at an alarming rate. By your own philosophies and beliefs, if you let nature do it's work unobstructed then it will balance itself. Especially those on the left push us farther and farther from this law of selection.
It will be a very long time before we have discovered all of the species of the ocean, let alone consumed said species. Again, there are laws of selection that nature lives by, and if left alone all will balance out. This 'make everyone equal (financially) so they can all have the same lobster dinner' and such mentality of "you can't be better than me" goes so directly against the law of Natural Selection that even I (who convenes regularly with friends who are marine biologists and assure me otherwise) am starting to wonder the validity of the leftist "we are killing the ocean" propaganda.
Foremost, for you specifically, or anyone who sees this post, to balk at consumerism - especially that of technology - is amongst the highest form of hypocrisies possible. Every employed person in the world is employed due to consumerism. Every successful individual, every technology every war and every medical advancement is due to consumerism either directly or indirectly. For anyone to say "stop consuming" is equivocal to saying "stop living" because consumption is the number-one basic instinct of all that exists.
Erutangis ym si siht.
Of course climate change is real. All you have to do to verify that is look back in the temperature record for the last 100million years. When you do so, you will quickly see that all of human history (including this year) is a relatively flat line, and a drop in temperature that is much like the grand canyon when plotted over time is "right around the corner," geologically speaking.
Climate changes. Get over it.
That said, the current warming period is on a scale that, when viewed in the context of human history only, is quite impressive. We've known that for a while now. Also no debate.
The problem is that we're not exactly sure why. We have some models that say that everything but CO2 that we know of (and feel we have decent measures for) can't quite account for the warming. We have some theories on how a relatively small amount of CO2 (and keep in mind that compared to all atmospheric CO2, human emmisions are very small indeed) might have an impact that's disproportionate. This is a perfectly reasonable theory, and I'd like to shake the hands of the people who did that very important work.
The problem that I and many other people have is that any work that goes into supporting or opposing this theory (both of which are valid approaches) get politicized, and the result is that anyone trying to support the theory is seen as "good" and anyone trying to oppose the theory is seen as "evil". Instead, people like myself suggest that the scientific method shoud dictate our actions, here. We should assail theories, not because we have a moral investment in topling them, but because theory that stands the test of such assault is stronger for it.
Instead, those who work in the field operate under an understanding that their work must not become "controvercial". That is, if anyone ever holds your research in their hands and supports the political position that global warming isn't human induced or that changes to cars won't make a difference (be they right or wrong), your career will be finished. In that climate (pun intended), science doesn't have a chance. Even if the theory that "must be true" is true, that's darts, not science.
Some days, I feel like making a "support our climatologists, stay out of it," bumper sticker....
But naturally occuring changes in the climate have not been slow. They've often been much faster than 40-50 yesrs. And they do threaten us -- and every other large species. I believe that the species will survive anything, but if an ice age comes along, anything like the previous four or so, it will kill at least 99.9% of us.
I also believe that there is nothing that cannot be understood. That also accounts for my deeply religious beliefs. However, like Socrates and Confucious taught, I believe that no progress in understanding can be made until we come to grasp the enormity of what we do not know compared to what we do know. Moreover, the wiser we become, the greater we see that enormity to be.
All that Kyoto buys is more coal-powered plants for third world nations.
Please supply a reference which concludes that the Kyoto Treaty is the direct cause for the building of third-world coal plants.
If anything Kyoto is more likely to harm the environment, and is, in any event, more of a wealth redistribution scheme than it is an environmental management plan.
Sustainable environmental management is wealth redistribution. No one said that it was going to be easy. And the nation which would be hit the hardest is not surprisingly the nation whose energy glutton dwarfs all others. And you have to start somewhere. Environmental management needs a big policy push for everyone. The US(government) has shown very little will to do this.
It's also funny to note that the country which "hates the worlds children" has made bigger strides in combating GHG emissions than several Kyoto signatories.
It's great, and the ozone layer is closing. But that's not what we're talking about - the ice is still melting...
But hey, who needs facts and logic when you can get all your opinions from the "down with HaliBusHitler" maniacs, eh?
Your own post shows a shaky logic at best and has facts that read more like talking points on Fox News.
Being called an idiot by an ignorant is a true compliment
Please take a look at "4. Why is the sea level higher off the coast of Bermuda than New York?" and "14. How much does sea level rise if all the world's ice melts?" there
The theory of an Earth centered universe is not a good example of a scientific theory. Science did not exist in it's current form in that time. In fact it was Copernicus and his Heliocentric theory that sparked a revolution in science because he used the available data at the time in a scientific way (instead of blindly following the church's teachings) to conclude that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Galileo then used a telescope to provide additional evidence that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun.
But I understand your point that we do not always have enough evidence to make the correct conclusion in science. In that case we have to make the best judgment that we can based on the evidence we do have, and act on it. In regards to global warming we know that the temperatures and CO2 levels in recent years have increased faster than we have ever seen before. So based on the evidence we have, I would say we better do something about it.
And there are far more reputable scientists who are actually doing useful work on the problem instead of whining about it being too hard.
Funding has less to do with quality than whether the research supports or opposes the current paradigm.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Sometimes, we should chose short-term pain for long-term gain. It is entirely possible that dealing with the problems we have created will hurt our economy in the short-term - many, many people depend on oil & gas production, manufacturing, etc, to earn their livelyhoods and a significantly number of them could lose their jobs. They would need to be retrained, find new jobs, and that is hard and it takes time.
However, when we consider things in a long-term perspective, this is a necessarily evil. Chances are, the economy will be revived as we develop new and different economic engines - production of environmentally friendly transportation, etc. A truly visionary politician is willing to see that long-term plan and work towards it, rather than being held back by the fear of loosing a few jobs.
I'll skip the typo, but I am fairly certain you intended to type its. The meaning you wanted is it's, which is the contraction of "it is" vs. what you typed which is the possessive. What your sentence actually says is that we know what is causing "climate change's us," whatever that might mean. Sorry, I figured as long as people are being educated, we might as well include some spelling/grammar lessons. (I don my fire proof suit for errors I am sure I missed in my post)
The warmest year ever => no major hurricanes in the U.S. Hmmmm...
Congratulations, my fellow
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You mean the Naomi Oreskes' non-peer reviewed essay in "Science" Magazine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_o n_climate_change#Oreskes.2C_2004), where she cherry picked 983 articles, out of over 11,000 published on climate during the 1993-2003 time period, and then claimed that it proved something? In fact that study has been debunked thoroughly.
Here's a quote from an article in The Wall Street Journal "More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy [sic -- Naomi] Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it."
Apart from that, Ms. Oreskes is the author of such fine scientific articles as "The Rejection of Continental Drift". Good thing we don't have any evidence to prove her wrong there. In fact her entire career appears to be all about how we must trust our computer models more than physical observation. But let her hold up the shiny holy grail of scientific consensus of Global Climate Change, and she's an untouchable pillar of science.
Sheesh, read some background for crying out loud.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I belive in the monkeysphere theory of human behaviour, and it definitely backs up what you are saying. Only the other day I was arguing the very same point aginst someone who thought that control over resources, territory and labour were not the root cause of war.
"Until there is some kind of one world order (God forbid), this will be the way of things."
The more we understand our own failings, the better equiped we are to survive. I think the major GHG emmitters are quite capable of solving the problem without resorting to a 1984 senario, after all smaller versions of the same idea have worked for other pollutants such as lead and CFC's. I also belive human population has peaked, the window of opportunity to avoid an armagedon style "population correction" due to GW, peak oil and "the sixth great extinction" arriving mid to late 21st century is getting shorter one day at a time.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I was kinda with Gore until he went into how his family owns a cattle ranch, one of the most inefficient sources of food that we have.
Except the oceans are currently a massive CO2 sink, not a net CO2 source.
Two decades of ocean CO2 sink and variability (abstract)
The Acid Ocean - the Other Problem with CO2 Emission
Direct observation of the oceanic CO2 increase revisited
Sure, science couldn't and still can't absolutely rule out the stationary earth (or mobile earth) formulations of a universe model, but you're neglecting one crucial point: uncertainty. We can take a look at our data, and estimate the uncertainty that should attach to our conclusions. When the data are such that if one model were true, there would only be a (say) .0012 probability that we would obtain these data by doing the experiments we have done, then we can much much much more safely claim that that model is false, particularly when we have another model which, if true, would produce these data (say) .98 of the time.
In short, the situation with the scientific method is really much better than you've described it. The scientific method not only tells us things, it tells us just how sure (or unsure) we are of them. In fact, you are exactly wrong about one thing: It was not possible to rigorously follow the scientific method in the Middle Ages and conclude that the earth is at the center of the universe. It was possible to rigorously follow the scientific method and not conclude that the earth is not at the center of the universe. The data which had been obtained was highly likely to have been obtained provided either model were true, and thus the scientific method did not distinguish between the two. Now of course, given some a priori notion of "simple", the rigorous formulation of Occam's Razor from Bayesian statistics could most likely choose one of the two models, but that is strictly outside of the scientific method, as it depends upon a prior notion, rather than exclusively upon the data.
So, both Gallileo (or Copernicus) and the Church would be wrong in declaring that either model is correct, as the data did not overwhelmingly support either model over the other.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Is 7 gigaton a year a lot in the planetary scale? I haven't got a clue... ... neither if it's a significant amount.
I can only marvel at the word "gigaton" and picture myself trying to carry a bag filled with 7 gigatons of gas.
This is why reasoning in "common sense" terms about an issue like this is next to impossible.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
And that is therefore, a great excuse to NOT do anything about it, since they *might* be wrong. Yeah, cause if global warming isn't real and we switch to clean air and renewable energy sources we will be in REAL bad shape...
"Oh no Johnny, the world is needlessly cleaner!"
On a nation-state level, I agree with you. However, I find that the wealthy individuals of the world tend to become increasingly altruistic and non-concerned with their personal financial situation (within limits... they're not gonna let themselves go bankrupt). I think this is perhaps the benefit of reaching the "top": You stop focusing on attaining the top, so you stand back, take a good look at yourself and the world around you, and realize everything you've been ignoring to rise to the top is in very bad shape, and you decide to try and fix it.
Student Manager - Take control of your education!
He's wrong anyway. Current warming is far more pronounced in the northern hemisphere. (Citing The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming , but I can't remember whose research Michaels was quoting, and I don't have the book with me.)
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Runs Thursday to Saturday. Just like the good old days decades ago when there would be snow on the ground all winter. In between storms the side streets accumulate a foot of ice which wrecks bottoms of average cars.
Isn't global warming fun?
Better data collection, analysis, and collation from many more terrestrial and orbital observers?
Better models and more powerful computers to run them on?
30 years' more historical data and advancement in the state of the art?
You can follow the links for the actual science. It's there, I promise. When I say "boilerplate argument", I mean that I'm not taking the time to tailor it to the particular post. However, as the post is just the typical "What about Mars?" question, it's not really necessary to tailor it.
If you think producing controversial science ends your career, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Albert. He got a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect despite having this crazy theory about space and time. (Yes, there were a lot of people calling his theories nonsense, but it didn't exactly end his career.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Hmm well I live in a desert. This past year brought a cold winter. So cold in fact that it snowed in the desert and covered the surrounding mountains with a lot of snow. This is at 1300 ft. above sea level. Sure seems warmer to me.
On the contrary, the skeptical scientists are working very hard to prevent the destruction of economies and implementation of "solutions" that will do more harm than good. I've seen this "laziness" claim before, and it is ludicrous. If anyone is lazy, it's the people who see no reason to question the current paradigm.
But the science matters more than the politics anyway, doesn't it? For your strong opinion to be justified, you must have thoroughly compared the science on both sides, right? So why don't you tell me exactly where you disagree with the skeptics, instead of just slinging mud? I've done my homework, and I'm ready when you are.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
This has been addressed over and over again. It was the popular media, not scientists, who were talking about global cooling in the 1970's. Kind of like those shark scares we see today. (Yes, you might have found a small handful of scientists who were concerned. However, even back then climatologists were warning about global warming, not global cooling.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Since the topic was brought up ...
...
Another factor contributing to the resistance of living more in harmony with our environment (i.e., reducing CO2 emissions, stopping corporations from blindly stripping the planet of resources) is religion itself.
Having grown up experiencing several different versions of Christianity, one message was pretty clear throughout: the world is for the taking, to use however we please, and the world itself has little other value as it isn't this life that counts, but the afterlife.
This attitude, it seems, is exactly the attitude so many people in the Western world exhibit in their views of global warming and the fact that we're significantly contributing to it. Protecting the status quo (as in 'protecting' the current economic setup) seems to hold much more importance than avoiding any possible disaster scenarios. This is only propagated further by the obsession of many Christians with the "imminent" apocalypse.
Mother Nature, in my observations, has one important rule for every living critter: adapt or die. Whether or not we're causing or contributing to global warming is really irrelevant; what matters is whether or not we're going to successfully adapt to the upcoming changes caused by global warming, such as rising sea levels (port cities will most likely need to be moved) and changing climates (once fertile areas may become deserts, etc.).
Additionally, there isn't much of a genetic mechanism to cap population growth. It's just ridiculous to think that we can continue to reproduce at our current levels. We also have the idea that we have the 'right' to reproduce, which is understandable considering our genetically-engrained urges. Religions that embody the need to reproduce like rabbits, however, certainly aren't helping matters.
I believe we will need a dramatic change in consciousness if we're actually going to survive, and a move towards humanity's root spirituality, animism, would be an excellent means. We need to realize and embody the idea that, as 'intelligent' beings, we have a lot more responsibility than other critters. We can't just take from the world without thought for consequences; we will need to be smart about what we can use, what we can reuse, and what we must give back to the world. This will, most importantly, include responsibility in terms of our population: what level can the world realistically sustain (many would argue that we're already artificially sustaining a population that is too large) and how can we encourage people to help balance it.
Should we fail to act (especially in terms of our population size), mother nature will gladly take care of things for us: disease epidemics, natural disasters, global catastrophes
I'm not going to go though a point-by-point on the parent comment, but I would like to respond to this assertion. We don't have as much arable land as you might think. There are three things working against us:
1. A lot of what is considered arable land (and activly used as farmland) is irrigated though aquifers. These are non-replenishable in the scale of human life span. Once they are gone, they are gone.
2. The best arable land is also where we want to live. People don't want to live in deserts or on mountaintops. They want to live in nice temparate plains. Farms become villages become towns become cities. Once that apple orchard becomes a Chevy Dealership parking lot it is never going to be used to produce food again.
3. Finally, climate change (irregardless of whether it is man-made or not) is going to shift arable land around; and it is much easier to "desertify" areable land than it is to "reclaim" desert. Good soil comes from a build up of organic waste. A desert that suddenly starts getting rainfall is going to take many years and a lot of hard work and fertilization to become usable farm land.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
If you remember the arguments in the '70s was whether CO2 would raise the temperature or all the particulates that we were emitting would cool the Earth or just cancel each other out. Since then we have cleaned up the particulates but not the CO2 so we are left with the global warming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I'm not sure I would think of "leftists" (I assume that's who you are talking about when you say "you people") as the most promiscuous group. I think that family size is a function of economics, education, and religion. On average I think it is fair to say that educated, wealthy, and secular people have smaller families than uneducated, poor, and religious people. Can you back up your statement that family size is related to political outlook?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Time to scoop up some land in the Northern Territories, eh?
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
But it *isn't* happening now. And do we know how much CO2 we need to add to the atmosphere to stave off this effect without causing excessive warming? Your solution reminds me of giving someone cyanide to cure pneumonia. Sure it stops the coughing at the expence of killing the patient.
-b.
You mean the model in which when you heat up water the solubility of CO2 decreases, so warmer temperatures would cause CO2 levels to increase?
Or the one in which CO2 increases cause a greenhouse effect so increasing CO2 levels cause warmer temperatures?
It's not "either or", it's both. It's called a feedback loop, look it up, since they're omni-present in nature. Anyone who doesn't realize that those two models are not contradictory but rather an indication of what can happen when we push the system too far should just stop talking about the subject.
The enemies of Democracy are
And that is therefore, a great excuse to NOT do anything about it, since they *might* be wrong. Yeah, cause if global warming isn't real and we switch to clean air and renewable energy sources we will be in REAL bad shape...
And if there is a REAL problem, and it is not caused by your religious beliefs, it will not get fixed by your evangilical preachings, and we could truely be screwed.
During the Black Plague, they thought that witches and cats caused the plague, and killed off a large number of cats, and burned many women at the stake. That was there solution to the problem. Since it was actually carried by rats, their solution of killing the cats ended up making the problem worse than it would have been, since the cats helped to reduce the rat population. They thought, just like you, that what they were doing was the reasonable thing, and if they were wrong, it couldn't make it any worse.
Maybe this "global warming" is caused by fairys, and we can fix it by placing bowls of milk on the porch every night to appease them. It "might" work, so if we don't, we could be in REAL bad shape...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
There are other metrics as well. Snowfall vs rainfall amounts for example, which would be easily done even with 10th century BC technology.
I dunno. I personally support the GP's "Stop breeding" comment. Let him and anyone else who wants to completely stop passing on their genetics. After all, it's extremely unlikely that the "stop breeding" people would actually convince every single human on this earth to stop breeding. And frankly, if you listen to that argument, and you stop breeding, then you're just helping humanity. One could probably argue that if you decide not to breed, then you clearly lack the survival instinct that the rest of us breeders have. This would imply that there is something fundamentally wrong with your ideas or your genes, and by ensuring that you can't pass this idea or genes on to your offspring, we reduce the amount of people who no longer want to breed. And even if they do manage to convince someone else, then we're still weeding out the "bad" genes. Give humanity a few thousand years, and the whole "stop breeding" thing will be completely weeded out. Natural selection, and all that.
Cynical Idealist
While you're at it, do you also believe that Xenu has infected earthlings with brainwashed body-Thetans?
Dear Lord: I don't want to go back to college, so please help me be sexy. Amen.
It's a well known fact that liberals have fewer children than conservatives.
Dear Lord: I don't want to go back to college, so please help me be sexy. Amen.
it's irresponsible to try to cure a disease when you don't know what disease you're curing.
BLEEDING! We need to bleed the planet! That should be good for it! It definately helped George Washington!
How do you know if your "solution" to the problem is just as useful as bleeding, when you don't know what the problem is?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
i always love that they spout about 1998 - 2000 being the hottest on record, yet fail to mention most of that warming came from extra solar flare activity.
It's not solar flare activity, it's general solar output, and yes it gets mentioned and more importantly accounted for. It doesn't account for the warming, only 30% of the warming can be accounted for by solar output. The reduction in temperature drops overnight shows that a greater percentage of heat is being retained, which is very bad especially if the sun is producing more heat to be retained.
frankly i think it's pretty concited to think we would be able put much of a dent in the planets atmosphere on a GLOBAL scale.
I think it's conceited to think that your opinion on the egos of scientists can cause a change in the actual physical composition of the atmosphere. We are conceited, as a species, but nevertheless the evidence is clear that global CO2 levels are much higher now than they have been in over 300,000 years, and the timescale of the change leaves only human industrialization as the cause.
Have you seen pictures of the night side earth from space? Notice anything you wouldn't have seen two hundred years ago? I think's it's incredibly naive to think that humans cannot have a global effect.
The enemies of Democracy are
But the world can't support even 6 billion people living at the standard of living of the average middle-class American. It's not even a matter of CO2 or energy - it's a matter of pollutants dumped while making the tech toys that make the economy tick... I think a far better level of sustainability would be 1 or 2 billion, and with declining birth rates, we may get to that level eventually in a few centuries. This isn't to say that the human race won't expand - we have the entirety of the universe to look forward and outward to.
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect, but you are unquestionably the most promiscuous people there are.
Ever heard of "birth control?" Even condoms stop 99.9% of "accidents" from happening.
-b.
Mr. President, we must not allow a dimming gap!
Ideas don't get passed down, only genes. When you say that there is "something fundamentally wrong" you are referring to "wrong" from a natural selection viewpoint; not necessarily from a moral standpoint.
Unfortunately, I happen to agree with you. There's a very interesting cimegraphic take on what happens when a segment of the population takes themselves out of the gene pool here.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I for one welcome the coming ice age along with the excellent skiing it will bring.
True, the scientists could still be wrong. But they also have a much better chance of being right than non-scientists.
If most of the available evidence supports an Earth-centered universe, I'm going to believe in an Earth-centered universe. If most of the available evidence supports global climate change, I'm going to believe that, too. Why? Because it's the best we can do. Sure, evidence can be misinterpreted. But there's a huge difference between "We can never be sure" and "Physical truths are unknowable." When you make policy, you do it with the best available information because even if you're wrong every now and then, you generally come out in the lead.
Do we really have to keep arguing about epistomology every time global warming comes up? Suppose you're walking across the savanna and a bunch of photons hit your retina in a way that suggests that a large lion in front of you. Nobody would say, "The best evidence I has indicates that there's a lion in front of me but there is no way to be sure; it could be an illusion." You act under the assumption that the lion is real until something happens that suggests otherwise (i.e. it walks through a tree, as only illusions can do.) There is a general scientific consensus that human activities play an important role in the global climate changes. Read the papers---you will find precious few that disagree, and they haven't been enough to sway the majority opinion.
Stop saying "they could be wrong." I'm tired of it. If you think they're wrong, tell us why you think they're wrong. Find a better explanation for the temperature increases, back it up with evidence, and refute the challenges that the rest of the scientific community presents to you. Otherwise, you have nothing to say. Scientists know they can be wrong. That's why scientists ultimately did reject geocentrism. That's also why they rejected heliocentrism and a million other ideas that turned out to be incorrect. Stop cluttering up the public debate with philosophical musings about certainty. It contributes nothing but gives ammunition to the FUDmongering interest groups who are trying to keep us from fixing the problem.
The same thing applies to global war
We routinely ignore and brush to the side any evidence that does not fit the current Evolution/Big Bang model. That's not to say the Catholic church didn't do the EXACT same thing with the Flat Earth-Centered Universe (often to the point of killing detractors).
But like the Flat-Earth situation, it will take a long time to find the truth if we say things like, "Students are not allowed to even investigate whether it appears man has been designed by a higher intelligence." Why not? What better way to teach kids to examine and weigh evidence. After all, if Intelligent Design truly is hogwash, then what is everyone afraid of? Won't the scientific method disprove it quickly anyway?
But throwing out potential evidence because we don't agree with the lifestyle or religious beliefs of the people it is coming from is NOT using the scientific method at all.
Which takes us back to people doing anything to maintain their kingdoms, even at the expense of knowledge and truth...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
First of all the planet can easily sustain a populous double our current size, if people would just use the grey matter known as our brains that we have been greatly blessed with.
Of course we can, we just have to be more efficient and cooperative and/orreduce our quality of living. But, since that isn't happening because people like you revile the concept of cooperation claiming it is opposed to natural selection, expect to be naturally selected and removed from the populace or have your quality of living greatly reduced.
I hear so many of the far leftists say "stop breeding" and such mantra to that effect...
"Leftists? Left and right are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs. Trying to imply that those assigned to the left end of the spectrum think others should stop breeding is a big stretch. It sounds a lot more like you're looking to vilify a group, out of mental laziness.
Umm, I don't think you are properly using the word "unquestionably." Promiscuity has a strong positive relationship with poverty, low education rates, and adherence to particular religions including catholicism and some protestant sects. Those traits have a negative correlation with members of political groups generally assigned to the "left." I'd say it is more than questionable. Just as a side note, calling groups "hypocritical is meaningful only if you can demonstrate that contradictory actions are those of an individual, or large number of individuals. If half of the people in a town publicly claim guns are evil and half are gun owners the town is not hypocritical.
It will be a very long time before we have discovered all of the species of the ocean, let alone consumed said species.
Perhaps you're misunderstanding the meaning of "sustainable." It means live in such a way that our supplies will not run out in the foreseeable future. If we're gradually reducing the number of species by consuming them, we're not behaving in a sustainable manner.
Again, there are laws of selection that nature lives by, and if left alone all will balance out.
This is a weak cop out. It is simply a denial of responsibility. "Nature" will take care of things. It is true, but the way it takes care of things might be to eliminate our species or kill off large portion in a slow and painful way, like starvation. One of the defining traits of humanity is intelligence. Thus we define goals and then logically address how best to achieve those goals. Depending upon your definitions that may or may not be "natural."
This 'make everyone equal (financially) so they can all have the same lobster dinner' and such mentality...
Wow, way to cram a lot of logical fallacies into a small amount of words. Argument by association is where you assume people that hold one view must hold another (worried about global warming means you must favor extreme socialism) and then you argue against the second point without ever addressing the first point. This is wrong because people don't all hold the same sets of opinions and because even if the second opinion is wrong, it does not mean the first one is.
The "left" is a nebulous assignation. By definition it cannot crete propaganda. More importantly, propaganda requires a deceitful motivation. What is the motivation of marine biologists and fishing organizations around the world to misstate the facts about fishing harvest sizes. How come most of the fish I can now buy in the supermarket was considered to be "junk" 50 years ago and not suitable for people to eat since other types were plentiful and better? Is i
Uhm, birth control? Were you aware that in this day and age it is possible to be both a) promiscuous, and b) against over population, without being a hypocrite?
Sheesh.
Jeremy
We won't willingly sacrifice our own lifestyle and position, but we have no problems with sacrificing other people's lifestyle and position for the 'greater good'! Greed is good, greed is right. Greed cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit that has marked the upward surge of mankind throughout the ages. And greed, mark my words, will not only save the united states, it will also save this malfunctioning planet.
My only regret... is that I have... bonitis..
yes, it must be the council of evil scientists, liberals and tree huggers (CESLATH) that has been funding this propaganda to try and topple the good and saintly engergy Companies!
... hi bingo
A power fluctuation killed it a few days ago. Until I can get the time to restore it, you'll have to hip yourself via the Google cache.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Just in case you actually believe that: Link. Greenland's ice cap is up to more than 100,000 years old. There were no farms back then.
And what was it's accuracy? What scale did it read in? Did it use the standard celcius scale: water freezes at 100, and boils at 0 (no that isn't a typo, look it up).
At what point were thermometers reliable enough to be accurate within 1/100th of a degree celcius, which is the range that global warming is being measured with.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
You tell me. I haven't seen any easy answers. My point was that the argument that fluorocarbons caused the ozone hole was minimized when scientists showed that volcanic activity produced far more chemicals to deplete ozone than we ever could. Perhaps a study should be done comparing the ozone hole with volcanic activity in the southern hemisphere. Changing to shorter lived fluorocarbons doesn't seem to have changed anything.
I'm sorry and don't like to hear about a higher rate of cancer or anything in any area any more than I would like to hear about an unusually high rate of leukemia in my area. Like you, I would like to have an answer and get to the bottom of it.
>The Sahara is a desert because the Atlas mountains block rain.
You mean, The Sahara that formed after the ancient africans were using it as their primary farmland?
... hi bingo
It is seriously not right when the grass is bright green from Nov to Jan in Sweden. And that despite the fact that the days are six hours long.
Mods: please mod parent (-1, already been debunked, repeatedly)
... hi bingo
What gave you the impression that the southern hemisphere wasn't warming noticeably? The raw data is freely available, and it is quite apparent that the southern hemisphere is warming noticeably; it just isn't warming as dramatically as the northern hemisphere.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I don't believe that its completely done by humans. I look at the evidence out there and come to my own conclusions. Do I think that humans have some active part in this? Absolutely. Do I think that we're the only ones raising the temperature on the planet? Hell no.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
That was also the real base on the suit against Galileo Galilei. He was not being accused of telling that the Earth was revolving around the Sun. The Pope in 1630 actually allowed research into a non geocentric model, provided the results would be presented as theories and not as facts (sounds familiar?). Galileo Galilei was accused of claiming that he was definitely right, and everyone else was wrong. Given Galileo Galilei's temperament and his strong worded pamphlets a lot of people felt offended.
(And differently than today's people somehow caught in diverse anti-terror-fishnets, he was not subject to torture or coercion. He was not thrown in jail at all. He was in Rome residing in the Roman villa of the Medici family of Florence, whose teacher he was at that time, and in the conviction he got ordered not to teach anymore and stay at his home near Florence. For the loss of his employment he got paid a yearly sum directly from the Pope, and when he got finally sick he was allowed to move into the town of Florence to be near his doctor. Quite different than anything we normally hear about victims of the Inquisition!)
Mars does have stable rotation along it's axis. It may have experienced True Polar Wander early on, but that would be difficult today. However, Mars does experience significant shifts in obliquity (axial tilt), which causes the rotational axis to point in a different direction in inertial space. The obliquity shifts happen on a much larger timescale (I want to say tens of thousands of years, but I could be misremembering) than a Martian year, so it's not quite right to say that Mars "tumbles over itself as it goes around the Sun." However, you are quite correct to say that this may have huge effects on the climate of Mars.
What about disease related deaths? I've read that global climate change will increase the range of tropical diseases such as West Nile virus and malaria. This is predicted to cause 500,000 or more additional deaths every year, swamping the miniscule reduction in heat/cold related deaths.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
2006 has not yet been determined to be "the warmest year ever" worldwide. That data is not out yet, although it may turn out to be true. The statement was, "The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record..." So it only applies to the contiguous 48 states. Whether the entire world was the warmest on record will take a little more data gathering and analysis.
Another point I haven't seen made, perhaps because it is so obvious, is that warm winters are by and large good for humanity. Normally thousands of people freeze to death every winter. With these warm winters, we must be seeing far fewer deaths and illnesses than we usually do. Granted, heat waves do kill people in summer, but I think on balance more people die due to weather in winter than in summer, at least in the U.S. and Europe, which are temperate-zone climates that extend into some very cold regions. I'd like to see some analysis comparing the number of lives saved due to warmer winters to the lives lost due to warmer summers.
Everything I read about global warming emphasizes the harm. Of course, that's what sells newspapers. But still, it can't all be bad, can it? Does anyone think that if we were suffering global cooling, sliding towards an ice age, that we'd be reading nothing but articles talking about how good this is? With killer blizzards sweeping across the globe, would we be reminded of how many lives were saved due to the mild summers? Would truncated growing seasons be turned into a positive, the way extended growing seasons are somehow being described as harmful? No, I don't think so.
Global warming has got to be better than global cooling, and undoubtedly has some good effects. It may be harmful on balance, but I don't think we are seeing that balance being presented clearly and honestly.
You can't infer any correlation [...] with the limited dataset provided above.
Exactly. So let's fill out the known facts in that situation.
Planetary Fact Sheet
Venus
- CO2 by volume: 96.5% (965,000ppm)
- Surface Pressure: 92 Bars
- Distance from Sun: 108.2 million km
- Average temperature: 464C
Earth- Distance from Sun: 149.6 million km
- Surface Pressure: 1 Bar
- CO2 by volume: 350ppm
- Average temperature: 15C
MarsGiven those facts, it is very easy to come to substantiated conclusions about CO2's effect, as well as solar intensity's effect, on temperature.
My point is that there are more factors affecting temperature than the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Your point was made by ignoring key facts and going "well, gee... what if?"
I would be interested to know how you justify that claim. We do have decent historical carbon dioxide records via ice cores, and temperature proxies, but the high resolution short term data doesn't support your claim at all, and the longer term data which does, at least, provide significant changes in carbon dioxide and temperature are simply of far too poor a resolution to make any claims about "just as quickly": ice core co2 records that cover previous interglacial periods have resolution of around 500 years; moreover they don't show changes in carbon dioxide as large as what we are currently witnessing; records that go further back to periods with significantly higher carbon dioxide levels have resolution that is orders of magnitude worse.
When mankind lived through previous changes in glacial/interglacial change the rate of change was more than likely slower. More significantly the lower technology levels of the time (and, equally importantly, lower populations) likely actually helped: humans were sparsely spread and nomadic - if climate changed then groups ould easily move to new areas. What we face now is a far denser population where any movement of significant percentages of population with have dramatic effects, and significant amounts of investment in fixed non-moile infrastructure. We can't just pick up and move all our farming infrastructure somewhere else at the drop of a hat - any transition would be costly and significant. Ultimately if you want an accounting of costs then ask an economist. The UK government did, and the result is the Stern Review from Nicholas Stern, a world respected economist. By his accounting (and it was an extremely detailed and in depth study - some 700 pages of report) the effects will be detrimental. Expect more such reports from other economists in the near future.
At this point I would again direct you to the Stern Review which is specifically what you ask for: an accounting of the costs of both inaction, and a comparison of those costs with an equally detailed accounting of the costs of mitigation. The results were that, providing mitigation action was taken sooner rather than later, the costs of mitigation efforts would more than repay themselves within 50 years. Indeed, costs of mitigation could amount to around 1% of global GDP if taken now, while inaction was expected to cost between 5% and 20% of global GDP by 2050. And just to reiterate: this was a detailed report from a respected economist (former chief economist for the World Bank), not a bunch of "sandal clad hippies".
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Why should I? The scientific community on the whole agrees that global warming is real and man-made. If you want to challenge that, challenge away. I'm perfectly satisfied with things as they stand.
You and I both know that there's no direct link. But you are doubtless also aware that there's a lot of very suggestive information, and that there's very little regulation over how the "gas credits" are spent. So let's not play games.
Hardly. If you truly beleive that third wolrd nations infused with massive ammounts of wealth are going to turn around and use that wealth to benefit the environment, then I've got some beachfront property to sell you. Sustainable enviornmental management depends on developing the required technology in the west, and then convincing other nations to make use of it. Wealth redistribution just takes away resources which could be going towards further research.
At last look, the US has made the biggest strides in hydrogen fuels technology, they have the only viable all-electric sports car, and they're making breakthroughs in solar cell technology. As far as I can tell, the US is making bigger strides toward the elimination of fossil fuels than all the other nations put together.
Who said anything about the ozone? I said greenhouse gases. That includes that big-bad-boogeyman, CO2. Here:
US greenhouse gas emissions have grown 16% since 1990, hardly a point of pride, but slower than Kyoto signatories New Zealand (21%), Ireland (23%), Canada (27%), Portugal (41%) and Spain (49%).
How 'bout them apples?
The fact that you use phrases like "talking points on Fox News" tells me all I need to know about your level of discourse. "Bumper Sticker Thinker" seems an appropriate label.
I am sitting naked in my spare room in Melbourne Australia, it is about 2:30AM and simply too hot...
That would be an extremely hot opening for an internet forum post.
If only that forum wasn't Slashdot. *sigh*
"Correlation does not *necessarily* imply causation but it gives you the right to be damned suspicious that it does."
No, no, no, no, no. That's bad science. That's tabloid scare-mongering science, it's not real science.
Strong correlation gives you the right to invent and investigate testable hypotheses for causation, and to publish those results for reproduction or refutation by others. However, you had that right anyway, it's just that it's statistically easier to distinguish significance from noise when the correlation is strong.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I must admit I based that statement on the less rain fall prediction. In a general sense I cannot support it. Also, with the extra water from melting snow and the flooding of low coastal areas it seems to be more likely to be wetter.
F*ck! We can't even hope for a dry heat.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
What a callous statement, not to mention childish, ungrammatical, poorly spelled and punctuated. My advice: if you don't want everyone here to assume you are twelve and ignore you, try phrasing your criticism more contructively and start paying more attention to the little details that act as a kind of shibboleth for the intelligent and well educated.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
to... " 2006 Was the Warmest Year EvAr!!!" Yar.
It would have been a standard mercury thermometer and it was measured in farenheit and whilst I'm sure it wasn't recorded to 1/100th of a degree the records would still be accurate enough to obtain meaningful data from.
The important measurements for the comparison talked about in this article is the average yearly temperature for the country which is a perfectly feasible data point to get from the records based on data gathered by these type of thermometers.
Since when has China cared about its citizens?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, considering that Mars's atmosphere very thin, I'd expect it to be cold. The atmospheric pressure is less than 1% that of earth's. You have to go up 20 miles to get the same pressure on earth.
Ah... we see where you come from. All sex = for reproduction.
Who do you think is having more babies?
A. Religious conservatives (All religions, not just Christian/Catholic)
or
B. Gay couples, "hippie" couples, atheists, feminists, etc.
"promiscuousness" has little or no correlation to population growth. It hasn't really, since 1960 - when the Pill was invented.
But people with attitudes like yours are still living in the "Leave it to Beaver" world of the 1950s, so you probably didn't notice.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
But what is the reason for correlation? Is it that people that have children are more likely to hold conservative views? Or does being conservative lead to having more children? I used to be a liberal, but after I became a parent I started to find myself following more of the conservative platform.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Shhh! Don't let facts get in the way of the GP's opinions. He believes that all sex = male/female unprotected intercourse with no access to abortion. Therefore, all sex leads to babies.
Seriously, have you ever met a liberal couple that had a LARGE family? Pretty rare. Now how many of you know a conservative couple that have a large family? PLENTY of those. Just go to Sunday mass and count.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
A good theory fits all data, not just a little bit of cherry picked data.
Ptolemy's model did acount for inferior as well as superior planets, including retrograde motion and maximum elongation. It did about as well Copernicus's model (they were both equally mundane) and thus the lack of observable stellar parallax lead back to stationary earth. It's not really until Kepler that a better model arrives, and then Newton to explain Kepler's phenomenology.
I've never heard of naked eye reliable observation that Venus changes size, so thanks for the tip (I teach a conceptual astro course, this would be an interesting tidbit).
I'll have to differ with your description of a good theory (unless science is to be nothing more than grand curve fitting). A good theory should fit some data, provide a conceptual framework and be able to provide predictions. I don't think we're really anywhere near a Theory Of Everything yet.
The point is that there *IS* no correlation between promiscuousness and parenthood.
There hasn't been a correlation, at least in 1st-world countries, since the invention of the pill.
There certainly isn't a correlation in the homosexual community.
The point is that promiscuousness and pregnancy have no correlation anymore.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Global warming has nothing to do with the lack of a child's exposure to farm animals. The reason most kids today haven't seen a pig is because our society has stigmatized real nature in favor of an idealized version created in manicured city parks. I grew up in farm country, and I've seen cows and pigs up close and personal (I still have a scar on my leg where a pig took a chunk out of me). My parents' house was in an unmanaged "wild" forest with real nature all around.
But, in the city, farmers aren't diligent hard workers who tend to the land and grow food. No, according to the majority of "cultured" city people I've met, farmers are just "poor dumb dirt-scrubbing hicks."
With that attitude, it doesn't surprise me at all that their children have never seen a farm animal or a wild animal. How many of your Environmentalist Icons have actually walked through *real* nature, namely a forest without hiking trails or roads? How many have been on a farm, and not just to protest it, but to spend an entire year working there to produce the food they think comes pre-wrapped in plastic?
Bah, Thomas Jefferson was right. To paraphrase him -- "No man's opinion should count until he has grown a tomato plant from a seed, tended it, kept it, harvested the tomatoes, and eaten the result. Only then can they begin to understand the cycle of nature." He also called cities, "the festering scabs on the face of America."
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
You've made some interesting assertions but I would take issue with a few.
Firstly, you seem to think that we cannot empty the oceans and exploit all the species if we can't even catalogue them first. Unfortunately drag nets do not discriminate between identified and unidentified species, nor do they leave much room for the natural selection you so obviously worship since they take everything. Another example would be the rainforests; do we know all the life forms that live in such a rich ecosystem? Does this mean that we can't destroy it?
You seem angry at the leftist that want everyone to be equal. Well, I'm with you, hard work and ingenuity should be rewarded, but why not let everyone start from an equal footing? Seriously, do you really believe that the Paris Hiltons of the world are the most fit to survive? Social Darwinism is a dead end, just ask Hitler.
Finally consumerism; you do make a good point that we must consume to survive, but that's not where our current problems stem from. Our current problems are a result of WASTEFULL CONSUMPTION. Do we really need blemish free, uniform produce at our local supermarkets? Do we really need all that gaudy oversized packaging around the trinkets that we buy? Does each of us really need an SUV, heck how many of us really even need to own a car?
How do we know? Some specific points of evidence that say it is our fault? Some experiment? Or a computer model?
Yes, global warming is occurring. Yes, there is climate change. Now let me tell you a little secret - the Earth has a dynamic climate. It changes. Ice cores even tell us that the Earth goes through warming and cooling phases, and our records of climate data show that the Earth has been this warm in the past.
The problem with the global warming community is that we can't get over our own ego and self-hatred. "The planet is warming, it must be our fault!" What a load of poop!
Does this mean we have no part in it? Of course not. We do have a hand in climate change because we make changes to the Earth.
But to sit here and spout this crap that it is all mankind's fault is ludicrous. We don't even know all the factors that go into climate and what triggers climate change. We don't have accurate enough records dating back more than 200 years to determine if this year's weather is just a spike in the equation or if it is some part of a growing trend.
My Sysadmin Blog
Why should developing nations be given a pass on how much they pollute when they are contributing as much, if not more, than the developed nations?
My Sysadmin Blog
We live now - not then.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The results from computer models show that it just isn't true. The effect of global warming will be larger than any effect from the disruption of the warm water current.
Possibly, but since I haven't seen the models and you haven't provided a link to them, I'm leery of such claims at best. The heat tends to be concentrated at or close to the equator, and the northern part of Europe relies pretty heavily on those currents to keep them warmer in winter. They may not see a mini ice age, but they may well end up with two seasons: Winter and almost winter. At least until the flow of ocean currents returns to normal.
Isn't relevant to his point.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
See the 2001 IPCC report on THC changes: "However, even in models where the THC weakens, there is still a warming over Europe. For example, in all AOGCM integrations where the radiative forcing is increasing, the sign of the temperature change over north-west Europe is positive (see Figure 9.10)." (The radiative forcing part refers to an assumption that greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase.)
When did I say anything about promiscuity? And by the way, your argument assumes that people actually use birth control.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Ehhhhh, probably the biggest ramification is that it is the earth that moves. So how much does it move? The history of how we understand earth is a beautiful display of how science works and advances.
You can go pretty far modeling everyday physical phenomena by using a flat, stationary earth. Expanding your horizons to satellites, you extend your model to round stationary earth plus Newton's Gravity. Interplanetary probes, you need more. At what point do you need to account for General Relativistic effects? Obviously not if your calculating the range of your potato gun.
Rigorously scientific, and quite wrong. This is something that's overlooked all too often -- Science can never promise Truth. The best any theory can hope for is to be very well verified. Please don't get me wrong -- the Scientific Method works better than any other method known to us. We can never know with absolute certainty that our conclusions are true, but using any other method is much worse. I'm not advocating that we replace Science with something else; I'm just pointing out that the conclusions are never absolute.But but but but they weren't "quite wrong"! They were merely improved upon. Better models came along as the limitations of the old models were recognized. (OK, it took a while) However, let me point out that the existence of new models and theories which have a geater range of validity than old models does not negate the utility of those old models. Most engineers learn classical mechanics and spend little if any time with relativity and quantum even though classical has been superceded.
So no, there is no cutting both ways. The hope and expectation for improvements in climate science is no reason to complacently wave away the predictions of today. However, we have recent history (tobacco industry)of junk science obscuring and obstructing. And that is the something many of us keep in mind in the current global warming debate.
The question of whether the ocean is a source or sink of carbon is an important one for carbon balance, and to be honest was the source of a lot of my discomfort several years ago with the conclusion that warming is primarily anthropogenic. However, the magnitude of the flux either way had already been constrained to indicate that there was no way that ocean could be providing enough carbon to account for the increases seen in the atmosphere. And:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/16/8308
clear observations of the oceanic uptake of carbon have been around for a decade now. So much so, that there's substantial concern about collapse of populations of coral and certain phytoplankton.
That's my principal problem with the "skeptics". The questions that "skeptics" ask, have either been asked and answered (as in oceanic carbon signal or changes in solar irradiance), or they represent unpromising avenues of inquiry motivated not by overall interest in advancing the status of the field, but in blocking progress towards more certainty and preserving doubt.
What you see from Pat Michaels is not healthy scientific skepticism anymore, it is paid disinformation. What you see from Richard Lindzen and William Gray is probably more cranky personal contrarianiness than shilling, but it is also not oriented towards helping science move forward and resolve genuine doubts.
There are still real problems with global climate models, which is why there's not much consensus on what warming will happen where, when, or even the magnitude of the warming by 2100 (2C to 10C is a pretty big range!). But there is no doubt that human activities are an important contributor to climate change.
CWD in deer - it seems rather odd that BSE should spread to deer since the mechanism of transfer to cows was supposed to be eating offal. Either you have serious carnivore deer - or it's a naturally occurring problem which has been labeled an environmental issue. Now can you understand why I don't trust the environmental lobby?
The sperminator Schwartzenbugger wants to have "low cabon fuels" to reduce "global warming".
o n/dimming_trans.shtml"
I'm sorry to break it to you gubbernor but it's the "carbon" aka particulate matter thats keeping us from cooking in our own sweat. See this article "http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horiz
Or google "global dimming"
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
You can't infer any correlation between CO2 and temperature with the limited dataset provided above. From general knowledge we know that electromagnetic (and thermal) fields fall off with an inverse-square of distance, so we can assume that Mars would be receiving less heat input from the sun than Earth, and Venus more.
Right, but we're not talking about the effect of atmospheric CO2 on temperatures in general, we are talking about the effect of atmospheric CO2 on temperatures on Earth. Distance to the sun and atmospheric pressure obviously play a key role in differences between planets, but they are largely static values here on Earth and so they are largely irrelevant.
All we know for certain is that the global average temperature is increasing, but we don't actually know for 100% certain what's causing it. CO2 is just the most-likely suspect at the moment.
That may be true, but if we wait until we're 100% certain of anything before taking action, we may never take action. If we do ever become 100% certain as to what is causing the warming who is to say that we won't have already crossed the tipping point where the intervention of mankind won't make a difference? At a certain point you have to stop sitting on the fence and say "Though it isn't 100% proven, I am convinced so lets start making changes." The scientific community has long since reached that consensus. The bureaucrats are still stalling it though (on behalf of their CO2 producing constituencies), and the sad state of science education in the US is allowing them to get away with it.
If you look at what the major sources of atmospheric CO2 are, nearly every one of them has other negative impacts on our environment or health. If we're not willing to clean them up to reduce global warming, we should at least be willing to clean them up for the sake of good health.
You're correct that we're not completely sure, but in science there VERY few %100 certainties, especially not with extremely complex systems like climate patterns. However, many great discoveries were made with less than "%100 confidence" the under lying theories were correct. I'm sure you can think of a few.
However, You can complete experiments in the lab that support the CO2 conclusion. The evidence we've collected in the field supports the conclusion. With respect, we will never get to the 100% you're talking about. The systems are too complex and too large for current technology and science to understand. And if we do understand them sometime in the future, by that point it will likely be too late anyway.
What's a acceptable level of certainty here before we act? Ask yourself that question.
That is the problem - all the wrong types of people keep breeding (hint - not "leftists" whatever that means) and the more informed, rational ones have stopped...
If only more "leftists" believed in such things as birth control and abortions...oh, wait....
"But this one goes to 11!"
I think that if one is familiar with the science, the science can stand on its own irrespective of the funding. However, for people who are not science literate (or even people who don't have time to wade through the details), it is helpful to point out why one might expect expert A to disagree with experts B-Z when expert A is being funded by fossil fuel companies. Also, as others have pointed out, even honest researchers are affected by their source of funding.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What are you smoking? Solar power converts sunlight into electricity which the gets converted into heat. End result: sunlight does something useful before being converted into heat. Similar with wind power. The only way to take heat out of the climate is to get it off the planet or store it in a giant battery (good luck with either of those). By comparison, fossil fuels involve turning energy stored in a chemical battery into electricity (and then heat once it's used) and CO2.
I have a degree in physics (two, actually), and I know that my understanding of physics helps me to understand climate science. Sure, one should trust the (average) opinion of climatologists over the opinion of physicists on matters of climatology, but when they agree I don't see what the problem is.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
These Christian Fundamentalists are going to get a shock when they get reincarnated as a rabbit in an area about to be bulldozed by a developer for a new subdivision...
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Of course we can,.... Ditto???
Perhaps a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but you fellows could certainly use large quantities of it. Try reading a bit of history, including the history of technology. Population growth and sustainability is directly related and correlated to energy development and usage - under the present reality context, it is highly improbable that the present population can be even remotely sustainable given oil depletion and positing no "miracle" energy sources will soon be readily adopted (with the emphasis on adopted). Both posts are living in a libertarian's (or neocon's) fantasy world - this is why the present wacko, fascist American political administration (BushCo) is seeking to dominate the Persian Gulf. Catch a clue, chums..... ["Greatly blessed with.." In who's universe?? And I would have spelled it populace, being a native English speaker.]
Thank you for wasting our time.
"Who said anything about the ozone? I said greenhouse gases. That includes that big-bad-boogeyman, CO2. Here:
US greenhouse gas emissions have grown 16% since 1990, hardly a point of pride, but slower than Kyoto signatories New Zealand (21%), Ireland (23%), Canada (27%), Portugal (41%) and Spain (49%).
How 'bout them apples? "
When someone has the largest emissions worldwide, a smaller "increase" than other nations means squat. 1 million added to 1 billion is a lot more than 100 added to 200, but percentage wise it is only 10% compared to 100%.
I don't like apples.
"A concensus among scientists is NOT fact."
Then nothing is fact.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
And by the way, the party that cries "Lower taxes" wants lower taxes for everyone, not just the current generation. The party that cries, "Raise Taxes" knows that the only way to leave the social security system as it currently is, means that our children (those working in the year 2035) will be facing an 80% tax rate to support the baby boomers on Social Security. Now who's taxing the children?
Ah, you had me until this last bit of BS. You think it will take an 80% tax rate to maintain Social Security in 2035? You lose all credibility with a bogus statement like that. Medical care, on the other hand, will be a FAR bigger problem in regards to supporting an aging poplulation. Swap out "Social Security" with "MediCare", and you may have a bit of a (exagerated) point.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
weather not seen on the planet since before the Ice Age began, 118,000 years ago.
What the fsck? The hottest day of the year in my location was announced as "the hottest on this date in thirty years". That's a 117,970 year discrepancy.
The global warming claim is that the earth is warming up by a couple of degrees. Well WITHIN normal statistical variation. If this were the hottest year in 118K years, then it's way the hell outside of normal (or even abnormal) statistical variation.
Call me skeptical, but I want to see the weather data for the year 97,324 BC.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Interesting. So that brings our data set from .00000327% of the Earth's estimated age all the way up to .00000778%?
All right. Now I'm convinced.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Those coal plants being built in China are going to be built Kyoto or no Kyoto.
Correct and that is exactly why Kyoto is worthless.
Fixing the damage from more intense weather is not very economically sound either.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Fair enough. I was recalling what he said and didn't have the article in front of me at the time. His other comments imply that the human contribution is at least significant however, if not dominant. If you feel that I'm being too generous with Pat Michaels, I can guarantee you, it is not my intent.
My problem is with anyone saying that it's a logical fallacy to mention the source of funding, when non-science-literate people are trying to decide who to trust. I'm a scientist and I think it is very valid for me to support my position in anthropogenic global warming by pointing out that almost all climatologists agree that it is a real phenomenon, and that the very few who don't are all receiving money from fossil-fuel companies. What's really idiotic is when the deniers chime in with "oh yeah, well those who don't receive money from fossil-fuel companies receive money from the government, and everyone knows that the Bush administration is all about AGW." (OK, they neglect to mention the Bush administration. That was just a lame attempt at humor.)
Well, what immediately comes to mind is a recent study done with respect to drinks. One thing worth mentioning is that studies with disparaging results are allowed to be suppressed by those doing the funding, unless the scientist demands otherwise prior to doing his research. (I.e., unless he carefully reads the fine print.) Demanding such freedom is likely in many cases to result in not being funded. Note that this is not true when your funding comes from NIH, NSF, etc.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Your proposal to accelerate opaque particulate pollution to catch up with greenhouse gas pollution is most wise.
No, and nor do I belive the tooth fairy will save us.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but you fellows could certainly use large quantities of it.
Starting a post by firing an empty insult is not a good way to convince any rational person of anything. Do you think this is going to persuade anyone that you are more intelligent or some sort of an authority?
Try reading a bit of history, including the history of technology.
A plea to believe your supposed vast expertise about technology and the state of the earth is just that. It is not a fact or logical progression that supports your opinion.
Population growth and sustainability is directly related and correlated to energy development and usage
What an interesting assertion. Given that no one with any real grasp of the facts would claim that our current, or even recent stage of development has been sustainable, how would one come to such a conclusion? Have you been studying alien civilizations again?
It must be great to live in a reality with so few variables. My world is a little more complex. Mankind can live a sustainable existence with double our current population and significant changes in other areas. For example, if we're willing to switch entirely to the most rapidly growing, nutritious foods, if we're willing to euthanize unproductive parts of the population ike the elderly and handicapped and ill. Basically, if we're willing to put up with hugely decreased quality of life and cooperate. I'm not suggesting this is likely or desirable, which is why I used it as a counterpoint to the first poster's completely correct assertion. It is possible.
Both posts are living in a libertarian's (or neocon's) fantasy world...
Gee my post has a life of its own? They attain sentience and grow up so fast don't they?
Catch a clue, chums...
Pull that stick out of your butt already. You condescension is sickening, especially for someone with limited reading comprehension. Or maybe, in your eagerness to insult people you did not bother to actually read my post. Either way, if you want someone to blame for our present political situation, look no further than the end of your nose. Smarmy elitist twats like yourself have alienated enough people to prevent any normal person from self associating with scientific views.
Thank you for the Gordon Gecko "greed is good" speech. However you missed a bit, after "Greed is good, greed is right." comes...
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I frequently argue against other points of global warming, I pointed out that paper because the parent was claiming there was a scientific consensus, indirectly citing Oreskes' flawed study.
I didn't say it was the Republicans who failed to ratify Kyoto, I said they campaigned on it. You may not understand the dynamics of a two-party system. In political systems like ours, one party can stake out a popular position and make it essentially impossible for the other party to oppose it. Much of our political dynamic, indeed perhaps the dominant political force in America, is one party using simple (often simplistic) ideas and slogans to force the other party to give ground on, or not press, a particular position. Think about the ideas that shape our public discourse today: soft on crime, cut-and-run, raise your taxes. When the opposing position is too nuanced to explain in brief, it can be extraordinarily difficult to persuade the public in our soundbite culture, and when the staked-out position is popular enough, it's often not worth expending precious airtime to make the effort.
That's the case with Kyoto. The Republicans staked out the position that global warming is a hoax and Kyoto would sacrifice the U.S. economy for other countries. The Democrats simply had no choice but to acquiesce.
If the right-wing had had principles and actually cared about future generations, it might not have funded think-tanks to deceive the American people and cynically tilted the playing field against those who might want to do some good. Maybe the Democrats would have done the right thing on Kyoto and maybe not; we'll never know. In 1998, after years of GOP battering on the issue, the minority party politically had no choice but to go along. I know who to blame for that; do you?
Unless the world's animals are having an ongoing farting contest that's lasted decades, I don't really see another possible source of for the CO2. Although you could argue that deforestation is leading to the build up, since the number of plants worldwide are no longer absorbing as much as they used to. But there again deforestation is a human cause (aka: out fault). Volcanoes spew CO2, but they don't really erupt often enough to contribute the amounts that we're seeing.
However, I am interested to hear of alternative sources.
True, current weather patterns are not really a good indicator of long reaching trends. However, the average yearly temperature has been steadily increasing, which is a good indicator of some kind of global warming occurring.
In this age of information, no person can possibly read everything there is to know about everything. As such, some kind of summarization must occur. Where most individuals fail is in the ability to keep an open mind and not blindly choose one side of the argument to believe in. Sadly, most Americans have been brought up in a society that foists false dicotomies on people. "Democrat or Republican", "Support our Troops or Cut and Run", "black or white", etc. In reality, there are often more than two sides to a problem or an argument.
I can only hope that you are not one of these lemmings, Mr. Cranky Kodack from Texas.
"I've never heard of naked eye reliable observation that Venus changes size, so thanks for the tip (I teach a conceptual astro course, this would be an interesting tidbit)."
I have no idea if people knew it was anything more than a dot before the telescope was invented. It is possible to make out the shape with the naked eye (usually a thin crescent, at least when it's visible and not obscured by the sun's glare), but I'm not sure if people realized it before the telescope was invented. It isn't exactly a large object and is around the limit of what the eye can resolve.
Apparently I wasn't clear enough; my point was that it doesn't matter if it's our fault. People are dying ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5203802. stm ), schools have had to be closed ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5194052.stm ), we've got electricity problems ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5212724.stm ) and harvests are doing... mixedly ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5216986.stm ). Oh, and 2007 looks to be even hotter.
If it _is_ our fault, we at least have a simple solution to how to stop this getting worse. If it's not our fault, we're even more screwed, as we have to come up with a solution.
"What does this mean: that 800kyears ago there was more CO2 in the atmosphere than now [in this case, do we know the source of it?], or that we do not have more or less firm estimates for older ages?"
800,000 years is as far back as the ice cores go. Other data relating to ancient climatology can only be inferred over very long ime periods as we don't have atmospheric samples from such times. However, I'm sure some smart scientist out there has extracted atmosphere samples from amber, but that doesn't represent a continuous scale.
"Just the fact that they aren't known doesn't mean that they aren't there."
In order to pump the amount of CO2 into the air that we've seen, the source would have to be enormous in size. Anything comparatively small in size would have key signs that the environment was heavy with CO2. Such signs would be a complete lack of life (too much CO2 will kill plants as well as animals), acidic lakes due to more CO2 interacting with the water vapor, a very "dark" area on NASA's thermal radiance satellite, etc. .
So, we'd be looking for a source of large area witha dispersion rate that the overall CO2 levels rise planet wide. Given the weather patterns of the planet, that's an unlikely scenario. So instead of a source of large area, we're looking at sources scattered across the globe, some larger than others possibly that cause a net rise in CO2 levels.
You know what? That sounds like...hmmm...human industry and cities. Shocking, I know.
"Are there any researches trying to find any?"
Uh...yes. NASA has entire branches dedicated to climate studies, along with NOAA, and many other Universities and research programs scattered across the globe.
"Besides, CO2 is heavily used by plant life, plancton included. It would be logical to expect that once its availability increases, we should see a boost in oceanic life."
No it's not logical. An increase in CO2 affects the environment, including sea surface temperatures and general ocean conditions. A later post points out of the chemistry. And large growths of plankton, especially in areas not used to such growth can quickly cause a multitude of other problems.
I guess I shouldn't mention the systematic destruction of the rain forests?
As water warms, it also losses capacity to keep gases (such as CO2) sequestered, which adds to the problem.
"Sources please?"
You can start by looking up Milankovitch cycles.
~X~
Yup.
Deer breed until they have mass die offs for the same reason.
I expect humans will breed to the point that mass conflict or starvation is inevitable.
And everything else (pollution, high production crops, etc. ) are just putting the problem off and making it worse.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I am on my own side so I care not if republicans or democrats beat each other up.
I am critical of facts people throw around and I have serious issues with some of the data on global warming. If you look at the historical evidence of these kinds of fears of doom and gloom, most of them were taken seriously based on the knowledge of the time and later debunked.
Just 30 years ago there was a concern of a new ice age.
To make my argument more clear. There are many things which control the climate of this planet and many substances which both reflect and absorb infrared radiation other than CO2.
Methane is a greenhouse gas and there are considerable amounts of it coming from livestock especially as our taste for meat grows (no I hate PETA and I'm not a vegan).
Water vapor as I mentioned has more of an effect on the greenhouse effect than CO2.
The sun is not a light bulb, it is a camp fire. It flickers, grows hotter at times, cooler at others, and the earth changes with it.
Deforestation is not nearly as rampant as people believe, outside of developing equatorial countries who are clearing rainforest for arable land that is. In the USA there are more trees now than there were 100 years ago thanks to advances in tree farming and agriculture. And these trees grow faster than their ancestors did thanks to gene manipulation in breeding.
My biggest gripes come from the way the data was collected and the amount of thought that went into finding errors or mis-interpretations of the data we gather from tree rings and ice cores. There are wide margins of error in how that data is compiled and interpreted.
This coupled with the fact that our science of climatology is in it's infancy and our computer models are crude at best, I don't think we can 100% rely on computer models and incomplete data to form an opinion.
I'm not saying deny global warming, I'm saying lets hold off on the panic button a while and get a better understanding of how this planet works before jumping to conclusions about the hows and whys.
Even trying to improve the environment can have unintended consequences and for us to play god with nature right now is folly. Consider "acid rain" which was the big environmental scare of the 70's and 80's. Fears over that had us finding ways of removing sulphur from our lignite coal and making cleaner burning power plants. The unintended effect of which was to lower sulphur in the upper atmosphere which helps to reflect sunlight and keep the planet cool.
The earth has a way of checking and balancing itself. If the system becomes unstable it self corrects in most cases. We have to get used to the idea of a planet who's climate changes. It's been happening for millions of years and it will keep happening. Sea levels rise and fall, ice ages come and go, forests become deserts, and savannahs become marsh lands, everything changes.
We are the single most adaptable single species on the planet. We have lived in all environments on this planet even without technology. We survived the European ice age and when global warming happened we were given some of the lushest and most fertile land in the world by the retreating glaciers.
Water is a buffer. If more ice melts, more water enters the climate and buffers the effects.
I'm not saying these ideas debunk everything about the climate, but they are just some of the ideas to think about and not automaticly buy in to everything you are told.
I will agree with something more from an impartial source or from a scientist than I will from a politician or the media. Politicians and sensationalists make their living on distorting facts and spinning things and I'm not buying into anything they have to say.
The scientific method doesn't work without open debate and logical people who rely on observation and facts. There for it is a healthy thing to disagree and to argue the facts. And popular opinion does not make something true or scientific and in fact it can cause serious harm.
And now that the permafrost is beginning to melt we can only pray the the gods that it turn out for the better. We've already seen in recent years what a little kinetic energy placed into the weather system can do and this energy is only going build up and amplify. Maybe if we are lucky the trend will somehow slowdown, maybe we missed something in the equation, but for all intent purposes this should be a code-red priority because if we do not prepare for the worst then it will be carnage.
First the natural disasters will come, and the governments will be burdened with the cost of rebuilding. People will point fingers at their leaders (cf: Katrina). States will weaken as their economies do, most of this damage will be from crop disasters. Skirmishes will break out and nations will may declare martial law. Then resources begin to run low due to the destruction of infrastructure and that's when the wars will start... it plays out like a bad "B" movie.
You have to remember that people have a tendency to panic in such situations and panic only makes things worse. And to top that off people are greedy, and the temptation for one to profit off of their fellow man's burden is one of our nastiest traits. With global warming you have to consider that it WILL change societies and probably not for the better. Disasters can bring out the heros, but as we saw with Katrina it can also expose the wickedness inside us. Plus to top that off, Iraq has shown us that if you make a man desperate and he can be convinced to do anything.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
Percentages increases are a measure of trends. Over time, the country which expands it's emissions at a higher rate will surpass a country which expands at a slower rate, regardless of the initial figures. Measuring growth in absolute figures rather than percentages is just silly - you can't possibly expect a country like the US to have the same absolute growth as a tiny place like Ireland, but you CAN expect them to maintain the same or a lower percentage. If you're going to tell me that you expect them to maintain the same absolute growth, then you are beyond reason, and we have nothing left to discuss.
We would make are children proud but are heads are so far up are ass we've created a new type of paradox and we can't have any intelligent discussion on the matter because we are too busy fulling our ears with blasphemous ultra-conservative consumer-culture oriented propaganda while screaming and kicking at the floor like an autistic kid having a hussy fit when ever anyone tries to tell us about the real world.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
Heh that's interesting - I'm in Queensland and I've heard news reports from various places about how this is the coolest summer we've had in like 20 years.
This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember. Normally by this point in the year we're in the same boat as it sounds like you are - still 30 degrees and 99% humidity in the middle of the night. But it's actually still pretty cool at night.
Fact-checking time.
The polar bear did not exist as a separate species from the brown bear until 200,000 years ago.
The current ice age began 40 million years ago and is still going. The interglacial periods experienced during this ice age only mean that the ice sheets retreated to polar regions, instead of covering most of North America, Europe, and Asia.
So technically, no polar bear has ever survived the end of an ice age.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
You'll have won when you can debunk the substance of the argument, rather than just a sensational headline.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
You forgot to mention that only about 2% of NSW has had adequate rainfall lately - the rest is either in drought or close to it.
Please refer to those sceptical scientists. There's no disagreement over man-made global warming in the scientific community and it takes a short trip to wikipedia to see it. Of course, it's harder if your source of information is junkscience.com.
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Whoever modded you as insightful? Anyhow, here's a link for you: there's no more question manmade global warming is happening.
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Then I guess the Washington Post 'is tainted by the anti-U.S., anti-capitalism, anti-progress political beliefs'. Huh, and here it is the Wikipedia and scientific community by the way. Ah, but you're right: they are a community, thus they must be Communists. /sarcasm
Then I guess we might overlook the fact that climate's changing faster in these last 20 years than it's been changing over the million years man has existed. And go on running our SUVs on cheap petrol.
:(){
"This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember."
/rant
We have had a few Antartic blasts, I had my first "white christmas" because there was an inch or so of hail on the ground early in the morning and the ski resorts had a layer of snow. Australia as a whole has had fairly average rainfall throught the drought becase the north has been much wetter than normal, our weather pattern is continuing to shift in the direction predicted by the CSIRO but anecdotally the whole thing seems to have sped up a notch or two over the last couple of years.
I don't for a second doubt what you say about Qld, the sea surface temprature (SST) on the east coast of Qld is 2-4C below the west coast SST. But for hard facts and stats I highly recommend exploring our own weather service. The service has archives going back to 2000 easily accessible via the web, the oldest entry in each archive sumarises the trends of the pre-2000 archives. For tempratue and rainfall maps look here you can also navigate to archived predictions (outlooks) and climate statements via the menu directly above the table. There is literally tons of this kind of thing availble on the site.
As an example, these maps show neither of us is "bullshiting". What they say is that NE & SE coast has seen colder than average minimum tempratures but only the tropics and the east coast have seen cooler maximums, other than those cold spots the rest of the country has been warmer at both ends. This is closely following the trend that the CSIRO has predicted, but observations support the notion that the prdictions are in fact somewhat conservative. On a brighter note the next three months have a 60-65% chance of being wet ones in the SE due to the building El Nino.
Incedently the current El Nino event is predicted to make 2007 the warmest year on record yet again, it is also said to be largely responsible for the "missing" US hurricanes. If the last two US hurricane seasons is not a demonstration of "extremes", I am not sure what is?
Disclaimer: I'm 47 and have closely followed the weather and the climate debate since I was a deck hand in Bass straight in the early 80's. If you have been in Bass straight in a 20m fishing trawler on a "choppy" day you will understand why I became interested in weather and climate prediction. Many people would label me with the currently trendy "alarmist" slur, as if somehow the prospect of rapidly changing weather patterns effecting our food & water supply is not "alarming".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Incidentally, the decrease in sulfur emissions is not largely responsible for the current warming. The earth has a way of checking and balancing itself. If the system becomes unstable it self corrects in most cases. We have to get used to the idea of a planet who's climate changes. Another do-nothing argument. Yes, the climate changes, but we don't have to help it change in ways that are detrimental to us. We are the single most adaptable single species on the planet. We have lived in all environments on this planet even without technology. There is no question we can survive global warming. It's just a matter of what the cost will be, which depends both on the amount of warming, and its rate. The more warming that happens rapidly, the more expensive it is to try to adapt. Our current civilization is optimized for particular conditions, and when those conditions change, there is a cost of readjustment. (e.g., due to relocation of some low-lying populations, or a change in good food-producing regions.) Water is a buffer. If more ice melts, more water enters the climate and buffers the effects. That's a non sequitur. Nobody claims that the Earth will continue to warm forever, just that it will continue to warm enough to be a concern.
I hate replying to my own post but I just wanted to mention that the colder minimums in the SE did severe damage to our fruit crops with unseasonal frost in Oct/Nov. I rent a unit by the bay and enjoy getting my "feet wet", but I don't want to contemplate wasting my retirement standing around all day in soviet style bread queues.
/rant_encore
It has been said that diffence between civilization and anarchy is mearly three days without food. The problem needs "fixing" while:
1. We still have a heathy global economy (well at least it's healthy for those nations that have an economy).
2. The symptoms are only starting to show.
I say "symptoms" because climate forecasting is more like a medical diagnosis, it's probalistic like the 1/20 chance a smoker has of dying early from the habit. Somking (away from others) is loading the dice against yourself in the same way fossil fuels are loading the dice for all of us, I myself am a smoker in both a personal and planetry sense and I know perfectly well that one of the "problems" I can "fix" by myself, and the other I can't.
OTOH: If AGW does get "fixed", I predict in the year 2100 a vocal minority will still be claiming, "it was just another Y2K scam".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
For every Galileo/Einstein/etc., there are probably > 10,000 Modern Geocentrists/Timecubers/etc. The world is a mighty big place.
Also, as with the modern geocentrists/flat earthers, the global warming deniers aren't trying to present new theories. Rather, they're trying to return to old theories. That hardly makes them mavericks. Correspondingly, you'll notice that most (if not all) climatologists who are used to support the global warming deniers (the climatologists themselves aren't necessarily deniers) are usually fairly old. (Unlike geocentrism, the old theory has been replaced by the new within their lifetime.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Then I guess the Washington Post 'is tainted by the anti-U.S., anti-capitalism, anti-progress political beliefs'.
Yes. Or at least the author of the article is. But even the article mentions human activity might be making up part of the reason for global warming. What percentage do you suppose that is? Perhaps we just get all the scientists to write down their opinions and average the numbers? Would that be a "consensus"? Usually science requires measurable facts, not "consensus".
Then I guess we might overlook the fact that climate's changing faster in these last 20 years than it's been changing over the million years man has existed.
Are you referring to the "hockey stick" graph the U.N. uses? That was convincingly (to me at least) debunked in an article I can't seem to find now.
I'm not saying global-warming isn't happening. It probably is. It has before. I'm not saying human activity isn't playing some role in it. What I am saying is that there's not enough unbiased evidence to suggest we completely abandon civilization right this very minute in response to a lot of "ifs" and "maybes".
I also think that with the acceleration of scientific development we can't predict what new technologies will be produced in the near future. I woudln't be at all surprised if we came up with new clean methods of generating and storing energy in the next decade or two. I think the driving force behind the switch will be mostly economic. I think methods of "cleaning up" the CO2 in the atmosphere, if we decide we need to do that, will also be developed. Or perhaps one of the methods I read about to block some small percentage of sunlight hitting the earth will be needed. It all sounds like science fiction now, but remember we went from no heavier-than-air flight to walking on the moon in the span of a single lifetime. I'm an optimist and think the human race has the capacity to solve problems it faces over time.
Oh, and I don't drive an SUV. I drive a small, fairly gas efficient car that will probably result in my death if I ever get hit by an SUV being driven by some tiny woman trying to dial her cell phone. I drive that car for, primarily, economic reasons. I've been researching biodiesel and veg-oil power and intend to get a vehicle that can run on that in the near future. I'm considering that for economic reasons, too (and because I'm a geek and think the whole concept of making my own fuel from waste to be cool). If I wind up "saving the planet" in the process, well that's just icing on the cake.
Finally, I never said squat about Communists.
Yes, but wouldn't spending on bombs also increase demand for houses in foreign countries? Isn't the net result positive?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Well, that's exactly my point. Dysfunctional production. Sure, the balance sheet is positive, but the *actual* result is nil. Lots of people work hard for *absolutely nothing*.
perception is reality
My books are at home, and I am at work, but I will post some info from home later. One that I don't have to look up is Sherwood Idso, whom I know personally, and greatly respect.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
I'm not arguing that we do nothing. I am arguing that jumping to conclusions and hastily making over our entire economy and way of life, before we have the facts, is worse than doing nothing.
I'm going to play devils advocate here for a moment.
What is the worst case scenario here? We slowly loose coastline over a few hundred years, while enjoying warmer winters, longer and more productive growing seasons and people will be able to migrate from the equatorial regions and begin settling the arctic and antarctic.
A large amount of the worlds life lives in the oceans and the coastlines that do flood will become shallow reefs that will support an abundance of life. For every species hurt by the rising ocean there will be more that will adapt or thrive in the new environment.
Think about how many people freeze to death or die because of cold weather every year. Don't you think it's a good thing to have warmer winters? Cool enough not to need air conditioning, just warm enough not to need heating oil. If we all had 70 degree winters think about how much fuel we could save.
Think about how much our economy would benefit if we could run ships through the arctic ocean instead of down through the panama canal. Think about how much rich and fertile land would be left behind by retreating glaciers and how much new land people would be able to settle in places like Asia and Canada where the harsh winters limit populations to a few small cities.
Yes if all the glaciers melted we would loose land around coastlines. But not as much as we would gain by being able to settle an ice free Antarctica, have thousands of miles of farm land in Alaska etc. The worlds population coastal will displace over decades or centuries and many people will be able to re settle into places formerly too cold to live but now warm and lush in wide open expanses.
More CO2 in the atmosphere also promotes more productive growing seasons and the lack of ice will allow wider expanses of the planet to support agriculture.
Now devils advocate aside, think about what you are talking about doing to truly make the world carbon neutral. Because that's what it's going to take to completely negate mans' presence.
If everything we do that causes CO2 has to include the cost of reclaiming that CO2 then everything would become prohibitively expensive.
You think that nice electric car you bought is carbon neutral? Think about how much coal and coke went into forging the steel your pretty little green machine is made out of. How much much oil went into creating the various lubricants, plastics, rubbers, and synthetic materials in that car.
Think about how much a gallon of milk will cost when you have to collect all the methane from the cows and gasoline is $20 a gallon to ship that milk from the farm to the store.
Our entire economy, ever facet of life in the world, is only possible because of the burning of fossil fuels.
Small changes in the price of coal, natural gas, or gasoline effect every single facet of life.
The fringe element of the climate alarmists want us to live like cave men again. They want to tear it all down in the name of the planet.
Well I for one would rather be able to swim in December than live like a primative, only to find out later that it had no effect on the planet or that the problem wasn't as bad as we thought.
Funding has less to do with quality than whether the research supports or opposes the current paradigm.
A very broad statement, and wrong, but wrong in an interesting way. Paradigms usually become current when they get increasing evidence. This can attract researchers because they want to do research that will go somewhere, and not end up in a dead end. In order to get funding, you have to show that you are likely to find something new. So, simply saying 'I want to do more work to back up global warming' isn't going to be a good way to get funded, which is why you are wrong.
My scientists said the Washington Post is a bunch of old ladies griping about their bridge games. :)
b al_warming.html
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060713_glo
"Longer and productive growing seasons" is not a foregone conclusion; global warming can cause regional weather patterns to shift and worsen conditions for agriculture. You can get more severe flooding in some areas, severe drought in others, more extreme weather events such as hurricanes and hailstorms, etc. Regional weather is much harder to predict, but reduced crop yields are as plausible as enhanced crop yields under current uncertainty.
You also act as if moving populations out of equatorial regions is a positive thing. Mass displacements can induce high economic costs, political and social unrest, and so on. And for all the new land that becomes useful, there is corresponding land that is now useless.
Once again, I'm not saying that's the scenario that's going to happen, but the whole "global warming is a good thing" argument is ill-considered at best. Now devils advocate aside, think about what you are talking about doing to truly make the world carbon neutral. Because that's what it's going to take to completely negate mans' presence. Fortunately, we don't have to make the world "carbon neutral" in order to mitigate the effects of global warming.
You are painting a very biased story. You take only the best possible outcomes of global warming, and weigh them against the worst possible costs of reducing global warming. "I for one would rather be able to swim in December than live like a primative [sic]", as if those are the only possibilities or issues to consider. In fact, you are being absurd. While the world's coasts are probably not going to be 50 feet underwater by the end of the century, neither will global warming produce your gentle Edenic fantasy world. Some people will benefit, some will get screwed, and figuring out which is which and how much is a matter of scientific and economic analysis, not wishful thinking.
And even if things turn out better in the long run for the U.S. — as if that's the only outcome that matters here; even if the U.S. is all you care about, what happens to other countries economically and politically certainly affects us — in the short run any significant change from the status quo over a relatively short period of time will incur a high economic cost. Our society is adapted to conditions as they are now, and does not possess perfect elastic resilience. That's why we need to consider "how fast, how much, and what does it cost". You may recall, for instance, the Stern Report which concluded that the economic costs of mitigating climate change could outweigh the economic costs of climate change under business as usual. It is extremely naive to insist that global warming can have no downside and only prohibitively expensive mitigation efforts can have any effect on the climate.
It's not a dichotomy, it is how both sides see the others arguments.
What were the consequences of the end of the last ice age in Europe and North America? Were they good or bad? Don't forget that man hunted the Mammoth and they became extinct yet we survived with one of our primary food sources gone. The north american bison roamed all over the heartland of the USA 150 years ago and now there are a few isolated herds, did the drastic changes to our prairies cause a catastrophe?
New York is not going to be under water in 50 years but the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and New Orleans might. I'm sure when people initially think about that they are imagining a wall of water flooding out the cities and the whole "waterworld" scenario. When in reality it will slowly push people inland as new coastline is created. The Mississippi river and the Yangtze river run through some of the most populated areas of the USA and China and they are continuously changing their courses and winding back and looping on themselves, and people have little trouble living on their banks.
Jamestown, the very first US settlement was built on the banks of a river and most of the site is now under water 200 years later but do people talk about the great flood and rising oceans wiping jamestown off the face of the earth? No because the coastlines have always and will always change and people follow them inland or outland as the coastline changes.
Deserts and rainfall distribution throughout the world is greatly affected and impacted by natural obstructions like mountain ranges being pushed up, more so than the ice caps would affect them. You arguments about severe droughts or excessive flooding, are already the norm. It is already a part of our lives to live through droughts and manage flooding. The Army corps of engineers spent the last 50 years flood proofing the USA. You are arguing that it will happen more frequently but how can you say that reliably? The climate models that are in place today paint a very broad picture and the best anybody can do is guess.
I am playing devils advocate here but I truly believe that peoples reactions to global warming and the theories vary greatly based on their perspective. If you live in Siberia you probably look forward to warmer winters. If you live in Florida you probably don't look forward to the water table rising any more than it has already.
Just think of it like this. This planet is stable and self regulating, if it wasn't then any little thing could cause a global catastrophe. If all it took to cause an ice age was the desalination of the north sea to shut down the gulf stream, then do you really think things would be the way they are today? If the planet could flip through extremes so quickly do you think any of the current life on this planet would have evolved the way it has?
We are born to this world, it is ours and it is our home. We should take care of it but it also takes care of us and we are superbly adapted to live here. It has been ever changing since it was created and it will continue to change and we all have adapted to thrive in this environment.
"Over time, the country which expands it's emissions at a higher rate will surpass a country which expands at a slower rate, regardless of the initial figures."
Right, if percentages were a constant, which they aren't, you even admit that this is true. Of course there will be initial higher percentages when they first start producing these emissions, to use those figures as a basis for your proof that the US does less harm is just downright misleading the discussion.. but I think you know that already.
Are you really arguing that because these countries have a higher percentage than the US, but drastically lower overall total emission level, that they should be held more accountable than the US for limiting their production of these emissions?
It's not a dichotomy, it is how both sides see the others arguments.
I'm not on anybody's "side", I'm saying that your specific arguments about climate change uncertainty and future consequences are not correct.
What were the consequences of the end of the last ice age in Europe and North America?
Irrelevant. The end of the last ice age did not involve warming at the rate that is now happening, nor did it involve a large human population whose societies are dependent on certain facets of the climate. You talk about human populations migrating in the past, but it was a lot easier to migrate in the past when you didn't have influential cities with millions of people in them.
I'm sure when people initially think about that they are imagining a wall of water flooding out the cities and the whole "waterworld" scenario. When in reality it will slowly push people inland as new coastline is created.
Once again, how slow and how far are yet to be determined, and considering what fraction of the world population lives on water, it is not trivial to conclude that mitigating climate change is less expensive than relocating population centers. Rivers with highly variable water levels obviously have societies that are adapted to highly variable water levels. But they are not adapted to additional water levels due to sea level rise, not to mention all of the major rivers which are not as variable, as well as all the coastal populations which are not adapted to that kind of variability.
You arguments about severe droughts or excessive flooding, are already the norm. It is already a part of our lives to live through droughts and manage flooding.
It still costs money and lives, so the question is, does it cost more money and lives to accept and deal with extra droughts and flooding, or to prevent them? It depends on the scenario, but there are many scenarios in which the latter is less expensive.
You are arguing that it will happen more frequently but how can you say that reliably? The climate models that are in place today paint a very broad picture and the best anybody can do is guess.
You can do better than just "guess": see, e.g., the Stern report. The odds of serious impact are high enough that you have to seriously consider the possibility of mitigation even when you're not totally sure of the outcome. Decision-making and risk reduction under uncertainty is always the situation you have to deal with. Once again, you advocate "do nothing because we're not sure". Well, that's not necessarily the smartest decision even if we're not sure. Sometimes the wisest course is "take some precautionary steps because we're not sure".
I am playing devils advocate here but I truly believe that peoples reactions to global warming and the theories vary greatly based on their perspective.
Global warming will have different effects on different populations, to be sure. However, even if global warming happens to help your country's climate, you also have to consider what the effect on other countries will have on you. Economic impacts on foreign nations propagate throughout the world's economies, some countries are already getting concerned about an influx of displaced immigrants, etc.
This planet is stable and self regulating, if it wasn't then any little thing could cause a global catastrophe.
From some perspectives, "global catastrophes" do happen.
If all it took to cause an ice age was the desalination of the north sea to shut down the gulf stream, then do you really think things would be the way they are today?
Desalination of the North Atlantic is enough to induce an ice age within a decade or two, and such rapid transitions to ice ages have happened. Unlike future climate projections, this is well established fact: there are many events in the geological record in which, for instance, the cli
No, I'm arguing that countries which sign the Kyoto agreement and then proceed to increase their emissions at a higher rate than the US have no business criticizing the US for not signing the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto has always been a joke, and the actions of these signatories only confirms this.
As for the rest, the US may be the world's biggest polluter, but what else can you expect from the worlds biggest producer? Sure, there's plenty of room for improvement, but singling them out for criticism is just silly. It also seems to be status-quo these days - all other nations get a free pass on everything, as long as they can shift blame to the US.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
First, let's get that straw man out of the way. I am not claiming, nor are the scientists to which I refer claiming, that there is no measurable human contribution to global warming. To say that, "There's no disagreement over man-made global warming in the scientific community" is dead wrong, unless you're defining "community" as only those who agree, which begs the question. Even the Wikipedia article to which you refer says only that there is a "consensus", and also notes that, "only one [survey] has been conducted within the last ten years, which has seen numerous advances in the understanding of climate change."
Here's a list of just a handful of the scientists who are skeptical of predictions of catastrophic climate change. There are many others who do not claim a position on climate change, but whose work supports an alternative view, and has largely been ignored by the alarmists. Further, skeptical scientists refer frequently to published objective data sets that alarmists have selectively ignored or misleadingly sub-sampled.
If you want more, I can recommend some good books, to save me re-typing their lengthy bibliographies.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Oh, it's not my own idea. You're taking issue with smarter people than I. Thomas Kuhn, for example, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Thanks for citing your sources.
Right, the scientific community is diverse and they'll never concord on anything. Actually, you'll see scientist debating on the validity of Newton's law and on the Laws of Thermodynamics; and, after all, it's their job.
However, the above-mentioned Wikipedia article says that the 'prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities"'. I take it more than 50% of scientists believe manmade GW is there.
Now, if manmade GW exists, it's a very grave problem as it's deeply changing the environment in a way we're not sure we can cope with as a species - at least a lot of us are likely not to make it. So, I'd rather take action - and see governments take action against it, soon. Using the discord as an excuse for letting things go the way they're going doesn't seem to me a very good idea - I think it's criminal indeed - because when we finally decide GW is happening and begin reacting to it, it might be too late.
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Sorry for citing again Wikipedia, but it's the best I have at hand. I invite you to also read the article on the "Global warming controversy".
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I'm afraid this isn't about the near future. It is about now. And nobody's saying we should abandon civilisation, it'd be plain mad. A lots of people is just saying we ought to change the way we see civilisation. Does adopting a renewable-energy-driven economy rather than a petrol-driven economy mean 'abandon[ing] civilization right this very minute'? Does making the politicians take steps towards a cleaner economy mean 'abandon[ing] civilization right this very minute'? I don't think so. It's a different approach, but does not mean 'abandoning civilisation'. Many European countries - and countries worldwide - are taking steps in this direction, but it's not as easy as "cleaning up CO2 in the athmosphere", or other sci-fi solutions.
Secondly, most of the controversy there is about manmade global warming is between scientists on one side and economists and politicians on the other. The scientific community is quite united on this topic - and it is their job to base their opinion on measurable facts. On this regard, I invite you to read the related Wikipedia article.
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But I think that claim is the very core of the controversy. It certainly is important to determine, as quickly as feasible, whether that's the case.
When I say "as quickly as feasible", however, I caution against undue haste. The actions we might take have pros and cons. It would be best, if possible, not to damage or destroy economies, and we certainly don't want to mistakenly take action that causes worse damage. The law of unintended consequences imposes a certain risk that is difficult to estimate. Nevertheless, foot-dragging and delays that are purely political in nature are completely unacceptable.
I agree unequivocally. Discord can only hamper efforts on both sides to scientifically determine the truth and find whatever solutions are necessary. I wish we could stop seeing it as two opposed sides, and rather as a cooperative effort, but I'm as guilty as anyone else in that respect. More than any scientist might be, and perhaps even more than the politicians, I think the media is behaving very irresponsibly. Their portrayal of the debate is despicable. They intentionally place the parties in tooth-and-nail opposition because they crave sensationalism. There is an increasing tendency for reporters to draw their own conclusions without consulting any scientific authority at all. Massive cleaving icebergs are spectacular, but before blaming anthropogenic global warming, why couldn't they check with an authority as to whether it is statistically anomalous to the melting activity that has been occurring since the end of the ice age? Land-falling category 4 and 5 hurricanes are spectacular, but a year like 2006 with a huge decrease in Atlantic hurricane activity is just as notable.
Also, I don't mean to decry honest efforts to reduce pollution of all sorts when the benefits and detriments are weighed appropriately. I don't think anyone can deny that we are in a better position today than we would be if not for the efforts of environmental and medical watchdogs since the industrial age began. While we still have a long way to go, we have made strides in, for example, particulate emissions and water pollution. In studying global warming, we are discovering indirectly-related problems we didn't know existed, as well as other indirectly-related ways to benefit humanity. Not to mention that we are simply adding to our overall understanding of how things work.
Thank you. I really enjoy the civilized discourse that I occasionally find on Slashdot.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
"No, I'm arguing that countries which sign the Kyoto agreement and then proceed to increase their emissions at a higher rate than the US have no business criticizing the US for not signing the Kyoto protocol."
Oh, then you're just wrong.
As you see below, these countries would be allowed to increase their emissions under the protocol, while those countries who have polluted the worst ALREADY need to start ramping down.
You can argue the merits of the protocol for sure but you're current stance is somewhat faulty. I would say that singling out the US (even though I don't think we are being singled out) would be appropriate given the level of emissions we have already deposited into the Earth that we all should be sharing.
"The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to a set of a "common but differentiated responsibilities." The parties agreed that
1. The largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries;
2. Per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low;
3. The share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs.[8]
In other words, China, India, and other developing countries were exempt from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol because they were not the main contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions during the industrialization period that is believed to be causing today's climate change.
However, critics of Kyoto argue that China, India, and other developing countries will soon be the top contributors to greenhouse gases. Also, without Kyoto restrictions on these countries, industries in developed countries will be driven towards these non-restricted countries, thus there is no net reduction in carbon."
I usually lump FICA/Medicare together since 1) they were created in the same month, 2) they come out of my paycheck as a single item (Fed OASDI/MED) and 3) since I'm 36, I can expect to never see either of them.
So, mea culpa on the incorrect phrasing, but the point is still valid, and comes from several economic studies done in the last few years. In fact in the (paper) study that I took this from, the worst case is that 2035 would see a minimum federal combined (Income+FICA+Medicare) tax rate of 87%. Best case was 71%.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I see this largely as a response to organizations funded by fossil fuel companies (such as junkscience) that are spreading disinformation. I haven't seen anything similar at realclimate (and I haven't been following UCS). Most people who are trying to "disprove" (really, most of them are just trying to muddy the waters) these theories are enemies of science in that they are dishonest about their science and their motivation.
Most of the grandstanding is happening in the popular press (you won't find it in scientific journals - even the climatology journals), frequently encouraged by groups such as junkscience. I don't blame realclimate for defending climatology any more than I blame evolutionary biologists for defending evolution. I don't really see the difference between defending climatology and defending evolution. Do you?Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
And kindly please don't use that neocon talking point: "smarmy elitist twats" and the alienating of people. I'm in the group which fights the wars and does the chores in American society, something your Bush buddies should learn how to do, when they aren't practising mass murder....
lol. ah, yes. "ok, you guys can keep polluting as much as you want, but...HEY! YOU YANKEE BASTARDS! CUT OUT THAT POLLUTION CRAP RIGHT NOW!"
Why does this remind me of the global position on EVERYTHING? Other countries can pollute, oppress their populations, start wars, deofrest the rainforests, fish and hunt species into extinction, break international laws, traffic in slaves, threaten neighbouring countries with extinction....and nobody says a peep. Maybe there's a few "tsk, tsk's" here and there, and if it's REALLY bad then the UN will write a letter to them,, and if it get's REALLY bad they'll write them a more strongly worded letter, but that's about it. Meanwhile, let the US try doing any of those things, and the whole globe is screaming at you to STOP YOUR IMPERIALIST FASCIST POLICIES THIS SECOND!!!!!!
I don't know man. I don't see what's "fair" about any of that. That's just me though. I feel that, in addition to taking the fall for all the bad things done in the last millennium, western civilization and the US specifically should also get the credit for all the positive things which the rest of the world had no part in achieving. You know, I believe in this little thing called "perspective". While we were busy polluting the world and oppressing the blacks, we also came up with the ideals of universal rights and freedoms, extended the human life span to twice it's normal length, and created technologies to fix most of the problems we've created along the way. Saying that the US "doesn't get to pollute any more because you already polluted too damn much" tends to ignore all the things made possible by that pollution. It tends to ignore the fact that the third world has accomplished exactly jack shit except killing eachother for the last few centuries and mooching off the modern world whenever possible. Could you imagine telling the Ford Motor Company that they can't have any more metal because they've used more of it than that drunken homeless guy in the corner who's passed out in a puddle of his own vomit? Perspective is an important thing. Too many people have lost all sight of it.
I usually lump FICA/Medicare together since 1) they were created in the same month, 2) they come out of my paycheck as a single item (Fed OASDI/MED) and 3) since I'm 36, I can expect to never see either of them.
I agree with you about MediCare - the whole issue of taking care of a rapidly aging population is a HUGE issue, but why don't you think that you'll never see any Social Security? It's a pay as you go system, and even if NOTHING is done to it except only using the funds that are being paid into it, it will still pay out at least 70% of its commitments through 2056, based on studies by the Social Security Trust Fund using very conservative economic growth models. The biggest threat to Social Security, IMO, will come in the form of a government attept to "save" it.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Oh, it's not my own idea. You're taking issue with smarter people than I. Thomas Kuhn, for example, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Which is largely true (although as a scientist myself, I have experienced major deviations from it), but irrelevant. The issue of global warming is not about a scientific revolution, or about novelty. Matters of climate modelling have been subject to strong debate for decades. What has happened is that the current consensus on climate change has been built up over a long time, as the original idea of climate change has been backed up by increasing ly good models and data.
In fact, what was revolutionary decades ago was the idea of man-made global warming. Current client change deniers are rather like those who still wouldn't believe relativity decades after the evidence started to come in.
I see the predictions of the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming as being the current paradigm, and the tweaking of models and selective interpretation of data as being the "mopping up" operations of which Kuhn speaks, skepticism being the revolutionary, or at least novel, component.
I accept that we simply have different views, and neither of us is likely to be convinced by the other. At least it keeps life interesting.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
I see the predictions of the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming as being the current paradigm, and the tweaking of models and selective interpretation of data as being the "mopping up" operations of which Kuhn speaks, skepticism being the revolutionary, or at least novel, component.
All models need tweaking and interpretation - if they didn't, they would not be models.
You are plain historically wrong - skepticism is the traditional view - the old paradigm, which has been replaced by the new paradigm - anthropogenic global warming.
This easy to demonstrate, as the number of skeptics (the old paradigm) has steadily descreased over decades. This is what happens when old paradigms die out.
Even Michael Shermer, of The Skeptic Magazine, who was until recently appropriately and vocally skeptical about man-made global warming now says that skepticism is no longer a sensible point of view. He changed his position last June - he said that the data was now so strong he could do nothing else.
I accept that we simply have different views, and neither of us is likely to be convinced by the other. At least it keeps life interesting.
If people like you can't be convinced, then we have a problem. That Shermer has changed his mind gives me some hope.
Watched it, loved it. Not so much a scientific journal as it is popular media.
Um, did you watch it? He never made such a claim. He did say that if all of the ice on Greenland melted or if the West Antarctic Ice Shelf melted, most of Manhatten (including the site of the twin towers - yes, that was grandstanding, but hey, this is a movie, not a journal article) would be flooded. Not quite the same thing you're saying he claimed, however.
Really? Which labs?
Can you give me a single example of this? Just one?
Actually, until recently you would find comments like this from Pat Robertson. Of course, now, he too is a convert, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Perhaps that's all you're suggesting, but that's not what I call being a denier. To me, being a denier means believing that either (a) it's hubris to assume that man could change the climate (if I had a dime for every time someone said this...), or (b) there's a conspiracy to spread global warming theories and that the temperature will return to normal "real soon now". Again, if you look at what Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen (two poster boys for the AGW denier camp) are saying, they don't deny that AGW is real. They merely say what you're saying - namely, that the popular press (and, yes, some scientists) are over-stating the problem. (Well, they do sometimes couch those statements in ways that a non-careful reader might think they were actually denying AGW.) On that issue, you will not find me in denial.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
What bothers me is tweaks that cause the models to predict more reasonable numbers, but for the wrong reasons; e.g. sulfate aerosols. And in referring to selective interpretation of data, I meant objectively measured data, not model-based data. And before you pounce on that one -- yes, I have seen that happen on both sides of the issue.
You don't seem to see that this is a matter of interpretation. Of course skeptics have decreased as the anthropogenic warming paradigm has grown. That's what "mopping up" science does. That tends to validate the view as a paradigm.
I would say exactly the same of you. We do have a problem. And I never said I was incapable of being convinced. In evaluating our conversation, I concluded that I would not be convinced by you. It is also painfully obvious that it would be futile for me to attempt to convince you that you are in error.
Regardless of your own interpretation of the history of the paradigm, it does not match my personal history on the issue, which is quite the opposite. It is my open-mindedness that has reversed my beliefs and led me to the position in which I stand today.
Respond and have the last word if you wish. I've had enough of being called "plain wrong" by you. Your black-and-white view completely blinds you to the fact that different interpretations might be valid. It's just plain insulting, and it is not the way I have treated you.
Did you say "insightful" or "inciteful"?
Now remember, you have to use real tin. Aluminum does not protect you from the Government's mind-control rays. ;)
Seriously - with a Republican controlled Congress (until very recently, of course) and a Republican in the White House this "conspiracy" is still going on? Must be some powerful stuff.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?