Slashdot Mirror
Billions Face Risks From Climate Change
gollum123 writes with a link to a kind of grim BBC story. According to a report drawn up by 'hundreds of international environmental experts', billions of people face drought and famine, as well as an increase in natural disasters, as a result of climate change. Individuals in the poorest countries face the most danger, due to a lack of infrastructure and geographic location. "The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world. Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft."
Siberians are happy about global warming. Siberia is now a happening place. Some Northern European countries are also digging it.
Table-ized A.I.
Forgive me for not towing the line, but I find this stuff really hard to believe.
My blog
To cut down on the solar energy we receive, and counter global warming, could we put a big mirror at the Lagrange point between here and the sun?
Locally, it means more people moving out of the increasingly thirsty eastern Oregon counties, and to the water-flush Willamette Valley. Either that or a damn good opportunity for rain catch basins as snow pak decreases in the Cascades and annual rainfall increases only to wash away into the ocean before we can use it for our hot and thirsty summers.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
People who lack this, don't exist. At least on this planet.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
and several delegations within the US want textbooks to reflect less certainty about evolution, and business interests want employment reports to reflect less certainty about offshoring..
these people should got @#$#@$ themselves because at this point there is no more contention on global warming besides those troglodites who refuse to let go of the past and want to politicise the issue.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Since we've had people on earth, we've had to face the risks of climate change.
II'd say the biggest difference now is that we subsidize people to live on shorelines and flood plains. Before we go crazy on carbon emissions, we should dump federal flood insurance and stop incentivizing people to live in stupid places.
The countries objecting are the 3 biggest oil consuming nations and one of the biggest oil exporting nations. Go figure that.
when technology advances, all boats rise!
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I don't know about you, but seeing wilder and wilder predictions over the years on global warming have gotten me more and more cynical. It seems to me the IPCC reports are more and more intent on making it look worse and worse. I've also been told that the summaries in the past have exaggerated the findings in the actual chapters. Anyone know about this report?
Saint Gore is the patron saint of Environmentalists. If you pray hard enough, he will make an appearance. He appears before you in a cloud of carbon dioxide, his chubby (face) cheeks glow with pride and joy, and he will bless you and praise you for doing your part to fight the evil demons of Global Warming, the coming of the Heat Inferno on Planet Earth.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
Trogolodytes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_opposing_t he_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warm ing
People like you are ruining science.
My blog
How can we avert this disaster in the poorest countries? We should build them coal/oil fired power plants which will be used to supply energy to desalinate water and irrigate their crops.
Search on mitigation in the summary and you'll find very little. These reports are definitely not looking at possible mitigation responses and are assuming increased carbon emission as the way things will be. Wonder who wants it that way?
I agree with that. We can't be certain. We've only got a few decades of really good data, and a few hundred years of approximate data prior to that. That's not enough to be certain to any degree about events that will play out over hundreds of years.
But that doesn't matter. We need to act on this whether (no pun intended) we're certain or not. The very fact we're not sure means we have no choice *in case we're right*. Not being certain works both ways. We're not certain it's a bit disaster, but neither are we certain it isn't. If we don't start taking action now then in 50 years time it may be too late. If we do take action then it might mean we all end up less wealthy, maybe even out of work if we work in a polluting industry, but is that really so bad if the cost of doing nothing is potentially the end of the human race, or even the sum of life on Earth? Sure, I'm a bit of a tree-hugging hippy liberal (lower case 'l') at heart, but I care that my children and children's children don't end up starving to death in a desert wasteland. With no trees. To hug.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
"This is another wake up call for governments, industry and individuals. We now have a clearer indication of the potential impact of global warming, some of which is already inevitable,"
Okay, first off, I'll pretend I fully buy into the "human-caused global warming" schtick. I don't. We may be CONTRIBUTORS, but not the root cause. But anyhoo, I'll bite in the "human-caused" thing for the sake of argument.
Even if the human race were to cease all industrial and agricultural output of greenhouse gas NOW (this very second), it wouldn't make a bit of difference in the warming trend. The material we've put in the atmosphere will continue this trend for at least the next century. So what exactly do they expect people to do?
People are going to have to do what they've always done when their environment gets hostile. Adapt.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
and what are their reputations?
if theyre like the scientists who support ID then you have a problem.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
yetanothergwdebate
That's what I heard on KTLA this morning. A dust bowl just like in the 1930's. I see a potential for cheap California real estate... Chinatown anyone :)
How long before this discussion is dominated by denial spam?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
We will just counter global warming with a nuclear winter.
we have millions of years of ice core data giving us a feel for global temperature.. and because we continue to drill we get more and more data every year.
here is a sample of that data charted
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Now we can put our Y2K supplies to good use.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
...any more than gravity is "bitch slapping" someone who falls off a cliff.
Nature is. Nature doesn't love or hate us. Nature doesn't care about us. Nature will go on with or without us. There have been times when there was no ice anywhere on the planet. There have been times when the ice was kilometers thick. There have been times when there was no solid surface. These were all natural conditions. None of these are any more or less natural than the conditions we live in now.
I agree with you. There is scientific evidence to show that climate change is not driven by human activity.
But why on Earth quote wikipedia? It proves nothing, and it's just as bad for science.
"IPCC Scientists" sounded pretty official, so I googled it up.
established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the IPCC is the authoritative international body charged with studying climate change. The IPCC surveys the worldwide technical and scientific literature on climate change and publishes assessment reports.
Ok, so they dont conduct their own research. They aren't really scientists, are they?
Sounds like one could make an argument they spend their days digging up reasons for themselves to even exist. I mean, surely a task force set up to "survey global warming research" doesn't have it in their best interests to conclude anything less than doom and gloom.
Being UN funded, no doubt they are highly politically motivated, and likely corrupt from the top down. I'm sure this is all fronting up another Kyoto-like scheme to redisperse US money around the world.
But hey, maybe if we all jerk our knees hard enough at the same time, the earth will cool down a lil bit.
Also, (most) people are smart enough to move when their land floods or dries out. The entire population of a geographic area doesn't have to die, most will relocate and/or adapt, as we've always done.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Don't anthropomorphize nature, she hates that!
Besides, as an unthinking natural process, it's incapable of caring about, let alone getting upset over, what we do. Which means that *we* need to be the ones holding each other accountable for taking proper care of the environment.
their reputations are based on peer review, not pupularity.. either their findings are unbiased, repeatable, and coherent with the full range of evidence or they are not..
repeated findings which show bias, lack repeatability, and/or are not coherent with the full range of evidence erodes reputation.
for example.. the ID assertions of a "great flood welling up from the ocean bottom" causing the continents to drift is a big fat steaming load which is not consistent with inch per year movement measured between alaska and eastern russia.
so no.. its not a popularity contest, it's a feasibility contest, and you have to prove their reputations if they have findings which run counter to the findings of the vast majority of the scientific community.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
...at it's best.
Run! NO, stampede!!!!
(like good little sheeple)
I thought the radical Environmentalist wanted 5.5 - 6.0 billion people removed from the face of the earth.
http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/Message.htm
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
>> US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft.
Gee what a surpise that those countries are objecting, given that those are mostly the worst polluters and also the worst countries for politically spinning and socially engineering information.
it's basically true, though i think its only 50 years, but it's been a while since ive read up on this, the figures could have been revised since then.
the point though is it takes a while for the pollutants to fully affect the atmosphere, so we need to make practical preparations in terms of securing greater disaster relief budgets, preparing for possible widespread destruction and rebuilding of coastal cities, and possible drastic changes to the geography and needs of many regions over the next century.
hopefully we do a good job at adapting.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Never mind that our ancestors migrated from one place to another because they couldn't stand the {political, environmental, social, etc.} conditions where _they_ were born. That was normal. It's _our_ changes that mean the end of the world. And if you don't believe that, some say that you're not open-minded.
Does anyone grok that property values in northern climates will be _rising_ if global warming turns out to be true? That the ice caps on _Mars_ are melting, so if global warming is a fact, it may having nothing to do with SUV's? And if that SUV's are a culprit, that Gore uses _private jets_ and _air conditioned limos_ to arrive at speaking engagements?
Does anyone else see there's more going on here than environmental alarmists would have you believe?
How could anyone ever think that lessening the amount of energy we receive from the sun could be a good thing?
Last I know we were already consuming our energy sources faster than could be replenished.
if anything we need a way to increase the amount of solar energy that makes it to our planet.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
Sorry folks, but as a 30 year weather guy, I have to call B.S.
In the 1970's, the worry was Global Cooling, because global temps were on a down swing, so we're all going to die. Now they're tending upwards, so we're all going to die. Oh, and there was an Ozone Hole, so we're all going to die. You get the idea.
The global temps were much warmer than today from the 1300's to 1500's. Greenland was actually green and you could grow grapes in Scotland. The 1600's saw a cool period -- see Maunder Minimum. Around 14,000 years ago, when Europe, northern Asia and North America were under the ice, Egypt and North Africa were grassy plains. Therer were plenty of rivers through the Saraha, and the Qatar Depression was a lake. The ice age ended and the climate changed. Guess what -- animals and people moved along with it. The melted ice cap meant the oceans rose a few hundred feet, so the coastline changed too. Polar bears still know how to swim.
The Carbon Dioxde and temperature pattern are correlated, but from Statistics 101, day 1, Correlation is NOT causation. BTW -- warmer conditions mean more plant growth, so more C02 is a likely RESULT of a temperature rise, not a percussor. WATER VAPOR is the earth's primary "greenhouse" gas, and many times more significant than C02, because Water Vapor forms CLOUDS.
Without the atmosphere, the earth's blackbody temp would be 255K/-18C/0F. The atmosphere makes the effective temperature 288K/15C/59F, which is why 15C is part of the International Standard Atmosphere.
The point is that warming and cooling are going to come and go because solar cycles come and go. The last 14,000 years or so have been (mostly) warming -- the most recent (of many) ice ages ended. No doubt things will continue to fluctuate, and so what? We'll adapt.
If you were able to watch UK Channel 4's "The Great Global Warming Swindle", it's been pulled from YouTube for copyright issues. Pity. It was spot on.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
The US and other G8 countries are spending a bunch of money to compensate for a warmer world, including things like alternative energy, GM food, and the like. The US is also apparently funneling a bunch of money through the MCA. This is all good. my question is we are spending money to hedge against the risk, then why are we not also spending some money to reduce the suspected causes of the risk. If it were a terrorist risk, we would have no problem spending $500 billion to fight even the most unlikely causes. OTOH, we can't even ask industry and individual to try not to pollute so much. It amazing me that we will fine people who throw a 1 oz tissue out a car window $500, but have not problem with the same person producing 1 kg of CO2 for every mile driven in the big truck or SUV, multiplied but the 60 commute every day. Insane.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
In 50-100 years people will look back and think, "what arrogant fools", what poor uneducated sheeple" to believe that they could affect climate on a global scale. Brings a whole new meaning to terraforming, when people think we are reforming our own terra.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
given that climate change is a fact, should we spend money in the hope that somehow we can reverse any human causes of climate change, or devote money to adapting to the warmer climate? If we cannot reverse the climate changing, and warming on Mars and other planetary bodies suggests there are significant non-human factors involved here, then spending significants amounts of money in "saving the environment" as it were will lead to the problems for billions of people, if the article's estimate on the impact is correct. For health reasons alone we need to spend money to fix how we treat the environment, but we need to make sure we're analyzing the full costs and benefits. To date every thing I've heard about stopping global warming involves things that could cause more environmental destruction. Corn ethanol is a prime example.
and for all deniers I provide this practical list, pick your poison:
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Canada is also a happening place. And they take in almost anybody. And I believe and they have a homesteading program where you can get your own large tract of land for free or nearly free. If I weren't already an American, I'd go for it even if I had to steal, jump fences, work aboard a cargo ship, swim and take assumed names along the way.
People forget that never in the history of Man has the climate not been changing. We survivors are the ones that went from where conditions were not survivable to where they were better. The ones who stayed behind are history. (Note to people in southern Florida: if your children can't breathe seawater, now would be a good time to find some land that won't be under water when they're grown.)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Maybe it's just because I've only heard the soundbites on this so far, such as "Report says warming to hit poorest people hardest"...and "The poorest of the poor in the world -- and this includes poor people in prosperous societies -- are going to be the worst hit," Pachauri said. "People who are poor are least able to adapt to climate change."
Fine, but you know what...in terms of problems and people, those billions of po' folk are not just going to hang out and wait for the vultures. They are going to make life just as worrisome for the rich folk, regardless of continent. Didn't we just hear how the US Southwest is the next dust bowl?
In other words, there is no comfort to be taken by anyone once a ball like this gets rolling, so spare the demographic studies and start cleaning out that old bombshelter, cause the hard rain is gonna fall...
Stupid question on my part: How do places on earth regularly get below this temperature with an atmosphere?
Solar wind chill? (I joke).
In all seriousness, if that temperature is a correct fact, and the atmosphere is our blanket to keep us warmer than -18C/0F, how do we radiate more heat to get below that background temperature?
We already figured out what causes global warming: the sun!
But seriously, a warmer planet is not automatically a bad thing. It's doesn't cause mass drought and famine. This is FUD.
They want something, and they want people to believe their reports so they can get it. Scaring people with doom-saying is the easiest way, apparently.
either"
Troll
Flamebait
Stupid Fuck.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
here's a chart, though it doesnt show the 2000 levels very well, you can see a sharp spike that shows roughly double the maximum co2 levels seen across the previous 400,000 years at the '00 mark. notice how temperature (in blue) tracks with co2 levels, and shows greater sensitivity to co2 at peaks.
remember temperature is related to atmospheric co2 in the same way economic growth is related to money supply.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
What ever happened to the Acid Rain scare? What ever happened to the coming Ice Age (Time Mag 1974)? What ever happened to water conservation(1958)? What ever happened to the Population Bomb?
How about sending the Peace Corp to the places that need water and dig a well?
I've got my shovel. Let's go.
Oh, their nation's government won't let us in?
I've got to start off by saying: I'm a conservative Canadian, nowhere near a vocal tree hugging liberal.
To all those that don't believe man is impacting the climate, I call BS. People said the same thing about the hole in the Ozone Layer (caused by CFC's prevelant at the time). People said the same thing about Acid Rain (caused by VERY bad emission controls on Auto's).
Let me bottom line this, read up on the melting at the poles, and at Greenland. Take a look at the average temperature per season per year for the last 20 years. Take a look at the number of Islands that have *disappeared* due to rising water levels. Lastly - consider that more people are alive today then have existed for our ENTIRE history.
The UN doesn't exist to "spread America's wealth", countries like Canada and NZ contribute the same or more PER PERSON than the US (when it pays - which is increasingly rare). The UN exists so that all the people of the World have a place and forum to voice their concerns on GLOBAL issues. I would argue that the changes we are making to our climate are perhaps the most important such issue to ever be discussed at the UN.
If after all the evidence you don't believe we're impacting the Climate, then be prepared to kiss your ass goodbye - if war and famine don't get ya, the drought will.
Killer
"All those scientists around the globe, that practice science everyday and have studied years and years worth of data are wrong. I saw something on the TV that said so."
Another favorite:
Ok, fine we have global warming, but it's not going to effect anybody.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow, I am completely surprised at the number of posts attempting to dispute global warming. Pathetically, most of said posts attempt to call into question the impartiality of the scientists that did the research as if they have some political agenda of their own. It's more than a little ironic that the term "sheeple" gets tossed about by those who are generally regurgitating political dogma.
And for the others who point to past predictions of environmental degradation that never materialized (global cooling, for instance) as reason to ignore the current forecast -- I beg of you, please stop. We obviously still don't know exactly how everything works but when the current body of knowledge and the majority of the scientific community is predicting something severe, we would be stubborn to the point of idiocy to do anything but plan accordingly.
Personally, I don't need any government study to convince me that global warming is happening. Look at a satellite map of the Arctic thirty years ago and compare it to one today. Thirty years is to the planet the time equivalent of an afternoon to us. Ever get that depleted hot flush a day before the flu kicks in?
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Global warming is a fact. You can pull all the temperature records over the last 100 years and clearly see that the average temperature has gone up 1 degree farenheight. But don't look too carefully, temperatures have been receding since sometime in the late 90's.
In the 70's we were concerned about the impending ice age.
Penn and Teller did a show about the environment. Someone was so concerned about saving a tree that they lived up there for many months. They even built themselves a wooden tree house that they nailed in place.
why not force those people to build on stilts, and subsidize the stilts : )
it'd cost less in the long run than paying to rebuild and refurnish homes in floodplanes.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
if i remember correctly, they still have a huge backlog of ice cores going back to the time of the dinosaurs they have yet to fully log..
so, in all honesty, theyll get it from the refrigerator : )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I have a problem with anyone who says that there's no disagreement about an issue. If you're interested in why third-world countries aren't developing at all, and if you'd like to see a different perspective on the issue, I'd recommend The Great Global Warming Swindle.
YouTube abridged documentary
Torrent of full documentary
Please don't hurt my karma too bad, I just think it's nice to consider all sides of an issue.
Heart,
Your Mom
Some (not all) of these "certain terms" that where debated where simply scare tactics that have no place in science, for example, the draft talked about economic problems N. America would face *with certainty* in the future. What purpose does a section about the economy serve in a document about global warming? This was just one of those debated terms, there where more that where either legitimately questionable or had no place in a science document. You have to take a step back and realize that when you get this many people together there are going to be ridiculous notions made on both sides. There are also going to be crazy people who will want things added or removed to push their agenda. Your knee jerk reaction to legitimate open debate about science should never be "$%@% those guys questioning things".
real estate prices say different, it will be "discounted" beachfront property, only 600k instead of a cool 1.6 mil, buy now! it's a steal! (scuba gear sold separately)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
'nuff said.
Actually I believe there is still contention, not over global warming but the cause and effect of it. There will always be differing opinions in this matter as it's a very complex subject. And there is most certainly arguments as to how things will play out down the road. In fact people on the extremes of both sides - not the real scientists - have politicized the issue and gone so far as to make it into a religion. Just look at what you said, "...those troglodites [sic] who refuse to let go of the past..." Yes, you're clearly a drooling moron unless you believe in my version of the truth.
What? Me Worry?
As long as I'm rich when I'm dead, I'm one happy mother fucker.
Sincerely, George W. Bush and the Gang
So they say that global warming will impact the lives of billions of people, but how many would be impacted by regulating greenhouse gas emissions as they propose? Droughts are not as much as a problem as long as you can build reservoirs to store rainwater and to provide flood control (we did this in the US just to increase our agricultural output). Costal flooding can be alleviated by building dikes and dams, and by moving away from problem areas. But if we spend all our money reducing greenhouse gasses, how much will be left over for these other projects which will still be necessary no matter how much we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
We need to establish how much the need for mitigation will be reduced by emission reductions, and balance it against the cost of mitigation that will still need to be undertaken.
Likewise, people need to consider how reducing greenhouse gas emissions will affect our efforts at rolling out zero emissions power technologies. The US could replace all of it's domestic power production with wind power for about 100 trillion dollars (which is ten times our annual GDP). It is likely that spending money to reduce greenhouse emissions by other methods will effect our ability to replace existing power infrastructure with these new technologies.
The site is owned by Steve Milloy:
Steven J. Milloy is a columnist for Fox News
also a paid advocate for Phillip Morris
Steven Milloy has made a career of lobbying for polluting industries
http://info-pollution.com/milloy.htm (laste update Jan of last year, I believe)
Things to take into account when determining wether or not this site is biased..
I would also like to point out the many prediction are coming true at an increased rate.
WHen a very [powerfull country like china signs off on the IPCC report(after they made the report make it seem Less severe) you can pretty much believe it.
If there was a problem with it, China would have made a big stink out of it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I agree with symbolset about survivors.
Also, phucking Al Gore needs to get his head out of his ass and change his mind about China not needing to clean up their heavy industry. That would also help level the playing field for trade which, currently, is not fair trade at all.
Also, it would benefit everyone if the the junk science were left behind and real science was touted. You know, the fact that the majority of global warming is a natural occurance.
example: katrina. (the city still hasn't recovered).
i honestly dont believe any actions on emissions now will show results for the next 50+ years, but in the mean time things will continue getting worse, and we should be allocating more funds to disaster relief and trying to prevent the end of this spike in co2 from getting any higher.
this denial and refusal to prepare based on "uncertainty" is like playing chicken with a freight train.. sure it "might" veer off the rails and not hit you, but all evidence points to it plowing straight on through. do you really want to be standing on the tracks when its perfectly feasible not to?
at this point the evidence is so blatant they might as well go to the airport and proclaim "man will never be able to fly"! at this point it's very much religion-like political fervor rather than weighing of evidence and reality.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
He has come up with a workable idea. There have been engineering studies done. It is possible. You have proposed a cost.
How about flipping it over?
You propose a solution "down here" and we'll consider the cost.
Until then, all you are doing with "solutions down here" is handwaving.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
co2 causes heat retention in atmosphere
human society creates billions of tons of co2
co2 has tracked consistently with global temperature in a positive relationship for the past 400,000 years of logged data, and we still have millions of years in ice cores to process.
those 400,000 years have had ice ages and warming periods, all sorts of climate, flora, fauna, and geological activity, and none of them have had a spike half as high.
it doesnt take a rocket scientist to notice the one key departure from those previous 400,000 years... human industrialization and population growth.
however, even if you contend we are not the cause, were still belching co2 into the air at the rate of a decent number of erupting volcanos, it would be prudent to attempt to stop it.
if youre standing in an airport, arguing with your friends because you dont believe humanity can ever fly, then yes, you are a drooling moron.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
A few papers speculating and calling for more data -- but not drawing a conclusion -- does not equal "concern over an impending ice age". Read the actual papers and then try and claim the authors were predicting an oncoming ice age.
For an interesting perspective, I highly suggest that everyone read Dr. Lomborg's presentation to the US Senate. (PDF)
I have a real hard time believing scientists/enviro-nazis that have an agenda. Remember how bad Freon and CFCs were? They were going to destroy the ozone layer. Not so much... http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/blackstock5.html
Connecticut has a net loss as far as federal dollars go.
We only get $0.61 back in services for every $1.00 we send to the fed.
New Mexico gets a whopping $2.00 for every buck they contribute.
I think we should stop subsidizing people who live in the fucking desert and Hurricane-prone regions.
Blar.
The main significance of the new data lies in the high correlation between GTG concentrations and temperature variations over 420,000 years and through four glacial cycles. However, because of the difficulty in precisely dating the air and water (ice) samples, it is still unknown whether GTG concentration increases precede and cause temperature increases, or vice versa--or whether they increase synchronously. It's also unknown how much of the historical temperature changes have been due to GTGs, and how much has been due to orbital forcing
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
The scientific method: Gather data; form hypothesis; make prediction; experiment and observe; repeat.
We have a whole mess of data, and we have a few hypothesis. The next step is to make a prediction based on a hypothesis and observe. We can't create an experiment for obvious reasons, but we can still observe. Last year there was a prediction. I don't know if it was a scientific prediction, or merely the collection fear mongering of the mainstream media (it's becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference). The prediction was that this year's hurricane season would be much much worse than last. What did we observe? A rather mild hurricane season. The prediction failed and the hypothesis has been proven false. In fact, nearly all climate predictions over the past fifty years have failed.
There are two major problems with the current climate scare. One of them I alluded to above: the media-zation of science. We are basing public policy not on science, but on what the media filters, edits and digests for public consumption. We aren't seeing the data, but are only being told "scientists say...". When you look at the actual data, you'll find that scientists aren't necessarily saying what the media says "scientists say...". A few might be, but not all. It's most definitely not consensus. The consensus is only that the climate is changing and that human beings probably have some level of affect. How much the climate is changing, what level of affect humans have on it, and what are the consequences, are NOT agreed upon in the scientific community.
The second major problem is that this is a very complex area of study. VERY complex. The models used for prediction are EXTREMELY complex. They've been doing modeling on supercomputers since the first supercomputer. Oak Ridge NL announced a new record breaking supercomputer today, and it will be used for... climate modeling. There are simply too many variables and too sensitive to initial conditions. If a butterfly can flap its wings in China and affect the weather in Canada, then we're going to need lots and lots of supercomputers to model all the butterflys.
Are these the models that predicts history's worst hurricane season? If so, they need to be seriously reworked.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That's what we're becoming. So totally wrapped up in the idea that we have some sort of "right" to exist that after engaging in hundreds of years of logical scientific inquiry, finding mountains of evidence that the planet's weather is dynamic, vibrant, and above all fickle, that there are regular up and down periods of cold and hot, we then turn a blind eye to it and against everything we just spent all that time digging up, and proclaim that the world should always have been exactly as it was on June 17, 1931, in Passaic, NJ or something to that effect, and that we must move Heaven and Earth to make it stay that way.
.0003 of that time?
Of course, I'm sure the ancestors of the present day people thought that as they watched the Earth begin to thaw from the last ice age, and the oceans rose to cover the continental shelves and give rise to the planet-wide myths about a globe covering flood. Except, they didn't have scientific evidence in huge piles of books showing that this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of what the bipedal monkeys are up to.
It has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. It has been colder than this in the past. Much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. And we know that there is NOTHING we can do at our present technological level about it. So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we've only had this supposedly evil technology for only less than
Because the global warming is real and there are people in this world and always have been who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them. And so they trot out to us a false premise, that we are totally responsible for an actually natural occurence in the long span of planetary history, and another one that they can save us from ourselves if only we give them the reigns of power. Seems like the phoney-baloney oil crisis that never happened in the 70s, the phoney-baloney global starvation crisis that never happened in the 60s, the phoney-baloney Communist scare of the 50s that was horsehockey, and ten million other crises.
It seems on the surface that we are supremely full of ourselves and yet in truth we are terribly dubious, completely without hope, and utterly given to embracing our own fallibility. There is no faith in ourselves in this idea that we caused global warming and still none in the idea that we can stop it. Only false hollow beliefs put forth to enrich the power of others.
Have faith in our progress and our natures that we are not so bad as we would think and as others would posit. We have greatness unknown and unmatched simply waiting to be explored. Once we dreamed of exploring the universe and doing so in style and comfort where now we dream simply of returning to primitive conditions lest Mother Earth shrug us off in anger over our insolence. Mother Earth is a nonentity and the physics of the world merely uncaring and indifferent to us. We cannot make the world stay in steady state, we can only live around it, and we are supremely capable of doing it. It was never of question if we can, but if we will.
There are problems with how we treat the environment, but growing the power of the state over the power of the individual, regressing to dreary primitive states, embracing inanities like hemp and bio diesel, and forgetting all the wonderous things we've thought up in the past to overcome each problem in turn, is to turn our back on being human, and all the best things about that. We can solve the problems and there need be no doom and gloom, and the solutions need not involve handing more power over to those who have far too much already and not nearly the wisdom to know what to properly do with it.
The world will shrug. We will move with it.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
In, er..., Socialist(?) London we put the politicians offices right next to the Thames, which both smells and is approximately six more shopping trolleys away from breaching it's banks apparently.
Regards,
Phil
Regards, Phil
n/t
Numerous scientists whose names are listed on that report as "authors" have publicly stated that they do not agree with it and that the evidence doesn't support it, but that it's been impossible for them to get their names removed.
Most of the names of "experts" on it are government bureaucrats who know precisely squat about environmental science, but got their names on the vanity list as "authors".
The reason they're taking so long (years) to release this report is because it can't be picked apart by scientists if it's not done yet, but the press knows no such bounds.
If you'd like to run some of the same experiments done in the IPCC report, you can (with a slightly older code base). The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a graphical interface and ported to Mac/Win. You can add CO2 or turn the Sun down with your mouse, a checkbox, and a slider. Simple graphical tools are included to look at the final results (there are hundreds of variables to choose from).
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
On many topics, there's a high ratio of insight to drivel on slashdot, but when it comes to
discussions of global warming, I realize that most slashdotters are young, impressionable
Americans brainwashed by their media, their megacorporations, and their mega-corporation
loving government, into not even bothering to evaluate the science of global warming themselves
before going into their kneejerk, programmed-in denials of it.
Go read the website ( http://www.ipc.ch/ ) and a bunch of credible references out from its reports,
then come back and post with some good, peer-reviewed knowledge under your hat.
Comment without research is just cocktail party gossip on the web, and frankly, I'd rather read
your uninformed opinion on Paris Hilton's fashion sense than your deliberately uninformed
opinion on global climate processes.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
http://www.ipcc.ch/
low-rent keyboard
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
anyone who calls the ignorant few ignoring the elephant in the dining room out as morons should obviously be censored.
after all, policy makers and oil companies should be able to breed their doubt and controversy without that pesky logic and reason crowd pointing out the overwealming evidence.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"but when it comes to making policy it would be nice to have a more constructive argument than "I just don't buy it."
I dunno. This has worked pretty well for George Bush these past 7 years.
"do you really want to be standing on the tracks when its perfectly feasible not to?"
No, what I'd like is science publications to remain fact oriented. The facts show climate change, and those facts can be proven, let's stick to that and not veer off into other things for (what seems to be) the sake of scaring people into better policy. Leave the stuff about what will happen to so-and-so's economy to the economics professors and get the facts out without any dilution.
"at this point it's very much religion-like political fervor rather than weighing of evidence and reality."
If I had not commented already you would get my mod points for this. This is the most truthful statement anyone has made about the climate change debate.
Just another hoax, move along. We've seen them before.
The population bomb.
The coming ice age.
The killer bees.
The ozone hole.
Please; this is like the brand-new Corvette that a man died in, off the road; you could buy it for a mere $400, but you have to get the smell out. (See Snopes.com)
It's not that there isn't a change, it's not that there won't be changes to human population. It's that there's nothing we can do, and we'll just deal with it. Remember that Greenland was once called that because it USED TO BE GREEN.
No jumping out of windows, guys. This, too, will blow over.
And just so ya know- Revelations is not going to be as bad as many (LeHay, Lindsey) say it's going to be. Miserable, yes, but not that bad.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Rough age of the earth, 4.5 billion years.
Now lets say we have 150 years of solid data (which we don't)
That is basically saying we have 1/30,000,000th (one thirty millionth) of the complete data.
Not very much, so...
Let's say the average person reading this is 40 years old, 1/30,000,000th of this person's life is roughly 2 minutes.
Not much to go on.
well.. interpretation of results and their implications is dictated by the intended audience.
If i report to someone that an experimental ferrous eating bacteria has escaped into the northeastern US megalopolis it doesnt mean much in terms of implication.
if i tell them that bacteria is highly aggressive and poses a major threat to the structural integrity of iron and steel framed buildings then policy makers have a better understanding.
this kind of publication, combining the efforts of hundreds of scientists, is intended for policy makers. they are not trying to convince themselves or other scientists, theyre trying to make a sound argument for their assertions and make clear the practical implications for the domain of policy makers, e.g. society, economics, and natural disasters.
I highly dobut these people working individually on reports intended for the acedemic community would be including such interpretation.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Umm... It was 27 degrees and snowing today. April... No one ever thought April showers were show showers!
If that's consistent with a warming effect, then I'm at a loss.
Sure the planet's warming. Proving that the actions of our species is the cause, that's a hell of a lot less clear.
Unless that's shown to be the case, hamstringing the world economy is a completely ridiculous "fix" for the warming trend.
Let's skip the feelings and "it's so obvious, geeze" responses, and apply the scientific method. So far, this has not been done successfully.
Europeans are brainwashed about America, and not very clear thinking.
Consider the discussion of climate in terms of control systems. The idea that politically negotiated adjustments of CO2 output are sufficient to control (whatever that means) the infinitely large dynamical states of the earth's climate is absurd. What outcome do you Kyotoists seek for the costs imposed? Do you want to end the current interglacial period. Great. Northern Europe and Canada will cease to exist due to renewed continental glaciation. Do you want to arrest climate change at the 1960 ideal? You can't Kyoto or no.
It is also not clear that greenhouse warming results in drought. It may result in the expansion of the temperate zone and increase agricultural output. The warming 20th century resulted in the expansion of world population from 1 to 6 billion. The dramatically cooling 14th century resulted in the deaths of 100 million or more due largely to failed cereal agriculture.
Now we have judges telling us that CO2 is a poison. So is their flatulence.
an ill wind that blows no good
We're arrogrant thinking our puny actions can have any lasting effect on Nature.
Sorry folks, but the Earth is five billion years old and has seen a lot worse than anything we can do let alone control.
"Man-made climate change" is a political slogan, not a fact.
In other words, you're being played by an small group of self-appointed know-it-alls who think they know what's best for everyone else, and they're doing it not for your welfare but for their own gain.
Don't be too suprised after you chase Farmer Jones off the farm to find Al and Rosie sleeping in his bed.
Environmentalism is the new Stalinism.
What?
Consider this abbreviated list of problems capable of bringing the world to it's knees.
The common thread underlying all these problems is the footprint of six billion people.
If we had only one billion people or if the world population lived with the footprint of only one billion people, then every problem listed above (including GW) would shrink to manageable levels.
It is grossly irresponsible to suggest that all we need to do is drive more efficient cars and make minor tweaks without really changing life stlyes to solve the world's problems.
Either we have to find a way to reduce the footprint of the word's populatino to roughly the equivalent of one billion, or nature will step in and impose some combination of war pestilence and famine that will do the job for us.
Why aren't we promoting massive global population control as a higher priority than global warming?
The only legitimate role of government is to protect people's personal and economic freedoms.
No, the spelling is correct.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Fewer third world povs out there sending nigerian spam emails sounds good to me.
Here's what I contend: Chinese coal fires produce 360 million tons of CO2 per year...more than all cars in the United States COMBINED. We need to work on the big stuff before we start enacting laws to force people to ride bicycles to work. Or what would you suggest to get rid of CO2 production in the US?
we could mandate the replacement of all our aging coal plants with, at minimum, the newest incinerator technologies as used in singapore.
the emissions are insanely low, and that means more of the fuel was transferred into heat, and thus into energy.
a beneficial side effect would be the ability to use garbage as fuel instead of using landfills, which would also mean cheaper garbage service because those plants could make a profit without charging for dumping rights.
we could also use more nuclear, yes the waste is aweful, but you use the newer reactors (im not as familiar with this so i don't know the names) and they can handle low grade materials thought of as "waste" with our older and aging reactors.
there is plenty of green space in the US, it would be very practical to put up wind turbines along highways and other open but low density areas.
finally, there are places like san fran bay, which have insanely powerful currents which can be harnessed with properly designed turbines (so as not to kill marine life).
as for vehicles, there are numerous models, most of which are not even marketed in the us, which get 40+ miles a gallon. I see ads all the time claiming the "miracle" of 22 mpg highway.. 40 mpg would absolutely kill the market. Develop them at GM and you have a huge boost to domestic car sales.
for the future, there is the promise of that new dye which will generate electricity... paint your houses and impregnate skyscraper windows with that and enjoy the savings.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Forgive me for being skeptical of someone who calls carbon dioxide "C02" instead of "CO2"
Thou shalt bow down before the "Science" of global warming and beg forgivness from it's patron saint Al Gore. Thou shalt not drive anything larger than a Yugo and thou shalt never fly anywhere in a jet* * Unless thou art Al Gore! My solution to fix global warming if for all the true believers of the Church of Environmental Disaster to stop breathing out CO2....that will fix the problem in less than 24 hours!
mod me troll...for get me...not coming back
I'm not convinced that a world with warmer weather would be, overall, a worse world than one with the same or colder weather.
It seems like common sense that most of the climate in the United States would be far more comfortable under the warming conditions being discussed.
Humans are intelligent and I see no reason why we could not figure out ways to mitigate warming conditions in the places where they are harmful, enjoy them in places where they are beneficial, and still wind up better off overall. For example, if sea levels are increasing due to melting polar ice caps, why not remove some of that ice and take it to the desert, where it would be useful?
I would like to see some thinking along those lines, instead of people ringing their hands and insisting that the sky is falling. After all, if you are saying that global warming is coming, and it's our fault, you're asking us to cripple Western civilization to only partially mitigate the situation. Bjorn Lomborg famously said that if we did everything Kyoto proposed, we might affect the temperature by half a degree, at horrendous cost to our economy and society.
I, for one, don't want to make those sacrifices and "enjoy" the colder winters that would occur if the changes were made. I prefer the climate we have now to the climate we had a few years back, and if the warming trend continues I'm sure I will like the future climate even more.
I am, however, a little puzzled in that we've been having exceptionally mild winters recently, and yet they cannot be explained by the tiny oneDegF change we're allegedly going through during global warming. So it looks to me like something other than global warming is involved, and perhaps that phenomenon, whatever it is, needs to be better understood.
Whatever it is that's creating milder winters, let me place on record that I hope it continues for a long time to come.
D
(The author hates cold weather and believes that the worldwide minimum temperature should be approximately 65degF. He should just move to Florida, but he is stuck in a mid-30s cold spell. In spring. And you want to talk to him about spending billions to reduce the world's temperature? It is to laugh.)
Have they improved the trash incinerators in recent years? There was a plant south of the city here for a while, but they shut it down because:
1) It was polluting horribly
2) It kept blowing its own roof of, because they missed something that wasn't really supposed to go into the incinerator.
I mean, I'm all for burning all of our crap instead of tossing into landfills (see especially those cow-manure powered generators). But burning anything is releasing some kind of gasses. I'm curious what progress has been made to make trash burning do anything but shift where the pollution is going.
You've managed to get a global warming skepticism comment up to +5. It's pretty hard to do that kind of thing.
~= scwizard =~
Consider, over 80% of fish in the oceans are under threat from extinction due to over fishing.
Consider, there is currently a honey bee plague that is killing up to 90% of hive populations in N. America. How fucked up is that?
Ground water is being used up at unsustainable rates in China and India. --- as well as in all developed countries
See, most people in the west don't hear about these disasters that are *happening* right now because they don't effect most of us... yet.
But everything is connected and eventually the shit is really going to hit the fan.
I live and work in Kenya and experienced the drought last here personally. Picture every day thousands of people carrying a small 5 gallon pail on their head, leaving slums in search of a little bit of water. Picture starving cattle --- so thin you can count their ribs, being driven into the city center to graze upon grass in the ditches and in parks. That is if they don't just drop dead on the side of the highway. (during the drought I saw...and smelled dozens of rotting carcases littering along the highway).
I"m an optimist at heart. Human can solve their problems, but MOST people have no FUCKING clue of what is happening and how it will get MUCH worse.
I'll tell you what though, democracy as we know will change. Governments WILL ration what we eat, drink, and manage the energy we consume. In developing countries this is the NORM. Soon it will be the norm everywhere. Doom and gloom??? No, just REALITY.
The simple truth is that most people are greedy bastards and will do all they can to enrich themselves and damn everyone else. I mean WTF, we are only on this earth for 60 odd years, so who cares right?
This is the world we have made for ourselves, we all have to educate ourselves and everyone needs to make better choices. However, I think increasingly we will need to rely on our governments to carry out responsible mandates if FREEDOM as well as EQUITY are to survive what is coming.
LOL. I forgot about the killer bees. Thanks, for reminding me about that one!
BTW -- warmer conditions mean more plant growth, so more C02 is a likely RESULT of a temperature rise, not a percussor.
I would like to take this moment to point out to everyone that plants absorb CO2, keep the carbon, and spit out oxygen. More CO2 is absolutely the opposite of what happens when you have more plant growth. The more they grow, the less CO2 you'll have.
Didn't they cover this in 3rd grade?
Well, yeah it has a positive relationship with temperature. But that really means nothing. What you are saying is that when X(temperature) rises, a little while later Z(CO2) follows suit. Which is what the ice cores show. Unfortunately, because X was the precursor, probability dictates that Z does not cause X.
You freakin idiot. Please don't ever post again. Plants absorb C02 and expel O2 for cleaner air. They don't create CO2! This is grade school shit.
Lets start with the great lakes...polluted mess. They are full of non-native species that are killing off all those beautiful fish that used to be there, not that it matters with all the toxic runnoff from factories and pulp and paper mills.
Speaking of pulp and paper mills, have you ever taken a plane trip over the coast of British Columbia? Its a mighty depressing sight to see the checkered landscape from all the clear cutting. Where do you think all that wood comes from that gets dumped on the US market? Sure...some is being replanted. Just come back in a century or two when it grows back ;(
What about Alberta...yikes they are strip mining the whole province as fast as they can to get at all that oil. DO I even dare mention the ENORMOUS quantities of water they are using in the process? It might just make you sick. (I grew up in Alberta)
I'll tell ya something else about Canada...we are getting pretty damn selective about who can emigrate. Not that I agree with it mind you. But Unless you are educated and have a good amount of money, chances are you will have difficulty in getting into the country...let alone getting a job or buying land. Ha! Homesteading? What is this the 19th century? There are no small time farmers left in the prairies --- they have all gone corporate long ago. Planting vast tracts of genetically altered sunflower seeds and other USELESS products so we can eat our fast food and become even more obese.
I'll tell ya though, I lived in the northwest territories (north of 60) for several years and THAT my friend is what I call untouched wilderness, complete with killer bears, herds of buffalo, and northern lights so close to the ground that you can almost touch them. But its damn cold.
Anyway, in summary,
Canada has a poor environmental record. Its just that we are such a FREAKIN huge country that most people don't notice. But trust me, our giga corps are doing their best to rape our land as they are yours.
additionally...
this is like saying "could it be in fact that because fire, while hot, does not actually burn things?"
greenhouse gases by definition retain energy from the sun and drive temperature upward.
btw.. calling someone a harridan for holding a position is betraying how insanely right wing you are.
models which are unreliable cannot be used conclusively, which means either the reports of "unreliable models" are either based on very old and now replaced or perfected global climate models, or these models were not used at all to reach more recent conclusions.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
But CO2 isn't the only factor, it's one of hundreds. And that's the problem. There are so many confounding variables that it's probably impossible - at least with current physics, math, and technology - to even have an accurate predication of what will happen and exactly why it's happening. That's why we're given probabilities in these reports that vary from mundane to extreme, it's hard to tell and we haven't even factored in all the variables yet.
I'm not qualified to make such judgments so I stay on neutral ground. However, I do work for an atmospheric research department so I do have a little insight into the matter. I'm all for reducing emissions. Even if it turns out we're not really the cause then we have the benefit of clear skylines, fresh air, and a more pleasant existence over all. I certainly don't think we should actively combat global warming by lowering the Earth's albedo, pumping chemicals into the atmosphere, or any other crazy plans such as this. Such a thing could backfire and plunge us into an ice age or have other unintended consequences that could harm us more than global warming would have. Mankind, in its infinite wisdom, will destroy itself with quick to solve solutions for poorly understood problems.
Billions face risks from climate change?! .....Ya don't say?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
this is not true.. another chart
co2 levels increase slightly before temperature.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
an environmentalist hoax! There is no real evidence of warming, just model predictions! One warmest year on record is not global warming.
Did anybody notice all the news bits about how Al Gore's monthly gas and electricity usage is about equal to what the typical household uses in a YEAR. It's wasteful for the Average Joe to waste gas and leave energy-hogging incandescent lights on when they are not being used, but Political Bigwigs are perfectly fine when it comes to keep their mansions nice and comfy.
Pepole would probably pay much more attention to him if he wasn't so over-hyped and politicized. That, and he could give himself more credit if he practiced all the crap he preaches.
Al Gore, Media Whore.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
yeah.. those damned scientists, with their evolution, their continental drift, their electricity, their computer chips, their aeronautical engineering, their weather forecasting, and that pesky rocket to the moon!
these "scientists" have the best understanding of which our world is capable.
These graphs may seem obtuse, but i assure you the data and empirical evidence are sound.
I once modeled the price of gas for one of my time series courses, and while all the coefficients were within proper parameters I didn't believe what i was seeing, because it showed gas prices (at the time in the 2.25 range) at 3 bucks a gallon just a few months down the road. Needless to say i thought i got the problem wrong, but it came back with full marks, still i didnt believe it, thoght it was academic, then sure enough it reached that price and i was kicking myself for failing to horde when i had the chance at over 75 cents less a gallon.
just because a prediction is "inconvenient" to you does not mean it's inaccurate. additionally, confidence intervals are used in such assessments to find a likely set of values, and guess what.. according to this article, most of the confidence interval is filled with insanely high temperature values
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
All you nut jobs that think global warming is fake better get a clue. The research is finished. It is in our textbooks, our schools and the news media so global warming is now fact. We know it is real because 51% of all scientists receiving grant money to prove it is true, have proven it is true. All those other scientists from elite universities with their fake Phd's whose research shows otherwise are idiots. Come to our next seminar and we'll prove it - if it isn't snowed out again...
The parent makes an excellent point about how pointless FUD and scare mongering can hava a vast negative economic impact on our society.
The science behind global warming doesn't support the doomsday scenarios put forth by Al Gore, the media, or even the IPCC. The claims they have made are unsupported by science, and they refuse to admit the weakness of their arguments. Why? Because they have an agenda they would like to see go forward regardless of whether global warming is a serious problem or not.
The key to understanding temperature trends on earth is the sun, and more particularly the solar wind. Solar wind mediates the global flux of Cosmic Rays. Cosmic rays mediate cloud formation, and clouds mediate incident solar radiation reaching the earth. Go to wikipedia and look up sun spots. Take a look at the nice graph showing solar activity as reflected in sun spot data over the last few hundred years. Note the period of low activity.
Now go to the page on the Little Ice Age. Look at the graph showing temperature trends. Note the that period of the little ice age is identical to the period of low solar activity from the previous page. _THIS IS NOT COINCIDENTAL_ There is a proven link.
If you want to learn about the relationship between solar activity, cosmic rays, cloud formation, and global temperature, visit http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
The sun is now ending its most active period since records started, which means we are in for some cooling for the next couple of decades. I guess we will see who is right, who is really interested in science, who is really interested in politics, and who the sheep really are.
"Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world."
Do the rest actually matter, or are they going to be like me in my science lab course where, if I didn't like a result, I would repeat or alter the experiment until it met my personal expectations?
venus is an example of how extreme co2 driven temperatures can rise.
and NO, it's not solar radiation alone, mercury is much cooler.
temperatures on venus are hot enough to melt lead, and this is with cloud cover reflecting a tremendous amount of sunlight back out into space.
no, this assertion of logarithmic effect is bullshit, and we have a huge model floating around the sun that disproves it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The next thing we here is that it is the fault of humans that this is happening.
The argument over natural vs. manmade warming is rediculous. It's about as relevent to real life as Britney Speares's haircut. We can't reverse it now even with a zero manmade CO2 output. I think that when the effects really start hitting, all this talk of "fault" will be overwhelmed with the talk and action of "adaptation".
We are all just people.
Sience(sm) Facts:
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
I find myself watching this argument and wondering how one person is going to laugh at the other when the water hits the fan.
This is the wrong way to solve the problems.
I live in Japan. My wife does not want to move. She knows about global warming.
Just wondering.
Yep! Feel the Love of the Glory of all which is Slashdot...
Shoot-the-Messengers: 40% Interesting, 40% Overrated, 10% Troll High Score 3, now down to 1.
"Yes, a small number of cranks were pushing the global cooling story,..." Time Magazine, 24 June 1974
Remember how we all stopped using chlorofluorocarbons? And suddenly a 50 to 140 year lifetime pollutant has dissappeared in the 9 years since 1996.
The ice age ended and people moved: OK, that works for a few thousand cavemen. Now do it with a billion. Pity. Venice has been sinking into the sea for 300 years, and now when it rains, thousands of bodies clog the canals.
Warmer == more plant growth == more CO2 vs Plants absorbing CO2. Yep, you got me there -- I stated that very poorly. My Bad. Should have said:
Warmer == more life growth (even in the Sahara until the rains stop) == more CO2.
C02 vs CO2 --- Style note: Always include a trivial typo in potentially emotional arguments so the emo grammarians can take the bait. Nobody complained about "Therer", but it took dozens of posts to catch the Plants-Produce-CO2 mismatch. Be careful the next time you jump on the trivial and miss the fundamental.
The temperature and CO2 traces match! OK, they're similar. That doesn't mean one caused the other. I also don't see any comparisons to other influences, such as Oxygen levels or Solar activity.
The TV Show -- Funny, I didn't see any counter arguments for the political side of things, much less the other climate correlations displayed. I mentioned the show last because it supported my existing claims, not that I make claims based on it.
Oh, is it a good thing that professional politicians can expound on climate without an Atmospheric Science degree but critics are dismissed because -- oh, never mind...
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /17813/story.htm
yes.. they range from mundane to extreme, and with every standard deviation from the center of this confidence interval you end up with considerably less likelihood.. in other words.. count on the center of that distribution, not the lower edges.
additonally, "one of hundreds of factors.?"...
you know.. there are hundreds of factors that contribute to human death, such as heart condition, cholesterol level, immune efficiency, but if someone comes in and tests positive for inordinant amounts of meth i'd say the meth is what killed him. perhaps he had a weak heart, perhaps a stronger heart would have survived the meth, but it was the meth which was the deciding factor, and the rest were statistically insignificant.
statistical insignificance is equivalent to "this will not affect it in any reasonable condition given these other variables, ever".. you toss them out of equations because of that, and anyone who tries to cast doubt on a study by bringing up how this or that variable which may be intuitive but is completely insignificant is being deliberately intellectually dishonest. What motivates such dishonesty.. could it be that they either sell or consume most of the oil on the planet and would have to make a few changes they dont want?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Here's what the sun has been doing since we first got accurate exo-atmospheric measurements:a d.html
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irr
In the 1970's the price at the pump shot up through the roof, the prices more than doubled in a very short time. How much did the consuption of fuel change? Did it go down at all?
If that didn't change fuel consumption, then does anybody realistically think that people will voluntarely decrease consumption by significant amount? Half the people in the USA don't even believe in global warming.
Can there be any doubt about skyrocketing fuel consumption in developing nations?
But, hypothetically, let's be insanely optimistic: let's say fuel consumption goes down by 5%. Would it matter? As I understand it, the situation will continue to get worse for several years, even if we stopped burning petro fuel entirely.
You're assertion that folks will move is a little naive. Quite a lot of people would like to come to the US to get out of grinding poverty that is owing in part to environmental degradation. So, now there are vigilantes on the border.
s -selling-solar.html
People often don't like leaving their homeland. The folks in Darfur, for example, are not so happy being pushed out as the Sahara grows and makes usable land scarce, and when they are pushed out they die in droves. If migration is to be the adaptation for global warming, it seems like justice can only be served for those who are displaced to come and share the land of those who caused the disaster. So, you better tell the border vigilantes to lay down their arms, because they'll need to be cleaning up their kitchens to start cooking for oh, say, 6 new family members each.
--
Mitigation before adaptation: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Well, I recall the lines then and I'd say yes, consumption did go down, but not because of price. It went down because supply was restricted by an embargo. This is something to remember as our Saudi friends say our occupation their neighbor is illegal.
s -selling-solar.html
Because fossil fuels are so deep in everything we do to make a living, it is difficult for price to make an impact. Normally substitution would be the response to price but in a famine you're stuck with nothing to substitute and that is sort of like our situation because without coal, gas and oil, our infrastructure does not work. This is why a carbon tax that could lead to substantial reductions would have to be impoverishing. You have to dry up the money supply (or remove the oil supply) to get us to stop buying since our lives depend on it. A moderate carbon tax only gets the low hanging fruit as it has in Europe.
You can kind of see why so much of our very big navy is over there right now. We pay for oil in dollars and in defence spending as well.
This is why, I think, we need to be very deliberate about changing over to renewable energy. We can rely on price somewhat to encourage adoption but there are a number of infrastructure changes that need to happen, such as fueling plug in hybrids or balancing the grid amid non-constant power sources. We can also restrict the supply of fossil fuels somewhat through rationing (since price doesn't really work for necessities) as we did in the seventies if it comes to that kind of thing (better than a carbon tax) so that prices will remain stable or even drop owing two lower demand. It is an interesting question how long OPEC lasts if consumption is reduced by 30%. Those who feel that this kind of control of the market is a bad idea, remeber that we set farm policy to ensure food surpluses because food scarcity is not acceptable. Similarly, our defence policy includes vital interests in the Middle East. Free markets for widgets (which may be substituted for waggets at a certain price point) but prudent deliberate policy for necessities is the way to do things. We are running out of prudence on the fossil fuel side of things and so need some pretty deliberate and big changes.
--
Hey Mr. Pricing Mechanism, look over here! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
For instance, there's ozone depletion and CFCs, and cooling from sulfate aerosols temporarily balancing out warming from GHGs from ~1940 to ~1970. Long before there were 6 billion of us, we were influencing global climate. I find it strange that people are using the argument that our species is too small to change global climate. We've been measurably doing it for years.
Tone is so hard in text. I can't tell if the MOD Parent Up message here is sarcasm from someone who is aware that ozone depletion was a serious problem that responded well to the actions taken as a result of the so-called "scare mongering," or whether the message is as completely sincere as the sender is deluded.
Programmers saved the day on Y2K, and if we can solve problems with millions of stochastic distributions like we solved linux, how hard could climatology possibly be? Are slashdotters really that afraid of losing their beloved penguin due to global warming, or are they more concerned that the FreeBSD devil will take matters into his own hands once the earth becomes his paradise? Windows magnify the solar heat, the devil basks in it and penguins worldwide are roasted. I can see how this concerns us. Personally I blame global warming on ATI and NVidia. It's time us hackers learn how to root mother earth with binary trees so we can decrease our CO2 output. Barring that, Luke lived just fine on tatooine and it had TWO suns. You guys are pussies by comparison. Worst case: we'll have more sand people to contend with and, of course, jawas selling us oil, but we can always cool off by freezing ourselves in C2, er carbonite. Alternately, it's cold enough in space. Maybe once Mos Isley is finished down in New Mexico we can get off this rock before it turns into another Alderan.
Make a few bad jokes on
This seems to be a fairly obvious thing to report to policy makers but it seems that the policy makers don't want to hear it so they forced it out. Kinda sounds like they're doing a heck of a job....
--
Brownie Points! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The skeptics recognize that the global warming community has a vested interest in receiving vast sums of money in government handouts. If there is no crisis, there is no funding. This is the downfall of government-funded science. The status quo is also bad. Government subsidies to petroleum companies helps no one. Businesses should be profitable in their own right, or there's no sense building them.
Some of the things you name are great ideas. Decentralization, efficiency, self-sufficiency are all great goals. Unfortunately, what the global warming community most represents is arbitrary government force keeping us from energy independence, blockading the paths to efficiency and self-sufficiency whether it be more American drilling or more nuclear power plants.
Speaking for myself, it's not that I prefer the status quo of centralized petroleum power (there are successful tidal generators that produce free energy out of the ocean -- yet they are not emulated!), it's that the environmentalist's gaia-worship-by-force alternative is so very, very bad. One of the largest roadblocks to the third world getting the tools they need to fend off starvation and poverty is environmentalists. They want and need power plants for their communities to develop. Instead, the wealthy foreign environmentalists step in and all they can get their hands on are a few rickety solar panels. You can't build a city that way.
Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Polar Bear.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....
Cardinal Fang! Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
That's all I had to say tonight. Global Warming is real because Global Asphalt is real. Mocking each other won't help nor will mocking God and Noah. Oops, that was #2. I downloaded that program above even though I probably don't have the savvy to use it.
One of the commenters above said there's no way we could run an experiment on the entire Earth but there is. We just all take a week's vacation and turn everything off for that week. That would pretty much reverse anything negative. We could try it and monitor the results. I'm turning everything off right n
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that "its the economy, stupid".
I (and many others far smarter than I am) say that on the subject of Global Warming: "its the SUN, stupid"
Our earth is warmed by a gigantic nuclear fireball, millions of times the mass of earth and a mere 8.5 light-minutes away. One hundred and nine Earths would be required to fit across the Sun's disk, and its interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.
By the way, the sun has a total luminosity output of 386 YottaWatts thats 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, but we only get a tiny portion of that.
You can't just ignore that kind of power. But a lot of researchers do, and simply dismiss our solar irradiance and it's variability out of hand. It muddles up the GHG modeling study they are doing when you throw extra energy into the system.
The total luminous energy output (visible, IR) received by earth from the sun is 174 PETAWATTS (174,000,000,000,000,000) watts. Now lets just say the sun increases its output by 0.1% as its been measured to do. (And its gotten way more active this century.) That dumps an extra 174,000,000,000,000 watts into our atmosphere (174 trillion watts) 24/7.
See the plot of Solar Irradiance from NOAA data hereg if
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.
Data source for graph: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_f orcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
Note: In the graph above, the low flatline from 1645-1715 is the Maunder Minimum, a period of virtually no sunspots, where the historical reports from the northern hemisphere tell a story of dramatic climate change: harsh winters, cools summers, crop failures, famine and disease.
Now lets put 174 trillion watts into perspective:
Hurricanes: the heat energy released by a hurricanes category 1-5 equals about 50 to 200 trillion watts or about the same amount of energy released by exploding a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes.
Katrina, released about 200 trillion watts over its life cycle.
Now imagine that approximate amount of extra energy being added to earth's atmosphere every second by small increases in the suns output that have been documented to exist.
Now lets look at us: 13.5 TeraWatts is the average total power consumption of the human world in 2001.
Do you think we could change the planets atmospheric energy balance with that if we squeezed all the power we made that year together and shot it into our atmosphere ?
Yeah, its the sun, stupid.
He looked for the science, maths and statistics that help him decide that MMCC is bunk.
As someone said on the BBC HYS site, I've never seen a percentage chance that the skeptic is wrong.
When your mars theory is debunked, you don't come back with a counter-proposal. You also don't shut the fuck up about Mars being a "Fact" that proves MMCC isn't true yet have conveniently (for you) forgotten the explanation of why it isn't a fact that disproves MMCC.
Then you call us econazis....
and then he'll have to believe MMCC!
4. Profit
If you look at the statistical history of CO2 and temperature two things leap out at you.
One is that CO2 rises followed, and did not precede, periods of warming. How then can they have caused them.
Two is that CO2 falls are unrelated to periods of cooling.
We have a quite long history of these two time series, and you cannot look at it without seeing that there is no causal relationship.
So why exactly does anyone think that lowering CO2 levels will produce cooling? It never has before. Let alone, why does anyone think that lowering man made CO2 will lower total atmospheric CO2.
Of course it's nice to be paid to spruik the fossil fuel industries' line, isn't it. I remember Professor Ian Plimer saying to a creationist he was debating (while holding a set of live wires in his gloved hands): Electricity is only a scientific theory too so just grab hold of these electrodes.
Looks like a lot of oil money being spent on slashdot accounts, to post and to moderate. I wonder what the IP ranges they're coming from look like?
You know the scientific model that predicted that cod in the Grand Banks would continue to be plentiful was wrong.
Saying a scientific model is wrong is a given. The question is really in which direction is it wrong.
Instead of getting stupid client deniers' videos that have already been debunked, try reading Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers".
Parent post is not a troll. One of the forecasted impacts is less snow in the Western US. Oregon has several cities (I live in one) that receive their water supplies from snow pack. Oregon agriculture is *extremely* dependent on snowpack.
If the resource changes, we may well end up adding more infrastructure to use it more efficiently. Also, census data show several eastern (desert) counties losing population, while Willamette Valley populations are growing rapidly.
*Nothing* Marxist Hacker 42 posted was trollish.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
While your numbers are probably correct, your conclusions are dodgy.
Extra Co2 equates to a forcing of about 2 watts per square meter, which totals about 1.12 Petawatt (10 ** 15). Compared to 13 Terawatts, this is about 100 times as large, which is significant compared to the other effects you mention.
Although I think it likely that a marginal increase in convection will easily handle this extra power, without undue climatic problems, nevertheless there is no doubt that this extra co2 is caused by mankind one way or another, and it probably causes something to happen differently to how it otherwise would.
From the stories I've read, the parties wanting to remove references were from the political camp, not the science camp.
m ing/2007-04-06-global-warming-report_N.htm
3 &cid=18644719
I don't normally have a very high opinion of USAToday, but http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwar
is a good summary. A relevant chunk:
The report concerns the effects global warming is already having and will have on life on Earth. The disputed paragraph centered on what has already happened.
The paragraph originally said scientists had "very high confidence" which means more than 90% chance of accuracy in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."
After days of intensive small group negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence be reduced to "high confidence" which means more than 80% accuracy.
Three top scientists-authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, including American scientist David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma. The scientists said it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that was not raised when the report was circulated the past several months.
In the hurry to get the report finished before its 4 a.m. ET release and press conference, diplomats forced the last-minute removal and altering of parts of the iconic table, which shows the ill effects of warming with each 1.8 degree increase in temperature, scientists and other delegates told the AP.
============
"What purpose does a section about the economy serve in a document about global warming?" Well, it's part of the IPCC charter. They don't do basic research--they summarize, and produce guidance for policy wonks. There's no way that economic matters aren't going to be a part of this. I'll go further--economic matters *had better be* a part of this, or we are all thoroughly hosed.
A previous post of mine
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22978
has some links to more info on the economics of the issue. Until politicians have some grasp of the economics, there's going to be little real movement on the issue. Maybe not even then...
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Many of your lines weren't complete!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
o totally wrapped up in the idea that we have some sort of "right" to exist
Naa, its just that some people, oddly enough, care about others and think its bad that billions might die horribly because nobody does anything.
we then turn a blind eye to it and against everything we just spent all that time digging up, and proclaim that the world should always have been exactly as it was on June 17, 1931, in Passaic, NJ or something to that effect, and that we must move Heaven and Earth to make it stay that way.
No, we see that the current direction will cause the death of billions if we don't do something, and much more importantly to the west it will COST us a fortune as societes are changed, and by trying to do something now it will be less expensive.
It has been warmer than this in the past. Much warmer. It has been colder than this in the past. Much colder. We know this for a fact.
We also know for a fact humanity wasn't around with our current level of civilisation, so what happened when there were only a few cavemen around is irrelevant.
And we know that there is NOTHING we can do at our present technological level about it.
Actually no, we don't know that. We do know that we can counteract a lot of it.
So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it
"WE" don't insist that, its only religious idiots like you, who can't be bothered to learn anything about the subject but just spout your hysterical nonsense based on what you personally feel who says that. What the scientists are saying is that WE are CONTRIBUTING to the effect, and that as step 1 we should stop doing that.
Have faith
"Faith" is for people who are frightened of facts.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
He's saying that the model's predictive power regarding human CO2 emissions overstates the damage from future CO2 emissons. That may not mean much to you, but it means that climate models consequently will overestimate the impact of reducing future CO2 emissions. This should radically affect the policy options we choose. It means that CO2 reductions will be far less effective than we anticipate in slowing or reversing climate change. Why should we accept predictions from any models that continue to predict results that are a poor match for the data? The fact is that climate IS an incredibly complex mechanism that includes primary variables, feedback mechanisms, time lags and all sorts of other statistical minefields. Because even the most minimal efforts to alter climate change are going to extract an incredible cost, we have a responsibillty to have at least a plausible model to test the pros and cons of any abatement effort. What if the earth would continue to warm at half the current speed by eliminating human CO2 emissions? That would also have an implication on the kind of policies that we choose. There are currently a lot of things that may be of some benefit in reducing global warming but need not be sold to the public on the basis. They have other far more tangible and predicable benefits. (Like conservation efforts and nuclear power for example.) Let's pick the low hanging environmental fruit first. There's no point in leading with the most dubious part of the science.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
It seems that there is a seriously flawed assumption involved in AGW that has started to surface. It is one that hasn't had play because politicians and talking heads and even intellegent commentators don't have the understanding to recognize it for themselves or recognize the importance. It's very likely that the flaw is also an article faith for many climatologists as they study weather patterns and ocean currents and don't study physics - otherwise they'd be physicists instead of climatologists and they wouldn't know diddly about weather patterns.
This flaw is the mechanism by which co2 blocks heat from passing in and out of earth. The current assumptions being made are that by making minute changes in co2 levels, there is a drastic change in temperature. The mechanism is co2 blocking bands of infrared light wavelengths so that energy coming in/going out in those bands doesn't radiate but is absorbed by the atmosphere. It's also a consideration in the wonderful world of infrared astronomy - best done from space since very little can be done on earth, pretty much only from the highest altitudes. The spectrums of absorbed energy for co2 and the other ghgs in the atmosphere are not unknowns but are well known to those doing infrared astronomy.
It seems the effects of co2 are mostly duplicated by the effects of h2o vapor. Note that when you take out the heat being radiated at the wavelengths of interest, it's no longer there to be taken out. Also note that it's a bit more complex than that because the heat being radiated is spread out over a very wide band of wavelengths and heat energy taken out does also heat up what absorbed it which then radiates at its temperature.
However, it seems the distance required for absorbing most all of the energy at the co2 absorption wavelengths for normal amounts of co2 in the air is something like 30 feet. Doubling co2 concentrations in the atmosphere might bring this down to something like 15 feet, but considering the atmosphere is miles thick, it's evident that pretty much all the energy that co2 is going to trap is going to be trapped within just a few feet, regardless of co2 concentrations being greater than what they are now.
As an example, if you've ever looked at greenhouses, you'll find some cheap ones that use plastic film, some that use 1/16" lexan and more expensive ones that use 1/8" or 1/4" glass. Perhaps the huge commercial ones might use rather expensive thick glass. Much of the decision to use thicker more expensive glass is associated with construction of the greenhouse and the expected lifespan of the building. For large buildings one has to have material that can survive the wind and support someone up there cleaning the glass and must last for a long time. The fact though is that while there may be some differences in just how well each works, they are do substantially the job of trapping the heat and going to a much thicker material doesn't trap tremendous amounts of heat more than the thinest. That's because the thinnest does most of the job of trapping the IR and thicker materials are mostly there for structural reasons not efficiency reasons. And, this thickness range is a variation of over a factor of 100 as well as varying in material for quality of IR blocking.
Another example of the nature of the concept would be adding sugar to iced tea. Once the first couple of scoops have been put in and stirred, the tea is as sweet as it gets. It's at 100% saturation and continuing to add sugar results in an increasing pile of undissolved granules in the bottom. The tea gets no sweeter.
Co2 is saturated in about 30 feet when it comes to blocking that IR which it blocks. The major portion (90% +)of IR that co2 will block became 'saturated' (or blocked) when there was enough concentration of co2 in the air so that the whole column of air to the top of the atmosphere contained about as much as that 30 feet contains now. Also, the estimates on ghg's current impact is around 30 deg C on earth's temperature with co2 a
You might find the equivalent solar forcing units used in the field more useful. With these it is much easier to see that your argument is flawed http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/executive-summ ary.html.
Or it could just be that some people are actually skeptical... It's probably true that there is a conspiracy to keep much of America in the dark about global warming, but your just being paranoid.
~= scwizard =~
I wouldn't put any stock in that documentary. The guy that produced it is a known fraud, and it's been shown definitively that he altered graphs and data in this documentary as well as others that he has produced. He also quoted a number of climate scientists out of context, and those scientists are now on record as stating that their statements were selectively edited to make them look like they said something very different from what they said in their interviews. See here. There's also more information about Martin Durkin's (the documentary producer) dubious track record if you google it.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
But that's not going to happen. Even the 'small government' right-wing Jeebus-loving freakos need their tax-exemptions for church! Hell, the most rightwing/conservative states are the states getting the most money from the Fed! There's too many people on the teat to change now it seems.
Don't get me started about 'child credits' on the tax forms either...makes me see red.
Blar.
Don't have to worry about your land flooding, and you can get food by dropping a fishing line over the side.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
Global Thermonuclear War
Global Cooling
Global Warming
Magnetic Pole Reversal
Alien Invasion
???
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Most or all of the problems you have "commented" on is a result of government meddling. So I hope the same organistion doesn't start rationing, that is just plain scary and freaky.
For example, smog is the government failing to care about property rights. Poor people in Africa: foreign aid and corrupt governments. Overfishing: no one can own the sea so it is tragedy of the commons, governments need to let people own it. Ground water: I dunno, but I guess governments own a lot of the water companies, they should have water meters so people can see the actual cost of water and don't waste it. Burning rain forests: I'd take a guess that they aren't allowed to own the forests so they have no incentive to replant or do something more rational.
I hope that capitalism topples democracy before it is too late.
As I see it there are two main possibilities :-
1. Global Warming is entirely human driven
2. Its partly if not entirely a natural process.
if its entirely human driven then considering human nature theres no way you would ever stop it happening, slow it down some maybe, but not stop it.
if there is a natural component to it then no matter how much you try to do to reduce the human component its going to happen anyway.
so its going to happen either way, get over it and start planning how best to cope.
The highest point in Florida according to this page is Britton Hill, at 345 Ft. According to this page the highest city is 500 feet. The average elevation of the entire state is 100 feet.
From the Army Corps of Engineers: hot topic
Today the lake is at 10.166 Feet above NGVD29. Historically, the elevation of this fourth largest lake inside the US has been as little as 10 feet above NGVD29 (mean sea level as measured in 1929). Review the part above about "very low levels" again.
From Wikipedia:
Now do the math. Even if your "one foot in the next 50 years" is accurate, one foot is very significant when high tide and storm surge is already enough to put a 150 mile wide swath of your home state under seven feet of seawater. The numbers I've been reading are not one foot. I'm hearing a meter or two. At that rate one good hurricane could remove the part of southern florida that survives from the mainland entirely. None of this considers an Atlantic Tsunami, which has happened and is predicted to happen again and would just wash right over central florida barely slowing down.
If you're reading this from south Florida, you should consider carefully your choice to stay where you are.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... we still have politicians who think that global warming isn't at least affect by industrialized nations. It must be those elves at the North pole again. After all, they're the only ones onto whom blame can be placed lately. They're probably the father of Dannielynn Smith. >.
I think "vast sums of money in government handouts" is a bit overblown. The entire budget for the U.S. National Institute of Science (NIST) is about $640 million for 2008. According to this summary, about $5 million of that was set aside for "Measurements and Standards for the Climate Change Science Program" (although NASA and NOAA probably spend a lot more). Exxon Mobil alone is making 10 billion dollars of profit (not revenue) every 3 months. Who is getting the "vast sums of money"?
;-). It is suicidal when applied to a population approaching 7 billion armed with technology, a market-driven mythology of infinite growth, and 10 million gallons a minute of oil equivalent fossil energy (to put this number into perspective, one gallon of gasoline provides usable energy equivalent to about 2 months worth of human physical labor. Thus, every minute, fossil fuels provide the equivalent energy of over 200 billion extra humans working).
I suspect this fear of environmentalists is mostly just a fear that someone will try to tell you what you should (or should not) do, and you might not like what they say. That is understandable. However, the mentaility of the lone rugged individualist "doin what I want with MY land" has always been a false abstraction even when people were spread thin, as no piece of land exists in isolation from the rest (unless you happen to live in the biosphere project
And why the hyperbole of "Gaia-worship-by-force"? Most enviromentalists I know are exquisitely practical in their thinking. They see systems in operation that SIMPLY CANNOT BE SUSTAINED OVER TIME and treat this as a problem to be solved. I suspect that you too would acknowledge, if asked in a respectful manner and encouraged to extrapolate things you already observe or believe, that things cannot go on this way much longer. Environmentalists look for workable solutions to this dilemma that can be applied early enough that there is some hope of having an effect before critical natural systems reach a point where they essentially fail to operate. Mostly they want to start by leveling the playing field for alternatives, or by giving them a minor start-up boost to help overcome the inertia of entrenched approaches.
As for Gaia worship, yes, environmentalists frequently look to biological systems for guidance. This is because they are the only systems known that can continue to operate successfully for extended time periods without catastrophic failure. Properly cared for farmland can be (and has been) productive for tens or hundreds of generations WITH NO EXTERNAL INPUTS except for the input of the sun and the natural distribution mechnisms of the water, carbon and other cycles. No technological solution ever devised can come close to doing this (the majority of farming done today is an industrial process for turning petroleum and natural gas into food--see The Omnivore's Dilemma for a good exploration of this).
Again, I ask, what is the program? Because one's personal unease with the consequences being a sprawling race on a fragile lifeboat is no substitute for a workable plan.
Yep, it me again here to point out some of the lies you have been pushing on slashdot for the past couple of years...
Lie #1 - "Realclimate is untrustworthy".
Reality: RC is run by climatologists, many have contributed or peer-reviewed the IPCC reports, the founder is M.Mann (the hockey stick guy).
Lie #2 - "NASA doubts the findings of the IPCC".
Reality: James Hansen, is a world renowned climatologist and also the guy in charge of putting up the "unreliable sattelites", he has warned we may only have 10yrs to turn things around.
Lie #3 - "The sun did it".
Reality: Ah, one of your favorites, I will repeat the reference: Figure SPM-2, 2007 IPCC SPM.
Lie #4 - "30% adjustment to climate models".
Reality: I am glad to see you are still inventing some of your own fantasy, I suppose you threw this in to cast doubt on the models. You are simply demonstrating to the world that you are incapable of comprehending Finite Element Analysis.
Lie #5 - "The problem is the demonetization of anyone who disagrees."
No, "the problem" is people like yourself, you try to paint yourself as a critical thinker and a skeptic. You are neither, you lie and look for the answer that you want. You pay lip service to science and skepticisim and go to extrodinary lengths to twist the real world to fit your dogma, you then promptly project this behaviour onto others. In short you are an anti-science fanatic and a habitual liar.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Thank you- this seems to have been upmodded since.
What is really interesting is how in Oregon, the very people most likely to deny global warming's effects (conservatives in Oregon are very much segregated to the rural areas) are also the ones most likely to be affected by global warming- which will make it hard to deny in a few years.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. As you've noted, there's a sharp dichotomy between east and west. Portland is a renowned green city, and eastern Oregon people are almost all Republican, etc.
:)
I live west, but spend time east, and know a bunch of people over there. Migration is already hitting them in some ways that are unrelated to any sort of climate change--such as an increasing shortage of physicians in some smaller desert towns. A few communities seem to be booming, mostly due to non-locals buying vacation homes, etc. But that doesn't always benefit some long term residents, who're taking a large hit on property taxes, etc., that they can ill afford.
I'm an independent--I hate nearly all politicians equally. While I loathe Bush, Clinton also made a few moves that were breathtaking in the sheer scope of their stupidity. As did some voters--meaning anybody that didn't vote the way I did.
Anyway, all I can do is vote green (wherever that seems to make sense) and wish my friends in the eastern areas well. I've a feeling that life is going to get harder for them, which rather sucks. Change isn't just coming to Oregon--it's here. However it all shakes out, I hope we take care of those eastern folk. I don't always think they're making good political decisions, but the ones I know are by and large good people. We absolutely need to avoid any intrastate red/blue divide, and just take care of Oregonians.
Times could get tough. There's the old phrase about hanging separately or together...
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Now that this article is somewhat in the past, I can say more flamebaity things, but things that are true to me.
It's my fervent belief that in the long run, Cascadia (see map in our logo at The Oregon Project) has a very different set of economical interests than the rest of the country. For one thing, our economy is much more tied to the Asian Pacific trading circle than it is to say, the New York Stock Exchange. For another, we've got a history of ambient energy projects such as Bonieville Dam or the Condon Wind Farm. And of course, our timber and agricultural history is second to none.
All of this combines to be an extremely rich set of natural resources- some of which are hidden behind an artificial shortage of labor due to problems like the water supply in the Eastern desserts, cliffside coast errosion, southern earthquakes, or the historically wet climate of the western valleys.
It's my belief that automation and robotic labor will allow us to exploit some of those resources again, places like Ashwood, where the lack of water and smallness of the mineral deposits make manual extraction difficult, or Granite, which went downhill due to interference from federal regulations, or Greenhorn, which by virtue of the highest city in Oregon would be an excelent place for a windfarm.
We've got the solution to global warming right here in our own community- if we can just get it away from the feds.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I can't go along with this *at all*. There's something about the last line on the link above that just rudes me out.
"To Purchase stocks by Paypal, click on the button below. The price is $10 until we reach 250 stocks, at which point it goes up to $1000. As of April 8, 2007, 10 stocks have been sold, so they're going fast."
You sell of 10 of 250, with no timeframe reference, while promising a 100X jump in price, and claim they're going fast? Also, the references to a 'central AI' are a bit disturbing. I would hope that any potential investors actually knew something about AI. You damned sure don't.
"When the project has sufficient resources and robots, it will be considered mature, and private detectives will be hired to start tracking down stockholders, in order of stock certificate number, to invite to be citizens."
I wander off in stunned disbelief. Please don't reply. I don't want to have to decide whether you're a nutjob or a con non-artist. But I've bookmarked this stuff, just in case a criminal case might be brought against you. I'd be pretty much in favor of that. I'm thinking that the moderator that initially rated you a troll (and whom I argued against) had simply seen your stuff before.
I don't know what to think about that. Was he/she just trying to make your stuff go away (which it urgently needs to) or should moderators ignore experience and just rate the most recent post? A difficult question, and one that won't be seen, as the article is stale.
Marxist Hacker 42 posts are definitely going to get a very careful eyeball on my part, in future. You seem mostly able to game the system. The only positive thing I can come up with is that you seem to have had limited financial success at being a complete slimeball.
Have a nice fucking day. You referenced a family Web site. I bet they're really proud of you, if they're knowledgeable enough to realize that you have well and truly poisoned the well for all of them. If any member of seeberfamily [dot org] wants to do anything *intelligent* with the Web, you have completely hosed them. Hopefully, they will beat you down.
How does it feel to have no sense of personal or familial honor or responsibility? That's *gotta* be weird. I'm sure we'd all like to hear your lamer story of how you came to be such a cur. Not!
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
That website will be taken down tonight. It was based on a mistaken reading of Regulation A. See my JE for more info IF YOU CARE- if you don't, I have no problem with you not replying.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"Let me rephrase something. I haven't found on peer reviewed article on the topic that is any more convincing then the other ideas being presented."
I neither like nor dislike you personally but I belive the world would be a better place if more people understood the philosophy and methodology of science and how "established science" is fundementaly more reliable than opinions and ideas. Even though I have been hurling abuse in your general direction lately I want you to know I don't have any sort of vendetta against you. What I am trying to convey comes from my scientific qualifications and the general cynacisim of a middle-age geek, as I have suggested before these ideas are encapsulated with much more elequoence in Sagan's book, "Demon haunted world".
Peer-review: Something that is "peer-reviewed" and published by a recognised jounal has been "tested", opinions and ideas are just that and are often written to support one side of an argument. Peer-reviewed does not mean "it can't be wrong or questioned", it simply means that similarly qualified and published scientists could not convincingly shoot down the articles assertion(s) at the time of publication.
Scientifically rigourous reports such as those from the IPCC do not use any published paper that is less that a year or two old. The reason is because the next step up the ladder of scientific credibility is positive citations and independent peer-reviewed replication, the opposite of that results in a downgrading of credibility. Both the up and down processes take time, for instance: the basic physical theory that asserts CO2 acts as a "greenhouse gas" has withstood over a century of such scrutiny.
Perhaps (as you say somewhere else) I did at one time post an RC story about a five year old paper (hockey stick maybe?), but as I have explained above age is not in itself a good thing, but it is a basic requirement of "established science".
Peer-review is a measure of scientific credibility, it's a cornerstone of the scientific method, ideas and opinions are the raw materials. Skepticisim and the scientific method are skills you learn and must continually refine, put another way science is formalised common-sense. From my point of view everyone should be taught these basic skills alongside the grab bag of random factoids that so often masqurades as a high school science class.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"What link? The IPCC. IPCC.ch, You mean you have been arguing in favor of them all this time and never been to their site? click on the about tab and read."
No sorry, you can't wiggle out of it that easy, you complained about me not re-reading the misinformation in your links and made the following claim...
"The IPCC and real climate isn't interested in anything other then Human caused scenarios. The IPCC clearly states their intent and purpose is to find this stuff when they were established in 87 (or so) If you doubt this, look at their damn website, It isn't some secrete or anything. At least it wasn't 3 weeks ago."
I ask for a quote and a link and after a bit of procrastination you produce the obvious, I have cut and paste the full text at the bottom of this post because I'm still looking to find where it says it's "not interested in anything other then Human caused scenarios". To all but an illiterate ludite, the text "clearly states" they intend to use scientific rigour investigating the risk of a theorised threat coming to fruition, as can be seen from studying their reports they have done an excellent job of living up to that intended rigour for the past 20yrs. Over that 20yrs they have found the answers to the basic questions and are now in the process of quantifying the risk and examining ways to mitigate it.
"BTW, how are you goign to find the time necessary to reply to all of non believers?"
I'm not an "all or nothing" kinda guy, I may even get bored of you but I wouldn't bet on it.
"Once again some story comes along saying some insane notion like the sun might be behind the warming or some of it. You have you work cut out for you. Doo you think anyone peer reviewed the sun?"
Yes I do think the IPCC's assertions about the sun have been peer reviewed. Once again I will tell you that established science says the sun is only resposnsible for a small amount of the observed warming even when you take into account the wide margin of error. Once again I agree the sun is responsible for "some of it". Once again the IPCC agrees the sun is responsible for "some of it". Once again I refer you to your own IPCC link to find the attribution graph displayed as figure spm-2 of the 2007 SPM.
The once again game is boring, let's move on.... Riddle me this batman: If sunspots are a significant cause of warming in the earth's climate, why don't global tempratures fluxuate in harmony with the well known 11yr sunspot cycle? If not sunspots but the cosmic rays they produce that are responsible for the temprature trend then why has no discernable trend in cosmic rays been found despite several decades of carefull observations and research?
Text from the link, my emphasis: Recognizing the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. It is open to all members of the UN and WMO.
The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature. Its role, organisation, participation and general procedures are laid down in the "Principles Governing IPCC Work"
General information about the IPCC, its membership, procedures and ongoing activities is provided in the official languages of the UN in the following fact sheets:
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.