Super Pathway Discovered In Southern Ocean

WaltonNews writes in to let us know that a major underwater current called the Tasman Outflow has been discovered by Australian scientists. It helps to regulate the Earth's climate by providing water flow between three oceans in the southern hemisphere. Relatedly, a senior climate scientist has called for the establishment of a Southern Hemisphere network of deep ocean moorings, to complement the network already established in the North Atlantic. The intent is to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.

Comments

Dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

More radical than the EAC!

Re:Dude!

[ashitaka]

Wow, right off the bat!

I was wondering how long into the thread a Finding Nemo reference would be made.

limited knowledge

[Bartas]

we know so little about our planet

I call bullshit!

[stratjakt]

Al Gore already figured ALL OF THIS OUT.

There are no natural processes which affect climate. We all know what affects climate, is our use of incandescent light bulbs!

If only we'd all switch to mercury filled compact flouros, we'd reduce this nations energy consumption by almost 0.005%! Not only that, we'd increase the amount of mercury in our groundwater by over 200%! Mercury is good for you and helps build strong bones and teeth.

Also, we should junk our existing cars and build and purchase new ones which are marginally more efficient.

WHEN WILL WE LEARN?! THE ONLY SOLUTION TO CLIMATE PROBLEMS IS TO SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND ON COMPANIES AL GORE HAS STOCK IN.

Re:I call bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

You strike me as the sort of person who has no friends.

Re:I call bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually laughed out loud reading that. Especially the mercury bit. What's almost as funny is that you will now be modded down for making a joke at Global Warming's expense. That's right, Global Warming is capitalized...that's what you do with religion, right?

Mod me down baby, waste away those mod points...

Re:I call bullshit!

[OrangeTide]

I want to be that guy's friend now.

seems like you're better off keeping a moderately efficient car for as long as you can (maybe 10 years?) instead of dumping it before its time is up to get a hybrid. not just environmentally but financially. not having to make $300/mo payments seems like you could afford a little extra gasoline.

CFL are great, but without a wide spread recycling program it is just going to cause poison to be released into the environment. Causing severe problems to sensitive species, including ourselves. If Al Gore is so smart why did he not propose a federal mandatory disposal/recycling program for CFLs and hybrid's lead batteries?

Re:I call bullshit!

[More Trouble]

seems like you're better off keeping a moderately efficient car for as long as you can (maybe 10 years?) instead of dumping it before its time is up to get a hybrid. not just environmentally but financially. not having to make $300/mo payments seems like you could afford a little extra gasoline. If all you're concerned about is your personal welfare, then I'd have to say ... it depends. Only an idiot would "dump" a working automobile. Clearly, you'd sell it, thus recouping some fraction of its value. And then you'd pay cash for the hybrid, you're unlikely to get a new car loan on a hybrid for less than 7%. I find that the best way to decide is to calculate the cost (to you) per mile. Depending on what you're driving today, how far you're driving, how fast you're driving, etc., a hybrid may or may not be a cost improvement. Ignoring fancy calculations like "carbon footprint". If you're interested in that sort of thing, I'd suggest becoming a vegetarian -- at least as effective and better for you. Also, buying food (and other stuff) that wasn't shipped thousands of miles helps.

Re:I call bullshit!

[budgenator]

I'm a global warming skeptic, and I work in the dental industry, you know mercury based amalgam filings, and I'm going to tell you I'd rather have a few mg of Hg in the land fill than the amount of mercury and thorium going up the power-plant stack that the bulb would prevent.

Re:I call bullshit!

[OrangeTide]

I see. that makes sense. your moderately efficient car can be pushed on to someone else who might not be able to afford a new car. those people tend to have very inefficient "beaters". and they can dump the beater and use your old car in its place. okay I can deal with that. Although the accounting still works out that selling my car means either one of two outcomes:

1. someone who didn't have a car before, has a car now. which means we have a hybrid + the old car on the road spewing out pollution, carbon, etc.
2. someone dumps an inefficient car and it gets melted down to make a new (hopefully efficient) car.

ps - I'm not sure if everyone becoming vegetarian would have a real impact on carbon footprint. not like you have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows.

Re:I call bullshit!

[OrangeTide]

I'd rather not burn coal and release mercury and radioactive particles into the environment, and use CFLs (and dispose of them properly) so we can use hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear power more effectively.

I want to have my cake and eat it too.

Re:I call bullshit!

[alexj33]

Great. Now when that current thingy goes up one degree in the summer, the Global Warming(tm) proponents are going to howl fire n' brimstone, when it's probably just the summer heat.

Mod me down baby, waste away those mod points

I see you also have realized that not going with the status quo here at /. gets you modded down. I believe one can only hope to be a /. moderator if he/she:

1. Keeps their mouth shut about Global Warming(tm) or post supportive comments.
2. Makes only nice posts about the Democratic Party(tm). (capitalized for the same reasons you mention above)
3. Throws in a few swipes at Bush or Republicans for good measure.

I once had mod points, but then began to speak my mind on Global Warming(tm). Watched those points grow little wings and fly away.

Re:I call bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not, but buying local instead of prepackaged foods from big chain stores can make a huge impact. Whether or not you buy meat is not really the issue. Go to your local farmers market, assuming there is one. Even if you have to drive a little more around town to get what you need, this is far better than the food that is trucked or otherwise shipped from places like Chile. I know not everything can be had this way but if everyone would start then maybe a trend would kick off and we could make a difference.

Re:I call bullshit!

[geekoid]

"I'm a global warming skeptic, "

really? what logical fallacy's are the climatologist using?
Have you read any papers? if not, please feel free to replace "I'm a global warming skeptic, "
with "I'm an ignorant blow hard,"

Global warming is happening at an increased rate that is only explainable by human activity.

NOTHING else to date explains it. Nothing.

Remember everything you hear in the news is skewed towards the small side of an argument. Even though some topic might have 99% of the consensus, when conducting a 'news story' they give equal time to both sides. This makes people believe that both sides are "equal" when they are not.

Re:I call bullshit!

[ravenshrike]

What about the "I'm an idiot who bought a car with a nickel metal-hydride battery which when refined produces shitloads of sulfer dioxide. But that's okay since carbon isn't present which makes everything fucking hunky-dory." crowd?

Re:I call bullshit!

[ravenshrike]

Really? Only explainable by human activity hmmm? Nothing else explains it? Why is it then, your warming trend disappears between 1940 and 1970? Magic perhaps? Given that the rate of CO2 generation did nothing but increase, along with continually decreasing amounts of foliage, one would think the trend would have stayed the same. Instead it didn't. Why is that?

Re:I call bullshit!

[panopticonisi]

your sarcasm entertained me for minutes! PS: that WAS sarcasm, right? the whole skewed to the small side thing? pure genius! LOFL!

Re:I call bullshit!

[thebonafortuna]

Are you honestly proposing that both sides of the argument are given equal attention in the mainstream press?

If there were a 90% consensus that global warming (and by global warming, I mean global warming as the theory of the warming resulting exclusively, or almost exclusively, by human behavior) were true, and only 10% of scientists challenged this belief, or remained uncertain, than would 10% of coverage for dissenting opinion be appropriate? Because despite what we read, it seems more than 10% of scientists either disagree entirely, or at best, remain unconvinced. And while both sides are presented with similar frequency on Slashdot, that doesn't carry over everywhere else.

In regards to your comment that

"Global warming is happening at an increased rate that is only explainable by human activity.

NOTHING else to date explains it. Nothing.

I would point to some interesting theories being proposed which point towards solar activity playing a large role in climate change. You asked if the parent of the thread had "read any papers" on the subject...I would invite you to look at some which challenge your valued beliefs. In the spirit of science.

Re:I call bullshit!

[More Trouble]

ps - I'm not sure if everyone becoming vegetarian would have a real impact on carbon footprint. not like you have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows. You don't have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows, but that's more or less how it's done on a large scale in the US. The corn & soybeans that most cows are mostly fed are produced with large scale use of hydrocarbons. And, one could pasture a cow on land that wouldn't support the cultivation of human foodstuffs. But again, that's not how it's typically done. Eating meat is by definition a lot less efficient than eating beans & grains. Most cows are fed beans & grains, and it takes way way more than a kilo of beans & grains to make a pound of stake. Not to mention that other greenhouse gas, methane! If everyone limited themselves to pastured, local cows, then there'd be no problem. There'd be a lot less beef, tho.

Re:I call bullshit!

[More Trouble]

What about the "I'm an idiot who bought a car with a nickel metal-hydride battery which when refined produces shitloads of sulfer dioxide. But that's okay since carbon isn't present which makes everything fucking hunky-dory." crowd? You must be referring to the (totally spurious) article comparing the Prius with the Hummer, where the Hummer comes out as more environmentally friendly. Perhaps some further research is warranted?

Re:I call bullshit!

[sumdumass]

In the scheme of things, the amount of produce and meets that are packed into a shipment going to the stores is like the bus scenario. You are polluting more per unit purchased buy driving to the stores then the transportation from one coast to another.

This is like the emtpy bus thing. An empty bus might get 11 mile per gallon and a fully loaded bus might get 10 miles per gallon. In your car, you get 40 miles per gallon. Now your car it more efficient over say a 100 mile trip with one passenger. you would use 2.5 gallons of fuel and emit the pollution from it. The bus would use 10 gallons just the same. Loaded with passengers, you have 3 other people with you plus baggage on the trip. So everyone is using .6 gallons of fuel and pollution. the bus holds 20 to 35 people plus baggage depending on the make. Lets use the lower of the two and stick with 20 people on the bus. They now use .4 gallons per person and pollute that amount.

So your not really saving any fuel or pollution with your small fuel efficient car assuming that all 25 of you (3 in your car plus you plus 20 on the bus with one driver) need to goto that destination 100 miles away. The same is with produce and food in general. A farmer transporting two bushels of corn, 10 dozen tomatoes, 40lbs of broccoli and 2 dozen heads of lettuce in his pickup truck, or worse yet, a small utility truck that gets 10 MPH instead of the 15-20 MPH that his truck would get would end up using more fuel and cause more emissions to get the same amount of food to the market as a fully loaded truck transporting 35,000 pounds of product. When you have a 4 by 8 bed that can go safely 4 ft high compared to a 53 ft by 8ft trailer that can go 9 ft high, you would see that to cover the same distance with the same amount of food fully loaded, the truck would have to make roughly 212 trips. And if the farmer doesn't have 212 trucks, he will have 212 empty return trips. (of course the number of trips were calculated by the dimensions to get the area and then divide the smaller into the larger. it isn't exact)

So using a farmer who drives 25 miles to market in a pickup, to deliver the same amount of food a fully loaded semi might deliver, the farmer would have to travel 10,600 miles one way. Doubling that with a return trip. That's more then going from LA to NYC.

My calculator might be off. And I estimated on some of the calculations because your not going to fill a semi trailer with internal dimension are 52.5' long by 101" wide and 110" tall from front to back and all the way to the top. You can get close but it won't happen. But anyways, the cubic feet hauled in a big rig is phenomenally larger then what a pickup truck can hold. Even the maximum allow weight dwarfs it in size (up to 2,000 lbs compared to 45,000 lbs). The idea of it being more environmentally friendly based on pollution and fuel usage is misleading. The economics of scale in most situation make it more efficient to use the larger vehicles even if it is over a larger distance.

It gets even more wicked when thinking about all the tonnage a ship will carry. Transporting oil in the largest tankers from the middle east to the US only add a little less then two cents per gallon in some cases. This doesn't say how much fuel and pollution comes into play but you would have to recognize that in order to charge so little and still make a profit, the costs of everything has to be low too. It just implies the efficiency is greater.

Re:I call bullshit!

[Scruffy Dan]

That is why full cost accounting is so important. Switching to the newest and most efficient is only worthwhile if the efficiency is enough to offset the cost of building the new product and deposing the old product. Unfortunately getting you hands on this type of data is incredibly difficult.

Re:I call bullshit!

[SuperQ]

Yep, people want to replace the polution causing car with a slightly less polluting car. The problem is that the car needs to be replaced the hard way with proper city planning, and social changes.

* walk to work
* bicycle to work (I ride 7 miles a day for my commute)
* ride in high occupancy vehicle (train, bus, gondola, vacuum tubes)
* mix business and residential zones so you can walk to do every day things.

Re:I call bullshit!

[uncadonna]

The entire faculty of the largest atmospheric sciences department in Texa, A & M, with over twnety faculty, uinanimously signed a declaration in support of the IPCC position.

http://www.met.tamu.edu/climatechange.php

More examples here

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus. htm

The number of remotely qualified scientists who disagree that humans are responsible for a majority of recently observed warming is really, honestly, negligible.

And we start another global climate change thread.

[slashname3]

And it starts yet again! Another thread debating global climate change!

Adapt or die! That is the solution!

Profit by investing in the A/C and flood control industries!

IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously anyone talking about any so-called "ocean currents" affecting the Earth's climate is in the pocket of Chimpy McBushitler and his cronies in Big Oil. We all know that only SUVs, incandescent light bulbs, and not listening to Al Gore cause changes in climate.

Holy shit, it's hot out today! WE'RE DOOMED!!!!

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[Maniac-X]

There must be a break in the earth's water cooling loop. Maybe it needs a new bigger pump, and some UV reactive dye.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, you are quite in the wrong on this issue.

It is obvious to any right-thinking man that pollution of the Earth cannot possibly affect mankind. First of all, the Earth is too big. Have you ever looked at a globe? The earth is many times bigger than even the biggest globe you have ever seen.

Second of all, if lefty "reality preachers" are so sure about evolution, then what is the big deal? Mankind will evolve special mercury-digestion organs and smog filters in the throat.

Third of all, whatever happens to the Earth is God's Will. Are you really so arrogant that you think you can change the Earth that God made? No, the Earth will never change unless God makes it change to punish us for our sins against wealthy industrialists.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[pchoppin]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

My God, when will people understand...

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[tonyreadsnews]

I agree, let's jumpstart the condenser part of the loop in this ocean current and drop in about 50 of the biggest pumps. Then we can reverse the global warming and pollute as much as we want...

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[rastoboy29]

The breathable atmosphere of the Earth is only 6.5 miles deep.  When you drive 10 miles, you have driven further than that.

Think about it.  And then think about how hard it really would be for us to affect the atmosphere in a big way.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[DragonWriter]

Obviously anyone talking about any so-called "ocean currents" affecting the Earth's climate is in the pocket of Chimpy McBushitler and his cronies in Big Oil. We all know that only SUVs, incandescent light bulbs, and not listening to Al Gore cause changes in climate.

You know, lots of people are posting variations on this as if it were some kind of clever skewering of the Al Gore and others advocating policy change to address global warming, but all it really does is demonstrate that the people posting this and variations on it aren't paying attention; Al Gore and others taking similar positions point to climate engines like this (though not this particular one in the past, since it wasn't known, but the North Atlantic Current has always been pointed to) as areas of sensitivity because human-produced effects can change the conditions which make these systems operate the way they do, thus causing them to change how they operate, thus producing greater climate change than the human actions do more directly.

The whole idea that there is some kind of binary dichotomy between human activity and natural processes influencing the environment, and that anyone pointing to the former is stating that the latter is not a factor is just bizarre. Its sort of like arguing, of a typical interactive software program, that the output must be produced by either the input or the executable code, but not the two working together.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[tdent1138]

"Al Gore and others taking similar positions point to climate engines like this (though not this particular one in the past, since it wasn't known, but the North Atlantic Current has always been pointed to) as areas of sensitivity because human-produced effects can change the conditions which make these systems operate the way they do, thus causing them to change how they operate, thus producing greater climate change than the human actions do more directly."

Be that as it may, it seems to me that we keep discovering parts of the 'system' we never even knew existed. I cannot understand how we are supposed to take seriously those who advocate destroying our (US) economy (ie Kyoto) when no one can begin to model the climate with any accuracy at all. 1998 was the hottest year? Oops! Not really. The average temperature has gone up? Hmmm... Since when? The last mini ice-age? Imagine that. Where exactly are all those temperature sensors and have they never been moved since pre-1900? Certainly there are 'heat islands' created by cities. Is that all factored in? And of course, even if we take those temperatures at face value, those are just the temps on land where we have sensors. What happened to the temperature where we don't have senors like over the oceans (the other 75% of our planet)? Did it go up there too? We don't know how this "brand new" current effects another current over there or how the sun effects the cloud cover or precipitation or or or... As far as I can tell, these "global warming" scientist guys think they know it all and that is the surest sign they know nothing.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[rgravina]

I don't know whether this is a troll or not, but this attitute really annoys me. While it is true that global warming proponents first reaction often is to link any unusual climate phenomenon with global warming, it makes little sense to pretend there isn't a problem either.

It's all too easy to just ignore the possibility that we might be screwing up the planet so we can happily go on and do whatever the hell we want.

Sure, it being a hot day today might have absolutelty nothing to do with what we have done to the planet over the last 100 years in particular, or it might. I'm not that cluely with the natural sciences, but it makes sense that curning out CO2 which was previously locked away in fossil fuels would increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and that in turn could have other effects, like warming up the planet.

Wny can't we just think rationally about issues like this instead of spewing out crap like the parent post?

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[macdigger]

Oh come on! Are you on drugs or something? Just have a look at space shots of North pole ice fields they feed you every year and how these fields shank recently. Look at graphs and tables http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Ice/Ice_dat a.htm These are facts. We have one of the hottest summers here in Japan and the 35+ degrees C heat continues noticably longer than it used to be. My home city of Moscow sees absolutely unrealistic temperatures like 30C for a month with sparks to 35. It's definitely getting hotter and no, it's not about killing US economics, though I heard that US economic wastes more energy than Japanese USES, and this is absolutely crazy. It's about facts that if things will continue the way they do for last 100 years, absolutely nothing good is going to happen to humankind. Hopefully, just hopefully - the current situation is just a natural flow of things, but somehow I don't think so. You can have your head in the sand as long as you want but just don't forget to pull it out before the sand turns into glass.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[bhiestand]

Negative! We need really big blocks of ice! And very large spaceships to deliver them with.

Re:IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE

[tdent1138]

Right. A graph proves it all. Way to avoid all my points. Hyperbole and insults are not arugment. You sound like Al Gore.

Tasmanian Outflow vs. North Atlantic Current

[andphi]

So does this deprecate the "The Day After Tomorrow"?

Re:Tasmanian Outflow vs. North Atlantic Current

[Rob T Firefly]

So does this deprecate the "The Day After Tomorrow"? Too late. That film did a pretty thorough job of deprecating itself.

Re:Tasmanian Outflow vs. North Atlantic Current

[Spudtrooper]

Why oh why don't we have a "criticaldesalinizationpoint" tag when we need it?

Bad bad reporting

[Yath]

None of the quotes in the article support the reporter's opinion that the intent is to detect adverse effects. It's almost like the reporter is trying to stir things up... troll, if you will, by making it look like the scientists are out to confirm some already-held conclusions that the climate is getting worse.

Re:Bad bad reporting

[OrangeTide]

That's how you get people to read articles. Honest unbiased journalist are probably cashing in unemployment checks more often than not. (because their dishonest editors won't print their articles)

Re:Bad bad reporting

[yakmans_dad]

A lot of the replies here remind me of the swarm responses to the FCC that [deleted]-wing groups drum up. There's an autonomic quality to it like Poe's Raven croaking "nevermore".

They just had to drop the GC bomb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another attempt to ride the bandwagon to get funding.

The Sea Turles ride this

[Anonymous Coward]

in Find Nemo, LOL!

Re:The Sea Turles ride this

[yourmomisfasterthana]

ur mom? (yea yea... trollin' whatever :P)

Re:And we start another global climate change thre

[Anonymous Coward]

Why invest in anonymous cowards?

Re:limited knowledge - amen

[mollog]

And here's another question; before the continents drifted apart, what was the climate like? Volatile? Constant?

So much of what we think we know is wrong. It's amazing to see the new discoveries.

Does a polar bear pee in the woods

[huckamania]

Apparently they do now.

Where did you come up with this?

[mollog]

I must have read a different article. All I saw was an article that describes scientific research that confirmed some theories.

Re:Where did you come up with this?

[Otter]

You did read a different article. He's referring to the second link.

Anyway, I don't really see what the OP's objection is. Literally he's right, but presumably they're not advocating putting in all these sensors so that we can find out about fantastic new developments that much sooner.

Meanwhile, the warming skeptics sure seem to have lots of money to spend on AdWords! I wonder if the proprietors of CoyoteBlog and the Heartland Institute are spending their own money or someone else's...?

Adverse changes?

[amightywind]

The intent is to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.

How would they discriminate between adverse and beneficial changes? Given that they are climate scientists, my guess is any change they find will be labeled adverse. And if the data show nothing they will be doctored until they do. Can you all see the symbiosis between the funding-greedy scientists who sow hysteria and big government liberal politicians who manufacture a climate crisis in order to raise taxes? Hey guys, it is mid-August in what was supposed to be a record hurricane season. No storms yet.

Re:Adverse changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys, it is mid-August in what was supposed to be a record hurricane season. No storms yet.

Huh? Concerning the Atlantic season, there's been five named storms so far, one reaching hurricane status (Dean, currently category 3, expected to increase as it moves into the Gulf).

And who said anything about a "record season?" The NHC is expecting an above normal one, but nobody said anything about "record."

Re:Adverse changes?

[Elemenope]

Hey guys, it is mid-August in what was supposed to be a record hurricane season. No storms yet.

Apparently you do not live in Texas, where Hurricane Dean (the fourth named storm of the season) is about to hit. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good story.

Re:Adverse changes?

[E 99]

The intent is to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.

How would they discriminate between adverse and beneficial changes?

Haven't you heard? All change is adverse. Change that hurts humans is bad because it hurts the oppressed, and change that helps humans is bad because it helps the oppressors. Welcome to the 21st century, it's stranger than fiction.

Re:Adverse changes?

[Stanistani]

*stares*

*marks amightywind as foe*

Foes don't even show up when I read comments or replies. I don't need input from the likes of you. You hope someone gets flooded out because he contradicts you?

I wish you a long and enjoyable life. I also hope you get a clue.

Re:Adverse changes?

[John Whitley]

How would they discriminate between adverse and beneficial changes? A shutdown of global ocean currents, as was the state (IIRC) roughly 10,000-14,000 years ago, will screw the world as we know it hard. Such a shutdown is believed to be a likely effect of a global increase in temperatures. The mechanism is roughly: temperatures rise causing ice packs to melt. This in turn desalinates the ocean. Lower salinity shuts down the deep ocean "salt pumps" which are the major force driving the currents. Once the currents shut down, they no longer act as powerful climate moderators, returning us to a time when radical and rapid climactic swings were the norm. Around the same time the current ocean currents formed, bringing that relative climactic stability, modern agriculture started. I.e. it became possible within a region to predict what crops could be planted and flourish year-over-year.

Beyond general scientific data collection, monitors such as this are useful to determine whether major changes in the newly discovered current are in progress and to track those changes against climactic effects. I know all this sounds passe compared to making up conspiracies based on oversimplifications and stereotypes, but it's a hell of a lot more useful.

Re:Adverse changes?

[Control Group]

Your sig is wholly appropriate.

Prick.

Re:Adverse changes?

[geekoid]

goof ball.

All climate scientist are greedy liars? Cause that would have to be the case.

Maybe you should try to understand what effects hurricanes before spouting crap out your ass.

Re:Adverse changes?

[ravenshrike]

Soooo, the answer is to dump enough salt into the ocean to counter-act the desalinization? Good to know.

Re:Adverse changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot that, of course, the status quo is fucked up all the same; so "no change" is adverse as well. The correct solution to this paradox can be found when the right questions are asked.

Re:Adverse changes?

[Captain Nitpick]

Hey guys, it is mid-August in what was supposed to be a record hurricane season. No storms yet.

Liar.

Nobody (reputable) claimed this would be a record hurricane season. The NHC and Klotzbach & Gray forecasts said it would be above normal. June and July are historically fairly inactive. But it's August now, and we're already up to five total named storms, with one skirting Category 5 strength right now.

Re:Adverse changes?

[amightywind]

Once the currents shut down,

How would a higher equatorial/polar temperature differential cause a "shutdown" of the ocean current system. The currents are thermally forced. Shouldn't they increase in strength? Use your head.

Energy source

[QuickFox]

We should tap these ocean currents for energy. We should have machines somewhat similar to wind turbines, anchored to the sea floor, floating in the middle of the flow.

These flows are far more steady and reliable than the wind. And no pollution. A great source of energy.

Re:Energy source

[SomeGuyTyping]

but the turbines will reduce the current - who knows what effects that may have.

Re:Energy source

[Enuratique]

Except that to harness/convert the energy would be taking energy away from the super current. It's been a few years since I took an Earth and Atmospheric Science course, but it's a widely believed theory that these currents really do have a significant impact on global climate. The last ice age is believed to be linked to a near standstill of this global current. To take energy away from the current would slow it down, thus sending us into a new ice age.

NOT GOOD!

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

That would require some really tremendous turbine farms! Those currents are enormous, bigger than countries. And water is heavy, which means the momentum is huge, which in turn means you can't easily slow the currents down.

A wind farm has far, far more effect on the wind, and to have an important effect on the wind you'd need a fantastically large wind farm.

I'm quite convinced that we can tap huge quantities of energy from deep water currents without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

They are indeed vital and crucial for our climate system! But the weight and volume of moving water is absolutely huge. Even fantastically large turbine farms would be puny in relationship to these country-sized masses of moving water. We could tap quite fantastic amounts of energy without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.

Re:Energy source

[evil agent]

They're trying to do this in the East River in New York. Unsuccessfully so far...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/nyregion/13power .html

Re:Energy source

[hanshotfirst]

To take energy away from the current would slow it down, thus sending us into a new ice age.

I think you just hit on the solution to global warming. Counteract it by triggering cooling down here in the oceans AND generating an alternative energy source at the same time. We can even sell more high-margin SUVs to fund it, since we can counteract greenhouse heating with oceanic cooling, and tax those sales in the process to fund any environmental program of choice.

More realistically, wind turbines don't stop the wind from blowing, so I doubt a few turbines down in the current will stop it, either.

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

"Unsuccessfully"? The article that you link to says their price is already only slightly higher than traditional energy production. That sounds extremely good for such an early stage in new technology.

Bugs are to be expected in the beginning. Saying that they are unsuccessful just because they have bugs is like saying that a programmer is unsuccessful because he's debugging his program.

Of course there could be other problems not mentioned in the article. But from the information in the article I'd say their technology seems very promising.

Re:Energy source

[SomeGuyTyping]

energy isn't free - by turning the turbines, you're taking some energy from the current. Maybe it's insignificant, but there is a loss

Re:Energy source

[Twanfox]

Isn't that what they said about global warming, that we're basically so insignificant to the size of the planet that nothing we could possibly do would harm the environment (hint: look at measurements for human-caused CO2 emissions into the air)? And wait, didn't we just read about (at least on a lower scale) China happily forcing the white dolphin to extinction because of their insignificant push on the environment (yay, toxic dumping!)?

Don't for a second dismiss out of hand the effect we might have on the environment simply because "it's so big compared to what WE could do." That's how we've gotten in trouble already, and you want to be so stupid as to continue down that path? If you want to ensure your untimely demise, by all means, get a gun and pop one into your cranium. However, until we know for certain what the ramifications of such a system would be, we should consider it potentially dangerous.

Frankly, it scares me to death when people start talking about tapping into the few things like ocean currents that keep the heat circulating from hot places to cold places. Shut those down and the hot places are going to get incredibly hot and the cold places are going to be terribly frigid. Some all-fired nasty storms happen when you have colliding air masses with huge variations in temperature.

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

by turning the turbines, you're taking some energy from the current. Yes, of course, that's my point, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are vast amounts of energy there, and we should use some fraction of it. I'm saying we should tap a thousand-billionth of it, or whatever. Even a tiny fraction would be a tremendous amount of energy.

Re:Energy source

[jrumney]

The ocean currents stopping will not trigger global cooling. They will stop the transfer of heat from one place to another, leading to the cold end of the current becoming colder, and the hot end becoming hotter.

Re:Energy source

[jafac]

Don't worry, when Ash Ketchum saves the day, Lugia will restore the flow of the world's ocean currents!

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

By your reasoning we should stop deploying wind turbines. They have far more effect than any ocean-current turbines can ever have. Note that air is far lighter than water, and moves temperatures around far faster than water.

I don't want to imply that we should be careless, and just blindly deploy new technology without considering the consequences. But with your reasoning we couldn't do anything at all. Almost anything you can think of will have far more effect than turbines in deep ocean currents. Note that the masses of moving water really are much larger than entire countries.

Of course at some point in the far future we could reach a point where the number of turbines is getting too large. But we're not there yet. We're very, very far from there.

The alternatives that are now actively deployed, like wind and geothermal and ethanol, have far more impact. I don't think that sitting back and waiting is a good solution. We need to explore and develop alternatives. This is one alternative worth evaluating.

Re:Energy source

[evil agent]

I stand by my "unsuccessful" claim. Yes, it looks quite promising even in early stages, but it hasn't really done anything yet. As far as I can tell, every time they try putting the turbine in the river, it breaks. If you installed a program and it crashed every few minutes, would you call it successful?

I commend them for their progress and continuing efforts to get this working. I'll call it successful when it's down there and generating electricity for a significant amount of time.

Re:Energy source

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better to hook a generator to the earth's axis. Just gear it up a bit...

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

If you installed a program and it crashed every few minutes, would you call it successful? No, if it was marketed as finished, and yet crashed every few minutes, I would indeed call it unsuccessfull. But if I'm writing a program, and it crashes every few minutes while I'm writing it, I'd call it unfinished. Whether it's successful or not is at that stage not defined by whether it crashes or not.

I suppose we have different impressions about what stage of development they are in. I do see your point, and you could be right, but I'm not convinced, not with the information I've seen so far.

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

This is the best proposal so far, because in order to keep the gears turning we'd have to connect it also to some other body, like the moon or the sun, and this means that as a by-product it could double as a space elevator, meaning we'd kill two stones with one bird.

Re:Energy source

[Twanfox]

You're taking the statements I made and slamming them over to the extreme and stating that we should never do anything that takes power from one form and converts it into a form we can use for our needs. To quote myself, let me explain:

However, until we know for certain what the ramifications of such a system would be, we should consider it potentially dangerous.

See, I'm all for cars. They're a useful piece of technology. However, when the gasoline engine was invented and put to use, whatever consequences were never fully explored, nor did they take their investigation (if there was one) to the extreme and account for 300 million Americans with 2-3 cars per family running them for several hours a day. And that's just the USA. One car by itself doesn't contribute enough CO2 to the air to make a dent in it. 600-900 million is a different story.

As for wind turbines, yes, I am a little cautious about that. I can see a potential for harm to the natural flow of heat from place to place. However, in this instance, I don't think ground-based wind turbines are really going to cause a huge problem. Put a huge wind farm up in the stratosphere with the jet stream with it's "unlimited power(!)" and you may see that it suddenly changes things. That's what these ocean currents are, that big jet stream just in water. There aren't many of them, and even if they are big and move a lot of mass from place to place, we do have the capacity (if not now, in the future) to really screw ourselves up if we do not have a proper understanding of what sapping energy from that system will do to the rest of the ecosystem.

I just want people to think about things first, not go "oh my god, there's so much power there, and it's all ours!" No, it isn't. If some/most of it isn't left in place, the ecosystem we've come to love and enjoy might just collapse around us. There is no such thing as 'unlimited power' or (to coin a fun phrase) 'free beer'. There's always a cost involved, we just have to figure out what it is to see if it's a cost we're willing to pay.

Re:Energy source

[QuickFox]

If some/most of it isn't left in place, the ecosystem we've come to love and enjoy might just collapse around us. I'm not proposing that we sap such inconceivably fantastic amounts that only "some/most of it" is left. That would certainly be catastrophic. Not just "might", it would be catastrophic. But I'm not advocating any such unbridled excess.

Moderation and care will be necessary in any case, regardless what solutions we use. No solution is sustainable if taken to horrific excess.

My point is that taking out just the tiniest fraction of the energy would be quite enough to give us quite fantastic amounts of energy. If individual molecules in the currents arrive at their endpoints one second later than they otherwise would, that would mean we got inconceivably large amounts of energy, and still the cooling and warming would be delayed by just a single second.

We do need energy. I think a tiny fraction of this ocean-current energy can be an extremely low-impact source, compared to the alternatives that we have.

I do agree with you that caution is necessary at all times.

Re:Energy source

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you installed a program and it crashed every few minutes, would you call it successful?"

No, I'd call it Windows.

Re:Energy source

[Raenex]

Nice article. I like this bit:

The East River's powerful tides have been wreaking havoc with the giant turbine blades since the first two were installed in December.

"But the good thing is that there's more power in the East River than we thought."

Now I know...

[Brad_sk]

Now I know why temperature been 100+ since last one week...

That is pretty normal

[WindBourne]

Nearly all of the major news reporters are simply trying to make big headlines (save for several which have their own agenda's). All will spin in to suite their purpose. A good example was back in the 70's, a scientist say that climate change WAS happening and suggested that it COULD lead to global cooling. From that, a number of the articles came out that pushed that. So, quite paying attention there.

Pay attention to what the real scientist are saying directly. Get past what fox news and oil companies have to say. Listen to the top ones (such as Dr. Hansen who is one of thousands ) and even ones like Dr Grey ( from Colo State, who is one of the very few accredited skeptics). It is a good thing to pay attention to both sides, just skip the garbage.

Re:That is pretty normal

[TapeCutter]

"Pay attention to what the real scientist are saying directly."

Good advice

Re:That is pretty normal

[ravenshrike]

The IPCC is a group of frauds. Not particularly clever frauds at that. I mean, c'mon, they cherry pick data, and when it suits them, attempt to destroy evidence. All of their studies are based on their end goal, which any proper scientist can tell you is an extremely amateur way of doing business. Until they throw out any temperature readings taken within the area of influence of metropolitan areas all of their models are complete bunk.

Re:That is pretty normal

[TapeCutter]

Ad-homs are tiresome, put up or shut up.

Re:That is pretty normal

[deimtee]

Until they throw out any temperature readings taken within the area of influence of metropolitan areas all of their models are complete bunk.

Throwing out the data is also wrong. They should work out what proportion of the world is within those areas and allow for the heat generation that occurs. The 'heat island' effect not only covers metropolitan areas, but significant areas downwind as well. Any model which doesn't allow for this is flawed.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ted Stevens had this comment...

[Jason Levine]

It's an underwater series of tubes!

Re:Ted Stevens had this comment...

[elrous0]

The Tasman Outflow eats ships, canoes, sailboats, barges, dinghies, divers, bouys, tankers, submarines....AND ESPECIALLY RABBITS!

Re:Ted Stevens had this comment...

[Cctoide]

You can't fit all of those in a big truck.

Re:Ted Stevens had this comment...

[ashitaka]

Sadly, most of Slashdot is now too young to get that.

Besides, "Taz" as he is now called, has become far too civilized and just another generic cartoon character.

"How come you bury me in the cold, cold ground"

Sequel time

[ghoul]

Hey now we can have the Day after Tomorrow 2 or as I like to call it 2 days after tomorrow. This time the problem starts in the south and we can have nice special effects of a kangaroo freezing to death. Hell we could throw in some junk science to explain why Australian animals are so different (something to do with a previous freeze) The big thing is we could use all the Australian actors - Mel Gibson Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman as the main characters and ask them to their native Australian accent for a change.

Re:Sequel time

[Anonymous Coward]

how about 2 dayz After 2 morrow, for that real Hollywood feel.

Re:Sequel time

[Anonymous Coward]

On behalf of all Australians, I would like to point out that Tom Cruise is NOT an Australian.

You don't get it.

[spun]

Global climate change can affect ocean currents, which in turn affect global climate change. Your strident ranting adds nothing to the debate except anger and misunderstanding. What is your motivation?

Re:You don't get it.

[sumdumass]

Which has a greater effect, oceanic currents on weather patterns or weather patterns on oceanic currents?

I doubt the problem with global climate change is the change in itself. The earth has been experiencing changes in the climate since before recorded history. It is the cause and effect (of what the problem is supposed to be) that is being told to us by some that brings skepticisms.

Maybe the point of his rantings were to show how silly the debate has been so far. Here we have some people who are so certain they got everything right when they don't even have all the facts. And not to mention that a lot of what we should do to stop the change from happening (whether natural change or not) has a small effect on what is claimed to be the problem or the fact that it all seems to be self serving to people with monetary gain to benefit from. It is just as whacked as ignoring global warming because the oil companies can profit.

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[E 99]

First of all, even if you filled up the enormous below-sea-level areas of dead sea valley and the death valley with ocean water, the change in sea level would be fairly insignificant. Anyway, the rate of sea level rise is, for lack of a better word, glacial. Beach erosion and hurricanes will be a much larger problem for most coastal cities than other sea level change -- unless an incredibly massive volcano erupts under Antarctica. One day, we'll get as smart as the ancients were, and we'll stop building cities on coasts. (Granted, they had much greater, and much more sudden sea level rises to deal with.)

Bad Marketing

[yintercept]

The reporting in the two articles looks pretty good. For that matter it even looks like the science behind the reports is pretty good.

Reading the press releases at CSIRO, it looks like the marketers for the organization are trying to establishes a connection to global warming politics (probably in an effort to get funding). The article I linked to says:

"research that will help them explain more accurately how the ocean governs global climate."

I am going to walk out on a limb here and reject the premise that purpose of the supergyre is to govern global climate. I will actually venture the statement that the supergyre really doesn't have a purpose in life, it is just the result of natural forces such as the spinning of the earth and the absorbing the energy of the sun, etc..

Settled?

[gsfprez]

so, theres a ginormous ocean flow that no one in the "settled science" camp knew about that has not been taken into account in global warming predictions?

Arrange this next to the .1 degree miscalc with the y2k problem from NASA last week... and one would get the feeling that settled doesn't mean what it used to mean.

Actually, it may be a good way to counter

[WindBourne]

The only problem is that we do not know where the tipping points are.

Who named it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"a major underwater current called the Tasman Outflow has been discovered"

When they discovered it, who informed us that the name of it was the "Tasman Outflow" ???

Re:Who named it?

[bugnuts]

I'm also glad they told me it was an underwater current. I was afraid it might be some other sort of above-water current connecting 3 oceans.

Re:Who named it?

[Teilo]

They can read, can't they? Duh!

But that would change the climate

[yintercept]

desalinzation on a massive scale, we could pump billions of gallons of water inland into the continents of Africa and Asia.

The efforts you suggest would change the climate. The climate change debate says that we need to stop change. It does not say that we need to work on technologies to make our lives better. If a place was covered with a glacier in 1976, then it needs to be covered with a glacier in 2076. If a place was covered with a barren desert in 1976, it needs to be covered with a desert in 2176.

Everything needs to stay the same. And it will stay the same, if we just moved real slow.

Adversely affect?

[WillAffleckUW]

My plans to colonize Antartica are going great?

Mind you, all you people in the former temperate zone are going to learn why the Aboriginal Caucasoid population of Australia has brown skin now ...

Re:And we start another global climate change thre

[slashname3]

Why invest in anonymous cowards?

This was rated insightful?? Why?

You must be a Blue Tang

[Anonymous Coward]

with an attention deficit disorder. Definitely not from the Clan Wu!

Yet another .. human error ..

[terbo]

Why is it, that everything we have discovered thus far, is taken as concrete fact, until something else is discovered?
How can such brazen destruction of the natural environment be taken in vain, until some new "scientific discovery" comes
about, saying how (obviously) destructive the past ways have been .. Oh, I don't expect any notice to be said, until the
world is on the brink of extinction ..

Seems we keep going forward, until we get the chance to look back and see, that the guys living in the bushes, had it all
worked out, and had been here before, with the gadgets, and the great disconnection from the earth, living in their heads,
and had been close to total elimination of the species, and had just went "Hmm, maybe we don't need cell phones .."

Just a general outlash on all the stupidity of the recent "scientific" "discoveries" posted here. Such crap.

Quote on the page:

"HELLO, everybody, I'm a HUMAN!!"

Re:Energy source - MOD PARENT INTERESTING

[Radon360]

Interesting article, though they are using tidal currents and not oceanic currents that are normally induced by thermal convections. Nonetheless, the mechanism for harnessing energy is largely the same.

Wonder if any article similar to this was ever submitted to Slashdot?

Between?

[TFer_Atvar]

The summary is incorrect. It should be among three oceans, not between them. Between implies two objects. Among implies three or more.

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[Radon360]

Well, I suppose if you like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. But then again, we haven't identified all of the causes and their extents a this point, so perhaps the best we can do is largely treat problems symptomatically for now.

While no doubt what you suggest as "conservation corps" project would certainly do good in Africa, its effect on climate change would probably be relative to pissing in Lake Superior to raise the water temperature.

Oh, yeah. What is the energy source for these desalinization units? Solar? Unless the lake is really deep, the output might very well evaporate faster than you can make it. Then again, one ginormous pool solar blanket might be the solution. Using a carbon-based fuel would be rather self-defeating of the purpose for doing it in the first place.

Re:But we *know* man causes global warming, right?

[CorSci81]

We knew deep ocean currents existed, the article really just points out that we have firmer evidence of there being a common flow between all of the southern oceans. The existence of the deep Atlantic currents we knew about was pretty good evidence this one likely existed, we just hadn't found it.

As far as climate goes, the deep return currents (much like this one) are very slow. Much slower than say the Gulf Stream in the north Atlantic. The time scale for these large flows to change is in the hundreds to thousands of years, and have very little bearing on current global warming. The article summary (and you) is really just stirring up needless controversy because if you mention anything to do with climate someone has to bring up global warming. For all practical purposes you could treat the deep currents as constant sources/sinks at the few places they interact with the surface and your climate model would work just as well. From what I recall most of them do just that for short-term (a few decades) timescales.

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[Do You Smell That]

Just picking a nit...

If I were to try to live near work and walk in (43rd and Broadway, NYC), my monthly rent would easily triple to somewhere in the range of $3000/mo.

While I'm all for not driving, the answer isn't walking. It's public transportation.

"How is this relavant to the article", you might ask. Well, that's a mighty good question. My idea, see, is to invent a habitable plastic sphere which has a bouyancy which would naturally put it about 800 to 1000 meters underwater. That way, you can live in Tasmania, get up in the morning, get dressed, pop into your sphere, and roll yourself off into the ocean. After descending, you'll be briskly whisked away to Australia's east coast (without any fossil fuels being burned!), which is where I'm assuming you work. Now, the article doesn't mention the speed at which this 'supergyre' flows, so we'll assume ~1500kph, which would mean you'd be pulling up off the coast about 15 mins after leaving!!

Getting home... now that's another matter.

mod styles

[zahl2]

I boggle as to how they were modded up as "interesting" and not "funny".

If it were me, I'd be torn between modding down as "troll" and up as "funny". But then I have a sick sense of humor.

OK, but what does the program do?

[Undead Ed]

It sounds like Microsoft Vista II.

Undead Ed

A bit more complicated than you would think...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

To quote Merriam-Webster:

"There is a persistent but unfounded notion that between can be used only of two items and that among must be used for more than two. Between has been used of more than two since Old English; it is especially appropriate to denote a one-to-one relationship, regardless of the number of items."

It goes on, quoting the following examples:

"It can be used when the number is unspecified 'economic cooperation between nations', when more than two are enumerated 'between you and me and the lamppost' 'partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia -- Nathaniel Benchley', and even when only one item is mentioned (but repetition is implied) 'pausing between every sentence to rap the floor -- George Eliot'. Among is more appropriate where the emphasis is on distribution rather than individual relationships 'discontent among the peasants'.

I don't have OED handy right now, but a quotation I found on the Web says:

[Between] is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually, among expressing a relation to them collectively and vaguely: we should not say the space lying among the three points, or a treaty among three powers, or the choice lies among the three candidates in the select list, or to insert a needle among the closed petals of a flower.

Note that I'm not a native speaker of English, but I would never dare to question the authority of OED. Minds you, such a simplistic view of the grammar of a natural language that you present can easily bring you into trouble. And as the water flow can only take place between two oceans, not "among" (in the vague sense of this word) several of them, I would go for "between", as in "between each two of them".

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't the sea turtles in Finding Nemo already figure this out?

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

yup

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been so long since I've seen any creative thinking, I almost didn't catch it here.

You, sir, are wonderful. I'm not saying whether your ideas are good or bad, or whether they will or won't work.

I just wanted to thank you for a bright spot of creative thinking amidst the 50 year storm of blah blah blah blah.....

The world needs more creativity and less intelligence. Smarts is getting in the way of solutions.

Anger management therapy might help

[spun]

Holy crap. I thought I was an asshole. I'm an amateur compared to you. You win the Biggest Fucking Asshole of the Universe Trophy with that remark. Guy shows you up using nothing but the facts, and you hope he gets flooded? Wow. Just... wow.

Re:Anger management therapy might help

[amightywind]

There are a few sacred cow opinions you slashdot idiots hold near and dear: space elevator, anti-M$, hatred of the Good President George Bush, and of course global warming. Spew on you twit.

No Baseline

[huckamania]

How exactly are you going to monitor changes to something that is newly discovered? Oh, that's right, we know what the ocean currents were like 10-14K years ago. We just forgot about this Tasman current.

Your post sounds like a mismatch of peer reviewed articles. Modern agriculture started when the ocean currents formed? A shutdown of global ocean currents 10-14K years ago?

I hope the view is pretty at the top of you house of cards.

Some things wrong.

[WindBourne]

Even if ALL of the mercury from CFL are released, it is far less mercury in the env, than what would be released via the extra energy released. So even here, it is better to go with them. Now, with that said, I am pissed that HomeDepot, lowes, and Walmart do not have a recycle program. I have already gone through 2 bulbs. As to the lead batteries in hybrid, you are kidding, right? nearly all hybrids currently use NiMH. And there are recycle programs available at anyplace that you buy a new car battery at.

As to buying hybrids, yeah, I have a saturn ion with 95K miles and will run it into the ground. After that, I will probably pick up a new hybrid, (or even better, try to get a tesla sedan). But would I sell it and pick up a 300 / month? Not on your life.

That is also the reason why I wish that politicians had balls. What is needed is a time based graduated tax on consumable fuel (i.e. natural gas, gasoline, diesel, etc). Ppl need to change their driving habits over a period of time. WHen they get hit with large jumps, it does kill the economy.

Re:Some things wrong.

[onemorechip]

In addition to the NiMH, the Prius has a small 12-volt storage battery (lead-acid). Like conventional cars, this is used to power accessories. However, it does not have to turn over a starter motor, so it is much smaller.

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[corbettw]

Rather than arguing about the cause of climate change, we need to focus on solutions to the problems it is creating, and monitoring of the climate. You're half right: rather than arguing about the cause of climate change, we should be arguing about whether or not it's a problem in the first place. Longer growing seasons in the extreme north, a wetter Sahara, these are good things.

Besides which, you're assuming that humans can control the weather. That's a pretty bold assumption, and until there's definitive evidence that we can actually change the weather, I'm going to remain a skeptic on anthropogenic global warming (and if it isn't anthropogenic, then there's nothing we can do to stop it, either).

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[account_deleted]

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Making a cheap shot

[Token_Internet_Girl]

Tasmanian Devil tested, Road Runner approved.

Pokemon 2000 already taught me this...

[happy_place]

I already knew all about this from the movie Pokemon 2000. What the article didn't mention was that this current is guarded by the mythical and mysterious pokemon known as Lugia, and that when the three powers of Fire, Ice and Thunder are awoken, the Guardian will awaken to quell the fighting--but alone the guardian will fail, so the earth will turn to Ash (Katchem)... --Ray

Beware, lest you offend The True Believers!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the ones who Believe The Truth! And are so fast to Congratulate Themselves For Being Courageous!

Otherwise known as sheltered suburban twits sucking at the teat of a high-consumption society. They can't find their way home from the mall if they misplace their cell phone with GPS, but they think they're smarter than everyone else because they Believe(tm) In Man-Made Global Warming.

Three words ...

[Ex-MislTech]

Global Warming Swindle ....search for it on google video, watch it,
learn a lot from "former" members of the IPCC.

Re:This is what we need to be doing

[glitch23]

Rather than arguing about the cause of climate change, we need to focus on solutions to the problems it is creating, and monitoring of the climate.

I'll offer a different opinion. I think we do need to focus on the cause of the climate change. The climate changes all the times. We all know it does so locally and it does globally as well. Smaller changes feed into the bigger system. That has happened since before there were humans. If we are not able to cause additional changes then there is nothing we need to do since the climate will continue to run on automatic for eternity. Of course (and unfortunately), there are people who think we have somehow made a dent in the global climate and, in addition, any small local change must be an indication of their theory that encompasses the entire globe. Again, small changes are always occurring, both good and bad. They aren't indicative of anything. If we spend billions on the assumption we can fix something we didn't even cause then we are just idiots. We have to come to terms with the fact we aren't causing climate changes and spend money elsewhere. We still need to change our reliance on oil and it doesn't hurt to help the environment but to do so under (or even spend more money because of) the assumption the changing climate is our fault is misguided.

One example that we are not changing the global climate:

Joughin, I., and Tulaczyk, S., 2002 Positive mass balance of the Ross Ice Streams, West Antarctica," Science 295: 476-80 "Side-looking radar measurements show West Antarctic ice is increasing at 26.8 gigatons/yr. Reversing the melting trend of the last 6,000 years."

I have a few others but the point is that Antarctica is getting colder.

Re:And we start another global climate change thre

[Anonymous Coward]

And it starts yet again! Another thread debating global climate change!

I don't really see the big deal here personally. Once we have enough SUVs to pull the Earth farther away from the sun just enough to compensate for the heat increase attributed to their emissions, the problem will solve itself. If that pussy Archimedes could do it with a long-ass stick and a tiny-ass fulcrum, there's nothing a few trillion Ford Taruses (Taurii?) can't handle.

Members of the Nobel prize committee and the Ford corporate marketing team can reach me at 555-WAS-JKNG.

Ignorant Blow Hards

[bobbuck]

Skeptics know that NASA just had to revise the warmest year on record to 1934 instead of 1998 because their software had a Y2K bug. Skeptics know that climate models don't account for solar variation, especially sunspot activity which affects precipitation. Skeptics know that the rate of global warming is falling. Skeptics know that that the economic costs of reducing CO2 emissions far outweigh the benefits. Skeptics know that global warming alarmists are funded to the tune of 1000x the skeptics.

Don't attack people when you really have no clue. Almost half the climatologists are skeptics and the other half gets big research grants because they aren't.

Re:Ignorant Blow Hards

[budgenator]

In Honesty I've seen the revised data and the difference is not great, more in the embarrassment range than the significant range. The skeptic in me welcomes this because the problem was found by a data auditor, which means that the work is being questioned, where as before it seemed that any infadel that dared to question a true believer in the church of Global Warming was summarily excoriated in public.

Re:But we *know* man causes global warming, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

for the love of god can we get a -1 where's your damn references mod???

Re:And we start another global climate change thre

[Kangburra]

This was rated insightful?? Why?

Someone who's more stupid than most had mod points.

We Need to Know...

[ConceptJunkie]

The intent is to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.

Climate change can have huge effects on agriculture, standards of living, and even whether people can live in a certain location, but we all know that real reason is to make sure that the blame is laid on President Bush as soon as any change, however minute, is detected. If it gets warmer, it's Global Warming. If it gets cooler, it's Global Warming. If it stays the same, it's Global Warming.

In the Name of Al Gore, Thomas Malthus and Woodsy the Owl. Amen.

do you get paid?

[m2943]

Tell us: you get paid for spreading vitriol about global warming and the people working in the area? Or do you simply not know any better?

Re:And we start another global climate change thre

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually; I was just bored.

Wow, was this in the model

[mveloso]

Oh, no, another factor!

Lucky for us we haven't committed any funds to the global warming cleanup fund yet.

Pumping carbon out of the ground to feed cows

[benhocking]

I'm not sure if everyone becoming vegetarian would have a real impact on carbon footprint. not like you have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows.

It's exactly like that: grass (carbon) in, methane (carbon) out. As far as solar efficiency goes, eating vegetables and fruit is the most efficient way to move solar energy into your body. Just like with any system, adding a middleman (or cow), increases overhead.

Re:Pumping carbon out of the ground to feed cows

[Scruffy Dan]

not to mention the conversion of high-carbon storing ecosystems (forests) into low-carbon storage ecosystems (range land). All the carbon stored in the forest biomass will eventually be released back into the atmosphere, and the new low-carbon storage ecosystem will only be able to absorb as small amount of the eventually-to-be-released carbon from the forest.

Re:Pumping carbon out of the ground to feed cows

[OrangeTide]

grass doesn't get carbon from the ground. it takes it in from the air.

cows exhale far more CO2 than they do methane. CO2 is used by plants during photosynthesis.

I don't think adding a 10x overhead by using animals for food instead of consuming the vegetation directly matters in terms of carbon output and global warming. As long as you aren't cutting down forests or pumping oil from the ground, it appears to be zero sum.

Particulate matter

[benhocking]

Why is it then, your warming trend disappears between 1940 and 1970?

Particulate matter. I'd explain in greater depth, but I assume you've already heard this before.

Sounds familiar

[Haekel]

Seems like I already read about "paths of the sea" in Psalms 8.

I hope that was meant to be a parody

[benhocking]

Skeptics know that NASA just had to revise the warmest year on record to 1934 instead of 1998 because their software had a Y2K bug.

Scientists (i.e., real skeptics) know that NASA just had to revise the warmest year in the US on record to 1934 instead of 1998 because of a software bug that had nothing to do with Y2K errors, although it did occur in 2000. Scientists also know that 1934 was already a very close second (in the US), and happened during the US dust bowl. Scientists know the difference between local climate and global climate.

Skeptics know that climate models don't account for solar variation, especially sunspot activity which affects precipitation.

Scientists know that climate models do account for solar variation, and that despite having just come out of a sunspot minimum, we were still setting temperature records.

Skeptics know that the rate of global warming is falling.

Scientists know that "skeptics" were claiming that 10 years ago, too. Interesting thing is that 9 of the hottest 10 years on record for the Earth (even after the NASA correction) happened in the last decade.

Skeptics know that that the economic costs of reducing CO2 emissions far outweigh the benefits.

Scientists know that the reverse is true.

Skeptics know that global warming alarmists are funded to the tune of 1000x the skeptics.

Scientists know that the alarmists are hardly funded at all, but that most climatologists are funded to do their research regardless of its outcome, whereas some researchers are paid by "think tanks" only if they get the "right research" (cf. the recent "bounty" announced by AEI).

Don't attack people when you really have no clue. Almost half the climatologists are skeptics and the other half gets big research grants because they aren't.

You had me until that last line. Now I know you're just being funny. Go to a climatology journal and see how many "skeptics" you can find. (By "skeptic", I assume you mean someone who thinks that AGW isn't real.)

Who are you calling scientists?

[benhocking]

Because despite what we read, it seems more than 10% of scientists either disagree entirely, or at best, remain unconvinced.

Who are you calling scientists - people who merely claim to be a scientist (like the Oregon Petition), or people doing active research in the field? I do not know of a single climate scientist who disagrees completely, and only a very few who remain unconvinced (e.g., possibly Lindzen and Michaels).

I would point to some interesting theories being proposed which point towards solar activity playing a large role in climate change. You asked if the parent of the thread had "read any papers" on the subject...I would invite you to look at some which challenge your valued beliefs. In the spirit of science.

I've read a few of these, and they might contribute to global warming. You should note that the authors of these papers are not climate scientists, to the best of my knowledge. The ones I'm aware of are astrophysicists. Legitimate scientists, but possibly out of their league in interpreting the atmospheric effects of cosmic radiation. (In fact, they're also out of the mainstream in their own field, but that's OK.) Read some papers by Lindzen and Michaels - these are two climatologists that are often touted by the "skeptic" camp. You'll notice that they do not dispute that humans are contributing to global warming. The closest they come is saying that they're not sure that humans are the dominant factor. Most climate scientists are sure. I do not know of any that are sure we are not the dominant factor, but if you do, please let me know.

Re:Who are you calling scientists?

[Torvaun]

What's the right temperature? Until someone gives us that, we're healing the planet as far as we know. Dinosaurs thrived in a climate warmer than ours. Mammoths thrived in a climate cooler than ours. We're humans. We adapt. We'll be fine.

Why was this modded as a troll?

[wilec]

Why was this modded as a troll? It seems pretty insightful to me. Whatever the reason for the recent tilt toward warmer conditions the advice is reasonable enough. For instance the idea of investing in new AC technology. Just today I noted to my boss that part of the reason a couple of our 100 ton air condensor AC units were struggling was that they were built optimized for efficiency in our locale (US midwest), however in the past week we have been experiencing Texas conditions. Units built for Texas would have a larger condensor surface area that ours but such would less efficient in normal midwest conditions. If these conditions do turn out to be long term or erratic then there is going to be a lot of money to be made designing a new generation of units and patching existing units condensors, control hardware and software. With water based condensors you simply add cooling tower cells, air based condensors are not quite that simple. Note this will be just as much an issue for homeowners as for industrial plants like ours.

Wabi-Sabi
Matthew

I'm not this cynical yet...

[benhocking]

But close. I'd point you to an article from today's front page, but that'd definitely be disingenuous because I'd be the first to point out that no single day or even season can be definitively linked to global warming. It's kind of like parenting in that way. A certain style of parenting tends to lead to ill-behaved kids, whereas another style tends to lead to well-behaved kids. However, the best parents can have an ill-behaved kid, and the worst parents can have a well-behaved kid. No single kid reflects which style of parenting is the best, and pointing out a particularly well-behaved kid being raised the right way is just as imperfect an indicator that that style is correct as pointing out a particular ill-behaved kid being raised the right way as an indicator that it's incorrect.

Anyways, if you're one of those people who only care about Americans, you're mostly right. Americans, in general, will not be hit as hard as the rest of the world. (Poetic injustice, if you will.) Of course, once those regions that are hit hard start getting desperate and/or upset, I wouldn't be surprised if we need to increase our budget on defense.

Re:I'm not this cynical yet...

[Torvaun]

Honestly, I don't care much for Americans either. Americans have continuously let me down as far as this whole 'Government of the people, by the people, and for the people' goes. My well of patriotism is starting to run dry. Luckily, my wells of cynicism and vitriol are looking to last the rest of my life.

I'm in Wisconsin. Should the ice caps melt and the oceans rise, we will not be in trouble. I could care less if LA and San Diego and New York City turn into places like Venice. From a population control point of view, I'm all for it. We haven't had a plague or a high-casualty war for quite some time. This is causing the boom, and it needs to slow down. The sacrifice of some for the good of the rest, I suppose.

I agree about your point of a season not being representative, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the world going through temperature cycles, and that we haven't left the expected range yet. I don't feel that there's a great risk of polar caps melting away in my lifetime, and I expect to have a good long lifetime ahead of me. We have time to sit down, and calmly discuss all the options. We aren't doing that, and that rather irritates me.

Also, I'm pretty sure that China is a bigger polluter than America. All poetry aside, I don't especially care where it's going to be worst, except that if it were going to be worse here, logic would go even further out the window while panic set in. Look at people. They're morons. Look at the press. They know people are morons, and they help induce that panic. If we were actually being threatened, they would do everything they could to hinder the rescue. I'm a certified lifeguard. Do you know how to get someone who is likely to drown but still conscious out of the water? You get close enough to them that they'll start to come after you, then you make them chase you back to the shore. If you get close enough for them to grab you, they will grab you, and hold you there just to have more time. It isn't an altogether uncommon thing for a rescuer and his victim to both drown from the victim's panicked behavior.

You're probably right

[benhocking]

I liked the visual, though. I can honestly say that I don't know how cows fit into the carbon cycle and was relying purely on "common sense" — very dangerous, of course. What I've read about them mainly focuses on the relative amount of land, water, and other resources required per food calorie for cows vs. fruits and vegetables.

Re:You're probably right

[OrangeTide]

certainly you can feed more people with the same amount of land if they are vegetarians. But in the US and western Europe there does not appear to be a problem feeding people with the amount of land available. (thank you industrialized farming!)

Leaving the expected ranges...

[benhocking]

I'm talking about the world going through temperature cycles, and that we haven't left the expected range yet.

As for temperature cycles, I'd say you're right. However, all models (and current temperature trends) suggest that we will in our lifetime. (This depends on how you're defining "expected range". I'm keeping it in the range of human civilization.)

I don't feel that there's a great risk of polar caps melting away in my lifetime, and I expect to have a good long lifetime ahead of me.

Actually, the Arctic ocean is expected to be ice free in the summers by 2040. When it comes to the Antarctic, you're most likely completely correct (unless massive improvements are made in longevity technology).

I'm pretty sure that China is a bigger polluter than America.

That used to be true only in regards to particulate pollution, but indicators are that it now (as of this year) has us beat in greenhouse gas emissions as well. As for my poetry, I never claimed to be an English major. :)

I'm a certified lifeguard. Do you know how to get someone who is likely to drown but still conscious out of the water? You get close enough to them that they'll start to come after you, then you make them chase you back to the shore. If you get close enough for them to grab you, they will grab you, and hold you there just to have more time.

They must have changed things quite a bit since I became certified. We were taught to approach them (circling around) from behind (so they can't grab us) and then put an arm over one shoulder and under the other. (To be fair, at this time we were also being taught to use H2O2 to rinse out our mouths after giving mouth-to-mouth to reduce the risk of AIDS transmission. However, AIDS was still quite new back then.) Sure, in some cases conscious people could "chase you back to the shore", but not in all cases. I think it is extremely unethical if they're teaching that technique now.

Re:Leaving the expected ranges...

[Torvaun]

Well, you do keep an eye on them. If they stop following, then something is wrong, and you stop waiting for them to chase you, and start doing something else. But the first thing you do is not move close enough to the panicking person that they can grab you and use you as a flotation device, at least as I was taught. For an unconscious victim, we were supposed to do exactly what you were taught. But we had "Never let the victim lay a hand on you" drilled into our heads.

Did I say 2040?

[benhocking]

Evidently, some are now saying it could happen as early as 2030! (OK, by "some are", I mean "someone is", but I still found it interesting!)

Will we detect benificial effects to climate?

[ananamouse]

Just wondering.