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

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: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: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."

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: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.

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.

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: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: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?

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.)