Slashdot Mirror
North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September?
phobos13013 writes "Recently released evidence is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. As reported in September of last year, the Northwest Passage was ice-free for the first time known to man. The implications of this, as well as the causes, are still being debated. Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?"
The Polar Bears. No place to go any more.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Oh no! What will happen to santa and his elves, and the reindeer? Won't someone think of the reindeer?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
That we carpet bomb the damn thing just to be safe.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Just read a great book about China's 'discovery' of the America around 1421 and they were able to get their junks around Greenland, a feat not otherwise possible, but it was warm that year.
No idea how many SUVs were on the road back then, so I wonder how we can compare CO2 emissions?
The opposite of progress is congress
much easier to extract all the oil trapped in the sea floor up there!
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
It's about fucking time those damn penguins get what they deserve.
This is not news. This is a prediction that there might be news in September.
If it doesn't happen, will we get an apology for misleading us?
"The melt would be mostly symbolic--thicker ice, pushed against the Canadian continental shelf by weather and Earth's rotation, would still survive the summer."
So when we say the North Pole will melt we are talking about a point not the whole Artic ocean which is what impression one might get from the title.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
I hate ice and snow anyway - what a bloody mess it is. If you are a masochistic person who actually likes snow I suggest you move to a colder planet such as Mars or Pluto.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Has anyone thought that this is just the planet recovering from the ice age?
Maybe the melting ice could have something to do with this:
AFP Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths
Some analysis at:
Global Warming - Or Simply Massive Under Sea Volcanoes?
It's almost like mother nature is giving humanity some 'gentle' urging to move-out and get our own place.
Pretty soon, however, if we don't get our ass in gear I have a feeling we might find all our stuff thrown out on the front lawn...if you follow the analogy.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
It is comical to me that in the past decade, I've seen the headlines purchased by oil company spin doctors go from:
Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?
to
Global Warming: Are We Causing It?
to
Global Warming: What Can We Do About It?
to
Antarctica: The New Hawaii
What surprises me is that there has not been any significant change in sea level even though the sea level rose about 130m since the last ice age.
I thought flooding was one of the major dangers of global warning. Where did the ice go?
TRA is about the North Pole melting. The link provided in the post about the implications is actually about the South Pole.
According to this article the information was really extended beyond what the reporter had received from the scientist.
It was also suggested that the ice may have been flushed out due to the movement of water rather than melting so much. This flow of water might be caused by greenhouse gasses though.
Changes in solar energy output (the "ringing" of the Sun)? Or . . .
Naturally occuring changes in the planetary atmosphere (as has happened before on this planet)? Or . . .
Naturally occuring changes in the planetary hydrosphere (as has also happened before on this planet)? Or . . .
Al Gore's incessant whining about greenhouse gasses (now there's a bunch of hot air!)? Or . . .
But you get the point - when we at least have an educated guess as to the 'why' (and if that 'why' comes back to human activity on the planet), then I'll consider this more than an interesting possibility.
Yeah, because everybody knows that the person who *really* knows about climate science is a bad fiction writer.
This is where I look to keep track of what's happening with the north pole:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Best graph is :
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
My friends refer to it a climate-porn...
Can't say I strongly disagree since it has the feel of watching a loooong slow train wreck...
Maybe that Point Barrow beachfront track that Florida sales guy sold me some time back isn't that bad of a deal after all!
This is just Mother Nature helping the shipping companies with the high price of gas. Opening the NW Passage saves having to go around that whole South America thing or go through the Panama Canal. See, it is all part of W's plan for stimulating the economy!
today is spelling optional day.
Ah, Chrichton. Because writing Jurassic Park is the only scientific credential that actually matters.
With all due respect, he's got an M.D., he's not a climatologist. I don't call a plumber when I'm sick; I don't ask an M.D.'s opinion on climate change.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Grolar or the Prizzly
Are they hunted for their magical powers?
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
This is great news for international shipping.
Just when fuel prices are skyrocketing, global commerce gets a 50% break on shipping distances.
On the North Pole web cam.
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster has their speaking privileges taken away. Put on your dunce caps, go sit in the corner and shut the f&*k up.
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
In no way will this turn out to be the same as most issues in popular science, where there is an underlying trend that we should consider changing, but whose likely effects will not be fully understood without much more research and in any case will occur subtly over a period of many years.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Mod me down if you will, but I heard one report that ice levels right now are higher than at the same time last year.
The NW Passage has been open in the recent past from (1905 - 1948). Accurate measurement of the "melting" began in 1979, probably about the time ice coverage peaked. As a cursory search will show, it has also been open in the more distant past as well.
The freeze/thaw of the arctic is clearly cyclic. Whether it is clear evidence of global warming or not is a question to be considered. Man's impact on this warming, if the warming is actually happening, is another question altogether.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
our sun is growing fast. A couple hundredths of a percent every decade.
[Citation Needed]
After the ice melts, the poles flip. Eventually we'll be in the next iceage... It has nothing to due with my SUV or your solar panels, it is the nature of the cycle of destruction. After the mass extinction, the strong will survive and slowly rebuild. Our Children and generations more will forget what came before. They will worship our relics and call God by his new name: ComPewTur
Am I kidding? Maybe, Maybe not...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I hope it all melts so we can see if Al Gore's doomsday prediction of Manhattan being 10 feet under water holds true or not. We need more "sky falling" incidents to show the "sky is falling" crowd that it isn't always as bad as they think (cough, hope).
The Grolar and Prizzly are endangered due to over hunting for their magical powers. Only the Liger has a more tenuous situation in that regard.
It's a sad site, watching Grolar hunters heading out, shot-guns in hand, trained wolverines at their side.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The NY Times' environmental blogger has a bit of an analysis of this including a great animation of sea ice growth and melt from 1980 to 2007.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/whats-really-up-with-north-pole-sea-ice/index.html
From my read of his post, it sounds like the Independent may have over-stated its case and mis-represented the words of the experts they interviewed. Which isn't to say things aren't bad...
Next they'll be telling us that poorly-built levees cause flooding and mosquitoes cause Malaria. I'm glad the White House ignored that pesky EPA with their science.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Sung to the tune of Santa Clause is coming to town "Santa Clause is going to drown"
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster has their speaking privileges taken away.
Who died and left you in charge?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Polar bears already have problems. Ice freezes later and thaws sooner, so bears have to swim further and many drown. Seals, their primary food source, are also under pressure because they need the ice to birth. Your wiki source also includes this:
Finally, the National Geographic was a little glib, if not intentionally missleading, when it said:
Any reasonable person quickly realizes there will be no ice to "push" if it's all gone in the center. Models that have not predicted the rapidity of ice loss need to be recalibrated as do politicians who deny global warming and it's impact. The alarmists are alarmingly correct.
I don't call a plumber when I'm sick; I don't ask an M.D.'s opinion on climate change.
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
The Cryosphere Today is a web site run by the University of Illinois. It gives daily information on the extent of polar sea ice.
As shown here and here and here, the arctic ice extent is actually greater than last year, although lower than historical averages.
We seem to have conflicting data.
THe poster above is probably referring to the theory that many millions of years ago the Sun was dimmer(75%) and it has grown slowly brighter. The thing is that data does NOT correlate with the Earth's tempature. Theory ran into a problem with you know Life being on Earth at the time which would have been difficult due water being solid. So they throw in Greenhouse gases at MUCH higher rates and poof tempature and life explained.
Problem is the sun is still growing brighter(for now) but we are adding more and more Greenhouse gases/pollutants. So I should think blaming the sun is putting the cart before the horse.
So we can grab our bathing suits and head for the north poll by next summer?
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
Because he invented the Internet, silly.
Fuck if I know. I guess the media likes people with name recognition. "This guy wrote Jurassic Park, he must know what he's talking about!" "Yeah, well, this guy used to be Vice President! He must know what he's talking about even more!"
It's the fucking name-obsessed news media.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
right now the cap is 10.5mm square kilometers, vs. 7.5mm this time last year. Hacks.
!#&*
Al Gore is just an environmentalist and a politician. In terms of delivering facts about climate change, he's not relevant. I'm not quite sure why he does so much speaking about it -- often scientific ideas are presented by non-scientists, but then, at least, they should be chosen for their charisma.
He's not, the thousands of climate scientists who back him up are. Who does that hack Chrichton have on his side? Some republican politicians and a shit load of gullible right wing retard slashdotters?
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
Global warming has been essentially 'known' (just not widely acknowledged) for as long as I've been alive. Which political interest do you think has been around for over 25 years making this "propaganda"? And why would they refuse to acknowledge it for so long if it was to their benefit? And which political interest spans the globe? Yeah, newsflash genius, this 'global warming' thing isn't specific to America.
In no way will this turn out to be the same as most issues in popular science, where there is an underlying trend that we should consider changing, but whose likely effects will not be fully understood without much more research and in any case will occur subtly over a period of many years.
Yeah. Better to wait and see. Then in 50 years when it's too late you can say "oh shit I guess it's time to turn my lights off when I'm not in a room and stop driving a 1 tonne truck to move 100 metres". Better to pretend the problem isn't there until it directly and irrefutably affects you and it becomes more inconvenient for you personally to not accept it's existence than to ignore it. Then you'll be bitching about how it was all covered up for so many years and they should have done more to warn you.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
If things are melting, why would we get into an ICE age?
Let's look at the motives of either side and see what's really going on. The Al Gores of the world have a personality order commonly referred to as "Chicken Little" and are so full of self-importance they feel the need to save the world. The idiots on the opposite extreme hate to be bothered by facts and science (hey, if it ain't in the Bible...), so they regurgitate a bunch of phony old-wives-tales they heard on Rush Limbaugh. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and thus is worthy of discussion.
you were a good bunch. some other place, time, dimension, whatever, see ya.
Read radical news here
Ok, I got a link for this, I knew I read that somewhere... It says 10 percent every one billion years or so... pretty small fraction isn't it? But with all other parameters taken into account, like the runaway greenhouse effect, the effect on Earth's warming is a little heavier.
I have some serious questions for you:
1) Do you believe that Michael Crichton has information that the climate scientists do not?
2) Do you believe Michael Crichton is smarter than the climate scientists and better able to interpret the data?
3) If either of these is true, what leads you to believe this?
But at a scale a lot greater than the human one, our sun is growing fast. A couple hundredths of a percent every decade. So our faith is there. As the sun will grow larger and larger, our planet is going to heat more and more, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Bzzzztt!!! I call Bullsh-t.
WTF are you talking about? The sun is growing larger? Why would you pull something so incredibly obviously wrong out of your arse, and why would anybody be dumb enough to mod this up?
The output of the sun is so even and so predictable, it's called the "Solar Constant". There is a variation of about 1 part per thousand over a 30-year cycle. In short, the idea that the sun is getting hotter every year is not just wrong, it's absurdly so.
Come back when you have some "facts" that reflect reality, mmmkay?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
True... now here's the converse: Al Gore is no climatologist, either - but that didn't stop him from writing a book and being pointed at as some sort of authority on climate by the populace at large.
Not trying to pick a debate, but I do want to point out something.
It doesn't require any sort of degree to use logic in order to take what's out there data-wise, and form a hypothesis (or opinion) that can withstand scrutiny. All that is required is logical skill, intellect, a lot of research, a little wisdom, and patience enough to see the argument (pro or con) come together.
I honestly don't care about who advances the opinion, I care about the logical progression of the argument. I also care about whether or not the supporting facts are as complete as possible, in context, and not in disregard of facts which oppose the conclusion. See also the reasons why ad hominem and appeals to authority are counted as fallacious.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If you'd like to simulate this yourself, the EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
Where did the ice go?
Tom Collins's.... Turns out...
So I should think blaming the sun is putting the cart before the horse.
No, no. I'm pretty sure without the sun there'd be no greenhouse effect.
2) Yes.
3) Watch the video, he explains it better than I can:
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-speeches-independent.html
and also this: http://www.michaelcrichton.com/video-charlierose-2-17-07.html
Who cares about what happens in 5 years? We'll pretty much run the world by then!
Umm, we're China, right?
Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?
Yes to all of the above.
I love multiple choice when all of the answers are right.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Alternatively:
Not a typewriter
Thousands?
Last I heard it was three. Two of which are forbidden to publish in scientific journals due to long histories of distortion and bias.
I'd find the citations, but it's Friday afternoon, you won't read them, and I have better things to do
At least Crichton cites the dozens of papers he read to draw his conclusions so that interested readers can do the same.
A few years ago I thought that it wouldn't be possible that there would be a passage through the arctic.
I would say we make a HUGE difference on the climate change in the short period that matters to US. We are realeasing millions of years of sun-energy in a few years and that can't be a good thing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The chart in the article includes plots of historical melt, 2007 melt, and 2008 melt. The 2008 line falls between the 2007 and historical lines. The 2007 and 2008 lines do overlap at several points, but the most recent plot points show the 2008 line moving back between 2007 and the average. How is it that 2008 is on pace to be a record year when 2007 currently shows more?
Aren't there valid arguments that say that this is just a cyclic phenomenon linked to solar activity?
No. Increased solar output appear to only account for a small portion of the increase in temperature. Of course some of the 10,000s of scientists involved may by liberal, so we can just ignore them...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Al Gore is just an environmentalist and a politician. In terms of delivering facts about climate change, he's not relevant. I'm not quite sure why he does so much speaking about it
...
ahhhh
What will we do when kids learn there's no ice at the pole for the old elf to live in?
Saint Nicholas definitely isn't an elf. He's too tall to be the traditional type, and too fat to be the Tolkein/RPG variety.
But to answer the question, he'll either have to adapt (/me sings "Wading Through a Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Puddle") or move to Neptune.
Blank until
But he has p-p-p-powerpoint!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Correct me if I'm wrong, (and I'm sure some of you will try), but when ice melts into water.. it does not displace the volume of the water.. correct?
What that means is New York and DC will (sadly) not be submerged in the ocean.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Prizzly? Fo Shizzly?
The photo shown in this story was taken nowhere near the north pole and is undated, why is it even there?
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
So no, the scientists do not back him up. And I have the UN IPCC document to back me up. What do you have?
The problem is that Al Gore's information is so full of hyperbole and outright lies, he discredits the actual science. To understand just how full of shit he is, compare his works with the IPCC's.
Global Warming is unfalsifiable. No matter what happens, the experts will find it supporting global warming. Can they give us ONE possible event that can falsify Global Warming? Nope. Can you imagine any event that could convince the experts to drop their theory? Nope.
I think Santa outsourced Naughty/Nice research to India, and manufacturing to China. It happened a long time ago.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
If you truly think that modern "science" isn't influenced at all by politics, you really need to read about what happened behind the scenes before that IPCC report was published. You could start by looking at the legal action some of the scientists named as contributors took to try to get their names removed because they didn't want to be associated with it. Then you could look at the funding arrangements for the strongest supporters.
I'm not saying the phenomenon of global warming is completely made up. I'm not saying we shouldn't be watching what's happening, considering our role in it, and adjusting our behaviour if necessary. Nowhere did I say any of these things, despite what several knee-jerk respondents seem to think I wrote.
What I am saying is that we shouldn't panic over every little story about something this year being different to something last year, and go all hyper as if the world is about to end. As others have noted, the possibility of global warming has been on the scientific radar for decades. If it is such a great and immediate threat to humanity, the scientific community has been remarkably restrained for an awfully long time given that suddenly this is the top item on the agenda and they are falling over themselves to tell us how much trouble we are in. The science didn't change that quickly; remember, the IPCC report was essentially a huge survey paper, not a whole load of original research that told us we'd been off by orders of magnitude in our previous knowledge and modelling or something. What changed quickly was the politics.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Ah, yes, the sun is growing. A couple hundreds of a percent a decade, you say. Let's assume .02 % per decade. A quick back of the napkin calculation... you're saying that the sun is 4% larger than it was 2000 years ago, and is more than double the size it was 35,000 years ago.
Tell me, where did the mass for that come from?
And why was the planet not covered in ice for the last billion or so years?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
There. Fixed it for you.
Remember Sonny Bono! Remember what's-his-name Kennedy!
You should be able to watch what happens from webcams near the Nort Pole station. Now, if the North Pole does melt you you won't see much anymore from those cams, of cause.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
All you'd need to show is a trend that, over time, the average temperature of the atmosphere and ocean is dropping, or at least stable. It might also help to show stable or increasing glacier masses (over a large collection of glaciers distributed all over the world, and over a somewhat large period of time - doesn't have to be stable in a one year cycle - one would *expect* glaciers to shrink during 'summer' [which is going to differ between northern and southern hemisphere's, of course], and grow back during the winter - but at least over the course of a decade or two).
So, the N. Pole is growing while the S. Pole is growing new ice despite a big hole in the ozone and chiken little claims of global warming. Yep - we live on a dynamic Earth, and I'm convinced that most of these scientists don't really know jack.
So true we should probably get rid of it.
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster ... shut the f&*k up.
Alternatively, any one who would like to stop hearing opposing view points, feel free to close the browser.
It's worth repeating, historically, the mob is often, if not always, wrong. Below is an excerpt from a speech that is well worth reading for an historical perspective:
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
The argument can easily be made that over the last ten to twenty years we have moved from a consensus of there-is-no-warming to a consensus of global-warming. One might argue that a few determined scientists with excellent data managed this swing in just a few short years.
But the argument can also be made that the consensus prior to global-warming was not there-is-no-warming, but rather global-cooling and trying to drive policy to prevent the coming ice age. These people have a poor track record with predictions, but always seem ready with recommendations for how to behave.
Only history will prove them right or wrong. Prior to that, we are just running around with our hands in the air like chicken-little and demanding that massive works are undertaken to shore up the sky. Had we done this for global-cooling in the 1970s, we would have wasted a lot of money and resources.
I would suggest that the global warming crowd make a track of predictions for average surface, ocean and atmospheric temperatures for the next ten years. They should be able to predict the average within a margin of error EACH year on the way to that goal. If they can select the measurement criteria and firmly state their predictions... then we can observe their accuracy and react accordingly as the reality of the situation unfolds.
Up until now, all they've done is move the target.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Let me clarify. I'm not sure why people choose to have him do the speaking. He seems genuinely interested in the issue to me -- though he certainly could just be in it for the speaking fees, notoriety, etc. That doesn't mean I'd want him speaking on my behalf; he's neither a scientist nor terribly charismatic.
The Earth stopped warming in 1998. Even the notoriously unreliable IPCC says so. Crazy people and wild speculation doesn't make for good journalism.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Considering many places are having record ice GROWTH
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/10/antarctica-ice-cap-growth-reaches.html
Where did the ice go?
It's now all at the north pole of Mars. What, does nobody read the other articles here?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
God. Sincerely, Nietzsche.
"remarkably restrained for an awfully long time"?
Hahahahahaha!
from the summary:
"Recent evidence released is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. "
This is restrained? this is about as strong a warning as it gets. The reason it doesn't sound like someone screaming from the top of their lungs is because scientists are supposed to report facts, interpretation and predictions.
Unless you mean _you_ can't tell that they are being serious about it, that you need the kind of sensational titles from those weekly celebrity magazines, like "Is Arctic Melting Again?!!! Scientists Say We Will All Die Next Year!"
By the time you feel their warning is sufficiently dire, it's already too late to do anything about it. Don't worry, it's not that much longer to go.
There have been plenty of dire predictions, but it's never going to enough for people who stick fingers in their ears and pretend they can't hear anything they don't want to hear.
You know, just because there are two sides to the debate, doesn't mean the answer is somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, one side is just completely wrong.
> often scientific ideas are presented by non-scientists,
> but then, at least, they should be chosen for their charisma.
What if he WAS? Do you think that climate researchers are any more charismatic than the rest of us, here?
Remember, these are the meteorologists who couldn't get their TV job, even in the smallest markets. :-)
Technically, if the world was to flood, then Religion would not be based on the Bible, And then the Bible would not exist.
It's not under debate by the real scientists. Funny people still try to spin that.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Because he's not Bush.
The sun is about 30% brighter than it was long ago, and it will continue getting brighter. The other poster just has his time-scales all wrong - it won't be a critical problem for hundreds of millions of years.
And the sun is getting bigger, as hydrogen turns to helium. But again, the time scale is long.
When I read about information technology on /., I learn stuff. When I read about science, I'm dismayed. Most of this global warming thread is ridiculous.
They could just mod you down instead!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So even global warming backers say global warming is in hiatus but they'll point to this as proof of global warming. Which they admitted is in hiatus.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Global warming is a scam.
Weather Channel Founder Wants To Sue Al Gore For Global Warming Fraud
http://www.infowars.com/?p=805
http://media.kusi.clickability.com/documents/Global+Warming+is+a+Scam1.pdf
CO2 is a life giving element not a poison.
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/warming.html
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
Perhaps because Al Gore has stated sources for all his information, which comes from climatologists. Unlike every bit of anti-global warming data, which is usually a non-climatologist quoting either himself or someone he knows (also not a climatologist). Why are people so willingly ignorant to issues that could easily come to the end result of the extinction of our species? Do Oil tycoons not realize that they will DIE like the rest of us? Its not a "poor humans will become extinct" thing, its a "money won't save your greedy ass from suffocation" thing.
Cod? Probably gone in our lifetime. More a matter of overfishing than climate change, but it's all the same if you like fish.
I hope you like krill. Cause that's probably gonna be it for seafood.
I think you misunderstand me. They (both the politians and much of the scientific community) are indeed making rather dramatic statements today.
Given that little new research has become available in the past couple of years, and given the decades of research we already had on the subject, it is surprising then that such similarly dramatic statements were not being picked up until quite recently. If so much of the scientific community agrees so unanimously that this is such a great threat, why did it take a failed presidential candidate making a flawed film to put this issue seriously on the political radar?
Of course, one could (and several in this discussion have) just as well point out that the total amount of ice up there is actually higher this year than last year. Should we infer from this that global warming was all just a red herring? Of course not. It's just another small piece in a very large jigsaw, and sensationalising it does no-one any favours.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Ah, yes, the sun is growing. A couple hundreds of a percent a decade, you say. Let's assume .02 % per decade. A quick back of the napkin calculation... you're saying that the sun is 4% larger than it was 2000 years ago, and is more than double the size it was 35,000 years ago.
Tell me, where did the mass for that come from?
Without examining your numbers too closely, I must point out that mass (which, as you rightly suggest, would have to come from somewhere if it was increasing) is not the same as volume (which is what one would more traditonally equate to "size").
This is exactly right.
Defense contractors and Republicans get hype terrorism, environmental scientists and Democrats hype climate change. Both threats are real, but the dialogue is severely distorted and misleading. Its all about power and money.
According to the Yahoo report this morning, the North Pole will be ice free for the first time in human history. Really? People were recording the ice flows 6-10-25 thousand years ago? We've only been a full scale sea exploring people for ~500 years. The first man reached the north pole in what, the early 1900's?! Wow, first time in human history the north pole is water. There are ancient Roman port towns that are over 1 mile from the current shore line. How do global warming experts explain that? That was 2000 years ago. Obviously, the ice caps were much smaller back then, for the ports to be a mile from sea.
I don't call a plumber when I'm sick; I don't ask an M.D.'s opinion on climate change.
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
If you'd watched "An Inconvenient Truth", you'd have known he has been interested in the environment since taking classes with professor Roger Revelle who was a frontrunner in the field of climatology.
I'm waiting for you to shut off your computer.
Well I know flamebait when I see it, don't you be callin' me humor impaired, you twat!
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
True, but I also do not know whether energy output is dependent on mass or on volume, on some combination, or something else entirely.
I would think it's dependent more on mass than on volume, as an equivalent mass in a larger volume should have fewer particle interactions. But I am not a physical chemist or physicist, so I don't know, and am feeling too lazy on a Friday afternoon to look it up.
For all we know, OP could have been referring only to apparent size, which could be affected by lens effects from the atmosphere... but no matter what, his timescale is WAY off.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
right quote is: "nuke it from orbit. Is the only way to be sure"
North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September?
A project that is on schedule! Somebody is in for a pay rise.
Oh wait, that was a question. Nevermind, I'm sure I can bring the project to schedule if I work evenings and weekends for the next three months. I'll be in my cubicle hatching evil plans if anybody needs me.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
Mammals are a huge reservoir of the disease, all the medicine in the world wont clear the disease from an area..
Storm
But he lost to bush so knowing more gets discounted.
You have to admire the politics of fear. Aside from perhaps the politics of envy, it is the most unprincipled way to make a case for anything. And yet it is spectacularly successful. You can convince people who don't know any better to support you without having to make any factual arguments. You can label anyone who opposes you a threat, so that again people who don't know any better will therefore be suspicious, and since it's impossible to prove a negative, it is hard for the opposition to defend themselves robustly in such an environment (unless they can appeal to a greater fear). Since on any given specialist subject, inevitably most people won't know much about the details, you can turn an entire population's view on a subject with nothing but oratory, regardless of how much factual evidence supports or opposes your case.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why not. Many people value the opinion of people with far weaker science backgrounds about the safety of nuclear power plants.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Could just be over fishing, my uncle went out ice fishing and caught 72 pounds. I think that is totally unreasonable myself.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
What I wonder do they teach enviro-mentalist scum nowadays? How to save toilet paper?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grolar
Grizzly-polar bear hybrid is a rare ursid hybrid that has occurred both in captivity and in the wild. In 2006, the occurrence of this hybrid in nature was confirmed by testing the DNA of a strange-looking bear that had been shot in the Canadian arctic.
Ungebildetes Gruenenpack.
Does this mean Kevin Costner gets forgiven for that movie?
Funny, yes, but many climatologists are physicists.
I have limited first-hand experience that climate researchers are dull, yes. The original complaint was that he wasn't a climate researcher. I figure the information should be presented by an expert who is actively researching in field or someone who's charismatic. Both would be great, but as you said, hard to find.
1) What bearing (if) anything does this have on Russia's controversial territorial claim of the region?
2) Is there oil? (Serious question)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Just curious, did you not learn in school that as stars the size/type of our sun age, the tend to get larger as the nuclear fuel is consumed?
It is absolutely absurd that you think the life of a star is a constant.
Its great that you quoted wikipedia though the perfect source of information, cause if you look around a little more you'd find this in the article about the sun specifically which contridicts what you've said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun):
I love quoting wikipedia, its great to make it obvious I don't actually know anything about the subject but I can paste the first google result.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Loss of cropland? How about GAINING cropland? In places like northern Canada. What was permafrost, is now agriculture.
Only history will prove them right or wrong. Prior to that, we are just running around with our hands in the air like chicken-little and demanding that massive works are undertaken to shore up the sky.
No, we're doing more than that. We are also diverting resources and attention away from other worthy goals. A lot more people are currently dying of preventable causes or suffering reduced quality of life than the worst predictions suggest global warming will affect a long way into the future. In many parts of the world, secure food and water supplies, reliable shelter from the elements, basic sanitation and elementary medicine are still rare.
I hope that if nothing else, the current emphasis on fighting climate change will serve the same role as things like space exploration and military research have in the past: acting as a catalyst for research that is useful in other areas, such as more efficient use of natural resources, methods of power generation that are sustainable in the long term, and earlier detection of and more robust defence against environmental disasters like the tsunamis and earthquakes we see all too frequently in some areas.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
A ten year cooling period proves that the globe cooled for 10 years. It's perfectly correct to say that during that 10 year period, we experienced global cooling. It might be that after that 10 year period, the globe then experienced another period of global warming. The thing about trends is, it always depends on what time frame you are actually interested in. One could go to the other extreme, and look at the last X thousand years of global history, say, from the peak of the last warm period, through the ice age, and up to the present and say that during that time frame, there is no average global warming or cooling, and that would be correct too.
The fact is, we know the earth is warming, because that is based on verifiable observations. You can't falsify observations. Now, there is something else also called Global Warming, which is the theory that man is *causing* the Earth to warm. That's a lot tougher nut, but there has to be a way to falsify that theory. One thing we can say is that the theory of Man-made Global Warming is based on the theory that certain gasses, which are released by man into the atmosphere, trap heat. That is a falsifiable theory, which has not been falsified. Experiments have indicated that the hypothesis that Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and other gasses trap heat in the atmosphere. There is another theory, that plants and other types of life forms (I think algeas and other lifeforms in the ocean) remove Carbon Dioxide, in particular, from the atmosphere, and that is a falsifiable theory. Since we know that mankind is, overall, reducing the surface area of the planet that is densely populated by plants, we can say, not absolutely surely, and possibly not falsifiable, but with with a high degree of confidence, that the earth's ability to reduce Carbon Dioxide is reduced from what it could do in the past (there is still the matter of the oceans; it may be possible that, even though the plantlife on the surface is not removing as much CO2 as it used to, maybe the ocean is removing more than it used to).
My point is, that while the big, complex 'puzzle' that is a theory like global warming, maybe cannot be falsified as a whole, you can certainly falsify the constituent pieces of the theory. If you have not been able to experimentally falsify the pieces (which are falsifiable), then the most reasonable assumption is that the theory is correct, until you have some concrete evidence or theory to show why the theory was not, in fact, correct.
That said, we should not commit economic suicide because of fear of global warming. As far as I can tell, the only reason people who are 'anti-global warming' even care about the issue is that they fear that we will enact regulations which will have a harmful effect on the economy, without really having a need to. The way I see it, global warming is, to some extent, a long term issue, and we should be thinking about long term solutions. We absolutely should be continuing to pour resources into energy research (e.g. improved designs for solar power, wind, fission, fusion, biomass - we need to explore every possibility to find cleaner, renewable energy), research into efficiency/consumption reduction, etc.
We shouldn't deny global warming, when there is so much evidence for the theory, but we also shouldn't make drastic bad choices that impoverish people, out of fear of global warming.
Well, what would have given them all that hubris? Possibly scientific education and specialisation? Years spent studying the planet's climate?
Well no shit Sherlock.
As a PhD in control theory, I can solemnly declare you a charlatan. Space shuttles are controlled. Nuclear fission reactions are controlled (and they are both nonlinear and unstable). Hell even chaotic systems are controlled. And I am supposed to believe a Sci-Fi writer that has been called a moron by every competent climatologist that hey, you can't help complex stuff? I don't believe in penis-enlargement pills, therefore I don't believe in Michael Crichton.
Your foolish statement may be reworded as "Since you cannot understand a system as complex as the human body, you cannot possibly cure people".
You know, I have this sick, sad habit of looking at politically incorrect sites. Nazis, racists, holocaust deniers—it's a little philosophical exercise, to think how the would would be absurd if these retards actually were right. There is however a line to draw, and Crichton, in that video, passed it after five minutes, when he said that Chernobyl was not really that much of a disaster because only "50 people died". Such a claim indicates a spectacular level of intellectual dishonesty: he's counting only the firefighters who died in the accident, and since nobody traced the isotopes, well, all those malformed children born in Belarus, all those cases of thyroid cancer, they could all just be a statistical anomaly, right? And that's only counting deaths, the really alarming numbers are the people who develop conditions because of the poisoning: in the Ukraine alone, the authorities estimate that 2.4 millions people were affected by the radiation. Note that Ukraine did not even get most of the fallout, Belarus did.
Well, that's enough to make up my mind for now: he's a shill paid by industry lobbyists to deliver lies. Call me up when they actually find a climatologist backing him up.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Chricton is, in some sense that I don't truly understand, a good writer of fiction. Nothing more, nothing less.
"polar ice maximum"--that is the *date* of the thickest ice, end of winter ice forming season. Calendar dates are not thick (or thin). FWIW, they reckon mid march this past winter for the polar ice maximum at the north pole. If you mean extent, it was marginally larger than last year, but still way below average and most of it is "young" ice, and it is already melting rapidly. Old ice-ice that has survived past one season- has been steadily dropping for some time now. That's the thick heavy duty stuff that hangs in there and really helps with climate moderation and circulation, but there is less of it every year now. Once it is all young ice, it will be ice free every summer, more or less completely. If that happens, the next goi go is the tundra, and if the tundra goes all melty, 100 zillion cubic metric fucktons of methane start to be released-then all bets are off. The climate modelers gauges only go to 10 ;)
Not that I am a proponent of the 100% man made global climate change theory, I am not, and I am completely against the total scam carbon trading massive wealth skimming industry and huge government power grabs being pushed as the "war on carbon", when we all need and use carbon, no way around that. But I am a proponent of the climate change theory of man made simultaneously with naturally occurring cyclic and solar output variable. IMO, it is *all of the above*, all the time now, but I also support a real fast shutdown (within a decade or so) of the heavy pollution from coal and oil, a fast weaning off those sources, (I certainly think the big oil guys and big coal guys have made enough for now, time for the planets money to go elsewhere and to eliminate threat of war over those resources) and a global mega project to go to renewables and decentralized power and individual ownership as much as possible. I am against massive air and water pollution just to perpetuate global energy cartel vendor lockin. If such a switch helps to moderate climate change for the better, that's frosting.
There has been noticeable changes in solar radiation that reaches earth. Reasons behind this are changes in sun activity or difference in earth atmosphere's reflectivity. In general solar radiation is taken into account when talking about climate models and it has some effect but is not alone able to explain the measured effects of global warming.
I would be surprised if slashdot or any other internet forum were able to figure out some new and important overlooked forcing in global warming that would explain it all. There is hard science behind global warming models and debunking the studies by providing one wild guess of "unaccounted" forcing is plain stupid.
Why are people so willingly ignorant to issues that could easily come to the end result of the extinction of our species?
1. Because that is ridiculous hyperbole.
2. Even if we are the main contributing force behind climate change, no amount of conservation will cause a reversal in the current climate change trends, short of shutting down nearly every energy source on the planet, shutting down all factories and eradicating all internal combustion engines...notice, that's a BIG if.
no amount of conservation will cause a reversal in the current climate change trends
While you say "reversal" and that is technically correct, you are obviously using this to avoid any action at all based on your own ridiculous hyperbole:
short of shutting down nearly every energy source on the planet, shutting down all factories and eradicating all internal combustion engines...notice, that's a BIG if.
MYTH: We can't do anything about climate change.
Get off your lazy butt.
Even though climates worldwide have been in flux since the creation of the planet and we have developed tools in the last 100 years to measure the climate and its changed by half a percent we should all panic and believe that we are causing it and save the planet!!!
what ever will will dooooo????? :P
And YES i'm posting anonymously because I'm tired of hearing it all....
AAAND yes, the run-on was definitely intentional.
No one is pointing to Al Gore as an authority on the subject. He's merely a political spokesperson, and the most prominent. He didn't invent the data or the interpretation thereof himself, and never claimed he did. What he did was to make the arguments available to the masses, to make a difference. Which, if he believes he's right, is the right thing to do (even if he's wrong: it's not like any measure that will destroy the world economy is going to happen by political decision anyway -- they don't have that kind of power).
As the sun will grow larger and larger, our planet is going to heat more and more, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it. ... But it's a fact we can see a slight difference, and it's a fact that WE make a slight difference on climate change. But our destiny is that of our Sun
Climate Myths:
Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans
We can't do anything about climate change
URL? Or did you hear this from Dr Evil?
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
MYTH: It's all a conspiracy
Their predictions were wrong. It's melting faster than anyone anticipated. That's fine, how does this get to "it's exactly what we said was gonna happen but worse!" when it should be "we were wrong and we obviously don't have an accurate way of predicting these things."
Done. Check out the old IPCC reports. They go back over 10 years. They've actually been too conservative in their estimates (i.e., their most probable prediction turned out to be too low).
I find that you have not been paying attention to the discussion, or to the data that has been collected.
As for the Crichton quote... that's cute, but that's complete nonsense. What he is going for is "scientists were wrong before, so they are wrong now!". It's absolute bullshit that provides zero insight into the current problem. For this reason alone, I disregard everything that Crichton says about this problem. He doesn't understand how science works, and merely derails discussions about data.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Skeptics tell us that the climate models are riddled with errors, and cannot be trusted. ... How can you base environment policies on models that are shown to have such large errors?
MYTH: We can't trust computer models
So, the N. Pole is growing while the S. Pole is growing new ice despite a big hole in the ozone and chiken little claims of global warming.
MYTH: Antarctica is getting cooler, not warmer, disproving global warming
Read the whole article.
Whew... someone mod this guy up.
Seriously, if the counter position to the threat of global warming has changed from denial to apathy, that's pathetic.
M
If a car is coming towards you at 100 miles an hour and at 50ft away a phycisist says "There's a very good chance that car isn't going to stop in time, maybe you should move out of the way" do you tell him you want to be 100% sure before you move?
Actually, I would do nothing. Not by choice, but because I wouldn't have time. If the car were traveling at 100mph, that translates to approximately 147 feet per second. Ergo, if the car were 50 feet away when the physicist began to warn me, I would be dead before he finished uttering "There's a..." So if we go by your analogy, we've been warned far too late and we're going to die anyway. Unless of course the physicist is wrong. I'm also curious as to why he's saying "Maybe you should move out of the way" rather than "LOOK OUT!!!" Typical physicists...
Well... I often find myself forced to walk among folks who would never wear the badge "geek", "intellectual" (or even "Internet User" in some cases). At the weekly farmers' markets, at a store (the ones that sell, say, auto parts as opposed to computer parts), at the train stops... places like that.
Kind, normal people for the most part, but they have an irritating habit of only paying as much attention to the issues as can be contained in a typical evening news sound bite. So when they hear that Al Gore says this or that, they quote him at length as if he did all the work. Back when Gore (ill-advisedly) said he facilitated the Internet's birth, and world+dog took that to say that he claimed to invent the Internet, these folks (to an alarmingly large degree) took it as Gospel.
I guess I should explain... I live in Western Oregon, where IMHO the state's political/ideological color shouldn't be blue (450â"495 nm), but ultraviolet (just past 450nm should do it...) I see more "Impeach Bush" bumper stickers on my way to work in the morning than raindrops on a typical Oregon winter's day. Think "polar opposite of Texas" here.
And, just like in Texas, you would be amazed and frightened at what an alarming number of ordinary folks in these parts believe to be unshakeable truth...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yeah, what's in a name anyway?
Michael Crichton doesn't give a fuck if his project gets funded or not?
Please note that the post to which I replied said that climate change was (a) man-made, and (b) a disaster. I'm not sure anyone here is denying that there is robust evidence of change happening; I'm certainly not. What I object to is hysteria about how we're all going to die tomorrow or something, and to blanket statements that imply the whole deal is caused because we drive too many cars or some similarly specific claim.
I saw a survey a few months ago where members of the public were asked their views on global warming. The overwhelming majority of them were sure it was a major problem.
Then again, the overwhelming majority of them also:
I'm not sure why I posted all that, except perhaps to demonstrate that we should be very wary of allowing politics or popular opinion to be confused with actual science.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm not sure why I posted all that, except perhaps to demonstrate that we should be very wary of allowing politics or popular opinion to be confused with actual science.
While that's an excellent point that I also wish would be impressed onto the general public, people take this WAY too far and just dismiss everything that doesn't fit their world view.
It still seems you have some misinformation, or perhaps a lingering misunderstanding of Global Warming. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but you're asserting that water vapor is more important that CO2 emissions right now.
MYTH: CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas
Here's the parent article to the article I linked for you:
Climate change: A guide for the perplexed
There's a whole lot of misinformation going around. I'm not trying to target you personally. If everyone linked to good articles which cite peer-reviewed research, we'd all be better off. And right now we've got people on both ends not bothering. However, just because there are also some nuts on the anthropogenic global warming side, this does not disprove Global Warming.
Fiction author, are the scientific community..who to believe..
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's an very good point.
Al Gore had actual facts in his book, and has been considered good by the scientists who specialize in climate change.
All data needs to be scrutinized, and certianly know one should agree with AL Gore because he's Al Gore.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I would like to see some examples of that.
What lies? what Hyperbole?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1) SO you are saying over 90% of the climatologist are wrong, but this one guy isn't? even scientists in countries whose best interest is to down play climate change?
2) Your an idiot for thinking 1 guy can interpet the data better then the people who spcialize in it.
His video is a joke, and has been debunks.
3) video explains nothing. perhaps you should watch it again? This time with common sense and a knowledge of logical fallacies.
The world is burning around us, and you people are too busy sucking anybodies dick who presents even the most ignorant 'facts'.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Quote -- This is Unix! I know this!
Dude... your lack of indication on the movie or the book leaves me to reference the funnier one.
Maybe...and I know I'm going out on a limb here..it's possible that this has a little something to do with it...?
Ferretman
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Wow, you lack of understanding science and climatology is outstanding, I mean your not even wrong.
Well done~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The total energy output from the sun in the last 100 years can not account for the rise in temperature.
Sorry, deniers need to find a new straw to grasp.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So just to prove Al Gore wrong, we've resorted to alternate theories for the exact same problem. Great. Now by blaming underwater volcanoes, we can die in our oil guzzling Hummers eating cheap beef.
I just watched that whole video.
It's interested how steadying some hindsight is. I don't know if I'll even bother watching the news anymore after that.
He seems to understand a little bit about Chaos or (as he calls it) Complexity theory. Kinda makes me think modeling theory as it relates to complex systems should be required for scientific/engineering disciplines.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
If a car is coming towards you at 100 miles an hour and at 50ft away a phycisist says "There's a very good chance that car isn't going to stop in time, maybe you should move out of the way" do you tell him you want to be 100% sure before you move?
Depends if moving out of the way means you have to jump off a 35' cliff.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
As the whole UFO and crop circle situation unraveled, I think it taught us a great lesson.
That many scientists are not to be trusted. They can be made to say anything, not even for money. They'd do it for fame, or to just kill time. Literally.
The worst part is, that many of these BS scientists completely believe in their BS science. When they speak with conviction, it is because they have it.
Of course, this lesson is followed by another great lesson.
That many scientists are to be trusted. They are acknowledged by their peers, their work is repeatedly challenged and tested, and backed with hard evidence. When they all agree on something, it is, by definition, true beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is one thing competent scientists agree on, it is global warming.
With that said, is the debate over? The debate about what to do, how to do it, and how global warming is really happening will always be debated. But not global warming itself.
we should be very wary of allowing politics or popular opinion to be confused with actual science.
Not only should we not confuse them, we should not let politics or popular opinion dictate our science.
Scientific problems are not solved by voting. They are only solved by science. And only when solved can we look back and say our science was correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
>scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests
The science on this began with Arrhenius in 1896. It has continued with people whose paychecks come from the Bush Administration.
>But the argument can also be made that the consensus prior to global-warming was not there-is-no-warming, but rather global-cooling and trying to drive policy to prevent the coming ice age.
That argument can be made, but only by ignoring the actual literature on climate from the last generation.
short summary of TFA: there's uncertainty in models, so they add error bars. There is major uncertainty in how to model clouds (some argue that the sign of the effect isn't known). Models are used to predict financial markets, so that's OK.
As a professional modeler working on another complex system (financial time series prediction), it is my view that the climate modelers are taking some serious shortcuts. In my industry, one wouldn't dream of committing real money to a model until it had made correct predictions of the target market going forward, without post-hoc tweaks. Constantly tweaking model constants is an indicator of curve fitting. And curve fitting is not prediction.
When a frozen climate model can correctly predict global temperature (objectively defined beforehand), week by week, for a significant time (say, five years), then it can be said that the climate modelers understand climate. Until then, curve-fitted models coupled with a rousing round of "trust us" doesn't make for a falsifiable hypothesis. And without a falsifiable hypothesis, the climate folks aren't doing science. Indeed, Gavin Schmidt at realclimate.org asserts that nothing in the next few years can falsify the models (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/) (!!!)
It blows my mind that unvalidated climate models are used as the rationale for multi-trillion dollar/euro investments.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Ahh, that was my mistake. *cough* *cough*
I don't much about Chricton's own credentials on global warming, but since people are so quick to buy into the opinions of politicians and pundits on this matter, but I'd consider his opinion among others... many many others.
hahahahahaha.................hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Funniest thing I've heard in a very long time. "My laptop runs off the battery most of the time so it doesn't use much electricity....hahahahaha
That is a false analogy, because the glass isn't filled with salt water. The sea level increase isn't substantial, but it is greater than zero.
http://www.physorg.com/news5619.html
The common misconception that floating ice won't increase sea level when it melts occurs because the difference in density between fresh water and salt water is not taken into consideration.
http://home.comcast.net/~pdnoerd/NoerdlingerBrower.pdf (the paper, provided by the author, that is referenced in the physorg article)
If all the extant sea ice and floating shelf ice melted, the global sea level would rise about 4 cm.
I would suggest that the global warming crowd make a track of predictions for average surface, ocean and atmospheric temperatures for the next ten years. They should be able to predict the average within a margin of error EACH year on the way to that goal. If they can select the measurement criteria and firmly state their predictions... then we can observe their accuracy and react accordingly as the reality of the situation unfolds.
I'll spare you the suspense. The global warmers have tried and failed to predict repeatedly for 20 years now. Practically every prediction they make is wrong.
... many countries are eagerly hoping that there IS a permanent melt up north for precisely those reasons, though they'd never admit it publicly... it would revolutionize shipping. And Canada, Denmark, Russia... many countries think that a lot of natural resources are waiting for them under that melting ice. Canada is now actively planning out new shipping routes, and trying to establish legal ownership of many of those possible routes across the north.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The only people who bring up Al Gore in a discussion of the science are deniers, not skeptics - deniers, looking for an easy ad hominem retort in order to avoid actually thinking about the science.
Who needs scientific evidence when you can simply scream a one-liner from a cartoon comedy show, as one of the tags on this article attests?
Al Gore appears to have listened to the scientists, and more-or-less understands what the data and the models are telling us about global warming.
To clarify this point: I'd listen to Angelina Jolie expound on General Relativity if what she said was accurate. I wouldn't listen if she started pitching a perpetual motion machine. (I'd watch either way.)
It's not about the person presenting the theory. It's about how well the theory is supported by data.
Join the club!
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Because he has decided to dedicate his whole career to it? Chrichton has not, last I checked.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
1. Polar Bears should plan accordingly.
2. Sell your land in low lying areas.
3. New destination for Cruise Ships.
4. Nowhere for polar transit airliners to crash land.
5. The Northwest Passage is now open for business!
6. Arctic Fishing is a real possibility.
7. Eocene Climate coming to a biosphere near you!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
(From: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The touchstones to use to make sure you're not getting bamboozled by an inappropriate appeal to authority ("I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV") are:
o Is the person genuinely an expert in the field?
o Is the statement within the person's expertise?
o Do the experts generally agree on the subject of the statement?
o Is the person decently unbiased?
o Is the field itself a sound, knowledge-based one?
o Is the expert identified?
The implications of this, as well as the causes, are still being debated. Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?"
There isn't any debate. Read this:
Climate change: A guide for the perplexed
I don't care if people are tired of me posting it. I'm tired of people spouting baloney without backing it up.
For fifty years, Western nations have maintained the sheeple in state of perpetual fear. Fear of nuclear war, fear of the Communist menace, fear of the Iron Curtain and fear of the Evil Empire. Within the Communist countries, the same just in reverse. But then in the fall of 1989, it was all finished; The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear, and something had to fill it.
We now have radical fundamentalism and post-9/11 terrorism to make us afraid instead. Before terrorism took over as the lead cause and reason for the reduction of civil rights, we feared the toxic environment. Before that we had the Communist menace. Although the specific cause of our fear may change, we are never without fear itself.
Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health and comfort. Average life spans have increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. Afraid of strangers, crime, terrorism, disease, and the environment. We're convinced the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around us.
In the old days, citizens of the West believed their nation-states were dominated by the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower warned the Americans against it in the 1960's, and after two world wars Europeans knew very well what it meant in their own countries. But it was no longer the primary driver of society. For the last 20 years we have in fact been under the control of the politico-legal-media complex, dedicated to promoting fear in the population under the guise of promoting safety. Politicians need to control the population. Lawyers need danger to litigate and make money. The media needs scare stories to capture an audience. They are so compelling they go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless.
The world has changed in the last 50 years. Global warming is just one of our many New Fears to enable Governments to impose so-called 'green' taxes that do nothing for the environment yet lighten your wallet anyway, and permit heavy, if subtle control over your life. Ask any child what Global Warming is, I guarantee they will be able to tell you what it is, or what the government wants them to think it is. Scary isn't it?
Don't take my word for it either. There are hundreds of texts that will help show you enlightenment where global warming is concerned, if you throw away a life-time of prejudices and just go and find out for yourself. Our climate is cyclic, always has been and always will be. Our part in this round of cycling is so insignificant as to be almost entirely irrelevant.
Further reading:
Terrestrial Ecosystems Aber, John D. Jerry M. Melillo. Harcourt Academic Press 2001.
Creating Fear, News and the Construction of Crisis Aldine de Gruyter 2002.
Global Warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet Climatic Change 63 (2004): 201-21.
Global Warming: The Science of Climate Change New York/Oxford University Press, 2000.
The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 New York/Basic Books 2000.
Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life State University New York Press 2002
After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America Pielou, E.C. University of Chicago Press 1991.
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence Federal Judicial Center 1994.
Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate Singer, S. Fred. Oakland Independent Institute 1998.
The above was a different can of worm on "skepticism", it was not linked to any data or science, but rather to cultural problem. One could certainly argue succesfully that it is in no way linked to current cliemtn change skepticism, as this skepticism is linked in NO data whatsoever, just like skepticism against semmelweiß theory was not linked to data. In other word, your example is not an example of a crowd being wrong, but an example of a crowd ignoring data and science. In other word it is a perfect example for climate change on the contrary to what you think.
Furthermore comparing temperature trend which are calculated over 10's of years and requesting people make a prediction on average each year is STUPID. Repeat after me, it is STUPID if your variance can be higher than your trend, which is the freaking case with climate change temperature prediction (0.2 ) and year to year temperature average which can reach more than that. A more doable prediction would be to predict that the trend will continue in the next 10 years, no matter if there are anomalous peak or depth.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
way to backpedal on your whole parent post in one "post-modern" solipsistic sentence...
face it, you got pwned
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm wondering if the visiting aliens will see a giant goatse from space, the melted hole surrounded by ice will look rather like that!
Brilliant.
Mod parent up.
BTW
Solar Cycle #24 is about 14 months late already and still not in sight. Expect a cold decade or more.
There is however a line to draw, and Crichton, in that video, passed it after five minutes, when he said that Chernobyl was not really that much of a disaster because only "50 people died". Such a claim indicates a spectacular level of intellectual dishonesty
You are apparently extremely talented at taking people's statements out of context.
1. You're an idiot. Climatologist do not think they can control the climate. They are using the data they have to model a complex system to increase their understanding of it.
And they do understand climate. There is a set of equations that can be used. However, when applying that to system the size of the Earth it makes it computationally expensive. You're not going to model every single atmospheric interactions, so scientist employ statistical models to get a good idea of what's going to happen.
They don't pretend to know the exact answers, hence performing what they call RESEARCH. But what they do know based on the best data and models that we have, is that the climate is changing and the largest forcing AT THIS MOMENT is the increase in CO2 of which humans are contributing a massive amount.
Considering these guys spend their entire lives doing this type of research, you might just want to listen to them for a minute. And when I say them, I don't mean Al Gore or the media. I mean go and read their research, download their model code and data sets, run the things and see for yourself. If you happen to be a brilliant genius who can find the errors of their ways and write a radiative transfer model in 5 minutes, then by all means publish your research.
2. All I can say is wow. Just wow.
So let me get this straight. You're willing to take the word of fiction writer who has no climatological credentials at all, has no PhD in the subject, and has performed no published or peer reviewed research over the entire body of evidence and research generated by climate scientists over the past 30 years? o_0
3. Wow. I suppose Mikey boy goes to crystal healers too, since they know more than the aggregated scientific collective on medicine, right?
Sorry, but using Crichton as your base for debunking climate science is like using bible to debunk dinosaurs. I don't see any papers written by him on the subject, nor any of the "data" he mentions backed by a rigorous and peer-reviewed
methodology.
Until such time, he is in the same camp as Intelligent Designers.
~X~
~X~
I don't want to get into it, but for starters, showing most of Florida and NYC underwater. That may eventually happen, but it will take a lot longer than what the science can predict. At the time of his movie, all he had was the TAR to go on and not the AR4, but he still has about 7 major points where his "facts" directly contradict the TAR. I don't know about you, but I'll get my science from the, you know, scientists :) The AR4 even further shows his movie to be mostly scare mongering.
He was always ridiculed for claiming to have "invented" the internet, even though he never said such a thing.
You may want to, you know, read what you respond to before responding to it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Damnit, It's not fair to mod me down for that! While greenhouse gasses have something to do with it, there is also a theory that claims that solar output is cyclic which may have contributed, for instance, to ice age(s) in the distant past! Solar energy patterns cause the El Nino phenomenon, don't they? Couldn't it be possible that higher solar energy output over a long period of time could also cause partial or even complete melting of polar icecaps? Main point is, can anybody claim they definitively know that one or the other is causing the global climate changes we're seeing?
No, you said they took it (the claim that he'd invented the internet) as Gospel. That's an idiomatic expression meaning they took it as unquestionable truth. I haven't misunderstood a thing, you dishonest piece of shit.
He actually cited 600 "experts" if you look closely. However, if you peer closer to who he cited, only 3 were climatologists like you said, and 2 well yea, lets not talk about that.
I like how one of his experts on the environment was a gynecologist. Not that this particular doctor is bad or anything, but all she wrote was a paper on what climate change would result in for reproductive rates in Africa, and her paper was speculation anyway. This doctor did not offer any evidence whatsoever for climate change, and yet was cited as one of the experts who agreed with climate change. Go figure, and for this piece of hogwash Al gore gets a Nobel prize, and a lot less noteworthy Time person of the year award.
Sigh, when you can cry the sky is falling and win a nobel prize is when I do indeed have no hope for our scientific community.
something like this?
High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
he who controls the spice controls the universe
I know, but there comes a time where for all practical purposes you have to stop being metaphysical and accept that that cigar IS a cigar.
What IS a cigar, and how do you classify them?
That's not metaphysics, buddy.
Are you suggesting that to "stop being metaphysical", we have to unconditionally agree with your assumptions? Were you home-schooled or something?
Science has almost nil to do with metaphysics. They're damned near opposites of each other.
You appear to be unable to draw a distinction between philosophy and science.
Sorry, I did use an ambiguous word that time. I meant only that water vapour is far greater in quantity. I could also have pointed out that other gases such as methane are more effective per unit. But what counts is the combination of quantity and potency, and as you say, on that metric CO2 is the most significant contributor to the effect today.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Funny how the rabid deniers all post anonymously. Dude, you're dealing with the Evil Global Warming Religious Conspiracy here -- you think not logging in is going to protect you? We have infiltrated all the news media, including Slashdot! Our agents have already tracked you down, and BLACK HELICOPTERS running on SATANIC BIOFUELS are already on the way to your back woods compound to punish you for your BLASPHEMY! This is your last chance to REPENT!
<eyeroll>
Yeah, that's why I carefully stated my thoughts and included the phrase "reversal". If you'd like to argue what I said, and not what you think I'm trying to avoid, that's another issue.
So you don't count years of Medical School and practicing medicine as dedicating an entire career to science???? Al Gore is a politician. He has dedicated "his whole career" to getting votes.
Thanks, I didn't think you'd notice!
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
even tho less than 30% of the heat gets to the surface, in its upper atmosphere where it is close to earth PSI, it is actually close to earth temps.
Also i bet you anywhere you compress a gas to that high pressure its going to get hot, ever feel a cycle pump or tyer ?
Thats what causes re-entry heat, the fast pressure build up, not friction as many people may wrongly infer from bad movies or cartoons.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That's your summary, but it's obvious you didn't bother to understand the article.
Oh, I did read and comprehend it, but I don't share the same naive view of modeling that New Scientist and (presumably) you have. A simple read of my post would have given you that information.
Going to some of your points:
You: need falsifiable hypothesis
From my link:
The validity of models can be tested against climate history. If they can predict the past (which the best models are pretty good at) they are probably on the right track for predicting the future - and indeed have successfully done so.
I can create a perfect climate "model" that exactly matches the past with a weighted sum of cosines -- the Fourier transform of global temperature data. I think we'd all agree that this model would have no predictive value. The only way to prove that a model is correct is to see it make valid predictions going forward. Matching the past, while necessary for a good model, is not sufficient, and is not convincing in the slightest.
But hey, if you think that modeling is really as simple as curve fitting the past, I invite you to trade stocks with a price model created in the same manner as your favorite climate model. When the markets drive your trading account to zero and hand you your head, you might understand the difficulty of prediction.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
According to this article the North Pole has already been without ice a few years ago:
"In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half of
the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. Moscow sought to bolster
its claim by sending a research ship north to gather geographical
data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an
icebreaker - the first surface ship ever to do so."
If you understood anything about climatology, you would know 1 C would be bad enough.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Fill a glass with water, take some of that water and freeze it, put the ice back in the glass.
The level of the water will be lower with ice (below the brim) than with water (at the brim).
The global water cycle started with water in liquid form which later freezed, not with water and ice, as you tried to show.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I laugh whenever I hear someone use the term "chicken little" in order to dismiss a negative opinion.
My point exactly. Just like when I was in 3rd grade (1977) and I was taught we would be out fossil fuels by the year 1990. Good call! If you go back to my first post, I said I was glad the ice would melt, so we would know once and for all if Manhattan would go 10 feet under water, or Al Gore is the modern day Chicken Little. I'm betting on the chicken.
Ok, if everything going on right now is our fault, why are other planetary and satellite bodies in our solar system seeing unprecedented warming?
Actually, there were no statistical increase in deformities or birth defects among children in the region following the Chernobyl accident. The media portrayed some deformed children and cried about how they were the result of radiation, however, deformed children are born all around the world regardless of radiation levels.
Besides the casualties during the immediate aftermath of the disaster, it was predicted that somewhere around 4000 people may die prematurely due to cancer from radiation exposure released by the reactor. However, there is no way to distinguish these people from the regular incidence of cancer in the general population.
2.4 million people may have been "affected" by the radiation, but this ranges from low to negligible doses that have no statistical link to cancer or birth defects. Many people around the world live in areas of high natural background radiation, far higher then those exposed by fallout from Chernobyl, and suffer no increase cancer risk.
So, Crichton's claim is not intellectually dishonest at all. Your grouping of his opinions to those of Nazi's, holocaust deniers, etc, in a vein effort to discredit him, is however a prime example of intellectual dishonesty and is the reason why it is so difficult to have a discussion on political+scientific issues.
Yeah right, as if I could not see a steaming pile of bullshit this big. Extraordinary claims claim extraordinary proof: where's yours?
That's a study by the IAEA (and they would never-ever have an economic interest in promoting nuclear energy, would they?), and has been criticised for being cherry-picking: among other things, they considered only Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, whereas most of the fallout fell on the rest of Europe (see the EU parliament's report); also, the figure in their report is actually 9,000, not 4,000 as in the press releases they gave, because they, well, are lying liars.
You are counting only deaths, as if debilitating conditions were not to be put into the equation. 2.4 million affected people in Ukraine only is an enormous number, it's over 5% of the entire population. And that's "affected" as in "got a disease or a medical condition", not "received some radioactivity dose they never noticed".
Really, come up with a source on that one. Far higher than Chernobyl and no cancer risk? You've got to be trolling.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Moderation 0
30% Insightful
30% Overrated
20% Interesting
Extra 'Insightful' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Total Score: 1