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2008 Is the Coldest Year of the 21st Century
dtjohnson writes "Data from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office suggests that 2008 will
be an unusually cold year due to the La Nina effect in the western
Pacific ocean. Not to worry, though, as the La Nina effect has
faded recently so its effect on next year's temperatures will be
reduced. However, another natural cycle, the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures
steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into
new warmth. If these predictions are correct, there must be
a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere ... unless the heat
output from the sun
is decreasing
rather than increasing
or the heat being absorbed by the earth is decreasing due to changes in
the earth's albedo."
But what will I do with all my "Gore 2012" buttons?
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Here comes a raging global warming debate... haven't seen this on the Internet in 5 seconds.
Hopefully for this one we'll get some cashiers, makeup artists and puppeteers to weigh in with their expert environmental opinion, just to mix things up.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It's La Niña.... not some chick called Nina.
Oh arse
Score one fer bloody pirates, mate!
It has seemed very strange to me seeing all the hype about global warming and such since I was young, yet seeing years like these recent ones where we are hitting some pretty long cold stretches, this year particularly. Are we or are we not actually having "global warming"?
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
we're seeing the best ski season since 1992. There are now around 4.5 metres of base snow at Mt Ruapehu http://www.mtruapehu.com/winter/turoa-report/
Those of us who are paranoid about the sun have got some justification for our beliefs. First off, the new solar cycle is somewhat late, depending on who you believe. Secondly, there have been very few sunspots this year. In fact, right now, we have gone 30 days without a single sunspot.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
Fire up those SUVs and coal plants, little ice age, here we come.
This is my sig.
How about "Simple Global Carbontosis?
I'm a big tall mofo.
No, the heat output from the sun is not changing to reflect the temperature changes.
Global warming doesn't stop or create the normal cycles. It makes them more active.
The particulate matters in the air reflects light.
Not enough to completly offset the global warming.
Look up global dimming.
The melting of the ice sheets is having a cooling effect on Europe.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
due to changes in the earth's albedo.
Guess Venus is starting to show her age.
Uranus looks kinda cute though.
Now every time a girl laughs I have facts to prove that it's normally a lot bigger.
C'mon, just say it. All of you climatologists need to Say "We have no fucking clue" in chorus and three part harmony. Global warming, global cooling, impending ice ages, heating sun, cooling sun. I'm tired of it. Tell you what, why don't you just have a big conference, admit to the world that you're totally clueless and are only spouting these opposing theories in a despeate grab for grant money, then have a gigantic clamateological circle-jerk and make Al Gore eat the bagel. Jackasses.
The greatest trick global warming ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.
is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth
Nice religion you have there.
Hype the headline a little more, will ya?
That the world is warming.... And he showed a graph to PROVE it !
No one is denying climate change. No one even denies that human activity (or the sun or various natural cycles) influences the change. The argument is over how big a role each factor plays. (Along with accusations of exaggerating selected factors for political or commercial gain.) As with many scientific questions, teasing apart correlation and cause is exceedingly difficult - especially with multi-factor causes.
... unless the heat output from the sun is decreasing rather than increasing or the heat being absorbed by the earth is decreasing due to changes in the earth's albedo.
TFA missed one: ... or the current sunspot shortage continues, as it did in the "little ice age", causing another one.
Given that, by at least one model, we only have maybe 8 or so centuries until the fossil carbon runs out and we plunge back onto the orbital-mechanics driven end of the current interglacial and dive into a BIG ice age (whose steepening slope we may have been holding off with greenhouse gases since about the dawn of agriculture) we might not see any significant "global warming" at all.
All of this is assuming that we don't establish enough space industrialization to let us tune the insolation and just FIX the issue. (Which seems likely. The current government prescriptions for patching "global warming" would destroy the wealth and technology bases needed to drive a space program.)
And also assuming that polywell, POPS (Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere), and other fusion power approaches ALL don't work out. (Cheap aneutronic hydrogen fusion power would drive fossil-carbon based fuels out of the market for most uses and provide the energy needed to drive several technologies that could tune the Earth's temperature.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Lan Nina and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation deal with upwelling of cold water and the descending of warm water. The descending of warm water is where your global warming is going.
Even so, 2008 is set to be about the 10th warmest year since 1850, and Met Office scientists say temperatures will rise again as La Nina conditions ease.
I hate to point out the obvious, but global warming models do not predict a year over year increase in temperature. Again, from the article:
"The principal thing is to look at the long-term trend," said Dr Kennedy. "2008 will still be significantly above the long-term average. There's been a strong upward trend in the last few decades, and that's the thing to focus on."
I came here for a good argument
It wasn't warm summer here in Finland, but the winter was also very mild. If we can say there was winter at all in southern Finland.
The climate is not looking very good.
Al gore's cousin Bedo. It's well know that carbon emissions can temporarily increase reflection. Indeed it was noted that China's Olympics carbon load will actually cause global warming. This does not mean the models are wrong, it actually means they are right. All the more scary really since these models were in some doubt.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It would be a lot more interesting if 2008 was the coldest year in the last 100 years instead of the coldest year "this century."
2001, or 2000 for those who short-change the first century, set a record as both the coldest and hottest year of the century. The following year broke one of those records.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"even a warmer climate has stretches of cold years"
Or even colder climate has stretches of warm years. Particularly if the hyster^H^H^H^H^H reasoned debate over climate change shows the "scientific consensus" is bunk
I think what all this is saying is that when it comes to climate no one really knows what the hell is going on.
Presumably there's an implied "thus far". Are you usually this angry?
Wow, believe it or not, most people aren't going to care about a theory that A) Doesn't affect them
Rising sea levels are already damaging coast line and harming fresh water life. Maple syrup producing seasons are shortening. This affects industries in an immediate way. States are losing tax revenue due to Maple Syrup production going to Canada and tourism being affected by damaged bodies of fresh water.
B) has many people that reject it
Many people also can't be bothered to learn the facts behind issues when they vote. What's your point?
C) Has no short or medium-term impact and D) has no effects right now.
As I stated, global warming is already affecting many people. If you disagree, then you have your head in the sand.
We need socialism to prevent these common tragedies (externalities of our carbon-based energy infrastructure).
SIG:
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This picture says it all - is it global warming or global cooling?
slashdot rocks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The climate does nothing but change. The debate is always about which direction it is going. Long-term ice records indicate it should be cooling. CO2 theorists say it should be warming. ! Could we be heading into a period of climate stability as trends cancel???
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I'm shoving my crowbar 'thus far' into your tender pink ass, theist.
Mean what you say and write rather than hoping the audience will become apologists for your shoddy presentation.
Yes this is Slashdot but I've always had a vain suspicion that members of our community are decidedly smarter than the average bear and far more erudite than someone who lurks/trolls at a *chan.
Oh! AL-BIDO... ok right... need to get of the Pr0n NOW!
Anyone doing "climate predictions" on less than 80 years of data with 5 year smoothing, drawn from multiple data sources representing well dispersed sampling sites, is kidding themselves.
But go on, look for your ice age if that's what you want to do. Nature doesn't give a bent farthing what you want, you will get what you have coming to you, never fear. And once we hit 400ppm CO2 we're likely to get it up side the head, in spades, and with a twist of lemon.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
To quote Mark Twain:
"The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco."
However, I did notice our weather here in the San Francisco Bay Area has been cooler than normal. I live in the San Ramon Valley, east of San Francisco, and the normal temperature average high temperature is 79 degrees F since June 21 but notice that our a average is now 75 degrees F.
...the theory of global warming says it gets warmer as a trend but that there are cold and hot extremes along the way.
Sounds to me like they are just covering their collective asses. This way they are right for as long as they need their jobs to last. I don't have an opinion one way or another on global warming/cooling and don't want to make one based on the reports I have read. The reports all seem to say we are all going to die, but on the way to death there is no way to tell whether or not I'm right so basically I need more money so I can continue to tell you we are going to die. Sounds like a good gig to me.
We too had an awesome winter...bet you didn't see that coming... Our local resort had the 6th best season in 70 years.
When I see a headline like "2008 Is the Coldest Year of The 21st Century" I immediately think, great what does that mean for local snow sports. Actually it doesn't really matter what the headline is, it could be "the average global temperature is 10 times hotter than ever", great what does that mean for local snow sports. You know what scratch that too, the headline could be anything. "Jerry Seinfeld Will Plug Vista", great what does that mean for local snow sports. "Iran Announces Manned Space Mission Plans", great how's the snow? "Everyone on planet dead except you" does this mean I don't have to pay for my lift ticket?
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Oh give me a break. The ice caps are melting, or haven't you heard?
That's why we use ice in our cooler chests: when they melt they absorb a lot of heat, and the ice cold runoff keeps the things around them cooler than they would otherwise be. But just because the ice is melting but your beer is cold you can't conclude that the sun has cooled off.
What you should conclude is that you'd better drink your beer before the ice melts, 'cause it's going to warm up real fast as soon as the ice is gone.
--MarkusQ
Did you know that , at the time of 9/11 , 2001 was the coldest year of the 21st century.
It was also the hottest year of the 21st century (at that time).
The term 'century' is often used to refer to a period of 100 years. However we have had less than 8 years of the 21st century so far. Wake me up when you have the results from the whole 100 years (ie in 2101)
This is my last winter in Chicago before graduation :(
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
I read his last book cover to cover, and it was pretty much crap, and, ironically, this "sequel" actually proves it.
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared went out of his way to show that some cultures were stupider than others because of all of these manner of environmental forces.
The comparitive historic poverty of Africa has -nothing- to do with the choices Africans made, for example. It came down to a sad and unfortunate combination of natural resources, and they were oh so helpless.
Conversely, early civilizations did not come to dominate the world for a time because of a culture that was better at world domination, instead, they dominated because every other culture had some lame excuse for not taking mathematics from basic algebra into the calculus or some other technological advance.
Of course, Jared even tips his hand as to the point of the book. It couldn't be that some cultures had adopted values that lead to bad decision making, that, would why open up the whole can of worms about cultural worth and thus invite old arguments about cultural superiority. No, no no, we can't have that. But...
In this new book, it turns out that our culture -must- change, and -must- make new choices, in order to save our precious mother earth. The question is then, if there are smart moves to make, and dumb moves to make, is it all remotely possible that European cultures of 1500-1914, American culture of 1800-1960, Chinese culture up until around 1500, Roman culture up till around 200AD, all had some sort of spark of superiority that allowed them to make good decisions and good choices when confronted with environmental change, whereas, other cultures have not?
Let's think about the gobbledygook we right, Jared!
This is my sig.
Speaking of Al Gore (many people mentioned him already), this reminds me of the day he gave a speech about global warming in New York... on the coldest day in that city's recorded history!! Ok, so some will tell you that it's not global warming, it's climate change. I have no proof to either confirm or deny that, so I do not have an opinion. However, let's examine this situation from another vantage point: History indicates that the Earth has had warmer and colder periods (such as the Ice Age) in the past, so it stands to reason that the climate probably has periods of increasing warmth followed by periods of increasing coldness. We have recorded data going back decades or maybe a few centuries at most. Beyond that, we rely on data collected from cores drilled out of ice and whatnot, and we make certain assumptions about how to interpret that data. Let's also take into consideration that although it is possible to fly across an entire continent in a matter of hours (for example, a trip from New York to Los Angeles takes less than six hours in the air), if you try to trek across that same continent by means available to the human race two hundred years ago, you will find that it takes you months; thus, the Earth is a big huge ball. I once worked on a project where the temperature of a giant steel fixture was taken at various points, several feet apart, every hour of the day. Part of this fixture was exposed to sunlight for several hours. We only BEGAN to measure increased temperature AFTER the sun was no longer shining on it, since it took it that long to respond to temperature changes. Applying this to a huge ball like the Earth (which, as I said, is so big that trekking across a continent will take months), any change to the climate will be extremely slow and will only show up after a delay of years or decades. Indeed, I once heard (though I don't remember where) that when the industrial age began and there was incredible pollution (much more than today with all the regulations we have), it took several decades for the climate to respond, and several more decades to respond after changes were introduced. All I'm trying to say is that we should examine the methods used to determine this "climate change" and figure out if all the SUVs and factories are really making as large of a dent as we think they are. I have a feeling that the Earth is so large, and it's part of such an enormous larger system (the solar system) that it is probably heating up more due to effects from the sun and the ever-changing distance between the sun and the Earth than from what we're doing down here. So are we affecting the climate? Or is it something that simply changes and we couldn't possibly control it? If you have any data to back up one viewpoint or the other, please throw it in...
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
You'll forgive me if I refuse to get all in a knot over this whole "global warming" paranoia. You young 'uns may not remember the "global cooling" predictions/concerns of the mid 70's. Heck, they were even suggesting that we blow soot all over the arctic region snow pack to absorb light/heat.
The scientists shrug and tell us that those models were too simplistic and wrong. Now, of course, the new models are spot on and we're all going to fry.
Not buying into the hysteria this time either.
First, we had global warming which was supposed to obviously describe the global increase in temperatures affecting climate everywhere and was supposed to already be in effect. When evidence of that was few and far between and the PhDs, who had to do something about their soiled reputation espousing the issues that global warming would bring and denouncing other PhDs who didn't agree with them, realized they were wrong they renamed global warming to climate change. This way no matter whether temperatures increased or decreased they could still maintain their large egos and be considered correct all along. Now, we are told that the current year will be the coldest in a long time and this:
However, another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth.
Now with this it seems global warming isn't actually supposed to be here, yet. So now the PhDs are trying once again to maintain their oversized egos by stating that what they predicted and have pushed on us layman really is real but not every place will get warmer, some places will get colder, but not yet. Not until things get warmer or colder will they actually say (using 20/20 hindsight of course) that we definitely have global climate change. Hmmm, maybe I should be a climatologist.
Of course, the big difference between the 21st century global climate change and the pre-Ice Age global climate change is that somehow the humans are at fault for the present predicament...ahh, but not yet. We're still in the clear it seems, until CO2 levels cause some places to get warmer while others get colder. And here I thought warming and cooling were just normal climate changes which have occurred irregardless of human existence.
Can someone point me, with no magical PhD to set me straight, where I've gone wrong? I'm a lowly crackpot until I get my PhD and subscribe to the GW (global warming) bandwagon.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Since global warming seems to be hard to accept given these many facts, let's call it "global climate instability." That way no matter what the data shows, we can posit any damn theory we want!!!
Then throw on some political motivation and you got yourself a spontaneous partnership between those seeking funds and those seeking new powers over industry. IPCC anyone?
"His name was James Damore."
It will get warmer and then cooler. Repeat.
My Theory is infallible.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"there must be a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere..."
sure is, my guess is that it's currently happily being soaked up by melting glaciers and ice caps. But dont worry, once all the solid ice is converted to liquid water our planetary temperature should really start to skyrocket and once again we can live in fear of impending doom, have a nice day :-)
Of course...I do live in New Orleans...I know it gets hot and humid, but, still doesn't stop me from bitching every year around August.
Then again...I guess it balances out with my $60 bills during the winter...no need really for much heat. And I do like that week in late Jan. where I can wear a sweater...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Seattle missed out on spring this year and summer didn't set in till mid July and we had less than seven days of 70F+ (21C+) temperatures till around mid July.
Not sure if that's related to Vista sales from neighboring Redmond :P
Does anybody actually realize that the Earth has cycles of global warming/cooling? Yeah the Earth is warming up, there is not question about it. But, how do we know if we are heading up another peak in the warming/cooling cylce? The way I hear it from ecofreaks is that the temperature increase is a permanent incline, versus the peaks/valleys of historical cooling/heating cycles.
What would be really cool is if we could try to build a device that collects/absorbs heat on Earth, and then shoots/ejects it into space. Maybe, since we can already turn matter into heat energy, what about turning heat energy back into matter?
It will take too long for us to counteract the heat we will absorb in the futuree. Wouldn't it make more sense to deal with the heat we already have by converting it into matter or discharging it into space?
Just my $.02
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
It's not going to just get warmer over short time periods.. It always amazes me that folks don't realize that.
What surprises me even more is how few people know that we've been experiencing global warming since 1830. AFAIK, we don't currently have a good model that can explain this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The cash part that is.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As a practical matter, it's going to be difficult to keep up political momentum in the face of cooler trends. The movement could be essentially dead in a couple years. In ten, we could be looking at films like An Inconvenient Truth, The Day After Tomorrow and Waterworld in the same way we now look at Population Explosion, ZPG and Soylent Green from the sixties and seventies.
Hysteria tends to go in cycles. Buried amongst discredited doomsday theories might be the one that actually does kill us. When that happens, I wonder if we'll all be surprised that it's nothing like the articles running in Time, or if scientists will actually see the prediction-of-the-decade come true, whether by brilliant insight or sheer coincidence.
What worries me is that with the best of intentions we do something profoundly stupid and damaging like, I dunno, dumping old tires in the sea in the insane (in hindsight) belief that they would serve as artificial reefs. In the seventies there were plans to coat the ice caps with soot to combat the global cooling that never came about. Now we're talking about dumping iron oxide in the sea as a solution to global warming, something that would be called "polluting our environment" if it didn't have the Climate Change seal of approval. Confidentially, it's unintended consequences from plans like this that scares me more than the fear that the seas will rise and drown us all.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Burning bras to keep warm.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Let's think about the gobbledygook we right, Jared!
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you engaging in steely irony, I can't locate an argument anywhere in your post.
It couldn't be that some cultures had adopted values that lead to bad decision making, that, would why open up the whole can of worms about cultural worth and thus invite old arguments about cultural superiority.
He builds this case as a contributing factor in most of the case studies, e.g. Greenland Norse caring too much about retaining European Christian norms rather than cribbing ideas from the Inuit, and freezing to death for their trouble.
I'm left to wonder if you actually RTFB.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Could have something to do with three volcanos going off in Alaska and the Aleutian islands. I've noticed the temperature in Texas drop and we've gotten a lot of rain after the 3rd one went off and cold fronts have come down from that area.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
This appears to be a good time to plug the BBC's miniseries/movie "Burn Up," which I literally just finished watching less than 5 minutes ago.
It is political as hell, but I really don't mind since I agree with its viewpoint.
Global Warming Theory predicts this!
Can travel on huge private jets, in motorcades of Suburbans, etc, why should I feel guilty to drive a 4 cyl compact and use... Air conditioning?
Sorry, I don't buy into the global warming alarmism until the "high priests" start practicing what they preach. These guys are nothing more than the 1980's televangelists (Swaggert, Baker, etc) reincarnated as profiteering "Gaia" evangelists.
Corporatism != Free Market
Is blind faith in global warming scare mongering number one?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
IANA climatologist, but perhaps that heat is going into melting ice, or warming of the oceans. Indeed, according to TFA, the La Nina cycle behind this cooling is caused increased sea temperatures in the western Pacific.
"Warmest year of the 21st century" (still the 10th warmest since 1850, according to TFA - your assertation of "an unusually cold year" is highly bogus) only applies to measured temperatures on land, not to the total average temperature of the atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't give a crap about climate change. I drive a prius so I can send less money to countries who send people here to kill me. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia.
"Show me one warmer's scare charts that predicted we would COOL DOWN for a decade. Every chart I have ever seen showed ever increasing temps until we all DIE."
More than that, where are those rising oceans?
And didn't these people tell us at the beginning of spring that we could have had an iceless-arctic this summer? Did we even come close to an iceless arctic this summer?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Let's face it when you have to alter your theory to "whatever happens, we predicted it", you've passed beyond science into religion.
Seriously, step back and think about what you're trying to advocate and you'll realize that you have no room to make fun of Scientology or any other faith based movements.
Those who just want to believe that man is ruining this planet had to change the name of the phenomenon to fit the facts.
I'm sorry, but if greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the planet, there is no logical way that cools the planet.
Unless you change the name.
The irony is that same people who ridicule Christians as believing in a spaghetti monster believe in man-made climate disaster as a matter of faith, regardless of the temperature evidence. How nice, the temp goes up, you win, the temp goes down, you win. Nice theory.
Mod troll all you want, but this is what I really believe.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Climate change predictions have to do with tracking a wide variety of observable measures over a large area (ie, the globe), and noting that the patterns in given areas are changing significantly from what we've seen in the previous one hundred years.
If, however, that you think that we can somehow predict the weather given an entirely new pattern of measurements, then you've never, ever, watched the nightly news weather segment. We're terrible at predicting weather, because it's an incredibly complex system. That does not, in and of itself, suggest that the system is as stable as it has ever been.
What I don't understand is why, given the immense amount of production we are capable of, people seem to cling to this idea that we can never, ever, possibly change the planet's weather. Is it really rational to say that, given everything we dump into the atmosphere, nothing would change?
[Ego]out
"Nobody says that climate change isn't happening. The temperature data is fact. It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue."
All that temperature data tells us is that temperatures have risen At Thermometers. GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE HAS MOVED ON.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
If these predictions are correct, there must be a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere
According to my A/C power bill, I've got more than my fair share this year. Cheers!
Boy do I wish I had mod points to burn...
"The last ice age was before the start of the Holocene, over 11,000 years ago. Not, as you claim the "late 19th centure[sic].""
Uhh, the Little Ice Age ended in the late 19th century.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Didn't even put in the air conditioner this summer, but I haven't seen winters in the upper Midwest _anything_ like my childhood. '68-'69 the cumulative blizzards were so bad we got out of the house through the front door because we couldn't push the back screen door leading to the garage open, the snow plow backed up a hill a block and took four runs at our block to get through, the resulting "canal" was something you dropped down four-five feet into to walk downtown, it's sort of interesting to drive when you are in a sunken grid and can't see around corners, and they called off school so many times they told the country kids to find somebody to live with in the city because they weren't going to call off school any more. I have a picture of my high school girlfriend on a memorable snow drift out of town that is about 2-1/2 times her height. You have to understand that North Dakota highways have really wide and deep ditches. That snow bank is actually on a ditch deeper than a car. Love to show you the picture on my DSL vanity server, but, you know....
Three or four years ago, my cat chased a fly around outside in Minneapolis in February. Now _that_ is freakish.
Doing stuff is overrated. Hitler did stuff! And look where that led! Wouldn't we all have been better off if he had just stayed home and gotten high?
What were we talking about again?
Sorry for the self-followup, but clarifying a possibly significant typo: "according to TFA, the La Nina cycle behind this cooling is caused by increased sea temperatures in the western Pacific". The mangled syntax caused by my omission may have made it seem that La Nina was causing sea temperatures to have increased, when is the other way around.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The climate does nothing but change. The debate is always about which direction it is going.
Sure there is a debate about that too but the important question is whether humans are impacting climate change and by how much. On at least the first part of that question, the scientific consensus is yes, we are.
Queue in 10 million "global warming is a scam", "don't look at me, people didna doit" and "Al Gore is a weenie" comments.
But all of these comments on the legitimacy of global warming/cooling/climate change all ignore one very simple, inescapable fact: Most "carbon-neutral" energy forms can be generated locally. Windmills use the wind in your area. Solar panels use the sunlight from your roof. This is also true for geothermal, ocean-wave, and bio-fueled energy. All can be generated locally, with local resources.
Only oil and nuclear have limited supply.
So if, for example, you were a wealthy, North-American country with a severe foreign-debt problem, you might consider the actual costs of oil in lost lives, civil liberties, currency devaluation, and raw wealth shipped oversees to fund a petroleum addiction. This cost is so huge and multi-faceted it baffles the mind. Average people just cannot even begin to understand wealth drain and cost of this magnitude.
But if we were to generate our energy locally, with renewable resources, not only would we leave a nicer place for our kids, grandkids, and their offspring, we'd also improve our national sovereignty. Rather than fund deadly radicals, we'd fund the nice guy down the street. Rather than ship our cash to entities who threaten us at every turn, we'd fund your next-door neighbors. No matter where you live, no matter who you are, no matter how wealthy you happen to be, this is a good idea.
Ignore the matter of global warming, because there's a much more immediate reason to "go green". And it has nothing to do with carbon footprint, it has to do with the green bits of paper in your back pocket. It will be expensive in the short term. It will pay and pay and pay for generations thereafter.
Which would you rather be remembered as: the generation that ignored the problem until it was too late, or the generation that set your state/country/civilization on a long-term course of prosperity?
I choose the latter, thank you.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
cat is better. Unless you're a sloppy-thinking slob.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It means "the Niña"!
I bet the consensus of climate scientists who have concluded that humans are changing the climate probably never thought of that "ice age" thingy. Good thing you found out about it on the web - maybe you should email them!
How old is the earth again? About 4.5 billion years? And we have how many years of data with which we are using to calculate any sort of climate model whether it be warming or cooling? About 150 years? I don't have a degree in mathematics but I'm pretty sure that 150 divided by 4.5 billion is a rather small percentage. And why does anyone think they can be even remotely certain how or even if our climate is going through any kind of significant changes?
...and thus experiencing winter right now, I'd just like to say NO SHIT SHERLOCK!!
We're freezing our butts off down here. Record low temperatures, frost for the first time in many places, etc.
Here in Europe it's been a new heat record every month.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
No. It has been declared that the official term must again evolve so as to include warming effects, cooling effects, changes in general and (most recently) the ABSENSE of changes.
It has been determined that the latest term to be used shall be "weather". Just TRY to debate against the existence of that, biatches!
... I have it on good authority that it's in the top 10 hottest years of the 21st Century! (Well, at least until 2011).
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
everybody knows that global warming is responsible for global cooling.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
.. i would say the coldest of the third millenium!
But then, you also forgot to mention that global temperatures have dropped since 10 years ago.
Ah well, that's the funny thing about going by names. The Little Ice Age wasn't actually an ice age, it's just called that. It only lasted a few years, (less than a tenth as long as the present Global Warming trend, for example) and was not connected with any of the processes normally associated with an ice age.
In other news, "hot dogs" aren't actually dogs, "hamburgers" aren't actually made of ham (or in Hamburg) and Queen Latifah, Nat King Cole, and Prince are not royalty.
--MarkusQ
I'm sure I'm not the only one pointing out that the 21st century is only 7-8 years old (depending on which definition you want to use).
...perhaps the fact that 2008 virtually wiped out any direct evidence for global warming should give us pause to reflect that we really don't understand how global climate works and that a multi-trillion dollar plan to combat it might help, hurt, or, most likely, do nothing but eat up so much tax money that if and when we finally do know what to do we will no longer be able to afford it.
And that is a very inconvenient truth.
Won't somebody think of the children^W starving Africans!
I had to sign up just for this topic. I'd like the take the opportunity to educate some of you and remind others. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING! Keep driving your gasoline guzzling car.
Don't drink the water. They put something in it to make you forget.
I pretty much agree with you, except for one point:
Nuclear doesn't have a limited supply in any realistic sense. This is just part of the massive anti-nuclear FUD brought to us by big oil & friends. In fact, it was one of the first, since nuclear was the first serious alternative to fossil fuels. The only reason nuclear seems limited is because we've let ourselves get boxed in to thinking in terms of one of the most wasteful and dangerous fuel cycles imaginable, which relies on comparatively rare feedstock and produces much more waste than it needs to*.
In a rational world, what we now call "nuclear waste" would be known as "fuel reserves" and we'd be set for the foreseeable future.
--MarkusQ
* But still nothing compared to what fossil fuels produce. There isn't a coal plant on the planet that could get an operating license as a nuclear plant, given the amount of radioactive carbon they dump into the air.
Sometimes go in the opposite direction from longer term patterns.
Film at 11.
Message to the moderators .... the parent was a PUN in care you lost your sense of humor somewhere. I agree, it's not THAT funny, but it's not offtopic.
It's like clothing, the styles recycle themselves if you wait long enough.
Then I'd like to see hot pants and miniskirts make their comeback soon.
In another source, the bad part seems to be left out though.
Even though this was the coldest year since 2000, it's still the among the ten hottest years since 1850.
So, no, this doesn't discredit the global warming theory at all.
Incidently, I'm not at all sure that CO2 is the primary source of the warming, but what we do know is that if we account only for things we know to affect global climate (seismological activity primarily), the temperature should've been decreasing, not increasing since the 1950s or so.
The question we need to be asking is; "What is screwing with our climate and can we do anything about it?" not; "Is there something wrong with our climate".
I can not really agree to that study, I live in the middle of Germany, not exactly a place known for it's brilliant weather and I have been growing Ginger and Chili since March, the latter with a tremendous yield. So it can't be THAT cold.
Troll? Sheesh, the scientific consensus human-caused-global-climate-instability-change mods are apparently out in force!
Thank you for this post. I am no scientist, but I am an undergrad in a dual major in Engineering/Science (mathematics), there are certain things that really trouble me about contemporary climate science. For one, there appears to be an over reliance on climate models based on broad sweeping assumptions, and an extreme exaggeration of the capacity of any given model to produce accurate results. Increasingly, the GW science seems to be violating Poppers fundamental philosophy of scientific hypothesis: The only theory worth considering is that which can be disproven. Or rather, science is not about proving as such, it is about disproving. I want to see the falsifiability of climate change theory thoroughly discussed, but it never is, nobody can challenge the models, nobody is allowed to question the methods, nobody is allowed to offer alternative to the mainstream narrative. Its a dangerous place for science to be. More and more I see GW predictions failing the falsifiability test: hot year? Earth is warming, cold year? Earth is unstable due to warming, flood: GW, everything, everything under the sun is being attributed to GW.
The 'consensus' worries me also, moreso in fact. There is rarely consensus in science, especially when dealing with fundamentally complex, non-linear dynamical systems which are proven to be inherently chaotic. Even when a theory is sound and mature, the most important consideration is that you are making predictions by using a model, an inherently and unavoidably flawed model. It is always, always important to cite assumptions and errors when making predictions with any model. But if you question the validity of current climate modelling, you are branded a heretic, a denier, and the worst of all: a skeptic. As if being a skeptic in science is suddenly the wrong thing to do? What happened?
All scientists are skeptics, a scientist without skepticism is no scientist, he is a fool. Worse still believing that computer models are completely trustworthy is like believing your lego starship enterprise will fly you to the moon.
I am not a denier, but I am certainly skeptical. I am certainly open to hypotheses, theories, models and all manner of explanations for given data sets, observations etc. But I am deeply troubled by the way discussion and debate about something as highly chaotic and poorly understood as the climate is shut down so vigorously these days. Worse still, the politicians and economists are on board. I can't help but be just a tad aware that politicians will leap on any populist position and economists are always hungry for new derivatives markets.
*snip*
It's just a shame that the other breeds of environmentalists happen to think certain species of birds are a bit more important than the real estate wind generators or molten salt solar plants would take up. I certainly won't debate the need for developing clean energy solutions, but at some point, you have to cut the ropes and say "enough is enough." Using ecological buzzwords is cute and all, but if the West doesn't pull its head out of its withering anal cavity, we may as well kiss electricity goodbye. There are plenty of niche groups that are standing in the way of everything because they feel we need to go back to pre-industrial population levels--to hell with the 6-point-something billion people we already have on this rock. No matter what happens, it'll never be enough. And if that's not frustrating, look at the various stories popping up here and there about locals who absolutely hate the noise wind generators make when they're running.
Fine. Maybe I'm just cynical. But trust me: Sooner or later, these wonderful carbon-neutral solutions are going to be put on a standstill because some fringe group is upset that their favorite little plot of land is being destroyed. At least, that's how it's worked out here in the southwest. There are a lot of the "not in my backyard" types who will do anything to halt human progress. I should think that we need to adopt sensible energy policies, but the greatest hurdle comes from the same crowd who want to save the planet--usually by suicide. (VHEMt comes to mind, if I remembered the acronym correctly.)
He who has no
and cannot comprehend TWO (2) words taken *together*?
GLOBAL WARMING
What does this mean? It means the Warming of the Globe, as in "WARMING OF PLANET EARTH SYSTEM", not warming of Miami or warming of London or warming of Beijing. Maybe GLOBAL WARMING is too scientific term for people to comprehend, I don't know.
There is no "global climate instability" or "hurricane increase" or "hurricane decrease" or whatever else you want to call it. That is NOT IT. It is simply, Planet Earth System, as a whole, retaining more heat thus warming up some. This will affect climate, but why would it necessarily mean "instability"?? That is completely unknown for now.
Global warming is NOT a misnomer. It is an *exact* representation of what is happening. Climate Change most likely will result as a consequence of Global Warming, but Global Warming Climate Change!!
A Global warming disaster is always 10 years away. Next year it will still be 10 years away and so on. Eventually the majority of people will catch on.
So global warming is heating up the planet as evidenced by when we have years that are hot. Then when we have years that are cool, it's something else. When we have average years, that's yet another thing. But because of global warming (and not any other natural cycle in action), we're bound to eventually have hot years again. At some point.
Yeah....
Or maybe observing temperatures and weather patterns for 50 years out of the 4,500,000,000 years that the planet has existed with only moderately accurate methods and instruments doesn't give us enough information to reach a scientific, actionable conclusion about a massive, open system like planetary climate.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Quick! Start producing CO2!! There's still time!
Daniel
Thanks Mr. Gore! You have saved the planet!
So, France is famous for going off on their vacations and leaving their elderly parents/grandparents alone in un-air conditioned houses to die of heat stroke.
Ah, yes those kind loving Europeans.
It's not that simple, I'm affraid.
1. At the very least the cost, or "danger", in acting rashly upon a fairy tale to please some cultists is to not do something that would actually work. At worst it's doing something outright unproductive, that compounds the problem in the long run or creates a bigger problem.
As the stereotypical example, take Easter Island. Instead of doing what would have worked (start replanting trees) they did what the priests told them (cut more trees to build and haul more statues to the gods, 'cause the gods would surely take care of all problems.) Eventually the problem got so bad that they couldn't even make enough fishing vessels any more. Maybe stopping and thinking before acting couldn't have been worse.
I find that to be, ironically, a decent metaphor for _both_ extremes of the climate debate. Both have their a priori "truth" set in stone, both don't actually do real science (in real science, no truth is set in stone, and everything is falsifiable), and both would rather act now, goddammit, instead of at least trying to understand the big model. I can almost imagine a bunch of Easter Island tribesmen doing the same, waving fists and shouting slogans to act now to please the gods, and calling anyone names if he even tries debating the already decided orthodoxy.
2. To also answer the question what is the danger: the economy is already in a precarious position in most western countries, having worked on, essentially, over-spending ever since the Great Depression. We don't really have a better model to replace it with.
The old laissez-faire model essentially died in the Great Depression. Not that it was that great a model to start with. It produced increasingly erratic swings between boom and crash, with each boom setting the stage for the following crash. Increasingly more money and resources were going not into satisfying people's needs (which, may I remind, was how the Wealth Of Nations was supposed to be measured), but into rebuilding the industry after the last crash. The actual standard of living for workers decline through the 19'th and early 20'th century, with the general theme being demanding more hours work for less pay.
(And it's funny to see Libertarians pining for _that_ model. But I digress.)
Even if some claim (rather unproven, but ok) that it was the corrective measures that finally caused the big crash, it still just wasn't a that great model anyway. The swings were getting bigger and bigger, and the whole situation shittier and shittier. Even _if_ it would have bombed a bit later without the corrective actions, bomb it would have. And it wasn't much fun to be an employee in that model even before it bombing.
Some also tried other stunts in the meantime, like supply-side economics, but even those failed to work better than the current model.
Or, of course, we could actually be Keynesian as Keynes actually intended it to work: overspend in times of crisis, yes, but cut back and pay the debts in times of boom. No government yet managed to do that, and it could be argued that it would make for a very unpopular government to cut back, say, welfare, _because_ the economy is doing great. Plus other problems.
But, of course, adding yet another permanent burden to it, really doesn't help there.
Basically most first world economies are in a bigger trouble than they seem. We all _seem_ to do great, but we're steadily heading towards the end of the model that makes it work. At some point, the debt gets so big that you can't go on like that any more. And all we've been doing is postpone the next crash. Quite successfully and for a remarkably long time, duly noted, but that's what we've been doing. And each averted crisis added even more debt. Not just in the USA, but everywhere.
Fear what will happen when we all no longer have the reserves to avert the next one, because it won't be pretty. Unless you're at least, say, 90 years old, you have only seen minor crises, held small by having the money to throw at them. To
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The problem is when we allow charismatic leader A, B, or C to start telling us what we can or can't do.
Self control is generally good, but can get out of hand sometimes, but I don't think that's what the guy you're answering is talking about.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Grist.org seems like a well-intentioned site, but if that's your only source, then you might as well not list any sources. It's a source that starts from the premise that the popular theory (a.k.a. Global Warming) is real and that it's readers are on a mission to save the planet. Fair enough, they seem to be honest about their intentions and and reasonable in their approach. But that doesn't make them right.
Global warming suffers from a couple problems:
1) It does not tolerate dissent.
2) It is a dogma
3) It is now an industry
4) Everything that happens is now "consistent with the models"
As much as devotees are well intentioned, as much as the scientific method is invoked, I only wish the true believers would step back and acknowledge there are still gaping holes in global warming, that this does not rise to the level of a theory yet, and that people who disagree are not "stupid" or "have an agenda".
And by the way, having Al Gore as a spokesman is a problem. There's a real reason that George Bush beat him for president, and it wasn't cheating... Al Gore is not seen by a majority of people as honest or selfless. Al Gore was the vice president of a very popular president and if he was seen as competent he would have beaten Bush by a considerable margin (and should have). And while a certain part of the population thinks of him as a promoter of saving the earth, a erudite spokesman, a beloved father figure, much of the population thinks of him more like a carny barker selling snake oil. He ultimately hurts acceptance of the hypothesis rather than helping it.
I don't see us running out of thorium anytime soon
This raises another good point, regarding the 'scarcity' of nuclear fuels alluded to a few level up in this thread. All the radioactive material we could be using to turn water into steam to power electrical generators is already sitting there burning at the same rate underground right now, it's just heating the surrounding rocks in a more diffuse spread than if it was all stuck into a reactor together.
We will run out of nuclear fuels at the same point in time whether we're using them or not, cause by their very natures, radioactive materials are always sitting there radiating. It's just a question of whether we take advantage of that energy while it's there, or just let it warm a lot of rocks a little bit until it all burns out.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Getting people worked up about things nobody can change is simply an ace-in-the-hole for politicians.
Uhm... the whole point is that we can change something.
It's interesting to note that conservatives seem to be mostly interested in conserving our financial system, which largely depends on wasting and throwing away, and not not conserving much else (like natural resources, energy, the human race, the planet).
The problem with these stats and numbers and figures is that record keeping (history) is a very very new practice. History was written down by humans who are not perfect and make errors all the time. The other problem is the scope of the cooling and heating phases. An 8 year scope is very small and doesn't mean anything. A 4 billion year scope is too broad. Case in point, last 10 years shows evidence of global warming. The last 4 billion years back when the earth was still a molten rock with massive lava flows circulating the earth for billions of years before it finally cooled down would show the earth has cooled down significantly. At what range of years do we consider sufficient for a model to determine global warming or cooling? The answer is unknown, and until that is answered all the guesses in the world are wrong. The west should go "Green" not because it's "green" but for the financial benefits in the long run. Russia's latest opera in Georgia is to prevent the Georgian's from providing a pipe to Europe that supplies fuels for energy. France and Germany are only nuclear because there is no alternative for them. All of their gas for heating homes during the winter come from Russia and nobody likes russia. No Georgia means Russia maintains its political power through its energy monopoly on Europe. USA is not Europe, USA is self sufficient for energy and has more energy production power than the rest of the world combined. The coal in the appalachian mountains is the highest quality coal on the earth. it's also the largest deposit of coal on earth. it's also not deep in siberia where nobody wants to go mine coal. Nuclear reactors in the USA do not go BOOM like russian reactors. 3 mile island is evidence of this. USA has a lot of Natural Gas, Oil, and Coal. They're all very accessable and cheap cheap cheap. Sure, 4 dollars per gallon is steep, but it's not because of the availability of the resources. The US dollar has been devalued a lot, Oil is now an official commodity in the market sense of the word. Oil refineries haven't been built in the usa since the early 70's. All of these things factor into the current price of oil. Yet Oil is just one part of the energy crisis. Wind Mills do not work, that is not an option. They must be maintained constantly. Birds, dirt, salt, water, nature in general destroys wind mills. They're very expensive and the wind doesn't always blow. The sun does not always shine, that is not a good enough option either. Insulation and quantity is relative to your climate. in the New England area and northern states of the USA 6" exterior walls are standard. in the Southern portion of USA it's not as important. There is no easy fix. If we act now no fruits will be born until at least 10 years later, at best. If you've ever watched the show This Old House they work on homes in the Florida Keys and in Hawaii and they show the construction difference and why it's this way compared the standard new england home on the show. Your home should be built for your climate.
Ever notice how the price of oil per barrel drops the day after the newspapers in the USA have any positive news on breakthroughs in alternative energy production? The Saudi Arabians aren't dumb. They know how much it costs to fund a R&D team to come up with new alternative methods and consistently keep their production levels just low enough to keep oil just high enough to make the R&D not financially worth it. There's A LOT OF STUFF going on in this world and one solution easily makes a dozen other problems. We must think this through, consider all possibilities, and act responsibly if things do not pan out as intended.
"Green" groups are mostly funded by the oil industry. One volcano eruption does outputs more carbon than humans in one year. The earth heated up by 2%, so did the sun. Carbon is good for plant life, and in return you get higher oxygen, good for non plant life. Any detractors?
"We all fly all over the planet several times a year for business and pleasure"
I'm on the no-fly list, you insensitive clod!
What the IPCC calls "global warming" was just a short trend that ended in 2001.
Climate has changed in the past. Climate is changing. Climate will change in the future.
If we can't accurately predict the weather for the next week, how can we predict for the next decades ?
Will it warm ? Will it cool ? Perhaps we should prepare for the cold, since it kills a whole lot more than the heat.
Climate changes are all normal, all natural. It's beyond our reach to interfere. Compared to the planetary/cosmological forces involved any human (re)actions will be futile, a waste of resources and money.
It has never been proved that CO2 increase leads to an increase in temperature. It has been observed that the opposite is most likely (i.e.: increasing temperatures eventually lead to an increase of the CO2, since as the oceans warm up, they lose their capability of storing CO2).
Any sanctions on CO2 emissions will stifle the economies and progress... for nothing. It's time to end this madness.
They break down faster in a reactor because the neutrons from one atom's breakdown catalyse the breakdown of the next atom. In the ground, the concentrations aren't high enough for this, and the neutron is absorbed by other rock.
At a critical mass, this chain reaction goes out of control and you get a nuclear explosion.
No, nothing drastic will occur in the next 10 years due to global warming. There will be increased droughts, but we always have droughts. Hurricanes will have increased strength, but there will always be hurricanes. Sea level will be a bit higher, but due to tides, the sea level is always changing anyway.
If you're expecting a disaster like you see in a movie, it will never come. If you can deny global warming today, I see no reason you wouldn't deny it 20 years from today.
If you want to see signs of global warming, you might want to keep your eye on the Arctic ice. It's already melting, and the Arctic is expected to be ice free in the summer in 20 years. You'll also want to watch for drought and problems with fresh water supplies in the American southwest. On the other hand, if you can dismiss the current Arctic ice melt and droughts, I don't see any reason you wouldn't dismiss them in twenty years, even if they're noticeably worse.
I only recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, where Gore likens us to a frog in a slowly boiling pot, that will let himself boil as long as the temperature rises slowly enough. You've just demonstrated this point very well.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
already sitting there burning at the same rate underground right now
You clearly don't understand nuclear physics.
Thorium natural isotope has a half-life 13 billion years (yes, 13 billion).
Uranium's natural isotope has a half-life of 4.4 billion years.
Neither are "burning up underground".
Most fuel is created by modifying it to create less stable isotopes. Then, when you put a big pile of it together (and/or bombard it with particles, as in the previous article), it creates a chain-reaction that triggers rapid fission. This is VERY different than half-life decay.
You do, indeed, "burn" it up. I'm not arguing against nuclear power, but just pointing out that your post is pretty much 100% entirely made up gibberish .
...but it sure is being used by those with particular interests - mostly their wallets - from anything being done.
Let's just presume that
1. climate change does not exist
2. even if it did exist, we're not the cause.
What should the conclusion be, then?
Should we all keep driving around in gas-guzzlers?
Should we keep sticking to the least efficient form of electrical lighting?
Should we keep firing up coal plants to power them?
Or should we look at the third point?
3. regardless, us pumping CO2 into the environment at the rate we are isn't particularly good.
And then revise our conclusions once more?
There are far too many people willing to throw away every single thing that they can do to lessen their environmental footprint based on convenient conclusions (hmm.. A Convenient Conclusion; I like that for a title.) - convenient because it's what they're used to, and convenient because it doesn't cost them any invest - of will, time or (and most importantly) money.
This is not much different from biodegradable shopping bags. When plain plastic bags were an obvious issue, two initiatives were started...
1. consumers could purchase more durable bags that they could re-use
2. the industry had to find a way to make shopping bags biodegradable without going back to paper bags.
Point 1 was implemented, but a lot of people will simply not purchase the bag.. it costs them money, it takes them will to have to bring it each time they go shopping, etc. It's just inconvenient. The worst-ever argument I've heard against them was on Slashdot recently... somebody didn't want to be seen with a smudgy old shopping bag.
Point 2 was also implemented, and now any shopping bags that were still used over the purchasable kind, would degrade naturally over time... a long, long time.
But Point 2 also gave the people in Point 1 a convenient conclusion; "the shopping bags degrade anyway, why would I purchase the more durable type at all?".
Unfortunately they thusly forget the entire reason for Point 1 in the first place - having *less* shopping bags out there. Yay the ones out there are biodegradable, good job, but that doesn't mean they're not still piling up on wasteheaps, very slowly (but faster than regular plastic) decomposing amidst other junk; because they're almost just like regular plastic, they can't easily be filtered out and treated specifically to become, for example, base soil.
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared went out of his way to show that some cultures were stupider than others because of all of these manner of environmental forces.
That is exactly what Jared did not do. He even mentions in his own opinion that less technologically advanced peoples like the New Guineans may be on average have more intelligent people. This is because if you are stupid you die, while in the West for instance you may even breed more. No what Jared was saying in Guns, Germs and Steel were some peoples were given a bad hand compared to others due to their environment.
they dominated because every other culture had some lame excuse for not taking mathematics from basic algebra into the calculus or some other technological advance.
No the "lame" excuse was that without good food production you don't simply have the time nor reason to invent mathematics or other technology. Technology often has to advance beyond a certain point before the new way is better than the old.
Let's think about the gobbledygook we right, Jared!
Good advice ;>)
The most dangerous drug
The RTGs in the voyager probes are generating around 320W now. The average annual electricity consumption for a single person is around 3084kWh. This works out to 350W constant drain. An RTG with something like a fuel cell to store electricity in low-drain times would provide just about sufficient power for a house (couple if with solar cells on the roof and you'd be fine).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Lets instead talk about:
Arguing about global warming is completely worthless. Its a manufactured argument designed as a political tool for people who stand to benefit (and I don't just mean those politicians who are proponents - the politicians who argue against global warming are champions in the eyes of ""climate change deniers"", benefiting just as much as their more liberal counterparts).
Instead of arguing about this *crap,* lets take a look at some of the real problems.
Mon chien, il n'a pas du nez. Comment scent-il? TrÃs mauvais!
Yeah, but betavoltaics require isotopes with half lives on the order of 10-20 years, like tritium, not 14 billion.
Thorium is totally useless for betavoltaics.
You cited Voyager, but you neglect to mention that carried something on the order of 100 pounds of pure Plutonium 239.
I won't even begin to estimate how much that would cost, nor how difficult it would be to obtain, because it's not a natural element. It ONLY comes out of nuclear reactors.
In fact, any element with a half-life short enough to be a betavoltaic substance is going to be non-natural. You either have to bombard it with neutrons to get a weird isotope, or you have to pull it from a reactor as a fission byproduct... or something equally exotic. Ick.
Tritium is the most likely culprit because it can be made in reasonable bulk and manufacturing capability can be added as a side-job of existing plants AND it's only needed in tiny quantities to provide power for 20 years, but it would still make for ABSURDLY expensive batteries. I believe tritium costs about $100,000 per gram for research purposes and requires DOE approval to obtain.
Whoop-de-do.
Yea I know there is a difference between climate and weather.
But can we honestly respect climate predictions ranging in the 10+ years when the same scientists can't predict whether it's going to rain tomorrow with more than a 10% success?
No offense, but shut the fuck up already. All I hear about is global warming ... and for the last month it's been both COLD and WET in Ottawa. During August ... where for most of my life has been hot and dry.
The truth of the matter is this. Pollution is bad and MUST be curbed, but also that scientists have no FUCKING CLUE what makes weather tick. It's too large a system to predict [and chaotic at best].
So stop the circle jerk, you're not gods. You don't know as much as you think you do.
I'm not sure if anyone happened to catch this, but it said the coldest year in the 21st century, which means the coldest year in the last 8 years.
HA HA!
Global warming is almost as good as Duke Nukem Forever. Always just out of reach with lots of reasons why things won't get as bad as predicted as soon as predicted.
There are natural cycles people. It will get warmer and colder as it always has. We will need to adapt to the changes. If the theories were correct then things would be getting worse at a predictable rate. But now the planets natural cycle is going to keep things cooler than expected. Hmmm, seems like the natural cycle has more control over things than everyone was giving it credit. Maybe man is not affecting things as much as supposed.
Of course no one will ever read this and think about it that much since it will be modded to -100 in the next few seconds.
You mean? Out of the EIGHT last years this is the coldest? Oh my God, It is freezing!? On related news this has been the shortest Century in the Gregorian calendar so far...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Well, there you go. Go vegan. Don't have kids. Get rid of your car.
It's really not all that hard. Then again, since most people have a nasty habit of misspelling "citizen" as "consumer", I don't expect most folks will be making those choices any time soon.
Oh well, nature will make them for us I suppose.
...who think that global warming is supposed to be a linear progression. Oops. Too late.
This being the coolest year is just part of the normal course of "Global Warming", ha aha aha ah
You fucking slashdopes and your fucking hero AL "22k a month energy bill" Gore
You people will never learn
Cue the clueless Global Warmings proponents whom have no problem suspending belief despite lack of solar and magnetic data and honest scientific study versus the geo-political agenda brought to you by the UN, Useless Ninnys.
ISS- ITS the SUN STUPID
"the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth."
Noticed how rich and fat Gore has gotten since he started his religion? I'm just waiting for Tipper to start wearing way too much mascara and he'll fit right in with the rest of them.
I can see why you posted AC, given that the article you cite has a note at the end of it saying that it's core premise wrong:
What I don't understand is why you bothered posting it at all.
--MarkusQ
Regarding the idea of a heat sink, remember the ice caps are melting, the oceans are warming, and lakes are evaporating. When the caps are all melted, I would expect the oceans to get warmer faster, etc.
It only seems strange if you can't tell heat from temperature. But this is exactly what happens in a glass of ice water on a summer day: heat flows in, which melts the ice, keeping the water cool.
--MarkusQ
I believe you are correct, that there is some C14 but it's contribution is dwarfed by radon. I shouldn't try to type faster than I can think.
--MarkusQ
the phrase "Global Warming" from the public consciousness, and replace it with the term "Climate Change," I am aware that this is purely an effort to cover your asses and to keep your anti-human agenda alive in both cases of warming or cooling. I'm also aware that this, along with the U.N.'s anti-poverty campaign, is merely a small part of an ongoing effort to transfer wealth from wealthy industrialized nations (primarily the U.S.) to the rest of the world. Since it's inception, the U.N. has been looking for a way to blunt the diplomatic/military power of the U.S., and they may have finally found a method that Americans will swallow. If such a scam was being perpetrated by individuals instead of by world governments, then said individuals would be rotting in jail. It's called fraud and theft.
We went to the minimum of the 11 year cycle after being at the peak for the millennium, then Solar Cycle 24 did not start.
What's next? Maybe you can get climatologists burned as witches!
I'm afraid you're relying on the Hockey Stick graph, which has been pretty much demolished by mathematicians by now:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
It's August 22nd. I would have appreciated this article months ago so I could prepare better.
Sheesh.
Who's got the inside scoop on 2009?
Did ANYONE actually read the article where the very next paragraph says:
Global Warming deniers think that any variation of temperature other than year after year increases in temperature is proof that Global Warming is a hoax. They fail to see the larger picture.
Time makes more converts than reason
Wrong. That is only for the US; we are talking world climate. The tiny correction made a slight difference in ranking of US warmest year records, not global. In terms of global temperature, all of the 10 warmest years have been since 1989, and the tiny correction (below the level of statistical significance) to the US temperature records did not alter that.
And by the way, it is not even true that NASA previously ranked 1998 as the hottest year. NASA ranked has always ranked 1934 as the hottest year (in the US only, of course, and by a statistically insignificant margin). The tiny correction did not change that, either.
You might want to think about the source you cited, and what their motivation might be for promulgating such disinformation, still uncorrected months after scientists have pointed out the falsity of the claim.
The whole point of a reactor is that you get enough concentration of suitable radio-isotopes to create a chain reaction - i.e., the rare neutrons from spontaneously fissioning U235 are used to hit other atoms (e.g. of U238) and cause them to fission, producing more neutrons and so on. Thus the "fuel" is used up much more rapidly than occurs in the ground. Of course I am over-simplifying, but it is quite wrong to think you just put a load of uranium in a big tin can and extract the waste heat.
There are reasons for the scarcity, but one is that current breeders reactors produce plutonium, and the countries which developed nuclear explosives are very worried about letting anybody else have plutonium in case they do it too. The problems of nuclear power are political problems, and those are the hard ones.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
These guys don't know sh*t from shinola.
That's a joke. Any attempt to deviate from the Received Wisdom of Anthropogenic Global Warming is swatted down by the cabal of True Believers who edit the Wikipedia articles on the subject.
"thw worst thing you can do is ramp up production and burn through your last remaining drops"
This just isn't accurate ,especially in this case. If the oil were irreplacable, you may have an argument, but it isn't.
As the cost of oil goes up, the financial incentive to use something else increases, while also becoming cost competitive.
If you ration, you create artificial scarcity, but you also remove a major incentive to find alternatives. In addition, and not accidentally IMNSHO, you condition people to live on an energy diet. I'm sure some of you love that idea, but I consider rationing out of necessity a scientific failure.
I dont know where this data is coming from, but its very suspicious to me. I've heard the snow caps melting (can't be from the cold, can it?), and the summers been hotter than ever. If they say this is the coldest year, I dont want to wait for a hotter one!
Ok NOAA is only about 50% accurate with predictions more than 4 days out and it goes down drastically after than. Last year was supposed to be a record year for major named tropical storms, and it had among the fewest. and I am supposed to believe these yahoos when they try to predict the climate 10, 20 or more years into the future? Get BENT! We have only really been analyzing the climate as a whole fore what 60 years maybe? Global Climate Change, Global Warming, Global Cooling, etc. is all about one thing. GRANT MONEY. Come up with a theory, present it to your friends, demonstrate how you can all get a crap load of grant money, then start telling people the sky is falling (or burning in this case).
So, here is MY theory. Back in the '40's, a substantial portion of the scientist working on the Manhattan Project, felt so strongly against detonating atomic weapons in the atmosphere that they actually petitioned the President of the United States to not proceed with the testing. One of the reasons stated was that it could cause a chain reaction in the atmosphere, essentially burning it. Because the evidence for global warming seems to indicate that the temperatures began rising in the '50's (when most of the atomic/nuclear testing was done) then it must be that those scientist were correct. The atmosphere is burning do to atmospheric atomic testing.
Think about it, you through one rock into a pond and you get a small ripple, through lots of rocks into a pond repeatedly and the ripples become chaotic and unpredictable, increase the size of the rocks and the variation in the size of the ripples increases as well. So clearly, this must be the actual cause of climate instability.
Now, where the 'F' is my grant money so that I can prove this theory and develop an action plan to correct the problem.
Oh yeah, one more thing....Greenland was once f-ing GREEN people.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
This raises another good point, regarding the 'scarcity' of nuclear fuels alluded to a few level up in this thread. All the radioactive material we could be using to turn water into steam to power electrical generators is already sitting there burning at the same rate underground right now, it's just heating the surrounding rocks in a more diffuse spread than if it was all stuck into a reactor together.
We will run out of nuclear fuels at the same point in time whether we're using them or not, cause by their very natures, radioactive materials are always sitting there radiating. It's just a question of whether we take advantage of that energy while it's there, or just let it warm a lot of rocks a little bit until it all burns out.
Well, not really, because in nature these materials will just decay slowly, while in most nuclear reactors (not in RTGs and fusion reactors) a sustained nuclear fission chain reaction is used, that is the material is prepared in a way so that it becomes much more likely that a free neutron can hit a nucleus, which results in induced fission, a nuclear reaction which breaks the nucleus into smaller nuclei as well as smaller particles including some free neutrons, which can again induce fission in other nuclei etc. By doing so, the rate of decay is increased by several orders of magnitude, resulting in the material being "used up" much faster than it would in nature.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Taking into account breeder reactor technology, we have enough nuclear fuel and "waste" to power the entire planet for the next 10,000 years without mining another gram worth of uranium.
France, Russia and Japan all have breeder reactors. The USA had a breeder reactor program in advanced stages of development, but it was killed by executive order from Bill Clinton.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
All the radioactive material we could be using to turn water into steam to power electrical generators is already sitting there burning at the same rate underground right now
The point of a nuclear reactor is to burn the fuel faster than natural decay, by the process called a "chain reaction." I think Otto Hahn and Enrico Fermi did some work in this area ;-)
the 'scarcity' of nuclear fuels
Everything heavier than iron is a potential nuclear fuel. Because with chain reactions and their resultant neutron fluxes, we can make anything radioactive. The supernovas made these tall stacks of energy, all we need to do is add a few neutrons here and there to topple them over.
Conversely, we can take things that are radioactive and "pre-split" their atoms to more stable isotopes before burying them.
The problems with nuclear power are political, and that means they are intentional.
CO2 content 2x higher than it has ever been in the history of our planet? [...] 500 million years ago [...] 100 million years ago
The history of our planet dates back to some time between 6000 BC and 4000 BC, with the invention of early writing. Everything prior to that is not history; it's prehistory.
Actually, that's not true. In a reactor, we bring that diffuse fuel much more closely together and then we get criticality, which increases the burn rate dramatically.
Noncritical U235 has a half-life of 700 million years and is primarily an alpha-emitter, but in a reactor the rare neutron emissions become a cascade of decay events, and the "half-life" is only constrained by the reactor's fuel load and energy output. An exceptionally designed reactor may be able to burn 87% of it's primary fuel in 25 or 30 years (fuel half-life of 8-10 years). In the detonation of a nuclear bomb, the half life concept doesn't even make sense because the bomb is designed to get as close as possible to every U235 atom breaking down in the insignificant fraction of a second before the bomb flies apart.
Th232 is an even more likely long-term nuclear fuel. It's half life is about 10 billion years, but in reactors, the earth could burn up the supplies found in Norway and India in about 5000 years (assuming continuous exponential growth of energy demand).
At least then it would dawn on people that hydrogen is not an energy source.
Not only is hydrogen not an energy source, liquid hydrogen is less energy dense than gasoline on a per unit volume basis. It takes 4 litres of liquid hydrogen to give you the same energy as a single litre of gasoline. Furthermore, hydrogen reacts with the nitrogen and carbon in the air, as well as the oxygen, so it's not as simple as 2H2+O2=2H20+energy, There are nitric and nitrous acids, various nitrogen oxides, hydrogen cyanide, and probably other nasties as well coming out of the exhaust pipe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_hydrogen
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Really? 2008 is the coldest year of the century? What about 2023? Or 2057? Or the Great Long Winter of 2076?
"there must be a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere.."
Yup...it is called glacial and polar ice cap melting. Last time I checked it take heat to melt ice.
And why is that? Global Warming.
I think Gore should handle this like McCain/Bush. Just tell everyone that our environmentalist "surge" has saved the planet. We just need to continue occupying the world with people who drive hybrids and recycle and not rely on any specific time table to end the war. Good job fighting the war on global warming!
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Not quite. You seem to imply that if you put a whole bunch of U235 together you'll get another Hiroshima bomb. This is not the case, but it is one of the primary reasons why many people have an irrational fear of nuclear power: equating it with nuclear bombs, hence the vague "nuke" epithet.
The fuel in a nuclear power plant has about as much chance of having a fission/fusion explosion as a child's bubblegum exploding in their mouth. This isn't to say that it's a warm and fuzzy, harmless event, it's just that in a power plant the fuel simply gets too hot to properly manage, both in heat and radioactivity.
It doesn't explode like a nuclear weapon. That's like saying that fireworks could be like a sniper rifle or machine gun. Sure they all use gunpowder and must be used carefully, but they are very different animals.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
It's a little early to make a statement like that, considering that this is only the year 8 of the 21st Century.
We should try to keep things in perspective. There are still 92 years left that can get much colder than this.
As always, just my $0.02 worth.
Yeah, that explains why CBS news violated their own policies to cover up a McCain gaffe in an interview with Katie Couric.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The media does whatever makes them money.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Yeah, I hate the way the media have manufactured this McCainmania
You're jesting, but in all seriousness, the inside scoop I'm getting from the *republican* congressional staffers I know is that McCain *does* get an undeserved shine from the press.
portraying him as almost the Messiah and so on whilst giving no coverage to Obama.
The Obama coverage is interesting. Some of it is fawning -- is it because of a hidden agenda, or are people genuinely impressed with him? Some of it is inane -- is he wearing a flag pin? Some of it is insane -- terrorist fist jabs, anyone?
Tweet, tweet.
Wrong! Gas is more expensive because oil is more expensive. This is because human civilization has now extracted the easy first 50% of the planet's original oil endowment. Now it's more expensive to extract oil, and the maximum volume extractable is going into decline. We CAN'T extract oil faster than we currently do. It's that simple.
It's preposterous that environmentalist policies could keep a substantial amount of oil of in the ground, over the objections of oil producers, at anywhere near current oil prices. Things get done globally largely based on who has the most money. Oil producers have the most money, by far, because oil production is the biggest business on the planet, bar none.
You have allowed yourself to be deceived by propaganda. Please do some serious research on topic before you blather further statements that prove your ignorance.
Forgot the requisite link to Peak Oil on wikipedia
Someone needs to go back to nuke class. The very reason that reactors produce so much power is that they are using the fuel much faster than it would normally decay. When you create a nuclear pile, the neutrons released from the decay of one particle, hit another and trigger its decay. If this didn't happen, the whole pile would simply be warm, not thousands of degrees. Ever wonder what the moderator rods are that you see in movies? Ever wonder why inserting them "shut down" the reactor? They absorb the neutrons before they can trigger more reactions.
Yes, it's decaying in the ground at it's natural rate. It is used up MUCH faster in a reactor.
Make that 24 panels or 150x24x4 = 14.4 KW daily. Although they make 200W panels the same size giving me 19.2KW which would be enough to power any house with a 150A service or less. If you had a 150A service you couldn't use this much energy in a day without blowing a fuse somewhere. I have a 100A service and would have to push some of this energy back to the utility or have a storage plan.
the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth.
Uhhh, I thought Global Warming was here and now....demonstrably ... But now we have a holding pattern for 10 years before it really kicks in? I'm super-serial, this fear-mongering is getting old.
I generally agree with you and I support nuclear power. However, I have to point out that cheap, aneutronic fusion just isn't going to happen. He3 + He3 does not produce neutrons but the inevitable side reactions do.
I'm not going to write an epistle, but I just can't resist responding to this post and the comments it has generated.
First, for those who won't like what I have to say, I'll give you a reason to move on. I don't buy the current hype surrounding "Global Warming" as defined by the IPCC and certain unemployed professional politicians. For those of a slightly more "conservative" or "independence" minded streak, feel free to read on.
The foregoing position does NOT prevent me from supporting some of the things which the "Global Warming" proponents suggest for entirely different reasons.
To illustrate one of my points, I'll refer to history. To a great extent the Allies victory can be traced to the supply of petroleum from the United States during WWII. (which hastened the depletion of our easily accessible reserves) That energy independence allowed the United States to fight a two front war with little concern for the position of others, other than those countries directly supporting our effort through basing.
Consider the foregoing relative to todays situation, where our economy and Foreign and Military policy is directly impacted by the ability to procure adequate petroleum stocks from nations who, other than wanting our money, are hostile towards our country. This is a fundamentally untenable situation, which effectively reduces our independence and sovereignty. In addition, the wealth transfer causes a substantial economic impact to the value of our currency and places the viability of the U.S. economy at risk. (Consider that if those nations holding LARGE quantities of Dollars, such as certain OPEC nations and China, decide to dump them, the U.S. Dollar will effectively become worthless. This devastation to the value of the Dollar can, on historical grounds, only result in one outcome. A spiraling round of inflation, ending in the kind of hyperinflation which has brought down many governments the world over.)
The seriousness of the current threat to our nation and our ability to execute our Foreign and Military policy with independence can be shown by the recent and increasing interest the U.S. military has shown regarding synthetic fuels. In short the Military is preparing itself for a future where they may be denied access to foreign petroleum and have to go to the fight only with what the U.S. has or can produce domestically. While I find it amazing it has taken the U.S. Military this long to reach this conclusion, I'm heartened they have finally "awakened".
I do not believe you can conserve your way out of the depletion of a finite resource. Sorry, it just doesn't work that way. There is also the high rate of change in energy use in emerging and high growth nations which will further expedite the depletion of a finite resource.
So while I do not propose wasteful petroleum or energy expenditure, I do not advocate draconian conservation measures which cause a substantial disruption to either the nation, individual states, or the individual citizens. Leave such measures for when they are truly needed. (in other words, short of all out war, it's status quo)
I do advocate continued efforts to improve product efficiencies through sound engineering in new or revised product, but that's it on the conservation front. You'll note I didn't say, "we need to pass a law". Lawyers and politicians make lousy technologists and engineers, and usually focus on the wrong metric. If you don't believe me look at the U.S. automotive CAFE standards...
So, where does that leave someone like me?
I do advocate the extraction of every last drop of petroleum and natural gas within our national boundaries, including our territorial waters. At this point, I would even support the use of Imminent Domain to obtain access, and to overcome the objections of the NIMBY crowd. (I don't like to advocate such a thing but extraction of those resources should, at this point, be considered a point of National Security)
I support any COST EFFECTIVE production of energy. You'll note the empha
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
"Economical" is a relative term. The type of DC lines you are discussing cost a lot of money. Realistic estimates are in the range of $1 to $2 million per mile -- not including the years-long battles that accompany the siting of any major transmission facilities.
Again, not suggesting that it's a bad idea -- but a 1,000 mile transmission line would cost in the billions and we (as energy consumers) need to be prepared to see these costs reflected in our electric rates.
2008 is the coldest year since the end of 2007.
Seriously...the coldest year of the 21st century? You mean comparing it to the 7 out of 100 that have happened so far? What a stupid headline.
The debate is settled. The scientists all agree. We are heading toward cataclysmic global warming. Al Gore told me so (while enriching himself to the tune of $100,000,000 +).
Not entirely. Uranium 235 is, indeed, heating rocks even as it sits in the ground, but U-238 does not, and something like 93% of all terrestrial uranium is U-238. Of course, breeder reactors stuffed with both convert U-238 to Pu-239, plutonium. So U-238 will always be with us until we decide to turn it into plutonium for power.
I think that the energy problem is not going to be solved without some unidentified technology. To me it seems that continuing on with oil AND trying to "go green" using the current green technologies is simply not going to work. Current green technologies do not generate enough energy at a low enough cost for us to maintain our lifestyle. There are some folks out there who are good natured enough to do this, but don't count on the masses excepting it. How about putting some sort of bounty on a solution that generates a defined amount energy on a defined budget in a renewable way? This sort of thing has worked somewhat for cancer research. Perhaps it can be applied here.
An extended historical study such as the following http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html can show that man does not have an extreme ability to change the global enviorment. The global warming "experts" are of the same ilk that predicted the coming "Ice Age" in the 1970's. A bunch of educated scientists working on the taxpayers dime and using Texas Sharpshooter modeling to publish books and influence weak minded politicians. A good diet of "Bread and Circuses" will keep the truth from getting out!
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Getting a lot of radioactive material into a small place accelerates the reaction. In the extreme, that's how A-bombs work.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
No particular individual dataset of observations definitively 'proves' the correlation of human caused climate change. But the cross correlations between an incredibly diverse set of observations does provide a basis for a pretty well based assumption. These include ice cap bores from Greenland, species in seabed sediments, coral growth, tree rings (even petrified trees :-), even historical accounts from a very wide variety of scientific disciplines, which use different methodologies and models, each subject to peer review within their own disciple.
What hobbles this in every case is the sample space, what is needed a fine resolution chronographic continuous globally distributed climate record. I.e. the ice caps are only located in certain areas and so it has only been in the last few years we have had satellite platforms to global measure sea temperatures. Global weather monitoring on a regular basis only started during World War Two, mostly driven by military aviation.
If Climatology is a tough nut, Paleoclimatology is even tougher. Ironically, the world wide exploration for oil combined with temperature as an indicator for petroleum formation has provided one possible set of observations. See " Optimal Surface Temperature Reconstructions Using Terrestrial Borehole Data" (and others) at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003/mann2003.html This area of current relies on ancillary data, but could be extended to deeper wells and better distributed locations to increase the time horizons.
The diverse and broad studies around climate change complement and supplement one another to reach the conclusion and correlation. Sunspots and lemming migrations can be argued endlessly, but it is the meta analysis of all these efforts that matters. If the media has a hard time with translating and portraying the problem and controversy inside a particular specialized scientific study, it is absolutely incapable of informing the public about the meta analysis. So drowning cute polar bears isn't scientifically precise, if the imagery causes behavior change, all the better.
The other aspect of the debate is the time dynamics and values of the risk situation: What is the cost of doing business as usual in the event the warming hypothesis is wrong? If we mitigate the carbon impacts and it's wrong, so what? We have a vastly more efficient and clean economy. If it's right, the downside is potentially death and disruption for billions. Also, how long do we have to figure it out?
Anonymous coward
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Temperatures hit the freezing mark in Minnesota and Wisconsin this morning.
Your argument that the Earth's heat must be stored someplace strikes me as a logical fallacy. We really do not know enough about the energy balance to draw any conclusions; but the basic assumption in any energy-balance calculation is that heat in minus heat out equals net energy absorption, which is proportional to temperature increase. If the temperature of the Earth stops rising, then the assumption would be that more heat is being dissipated. The global warming theory assumes that increased greenhouse gas causes less heat to be dissipated. If temperature stops increasing while CO2 continues to increase, that proves- as much as anything in this sphere can be proved, which is not very much- that CO2 does not control temperature. This is already proved in many ways. Over the past 3000 years, there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. The current warming trend began before the Industrial Revolution, and most of the warming since 1800 had already occured before CO2 began to increase. As CO2 began to increase, temperature decreased from 1940 to 1970. Just as alarmists cried that human emissions were causing global cooling, temperature began to increase. This correlated with changes in the solar cycle. The temperature profile since 1940 also correlates with changes in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Our first suspicion should be that the Oscillation and the temperature are both correlated with solar cycle. There is a very strong correlation between temperature and solar cycle, on every time scale: millennia, centuries, and decades. In "Daggers Are Drawn Over Revived Cosmic Ray- Climate Link", Science 319 (2008), p144, Jacobo Pasotti references a paper in "Earth and Planetary Science Letters", by geophysicist Vincent Courillot, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris. Courillot and coworkers have published a very strong correlation between the Earth's geomagnetic field, solar irradiance, and 20th century global temperature. There is evidence that the Sun is entering a phase of reduced irradiation. Solar cycle 24 is behind schedule, which indicates we are entering a new little ice age. None of this can support a definite prediction; but past climate patterns predict global cooling for several decades, bottoming out at a temperature slighty below 1776, the low point of the last Little Ice Age. See the following link: http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/Conf2007/Archibald2007.pdf Global warming is beneficial to human life. Cooling is tough, hitting agricultural cycles especially hard.
The latest data begs to differ. See Arctic Ice On Verge Of Another All-time Low.
--MarkusQ