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Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."
We all gona die, but at least I got my first post...
So they are saying we will have the opposite of the Younger Dryas no matter what we do. That may be true, and it might not be true, but I think it's a bit premature to say that our computer models are so good that they can definitively say what global conditions will be like in 1,000 years. Considering how few variables we model let alone the level of detail we have on those data points I think it's a bit foolish to say we can say much of anything definitive from our models at those type of timescales.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Wow. I hope the paper is not as inane as her quotes. There's a difference between passive conservation and active geo-engineering. What Solomon is trying to say is that even if we all hold hands and try to conserve that it'll make no difference because the damage is already done. Of course, to acknowledge this is difficult if you buy into environmental conservationism, as Solomon obviously does, so you end up with quotes like "I guess if it's irreversible, to me it seems all the more reason you might want to do something about it".
How we know is more important than what we know.
Damn whales exhaling in our oceans.
We didn't listen!@!
Great news to start off 1/27/09. Your world is ending, and there is nothing you can do about it.
I think a lot of us felt it would turn out this way.
Hope I look stupid in 50 years. I probably won't though.
Dad?
What a load of bull. I can't believe the crap people publish nowadays in PNAS.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's too bad, but on average, the human race is pretty darn stupid. I think that just about sums it up...
.: Max Romantschuk
I am not surprised. I have been pondering the various, strong positive feedback loops involved with climatic phenomena, like the release of gigantic amounts of methane from the Siberian permafrost due to warming, the decrease of vitality and eventual death of plankton in the oceans (main source of oxygen for the planet, as well as main source of food for fish) due to increased sea temperatures, decrease of albedo due to melting of icecaps and glaciers, decrease of rainfall and consequent decrease of forests (that the Indonesian and Amazonian forests have been mercilessly burnt, doesn't help), to mention just a few. I am sure the better informed reader can add a few more of these positive feedback loops, but in my humble opinion, these are the stronger ones, and make the process of global warming unstoppable.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Oh, hang on, no that's pretty bad.
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The key element about global warming that seems relevant is this : how LONG will it take? If we have 200 years before the ice caps finish melting, then it's not really the crisis that it's made out to be.
Why won't it matter if it takes 200 years? Because realistically at even a fraction of the current rate of technological progress, mankind will have the technology to do something definitive about it in 200 years. The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface.
I can even see how this would be done using a juiced version of current technology. Automated factories would produce the thousands of square kilometers of shade material (kind of like the automated factories in Japan right now...). The factories might be on the earth or the moon. We'd blast the shades into orbit using lasers (see Lockheed Martin's new LED pumped laser weapon for technology that could do the job TODAY) and they would automatically position themselves in the right location using tiny ion engines (also already been done).
The solar panels would produce electrical energy, which would be beamed down to earth via microwave. The panels would only be maybe 40-50% efficient, so the waste heat would radiate out to space, reducing the total thermal load on the planet.
Presto! Problem solved, and probably would be a profitable endeavor for some future megacorp.
You cannot extrapolate from the occurence of "new technology" in the past to help us, onto future new technology coming at time to help us. New technology is in general an unknown, and thus you should NEVER plan with them in mind. The new technology could as well NEVER happen and so much screw you up in an irreversible way. Which is why it is insane on planning on new tech coming (ne crude extraction tech, new energy generation tech (including fusion), new food production tech, new recyclage tech , new medicine tech etc...). A sane planning should always be based on current tech. You can always adapt your planning if a new tech comes up. You can't if you are waiting for some new tech to come (when ? In how far the problem would be solved ? What problem would be left ? etc...). waiting for new tech to solve your problem is akin to waiting that the problem solve itself. And that is totally utterly lost on you.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In the 70s they were also predicting a coming ice age.
No, much more likely we'd be gone, and in a few tens of millions of years
Let's just hope that whoever will be putting our bones in a museum will get a little sophisticated and won't think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
May 19, 2008 Are 32,000 Scientists Enough to Question Global Warming 'Consensus?' Marc Sheppard The National Press Club in Washington will today release the names of as many as 32,000 American Scientists who reject not only Kyoto-style greenhouse gas limits, but the very premise of manmade global warming itself. On Saturday, Lawrence Solomon wrote a great piece in the National Post (h/t Benny Peiser) which begged the question: "How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?" How many, indeed? Solomon, author of The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so, reminds us that 32,000 scientists have now signed the "Oregon petition," which states that "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth." Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/are_32000_scientists_enough_to.html
Considering the evidence that climate has been cyclic with a cycle of approximately 100k years for the last million-odd years, leads me to think that there must also be negative feedback loops involved here. You seem to have missed that. Badly.
Yes, I realize this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a magic global temperature or CO2 concentration at which suddenly this behavior breaks down. But somehow, I don't think we know all that much about all the processes involved.
Then we should plant lots of kelp. And there is little chance of a fire in a kelp forest.
What?
I suggest you read this and see why the Sun is not responsible for our current climate problem.
At the risk of sounding out of place. I listened to this on the drive to Bar Review Class today and the point was that the damage we have done is relatively irreversible, but we can stop the magnitude of the result by limiting green house gas emissions in the present. That is not particularly outlandish, but it is also slightly disheartening to see that we have passed a threshold of no immediate return. That is the reaction is moving in a reaction to restore equilibrium.
I think we need to not discount technological possibilities of the future, however, curbing carbon emissions is a laudable goal for the present.
Earth has not been 'far warmer'. See the hockey stick.
Cold in DC and in Europe for that matter is due to slowing of the Golfstream and masses on polar region air coming down, both of those phenomenons are activated by global warming.
It could be that the natural negative feedback loop for the global warming is the formation of an Ice age cowering Europe and most of the USA under miles of ice. That might balance things out. In a couple thousand years.
So ... 10 billion people, frozen Europe, Canada, USA, Russia, scorched deserts in most of Afrika ... where will we all go to live? Will everyone migrate peacefully? How many billion people will be killed in wars to control few strips of land that are still fertile? And how many billions will die of starvation because they did not have the military power to get those lands?
Not so fun.
"...get rid of your..."
Well, if you are going to go all 'asshat' here, then you need to be more specific.
Depending on how he 'got rid' of the PC, house, and car, he might have ended up 'greener' by keeping them going instead.
I would not be surprised if your nose was flat from all of your knee-jerk reactions.
Carry on...;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.
The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.
The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.
If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.
Can't do jack anyway, so why bother trying?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"If you can invent an easy process to turn CO2 in low concentrations back into carbon and oxygen, you have a winner."
Trees?
-- Terry
And as for the term "climate change" ... that is, well, dumb. The climate is always changing ... always has, always will.
"climate change" stands for "anthropogenic climate change" but four syllables words are too hard to remember for americans...
Not the goddamn short-term hockey-stick again. Go wave about a longer-term climate change graph than a mere 1000 years. Have a look at this one, for example.
You think it'll last forever. People and cars and concrete. But it won't. And one day it's all gone. Even the sky.
My planet's gone. It's dead. It burned like the Earth. It's just rocks and dust. Before its time.
You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're gonna get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Like maybe you survive. This is the year 5.5/apple/26, five billion years in your future, and this is the day... Hold on... This is the day the sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world.
Damn blowhards!
Over all, are whale farts worse than cow farts in regards to climate change?
I just don't see fart collector bags working out on our deep sea diving overlords.
*Imagine trying to dive to the bottom of the pool to snag that coin with a fully inflated Hippity-Hop tied to your arse!*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Well, I probably just biased you into thinking I'm a climate change denier with the title, but guess what... I buy into science.
However, there is such a ridiculous, self-reinforcing feedback loop of grandiose speech and groupthink within the climate research community that its no wonder quacks out there are encouraged towards disbelief. If you attend lectures by some of these researchers (personally, its been mostly atmospheric chemists for me), you'll see that nearly every one of them thinks they're some sort of Messiah trying to spread the holy message. This article (the original, not the fluff news summary) is no exception.
In order to secure a newspaper headline title (once again, in order to get THE MESSAGE out), Solomon completely ignores a range of facts and potential solutions.
First fact, she admits in the article that people have previously predicted the consequences to last centuries. Apparently, when you increase the timescale from 200 years to 1000 years, you pass her arbitrary distinction between 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. How about we agree to refer to this as possibly reversible on a really long time scale, huh? And instead of Solomon saying that she was the one to discover global warming was 'irreversible', instead say that it will take longer than expected to return to normal?
Second, Solomon DELIBERATELY turns a blind eye to research already in the literature that contradicts her model. This surpasses vanity and enters into the realm of negligence on the level of an ethical violation. I'm talking about the emerging field of carbon sequestration here. Anyone in the field of climate research WILL know about the branch of research focused on removing and confining CO2 from the atmosphere. While any implementation is still a long way from large scale deployment or commercial viability, if you're going to make predictions on a 1000 year time scale, you might want to take into account technology advances in this field! However, that would destroy Solomon's pretty newspaper headline and reduce it to the following:
Global warming might last five times as long as previously expected assuming we don't find a way to fix the problem first
.
Does that sound front-page newsworthy to you? Ok, I support the theory of man-made global warming. However, if we want to persuade the skeptics and nuts out there, climate researchers should start approaching the issue honestly and responsibly. Half truths will only undermine further discussion!
.
What is "irreversible" seems to be the transformation of the so-called "top scientists" into funding-whores and false prophets of Doom.
"Turning off the carbon dioxide emissions won't stop global warming."
Ok, irreversible. Surely we can frack up the planet more by trying to fix the soothsaid irreversible damage. Let's terraform Earth into some sticky goo which will be fun to breath.
"As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption."
As humans continue to live the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. Let's be wise and not foolishly go off half cocked with the soothsaying pablum that passes for climate science.
I gather we are now learning how to terraform one planet! This could be good for our descendants move to Mars, Europa and other planet-like moons in the solar system.
Soothsaying the Idiocracy into existence. Not smart.
""People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says."
People have imagined pink unicorns screwing as being the origin of the universe. What one can imagine and what is really going on are a wee bit different.
When the scientists can't even get agree on the RAW temprature data how can you even trust their computer models? Simulating climate with starting conditions that aren't close to the real temperatures won't help with the accuracy of said simulations.
I'd like to see the source code for ALL climate models used to support the conclusions of ANY climate change claims - regardless of which direction or dire size of said claims. Auditing the scientists is crucial. Open science that can be vetted by anyone is crucial. AUDIT! Verify! Reproduce results (if possible and so far many of the claimed GW can't be independently reproduced by auditors).
Hey my soothsaying computer models says that the world would be a better place for me if you all sent me $1,000 for use in warming my climate with a trip to the tropics.... (it's cold here where I am). If you all show me the money my climate will be warm for the rest of my lifetime with lots of fun times with yummy cold liquid hydrocarbons.
Don't buy car insurance, either.
After all, you've never had an accident! Who are those doomsayers who say you HAVE to?
Those negative feedback mecahanisms have worked in the past, but something - who knows what - might be different this time and disable them.
Even if they do work as previously, at what point are they triggerred? It might get pretty uncomfortable for us before it starts to turn.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In the 70s they were also predicting a coming ice age.
That has been refuted even here on Slashdot IIRC. Global Cooling article in Wikipedia says:
"Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming."
Which doesn't mean your statement is necessary false, but you should provide some data supporting it.
The headline is a little alarmist, but the article is more reasobable:
One of the things people don't understand about science sometimes is that it doesn't set policy because it requires objectivity. Goals, which are the basis of judgement and therefore decision making, are subjective.
Err... unless I'm thoroughly mistaken, doesn't the vast majority of that graph lie significantly below modern temperatures?
And remember that just because similar temperatures have happened before, doesn't mean that they don't have consquences for those unfortunate to live through them.
Furthermore, the most important factor is the speed of the temperature change, and even the steepest components of your graph show temperature changes of maybe 1C every 1000 years. We're facing a helluva lot faster than that this time round, and the consequences will be more significant.
http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/8/vostok.jpg
This scientist is wrong.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Actually, I'd say Anthropogenically forced climate change is the accurate term.
But we have to remember that for most people, talking about several thousand years ago as "recent" (in any terms) sounds like a bad joke. They're doing good if they voluntarily reuse a plastic bag, so lets not feel too harsh about the necessary dumbing-down of the science to a general public level.
If we want everyone to do anything about it, it needs to be presented at a level that everyone can understand, while at the same time making it obvious that there's a lot more to it than hand-waving arguments, lest the smarter ones decide that its hokum.
. . . before we all freeze to death!!
Which is why it is insane on planning on new tech coming
Well, at least you got some terminally stupid people to mod you up. Good job.
We do all kinds of things today considered impossible in earlier times. The one I think about the most is the scientist who proved heavier than air flight was impossible, or maybe the patent clerk who quit from the US Patent office over a century ago because Everything Had Been Invented already.
When we're[1] set free to invent things, we can do extraordinary things. I view events of the last 3 or 4 decades as more of a problem of declining freedom than anything else. The 50s and 60s were an exciting time of exponential technological progress.
Fortunately for me, I grew up in the 60s and when they thought I was brain damaged and slow, my mother helped me read astronomy books from the library and I got interested in the space program. Today, they would probably just fill me full of drugs. I've heard too many horror stories to ever let my sons set foot near a US public school.
You can always adapt your planning if a new tech comes up.
Well, sure, but the thing is, we used to invent those all the time. Still do, when we're given half a chance. The human mind is a most amazing thing.
[1] "We" as in humans in general.
Still not "far warmer". +3C maximum from where we are now, for relatively short periods. GW is predicting more than that.
... the fact that "ice caps" are the least of our worries. Diseases, spread by insects, could become widespread as insects migrate to previously colder climate zones. Malaria, dengue fever, West Nile etc. That will probably be the quickest "experience" we have with global warming.
As we currently do not have correct antidotes against these diseases, I call your bluff.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I think they were right (about the coming ice age).
During the "mini ice age" 300 years ago, the notable feature was the lack of sunspots. Guess what the latest photos of the Sun show - NO sunspots.
Temperatures have also been going down, not up recently.
Analogy time. If you're trying to optimize code for speed you want to work on the region of code where you're spending the most time in already. It's the same as with temperature on the earth. The biggest input is the Sun. If the Sun cools down, as it apparently does periodically (periodic ice ages are fairly well documented and proven), then things get colder.
If one was *really* concerned about Global Warming, one would want a thermostat applied to the Sun. No one has suggested that. I find it remarkable the Sun stays as consistent as it does.
Anyway, the Sun is a first order effect, and anything man-made is at best several orders beneath that. We have more to worry about if the Sun suddenly becomes unstable and goes nova than this so-called Global Warming.
I'll leave it to someone else to provide a car analogy.
There is a myth that they predicted all apocalyptic shit in the 20th century. I remember when Limits came out .... its predictions were aimed squarely at the early to mid 21st century.
That was not what they were teaching in schools 20 years ago. Oil was supposed to have run out about 1997 or 1998 and tin 1990ish.
Oopsy!
Oh wait! We *did* already run out of oil out of the ground and all of today's oil production comes from extraction from teenager's faces![1] How could I be so dumb?
[1] Who would have thunk that Mel Brooks could save the world?
I get the joke but I'm not sure how we ended up on limits of growth and horse shit, that is not what TFPaper is about.
What it says is that IFF we stopped pumping out GHG tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the ocean to regain it's pre-industrial PH level. The ocean (and the shelled critters in it) is the largest C02 sink, too much CO2 makes the ocean slightly more acidic and this is already having a negative affect on said shelled critters ability to make shells, loss of coral reefs is the most publicised of these effects. Personally I hardly think it's surprising that it would take a long time for makind's CO2 spike to be aborsbed into the system if we all dropped dead tomorrow but science is about measurement and evidence, the question of "how long would it take" is as valid as any other.
limits of growth and horse shit
I like the horse story but the Dodo bird meat industry didn't fare quite as well. Tecnology may one day overcome that "temporary" glitch but until it does the Dodo meat industry went past it's own limit to growth in the 1700's(?). While we are LIMITED by our lack of terra-forming technology I think the most obvious limit to growth comes from from human shit, not horse shit.
As far as I am concerned we have no choice but to turn to technology to fix technology. However it's nice to have a "bug report" that clearly lays out what the problem is. Science is that bug report, without these kind of studies we wouldn't even recoginse the problem, and in fact many people still don't (just look at this thread for examples).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I doubt she genuinely modelled the technology correctly but what you could do is model technological improvement as a multi-faceted project plan with dollars and deadlines and scientific managers assigned to each breakthrough. This would be more of a manhattan style or Apollo style project. This top down approach to science is in the reverse of the present basic US science policy, which is basic research oriented. But, you could have all US science policy be top down, with branches for different paths that might emerge as discoveries are made and a process to invalidate branches, and then reassign or dismiss the scientists that worked on those invalidated branches. From there, you can calculate the best case, cost benefit, by examining the research branch that yields the highest climate alteration per $ spent, and then, various other branches.
This is my sig.
The planet is not infinite. Exponential growth will hit a ceiling, whether you want to believe it or not. Any nerd should know that.
That is why we have wars, and any nerd should know that. All we need is a little nuclear war in asia and all of our problems are solved.
This is my sig.
"According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people died of starvation every day in 2003" - Wikipedia article on starvation.
On a scale of 0 to 10, low to high, I would rank the UN about 3[1] and Wikipedia 0 as reputable sources.
I've *lived* in the 3rd world for half a decade and there's no way that number is even close. So what is your point?
People live, people die. The leading cause of death in the world is government (war, etc.).
[1] The UN only gets that highly ranked because they were honest enough to publish a study reporting NO statistical dangers from so-called second hand smoke. They retracted it later. Sigh.
The reality is this article is an escape clause for scientists. Now, we're going to spend trillions of dollars and impoverish millions of people fighting the global warming man, and then, after that, when we go to check to see if this is shit worked, we'll hear from the environmentalists that, "it will work in a thousand years". WTF!
That's not science. That's religion. And just like every 1000 labelled year, we'll find a new reason that Jesus didn't come back, in the form of some new thing that says we should worship mother earth more, so that she will come back to us.
People that believe this stuff are idiots. Maybe we should have US troops in Iraq for a thousand years, because they will be a democracy by then. Maybe we should let the free market handle this current economic crisis, because it will be ok in a thousand years. A thousand years! If the plan that we are to embark on -might- show progress in a thousand years, then our plan is stupid, how about that!
Stupid climate scientist. I wonder if they will come up with something intelligent, before Jesus comes back!
This is my sig.
Not at all. Next time you're at Davos, sign up for a flight off this rock. Now the whole global elite wants to go prices are down to $20-30million per seat.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Ok so let's say (as a for instance) global warming is completely made up crap.
People who pollute the crap out of the earth for private gain are still an enemy of humanity and deserve to have horrible horrible things happen to them.
They should at least be put in cages like any other dangerous animal.
The extinction of mankind is a small price to pay for the complete annihilation of nerdom.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
In 1957/58, scientists worldwide held an International Geophysical Year, during which they collected as much weather info as they could.
Show me the computer model which starts, say, 1 Jan 1958, and correctly forecasts global weather to any degree of accuracy for 1 Jan 2008. If they don't work over 50 years from a known starting point to a known ending point, why believe them implicitly for 100 years?
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
Wasn't the world kind of molten before..lava n' stuff.
It would stand to reason that it will cool down.
I still support doing nasty things to major polluters because it's my planet too and I have every right to defend it.
Damn whales exhaling in our oceans.
The methane (a greenhouse gas) in our atmosphere is nearly all from cow farts.
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
These people have their value though.
Without their strong caveats who knows whether enough of us would feel compelled to actually solve those problems before they blindsided us like a stealth missile.
All optimists, progressives, and risk-takers express this kind of dismissiveness about such dire predictions, but without them, and those who act on them, our decisions would become reckless very quickly.
For instance, if nobody started raising severe alarms about energy use, we probably would have all died in a third world war caused by people fighting over oil for their 10 gallon per mile cars.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
We might as well continue polluting the environment, since it wont make any difference anyway? oO"
It's all a myth anyway, according to the Daily Mail. Richard Littlejohn said so, and he knows more than all those "scientists" combined!
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them
If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".
the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in that.
If by "better" you mean stuck in the middle ages without electricity (rural electrificaiton initiative), railroads (transcontinental railroad project, and similar projects by european counterparts), sewers, municipal water, rampant disease, and the list goes on and on.
The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally in conjunction with guidance and aid of committees of busybodies trying to save the world.
There, fixed that piece of libertarian propaganda to reflect reality. Do you really think there were not think-tanks, policy analysts, and government activists since the first city-state arose?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I think that was just a speculative suggestion. The core of grandparent's message was that we have here on Slashdot a paper which purports to predict what will happen 1000 years in future, and then happily claiming inevitability. 1000 years is a mighty long time. A natural disaster could happen, giving the climate a jolt in either direction. Or maybe we invent a way of filtering CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it somehow. Or maybe some new plant emerges (or is engineered) that somehow has an exceptional CO2 demand, who knows?
Yes, the news is worrisome, and we'd do well not to make the situation still worse than what we already have coming for us, but to pretend that you can predict what will happen in 3009 is silly. Hundred years ago folks didn't even have personal computers yet, don't forget that.
"Global Warming Irreversible"
Wow, are there no limits to human ingenuity? We are finally safe from nuclear winters.
I think it will be a lot harder for these researchers to go back and change their headlines than it has been for them to modify the historical temperature data. In a few years time we will be able to look back at these headlines and have a good laugh at what people were willing to say just to keep their funding.
Cheers,
_GP_
remember ppl a few hundred-thousand years ago where u probably are (if you are somewhere where its snowed last year) would be under a mile of ice. yes the temprature is going up but its just going back to normal. (ice age remember) however the CO2 in the oceans may be a problem so just stop.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
We could put a sunshade at the Earth's L1 Lagrange point and cool us down as much as we wanted to.
There are other possible mega-engineering possibilities to deal with global warming, but this one would certainly work is within our capabilities.
It is hard to get some people to think outside the box.
It seems like the argument is that, if we were to immediately stop releasing CO2 into the environment, it would take at least 1000 years for the earth to return to 'normal'. But this is not the same as saying the effects are 'irreversible'. Presumably we could reverse the effects by removing CO2 from the environment and putting it back in the ground in some stable form.
We can produce food for many times what is on this planet. The only difference is that diets will adjust to which food products can be readily produced. Do you understand how much land that is suitable for farming isn't even used?
Susan Solomon is a CO2 freak. Her contention has been that we produce too much CO2 but every time I have read her interviews she spouts the changes in how much we produce without going into how much is naturally occurring. In other words, it looks bad if you just see how much more we produce but mankind has nothing on the mother nature's numbers.
Hyperbole for the win by the way, we have lots of fish, the key is who is farming it and where. Certain vocal industries are decrying loss of fishing but what good does putting a restriction on where our people can fish if our neighbors don't.
The whole problem with the GW is caused by man is that it really is "GW is profitable to certain men". Cap and Trade is the outcome these people want because it will make them money. In the mean time poor chinese and africans will lose their lands to damns and energy projects that benefit the rich world and a few rich people.
Lovely.
Man isn't the cause of global warming but men will certainly find a way to profit off of it
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Are any of us truly surprised.
How many of us just want to believe otherwise, as the idea of it is so difficult to accept. I imagine that one could almost put a name to the mental behavior that so many of us have as we consider this.
It really _has_ always been about adapting, rather than avoiding. The bomb has already gone off, the walk of the meek is at hand.
There is plenty of food.
Where we struggle, as human beings, is getting it to the people who need it. Politics, not capability, determine who gets fed and who doesn't.
We have PLENTY of resources to feed 7bil, 8bil, or even 10bil people. That has never been the problem. It's our own selves that is the problem.
Well Earth is getting more distance from sun we have a angle of 1 to 27 degree we are now in 7 degree of distance ... the big problem is the waste of our energy sources that give us enought energy to survive in a glaciar age. We are know 14 thounsand years of warm weather cycle and maybe in a near future 100 thousand years of glaciar age.
The big problem in Mars was the internal vulcano activity that disapear and destroyed electro magnetic fields in polo's.
At the moment we now that Earth is changing is magnetic fiel from North to South, the big activity that sun show us in 2000 is slowing down, we are near the limit of 14 thousands years of warm weather and 2008 was the coolest year in 50 years timeline.
The big problem of CO2 is Venus effect, and that my contribute to an irrersible "hell" in earth. ... but we are parasite and adapt and we go to Mars or Europe in Jupiter and so on ... ;) :P
Linux dune 2.6.9-gentoo-r3 #4 SMP Thu Nov 11 15:52:41 UTC 2004 x86_64 4 GNU/Linux
One less thing to worry about.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The parent to whom you replied may not know, but I do, as I've run the Global Climate Models in which you seem to place so much trust.
Unfortunately, your trust is misplaced. The best GCMs of the current crop are not able to simulate the Earth's processes well enough to yield predictions that correlate with the climate of our past, and therefore are worthless as predictors of future climate.
It's no surprise at all. After all, they don't model the oceanic processes that exchange CO2 at all well, they ignore oceanic biota and the recent devastation of oceanic diversity entirely, and they barely touch the most important warming control process of them all, which is cloud formation, because we do not understand it. As a result, the GCMs are interesting as tools that increase our powers of analysis, but they are worthless as part of the scientific method that puts theories to the test. They fail that test.
So don't be so fast at putting your trust in others, whether they be high priests of religion or of climatology. The science in this area is at an early stage of analysis, and climatological prediction is at a handwaving stage only. We currently deal with limited processes and do not yet have a predictive science.
... loading her infant son into a homemade rocketship...
This is a positive. I can safely resume burning pandas for fuel with a clear conscience.
A beach front property!
Now if these climate scientists can get it together and tell us where the ocean levels will be in 20yrs, I'm buying up big now while it's still cheap.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
There are several ways to reduce the CO2 in the oceans, both chemical and biological. In fact the earth has recycled CO2 in the oceans many times in the past when CO2 levels were even HIGHER than today in the atmosphere. The problem probably isn't irreversible, but it is a lot harder than just reducing or stopping CO2 emissions.
It seems all our problems would be solved if we were fewer...
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
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So how will we move people to habitable colonies in the clouds before the Earth atmosphere is thick enough to support them?
I thought the science of global warming was settled. Why are we still studying and discussing it? I guess someone thought there was just a bit more room for additional info.
Can we now declare this the cutoff point for new knowledge?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
In actual fact we currently produce enough food for over 7 billion people. (Some is turned into ethanol, some grain is used to fatten up meat animals, some food goes to overweight people like me ... all because food prices are historically low.) The reason millions of people are starving today has nothing to do with global production shortages -- it's because of political failures.
Current human tendency is to care more about short term gains than long term projections. Thinking long-term is for "other people." And the people ruling the day and exhibiting the most "success" are those who capitalize on short-term gains. Even now, as the markets are showing signs of recovery, the illusion of prosperity is returning and SUV sales are returning. We aren't learning any lessons, we just want to live in our bubbles.
And I just speak of the U.S. What of other nations? Does China show any signs of change or reform? Are they looking long term? I really don't know. What I do know is that the widest majority of people can do nothing to fix the problems while the thinnest minorities who can make a difference are unwilling to sacrifice and make changes to favor global interests if they can't use that to increase their wealth.
But forgetting all of that, look at what happens at "the bottom" as well. People talk about global issues like starvation and the like, but what they don't say is that people are having babies in the worst parts of the world at unsustainable rates. The population of the U.S. shows changes that are also increasing suffering and further thinning of wealth and resources. People with money are having fewer if any children. People without money are having more and more.
We live in a very imbalanced world. There is nothing I can do but watch it... nothing you can do but watch it. I am starting to become a believer in socialist/communist thought though. There is nothing about capitalism that addresses what the world does to survive during times like these other that hoarding and massive suffering. These are pictures that few of us can visualize easily. The nature of people at the top and the nature of people at the bottom and all of those in between are essentially the same. "The rich and powerful" aren't more evil than "the poor and powerless" and they suffer from the same problems. What can arrest this obvious condition often described as corrosion? Should we wait until the poor and powerless die off?
1895 - "Geologists think that the world may be frozen up again" - New York Times
1912 - "The human race will have to fight for it's existence against cold" - Los Angeles Times
1912 - "The titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks" "An ice age is encroaching" - The New York Times
1923 - "Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada and parts of Europe and Asia, and Switzerland would be entirely obliterated." - Chicago Tribune
1923 - "The Ice Age is coming here." - Washington Post
1930s - Searing heat and drought turn the nations midsection into a dust bowl
1933 - "America is in longest warm spell since 1776, with temperatures in a 25 year rise." - The New York Times
1939 - "Weathermen have no doubt that the world, at least for the time being is growing warmer" - TIME
Early to mid 1950s - North America experiences above-normal temperatures, droughts, and on the East Coast, devastating hurricanes.
1952 - "Melting glaciers are the trump card of global warming" - The New York Times
1960s - Brutal cold prevails worldwide.
1970s - The chill continues. TIME and Newsweek magazines report on the coming ice age.
1976-1979 - The United States and many other parts of the Western Hemisphere experience the coldest contiguous winters on record.
1979 - "Plan for the Study of Dome over town is approved" [Winooski, Vermont; to protect the city from the cold] - The New York Times
1980 - A brutal summer heat wave occurs in much of the United States. (Resident of Winooski realize that they would of fried to death under the dome)
1980-2000 - Temperatures rise globally, interrupted only by the cooling effects of major volcanic eruptions: El Chichon in Mexico (1982) and Pinatubo in the Philippines (1991).
1988 - Record heat and drought in eastern and central United States cause over $40 billion in crop losses.
1991 - "Volcanic eruptions in Philippines may counteract with global warming" - The New York Times
1997-1998 - A super El Nino results in the warmest temperatures on record world wide.
1998 - "Earth temperature in 1998 is reported at record high" - The New York Times
2007 - "First major snow in Buenos Aires since 1918" - International Herald Tribune
2007 - Australia records it's coldest June ever and Chile experiences it's toughest winter in 50 years. Johannesburg, South Africa, get's it's first significant snow in a half century. Despite the bitter cold throughout much of the Southern Hemisphere, NASA's James Hansen declares 2007 the second warmest year on record.
2008 - The coldest weather since 1964 hits the middle east, while China experiences unusually heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
2008 - "Snow day in Baghdad" - International Herald Tribune
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
That includes not preventing pregnancy, not doing abortions and not taking care of their children properly.
The fact that you can use the phrase "not doing abortions" beside the phrase "not taking care of their children" makes me sick. So, KILLING a child that hasn't been born yet and has had NO INPUT into it's circumstances is a way to TAKE CARE of the children? That is the kind of "care" that ends with a baby in a dumpster, or a mother drowning her kids in a bathtub. Your mentality is so wrong it's almost painful.
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
I can't stop it so I wont try. Can I buy a Hummer now, they are a good deal.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
have to be fixed.
Without Bush how many other items which were invoking all sorts of angst during his Administration will suddenly be passed over?
Do things only matter if its the other side in power?
FISA LEGAL(warrant less wiretaps) Check
Global Warming Can't be fixed Check
So, when does Iran being a real bogeyman get accepted?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Jesus, haven't you been watching?
Tens to hundreds of millions have starved to death over the last few decades. They live at the edge of the carrying capacity, and when there is a bad year or two, they starve.
There is just one thing preventing you from starving too. Energy.
Deleted
Global climate change has been going on for the last 4 billion years. What makes anyone think that it is going to stop just because it would be convenient for the human?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Geoengineering to the rescue!!
No, seriously, if leaving the thing alone doesn't cut it, if jumping on the brakes isn't enough, clutch to reverse and jump on the gas pedal.
You just got troll'd!
Not like we are on an isolated ball floating in a vacuum with finite resources.
Even if it was just plant and insect life on this planet there would be biosphere effects (i.e. climate change). Add 6.7 Billion people and what did the scientists think would happen. Seems pretty simple to this layman.
For the record, I'm not someone who thinks we should forcefully limit the world population to 10 million. But my opinion is couples with 5+ children are not helping the situation. People that do not have realistic transportation needs, people that light up the night because they can or heat their homes to 80 in the winter while cooling them to 65 in the winter. This ball of dirt will be used up one way or another it's inevitable.
Finally, my opinion is that we should limit our impact on the environment and mitigate climate change. But to believe that we can prevent or have the audacity to think we have the knowledge and resources to reverse it seems foolish to me.
If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".
If you actually knew your history rather than assuming that things then were as things now, you'd know that the public transit system in New York was not built by the government, but by private enterprise looking to make a buck. The move to put it underground was funded by city bonds, but it the elevated train system was already there. Furthermore, "auto-centric" laws came as result of the mass adoption of automobiles by the public at large, not the other way around.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
[The] "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again.
Wonderful, more “endless growth within fixed constraints” nonsense!
Space and resources on earth are finite. Our population expansion and increasing consumption must eventually stop. The only debatable question is when.
Like so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
FRA: STFU GTFO
So a blog article by some random guy is proof? Well Dr. Svensmarks SKY experiment would tell you otherwise http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults - as would the fact that since 2002 roughly the Earth temperature has been stable, with a possible cooling trend (that is not yet statistically significant, on the order of -0.04C). Incidentally this coincides with a starting low activity period for the sun afaik.
Well its funny because every manner of fossil fuel is in a state where we are getting "not as good" raw material out of the ground. I'm hardly a big environmentalist but I can't see how anyone can deny any peak fossil fuel or even nearly planetary resource.
The oil we are getting is not as good and harder to extract. In old oil fields you drilled a few hundred feet and you could just pipe it onto a rail car and you were good to go. Now you have to go thousands of feet, blow compressed air into the ground to smash up rocks, heat the oil so you can pump it, and then you have to refine the crap out of it to use it. Even good old coal is certainly not as good - Germany is practically onto burning lignite and that's pretty crappy coal and even in America the good hard stuff is getting used up and we're onto lower grades of coal.
Even for metals you have to wonder where all the good stuff is. In the 19th century, people were getting gold out of the ground and you could SEE chunks of it. Now, when they talk about gold mining, they don't even bother screening the miners because the gold content of the earth is so low that a miner would have to take out an F-150 sized truck of the stuff to get a few bucks.
Meanwhile, up in space, we have an asteroid that is quite literally made out of 20 trillion dollars worth of practically pure iron and precious metals, a planet made out of methane, and we're sitting here with our thumbs up our rears, barring ourselves from using nuclear power to make spaceships with, when unimaginable wealth is in the skies above us.
You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to see where the future is. All you need is to read an assay of a asteroid, and compare that to an assay of what's considered to be a good project today. Right now, if we took a tenth of the capital we spend on developing technologies to get every last scrap of goodness out of our used up planet, we could have enough materials of any kind to essentially end all of poverty on this planet.
There is no long term environmentalism without the conquest of space.
This is my sig.
Plus another thing to consider...
First, we know with absolut certainty that oil and coal WILL run out. Before they run out they will become prohibitivly expensive anyway.
Sooo...
Why not develop technology that minimizes they use (and reduces CO2) now when it is cheap to do so. Even if GW is wrong we are STILL better off!
I just don't understand what the AGW people are fighting against.
...can tie up any new energy project in the courts, effectively forever, the status quo is what we are going to get, effectively forever.
This applies to politically correct energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal, just like it does to those eeeeeeeeeevil nuke and coal plants.
Since some of Obama's core constituencies are the trial bar, NIMBY "activists" and the save-the-endangered-weeds Gaia worshipers, don't look for any of that there "change" any time soon.
I have had algae before... I may look good to you but trust me, its an acquired taste...
I have had algae before... It may look good to you but trust me, its an acquired taste...
--- When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out any facts that don't agree, is it true?
Why aren't we allowed to see absolute temperature plots?
Why are all the available graphs of temperature "anomalies"?
What's so great about 1961-1990 that all other temperatures should be compared to that?
Why aren't the anomalies across 1961-1990 zero?
Is someone afraid that if we see absolute temperature plots we will draw the "wrong" conclusions, i.e. anything other than what the IPCC continues to be paid billions to spout?
I can think of a bunch of ways to attack it.
Hybrid algae or bacteria that eats its weight in carbon dioxide and spits out oxygen.
Mirrors in space to reflect just enough sunlight to counter the warming.
Huge air filtering machines
Saying there's nothing we can do doesn't help. It didn't help us get to the moon, either. It won't be easy, but it's possible if we start right now.
Just like that whole "Ozone Layer" thing back in the day. Good thing we didn't give into those alarmists then, and we did nothing about it, right? Right? (/sarcasm off)
cant believe that in a few hundred years we could saturate the ocean with CO2. What we have is a bunch of climatologists who for the first time in their lives have the spot light and they are going to keep it no matter what, real science be damned.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
because we have our own dumb politicians in America who will do the same to us what yours have done to you.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Don't worry, it's just the mice overclocking the Earth a little bit so they get the ultimate question five minutes eralier. It's all perfectly under control, just ask any mouse about it.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Okay you just typed more text than he did, but tried to be apathetic. Grumpy-forum-poster-fail.
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
That kind of puts the rest of today's news into perspective. We're not all gonna die of the wars and famines and such, but a hell of a lot of us are.
Unless we fix things. We fucked them up (even though we've known for over 100 years that this could be a problem, and for 40 years that it actually was happening) and we had better spend every bit of our ability trying to fix them. Go plant a tree, work on clean power, kill someone in an SUV, insulate your house, design robots or processes that can do more good than humans can...
This one study isn't necessarily correct. But it is more evidence that things are very likely really bad and that we need to bust our asses to fix things.
Fix? If the Earth heats up, there's no way it will support billions of people. The whole ecosystem will crumble. Even if it could support us, billions of people would be displaced--who's going to pay for that, give them a place to live, etc? Those responsible? Yeah, right.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Wrong? And your reason is? Let me remind you that people figured out how to deal with malaria back in the days of the Roman Empire. Draining swamps and eliminating mosquito breeding grounds is the number one solution. You don't need a cure when you can't catch the disease.
He wants you to know that he's very passionate about his apathy.
Like, the pentagon, for example, that hotbed of the loony-left, right?
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3566_AbruptClimateChange.pdf
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The alarmist soundbite "irreversible" is misleading. It is reversible by sequestering greenhouse gases allbeit expensive with current technology.
I highly doubt that global warming is reversible. What about the Canadian invention to clear our air of CO2 that is available? I think it is time that the Governments stepped up and considered investing money for the environment as I have not even seen any bailout package for the Environmental development. Guys, its our future, our childrens' futures, our grandchildrens' futures, Let's not make it worse for them to live on this planet!
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
I don't think it's the tree huggers that are pushing ethanol from corn. Ethanol from corn isn't even good for the environment, and the tree-huggers have figured this out by now. The real driver for the ethanol from corn stupidity is pork barrel politics. Corn producing states push for subsidies and incentives to support the price of corn produced by their constituencies.
...
This kind of research is quite alarmist and its objectivity is, at best, dubious. Michael Crichton pointed out that we don't fully understand our impact on the environment. That said, he also stated that reducing or eliminating carbon footprint is a good idea because human being weren't meant to breath CO2. His afterward section of State of Fear takes an intelligent, non-alarmist, and objective evaluation of the science of climate change. In it, he shows starting signs of subjectivity and potential influence from outside parties seeking a certain result.
Global warming would extend the US grain belt up into Canada. The land there is as fertile as any other place on the planet, and would easily be able to feed two-three times the current world population BY ITSELF.
What's your point? You give one example of something that illustrates your point. There are plenty of examples of the government has done positive things. Capitalism wouldn't abolish slavery. Too much government is bad. Not enough government is bad. Why don't people get this?
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
One big frustration for me is the complicity of the media is forcing this man-made climate change nonsense on us. Every couple of weeks someone in the news will make the statement that humanity is unquestionably responsible for global warming with no evidence whatsoever to support these statements. For me, climate change is the 21st century equivalent of a witch hunt. The whole fixation on carbon emissions, I'm convinced is going to turn out to be a big sham.
There have been reports from all over the world of unusually cool weather, but will you find this reported in the American media? Just barely. This past week there was snow in the United Arab Emirates. From what I've read it's the second time anyone can recall that they've experienced snowfall.
Even more impressive however, was the unusually cold weather in Thailand. Unusually cold for them being temperatures in the low 50s when they're used to 75+ temperatures. People there didn't even have coats to cope with the weather; a few people in northern Thailand died of hypothermia. I heard about this from my wife who gets news from Taiwan. I tried searching for stories on the web and the only sites I found covering it were based in Australia and elsewhere in Asia.
Speaking of Taiwan, they've had unusually cold weather as well. There were a few inches of snow in the mountains which is relatively rare. I have family in Europe who have also complained about unusually cold weather. My cousin went back to the UK after the holidays and was greeted to a few inches of snow outside of London. That's not that unusual, but it's certainly normal either.
And in my own area we've had an unusually high number of snow storms and colder weather than normal. But where few outside the local news services seem to point this out. On the other hand, we get a couple of days hot weather, like we do every summer, and the cries of global warming start.
I need to point out all these examples because if I were to only point out what was going on around here my experience would be immediately dismissed as being too localized.
Even NASA can't get their data straight. Last year the temperature readings for Russia were reporting the hottest October every, by a significant amount. Some guy took notice of this and on investigating found that the date for October was identical to September. He reported it, barely got a response, but noticed the data quietly fixed within a few hours. I have a friend who makes a hobby of looking at climate data and he's said that there are quite a few head-scratching oddities here and there in the data. Then there are all the improperly placed temperature measuring stations.
I accept that there will always be some amount of flawed data. That's just the way things are. My problem is how people are making such absurd assumptions on this data and then want to force everyone to change their way of life because of it.
But ultimately, I'm convinced this comes down to money. There's a fortune to be made over climate change and everyone, from Al Gore on down is looking to cash in. They're trying to create a forced economy by making us pay to build the alternative energy industry. And Obama has shown his disregard for the average person by acknowledging in an interview with SF Gate last year that his energy plans are going to result in much larger financial burden for Americans. He has said he didn't have a problem with gasoline being over $4 per gallon, his problem was that it got so expensive so quickly. I already pay a lot for utilities around here and I try to be quite frugal with usage. I would serious consider moving if things got worse.
And finally, one common theme I see with the global warming crowd is how we're going to be facing the consequences of climate change in the near feature. It's always looming, yet year after year nothing ever happens. We've had 100+ years of global warming but little has come of it. And the consequences of global warming are wildly contradictory. One the one hand, they'll cause larger and
Notice how this report is released 1 week after Obama was sworn in and Bush and his censoring cronies left town. I don't think that that timing is accidental.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Ummm, Hobbes wasn't really predicting any sort of future. The entire "nasty, brutish, and short" thing is presupposed upon a continual condition of war. I don't think that Afghanistan, Iraq, or Palestine support any statement that war doesn't cause a man's life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". He seemed to imply that humankind's natural state was war, which is debatable, but not entirely unsupported by average conditions for much of the world's populace.
That said, predictions are based on assumptions. We produce tons more food, and we're trashing our coastlines with the agricultural run-off. We're producing less food by fishing. Right now, it's a drop in the bucket. What percentage of the world's food is disappears when fishing is no longer viable?
Of course, we can change course for most things. We can fight run-off and protect fishing. The whole point of TFA was that we can't reverse dissolved carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures. Similarly, we can't immediately un-melt glaciers. We can't adapt ourselves out of basic facts of chemistry. We're working on relativistic physics, though.
Humankind's ability to adapt has dick to do with heat and carbon in the ocean. The only thing we need to do is hit a certain carbon-level. If you think getting the Chinese or Indians to curb industrializing will be as easy as getting people to switch from horses to cars, I truly fear for us all. I suppose we could bomb them, but I don't think that'll help.
The horse analogy is a good one. However, we can't innovate ourselves out of every problem. When we abandon this rock as unlivable, I'm sure someone will point to innovations in spaceflight. That's great. Of course, we could have just not flooded our coastlines, killed our oceans, and wiped out our forests.
It appears your argument is "we've always found a way before". Well, that's just as good of as the assumption that we'd all have been riding horses right now. Apparently not liking the result of a model somehow correlates it with failed models.
Meanwhile, the people who are going to try to innovate and prevent our way out of this mess will be paying attention to good research and data like this study, instead of trivializing it out of some sort of fearful reliance on manifest destiny.
This should freak you out. Maybe not a lot, but it should be of concern. There is absolutely no solid reason to say "it's probably not accurate". There is reason to say "let's be calm about this". In the meantime, let's just hope nature doesn't decide to take us down a peg.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Russia has the technology and resources to reverse the Global Warming, and more, assure quite a harsh winter for everyone.
The question is, who is going to take all the nuclear fallout that would be the side effect of the Operation Climate Change, provide sites for detonating all the Climate Change Devices.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Doesn't anybody recall the huge deal about "global cooling" about 20 years ago or so?
I hope this supposed scientist didn't really say "dust-bowl conditions", because that would make her entirely ignorant of the true cause of the dust-bowl: destructive farming techniques and lack of proper irrigation.
Besides, assuming that the warming trend is really due to human factors, it's ridiculous to presume that we can't reverse the trend when there are so many methods demonstrated to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it. She's just another ignorant alarmist for whom cautious conservation is not enough-- we have to radically change our way of life.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
While most of the scientific papers might not have supported the idea, it was all over the media!
Hmmmmmm... sound familiar?
Well that's just great. So we get two disasters in a row, huh?
Seriously, adapting to the first set of climate changes is going to be hard enough. If it undoes itself in 1000 years we're just going to have to do the whole thing over again.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"So the population problem is taking care of itself too."
That is absolutely true. Overpopulation *always* takes care of itself.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"Did you see how this "leader" was treated at the G12 summit once they knew his ass was gone? "
There's a real story there in convictions and courage. Yessiree.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, I'm sure GM, the largest corporation in the world had nothing to do with those efforts, just as it had nothing to do with the laws developing the interstate highway system or the destruction of the streetcar lines it purchased.
If you're so well informed about history, what makes you so confident about the simplistic causality? Have you been reading the libertarian equivalent of Howard Zinn?
Sorry. Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) beat you to the punch. It's part of the el Nino /la Nina cycle.
So, again, as much as I never wanted to live in FL for the hurricanes, it's going to be interesting.
The problem with trying to find the right place to live within the concept of global warming is that while the average global temperature goes up, the temperature swings in some places should increase. Summers may well be hotter and winters cooler.
Since I want to live in Scotland, my concern is regarding any shift to the Gulf Stream and the effects that would have.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
This assumes we just stop outputting CO2 at some point and are passive. But humans are anything but passive, this is what got us into this mess in the first place.
So the article doesn't take into things like sequestration and other active attempts to reverse the trend.
I am confident in 50 year we will be able to completely re-terraform earth back to normal.
We will be able to deliberately control the amount of atmospheric gases, solar radiation reaching earth, and chemistry of the oceans and become the masters of our climate.
Why do I think this?
GA, AI, super computers.
And progress in Material science, renewable energy, Self replicating robotics, genetics and artificially accelerated evolution, Computational chemistry and simulation of quantum molecular dynamics.
The machines (beyond computers) under human guidance will do the research needed to reverse things.
So it's will be just a matter of energy required needed to do this.
I believe it will take more power to put the CO2 back then when we released it from burning fossil fuels. Essentially give back that energy that we used for the past 100 years + interest.
As much as I disagree with Kurzwell on many things, some parts of his Singularity theory are dead on and will be able to reverse this trend.
So getting fusion working, space solar or some other massive power source going is critical to do this.
The key here is to use the amount of available resources as best as possible to devise future solutions before we get wiped out as a species.
I have faith that technology will save us.
But it may get a lot worse before it gets better.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
As a libertarian, I'd be more inclined to simply sue you for polluting.
Just because it is 41 does not mean that an average temp for January indicates a lack of global warming. You look like someone who knows little about the weather and are mathematically ignorant.
To make a realistic argument, you have to look at the data, the source of the data, etc. A real analysis would be nice. I'm currently in a place where some winters are colder than others. Sometimes we get snow only once, and other times we get dumped on. Back in 1994, we hit around 20 below Fahrenheit.
Yeah, the medication issue sucks, but it's not just the laws, but the laziness of pharmaceutical companies. I take a ton of meds, and they piss me off too.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
For those taking that post seriously: it's satire. Look:
Because, you know, if "they" had ever been right then... uh... I guess he would have died a horrible death, and then he wouldn't be here to talk about it. It's *impossible* for him to have any contrary evidence. Not because he's right: but because anyone with a different experience would be dead. His evidence is meaningless. And from how he writes, I think he knows it. Nicely played.
But for the suckers out there, please take a moment to think. Someone up-thread referred to the problem of induction on Wikipedia. Look it up. Or read Taleb's The Black Swan. Then realize that many of the arguments that we don't need to act now to prevent global warming are essentially the same as the arguments that the housing bubble was not a bubble and there could be no financial crisis.
And by the way, there have been many - many! - societies wiped out by events they didn't see coming. From ecological and environmental disasters of their own making (for which Easter Island is the poster child) to other unexpected causes (whole native American communities and cultures killed by Smallpox, cities razed by rampaging Huns, etc.). Our civilization has had some close calls historically and recently, ranging from the Black Plague and Nazi Europe to the Cuban missile crisis (the U.S. almost invaded; the Soviets in Cuba had authorization to use tacnukes which would have escalated) and that Norwegian satellite launch Russia mistook for a nuclear attack and almost retaliated against in the 1990s.
There is no special law that says that we are different. No special reason that we, too cannot fall. Our (struggling) free markets and our technology are not magic charms guaranteed to save us. Will climate change bring us down? I don't know. And you don't know either, regardless of how many times you haven't already died.
Too much government is bad. Not enough government is bad. Why don't people get this?
This thought can be extended beyond government. Nothing is ever black and white, all or none. Except for peoples minds it seems.
I think this is an effect of propaganda (often subliminal and often unintentional - like a reporter reporting things how he sees them) in conjunction with the instinctual habits of people, often in response to fear.
The private individuals looking to make a buck did so - and created the next batch of problems now known under the names of "Respirable Dust", "Smog", "Traffic Jam" and not to forget "Global Warming".
Did it occur to you or anyone else of your school of thought, that individuals looking for a quick buck /might/ be involved in something commonly defined as the 'tragedy of the commons' and thus might give horse manure for long term consequences of their doing as long as they personally make a fortune and do not have to pay for the consequences?
I for one would welcome a committee of busybodies (who are not actually lobbyists trying to make a quick buck by catering to particular interest groups) that actually takes the time to think about possible consequences of their doing before presenting solutions. Just for example, that would have circumvented that whole stupid bio-fuel-from-crop-pseudo-solution.
According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
Unless, of course, we have millions of starving people on the planet.
I don't understand why people want to dismiss the concept of global warming. I mean, the ways the experts say to prevent it aren't BAD things to do. I don't see the harm in reducing our carbon footprint, or recycling, finding new energy sources, or just being less wasteful in general. Jeez, can't we spend money on things that don't kill each other or just make us fatter and lazier?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Umm, well, good luck with that. The only problem with your argument it the complete fantasy that your altruistic busybody is both going to show up and his/her replacement is going to continue in their do goodery. As flawed as free market and capitalism is, it feeds of the basic human instincts of greed and desire to harness them and use them to further the economy. What you suggest is a one track path to fascism.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
We have only been systematically recording weather for about 100 years or so, and yes, in that time the average temperature has risen. However, 100 years of data tells you nothing about cycles that take 50-100 thousand years. It also does not tell you if it is mankind's fault or not. There just isn't enough data to draw any sort of conclusion.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That the left has just as much disdain for science...
The good news is that since Global Warming is irreversible. We now no longer have any reason to combat it.
We might as well pump out all the CO2 we want now... :P
They had an entire crew killed on the launchpad on the very first go, and the crew of Apollo 13 were dumb-shit-lucky to make it back to earth. Six of the missions actually landed on the moon, out of SEVENTEEN missions (yes, a number were not designed to land on the moon, or even leave earth orbit.)
Even if you're exceptionally kind, NASA failed to reach the moon 1 in 7 tries.
Please help metamoderate.
why should we worry about it?
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
Just tell them to smoke marihuana.
"I am not a climate scientist, but I believe that if I don't understand no one else possibly could," would have been a sufficient answer.
The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change.
Who are these people? Can you list their names? Was Susan Solomon an author of the "Limits to Growth"?
When solving problems I think it's important to be specific. Like--what exactly is Susan Solomon saying, and why specifically do you believe she is wrong? Do you have more to offer than just vague hand-waving?
It's funny how problems seem to solve themselves from the perspective of people who had nothing to do with the solution. "New technology" does not just create itself. Genetically engineered drought-tolerant crops are just one example of a "new technology" that was developed specifically in response to concerns over our ability to feed ourselves.
I have every hope that unforeseen new technology will help mitigate problems like global warming. That doesn't mean it makes sense to disregard the warnings. In fact the warnings help people decide where to focus their new technology efforts.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Do you idiots have any idea how stupid you look and how dumb you are?
I too have asthma and I agree the new propellant for inhalers isn't as effective in delivering the medication, but I'm afraid you appear to be the one here looking stupid.
Those inhalers didn't release 'green house gas', they released carbonflourocarbon, which when gets to Antarctic gets into the the cold air. When combined with cold air, CFCs react easily with O(3), leaving you with O(2) and Cl+O(1). Eliminating this extremely serious threat, CFCs were banned, and medical CFCs were given a very long time to come up with another solution, which is *takes out inhaler* HFA 134a.
Oh, and when you start a comment with "I believe dot dot dot", you're putting a bright red target on your face.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I don't think there are enough data points.
You're talking about an evaluation of a complex system. And I dispute that it was working all that well before the increase to 40 to 1. But cutting it back to 10 to 1 might well be reasonable. Or even eleven.
The problem is, this is probably something whose optimal value is dependent on factors that we are considering, and can't consider because we don't even realize that they're important. Like the difference between the minimum wage and the average price of an apartment.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You might be missing some history there. A single scientist did a single study that suggested - as an aside no less - that global cooling *might* be a *possibility*. Then the media got hold of it. Made a great story. There was no consensus on global cooling - unlike with global warming.
I should add that deniers, when they get their facts straight, generally switch from being deniers to "adapters". That in itself says a lot.
So my question to you is - if global warming could be shown without a shadow of doubt (use your imagination), would you advocate change, or should we adapt?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I thought it must have been like that, but I didn't have any facts. Do you?
(I'd seen an ad for the opening of the New York subway, but couldn't remember who it said funded it.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Moderation is not one of them. Y'know how troll, flamebait, and offtopic explicitly do not mean "I disagree with you and wish to censor your comments"? In the same way, insightful does not mean "I agree with the inane drivel that you have spewed forth onto the intertubes" nor does it mean "I up-mod mindless flamebait for the lulz".
Now, while you're certainly free to have the opinion that his opinion of the moderator's opinion is not a worthy contribution, I feel compelled to point out that you're a worthless hypocrite, because you posted your equally worthless opinion on his opinion of the moderator's opinion. And before someone falsely claims that I'm also being hypocritical - I never claimed that any of the posts in this thread should not have been posted. Indeed, the entire point of the moderation system means that dross such as this can be posted, and will inevitably settle at the bottom of the metaphorical dung heap that is the interweb, where those that have far too much time on their hands will revel in the discussion.
I'm not an expert by any means, nor do I have an opinion on this or follow this "science".. Which I haven't decided whether it is yet.. However, I did hear that NASA has said the polar caps on Mars are decreasing in size at the same rate as Earth's. Is this true?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I worry more about the stuff that isn't unintentional. For example, Rush Limbaugh isn't trying to find common ground and compromise. He is trying to divide people and in the process, make profit from it. That's pretty sick...but that is the world we live in right now.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
>Don't take my word for it, look it up.
Always good advice.
Science News, October 25 2008, page 5: retrospective on 1970's climate change literature.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37590/title/Cooling_climate_%E2%80%98consensus%E2%80%99_of_1970s_never_was
citing a review article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by climatologist Thomas Peterson and collaborators.
Peterson expected to find predictions of cooling and the reality of what was in the literature came as "a surprise to us", according to Peterson. "[S]keptics had repeated their arguments so often and so strongly that we misremembered the tenor of the times".
Another place to look things up is this bibliography of 1970s climate science literature. Most of the papers of the time boiled down to "we don't know", with the occasional "this interglacial is due to end in the next couple of thousand years".
The kindest possible interpretation is that some people got Newsweek confused with the scientific literature and then somehow got hold of a megaphone.
What I don't understand is wasn't this carbon involved in the carbon life cycle many millions of years ago. The carbon that is in the cycle today was presumably in the cycle then as well. So wasn't there more carbon: and one would assume more CO2 in the atmosphere millions of years ago? The carbon in the life cycle today wasn't locked up as far as I can tell. I would imagine that the amount of carbon on the planet would be pretty static even over millions of years. Maybe a few asteroid hit bringing more; but I would think that would be inconsequential.
So if more carbon was in the life cycle and not locked up as hydrocarbons; wouldn't we just be bringing the planet back a few millions years? Clearly the planet was hospitable to life then; are we really in any danger?
Is it possible that we could design machinery in the future to remove CO2 from the air?
I am not sure I am convinced on the science overall; but these questions I haven't even heard debated.
>don't we have a bunch of satellites that do nothing but watch the sun and monitor space weather? If there's been some finding that the power delivered by the sun has increased, I missed it
Indeed we do, with direct measurements of solar output going back to 1978. Draw your own conclusions from the satellite measurements of power delivered by the sun.
If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".
If you actually knew your history rather than assuming that things then were as things now, you'd know that the public transit system in New York was not built by the government, but by private enterprise looking to make a buck. The move to put it underground was funded by city bonds, but it the elevated train system was already there. Furthermore, "auto-centric" laws came as result of the mass adoption of automobiles by the public at large, not the other way around.
If only your assertions were true.
watch the history channel once in a while.
It's nice to see the libertarian groups have a large enough array of sock puppets to spam you with mod points though.
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It'll be a cold day in July before that argument works on me.
I can't tell you what the weather will be on any day in July but I can tell you that it will be warm.
I can't tell you the weather in Seattle next week but I can tell you it will have about 30 inches of rain over the next year.
Climate is easier to forecast than weather. Climate is the signal, weather is the noise.
actually, the government handed them the land, free of charge, for several miles on each side of the track they laid down.
You don't even have to read it, just watch history channel when they roll their documentaries.
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Let me explain how stupid this is. For each ton of coal you burn you get about 3.5 tons of CO2. The reason for this is that coal is about C(n)H(0.6n). C=12, O=16, 12+16+16 = 44. 44/12.6 = 3.49. What to change this chemistry? Go ask GOD.
Power plants are about 50% efficient. At 100 kWh / tonne they need 350 kWh. In order to get this much power they will need to burn close to a ton of coal. This is unless they plan on using Natural Gas to produce the power. Think on that one while you are inventing the next perpetual motion machine.
Jesh! We need to get science taught in schools.
Is that the best you can do? References from IPCC that are over 7 years old? Pathetic.
The very first reference you gave (7), was written in 2001 and bases its support of the subject on an earlier IPCC Third Assessment Report! Jesus Christ! Not only the third but now even the 4th have been discredited. They mis-reported the science, and in some cases the "science" in them was actual fraud!
The second reference (8) also bases its position on the 2001 IPCC TAR, and other related United Nations activities, which again have been discredited.
The third reference above (10), ALSO uses as a basis the IPCC FAR (4th Assessment Report). Do I have to state yet again that this has been discredited?
The fourth reference you cite (11), (which, incidentally, is the third many-years-old citation from the Royal Academy), ALSO cites as the basis for its support, the IPCC TAR of 2001.
And the fifth reference you cite (12) is the laughable, discredited "study" by Naomi Oreskes. (Hint: I asked for something other than that, thank you very much.) Is that the best you can do? References from IPCC that are over 7 years old? Pathetic.
The very first reference you gave (7), was written in 2001 and bases its support of the subject on an earlier IPCC Assessment Report! Jesus Christ! Even the report before last was discredited, unreliable, and largely retracted!
The second reference (8) also bases its position on the 2001 IPCC TAR, and other related United Nations activities, which again have been discredited.
The third reference above (10), ALSO uses as a basis the IPCC FAR (4th Assessment Report). Do I have to state yet again that this has been discredited?
The fourth reference you cite (11), (which, incidentally, is the third years-old citation from the Royal Academy), ALSO cites as the basis for its support, the IPCC TAR of 2001.
In short, 4 of the 5 references you cite above are solely based on the flawed Assessment Reports from the IPCC, and the fifth (12) is the laughable, discredited "study" by Naomi Oreskes. (Hint: If you go back and look, you will see that I specifically asked you for something other than that because it is known to be flawed, thank you very much.)
Sorry, guy, but you should know better than to use Wikipedia as your source on such matters. I can do better than that with one cerebral hemisphere tied behind my back.
Here is the public letter from Chris Landsea, explaining why he had his name removed from participation in the IPCC studies: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html
Here are a bunch more links. No, they are not all peer-reviewed scientific papers, but they sure do refer to a bunch of them. Follow the link chain as deeply as you care to, but they pretty much all contradict your position:
International Conference on Integrity in Science http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002299.html [jennifermarohasy.com]
Economic Formulas in IPCC Report Criticized for Overstating Emissions http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22786 [heartland.org]
Here's a DIFFERENT former IPCC participant: Former IPCC Member Slams UN Scientists' Lack of Geologic Knowledge http://newsbusters.org/node/13971 [newsbusters.org]
Yet another official IPCC reviewer criticizes the reports: http://oldsarges.blogspot.com/2008/03/paul-reiter-takes-on-ipcc.html [blogspot.com]
Global Warming: Science versus Fraud http://www.forces.
. . . and people fried.
Their they're doing there hair.
why are so many corrupt govt workers so happy to work for the govt even tho they know they get it easy and good, but wrong. Why do the police officers who get paid well, bash people up? They get paid well... just ignore the dissent and anti govt people - or do they feel threatened when the govt does get taken down, they will be the first strung up on a rope and their houses burned down?
Simply following orders isnt good enough, if your a personal body guard to Magabe, take a lucky shot, become a national hero!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
No one said oil would just STOP dead , just that peak growth would hit a wall, and it would not increase again above a ceiling.
More official real data and information at:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Too much human capitol is wasted on useless number crunchers , not real men science.
Do we really need 20 million accountants, 50 million lawyers, etc...
We need to get off our asses, get some balls, make 200 nukelear spaceships, spend 10% of GDP on space. Stop wasting 50 years of pussy footing with tin pot useless nations, send in 50k troops/uavs, kill their useless 19th century despot dictators that are more useless than a drunk Santa Claus at your super mart on Dec 22.
Remove all parking fines, all speed fines reduced, zero land taxes, fixed 5% capitol gains tax, fixed max 25% income tax. Max 10% Vat/Gst.
Stop paying politicians $150k to $250k for just 'being there'.
The whole govt system needs a delete/rewrite, its worse than a 90 year old windows 3.11111111
Unfortunately, too many peoples lively hood and careers are due to govt inefficiency. They benefit from it, from taxes, from easy jobs. The west is no diff to the army of North Korea.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Stop buying paper/wood products from there, that includes toilet paper.
These tinpot nations should learn to create real wealth, even if it means pissing of the USa, and legalizing cannabis. Want to make 20billion yearly without destroying rain forrests, grow a brain cell, then grow cannabis.
As usual, we have to wait 20 years, till the stupid old fuddy duddys useless people in charge DIE, and get replaced by hopefully progressive young people that arent BRAINwashed by their older parents to toe the party line.
Say no to old peoples ideas, start a fresh and new, do the new thing.
Time for change it is ... the young are paying taxes to support the old, so the young should make the rules, rewrite the rules, delete old rules made by idiots.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Seed the atmosphere with tiny particles to deflect heat, mix it with commercial fuel, and secretly see temps reduced, with perhaps minor population side effects, after all if 1% of 6 billion die, its a blip really.
Maybe it is being done already...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Right, I said that:
The government made it easy, to be sure, but mostly only by giving away that which wasn't theirs to give in the first place.
The thing to note, however, is that the land they gave didn't cost the government anything.
Which is why it is insane on planning on new tech coming
Well, at least you got some terminally stupid people to mod you up. Good job.
Hmm, so because technology has progressed means you can predict future technology? If you do not know the future technology, then you cannot plan for it can you?
The most dangerous drug
Right, I said that:
The government made it easy, to be sure, but mostly only by giving away that which wasn't theirs to give in the first place.
The thing to note, however, is that the land they gave didn't cost the government anything.
Apparently you never read the "purchase" part of "louisiana purchase"
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This is a non-sequitur on a couple different levels:
1) The Louisiana Purchase was made without regard to running rail. They were seeking New Orleans and were shocked to be offered the entire section of territory.
2) The decision to run rail coast-to-coast was made after the purchase had been made, and was made independently.
3) It does not cover all the land necessary.
4) Much of it had already been gifted to the public via homesteading and expansionism. It was common practice for the United States to renege on agreements at that time, and this kind of 're-gifting' really shouldn't be entered into the ledger of 'good will' twice, should it?
I'm curious, from your point of view, did we oust Mexico from our southern territory for socialist reasons as well?
You have to qualify your statements.
Too much government is bad for who?
Not enough government is bad for who?
From my perspective government is bad as a general principle, I don't want others to help me or to control me through government. Of-course in an environment with no government I would have to fight to protect myself, but I believe that for my purposes this is the best system. My purposes are not yours, you may believe not enough government is bad, but it is your position, based on your principles, not mine.
You can't handle the truth.
I think you will find these links interesting. Not comprehensive, but certainly thought-provoking.