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Formerly Classified Global Warming Spy Photos Released
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration has released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice, following a declassification request by the National Academy of Sciences. The images feature a 1m resolution, and scientists who have had to base climate models on 15m- or 30m-resolution photos are rejoicing. The photos, kept classified by the Bush administration, show the impact of global warming in the Arctic and the retreat of glaciers in Washington and Alaska."
At least we're winning the battle against something!
"Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?"
Neither are humans, particularly when they have no fresh water.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
to your wealthy masters, Lord Messiah Obongo and Emperor ManBearPig...
Hey, wasn't a vast expanse of North America covered by a glacier at one point? Damn you cave men and your SUVs!
BTW, for those of you who didn't get the memo, the cover-your-ass term is now "climate change."
Neither are planets.
Isn't it scientifically a fact that the earth will always remain the same, so we can be happy?
Oh, right...only since the last ice age.
Generally speaking, there's supposed to be at least a few of them which aren't melting away to nothing.
No sig today...
I'm surprised a resolution of 15m wasn't enough. At the supposedly alarming rate that they are receding, wouldn't you think there wouldn't be such a need for this kind of precision?
The polar caps have more ice on them then at any time in the past 30 years. Glaciers retreating is neither evidence for or against global warming.
Why were photos of ice classified in the first place?
Did the Bush administration actually deny requests to review these images, or did the request simply not get made until recently?
Since the summary and article do not mention it, 1m resolution = One Meter Per Pixel.
I had to research that to figure out why a one megapixel resolution was some how magically better than thirty megapixels.
Why was a spy satellite taking snaps of the ice classified? The ice launching an incursion into US territory? Are they afraid the terrible secret of ice will be revealed?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I can't think of a single reason that this information should have been classified. Pictures of ice!? Why would you keep helpful facts from your people? Of course there are a couple of conspiracy theories bouncing around in my head but I think they're too obvious to even mention.
prove he wasnt
"Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?"
Neither are humans, particularly when they have no fresh water.
Are you trying to imply that those glaciers are part of our supposedly limited fresh water supply when in fact that comes from a continuous and never ending cycle of evaporation and rain ? Cause I'm sick and tired of hearing the cretinism of what a scarce resource water is when in fact it falls out of the sky and the more heat the more rain.
And for your coming objection the water that evaporates from the oceans doesn't all rain above those oceans and perhaps you'll have the sense to realize it loses the salt too and becomes freshwater.
Neither are humans, particularly when they have no fresh water.
Yeah, and? It's all nature man... Life, death... Just be in it, man...
I thought I was going to see a significant movement in the ice sheets, on the order of 10's or 100's of miles. From what I saw, the rate of decline was statistically meaningless, measured in mere feet. My guess is the previous administration was more concerned with releasing something that would show or capabilities of our spy satellites and not trying to conceal this.
... that is politically convenient...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Also there's a lot of surface heating related to loss of ice. The change isn't slight either. The classic test is of coarse laying out black and white cards on a sunny day to see their temperature. The black is drastically hotter than the white. Ground and water are quite dark compared to ice so the increase is disproportionate to the ice loss. Loosing surface area of ice during the summer could equal or exceed warming from CO2 over the next century and it's often ignored in temperature projections. I would assume there was more than military secrecy behind suppressing the images. The goal of the oil lobbyist for some time has been to suppress data until it's too late to keep oil usage high and they've had a lot of influence for the last 8 years. Not that that influence has ended it's just no longer absolute.
...not know what a condom is?
Does the average slashdot crowd?
What do they show regarding the antarctic?
Anything there? Or is just the top of the planet getting warmer?
Nor are universes.
Stupid industrial revolution, causing the heat death of the entire universe. What won't mankind destroy?
The great irony of the glacier retreat being the harbinger of doom for humanity is that on most continents the glacial retreat is uncovering substantial quantities of archaeological evidence. I wonder what the people whose archaeological evidence we are finding thought about the glaciers when they encroached on their lives thousands of years ago. It is an interesting juxtaposition.
Man -- I was about to mod you up till you hit on the racist BS. Overbreeding is rampant everywhere.
The fact is, the single most polluting thing a person can do is have kids. I'm intentionally child free so in the balance of things, I could drive a hummer, alone, with extra lead weights in the back, 100 miles per day. I could leave my lights on 24/7, run AC to frigid temps in the summer, blast the heat in the winter, keep a propane flare burning ten feet tall day and night in the back yard, and still not come close to the devastation caused by parenthood.
I don't actually live my life that way, because I'm a bit frugal. What mystifies me is why words such as "conservation" and "conservative" have such differing application when both imply frugality to me -- frugality in how we use environmental resources, and frugality in how we use financial resources. I want to see the birth of the frugal party. Pun intended.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
To maximize the fullest potential of the LIDP dataset in scientific research, the committee recommended that the release include thumbnail copies of the images, exact information on the location of the images, calibration information, the time of acquisition, and the information on the pointing angle.
It takes time to scan an image at that resolution, so the "calibration information" probably gave info about the satellite's velocity. Combined with the "pointing angle," I'm pretty sure that means they just revealed the satellite's orbit, in agonizing detail.
(Presumably it is in a different orbit now.)
Glaciers are like batteries. With a battery, you can store up power when you are near an outlet, so you can continue to operate your device later when you aren't near an outlet. This allows continuous operation irrespective of your proximity to a receptacle.
Glaciers store up water in the form of ice during the winter. Then, in summer when precipitation is less frequent, they melt and release that water. This allows continuous access to water irrespective of the immediate level of precipitation.
Yes, we could build more reservoirs, but talk about expense. Plus they suffer silting issues and large areas have to be destroyed to build them. And if the rains stop falling anyway, then what? Build more?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
So are we supposed to get all hysterical over two data points now? Man, political power comes cheap these days.
Well if everyone thought that way the human race would cease to exist pretty quick. The problem is more with bad parents having lots of kids they can't financially or emotionally support. You are no burden on the environment raising intelligent, well-adjusted children. In fact the world will need more of these to become adults or I don't see things improving much. If on the other hand you have no parenting skills or purely dislike children then that is another matter.
Um, the National Snow and Ice Data Center disagrees.
I don't know if you intended the strawman or not, but allow me to debunk it anyway.
Yes, humans have lived in warmer climates with less glaciers, and colder climates with more glaciers.
There were also a hell of a lot less of them.
The danger of global warming/climate change has never been a threat to the overall existence of humanity (aside from ranting hyperbolic morons). It is however a threat to the maintenance of modern civilization if it causes enough damage to agricultural yields (whether or not it will do this is debatable, and very very complicated).
...not know what a condom is?
Does the average slashdot crowd?
We know *of* them, maybe not in practice but from our knowledge of "sexual research medias".
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
There is also a big difference between glaciers or rising oceans encroaching on ancient human settlements and them encroaching on our relatively immobile modern cities.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Generally speaking, there's supposed to be at least a few of them which aren't melting away to nothing."
In who's reality? I live in the arctic, the glaciers are all receding with each passing year.
Anyone that says global warming isn't happening is ill informed. All you have to do is visit places like Alaska and see for yourself.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Is always totalitarianism. No thanks.
Actually no it doesn't disagree with him at all. There is less surface area (extent) but considerably more volume which has more than compensated for the extent reduction. The total volume of the ice pack has increased not decreased
That's the problem with you global-warming zealots. Anyone says anything, you go crazy and call them "deniers" and whatnot. Such behavior doesn't help your cause.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...not know what a condom is?
Does the average slashdot crowd?
Nah, "Palmela and her Five Sisters" is infertile.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
OOps, I used the term 'global warming' which is not quite accurate. Perhaps I should have phrased that as 'Climate Change' which is a more accurate term. Some places are experiencing unusual warming trends such as the arctic, whereas other locations are experiencing cooling and/or droughts uncharacteristically. Climate change is a more appropriate term to attach to the effect that industrialization and resulting green house gases have had on global weather patterns and trends.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Where did I go crazy? Where did I call him a denier? Where am I a zealot? Please point out the zealotry.
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post.
My concern however was that other people would see the implication and think it was a valid point (again, a point the OP may very well never have even thought of, he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.)
The only one name calling here is you, since you seem to think that I am a "global-warming zealot," when nothing could be further from the truth. I could spend the next thirty minutes of my time explaining my actual opinion on the matter, but it isn't relevant to my point which is: Pot, meet kettle.
(Okay, that was a bit of name-calling by me, but I'm only being cheeky, not vindictive--the thought popped into my head and talking kitchenware amuses me. May it amuse you too.)
How can we explain this logic to a billion zombied eyed smiling customers waiting in line to buy a Nano? I fear that we will be saying "Ta Ta" to the glaciers that feed the many rivers that feed the Ganges.
Why are they using 2007 photos and not 2009? Because they know all of the ice is back again.
Condoms are also useful for prevention of STDs. You never know where Palmela and her five sisters have been. Especially if you're gynecologist or a proctologist.
One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic.
Two pictures taken a year apart now show definative proof for global warming. Jesus H Christ.
You're told secret data has been wrestled from the grasp of the corporates and you're given a link. The page presents a pair of images right at the top, unavoidable; seen before anything is even read. Two images; one of vast quantities of ice, the second utterly free of ice. Global Warming has been implicated before you've read word number one.
If you look carefully you might notice one end of a landing strip just inland in both photos. These photos cover very small areas; only a few miles. The caption reads:
Sea ice forms along the coast in the winter, and generally melts or breaks away by mid July. Observations of sea ice position reveal considerable year-to-year variability. Changes in the timing of coastal sea ice breakup and in the location of offshore sea ice have significant local impacts: ecological, biological, and human. This image series portrays changes in the timing of coastal sea ice breakup, and gives information on smaller scale properties of ice. This information recorded over long periods, is required to understand and model the dynamics of sea ice and how changes or trends develop and influence other systems.
In other words these photos are 'evidence' of nothing. Minor, small scale year-to-year variation in ice flow patterns. The use of these photos in this manner is equivalent to claiming that because there was snow on my walk on January 10, 2008, but none on January 10, 2009, my environment has been ruined by Global Warming.
Yet there it is, fed to the reader at the very start of the story; no disclaimer provided. The pair of photos will now be repeated ad nauseam for years on end around the planet. Biden will have a blown up poster of these photos in his town hall kit by Wednesday. Fresh new memes the huckster elite will use goad "The West" into self inflicted poverty; "See? The planet is in peril! Man must be stopped!"
Here is a recent and well researched report on the $79 billion that has been spent by the US government (only) on climate research over the last 20 years. 19 pages and 52 citations. I dare you to read it. Global Warming advocates are not the underdogs. They rule vast quantities of public money.
In almost all other matters you can take it as a given that around Slashdot you will find if not cynics then certainly skeptics. On the other hand if it has a Bush taint, a little anti-business flavor and it's wrapped up in a Global Warming ribbon you people suck it up like hicks at a Benny Hinn sermon.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Over the timescales being talked about, our modern cities are pretty mobile. There will be quite a lot of new development and redevelopment over the course of a century. Whole industrial regions die and new ones sprout up (say, Detroit versus Silicon Gulch) If rising waters start to be a problem the new development will tend to be higher or more inland than the old, or there will be more investment in breakwaters and such. Frankly it's silly to be seriously worried about this when there must be dozens of potential threats to humanity that we *wouldn't* have multiple decades to gradually adjust to. It's like if you lived in New York in 1900, extrapolated current trends, and worried about the horse manure problem we'd have in 2000. If you want to worry, worry about meteor strikes. Worry about nuclear strikes. Heck, worry about Peak Oil if you want. Or flu epidemics.
I play Nerd-Folk!
What is this strawman you speak of? And what is it that you're debunking? The post you're replying to, simply points out that receding glacier tends to reveal archeological evidences of earlier humans, and muses of what they may have thought of the glacier change. Your knee-jerk reaction, suspecting alterior motive, is the reason why I call you a zealot.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
imminent death of the planet predicted; news at 11.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Didn't you know? Every sperm is sacred. Blame the Catholics and other idiots who continue to promote 'abstinence' as the sole form of birth control, and lie about and demonize other forms of birth control (including being gay)...and the vast majority of those (where I come from) are white, you racist idiot.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
I'm intentionally child free so in the balance of things
So your idea of balancing things is to place the burden of paying for your social safety net/ripe old age on my children instead? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
Face it: global warming and global cooling is a proven recurring fact. Politics isn't going to change that. Nor will any consensus change it. Given time, the world will cool again. The only question is, whether man will be here to witness it.
Let's start some moon colonies, some Mars colonies, and start out to the other planets. That would improve our chances of seeing the earth covered in ice again.....
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
*citation needed
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
Even if Global Warming Alarmism were true, and
human activity was causing some effect, that
still is not a reason for me to cede my liberty
to a Carbon trading mafia based in Chicago.
There are many things in nature that I don't like,
causes that I could support. Again, not a reason to
cede my liberties to untrustworthy bureaucrats.
water freezes. Ice melts. the powerful scheme for
more control over the lowly.
The integrity of the president is in question in the sense
that his friend set up the carbon trading floor in Chicago,
funded by the foundation that our dear legacy president
worked for . . .
It is all in the public record but not widely reported by the media.
And so since we can not trust the people who scheme for these new
arduous taxes, we must reject them out of hand. Profiteering
by elected officials . . . will it ever end.
The race-baiting bigots who are the affirmative action
legacies have a very compelling argument that they
make about the corruption of the human soul.
They say that 'white' people have been traditionally
racist. I know that there is a flaw in their argument.
I say that is all people who are inherently self-centered.
So, I know this is true. And that people are selfish and
not immune to trying to enslave others, even it if is just in
a small way.
So I don't trust the motives of those who argue for the
carbon-credit tax. I think that they are doing this because either
they are brainwashed by the alarmism, or they are
going to profit from the new taxes.
Socialism if failure, Marxism is envy-mongering, Global-warming is
a clever scare tactic to allow for these new consumption based taxes.
Meanwhile the so-called global leadership class will continue with
their piggish consumption. No tax will curb their ferocious over-consumption.
So why curb my modest consumption?
I was raised to believe that all men are created equal.
Then I was told that 'my race' was always doing better so
we must be kept back. But I was tought that race isn't supposed to
matter. But it clearly still did. I realized that my parents had
trained me to believe in the equality of all men but that the
people who I was equal to thought that I must be a bigot. I must be doing
better than them. So I have to let them go to the front of the line based upon
their race. Isn't that racism? They said no. Then I was told that if I disagree than
I must be a racist.
Meanwhile affirmative action programs don't care about needs of the
candidates, only a racial preference based upon the arbitrariness of
place of origin or skin color.
I am tired of the descrimination, the racebaiting,
the continuous nepotism of the monied elites.
And also I am tired ot the global-warming-alarmist industry.
These alarmists really need to be put out of business.
Think of all the global warming they cause with their continuous
harping in the media on a false premise: that global warming is real so
give us all your money.
When we are finally free of these scare-mongerers who seek
to take our liberty and make our lives much more expensive,
then we can face the realities of climate change.
The greed-heads who seek our enslavement need to stop.
Blame the Catholics and other idiots who continue to promote 'abstinence' as the sole form of birth control
Yes, every social ill on planet Earth is the fault of the Catholics.....
and lie about and demonize other forms of birth control (including being gay)
I'd imagine being gay is a pretty effective form of birth control ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
On a less politically charged argument: the real questions are: "Is global warming caused by humans?" and "Can humans reduce the global warming?"
I would contend that humans have a minor impact on the globe's warming trend. There are plenty of other things putting out CO2: cows, volcanoes, fissures in the ocean, earthquakes, just to name a few.
I would also contend that if humans try to reduce the global warming trend, we could be seriously impacting the environment in a very negative way. One in which would be equally detrimental. The Earth is in a constant state of flux. Granted, the theory is that it is trying to maintain equilibrium, but there are so many things going on that it is not meant to truly be equal.
On a more political note: Why are the liberals and/or environmental wackos so interested in trying to make things equal and alive? Let an industry die, and like the phoenix, be reborn into something better? Let the earth take care of itself, let us humans do what is right and treat nature and all things with respect (and that goes for the industry execs who may be hiding facts as much as the enviro-wackos preventing legitimate business and research.)
Your knee-jerk reaction, suspecting alterior motive, is the reason why I call you a zealot.
Suspecting ulterior motive....
The whole point of the line you quoted was my acknowledging the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of claiming--that the OP may very well be a reasonable person who did not imply what I saw in his post...he may have just been humorously musing on the juxtaposition, as he put it. In fact, I think this is probably what happened.
I don't think 'suspecting' means what you think it means. Unless you meant to say I suspected he DIDN'T have an ulterior motive, which would be closer to reality.
The strawman I'm referring to is the idea that just because the climate has changed in the past (which it obviously has, including drastic changes in recent history having nothing to do with the industrial revolution--the Little Ice Age in the 12th-13th centuries, surprisingly cold years in the 19th century in Europe, etc.) means that climate change in the future is no danger. On reflection, this isn't really a strawman argument (though it does sometimes function as a component of one, but that isn't relevant). But it is a fallacy. I was explaining why it was a fallacy.
As I said in the opening line of my original post, I suspected the OP didn't mean to imply that. But there are people who think that, so I felt that it would be beneficial to the overall discussion to explain why it is a fallacy.
Stay crazy, my friend. ;-)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Not really. Social Security and its ilk are doomed. What I really want to know, is why you don't take on the burden of raising your children yourself instead of sucking up my tax dollars.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Still not sure why you need 1m resolution to show what looks like a half mile (805 meters) or more of ice melt.
Even with 15m that's 54 pixels or 3/4" inch on a 72dpi monitor. That's seems fairly visible to me.
Then again maybe I'm missing something.
This is a great example of sensationalized cherry-picked anecdotal evidence...which in reality means nothing. The picture showing ice was taken during an abnormal year. The ice melts away every year, usually in July. It took longer to melt in 2006 thanks in part to their being more than normal amounts of "multi-year" ice shoved down from the arctic that year.
Article (from AP): http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/372343/arctic_ocean_ice_crashes_on_alaska_shores/
Video (from NASA): http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~10~10~71195~176482:Ice-Surge-in-Barrow,-Alaska
You seem to be making a case that the earth is overpopulated. And, by extension, we are poisoning ourselves with our waste products. If so, I'll have to point out that this is indeed a natural process. Check out any laboratory with cultures of bacteria.
IF the worst case climate change scenarios are true, then yes that is how I would describe it. And yes, it is a common natural phenomenon. It is still not in our best interest for that to happen. HOWEVER I am not convinced that the worst case scenarios are true--I'm not convinced they aren't true either--I'm fully skeptical on the matter, I just don't know (and no, I don't reflexively trust simplistic surveys of experts--and I unfortunately don't have time to review the extensive literature on the subject, so I will remain skeptical either way).
Meanwhile - I have to point out that the GP's post seems to have gone over your head, or at least you dismiss his reasoning. The earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past. In fact, the earth has warmed and cooled within recent prehistory. That heating and cooling has taken place despite man's presence, and there is limited and tainted evidence to support the idea that man is causing global warming.
I'm not dismissing it at all. I think it is a valid point (I'm also not certain he was addressing it that seriously). But I think it is a mistake to generalize past history where the human population was less than 1 part in 1 thousand, and more importantly division of labour was minimal, to the present.
10,000 years ago nearly every living human was engaged in procuring the necessities of life for themselves.
5,000 years ago we invented civilization--some people grow food, others build houses, others sell used cars. Civilization inherently rests on the presumption that a subset of the population can provide enough food for the entire population.
I'm NOT saying that climate change will make that impossible, but I am saying that the threat is that it MIGHT do so, and that the mere fact that mankind survived climate change in the past doesn't mean that we can support nearly 7 billion people in the future if the climate changes in ways that damage agricultural yields.
Please understand, I'm very (philosophically) skeptical on the matter. I'm not committing to one conclusion or the other (because, frankly, there is not enough data in my hands (key phrase that, in my hands) to prove anything). I am simply explaining the possibilities, the reason (that I think) one should be concerned about them, and cautioning AGAINST jumping to either conclusion without doing the proper, scientific (epistemologically speaking) due diligence.
There are multiple places where man has left artifacts that are now being uncovered by melting glaciers. One story in South America shows that previously cultivated land is being exposed. (Sorry, it's late, I'm lazy, google it yourself if you're really interested)
The fact that there are more people today than at any time in history or prehistory may or may not have an impact on global warming. Fossil fuels probably have an impact, but it probably isn't as great an impact as the alarmists would like us to believe.
First thing: The physics of the greenhouse effect are not disputable (not accusing you of not knowing this, I'm simply placing it into the record of our discussion). If you increase the portion of carbon dioxide in a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide the mixture's opacity in the infra-red rises. This is experimentally, and theoretically (from quantum mechanics) verifiable.
Rising atmospheric opacity makes it harder for the incoming heat from the sun to escape out into space. ONE WAY to restore the energy input/output balance is to raise the surface temperature of the atmosphere. It is however, NOT the only way, and that is where there is ample room for discussion, debate and
I worry that they cheated you on your last purchase of tinfoil. It appears you made yourself a hat of wax paper instead...
First of all, the question isn't if global warming is caused by humans and the ice record indicates that Earth goes in cycles and it's about time for things to heat up. The average temp during the time of the dinosaurs was almost 130F. That's significantly warmer than the average temp now. So the Earth will heat up on its own regardless of the level of CO2 we pump into the air. The difference is that if we slow our emissions we can prolong the length of time it will take to warm up and reduce the catastrophic damage from it happening at an accelerated rate. Can humans reduce global warming? We know for a fact that we can impact temperatures. You need only look at 9/11/01 to see that when all jets were grounded, temperatures dropped. That is but one example of course. You even raise the cow issue which primarily live because we breed them and feed them crap by the millions.
You are right that the Earth is in a state of flux and at certain times it is more hospitable to human life than others. The people of Florida may have to forgo their homes along with many other heavily populated regions. We will adapt, it will be expensive, it will cost a lot of lives, and we simply need to stop arguing about what we're seeing and move on to arguing about what we're going to do about it. It's not the end of the world, just probably an end to it being nice to live on. Of course who the hell knows how long it will take to get to a point where we run extremely low on fresh water. Technology will allow us to survive if we prepare for it rather than wait for it to arrive.
The problem with treating nature with respect is that nature doesn't care if you live or die. The reason nature deserves our respect is because it has produced incredible amounts of biodiversity accommodating almost any environment and providing an example for us in creating sustainable environments. If we want to live we will have to domesticate nature like we can do with most animals to make it work for us. This has huge potential to be disastrous as political motives can and do color what we understand about the world in which we live. We throw out variables because we don't think they are important and that is quite dangerous. Tough times ahead, I just hope I'm long dead before mankind has to face the hard realities. I think we're up for the challenge technologically, so its more of a social, economic, and political problem.
Let me be less snarky. I see many young people in eco movement, and I think they're in for the right reason. But don't be a fool. Question everything. Make sure "right" thing is indeed the right thing. Make sure again. That's the spirit of science. Newton's laws of mechanics is what it is today because it survived so many tests.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I agree, everyone needs to stop arguing about the cause and move on to arguing about what we're going to do to prepare for the inevitable. The Earth will heat back up whether we're here or not, the only question is whether we want to slow it down to extend the time frames for building cities in safer locations. Who's to say frying the southwest even more won't result in far more crop growth further up north. The growing season is getting longer and that could have positive impact on our agriculture.
In short, I think you don't give humans enough credit on their impact on the Earth but you're right that alarmist on the other side aren't being genuine either. The world won't end tomorrow or in the next 100 years but I'd rather we take steps to be more sustainable now to extend the time period before we have to deal with some impressive environmental changes that will change our way of life.
Out of curiosity, what area is experiencing cooling? Parent lives in the arctic and I live in the southwest. Both places are getting warmer on average. Of course it could just be the sick of summer me talking. It was 116F here last week and no matter what they say, that's hot! Especially when you go from 75 degree AC.
I'm not part of the eco movement. Not by a long shot.
If you read my posts (referring to the greater body of my collected /. rantings, and I'm not implying that I expect you to because honestly, why would you (or anyone)?) you'd see that I have consistently maintained the same position.
I could have spent 30 min explaining my view on epistemology, what I consider to be an acceptable standard of proof, etc. I didn't because it would have been a waste of time:
. But don't be a fool. Question everything. Make sure "right" thing is indeed the right thing. Make sure again. That's the spirit of science. Newton's laws of mechanics is what it is today because it survived so many tests.
This is the cliff notes version of what I would have written. That you felt the need to tell me it only further convinces me that interacting with other humans is a waste of time, because they never fail to misunderstand each other. But that is a whole other thing I could spend more time than necessary on.
My advice, in line with yours, is to apply it to the boxes that you stick on people when you are talking to them (advice I should take myself, I try, but no one is perfect, and it certainly seems to run contrary to human nature). People do not fit into the neat boxes we like to imagine they do. Just because they said one thing doesn't mean they think the unrelated thing you (or I) assume they do.
Anyone that says global warming isn't happening is ill informed.
Maybe. But our goverments are wasting vast amounts of money on fighting carbon dioxide emissions. The Greenland was once actually green. Do you think that it was result of carbon dioxide emissions by ancient industry? I suspect that global warming is just an opportunity to make money on fighting it.
The average per family in Mexico is of 2 kids.
If you're simply "Questioning the Mainstream", you're missing the point somewhat. The point is not to question something specific; the point is to question everything. Not only should you be sceptic of people who believe that global warming is real and man-made, but also of those who deny this. In fact, what you should do in all cases is not trust anyone, but look at the studies and data yourself, and judge it on sound scientific reasons.
Perhaps my rambling about science does not apply to you.
My point about you jumping the gun, does apply. Good night.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Care to back these comments up with some facts? As a parent, your comments made me a bit upset but also curious as to what you base your opinions on.
"The Greenland was once actually green." .. Global Warming.
Really? In your life time? You must be really, really old! As far as my history books go, Greenland has been a frozen semi-continent, well, except for now that the ice pack on it is also melting due to rising arctic temperatures,
Okay, I'll be fair about your statement. Once upon a time there were dinosaurs roaming the lands, and probably around that time when Iceland was located near the equator, it was green and lush. Sure, your point has a small bit of value. But completely irrelevant in the context of this thread.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
"I would contend"
Based on what data? I don't really feel like trusting the future of the planet on somebody's hunch, and the data I've seen seems to show that global warming happens, that it is caused by CO2 emissions, and that it is highly likely that mankind at least contributes substantially to the trend.
"that humans have a minor impact on the globe's warming trend."
Small changes can cause huge changes if the system was in balance before the small change was made.
"There are plenty of other things putting out CO2: cows,"
Okay, that I don't understand at all, perhaps somebody can explain this to me, because I think I'm honestly missing something here. As far as I can tell, this whole "cow emission" thing is total bullshit. Cows' farts don't release new CO2 into the atmosphere. They release CO2 that was previously bound by the plants the cows ate, don't they? So it's all just part of the cycle of life. The real problem isn't the CO2 that was bound by plants during the last few decades and is now released again. The real problem is the CO2 that was bound millions of years ago and is now being released again, destabilizing the climate mankind has enjoyed recently.
I agree with the above comment. First of all: judging on just 2 years is insane. We had some snow this year, haven't had any last year, and the year before we had tons.. Oh no.. global warming has stopped, started again and then stopped a bit ?
I do think this kind of pictures with that resolution can make a nice contribution but let's leave the judging to the scientists who study more then just 2006, 2007.. it's not a before and after makeover..
1) Greenland's glaciers are far older than the name Greenland.
2) How much money do governments spend "fighting" carbon dioxide emissions compared to what they spend on burning fossil fuel? Compared to the handouts to the car industry?
3) What's the revenue of the climate change industry, compared to the oil industry?
4) Considering the above, how do you even remember to breathe?
That 85% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Why are you relying on your kids to pay for your old age? Are you incapable of planning ahead in case you don't die early, and saving up some money for that possibility? I think investing all the money you would have spent raising kids would already provide a pretty decent retirement fund.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
It is "climate change" not "global warming".
"Global warming" implies man-made causes whereas anyone who actually went to secondary school and did geography and/or geology knows that for millions of years the Earth's ice has been expanding & contracting, resulting in at least four Ice Ages and all of which happened before man was ever here.
Sure, let's recycle more and let's burn less hydrocarbons because that's a good thing to do anyway - but "global warming" is about tax expansion, not ice contraction.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
That's the problem with you global-warming zealots. Anyone says anything, you go crazy and call them "deniers" and whatnot. Such behavior doesn't help your cause.
And that's the problem with you wing nuts. You believe that a collection of facts and figures is a "cause". What next? Thermodynamics: a political conspiracy designed to stop us getting something for nothing!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?"
Neither are humans, particularly when they have no fresh water.
If the current trend continues, a lot of humans are going to be up to their neck in fresh water (liquid or frozen) which won't be all that great either. And others will indeed have less.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
... it can be strongly suggestive of causation.
Now what is that Preview button for again?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
As far as my history books go, Greenland has been a frozen semi-continent
From Wiki:
From 986 AD, Greenland's west coast was colonised by Icelanders and Norwegians in two settlements on fjords near the southwestern-most tip of the island.[8] They shared the island with the late Dorset culture occupying the northern and eastern parts, and later with the Thule culture arriving from the north. The settlements, such as Brattahlid, thrived for centuries but disappeared sometime in the 15th century, at the time of one given date for the onset of the Little Ice Age.[9] It is debated[who?] whether data from ice cores indicate that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years.
Speaks volumes about how much "climate scientists" believe in their own evidence : Not. At. All. Clearly they believe repression is necessary to sustain the global warming theory (never mind anthropogenic global warming).
It also proves that the grandparent posts were correct in asserting that anyone, no matter how reputable, finding anti-global-warming evidence is attacked. I mean, this guy is right up there with Fermi, Hawking, Feynman and other legends.
I'd also believe you guys more if you could come up with a rational explanation for the massive hoax being perpetrated on the innocent public by the 90% or so of scientist who claim that Global Warming is happening and is caused by man. I've yet to hear anyone come up with a reasonable theory as to why these evil scientists would be doing such a thing.
It's a plot! Against ... um against ... yeah ... it's a plot against America!
"Glaciers are not permanent structures. So what?"
Neither are humans, particularly when they have no fresh water.
Thats good because the water is now unlocked for our use....after we get the salt out of it.
How much money do governments spend "fighting" carbon dioxide emissions compared to what they spend on burning fossil fuel? Compared to the handouts to the car industry?
All those anti GW regulations (at least in Europe, the Kioto protocol) are expensive in implementation. And are founded by you in taxes and in prices. The goverment is wasting your money. Period.
Okay, that I don't understand at all, perhaps somebody can explain this to me, because I think I'm honestly missing something here. As far as I can tell, this whole "cow emission" thing is total bullshit. Cows' farts don't release new CO2 into the atmosphere. They release CO2 that was previously bound by the plants the cows ate, don't they? So it's all just part of the cycle of life. The real problem isn't the CO2 that was bound by plants during the last few decades and is now released again. The real problem is the CO2 that was bound millions of years ago and is now being released again, destabilizing the climate mankind has enjoyed recently.
Cows release methane. IIRC it's about 20x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.
However, methane oxidizes to CO2+H2O in a fairly short time so it's not so critical when looking at long term climate change unless there is a continuous source.
After a fairly long period of constant CH4 concentration in the atmosphere, it has recently started rising again. It's not certain why that is happening. Worst case is likely to be CH4 release due to melting of permafrost and clathrates because that may indicate that we've succeeded in tipping the climate far enough that future increased warming is self sustaining even without mans input. Best case is that it's a natural effect unrelated to climate change and we've still got time to deal with global warming before it becomes too expensive (although I don't hold out any hope that we actually will deal with it proactively)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
I'm asking for hard numbers, not your fantasies. I live in Europe, and all I'm seeing is that the price of petroleum is unaffected, airline tickets are dirt cheap, and so are clothes, electronics, food, etc. The only thing that's become more expensive is housing, hardly due to GW regulations, and electricity, entirely due to deregulation of the market.
I wonder where the babe is!!
It's a joke, but you know. I would not be surprised if we switch from a War on Communism, to a War on Drugs to a War on [Islamic] Terrorism to a War on Global Warming.
Why can't we have a War on Poverty or a War on Hunger or a War on Illiteracy? Maybe we won't win, but at least the basic premise isn't complete bullshit. And I don't think we'll have to suspend anyone's rights to fight Hunger. (at least I hope not)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have karma to burn, and the rightwing conservative BS echo chamber on this story's comments is really getting to me...
It's hard to believe in this day and age, that despite overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, that there are still hordes and hordes of conservatives and fringe dwellers denying climate change.
Given that the scientific method is the gold standard of finding what the closest thing humans can get to absolute truth, and that real scientists (and not right wing fake scientists and shills paid for by various business, conservative and libertarian interests) have a huge burden of proof to justify their stances, it's absolutely ridiculous that anybody should deny climate change at all.
Climate change deniers are not scientists, and if they're scientists, they're weirdos, and certainly not trained climatologists.
Like many on the conservative side of politics, climate change deniers think that gut instincts, opinions and truths are as strong as scientifically proven fact. It's common amongst irrational, religious people to think that the truth is whatever you decide to believe. This is an affliction of the far Left too, although the Left is always called out on it -- the Right are not.
Climate deniers know they're getting thrashed when objective standards scientific inquiry and applied to their stupid and mistaken beliefs. So they've resorted to the slow drip-drip-drip strategy of conservative lying: repeat a lie over and over and over, and you can turn black into white, and lies into truth. They tried this with the lies that led to the Iraq War, and they succeeded -- at the cost of thousands of needlessly wasted lives.
With climate change however, the stakes are much higher, and it's the duty of all normal, rational scientifically-minded people to oppose the right wing lie machine.
From http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2006/20061108124934.aspx
The call for global warming spending has been heard before. In 1997, the U.S. Senate spoke out 95-0 against the Kyoto treaty, which was designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions of the world's nations. If the United States had joined that agreement, it was estimated to cost up to $440 billion per year.
And an interesting report about GW from here:
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
If nobody had kids, what the hell would be the point in conservation?
The standard war cry is that it's all *for* the kids, all this reduction in industry that's being threatened, it's meant to be for *their* good.
And talk about over exaggeration, it's not a "fact" at all. Your computer is causing more pollution than any child does. How the hell does a child cause pollution anyway? Some parents in the west choose to create a polluting lifestyle to raise their children in but wtf has that got to do with the child? Most children do nothing to contribute to pollution and they certainly don't drive industry.
Good god.
Only here would such irrational emotionally overloaded drek get modded to +5 insightful, simply because it's anti-parent.
What has driven so many on this site to hate their parents and by extension parenthood? It's certainly not the normal state of things and it's really quite sad.
Oh and nice attempt to deflect the blame for the environment on to everyone but yourself.
Pathetic.
Overbreeding is rampant everywhere.
No, actually it isn't. For example Germany has total fertility rate of 1.4, and Kenya has 4.5. Germany has population growth of 0.05%, Kenya has 2.36%. Here is a nice picture from Wikipedia illustrating this Fertility rate vs GDP per capita .
It pleases me to know that those with your attitude probably won't breed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fertility_rate.jpg The preview button is not there for nothing...
Are you as concerned with the equilibrium of life and the earth when you get the flu and go bleating for antibiotics? Or are you pro-bacteria?
I don't suppose anyone here is interested by reports stating something different than the "obvious" truth by Alan Gore and the like...
However, if there is one, please read the following:
http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/DOC062509-004.pdf
esp. paragraphs 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3
OBAMA IS HIS OWN FATHER!
It says right there.
Father's name: Barack Hussein Obama
Child's name: Barack Hussein Obama too
That would mean that sometime in the future he will use the newly developed time traveling device (created by the US Army) to travel back in time.
He obviously has all the answers then - he IS from the future.
On the other hand, the sea cools quicker in winter when there is no ice. The fact is that while 2007 was an extremal year, 2008 was not so bad. Actually, if you look at:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
you'll see that the maximal extent of the ice sheet (in winter) is always more or less the same (mniimal: 14, average: 15.5 million km^2), but the minimal one changes much more (minimal: less than 5, average: 8).
"If you're simply "Questioning the Mainstream", you're missing the point somewhat. The point is not to question something specific; the point is to question everything. Not only should you be sceptic of people who believe that global warming is real and man-made, but also of those who deny this. In fact, what you should do in all cases is not trust anyone, but look at the studies and data yourself, and judge it on sound scientific reasons."
Idealy that is correct but you* cannot have expertise (let alone time) to investigate every issue personally at some point (usually in the land of the lobbyists) a critic turns from a skeptic into a cherry-picking conspiracy nut. This is where "consensus" comes in ("consensus" = "The republic of science"), at some point you have to trust other investigators. So you pick investigators with a good track record to be your surrogates, the most credible are public institutions such as the Royal Academy or NAS or a million other well known acronymns.
If every one of those surrogates agrees on a particular point then it's part of a body of tentative "scientific facts" that are the evidence behind such phrases as "science says light and radio waves are the same thing at different frequencies" or "scientists say a comet or asteroid is the likely cause of the new spot on Jupiter".
A scientific education ( when done properly ) helps you to negotiate this mountain of information more easily and gives you a basic framework to the body of knowledge called science. However self education can also do the job, James Randi is one of my favorite skeptics and his only qualifications are in magic.
I'm not a climatologists but I have followed the topic for nearly three decades. I joined "Al Gore's religion" around 1997 (specifically because of the 1997 IPCC reports). Apparently this makes me harder to convince than NAS who in the late 50's warned the US government that AGW was occuring and have not changed their minds since. My logic goes like this...
Science says:
- The globe is warming.
- Most of the warming is due to CO2 emmissions
- Ignoring the problem is not a rational option.
1. Since 1997 I have not seen any convincing contra-evidence to the consesus. Some of it has made me do a lot of research, most of it has simply been old talking points perpetuated by the Heartland Institute and their affiliates.
2. I cannot name one credible scientific institution that disputes any part of the consesnsus.
3. Dyson is the only credible scientist I can name who still disputes part of the consensus. When he publishes his ideas everyone can check them out.
4. The most interesting critisisms come from members of our own "religion". Especially at my cult leader's web site (realclimate.org), they slay a few psuedo-skeptics for breakfast and then spend the day argueing over real questions such as the "missing methane" that was predicted by climate models.
5. Computer model ensembles for defined senarios give accurate but conservative forecasts. ( I have some expertise in FEA computer simulations and the mathematical training to understand the algorithims )
6. I live in SE Australia that according to geologic evidence and recent experience is highly sensitive to a warming climate (natural or otherwise).
7. The fucking North Pole is melting.
*Disclaimer: not "you" personally.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The company I work for has some work in Uzbekistan. Reading up on the CIA page, it says that while there is no official censorship of the media, there is widespread self-censorship. Anyone who does not censor themselves is usually fired or "taken care of." So while there may be no official cabal of Global Warming alarmists, it does not mean there there are no dire consequences for taking a stance against it.
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon. The changing climate is also a worry (which we wouldn't want to encourage to change faster than it already is), but it's not the only reason, and the money spent on migrating to alternative energy sources certainly wouldn't be wasted.
Well, the question is, does the increased fuel efficiency actually pay for itself? The thing is, the more efficient you are, the more complex you are. The more complex you are, the more you cost. This relationship between efficiency and cost is exponential due to increased complexity efficiency demands. I put together a simple JavaScript model of this at http://www.treatyist.com/issue1/savetheearth.aspx . Basically, by jiggering the predicted cost of fuel (using gasoline as a baseline), versus, the exponent of increased energy efficiency costs, you can arrive at a number of scenarios where reducing greenhouse gasses actually doesn't pay for itself. If it pays anyone, it also pays the Chinese and the Europeans..
In any case, most models show that even a rather dramatic altering of CO2 emissions will not alter the course of climate change for a minimum of 200 years. Even if we stopped now, the glaciers are still going to melt. The CO2 is already in the air.
This is my sig.
Meanwhile in the real world there is no such thing as "the climate change cabal," what there is are thousands of mainstream scientists who basically agree,
My question would be, regardless of the academic opinion of the scientists, when do we start trusting global temperature measurements over their opinion? The RSS measured planetary temperature has been falling sharply for the last six months. In June the anomaly was 75, and in Jan it was 322.. Meanwhile, the CO2 actually climbs still. How long do you have measurements of the temperature going down, before scientists say that it is actually going down?
This is my sig.
In fact, I have some problems, but let's have some here :
- Artic ice cap, as antartic ice cap, melt and reform each year : something I didn't knew before doing my own research. Artic ice cap size reduce something like 5% per year in the last 20-30 years and the antartic ice cap size is GROWING, slower but growing each year.
- The growth in temperature for more than a century is less than a celcius degree (0.76 if I remember well). Half of this increase happen if I well remember before WWII.
- In recent years there have been no increase in temperature, even if co2 incresed
- Temperature measure are often done in inner city, where temperature is effectively slighthly greater
- Finally the point that wake me up to the possibility global warming is maybe political / taxation propaganda : ALL other planets got temperature increase.
So yes maybe a majority of climatologist could agree that global warming got a human original, but I'm not buying that. I could agree maybe for a point around 20% of global warming is human origin, but absolutly no more than that.
This being said, I'm very ecologic and I make a distinction between pollution and global warming.
"Okay, that I don't understand at all, perhaps somebody can explain this to me, because I think I'm honestly missing something here. As far as I can tell, this whole "cow emission" thing is total bullshit."
It's clever propoganda that goes with the "humans are only responsible for 3% of annual CO2 emmissions". The cow/grass eating, farting, shitting and growing more or less just needs water and sunshine to run in a cycle. But that's a misdirection since the complaint about cows is their contribution to our emmissions via land use problems (eg: Indonesia, Amazon, etc). Our 3% is 2% above what the biosphere can currently absorb as a bi-product of human eating, farting, shitting and growing.
We could shoot all the cows and burry them but then the cure is worse than the deseiase more rational to phase out coal fired plants on a global scale over a 50yr period. We built them all in 50yrs, we know it can be done and so does the coal industry.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Are you as concerned with the equilibrium of life and the earth when you get the flu and go bleating for antibiotics? Or are you pro-bacteria?
Don't blame the poor bacteria for the work of viruses.
True, it's irresponsible to reproduce until we can genetically modify children so that they will collectively develop cold fusion before they are 20 and light-speed travel before they are 40, though they are likely to rebel and kill us all before they are 3.
Now if only we could get 'hi res' pictures of all the glaciers that are GROWING (http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm) then we could have an accurate picture of what's going on.
And as far as arctic ice melting, the last 'uninterpreted' data I saw (http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png) doesn't show much if any evident trend for the last 8 years.
-Styopa
Care to back these comments up with some facts? As a parent, your comments made me a bit upset but also curious as to what you base your opinions on.
It doesn't need "facts", it's quite evident from logic alone: If you have two children with your wife, you have caused two additional Americans to exist who otherwise wouldn't. Each American causes the emission of roughly 1,500,000 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere in the course of his lifetime, thus having children is very expensive environmentally. (And we haven't even gone into the matter of grandchildren and great-grandchildren...)
Of course there are counterarguments ("if my children don't use the energy, somebody else's would" and such) but it is probably uncontroversial that the Earth's ecosphere would be a lot more sustainable with a smaller population.
This is a mentality I just don't understand. I think it is simply a non-engineering mindset vs an engineering mindset.
The non-engineer looks around and says, we don't have enough resources to support our growing population and decides that the problem is "overbreeding".
The engineer looks around and says, we don't have enough resources to support our growing population, and decides that the problem is better management of those resources / technology / whatever solution presents itself through the analysis of the problem.
If you had a factory that made screws and you had orders to 300 more screws but could only make 100 at current capacity you have two options. Refuse the business , or take the contract and bust ass. I've never known a company to do the former, they will always take the business and rearrange lines, hire on temps, delay lesser known clients, etc, to make as much money and gain as many new clients as they can.
The world around me seems to think that the key to survival as the human race is to keep us as the small, built in my garage business that we are today. Instead of solving the real problems (distribution of wealth, land, etc) we take the easy way out and tell people to have less children. If we put our brains (and wallets) to it, we could easily sustain a much larger population and reap in the benefits of a larger brain pool, a deeper diversity in the human species, as well as the simple fact of saving our most basic rights to procreate (who gets to decide who has less children?)
To say that we are "overbreeding" is one of the most ridiculous things I hear today.
It's almost as stupid as making claims about the climate and ecosystem of an entire planet millions of years old with a scant 30 years of data spread over three different measurement systems.
Oh wait...
Who'se social safety net is he paying right now then?
Then don't turn the AC down so low. When I was in the southwest last year, I remember walking into a Walmart (I think it was in Nevada) wishing I'd brought long pants and a sweater. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, because it was well over 100F (that's about 35C, I think). Now, that's just wrong. It's hot outside, people are going to come in wearing less clothes, accommodate to that. Don't send customers away with a cold. It's good for everybody. The shop saves money (less money spent on power running the AC, so either more profit or lower prices), the environment is less burdened (however you feel about that) and customers don't walk away sneezing all over the produce.
Glaciers? In my Washington? Click here to find out!
The word is Skeptic, not Denialist. Denialist is clearly an emotionally loaded word designed to evoke thoughts of Holocaust deniers. Anyone who uses it has Godwined themselves.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
It's clear that you are not well versed in Conservative Science, because you're not being Fair And Balanced. The five basic principles of Conservative Science are as follows:
1) The earth is six thousand years old.
2) Pi equals three.
3) Global warming is not real.
4) Evolution never happened.
5) Cells are people too.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
From what I can recall, scientists discussed a correlation between pollution and global warming back in the early 1970's. So, since then, we cleaned up emissions from cars, emissions from factories, heck, people are using CF bulbs to reduce the use of electricity. Furnaces, Air Conditioners, Hot Water heaters continue to improve in efficiency indirectly reducing pollution. Wood and coal are not used as prevalently for heating homes; and the list goes on.
Shouldn't we be able to see some evidence of all these changes, of all the struggling to slow global warming, shouldn't there be some sign that it's working? Year after year we keep hearing that "We have to stop using this, or stop doing that" and we do, and yet, there has never been anyone who has ever said "IT'S WORKING!!!!!"
If the scientists have proof that humans are causing global warming, then they should also have proof that all of the things we have done have helped, no matter how little.
I don't deny that the climate is changing, it's just that year after year with no word that anything humans have done to lessen their impact on the environment has helped, it makes me wonder if it's even worth the effort.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
The Earth is cooling...so....why are we attributing this to global warming and not normal periodic ice melt?
Unfortunately your parents didn't feel the same way :-0
Why hasn't this been tagged Waterworld or Kevin Costner yet!?
Collapsing albedo, as opposed to runaway albedo
Where is the tipping point?
The problem with Liberals is that the only thing they ever want to see change is my bank account as my money is taken out and deposited into theirs.
... you give me all your money, and I'll fix it for ya. No, really. I promise. Global warming / climate change / whatever they want to call it this week is nothing more than a ploy. It's one more thing that we have to do that will just happen to require politicians to have more control, and require more of our money to resolve.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
From the article
"...The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change."
Stopped reading right there.
Why are the captains in Deadliest Catch bitching about how it comes down faster and harder more and more each season?
It's disappointing that your parents didn't feel the same way you do.
Do you think that the rising temperatures in Greenland and Alaska and the shrinking north pole ice cover are lies? Come on, that's about as retarded and paranoid as the flat earthers. Just look at the pictures, man. They won't ALL be lying to you.
As for money to made with carbon credits, up until now it hasn't exactly worked very well, has it?
i really liked your little poem about global warming
Maybe you are now ready for open source governance.
Watched a special on Climate Change on TV last Sunday. Was a very well done piece, and the professor doing it was a good orator.
Normally I am not exactly a skeptic, but a skeptic of the scientific process, however this guy was pretty damn convincing.
He came at the problem from a different angle, primarily that of food production and what a 2% temperature increase would do to that, and what the political fallout and ramifications would be.
Pretty dire stuff. Made me want to go out and buy some guns and start hoarding food...
He went on to detail a solution, and then went on to say that practically there is no way we are going to hit that target in time due it being politically unpopular around the world.
He went on to say that the only saving grace may be geoengineering to postpone the target date so we can meet it politically. Problem is while he was more articulate and convincing about geoengineering, I am still convinced that A) it will not do enough, and B) we do know understand the full ramifications of doing some of these things and may do more harm than good. Having said that, I can only come to the conclusion that we are doomed to a MadMax sort of wasteland. Move aside! I need to get my guns and canned food!
Err. What?
Antarctic ice has actually been growing in the last few years. If a person visited the antarctic they would come to the opposite conclusion. I'm not saying that global warming isn't happening, but it's more complicated than seeing ice melt in a specific area and extrapolating that to the whole planet.
What we know:
What we don't know:
We need to start thinking clearly, do some better research, and approach the problem objectively.
Time and time again, the basic premise of global warming is misrepresented. Maybe the press is bad at reporting it or people are bad at understanding it. Global warming advocate are not saying the danger to man is that the Earth is getting warmer. Global warming advocates are not saying there has never been periods of cooler or warmer climates. Global warming advocates are saying that the Earth is getting warmer at a faster rate than most periods in history that we can measure (going back hundreds of millions years) and this rate of change is dangerous. Ecosystems do not react well to sudden change and so this has serious consequences to the survival of many species including us. The other premise of global warming is that this sudden rate of change occurred right around the start of the Industrial Revolution. A large body of evidence is pointing to the most likely conclusion that humans are responsible unlike other periods of cooling or warming which were caused by natural forces.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
More than a million square meters of missing ice and they needed previously classified 1 meter resolution spy photos to observe???
Of course they're going to release this stuff now. They need to get people fired up about global warming so they can pass Cap & Tax...'scuse me...Cap & Trade. The health care bill isn't going to pass so they desperately need a major success. But be that as it may, ten bucks says anyone could photoshop those images with little effort. Oh, and how convenient it is to change the term from Global Warming to Global Climate Change. That way you can blame the fact that it's 72.00001 degrees today when yesterday it was 72.00000 on George Bush.
The paper by McLean, de Freitas and Carter that is making the rounds in the denial-o-sphere has been shredded by the climatology community for fundamental errors in mathematics. Apparently the authors repeatedly failed Calculus I because they don't understand what a derivative is. One of the authors (McLean) is distancing himself from his co-authors as well. Carter says "The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions.", but McLean says the paper doesn't reach that conclusion, the only conclusion that is drawn by the paper is that there is a relationship between the Global Mean Temperature and ENSO. Unfortunately for McLean, de Freitas and Carter the correlation is well known and has been discussed in the literature for well over 10 years. Further Carter has a long history of working for the oil and gas industry
That's because of the global ice age that's happening as a result of humans. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html If carbon emissions are causing a problem, I say we destroy all Magnoliophyta. These things just suck up oxygen all night and spit out CO2. We've gotta get rid of them!
As a kid I remember the big catch phrases being acid rain, the ozone layer and, to a significantly lesser degree, global warming. I remember seeing pictures of perfect blue lakes where all the life had been killed off by acidification and being told that the hole in the ozone layer would mean that I'd need to wear SPF 8000 sunscreen when I grew up, unless we did something about it.
So far as I know we cleaned up emissions from cars and factories to combat acid rain, and it's been very effective. I'm not sure why anyone would've thought that scrubbing pollutants out of the air would affect global warming though. CO2 was never getting scrubbed out.
The air conditioner thing you're referring to had to do with CFCs, iirc. CFCs were the primary agent wrecking the ozone layer, punching holes in it over the Arctic and Australia, as well as other places (to lesser degrees).
Acid rain and ozone layer depletion were issues with proximate, easily identifiable and fixable causes. Rain pH, pollutant content and ozone layer thickness are all very easy to measure and demonstrate, compared to global warming. It's difficult to pretend that these are the result of natural oscillations in the climate.
Only *this* climate is right, all others are wrong? Any change that happens (LIKE THE 3,000 RECORD SETTING LOWS IN AMERICA FOR JULY TEMPS) and GlobalWarming(TM) robots say that it, too, is global warming. Whether it's hotter or colder, both ways are because we drive cars and enjoy eating dinner by electric light.
What's wrong with them? This isn't science: it's religion!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Having kids also ensures that in a few decades, there will be people in the workforce producing things that offset the drain you will incur on the economy at that time. Unless, of course, you were planning on being eaten by a bear at age 50 or something.
Kids aren't a net pollutant. If they were, so were you - why would you insist on surviving now?
Except that archeological evidence has shown that humanity has thrived when the climate was warmer. That means better crop yields, perhaps more livestock. There isn't much that can be grown if we're facing long, harsh winters and short, cool summers.
The distinction is that in the past humanity was more mobile. Now we've far more people in many more places with many of them concentrated in immobile massive cities. Many of those are sitting right on the coast, so there's a risk of many more Katrina-like events. Honestly, I don't think this is anything we'll be able to resolve, at least not without advances in technology. Trying to affect climate change wont do it because the climate is going to change whether we like it or not. And if we try to meddle directly in the weather we'll almost certainly cause more harm than good.
As the glacier melts, sea currents that bring warmth to north from tropical areas slow down. In northern Europe, for example, this means that winters get warmer but summers get cooler.
Or well, that is what I remember being taught about it in elementary school. (Living in the mentioned area, they did teach us about it)
So that's the theory, overly simplified. I would not have a guilty conscience from signing that based on what I've seen especially during the last decade or so.
Knowing that my kids will be American -- even though I'm British -- is knowledge enough to make me not want any. Will they speak with annoying nasally accents and constantly want to eat Big Macs with dustbins full of Coca-Cola?
What won't mankind destroy?
Stupidity. We know, we've tried.
I agree. It is not a good example of anything except perhaps how extreme year to year variability can be.
So I guess revealing the fact that Cheney and his energy industry friends' policies were destroying the polar ice caps, the glaciers, and the environment in general would (somehow) threaten U.S. security, right? IMNSHO, just another reason to bring those thugs to justice.
As we talk about money for this and jobs for that, the real issue here is that even if drastic reforms are brought about, corporations will ALWAYS find a way to profitize anything. Look at organic food. It has become harder than ever to find real organic food since they started regulating it, because corporations can lobby to have exceptions made while small farms, where the real organic food comes from, can't afford to navigate the bureaucracy to become certified. Meanwhile a company in Texas actually got tap water certified as organic. It's a sickness.
Mark my words, there is a lot of profit to be made in saving the environment. We are not being controlled by violence, but by assimilation. Every revolutionary idea is eventually accepted, promoted, and profited from. And as long as people are happy with a suburban house, a big tv and the illusion of freedom, things can never change.
It costs about $150/year to join the AAAS and with that you receive an issue of Science magazine weekly. While some of the articles are dense and very domain-specific, many of the others are not and are (I think) quite accessible to most readers - especially if you read it more or less consistently. Climate change has been covered very thoroughly in Science over the years. So, don't go with (in the most general sense) media, go to a source where the research is being covered at first or second hand and read it/evaluate it for yourself.
It is also a great way to give yourself an education in general science. Though it can be a bit intimidating at first and is certainly a bit overwhelming (the magazine arrives relentlessly - if you've read the previous issue(s) or not).
If nobody had kids then OP wouldn't need to balance things out by not having any.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Free trade isn't exactly an idea from the lef
Actually, that's not true at all. Lefties embraced free trade round the turn of the century in the USA in order to get southern votes and to also throw a cog into the wheels of the robber barons.
However, you are right, of all the ideas liberals had, Republicans have embraced the worst one in free trade.
Leftists promote a crackpot idea called "fair trade" instead of "free trade".
GASP! CHOKE! HOW DARE LEFTISTS ACTUALLY BE RIGHT ON AN ISSUE!!! :-)
Those leftists are actually right at least on that issue. My wife is a staunch leftist and I'm of course a right wing loony but we both have a solid common ground in supporting fair trade and buying local wherever possible. Unlike many conservatives, I'd rather support the UAW and General Motors than a foreign company...
This is my sig.
Family is a hedge against inflation or catastrophic loss. If the US enters a Zimbabwe-like inflationary spiral, wiping out the value of savings, it is people with social capital like a network of relatives that will thrive.
I think the current recession indicates a time when finances are no longer more reliable than family is again on its way.
There's also the problem of political boundaries. Last ice age, there weren't any borders to stop people from migrating away from uninhabitable land.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I'm intentionally child free
It's OK, this is slashdot, you don't have to lie
Ayjay on Fedang
Precisely. Melting glaciers is good, it releases trapped fresh water which is so much needed in many parts of the globe :P
It seems that I misunderstood at least parts of your post. Our positions aren't very far apart, really.
Some related reading from my news feed: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/28/global-warming-inca.html
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The hotter it gets, the more evaporation will be, hence more rainfall. CO2 + water = cheap food. Google for biomass increase over the last couple decades.
Every farmer knows that it's in general better for the crops to be in warm climate than in cold climate. Every single fucking one of them. You are talking about GLOBAL changes, globally global warming is good for the crops, and for civilization.
We don't know if oceans will rise. All we know is, they actually may decline because more heat = more evaporation -> which then may be trapped in Antarctica and/or vegetation. We don't know. We know that the biomass has significantly increased over the last couple decades.
if the climate changes in ways that damage agricultural yields.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the climate is changing in a way that would damage our yields on a global scale. There's a lot of quite convincing evidence on the contrary, feel free to google for biomass increase over the last couple decades. Apart from evidence, I urge everyone to use basic logic, for a start. CO2 + heat = greenhouse. It's a fricking greenhouse effect, is it not? The crops grow best fricking where? What do you build to increase your yield from a square mile? :P
While the images seem to be highly decimated, there's definitely two different sensor types being used. One is definitely visible light (the cloudy ones are obvious, but less obvious is the way the water appears in a read/NIR image channel, which I imagine is the range we're looking at). The other is most likely a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). This becomes apparent when looking at ship wakes as well as looking at the structure of the surface of the water. Additionally, the telltale signs of speckle are present in the SAR images.
If you want to see some similar-looking, but civilian-produced images, I'd recommend checking out TerraSAR-X.
While I can't do analysis on the images (they're too highly decimated, have been orthorectified/geocoded, so a lot of the original signal structure has been lost), I'd guess based on artifacts I've seen that the SAR images are decimated by a factor of 4 (though that is just a gut feeling).
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Thanks to the Industrial Revolution we can build some protection against global warming.
In a hockey game I was watching, a breakaway skater came in with the puck and the goalie was all alone. Instead of staying by the net, the goalie skated out to meet the charging shooter because the farther the goalie was away from the net, the less area there was to shoot at to make a beeline to the net.
With this analogy, we can make some umbrellas in space orbiting far from Earth but crossing in front of the Earth-Sun line. The umbrellas would cause mini eclipses occasionally and thus reduce the greenhouse effect.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Yes, but the seldom-reported fact is the "ozone hole" disappeared about 10 times quicker than anyone predicted and eliminating CFCs had almost nothing to do with it. It needs to be stressed that it was a theory that the "ozone hole" was caused by CFCs and the theory was pretty much proven wrong. Nobody knows why there was a hole and nobody knows why it disappeared.
About the only thing known is that it had nothing to do with eliminating the use of CFCs.
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"You need to recognize that BOTH sides do EVERYTHING they do for money."
Sorry, but not true. Most academics would be happy to do their jobs for a decent wage, but reality is that you can't do research without funding, and most universities can't afford to fund it themselves.
If money were their primary motivator, no smart people would go in to academics or research, because very few people in those fields become rich. For most academics, money is the means, not the ends. Otherwise they'd be in finance, making big bucks.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Blame the Catholics and other idiots who continue to promote 'abstinence' as the sole form of birth control
Yes, every social ill on planet Earth is the fault of the Catholics.....
So, you quoted the sentence and yet couldn't finish reading it? I clearly included the other idiots... I thought it was a very clear reference to 'Monty Python's Meaning of life' (google every sperm is sacred), but if you want to get down to brass tacks, then I would have to say that no, not all the social ills on this planet are the fault of the Catholics, but they have caused and continue to cause more evil than they ever prevented in my opinion. Just look at how they conspire to keep child molesters in their ranks and hide their crimes. Not to mention the Crusades (estimates range from 2 to 5 million deaths) and the Inquisition (20-30K TORTURED TO DEATH). I think they are fair game.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces - PF
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
There's no evidence whatsoever that the climate is changing in a way that would damage our yields on a global scale
You've made far too strong a blanket statement here. There is significant evidence that current major agricultural regions will be adversely impacted by changing rainfall and rising temperatures (again, that is IF the projections are true, which they may very well not be). There is some evidence to suggest that new agricultural regions will open up in the process (if those same projections are still true).
However, even if total arable land increased (which some studies suggest is likely as areas like Siberia and Northern Canada thaw), the short term (short term here could mean decades) disruption until agricultural resources could be reallocated could still cause widespread famine.
There's a lot of quite convincing evidence on the contrary, feel free to google for biomass increase over the last couple decades.
Yes, but what kind of biomass? Not all biomass is equal in the eyes of human sustenance, and not all forms of biomass react the same way to changing CO2 and temperature.
Apart from evidence, I urge everyone to use basic logic, for a start. CO2 + heat = greenhouse. It's a fricking greenhouse effect, is it not? The crops grow best fricking where? What do you build to increase your yield from a square mile? :P
This is silly. "Basic logic" as you call it, seems to be short hand for "simplistic preconceived notions." Maybe you were going for satire, and +5 Funny? In which case, you may ignore me.
Greenhouses are used in places where it is too cold to grow a certain crop outdoors. You would never use a greenhouse in an area where it is already warm enough to grow that crop.
Large portions of Africa and South America are already at the limits of the temperature that some crops can grow there. If the temperature rises enough, yields will fall sharply. Increasing desertification in the sahel will further damage yields. Salt water flooding in low-lying areas of south east Asia will damage rice yields. The reasons to be concerned about the threat to agriculture (even if, as I said before, enough arable land is opened up in temperate climates to compensate in the long term) are well documented.
Overbreeding is rampant everywhere.
Except for the vast majority of Western countries. Which, I believe, was GP's point.
Ah, now I see you weren't going for satire. Unfortunate.
You have such a potty mouth. Your mother should have taught you to behave better.
Yes, warm climates are better than cold. But too warm, and the plants simply die. Too dry and they die. Too much salt and they die.
That climate changes in equatorial regions threaten to severely damage agriculture in those areas is well documented. Of course, this does not make it true, but it does make it something to be concerned about, and most importantly, something we should prepare for.
When we have evidence that an influenza pandemic is coming what do we do? We stockpile Tamiflu and vaccines. Not because the pandemic WILL happen, but because it is better to be prepared.
When we have evidence that global agriculture will be severely disrupted (even if, in the long term, agricultural resources can be reallocated to compensate), we should be preparing for it.
just look at the other planets in our solar system, people don't live in them. yet the climate still changes. climate change is driven by cosmic and radiant energy hitting the atmosphere. CO2 has little to do with it. its already in the atmosphere. plants need to it make food. so if your against CO2 go plant a tree! now if you want to patch up the ozone layer, release O3 (trioxygen) in to the atmosphere. ozone generators do exist. The Great Nikola Tesla built one.
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. - Nikola Tes
There are many reasons to migrate from fossil fuels, the most compelling being that they're going to run out very soon.
If they really are going to run out soon the market will handle it. Prices will rise as the fuels become scarce and the miners/drillers have to go after less accessible sources.
Fossil fuels are used instead of a host of other energy supplies primarily because they're cheaper. Shift that balance and the users will migrate away on their own with no need for legislation. And usage will taper off so there will continue to be a small amount available at a high price for other, non-fuel uses that are sufficiently important to command the price.
On the other hand my impression is that the fossil fuels will NOT be exhausted any time soon. 500 years or more at the current rate (including much acceleration due to industrialization of third-world countries) seems reasonable.
Don't be fooled by "known reserves". Those are the ones that have been explored for, proved out, and claimed. When about 30 years worth are on the books the energy companies have no incentive to spend money now to explore for more that won't be used for decades. So we've been at something like 30 years known reserves for a century or so.
Of course people who don't understand that are always raising a panic by assuming "known reserves" are "all there is" and we're going to suddenly hit the wall in a few years. (In fact, before the discovery of petroleum fuels, there was a similar concern over running out of whale oil if the poor kept earning enough in the factories to finally afford lamps...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There's nothing "interesting" about a report from the CEI. You may as well ask their sponsors, like Texaco and Ford, directly. They're shills. That's their job.
Besides, you said "our goverments are wasting vast amounts of money on fighting carbon dioxide emissions", now you say they voted 95-0 against it. Make up your mind: do they spend vast amounts of money on it, or don't they? Fact is, they don't. Maintaining the economy from 1997 has been orders of magnitude more expensive.
The fact is, the single most polluting thing a person can do is have kids.
Some wish Gore's parents thought that same way.
The danger of global warming/climate change has never been a threat to the overall existence of humanity (aside from ranting hyperbolic morons). It is however a threat to the maintenance of modern civilization if it causes enough damage to agricultural yields (whether or not it will do this is debatable, and very very complicated).
So, in summary, change is bad.
If it is as complicated and debatable as you claim surely there is a lot of room for warming to, in fact, improve agricultural yields. Seems quite likely, in fact, if we consider historical vegetation growth to be any indication.
The fact is, the single most polluting thing a person can do is have kids.
And some wish Gore's parents would've taken this approach.
It's like playing wack-a-mole with you guys. Thining Now go back to Rush for your next excuse. Or just admit you don't really care how much evidence there is, you have moral ideological reasons for this silliness.
So, in summary, change is bad.
If it is as complicated and debatable as you claim surely there is a lot of room for warming to, in fact, improve agricultural yields. Seems quite likely, in fact, if we consider historical vegetation growth to be any indication.
Change is not bad, but disruptive change can be difficult.
Climate change will very likely increase yields in some areas, and decrease them in others. Whether on the whole this is a total gain or loss I don't know. BUT if the decrease takes place in current agricultural zones there will be massive disruption. Disruption of food production means famine. Famine means death.
Even if in the long term (say, decades) agricultural resources can be reallocated to new, improved arable lands in temperate zones, there will still be short term starvation.
My primary point is that we simply need to be prepared for the changes that are taking place (regardless of what caused them). Regardless of whether we want to cut emissions (which is an entirely separate issue), we should be studying and preparing for potential disruption to our food supplies.
History is littered with the corpses of societies felled by ecological disruption and mismanagement. None of those destroyed humanity. But they all killed a lot of people. It's not something we should blithely ignore.
Most of the world is living along low-lying, coastal areas. It would be very painful to have to relocate them, even under the best of circumstances.
Forget the economic issues. Think regional stability.
Imagine Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas were flooded with people from Florida and the Caribbean. And it's not a matter of states closing off their borders. They can shoot a few, but when the mob of refugees retaliates, there's no telling what'll happen.
Hell, just imagine Californians all moving en masse into the Rockies. It's not fun, and hopefully, we won't get to the point where substantial tracts of land start disappearing underwater.
Wow. It seems some people hate hearing the truth.
"If anyone, including noted scientists, say anything remotely the opposite of the climate change cabal, they are run out of town, belitted by their peers."
I'm sure you are absolutely correct. Good science is being run out of town left and right, and journals are refusing to print well researched opposition papers......
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:ypqfSnfiXoYJ:www.cnsnews.com/public/checker.aspx%3FrsrcID%3D51517+http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx%3FRsrcID%3D51517&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Have you ever considered that there isn't a grandiose conspiracy, and perhaps good data speaks for itself? Maybe that means that the good data has been on the current 'winning' side, and that contrary evidence has been sparse?
The above paper was published, and is being taken seriously.
Personally, I don't care "who's right". There are many reasons having nothing to do with climate to move away from fossil fuels (air quality, finite resource, foreign dependency etc..), we should get started as soon as possible.
Ah, how I loathe the politics that drives the global warming debate. Just imagine, just as the planet cools, the Obama administration timely releases pictures of the north pole just to keep us from looking at the thermometer or talking about the south pole for that matter.
Remember, NEWS is something somebody is trying to KEEP FROM YOU. Everything else is plain ADVERTISING.
*for extremely large values of "very soon"
Carbon trading is a scam. There is no rational way to give out the credits, so you are basically give a whole bunch of random people a lot of money for no reason. They will come up with a bizarre scheme that's full of loopholes and hand-waving, and we will end up paying some rich guy with connections to buy a yacht. Gotta love politics.
So basically you've decided to self-select against people with self-restraint when it comes to reproduction. I can only hope others don't decide to make the same self selection.
Guess what happens when only people without self-restraint are the ones who reproduce?
we are towards the end of a solar cycle and galaxy shift... read the myan calendar, nuff said. it's affecting all planets, not just earth. Now excuse me the black cars are outside...
you severely over-estimate the size of children.
GDP is the key.
Got bad news for you: have you been to India lately where population growth goes on unabated. Similarly in Africa and the Middle East. Probably the only benefit from you not having any kids is to ensure stupid genes don't enter the gene pool.
Yeah, but releasing records of American abuse on other humans is not worthy of our interest.
My God climate change is a total scam. Al Gore lied in the video. British courts ruled as such!! More scientists signed with full disclosure the petition against man made global warming theory, saying it IS BUNKUM than signed the IPCC climate paper, which was done in a highly compartmentalised way, so that most of the scientists who even signed it either rescinded their signatures, or did not agree with the conclusion which was NOT endorsed by the whole of the community. But as I said, a lot more scientists have signed on that it is bunkum that say it is real. Al Gore is a politician! endorsed by the OSCARS for crying out loud. My god... when will people WAKE UP.... more important things to worry about like depleted uranium being used on Iraqis torture and massive drug running operations by the CIA, and the fact that on 911 the towers fell down at free fall speed have a look at architects and engineers for 911truth ae911truth.org and see how many renowned and experienced architects say that the claim that no explosives were used was a scam and a lie by the media and the military that runs the countries. It's a scam just like the 1970's swine flu where the vaccine killed more than the flu did by like 1000 to 1, and paralysed many more, and just like asbestos is safe, ddt is safe, cigarettes are good for your health and oh yeah, the 1970's global COOLING propaganda, where we were all going to die in the future ice age... they were all so serious and certain yet WHO took responsibility for the alarm and panic every time... SCAM SCAM SCAM...
Why, thank you.
I was just reading in a book written in the 1950's that
for most of the Earth's History there was no polar ice.
From The Changing Face of New England by Betty Flanders Thomson:
"In the past century average temperatures have been rising, but we do not know enough about the causes of lang range fluctuations to tell in advance which changes are minor eddies in the current and which are part of a great and lasting trend." - p 17
And this was written in the 1950's.
This is the most disturbing news yet from the worst admin to ever hit this land. These monsters took it upon themselves to delay data that might cause the end of us all. Now that is HUBRIS!
Let me begin by pointing out that your criticism is a non sequitur. I did not claim either that Science per se of the science of climate change was indubitable and that anyone doubting it was as a consequence deluded. A careful reading of the post you are responding to reveals that I explicitly left room for the valuable contributions made by informed skeptics and specifically distinguishing them from "outright denialists." OTHO someone who argues that the science must be wrong because it's all a plot to bring about UN world police state ... well.
Instead what I was addressing was the apparently common belief that if the majority of scientists say A and a small minority say B, then B must (at least presumptively) be correct.
In the 1850s hundreds of scientists in the best scientific schools and departments in London were in consensus that "Miasma" was what was causing Cholera outbreaks in Soho, London.
The one individual - John Snow (who I'm sure was called the 18th (sic) century equivalent of a "denialist" and "deluded" by the scientific community and the likes of you who applied real rigourous science in the face of the "scientific consensus" found that to the contrary and completely correctly that it was tainted water not the air causing the outbreaks. Fortunately he had gone to great lengths to document and his research and the great and all knowing "scientific community" immediately reversed their position and accepted his better and obviously correct theory. Oh wait they didn't, they did exactly what you are doing here.
What I'm doing here is asking people not to reject well documented research on the basis of ideological bias, but instead to take seriously the "real rigourous science." So no they didn't do what I'm doing here. In fact they did what you are doing here: They "completely ignored the research" and told people to "stop placing so much faith in a new and very very undefined 'science.'"
They completely ignored his research, called him a fool and over the next ten years thousands more died ... It wasn't until nearly 10 years after his death that he was acknowledged as being correct.
In the C19th that kind of story is perhaps not as uncommon as it should have been. Indeed even at the beginning of the C20th the story of Joe Goldberger's struggle to get the medical and political community to accept that Pellagra was a dietary deficiency, bears the same hallmarks. Goldberger, despite the fact that he had irresitable evidence from prison experiments, was driven personally to consume inter alia faeces from Pellagra sufferers to demonstrate that it was not an infectious disease. However increasingly over the C20th and into our own century the liberal-romantic story of how science is done becomes less inappropriate (fortunately for scientists).
But let's attempt to apply it anyway. Let me tell you the story of another scientist. His name is Jim Hansen, and in 1988, arguably somewhat prematurely given the state of the science at the time, he became so alarmed at the trend he observed (being also mindful that the basic physics implied such a trend) that he warned Congress about the very real concern that GHG emissions could cause serious climatic change. Fortunately, it only took him about 10 years to be proven correct, and indeed the initial skepticism that much of the profession showed has served to make the science much the stronger. In any case here you are (and not you alone), some 20 years later, arguing for the climatological analog of Miasma theory!
I think the lesson you need to take away here is that when one (or more) scientists have good solid evidence, (be that Snow, Goldberger or Hansen,) we ignore that evidence at our peril.
Your argument is nothing more than the exact same argument the religious use to shut down dissent, an argument which goes "The establishment has formed consensus, and who are YOU to que
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
We are sure, eh?
I know that's the point you are unable to accept, but yes, we are as certain as it is possible to be about physical events as complex as these. Hopefully our certainty will prove ill founded, but unfortunately that seems extremely unlikely. The science is here. You can read what has been established (and to what level of certitude) for yourself. But you are not even going to read the summary, are you?
Go read 'Red Hot Lies', or watch 'Great Global Warming Swindle'.
That sums it up really. The authoritative science you won't trust, but debunked denialist propaganda you swallow with the credulity of a small child. I find it incredible that people can be gullable enough to be taken in by this kind of nonesense. But like they say there's a sucker born every minute, and I suppose it's no surprise you have been played for a fool, after all you actually want to be deceived, don't you?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Does the report also show the massive increase in ice coverage in the antarctic? Since we're presuming human induced global warming caused the former, we must also assume it caused the later, no?