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Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea
RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"
If you can't play nice with your toys and share, mom will take them off you.
I say this year we nominate Global Warming for the Nobel Peace Prize for providing a peaceful solution to this heated dispute between Bangladesh and India.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
New Moore Island, eh?
So the new name is now No More Island, right?
I thought global warming was a myth? Darth Cheney said so.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We can't have pretty/shiny things.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
It's not Global Warming it's Global Climate change. That way, when it comes resurfaces, we can blame it again!
~Mekkah
I learned that from my parents - "If the two of you can't share, neither of you gets the toy." As a side note, I doubt I was particularly happy at that, as I was an only child, and toys generally truly were mine.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
I'm pretty sure this was the plot of a book...
I'm fairly sure this was the plot of a Terry Pratchett book.
Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On A Technicality --theonion.com
*sigh* Dude, the correct answer is, "No, no! Let him have it! Please! Just don't destroy it! I love it too much!" Shame on India and Bengaladesh!
Everyone knows that by now!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
From TFA: Until 2000, the sea levels rose about 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) a year, but over the last decade they have been rising about 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) annually
So er we're talking a foot of water every 60 years? Sounds almost scary, except when you put it into context. Increases in sea level are not new phenomena. No doubt they were produced by all that fossil fuel consumption 20,000 years ago.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"Hurry! Buy into my company's carbon credits scheme so you can keep polluting!" -Al Gore
Global warming? Or mere subsidence?
(Or both?)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Sea levels can't just rise in one place. They haven't risen enough to submerge islands. Period. Subsidence is to blame here.
So THAT is why I see all these geese who have never belonged here forming a real plague now. It's because the drop-dead obvious does not exist...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
See, we just need to understand that global climate change isn't good or bad. It's both. It solves problems and creates them. We just have to accept that it will happen, and continue to do whatever we're doing. No need to change anything, just ride out the changes. We can live without coral and fish. It'll be fine. Because now we have less land to fight over. Which will result in less conflict because we'll be able to peacefully come to agreements about how to divide the less amount of remaining land that we now have. See? It all balances out.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
According to the article, sea level has been rising by 0.2 inches per year. This would imply a rise of about two inches since 2000. Over the previous twenty years (back to the origin of the dispute over the island), the rise would have been about 2.4 inches, using the figures in the article. So the island, at its highest point would have been less than five inches above sea level.
According to the Wikipedia entry, the "highest elevation of the island had never exceeded two meters above sea level." Which would indicate that it was at least one meter above sea level at some point, meaning that the cited increases in sea level could not have accounted for the disappearance of the island. For the quoted rise in sea level over time, it would take about 330 years for the sea to rise one meter.
Yet "oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta" said "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming." One would think that a university professor would have a slightly better grasp of the numbers than that. It helps nothing to make clearly false claims about the effects of climate change.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
"...stand in the way of a good ad hominem. HAHA! Al Gore's fat!"
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go listen to Rush while I jerk off to a picture of Ann Coulter.
Totally. It's like Wikipedia. If a lot of believe something, then it's a fact.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
For people thinking this was a huge old island that is not so. The island came into being during the 1970 after a cyclone.
Since the talk that it is gone came from a single photo will be interesting to know if the picture was taken during high or low tide.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Ice cream causes skin cancer. I know this because in places where they eat more ice cream they have higher rates of skin cancer.
It's blatantly obvious, and I KNOW I can count on you to back me up on that. Power to the insightful, brother!
If the water is still less than say 3 feet deep, crossbreed some sheep with dolphins and start farming leaping mutton!
There's lots of information available on the subsidence, via plate tectonics, of the Bay of Bengal, for exameple:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6X-4B4PWYT-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F02%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1269324457&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=098986c85bd272474f1579b29771b39c
The islands are made of silt deposited by the river, and rise and fall depending or whether or not the river floods are depositing mud and building up islands faster than wave erosion and subsidence of the underlying plate are taking them down. The process is weather dependent, but weather is not the only significant force at work. The islands have come and gone before and will do so again.
I know OMFG global warming is hip and all, but this almost certainly wasn't a case of rising sea levels. Sea levels are rising REALLY slowly. That isn't to say that a big hunk of the antarctic couldn't melt and slide off into the ocean and give me some beach front property, just that it hasn't happened yet. The island almost certainly simply sunk into the ground. The earth sucks stuff down and pushes other stuff up all the time. It happens.
If no one has done so yet, this story needs to be tagged "Leshp"
--srj/mmv
If I can't have it, then nobody can have it!
Attribute to plate tectonics? You mean the incredibly slow process whereby the continental plates move around? The process that's so slow that it couldn't make effects like this at the rate we're seeing? ... nah, you clearly mean some thing else that goes by the name plate tectonics. Sadly, I've never heard of another meaning. Please enlighten us?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
a few days ago this was a top story on yahoo home page, with another picture, if you right clicked on the photo on th yahoo site, the info strongly suggested the photo was stock of someplace else, aka a lie
This is a sandbar in an estuary. It first accumulated enough silt to poke above the surface back in 1974, and was never more than 2 meters high. In addition, the nearest tide gauge is showing +0.54 (+/- 0.52, heh) mm per year rise in sea level, meaning that it would have taken nearly 4000 years for the local change in sea level to have caused it to disappear.
If you insist on bringing up global warming, you have to blame the sandbar's emergence on global cooling during the 70s and notice that we are now back where we started. A much wiser choice would be to simply notice that rivers flush crap down stream, and ignore this "island" the way we ignore all the other sandbars and ephemera.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/bengal-island-succumbs-to-global-warming-nonsense-ap-gets-nutty-over-loss-of-a-sandbar/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Talpatti_Island
Move along, nothing to see here.
See that "Preview" button?
Mom's comin' round, to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim.
This is clearly *not* global warming or "rising seas" but old boring "erosion" (I know, not fun).
Consider this - less than 30 years ago India could sent paratroopers to this island's "rocky shores" (sic).
Seas were rising 2mm per year until 2000 and 5mm per year thereafter, so we are talking about a rise of 2*20 + 5 * 10 = 90 mm , less than 10cm, or for those US-residents - about 3.5 inches.
I am sorry, but something smells fishy here - a place can't be 3.5 inches above water surface and have "rocky shores" which paratroopers can walk on. Consider that a tidal range in those parts is at least a few feet, so those 3.5 inches would have to completely disappear under water once or twice a day. That would make this land a "shoal" by any maritime definition.
If this island no longer exists it is because it has been washed away, as these things often occur, especially in river deltas - perhaps after a cyclone or hurricane. Nothing to see here, move along.
Is this a Terry Pratchett novel? Jingo?
You kids today think you have it so tough because all you can come up with in your "WE ALL GONNA DIE!" scenario is that you might have to abandon a few coastal cities and loose a few fucking islands?!?!? Let me tell you something, ladies--back in my day, we had REAL fears, like nuclear winter. We had roving packs of post-nuclear-holocaust marauders ready to cut our heads off just to steal a lousy tank of gasoline and some shotgun shells in OUR fucking doomsday scenarios! Has a little rising seawater ever caused your hair and teeth to fall out? Huh? Has a little coastal flooding ever caused packs of cannibals to roam the lands looking to rape your wife and have you for dinner? I don't think so! Ever had a supercomputer start an apocalyptic war with some slowly melting ice caps? Not likely!
Grow up and get some real irrational fears, you pansies.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Sundarbans are also subject to some crazy tidal influences and currents, which have been known to create, reshape, and destroy islands in the past.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
FYI, according to the USGS, the Himalayas are rising approximately 1cm per year (likely to assume land can drop that fast due to tectonic activity as well). According to the first line of the wikipedia page, the rate of ocean rise has averaged 1.8mm per year. So tectonics can be over 5 times as fast as ocean rising. Geological processes can quickly raise, lower, or split land. In an earthquake, landmasses can move several METERS in minutes. Tectonics is vastly more powerful than even the worst predictions of global warming.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The Chesapeake Bay loses islands (famously in Michener's novel) and there is a nice essay about it here: http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=1116
Charles Widmore will not be happy to hear this news.
So the Wikipedia (I know) says New Moore Island was never higher than two meters above the water. Oh, and that was at low tide. Was this any more than a shoal?
Are you (or the FA writer) claiming the ocean there has risen as much as more than a meter???
I call BS. In fact, I suspect it was erosion that has claimed this island. Maybe, MAYBE accelrated by a few centimeters rise in ocean level, if at all. Wind and water do just fine on their own. In fact, the island was close to, if not within, the main channel of the outlet of the Hariabhanga River. Erosion and currents probably did it in.
What a pantload. Global warming? More likely predictable current-based erosion.
New Moore Island wasn't much of an island. The river took it back.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Never heard about the Ferdinandea Island? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinandea
Check out my cross-platform apps
OK Bangladesh - you can have it.
Luv,
India
Talking about the hottest decade on record is like me saying I'm the tallest person in my chair.
One can easily check the last 10 years of photos of that region and determine that the coastal area less than 3 miles from the island hasn't changed at all. IF the ocean was rising enough to cover the island it should also move the shore back enough to be visible in the photos. It hasn't. I suspect that local subsidence and/or erosion is responsible. But, when you religiously believe in the AGW Hammer everything you see is a nail.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
So, logically, we should start some massive earthquakes to induce the rise of more land up in order to counteract the rising sea levels caused by anthropologic global warming. ;)
Couldn't someone invent a "vehicle for going under water without drowning" device and check it out?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Whether it's global warming or the Internet, Al Gore has this year's Peace Prize coming to him.
The island is clearly sinking. The oceans are not rising. Go look at the data. A plate shifting or some seismic event caused this island to sink. Not global warming.
You're just a /.er, What do you know anyway?!?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Ok ... hold on a sec. The whole global warming climate change is supposed to be making sea levels rise at a very slow rate. We're talking less than inches per year. I read that this island used to have at least a mile of earth sticking out of the water. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that this land was more than a few inches above sea level. Now, all of the sudden it just disappears?? wtf? Was it slowly disappearing at a rate of millimeters per year? Reading the article doesn't seem to indicate this. The article is worded as "They were fighting over an island and then 'poof' it disappears underwater" Ok.. if the sea levels just rose 10 feet in a day then yes I think that's cause for alarm. Somehow, I don't think this was the case
I knew that it was silly of people to claim that one or two islands could be affected by sea levels without affecting all islands, everywhere. But I couldn't find any data to back up or explain what specifically was happening in this case. I suspected it was either plate tectonics or erosion; turns out it's both. Thank you.
I say this year we nominate Global Warming for the Nobel Peace Prize for providing a peaceful solution to this heated dispute between Bangladesh and India.
Sarasota Herald - May 29, 1937... see page 4, top section. "Islands" have disappeared before.
The above link is from this page:
Bengal Island succumbs to global warming nonsense – AP gets nutty over the loss of a sandbar
Terry Pratchett wrote a book about this...
A weathercock has risen from the sea of Discworld, and suddenly you can tell which way the wind is blowing. A new land has surfaced, and so have old feuds. And as two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch has got just a few hours to deal with a crime so big that there's no law against it. It's called 'war'.
He's facing unpleasant foes that are out to get him that's just the people on his side. The enemy might even be worse. And his pocket Dis-organizer says he's got Die under 'Things To Do Today'.
But he'd better not, because the world's cleverest inventor and its most devious politician are on their way to the battlefield with a little package that's guaranteed to stop a battle.
Discworld goes to war, with armies of sardines, warriors, fishermen, squid and at least one very camp follower. Jingo is the twenty-first in Terry Pratchett's phenomenally successful Discworld series. .
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
+1 Lost reference
I'm guessing he's never seen a destructive earthquake, even though we just recently had two globally publicized events.
You know the kind I'm talking about, where one side of the street rises 10 feet and the other side drops 10 feet in a matter of minutes?
Yeah, plate tectonics move REAL slow.
Here's a hint for the GP: Plate tectonics move slow on average, but if two plates collide that are not in an abduction/subduction relationship then massive amounts of energy build up and hundreds of square miles can move many feet in just a few minutes. It might take 200 years for that energy to build up, but when it reaches the breaking point - POP!
Note that a lot of mountains were formed this way, so that should give you some perspective.
For what it's worth, the Indian scientist blames global warming even though the Bay of Bengal has historically had abnormally high sea level changes, and the recent changes have been extremely abnormal. The rest of the world's rate of change hasn't risen like this, only the Bay of Bengal. So what halfway intelligent scientist would automatically attribute that to global warming, when there is obviously something else going on?
The island was created 40 years ago by a hurricane, you didn't see global warming dumbasses claiming it was a massive drop in sea level caused by global cooling (which is what was hip at the time), why would the abnormal rise in sea level, localized to the bay of bengal, be caused by global warming? It's that kind of thing that pisses me off and muddies the whole issue. There is no way this was caused by global warming unless it's an indirect effect which they haven't spent nearly enough time studying to determine. They just throw it out there like it's the cause of all the world's problems. Assholes.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
...have REEFER fund!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Global warming? A dubious reason at best. Just another excuse to inflate claims about a naturally occurring event to push an agenda. When will folks learn that some of us see through the nonsense and tend to discount the overall legitimacy of the authors of such tripe?
Didn't even think of that, did you? The sea level may have risen "only" 3.5 inches (that's a lot) but that means more of the island would be underwater more of the time, leading to increased erosion rates. From the wiki article, I've gleaned that the highest point on the island was around 2 meters, that it appeared relatively recently, and was made mostly from silt deposits. It wouldn't take too much of a rise in sea level to change the rate of silt deposition relative to erosion.
However, I think it is clear from reading the wikipedia article, this was a silt deposit in a river delta that floods once a year. It was never a permanent feature. Global warming likely sped things up, but this 'island' was never here to stay.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"It's mine!" -- Bangladesh
"No, it's mine!" -- India
"No, it's mine! -- Dagon
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"
Perhaps this "Global Warming" dude should initiate a practice in mediation. Seems like he has a way to get arguments resolved.
Go "Global Warming" dude!
Benjamin Linus strikes again.
The island is actually bouncing around through time... or maybe it sunk into the sea.
Now, if only Israel and Palestine could be submerged...
The scientists "PR departments" will probably be called "Communications Departments" in universities, probably the same in private industry as well. The majority of grants from funding bodies come with an obligation for scientists to promote the outcome of their work, and scientists are encouraged to generally. People look pretty poorly on scientists who want money but won't tell people what they've been doing with that funding.
Generally scientists are encouraged to promote their work by attending conferences etc. They are encouraged to keep their university's Communications Department informed of major achievements, as the Communications Departments' jobs are to promote their university (and hence get funding at the cost of other universities). Scientists are increasingly encouraged to attend courses to learn how to best present and promote their work so if the opportunity does appear (like the local media needing an expert to talk about a topical issue) they can do a fair job of presenting the story in a media friendly way (precise clear summaries, avoid complex jargon, etc).
If you want to becaome a "PR agent for a scientist" probably you need to phone up some communications and promotional people at universities and in the private sectors and ask them. I'd imagine qualifications in journalism, literature, media studies etc might help.
That would be my approach to Israel and Palestine problems with Jerusalem Just say no one owns the areas... No residences are allowed but you can visit it for the history and religious pilgrimages. Perhaps the UN will make sure everyone plays fair in the area.
How big of an area do you clear out around a few holy sites, and what do you do with the nearly 750,000 people who already live in the city? I'm sure that the Palestinian territories would have *plenty* of room to absorb the roughly a quarter of a million people who are Muslim, and Israel's wide open spaces that give people plenty of room to build *on their own territory, instead of someone else's* could just soak up half a million people with no trouble, right?
I mean dispersing a population density of roughly 15,000 people per square mile on behalf of a couple of temples -- which are the only reason anyone has to be attached to the city -- is child's play right? Easy as chopping a baby in half to resolve a custody dispute.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'm guessing that it would take about 500-1000 years to get anything that was called an island rather than a reef to go away at current rates of sea level rise.
You may have assumed that this is something that sensible people would call an island. It's basically a sand bar, created by a hurricane in the 70s, that both countries wanted solely so that they can claim the surrounding parts of the ocean. No one could or would want to live there. It was an insignificant speck of land that was never more than 2 meters above sea level at its highest.
This is a case where is could easily be both sea level rise AND erosion and subsidence. But I agree that the latter two forces were most likely to be the primary culprit here. The island was ephemeral from beginning to end. Who knows? In a few years, it might come back.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Israel signed the treaty in 1949. Egypt (previous owner of the Gaza Strip) signed it in 1949. Jordan (previous owner of the West Bank) signed it in 1951. Syria (widely considered the owner of the Golan Heights) signed it in 1949. Lebanon (considered by most to own the Shebaa Farms area) signed it in 1949 on the same day as Israel. All of these parties were bound to the treaty and bound to respect the others' citizens under the treaty. Israel's occupation of disputed territories flagrantly violates the conventions in several ways, not the least of which is colonizing the territories.
I definitely agree, Israel isn't helping the situation any with their colonization. I'm only arguing from the standpoint that they fairly acquired those territories in the wake of a war they didn't start (the Six-Day War). It seems like others on here are trying to demonize Israel for every single thing it's ever done, and acting like the Arab nations did absolutely nothing wrong, which is ridiculous. They seem to think that Israel should have just surrendered and allowed the Arab nations to do what they wanted with them.
The German/French land I'm talking about is Alsace-Lorraine, which was German before WWI (taken in the Franco-Prussian wars in the 1800s), taken by France after WWI, taken back by Germany during the Nazi period, and taken back again by France after WWI.
What a lousy initial post regarding sea level causing this little disputed bump to disappear. It is such an outrageous lie as is the associated image. Sea levels have been rising slowly and steadily for well over a century. Check out http://www.skepticalscience.com/Visual-depictions-of-Sea-Level-Rise.html for an excellent very recent article with a chart from back to 1870 along with very recent highly accurate data. Pretty minimal changes in past 140 years. At least seven author/sources are noted. Even the modest rate of change in continued rise since the 40's is well within natural variability in eon scale cycles. In the past 20 years the sea level has fallen in some areas!
During the dispute time frame, the sea level rose a bit less than 3 inches. Had this occurred in the late 1800's the sea level would have risen a bit more than 2 inches.
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/sea-level-tidal-satellite.jpg for the first chart.
I know you don't want to accept this. But the reality is that unless you're willing to spend years learning about the subject, you are not qualified to assess the science. "Dumbed down" or not.
And then what? How do we run a democratic society if the people are expected to never look too deeply at science? In a democratic society, we need a populace that is actively interested in trying to evaluate the work of scientists. How is the public supposed to know what to base their voting decisions on if they're just told to "listen to the experts?" What do we do in areas where the science isn't as solid as global warming and takes a decade or more to settle down -- such as all the various health panics over cell phones, MSG, aspartame, or MMR shots?
If you encourage people to simply place a wide gulf of respect between themselves and scientists, then that wide gulf also can become one of distrust, like that which AGW-deniers and creationists have. If you don't speak the language of scientists and never try to learn it, then why would you ever trust the man in the lab coat more than any other authority figure? To many people in this country, the process of science is as opaque and foreign and is something understood only distantly and with a hearty dose of misinformation, skepticism, and distrust.
The poster that you're unrepentantly bashing as simply unworthy of scientific understanding is someone who is trying to be informed about the issues and trying to make a good policy decision. Your sheer arrogance and belittling of him only makes things worse by trying to ensure that people treat science like religion -- something passed down from on high by people greater than yourself. In the fact of that, is it any wonder that many people simply pick their choice of experts when one looks as valid as the other?
This is absolutely counter-productive unless you simply advocate giving up on democracy.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I came in here to see if someone had figured out and posted the Google Maps URL for this location.
Instead, even at +5, I've got 27 comments with the same tired "debate" about global warming.
Slashdot, you suck.
Here's the location, supposedly:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=New+Moore+Island,+Bangladesh&ie=UTF8&hl=en&cd=1&split=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=23.875,57.630033&hq=&hnear=New+Moore+Island&ll=21.638282,89.145126&spn=0.213497,0.276031&t=h&z=12
One simple rule for its versus it's
You're calling media relations a "PR department"? You're comparing a small group of people who put out press releases with the massive industry-funded disinformation campaign which organizes massive denier conferences and offers prizes to scientists who can publish papers that support their position. Please, get serious here.
You know, not all PR departments are nothing but lying conspirators out to twist and hide the truth. Most company PR departments do nothing but put out a little press release with some boosterism and self-congratulating -- just like university PR departments do. A lot of crappy science journalism gets its start with a boiled-down press release that proclaims that the university's researchers have released a study proving some fact when the study in truth doesn't say much of anything conclusive.
For example, look at the story that was recently on Slashdot about HFCS causing obesity in rats. Several respectable science journalists have taken the time to look at the study more closely and concluded that it was deeply flawed and didn't prove much of anything. (1 2 3)
So where did the wide-eyed, "Big News!" take on the study come from? Why from Princeton's press release. This sort of things happens all the time in headline-grabbing areas of science, like global warming, nutrition, anthropology / humanoid evolution, cosmology, etc. Universities know that donations and grants come to those institutions that make the biggest splash, and they are more than willing to trump up the importance of a study that isn't as powerful as the headlines might make it out to be. Just like all those massive industry campaigns you decry as so different, lazy newspapers pick up the PR piece and publish it almost verbatim as news.
The problem of self-promoting PR compounded by a lack of journalistic integrity and diligence is just as prevalent in science as in industry. You want to know where the whole "eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you" debate comes from? It comes from press releases overstating the importance of a particular study before it's faced years of peer review and double-checking. And this sort of irresponsible bragging is a large part of why the public is so skeptical about science actually knowing anything.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Your disingenuous response is typical of the left-wing side in the debate, and it does little to convince anyone.
As a left-winger and someone who has been convinced that the science does show global warming is happening, I wholeheartedly endorse this statement. Telling people that they're not good enough to understand what the big people are talking about is no way to get people to vote to support the policies you endorse.
If anything it's about as effective evangelism as standing around on a street corner with a sign saying "God Hates Fags" is for converting people to your faith.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You must have missed the new variation on the SALT treaty that's being hammered out - no one is going to have enough nukes to create the kinds of earthquakes (deep underground detonation) we need for your solution.
I'm only arguing from the standpoint that they fairly acquired those territories in the wake of a war they didn't start (the Six-Day War).
Well, the problem is that international law doesn't really recognize land seized in war as "fairly acquired" anymore -- especially without a treaty where the surrendering parties cede the land. It's true that Israel was the attacked party in 1967, but that didn't give them the right to carve out payback on its own terms unless you ignore modern law in favor of more traditional rights of conquest.
It seems like others on here are trying to demonize Israel for every single thing it's ever done, and acting like the Arab nations did absolutely nothing wrong, which is ridiculous. They seem to think that Israel should have just surrendered and allowed the Arab nations to do what they wanted with them.
Nah, that's not my perspective anyway. I just think though that Israel has burned a lot of its position of moral superiority from that time period over 40 years of occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. The relative conditions of their peoples and the relative body counts in any conflict don't win them many points either. Israel has a right to live. It just doesn't have a right to act with impunity in responding to a self-created problem.
The German/French land I'm talking about is Alsace-Lorraine, which was German before WWI (taken in the Franco-Prussian wars in the 1800s), taken by France after WWI, taken back by Germany during the Nazi period, and taken back again by France after WWI.
Ah, I didn't even think about that because I've always thought of that as belonging to France in the first place. (Kind of hilarious that much of the Prussia of the Franco-Prussian War is not part of Poland.) I guess it makes sense to consider that part of Germany if you're of the "taken fair and square" camp, but it's moot since it's France's by treaty and the whole thing happened pre-Geneva.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I guess it makes sense to consider that part of Germany if you're of the "taken fair and square" camp, but it's moot since it's France's by treaty and the whole thing happened pre-Geneva.
If you're part of the "taken fair and square" camp, then you consider it part of Germany after 1870, part of France after WWI, part of Germany after 1940, and part of France after 1945. You wouldn't consider it extra-temporally part of any country, as each time it traded hands, it did so because the winner won the battle/war. Plus, if you go backwards from 1870, the history gets even more muddy and complex as it wasn't that long before then that western Europe was a bunch of small kingdoms, fiefdoms, or whatever. The nations of Germany and Italy are really quite recent developments.
Except that it's changed; according to the Wiki article, after France retook it after WWII, they pushed out all the Germans who had moved there since 1870 (that's 65 years' worth of immigrants), and also strictly forbade any public use of any language besides French, effectively oppressing the peoples' native languages.
So the demographics of the area now are probably quite different from pre-WWII due to these policies.
Personally, I think it would have been nicer if they let the inhabitants of the region vote on what they wanted, whether to join one country or another, or to be independent.
I mean I thought the ones Carter and Klugman got were as a statement against Bush. (And for hating America too.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
There's the Earth in 2010, the Earth in 2000, the Earth in 1990, etc.
They're coupled.
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Why is it that 'Ex-Spurts' are so narrow minded? The Christmas Tsunami was the result of volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean. The Himalayas are fold-mountains caused by India moving North and China having non of it. The epicentre of the Chilean Quake rose more than a meter (3 feet) in a matter of seconds. What goes up can come down. Even a sandbar island.
CO2 PPM ..2500ppm
Co2 today? less than 400ppm.
I'm quite sure the earth isn't going to stop it's natural cycles because of our pathetic existence. Especially not because of CO2, which is a common byproduct of most lifeforms on planet. In the grand scheme of things we are truly insignificant. any extra we put out just means the earth can support more plant life. I see this as an opportunistic piece to point at and convince people of the new terrorism. I'd be all for a cleaner environment and conserving resources if it weren't wrapped in sensationalist tyrannical agendas out to control the population.
"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.
Why does everyone default to anthropogenic global warming as the culprit? Global warming or even other events might (and probably do) have a varying significant impact on this island becoming submerged; yet it is shortsighted and laziness on this person's judgment to claim it was global warming to unquestionably. Get some scientific and reliable evidence before you make public claims as facts.
- Why worry about the end, when people are already destroying the present?