New Photos Show 'Devastating' Ice Loss On Everest

Simmeh writes "The BBC reports on new photos of the Himalayas taken from exactly the same position as ones from 1929 and compares the ice coverage. The Asia Society, which did the groundwork, are quoted as saying, 'If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be severely diminished by the middle of this century.' I guess the previous claim wasn't too unrealistic."

Comments

Easier for denialists

[colinrichardday]

But won't this make it easier for AGW denialists to climb Everest?

Re:Easier for denialists

[DWMorse]

A little mental parsing and I've come up with 'Alien Galactic Weasels.' I can see how being in denial about such things can be devastating to one's capacity to ascend mountain peaks.

Re:Easier for denialists

[JWSmythe]

    I believe AGW is "Anti-George-W", in reference to the previous president. Alternatively, it would be "Anti-Global-Warming". Expanding it, "Anti Global Warming Denialists" makes an interesting double negative. I suppose that would be someone who denies that anti global warming activists exist, but I could be mistaken.

Re:Easier for denialists

[zmollusc]

I, for one,...

Re:Easier for denialists

[colinrichardday]

Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Re:Easier for denialists

[timmarhy]

the fact that you think this is actually evidence is all anti AGW people need to prove their point....

Re:Easier for denialists

[Anonymous Coward]

Another key difference is that Holocaust denialists are just as nutty, but they're pretty much harmless, and it's only other nutcases pulling their strings.

You can't be serious about this can you? Holocaust deniers are usually linked to extremist groups of varying stripes.

The people pulling the denialists' strings are trying to stop serious action on an issue that is somewhere between "serious" and "catastrophic", and through inaction they are making the latter much more likely than otherwise.

Stop serious action? The only serious actions I know of in regard to global warming are those that will a) make some people some serious money, and b) cause some serious changes in our lifesyles for the worse, i.e. lots of us have to live like peasants while a privileged few of us get rich because of the laws and regulations that make the rest of us live like peasants.

Compared to that I'll take the serious or catastrophic consequences of global warming, should they come to pass, thank you very much. At least those will be equal opportunity changes since Mother Nature and the Universe don't discriminate when it comes time to bring the pain to those unworthy to survive.

Re:Easier for denialists

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello! I'm the drunk AC.

My initial response was based on a reflexive reaction to the word "denialist". Like most people, whenever I see the word I think of "Holocaust denialism" and the lunatic fringe that attempt to deny the horrible crime that happened to the Jewish people during WWII. I'm saddened and disappointed whenever supporters of the environment attempt to use the word to attack reasonable people that question whether, or to what degree, man effects the environment and the climate in general.

Not truly, simply annoyed. And drunk. ;D

Re:Easier for denialists

[Capsaicin]

"Denialists"? Are you talking about people that deny the Holocaust happened or objective, independent people that question whether man is to blame for "global warming"?

Denalism is by no means limited to Holocaust denial. Along with AIDS denialism, flat-earthism, tobacco denialism and AGW denialism, holocaust denial is merely a species of denialism. For it to be classified as denialism (as opposed to scepticism, for instance), it must involve the outright refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality, as we can witness with both Holocaust or AGW denial.

Denialism also refers to a set of rhetorical strategies used to create the impression of uncertainty where none exists. Unsurprisingly perhaps, these bear a strong resemblance across the various species of denialism.

Re:Easier for denialists

[NeutronCowboy]

why is it when I point to localised evidence of cooling as proof AGW is bullshit, AGW supporters give me a line about global temps being the only valid data. but when there's some local event like ice melting on a mountain, it's considered rockhard evidence by AGW supporters?!

Because you are trying to use anecdote in place of data. These people place anecdotes in the context of data.

i'll tell you why. it's because most of popular climate change "science" isn't worth the paper it's printed on, and it's agenda is run by hypocrites.

No. It's because you suffer from cognitive dissonance, and any evidence that clashes with your current world view merely reinforces it. In other words, you are walking case example of neuroscience at work.

Re:Easier for denialists

[colinrichardday]

How about this

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global

Re:Easier for denialists

[colinrichardday]

I don't know about Waxman's district, but his cosponsor's (Markey (MA)) district has some very low-lying land (sea-level).

Let us say, just for the sake of argument, that the AGWers are correct. What do you expect us to do?

The very raising of the problem may well encourage people to solve it.

The simple fact is after years of searching we simply haven't found anything with the energy density of oil, and short of wiping out a good 60% of the world's population and going back to a pre-industrial society I don't see anything on the board that will cause any real change.

And if we do nothing we may suffer that population loss anyway.

Re:Easier for denialists

[Capsaicin]

I've always thought it was more hubris. It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast.

So your line of thinking is: Because it is arrogant to believe humanity can affect the Earth's climate, the climate data, statistics or the statistical models incorporating the data must be wrong. Have I got you right?

Cool, science just got so much easier, no more nasty maths to deal with for a start. You don't even need to consider the actual volume of the troposphere, the concentration of various gases it contains, their change over time, the volume of CO2 release by fossil fuel use or any of that crazy empirical evidence stuff. We can just run science on a sense of moral outrage and gut feeling. Yeah!

Re:Easier for denialists

[L4t3r4lu5]

... wish that I'd remembered to finish the sentence before I hit submit? D:

Re:Easier for denialists

[turbidostato]

"It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast."

Earth's surface: 510,072,000 Km^2
Earth's population: 6,856,832,000

Mean earth surface per inhabitant: 0,074 Km^2/habitant, or, to give it in "real international standards units", about 13,7 football fields.

Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that a single man can alter 13,7 football fields within his lifetime through farming, mining, driving, building, etc.?

Re:Easier for denialists

[Stephan Schulz]

At least those will be equal opportunity changes since Mother Nature and the Universe don't discriminate when it comes time to bring the pain to those unworthy to survive.

You mean the poor farmer in Bangladesh will experience the same hardship from sea level rise than a Miami millionaire? One loses his livelihood and the other has to move his yacht pier up 3 feet - yes, that seems about the same.

More generally, rich people are generally much better isolated from any environmental changes, and also in a much better position to exploit them. Assume the Dutch have to rebuild their dikes - do you really think that most of the money spent will go to the guy who drives the backhoe?

Re:Easier for denialists

[LKM]

The only serious actions I know of in regard to global warming are those that will a) make some people some serious money, and b) cause some serious changes in our lifesyles for the worse, i.e. lots of us have to live like peasants

I've seen a lot of proposals that could help against climate change, but I've never seen one that would turn people into peasants; quite the contrary, they usually involve a ton of technological progress. The countries who would mainly lose out are the ones that are basing their economy on oil—and those people are often already mostly peasants.

Re:Easier for denialists

[Capsaicin]

My initial response was based on a reflexive reaction to the word "denialist". Like most people, whenever I see the word I think of "Holocaust denialism"

Really? Most people? I think of climate denialists and evolution denialists. They are just so much more prevalent than holocaust deniers or AIDS denialists etc. these days.

I'm saddened and disappointed whenever supporters of the environment attempt to use the word to attack reasonable people that question whether, or to what degree, man effects the environment and the climate in general.

I agree completely and I would add the corollary that unreasonable people who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, deny that humans affect the environment and the climate in general are the only ones who are properly called 'climate denialists.'

Re:Easier for denialists

[rainmouse]

The biggest problem with people who deny the massive amounts of evidence pointing towards a significant human effect on global warming tend to be those who are financially benefiting from the alleged destruction of our environment .

Out of 3,146 scientists surveyed as to if they believed human activity to be of significant contribution to the increase in global temperatures since the 1800's, 82 percent said they did. Interestingly out of the petroleum geologists asked in this survey (who's job is oil exploration) only 47 percent believed.

(source:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html)

Re:Easier for denialists

[arivanov]

Ice melt is one of the worst indicators imaginable of antropogenous warming. Glaciers, snow and ice are more influenced by the dust we produce than by temperature.

Up to as recent as the 80-es the industrialized countries have been producing immense amounts of soot from buring coal, diesel, etc.The developing nations (including India) are now the main polluters and they are producing more and more of it. I am not surprised that Asian glaciers are retreating. Considering the complete lack of pollution control in India and China I would be surprised if they were not.

Re:Easier for denialists

[dbIII]

We saw exactly the same thing happen with nuclear back in the 80's and in hindsight nuclear may have been the right choice all along

80's nuclear was so crappy even Margret Thatcher dropped it so hindsight doesn't help. 2010 nuclear has more prospects but still needs a lot of work.

Re:Easier for denialists

[Ardeaem]

Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that the variations in radiation from a superheated ball of gas at 5505C (9941F) might, just possibly, have some bearing on the situation ?

Oh, so that's what the climate scientists have been missing all this time! They forgot about the sun! Silly them! When is your schedule free, so we can give you your Nobel Prize?

Re:Easier for denialists

[Savage-Rabbit]

"It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast."

Earth's surface: 510,072,000 Km^2
Earth's population: 6,856,832,000

Mean earth surface per inhabitant: 0,074 Km^2/habitant, or, to give it in "real international standards units", about 13,7 football fields.

Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that a single man can alter 13,7 football fields within his lifetime through farming, mining, driving, building, etc.?

As opposed to the sun which has a surface area of 6088000000000 Km^2 ?

That's 887 Km^2/habitant, or 164,377 of your "real international standards units" (football fields).

Do you really think it takes too much arrogance to imagine that the variations in radiation from a superheated ball of gas at 5505C (9941F) might, just possibly, have some bearing on the situation ?

The sun may very well may have a bearing on the situation but you are not going to convince anybody that digging and pumping up billions of years worth of sequestered carbon over the last 60-70 years and releasing it into the atmosphere with wild abandon had no effect at all. But let's put the climate debate aside for a moment. He was talking pretty generally about the way that humans are affecting their environment. Facts like a drop in the wold tiger population from 100.000 at the beginning of the century to a mere 3000 today can hardly be blamed on the sun, there are huge areas of dead ocean where nothing survives in any numbers you can make a profit from catching and selling, the list goes on... Changes like that are undeniably due to human excesses, mismanagement, corruption, greed and very little else.

Re:Easier for denialists

[marcello_dl]

But, two photos is evidence for variation, only, not warming or cooling. Those are trends and need way more data. Yes I know there is LOTS more data. But the problem with global warming is twofold.
First, there are vested interests both in denial and in assertion of global warming. This is not science, this is a war of interests.
Second: CO2 can be absorbed easily and is not toxic. What about persistent, toxic, mass produced, untaxed and uncapped pollutants? While our generation looks at 1C difference in south patagonia since the 1866, next ones will increasingly have trouble eating fish, breathing, reproducing.

Re:Easier for denialists

[Burnhard]

The stupidity of your position is that you yourself have not studied the data in any detail. All you need to know is that the rate of change has not accelerated and all the evidence shows this is a long-term process that has been going on for centuries. That is, as the Environment Ministry in India has said, "none of our glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat". Nobody is arguing that some of them aren't retreating (some of them are also growing), but as usual for you alarmists any change that contradicts your hypothesis is "weather", whereas any that supports it is "climate".

Re:Easier for denialists

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Okay let's see you "go first". Become an early adopter of the post-AGW lifestyle.

First thing : dump your computer, your car, your tv, your telephone. There's just no way that we can have personal computers, cars, or even normal phones (pray you get to keep your cell phone, and forget about smartphones) using only renewable resources. Not going to happen.

Oh and obviously the human population will have to be decimated, even if you do actually give those things up. Forget about birth control, which only has effect after 60 years or-so, assuming you can enforce it globally (assuming, to be blunt, that every nation on earth is prepared to kill "unapproved" babies), which is "too late". So who do we kill ?

Mind you, we'll need to lose somewhere between 60% and 90% of all humans alive. Who do we start with ? To keep in the theme of this thread, perhaps the Jews ? Of course atheists, christians, muslims, hindus and buddhists, even slashdotters won't be far behind. This 60% merely makes "living renewably" an attainable goal, btw, it does not, at all, guarantee we actually do accomplish it.

There are 2 things we can do :
1) attempt to stop climate change
2) ignore it, adapt to changing circumstances, and grow

EVERY species that has chosen option 1, and every human civilization that has done so (according to Jared Diamond) is ...

extinct

(and one can easily name dozens of species and civilizations that have attempted to preserve their environment ... all extinct)

It does not work.

Of course, when there is a climate conference, there is a solar eclipse generated by the amount of private planes converging. So we all know what the politicians and scientists (everyone who goes to such conferences) want ...

Of course, we "have science" so we can do anything, right ? (of course, half of those extinct civilizations did have science too, most had quite extensive agricultural and climatic knowledge. It didn't save them. Why would it save us ?)

Re:Easier for denialists

[TheRaven64]

Please can we take the belief terminology and appeals to authority out of the debate? If you believe in global warming, then you are an idiot. If you believe in anything because the majority of scientists do, then you are an idiot.

There is a large body of (reviewable) evidence in support of various hypotheses under the global warming umbrella, and a lot of ad hominem attacks against it. That means that it's sensible to accept these hypotheses as provisionally valid and, until any contradictory evidence is presented, a reasonable base for policy decisions. It doesn't mean that you have to believe in any given hypothesis. If you're emotionally invested in a hypothesis, you aren't doing science, you're doing religion.

Re:Easier for denialists

[MrHanky]

Most climate scientists agree that without the sun, the earth would be much colder.

It's arrogant of you to think that people in the know don't take the obvious into consideration. So yes, you're arrogant, and you're an idiot as well. How about trying to gain some knowledge about a subject before dismissing a theory out of hand.

Re:Easier for denialists

[cabraverde]

What IS unrealistic to to blame ONLY man to the exclusion of all other contributing factors, which is what the A in AGW and all the real debate is about.

Straw man weasel alert! No-one (NO-ONE) is saying that man is the only factor in climate change. You are pointing at the relatively small (natural) variation in climate that you could expect to occur over a couple of centuries and using it to spread FUD over the much larger anthropogenic variation.

Re:Easier for denialists

[bunratty]

We aren't blaming only humans. But the consensus is that humans are responsible for most of the warming of the last 50 years.

This conclusion is endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences, The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and its parent organization, the American Institute of Physics, the national science academies of the G8 nations, Brazil, China, and India. and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The phenomenon of warming caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to humans burning fossil fuels was predicted by Arrhenius over 100 years ago.

Re:Easier for denialists

[hairyfeet]

So your answer is to go "The sky is falling!" and then stand there? How is THAT supposed to help? Here is my own "inconvenient truth"...nobody ATM has even a half assed, much less a comprehensive plan for dealing with AGW. Instead what we have is a bunch of leeches that have figured out a way to cash in on others misery. The ambulance chasers of AGW basically.

Look, I'm not "for or against" either side here. What I AM against is bullshit and thievery disguised as "being green". ANY plan that is based on "Fuck the west" is doomed to failure, because the west is ALREADY in decline. The USA? We don't make shit anymore, hell I wouldn't be surprised if even our bullets had "Made in China" stamped on them. Europe? Wouldn't be surprised if the EU splits up with Greece and now Ireland circling the bowl.

And of course cap and trade ignores the twin elephants in the room...India and China, who simply will tell you where to stick it. And notice how old Al Gore and his fellow cap and traders have NOT ONCE demanded heavy tariffs or other protectionist measures to get China and India to comply with carbon caps, why? Because they make massive profits there, that's why!

So if someone comes up with a real plan, like closing down all coal fired plants and replacing them with a combination of nuclear, wind, molten salt solar, and other long term zero carbon energy sources? I'll be the first one on the bandwagon. But carbon trading is nothing but a scam, a Catholic indulgences scheme cooked up by the same folks that gave you credit default swaps to yet again bleed cash from what little the American people have.

There is a reason why old Al Gore and the other 1%ers have made 85% of the wealth since '75, while the rest of us get to scrabble over the scraps, and it ain't because they worked harder. It is because, thanks in part to SCOTUS saying "corps=people" and "money=speech" that massive corruption have allowed the 1%ers to bribe...err I mean lobby, the laws to be tilted into their favor time and time again. And now they seek to do the same with a very real problem. Don't let them. If you truly believe in global warming, not this weasel worded climate change bullshit (since when DOESN'T the climate change?) then demand REAL change, not the snake oil Rev Al Gore and his pals on Wall Street are pushing.

Re:Easier for denialists

[turbidostato]

"No, I don't think it's unrealistic. What IS unrealistic to to blame ONLY man to the exclusion of all other contributing factors, which is what the A in AGW and all the real debate is about."

I don't think anybody sane would deny there are other forces in the game since it's obvious the climate has changed, quite widely, in times when human activity can certainly be discounted.

Anyway this is not what I was arguing nor it is the position of those that want to give credit to the option that anthropogenic causes should be considered for changes for about the two last centuries up to the point of considering a trollish straw man even mentioning.

"This blinkered "it's all mans' fault" is nonsense. It's partly mans' fault at best."

Up the point that it is maybe at least partially "man's fault" it's all that counts: or have you heard anyone proposing we can do something about sun's emissions variations or rotation angle or any other of the cosmic or Earth-based variations? Since all we can do about is anthropogenic variations all that rests is cost/benefit analysis. And we'd better don't let the energy tycoons (esp. oil tycoons) be the ones to assess such cost/benefit analysis.

"Will reducing man's contribution in a real way (not Carbon Credits, or other bullshit), have a significant slowing affect considering the input of the above mentioned phenomena ? Again, show me !"

On one hand it's due diligence. Given that it's certainly worthy the proposition that human beings are able to significantly affect their 13.7 football fields in just a single life timespan and that we have been doing it at an exponential rate for about eight generations we'd better be safe than sorry and start acting now if even "just in case".

On the other hand, you seem to consider that Sun is so much "bigger" than anything that man can do that it's a bit silly even considering the options (13.7 versus 164,377 football fields or a factor of about a x10000 on your accounts). It's only you should consider two other things:

  1) While Sun is big and hot beyond ordinary human common sense, it's far away beyond human common sense too. The average energy we recieve from Sun taking account for distance, angle and albedo is more or less 106 W/m^2. So Sun's energy finally reaching the Earth is at odds with what is needed to light up an office table (a "traditional" 100W bulb on an office table lamp for a table about a square meter). Not quite impressive expressed that way, uh?
  2) It's not about raw energy as much as catalizer effects: one drop of poison can trash away a full well of fresh water, right?

Re:Easier for denialists

[Lumpy]

Carbon credits are the best scam ever devised... I'm just pissed that I did not think of that scam first.

Re:Easier for denialists

[rjames13]

No. It's because you suffer from cognitive dissonance, and any evidence that clashes with your current world view merely reinforces it. In other words, you are walking case example of neuroscience at work.

Hi I'm the Cognitive Dissonance Troll. I'm here to point out that you are incorrectly using the phrase "Cognitive Dissonance"

Cognitive Dissonance does not mean that people reinforce their current world view because of conflict with a new evidence. What it does mean it that you feel discomfort because there is a clash between your current world view and the evidence the world presents. What a person does with that discomfort is not related to the dissonance, the dissonance is the discomfort.

Thank you for your time

Re:Easier for denialists

[Vintermann]

And notice how old Al Gore and his fellow cap and traders have NOT ONCE demanded heavy tariffs or other protectionist measures to get China and India to comply with carbon caps, why? Because they make massive profits there, that's why!

Nearly. I don't know how much Al Gore personally makes from polluting in China, but no matter how much it was it would be a small share of all the money being made by polluting in China. That money is hard to fight against politically, tempting politicans to choose easier paths.

By the way, there is at least one prominent climate scientist in this debate, who is railing against politicians like Gore for taking the easy path, and stating that the political influence of money is the largest problem in fighting global warming.

Re:Easier for denialists

[PopeRatzo]

Okay let's see you "go first". Become an early adopter of the post-AGW lifestyle.

First thing : dump your computer, your car, your tv, your telephone.

These are some pretty big straw men "OeLeWaPpErKe".

Your scare tactics aren't going to make scientists out of AGW deniers. Nor is the decision of a single person going to make much difference fighting climate change. But there are systemic changes that could be made right now without displacing millions or causing you to give up your iPhone.

And maybe you don't realize how easy it is for those of us that live in big cities to give up our cars or at least to think about what it would take for us to spend fewer of our waking hours behind the wheel. Nor do you appear to understand how much of a benefit it would be for you to give up your TV. It might keep you off of Fox News long enough for you to be deprogrammed.

.half of those extinct civilizations did have science too, most had quite extensive agricultural and climatic knowledge. It didn't save them. Why would it save us ?

Are you saying that giving up Science would help us avoid extinction? Now you're scaring me.

There are 2 things we can do :
1) attempt to stop climate change
2) ignore it, adapt to changing circumstances, and grow
EVERY species that has chosen option 1, and every human civilization that has done so (according to Jared Diamond) is ...
extinct

Please name the civilizations that have become extinct after attempting to prevent climate change due to profligate use of fossil fuels.

Re:Easier for denialists

[drinkypoo]

Ah, I see. "Denialism" is what zealots used to call "heresy":

No, denialism is what we usually call "unwillingness to accept reality". If a truth is inconvenient (it's times like these I hate the name of that movie) then deny, deny, deny. Well, forget Al Bore for a minute and take a look at the science involved. We know what CO2 does. We know we release orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanoes, and we know their CO2 is a driver of weather. Cancer rates double in the industrial revolution and denialists want to claim that it's because people live longer, but a) lifespans did not increase so very much at this time and b) we now know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the industrial revolution caused positively carcinogenic compounds in the atmosphere to be multiplied several times. It's always the same; the people who have everything invested in a process of raping the earth want to claim that she was asking for it. You don't have to be a coal miner or a logger to benefit from modern industrial society, of course; every time you discard a disposable plastic plate or get your iPhone replaced for some failure that never should have been made you're not only making your own contribution but you're deriving a feeling of security from the ongoing destruction of the biosphere upon which we depend. When your sense of well-being is dependent on believing a lie, you apparently cling to that lie whether it appears to fit the facts or not.

Re:Easier for denialists

[PopeRatzo]

My initial response was based on a reflexive reaction to the word "denialist". Like most people, whenever I see the word I think of "Holocaust denialism" and the lunatic fringe that attempt to deny the horrible crime that happened to the Jewish people during WWII.

Are you suggesting that heretofore the word "denial" or "denier" should only be used in reference to Hitler's genocide against the Jews?

Should we no longer be able to say that the people who don't believe that for which there is extensive evidence are "in denial"?

Can you give me the list of other words that can no longer be used because they make you think of something bad? Maybe I'll give you "holocaust" because there are already lots of other good words to replace it, but something as simple and basic as "to deny"? That's taking an entire category of description off the table.

Can you give me another word to describe someone who refuses to accept that for which there is ample evidence? Don't say "skeptic" because skeptics are the ones who require evidence, not the ones who ignore it. I'm specifically looking for a name for someone who refuses to accept any evidence. And "creationist" is too specific. I'm looking for a more general term.

Re:Easier for denialists

[YttriumOxide]

Europe has just had the coldest winter in 50 years.

Followed by the hottest July on record for an insanely long time also...

I really wish people would stop thinking "Global Warming" simply means it gets warmer everywhere, evenly... it doesn't, never has, and never will.

if you can explain in a non emotional way sticking purely to the facts and data that i can look at myself, why CO2 has become the driver behind climate rather then the sun and water vapor, you'd convince me.

Simply that it's a bigger system surrounding a chaotic system* (that is, weather). Chaotic systems are a pain since we can't truly model them due to the insane complexity and number of factors. A tiny push from any thing can drastically alter it. The sun DOES affect the climate more than CO2. Water vapor DOES affect the climate more than CO2. But historical evidence points towards these things in their natural cycles causing warming and cooling over much longer time periods than what we're currently seeing. CO2 appears to be causing a very rapid change in the climate, kind of like the effect in a greenhouse (see where that old analogy comes from?)

* Note that I don't actually believe that there is anything too complex to model theoretically... practically certainly, but I doubt the climate of one planet even stretches that far given technology way ahead of our own.

Re:Easier for denialists

[mgblst]

the laws and regulations that make the rest of us live like peasants.

I know, not having two hummers, 4 bathrooms in your bachelor pad, and your own jet makes you a fucking peasant.

Re:Easier for denialists

[quanticle]

At least those will be equal opportunity changes since Mother Nature and the Universe don't discriminate when it comes time to bring the pain to those unworthy to survive.

Except they won't be. The vast majority of the negative impacts will be in areas like India and Africa, where the people are least well equipped to deal with climatic changes. Global Warming (anthropogenic or not) will affect polar and tropical areas the most - the temperate climes of the rich world will be affected last.

As for saying that those people are "unworthy to survive", who are you to make that decision? Genetically, biologically, those who are going to die from global warming are no different than you or I. If they are unworthy of survival, then so are you. Its only an accident of birth that ensures your survival.

Re:Easier for denialists

[mcgrew]

Spelling out Anti Global Warming, or saying Global Warming Denialists, would be TMI.

HAND.

PS: What is "fsck" an acronym for? I'm guessing "fucking stupid censorship, kids".

Re:Easier for denialists

[hawkfish]

You mean the poor farmer in Bangladesh will experience the same hardship from sea level rise than a Miami millionaire? One loses his livelihood and the other has to move his yacht pier up 3 feet - yes, that seems about the same.

Yes, the 2.8mm/year rate of sea level rise is sure to take away the livelihood of that farmer in Bangladesh... he should start running now, or else he may never escape!!!!!

You don't realize the absurdity of your extremist appeals to emotion BECAUSE YOU DONT EVEN KNOW THE FACTS OF THE VERY SHIT YOUR ARE SUPPORTING.

No, you don't know the facts of the "shit" you are supporting. To start with, Bangaldeshi farmers can't start running because they live in one of the most densely populated areas on earth and the national boundaries there have been drawn in the 20th century to stop traditional migrations. And while 2.8mm/y may sound like nothing, try to remember that a) it has been going on for decades, b) that projection is probably too low and c) it is already causing serious problems in low-lying island nations such as Tuvalu and the Maldives as well as in Bangladesh itself.

So get your head out of your fat Western ass and start paying attention.

Re:Easier for denialists

[bunratty]

No one is proposing that we change our lifestyle by dumping our computers, our cars, our TVs, our telephones. The plan is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. This will be done by improving energy efficiency, developing nuclear power more, and increasing energy from renewable sources. No one has said we need to get all energy from renewable sources or stop burning all fossil fuels altogether. Nice strawman!

Re:Easier for denialists

[operagost]

I'd rather not.

Sorry, my bad.

[DWMorse]

We needed something to put the kegs in to stay cold.

We needed something epic.

I am not scared

[a_tharwat]

Conspiracy theories and scientific hypes aside, is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth? Or, in other words, can we stop this even if we want to? Earth will continue changing as it will continue rotating, and we might as well take our minds off what we cannot change and work a little bit more on what we can, i.e. the misery of mankind.

Re:I am not scared

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me ask something slightly different. Is bacteria actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as man? Oh wait, thats very different, my bad!

Re:I am not scared

[Improv]

Not scared? Maybe you should be.

According to our models, yes we are so capable. Don't just use your intuitions - "common sense" is often wrong. There are people who study these things - go to your local university and ask professors with knowledge in the relevant fields.

If we damage the environment, we *are* causing misery of mankind.

Re:I am not scared

[PinkyGigglebrain]

When it comes to size you have to stop thinking about the Earth, 12,752km diameter, and think about the atmosphere, 90% within 50km of surface.

Could humans make an impact, yes. The CO2 increase since the start of the industrial revolution shows that.

Is that the main cause of climate change? That is what the real arguments are about.

If Humans are to blame is it too late to do anything? Don't know, don't care. Its been done.

Humanity will need to adapt to climate change or it'll die out, just like everything else on the planet.

Re:I am not scared

[Anonymous Coward]

is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth?

Or, in other words, can we stop this even if we want to?

These two questions are not equivalent. Can nearly 6.9 Billion humans change the planet? Of course. Can the behavior of all these humans be coordinated and changed in order to create a specific desired outcome? Not all of them, no. Maybe you can get your desired results anyway, but it depends on how many people you need working for it, and how few people would be needed to sabatoge that effort.

If you ever get 6.9 Billion people to agree on anything you'll have solved much tougher problems than mere warming.

Re:I am not scared

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a believer in man made global warming, we are in a warming cycle that follows a trend that is documented over millions of years.

This global over-politicization of the issue(i.e. Carbon credit, etc.) is just plain bullshit.

However, the current trend just might cause a Lot of misery to mankind. Ocean levels fluctuate wildly and a few extra feet would submerge a few island nations and displace millions of people.

So I applaud the effort of scientists to combat the problem and come up with a solution to the warming trend be it man made or not.

My fear is that nothing they come up with works as ultimately you cannot fight the Sun and Earth's natural cycles and all the blame will be set upon carbon.

Re:I am not scared

[MikeFM]

From the article it sounds as if the issue in questions is water supply and how changing the normal rate of glacial melt could change how people live. If THAT is the issue then it may suck, change usually does, but people need to just deal with it. We can't coddle societies that don't want to put in place infrastructure they need for security and stability.

The US is bad enough about it's own infrastructure, due largely to our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents not paying their fair share and we'll soon be in trouble if we don't cough up the money to repair and upgrade it. There is no reason others shouldn't have to do the same. Or don't and be at the mercy of whatever happens.

Re:I am not scared

[feepness]

Not scared? Maybe you should be.

And here I thought the right was the "Party of Fear"!

Re:I am not scared

[TapeCutter]

"When it comes to size you have to stop thinking about the Earth, 12,752km diameter, and think about the atmosphere, 90% within 50km of surface."

And most (but not all) of the stuff that affects climate happens in the troposphere (bottom 5km).

Re:I am not scared

[bertok]

Conspiracy theories and scientific hypes aside, is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth?

Or, in other words, can we stop this even if we want to? Earth will continue changing as it will continue rotating, and we might as well take our minds off what we cannot change and work a little bit more on what we can, i.e. the misery of mankind.

You say that like you're thinking of "one man" affecting an entire planet.

Think of it this way, the surface area of the planet is 5.1x10E8 km^2, but there are 6.75 billion people alive today.

The real question is, can "one man" have an impact on their own personal share of 0.07556 km^2? That's only 7.6 hectares per person, of which only 2.2 hectares is 'land', which includes mountains, desert, and ice. This leaves about 1 hectare of productive land for each human being.

So the better question to ask is:

Are men capable of changing the properties of something as huge as 1 hectare each?

I'd say: YES

Re:I am not scared

[popo]

Please define the difference between "environmental change", and "environmental damage". Do you believe that the current environmental "stasis" (however incredibly brief it is, by any measure of geologic time) is somehow "good" and any deviation from this stasis is "bad"?

Do you believe that climate is static, consistent and invariable? (There are mountains of data to refute this).

Do you believe that changes in climate are inherently "bad"? Do you believe that it is possible to differentiate between man-made climatic shifts and naturally occurring climatic shifts? How? Do you believe that a man-made influence on the environment is "worse" than a naturally occurring climatic shift? Why?

Do you subscribe the puritanical view of causation whereby actions and causations which are man-made, are by definition 'evil'?

Re:I am not scared

[TheLink]

> From the article it sounds as if the issue in questions is water supply and how changing the normal rate of glacial melt could change how people live.

They may be able to fix that:

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4932332-indian-engineer-builds-glaciers-to-fight-climate-change

Quote: As of this year he has built 10 artificial glaciers, using a simple system of pipes and stone dams to pool and direct streams of water into heavily shaded parts of valleys above a given village. During winter the pools become thick ice masses - frozen water tanks for farmers who need reliable summer flows as a hedge against changing weather patterns.

Some people have done glacier growing for a long time:
http://www.umb.no/statisk/noragric/publications/master/2007_ingvar_tveiten.pdf

Quote:
People in the districts of Baltistan and Gilgit practice 'glacier growing' with the intention of
making glaciers that will enhance water availability. This is done by carrying glacier ice from
a naturally occurring glacier up to elevations over 4000 m a.s.l., where it is placed in a dug
out cave in a scree-slope. Apart from the ice, gourds containing water are also added to
interior of the cave. Then a layer of charcoal, and sawdust or wheat husks is put on top of the
ice. The workers close off the cave by piling up rocks to cover the entrance.

Lastly, by growing many glaciers, you can affect the albedo of a mountain, or even a mountainous region and thus affect local climate. Darker mountains absorb more heat and thus lose ice faster, reverse that by making more glaciers and other glaciers could appear without you having to make them directly.

Re:I am not scared

[Tumbleweed]

Is that the main cause of climate change? That is what the real arguments are about.

There is no real argument among the people who are actually professionals in that particular field. The only arguments I hear are from the aggressively ignorant who claim that anything that is not in the Bible isn't real, and therefore is anti-American. Even claiming that "we don't know" is a lie perpetrated by these wackos.

The unfortunate part of all this is, it IS too late to stop it. WAY too late. The ending of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" was interesting, where he said something along the lines of, he wanted to make sure people didn't come away from his documentary thinking it was too late to stop it. He also didn't talk about a lot of things that made his scenario much worse. The permafrost melting in Siberia, which makes things MUCH worse, and several other things around Earth that are happening far faster than even some of the nightmare scenarios climatologists have been talking about. It's WAY too late.

The problem then becomes, can we use technology to reverse it? Probably so, if we were willing to invest in some sort of global Manhattan-scale project to do something with nanotechnology or some other grandiose not-yet-there technology. But with the current climate of people being misled into thinking that this is even not real, that's NEVER going to happen. It's just not; that's a total fantasy. This may be the Fermi Paradox at work, though I doubt it'll get that bad. We can probably adapt to any Man-made disaster short of total nuclear annihilation. But the population left over may be quite a small fraction of what we have now. Not that Mother Nature would consider that a bad thing. It seems it's time to cull the herd. I'd just rather not be one of the ones culled.

Re:I am not scared

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Yep. And I had another number wrong. its should have been 90% of the atmosphere is within *7km* of the surface not 50km. But as you point out almost everything that affects life is within 5km.

After I hit submit I found a site that made a really easy analogy.

If the Earth was the size of an apple (the fruit) the atmosphere would have the same thickness as the peel at that scale.

That really puts it into a perspective people can wrap their head around with a bit less effort.

Re:I am not scared

[LKM]

The results of global warming won't be just a bit of lacking water, and a bit of infrastructure won't fix it; instead, we will lose a lot of fertile soil within a short amount of time. As a result, almost every required resource will be available in lower quantities. This might very likely cause a widespread destabilisation of political structures, and probably a few decades of global war, until human population goes down to a level that is sustainable again.

Some people seem to think that global warming will mean that they will be able to go bathing in the lake in summer, so yay, more bathing! No. This is not going to be the same world, except a little bit warmer.

Re:I am not scared

[Tom]

is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth?

man? no.

But men - yes. Your intuition fails at the huge dimensions involved here, because it evolved to deal with the small immediate surroundings of you and your tribe on the plains of africa.

We are talking about 7 billion people, eating, shitting in the woods, making fire to cook their food, and - increasingly many of them - driving cars, flying planes, burning fuel to generate electricity and so on. Wolfram Alpha computes we use 86 million barrels of oil every day.

Unless you can create a picture in your mind of 86 million barrels a day, every day, build that up to a year, and then to a decade or five, I strongly suggest you stop relying on intuition and common sense and start relying on science and data.

Re:I am not scared

[h7]

We only have records for a couple 100 years. Only when we get the data for the other millions of years can we accept your statement as fact.

Re:I am not scared

[UnHolier than ever]

To create a picture in your mind:

86M barrels per day corresponds to ~158 m^3/s.

This is equivalent to the average discharge of a middlish river. The Shannon, for example, has a discharge of 186 m^3/s. The Potomac has ~300m^3/s on average. The River Thames is only ~65m^3/s.

So, stand on the London bridge and have a look below. The total usage of oil in the world is twice that, every single second.

Re:I am not scared

[Joce640k]

The peel sounds way too thick to me, 7 / 12752 gives 0.05% (five hundredths of one percent). More like the layer of wax they put on it the apple to make it shiny.

The SciFi image of an atmosphere extending into space is very, very wrong, but I bet it's what most people think of when they deny that man can change things..

Re:I am not scared

[Vintermann]

I for one like the climate conditions on Earth in which civilization arose. If that's threatened by natural climate change one day, I'll suppose my descendants can decide how to deal with it, if at all. Hopefully it might be gradual enough for adaption.

But it's not natural change which is a threat to our civilization-friendly climate today. Nor is it necessarily gradual enough for adaption without great human suffering.

My actions aren't by definition evil, but taking responsibility for them means realizing the possibility that they could be.

Photos from the same spot but not the same season

[drmerope]

So we have a few photographs and the conclusion that the ice loss is devastating--despite no investigation as to whether the photographs were taken during the same day of the year nor as to what the internal variability is. But still, the editors immediately jump to the ice loss is devastating and that the mid-century prediction of the AR4 is right after all.

Nonsense, the glaciers are monitored very closely and the loss-rates are calculated to be very slow. The AR4 prediction was, of course, the center of a big scandal because it was basically a fabrication, whereas the actual science is deep and gives several hundred years.

News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

About 10k years ago, there was glacier over a mile thick right where I am sitting.

Must have been all those SUV driving woolly mammoth bastards!

Re:News Flash!

[Rakshasa Taisab]

And we also know that temperatures are moving towards a climate singularity just like the technology singularity, changing at ever faster speeds due to natural causes.

Re:News Flash!

[danerthomas]

When you live in an area such as Stockholm where you see direct evidence of the most recent ice age and post-glacial rebound it makes you wonder just how much of this warming trend is anthropogenic. What percentage of the information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age must we ignore in order to make our current interglacial period all our fault? How conceited do we have to be in order to come to the conclusion that we can: A) Determine the optimal level of glaciation and, B) Determine the means by which to stabilize the climate of the earth so as to maintain this level? Don't get me wrong, I commute by bike as often as possible, didn't have more than 2 kids, drive a car that gets over 30 mpg (and drive it less than 6000 miles a year), recycle as much as possible, purchase locally grown and ecologically produced food and in general, try to tread lightly. I think I do all of these things for the right reasons, but I'm not under the illusion that my doing so is going to prevent global warming or "save the earth".

Re:News Flash!

[vux984]

About 10k years ago, there was glacier over a mile thick right where I am sitting.

Must have been all those SUV driving woolly mammoth bastards!

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to see us avoid another ice age if possible. I don't much relish the thought of having to leave everything behind to flee a mile think sheet of ice. Some twit telling me its a 'natural cycle' isn't going to make that any easier. ;)

Re:News Flash!

[biryokumaru]

Ah yes, recycling... Didn't Penn and Teller do an episode on that?

And what does having fewer kids have to do with anything? Are you trying to breed "ecological concern" out of the species in favor of "religious fundamentalism that doesn't believe in birth control and doesn't give a crap about the planet?" Because that's what happening when you have less kids.

Re:News Flash!

[slater.jay]

Today: Look out! There's a glacier on the horizon!
Tomorrow: Look out! There's a glacier on the horizon!
...
Slightly more than a year later: Look out! The glacier is almost here!

(Using 20-30 meters per day as a speed, per Wikipedia).

Re:News Flash!

[Lumpy]

Yup most sane people understand that recycling at home is useless (in the separate your crap containers to feel good about yourself) Recycling in general IS effective. Lead recycling is hugely successful and has significantly reduced the need for mining new lead. Steel and metals recycling is hugely sucessful, almost all foundries use scrap metal in their furnaces. Plastics recycling makes us that horribly overpriced plastic decking that the rich people use to feel good on their new 6800 sq foot 8 bedroom home for 2, but there are other things that are real uses like fleece.. just don't get it near open flame as that crap goes up faster than gasoline soaked rags...

Composting at home is recycling that does work well.

Recycling works, it is that feel good, separate your trash, recycling at the curb that is fake. In fact more could be done to help the environment by having these feel good yuppie environmentalists STOP drinking bottled water. Bottled water is really bad for the environment as most bottling plants destroy the aquifer for the area they tap into for the real spring water.... The rest is just city water put in plastic bottles that are not recycled if you don't take the cap and ring off. because the makers are too stupid to make the cap and bottle out of the same plastic. Well not too stupid, it's on purpose... Cheapest price is far more important that recyclability.

Re:News Flash!

[ultranova]

What percentage of the information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age must we ignore in order to make our current interglacial period all our fault?

It doesn't matter who's fault it is; what matters is what consequences it has for us, and what can we do about it if - as is likely - the consequences are bad.

How conceited do we have to be in order to come to the conclusion that we can: A) Determine the optimal level of glaciation and,

Optimal level of glaciation from our point of view is what our infrastructure is built for, which of course would be the current one, or the one a few decades back.

B) Determine the means by which to stabilize the climate of the earth so as to maintain this level?

Now this is an interesting question. In the long term the most effective means would likely be to control the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth with space-based sunshades and mirors, but right now we don't really have many tools besides controlling the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

Re:News Flash!

[Vintermann]

When you live in an area such as Stockholm where you see direct evidence of the most recent ice age and post-glacial rebound it makes you wonder just how much of this warming trend is anthropogenic.

Ah, yes, that's the problem with climate scientists. They don't appreciate the personal impact of seeing scouring marks on mountains, so they forget that there's been an ice age recently!

Uh, NO. No one ever said "the current interglacial period was all our fault". Ice ages and interglacials are caused by Milankovich cycles, small variations in the earth's orbit and axial tilt.

It's just one thing: those orbital anomalies cause only a very, very small change in temperature by themselves. Not nearly enough to move the earth in and out of an ice age. Yet they have been found to be an excellent explanation for them. Why is that?

Because of climate feedbacks. As white ice sheets melt and turns into dark ocean, the sun absorbs more of the energy striking it. As the oceans warm, their capacity to dissolve gases is reduced, causing them to release higher amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Causing further warming, causing further melting. The earth keeps warming, but all things that become warmer emit more heat radiation. Eventually it becomes hot enough that the heat radiation out is in balance with the additional energy absorbed. But by then the tiny change in temperature from an orbital change has turned an ice age into an interglacial.

I recommend you start read Uppsalainitiativet since you presumably speak Swedish.

Re:News Flash!

[Culture20]

Are you trying to breed "ecological concern" out of the species in favor of "religious fundamentalism that doesn't believe in birth control and doesn't give a crap about the planet?" Because that's what happening when you have less kids.

I wasn't aware that ecological concern was a genetic trait. I also wasn't aware that religious people "don't give a crap about the planet". I suppose the term "stewards of the Earth" comes from the UFO-origins crowd.

Re:News Flash!

[Rutefoot]

They use different plastics because they are produced using different methods. The bottle is produced by injection molding the top part with the threading and blow molding the rest. There are many things that have to be taken into account when choosing the right polymer to use (and price is only one of them). The ability to blow mold, the strength of the plastic (ie the ability to stack several cases of water on top of each other, amounting to potentially thousands of pounds), the flexibility (A bottle with little flexibility could puncture easily. The injection molded lid then has to have different characteristics in order to work properly. Trust me, the makers are not stupid. A water bottle is incredibly complex and it takes enormous amounts of knowledge and experience to create. You need understandings of biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and economics to design that little thing that costs pennies to make.

To summarize: Try and design something that has the following characteristics (which is only a fraction of what is required) then come back and tell me that bottle designers are stupid:

1)Has to contain a liquid without leaking
2)Has to be relatively puncture proof
3)Has to be lightweight
4)Has to be cheap
5)Needs to be manufactured quickly and must be able to be produced by machine perfectly every time.
6)Has to be able to support thousands of pounds while filled with liquid without breaking or deforming (this isn't an exaggeration. Cases of water will be stacked 6 or 7 tall on a pallet then two or three more full pallets will be stacked on top of that.)
7)Has to be ergonomic
8)Has to withstand heat and freezing temperatures and the tendency for the liquid inside to expand when frozen
9)Has to have a unique shape for branding purposes and still meet all the above criteria
10)Needs to be designed to maximize the quantity on a pallet and in turn maximize the quantity on a truck. Most bottles have short necks for this reason (then go and try and create a short neck that is capable of withstanding weight)
11) The lid needs to be able to be removed easily, but still is able to withstand the weight, the pressure and the temperature changes without leaking.

Re:News Flash!

[sjs132]

I'm not rich, and my home is much-much(x6) smaller, but I like that decking. Does it make me feel good? Not in the least bit... I hadn't even though about that until your post. I guess I should be happy that trees are not cut down for my deck covering, but I still live in a house made of sticks.

I guess it would be better if we all crawled back into caves? Now that's a feel good idea. How about self-recycling? You could compost yourself in a forest and do good for the planet to. (Think how low of a carbon footprint you'd achieve!) :)

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

That *MAY* be true for your neck of the woods, but it is not true everywhere. In many locals at home recycling is very effective at reducing waste and reducing the carbon foot print of the city.

I have several friends involved in my city's recycling system. By conservative estimates, the city's recycling reduces overall carbon footprint (including energy used to recycle and transport) by 15%. That is also the most extreme conservative estimate. The last independent review put it at closer to 22%.

Part of this success is that recycling at home is part of a larger system of sustainable living for the city and region. It is at this point part of the local culture and you are more likely to see an average house produce between 50% to 70% recycling and only 50% to 30% trash on any given "trash day".

Another example you used would be water and soda bottles. Both require a deposit when purchased. That deposit is refunded when recycled (any store that sells them is required to be recycling collections spot). This has resulted in about 82% of these objects being returned for deposit and recycled and an estimated 7% being recycled without deposit returned.

Re:News Flash!

[Artifakt]

So long as 'Man-made' and 'Supernatural' are both common antonyms to 'Natural', natural is a word to use very cautiously. On Slashdot, it's also most frequently misused by the very same people who misuse 'Rational' to mean 'Reasonable', and 'Logical' to mean 'Scientific' (and various combinations of these). (In the wider world, 'natural' is as often misused by the same people who aren't clear about the differences between 'illegal' and 'immoral' - that seems less frequent around here).
      As a preternaturalist, all this bugs me enough to hope something with tentacles does some pruning.

Re:News Flash!

[tbannist]

Also, it should be noted that Penn and Teller sometimes miss obvious things because they don't properly research before debunking. For instance, I'm betting they totally missed the fact that recycling (at least here) is a municipal program and the people who do the recycling make money because they are contracted to do the work. The municipality probably looses money on the actual recycling but that's not the goal of the program. It's about saving money on landfill, by diverting significant amounts of garbage (I think my city has hit a 50% diversion rate) the municipal government doesn't have to use as much landfill space and that saves a lot of money on building new dumps or transporting garbage to other dumps.

Re:News Flash!

[Vintermann]

Ask yourself why would someone want to compare the rate of change of temperature to the rate of change of CO2?

It's not even obvious how those are expected to corellate. Why not look at temperature and CO2 levels directly?

Because the results from that would be too hard to weasel away from. But if you have a noisy dataset, you are a lot less likely to be able to prove correlation between the derivatives. Thus you get the lack of conclusion that you want.

This retreat to the derivative is a special case of the general denialist strategy (not only in climate change, but in everything exposed to political hackery): If you throw out enough data, the results become "inconclusive".

Taking a needless derivative or two is an easy way to throw away data. It looks impressively mathy, too.

The choice of the Sargasso sea as the one and only reliable climate proxy is another example of throwing out data. This simple variant is what we call cherry picking.

And what season were these taken?

[Delgul]

The first in mid-winter? The second high-summer? We don't know. And that is exactly the problem. Every time some alarmist 'scientist' comes with this kind of 'evidence' they leave something out. We just cannot trust these guys anymore...

Re:And what season were these taken?

[Anonymous Coward]

Glaciers are not snowfields, they show almost no seasonal change

Re:And what season were these taken?

[PhilHibbs]

Also, picture was taken in September 1921, so ice would have been at its lowest point anyway if it was seasonal. No-one climbs Everest in winter, at least they didn't in 1921.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA doesn't mention anything about the time of year each of the pictures was taken. It also ignores the fact that some glaciers seem to be growing in the Himalayas
http://news.discovery.com/earth/himalayas-glaciers-shrink.html

Didn't even check if evidence existed

[mrcaseyj]

I don't know about the credibility of this report. Maybe the glaciers are melting because of human CO2, maybe they would have melted anyway, or maybe they aren't even melting. But when the supposedly respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made that mistake in their report where they claimed the Himilayan glaciers would melt by 2035, it exposed more than a simple mistake. It showed that for their report, the IPCC didn't do what you would expect, which is thoroughly scrutinize what they cited. Nor did they look over what they cited to see if it was reasonable. No, they didn't bother with all that. They didn't even check to see if the evidence they cited about the effects of global warming EVEN EXISTED.

The entire climate science community has defended "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline" so that people wouldn't see how bad their evidence is, instead of criticizing the hiding of results that cast major doubt on their evidence. None of them have any credibility left, and will never get it back until they condemn instead of defend "Mike's Nature trick".

My criticism of climate science on Slashdot are routinely the target of moderator abuse, so watch the down moded comments for good stuff.

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[Anonymous Coward]

So in a 3000 page report, you can point to one minor error, in the section for policymakers (not scientists), which was dealt with correctly in the section for scientists, which was picked up by an author of that section... to abandon over 100 years of climate change science?

Your posts aren't getting modded down because of moderator abuse. They're getting modded down because you're a gullible moron.

But as you can see from this thread, the denialist moderators are out in force tonight.

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[Yvanhoe]

Take a respected science publication. Take "Nature" if you wish. From 2008. Count how many of the reputable, scientific publications there have been contradicted since then. 3000 pages of science without mistakes, without errors are not 3000 pages of up-to-date science. Having just two mistakes in the report is actually incredible. I am sure we will find more, this is an ongoing work. Misquotes, honest but dumb errors, happen to very good scientists. Being a top scientist doesn't mean you don't make mistake, but that you correct them when they are pointed out, even if it means questioning your basic premises.

Does the errors about glaciers ice loss question the existence of climate change ? No. Was this ever considered ? Hell yes. Actually, when one reads the actual IPCC report, you would see that it is far from alarming. I used to be a "soft denier" when I discovered that much of my claims were already there. The rise is small and slow, the link to human activity is credible but a lot of uncertainty factors are underlined, the rise being a long term natural cycle is not ruled out, etc...

The warming is not an invention. First measures apparently were a bit too high and over-estimated the rise. They have been corrected since and a rise is still present. I pity climatologists. They are trying to do good science in a very heavy political context. That must be very hard.

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[meringuoid]

None of them have any credibility left, and will never get it back until they condemn instead of defend "Mike's Nature trick".

Just to be sure you're not a crank: could you explain to us what "Mike's Nature trick" was, what was in "decline" and how it was hidden? I mean, you're not just regurgitating memes from denialist blogs, right? You do actually know what you're talking about, right?

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[mrcaseyj]

Before the climate gate emails were released I had heard of the "hockey stick" but I didn't look into it because I thought it was probably just anti-science oil company propaganda. But after hearing about the trick to "hide the decline", I looked into it more. Climate scientists wanted to get rid of the medieval warm period because if temps were just as warm in the recent past, then there couldn't be much worry about today. So they found some tree rings that showed temps were cool back in the medieval warm period. Problem was that some of these trees were saying that temps were also cool during the last 50 years. Instead of eliminating these lying trees from the data set, they covered up the inconvenient data for the last 50 years from the lying trees with thermometer measurements and left us to think that these lying trees were telling the truth about the temperatures 1000 years ago.

There seems to be two main defenses given by the climate science community for these cover ups. One is that some of the trees don't show this "divergence" from the thermometer temperatures. But if it is true that they have trees that give good data, then why not exclude the trees that lie? They can't claim they're reluctant to cherry pick the trees because this whole temperature from tree rings procedure demands picking out trees that are growth limited only by temperature and not anything else like water or CO2, and therefore cherry picking is inherently part of the process. And besides, even if they ought to leave the lying trees in, that's still no excuse to "hide the decline" in the final results.

The other defense is that other studies by other researchers using other proxies, like sediments, have come to similar conclusions about the medieval warm period. But that's kind of like saying "My methods may have been corrupt, but my good buddies who have defended my corrupt methods, have gotten similar results in their research." This defense doesn't alleviate my concerns. And even getting correct results doesn't justify corrupt methods.

If you think my criticisms of the hockey stick are harsh, imagine what the climate science community would think if someone like an oil company used similar methods in some research. Imagine an oil company found the medieval warm period was much hotter than today, but their results were based in part on rings from trees that showed temperatures from the last 50 years were much hotter than they really were, and the oil companies hid the results from the lying trees by replacing them with thermometer temps. But of course nobody would criticize that method if sediment studies from other oil companies showed the same results, right?

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[Joce640k]

The medieval warm period happened in northern Europe. At a global level there was no "medieval warm period".

Here's the pesky facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#By_world_region

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/werent-temperatures-warmer-during-the-medieval-warm-period-than-they-are-today/

Sorry for bursting your cozy little bubble.

Re:Didn't even check if evidence existed

[Attila Dimedici]

According to the Wikipedia cite, it is known that it occurred in Europe and the North Atlantic, but the evidence for the rest of the world is inconclusive. Your other cite is a website that is home to AGW propagandists, while it bases its viewpoints on scientific evidence, it also dismisses out of hand any scientific evidence that does not support AGW and it promotes greater government regulation. Climate scientists who support AGW would go a long way towards improving their credibility if they would stop promoting "solutions" and stick to declaring what they perceive to be happening.
One of the interesting things about the medieval warm period (even if it was localized to Europe and the North Atlantic) and the little ice age (which the concensus agrees was global) that followed is that storms in the North Atlantic were more mild during the warm period and more violent during the little ice age which followed, which is exactly the opposite of what the AGW Alarmists tell us should be the case.

This makes sense

[hopejr]

Nepal's power is run from hydro installed by the Russians many years ago. The generators are on the rivers that contain run-off from the Himalayas. I used to live there ('99-'01) and there was enough problems with lack of water then for us to have many brown outs. But lately, friends over there have been telling me that the power has been out for weeks on end, with hospitals, etc, having to constantly run their diesel generators, increasing the already excessive amount of pollution in the air, especially around Kathmandu. They've been saying that it's because the rivers have had hardly any water in them, which is caused by the decreasing amount of ice on the mountains.

Re:This makes sense

[Delgul]

Well... If it melts at an alarming rate, should they not have had MORE water to drive those powerplants with? This proves nothing! If it proves anything at all, it is that there is less melting going on...

Re:Yes, you can trust me, I'm a professor

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

Yes, there are people who study these things, and who get research grants to do so. Grants that in NO WAY influence the conclusions of such research? Reducing use of fossil fuels is a noble cause, but using AGW as the reason is akin to telling a teenage boy to stop what he's doing because he's gonna go blind!

Re:The Newest Wave of Warmist Alarm

[bug1]

Furthermore just as with most other Warmist alarm-filled propaganda, they give no hard data

As opposed to the climate change deniers who release 900 page reports reviewed by the elite of the world scientific community with only 1 or 2 mistakes in them ?

Hmm, actually, no. Its the "Warmists" who are releasing the hard data, its the deniers who are a lunatic propaganda followers with a "Flat earth society" culture.

Get a grip

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[martin-boundary]

Unfortunately, the images in TFA are a bit misleading, as they are not taken from the same point. If you look closely, you'll find that the black and white image only starts about 20% into the left of the color image, and similarly the color image ends too soon, about 20% on the right of the black and white image.

To visually compare the images properly, the color image needs to be turned into grayscale, and the two images need to be cut so that they can be properly superimposed. When this is done, the loss is a bit less impressive, but still noticeable in the valley if not on the mountains.

Get it right, damn it.

[kurokame]

Since it's inevitable that this will devolve into a bunch of AGW/anti-AGW trolling, let's get our facts straight.

No one with any knowledge about the subject is disputing that climates change. The disputed points are that human-produced carbon dioxide is or is not a significant factor, that Al Gore does or does not have any clue what he's blabbing about, and that the green movement does or does not constitute anything more than lies and snake oil.

Anthropogenic or not, climate change is a serious issue which affects the future of our species. The people who support (or object to) AGW by chanting an entrenched position over and over, and the people selling us snake oil as a "fix" are NOT helping. In fact, they're probably selling the future of humanity off in order to make a quick buck off of people who get their science from Twitter and Fox News.

Slinging around words like "denialist" doesn't help a damn thing either. Have we forgotten Godwin's Law so quickly?

With that said, the "before and after" photo trick is extremely passe. It is good for gulling the public, but little more since you only have two data points and are doing absolutely nothing to control for any of numerous confounding factors. It doesn't tell you crap about local conditions (pollution? construction? traffic? did someone just set off dynamite as an anti-avalanche measure?). It doesn't tell you about shorter-term cycles of climate variation (what's normal? was it unusually heavy in the "before" photo? was there more or less pollution historically? what about solar cycles?). It doesn't tell you about the cause of the climate trend if any exists, and it absolutely does not tell you a single bloody thing about the global situation.

Nor is this "incontrovertible" proof all that clear. The saturation in the 1921 photo is such that it is very hard to compare the two photos directly; you would need to analyze each in detail including examining the depth in a given area, the seasonal and longer-term variations, the characteristics of the camera and film used in either photo...the list goes on. The "experts say" line is a bullshit maneuver pulled by journalists in order to make their craptastic statements of absolute truth seem like they have some authority behind them - in reality, it usually means that the journalist is aware that they don't have the means to back up what they're claiming. Three huzzahs for the terrible state of science journalism, eh? FUD and misinformation and more FUD is all you can expect.

Re:Get it right, damn it.

[Tom]

Before you yell "get it right" to others, and then ramble on about "just two data points", how about reading TFA ?

oh, look:

He has not only followed in the footsteps of Mallory but also those of Italian photographer Vittorio Sella, whose work spanned the 19th and 20th Centuries.

The result is a then-and-now series of photographs from Tibet, Nepal and near K2 in Pakistan - all of which show glaciers in retreat.

It appears that there are lots more than just two data points. It's just the /. summary and maybe limited space or journalistic choice at the BBC that made them pick out only one specific picture set to show.

Re:Get it right, damn it.

[bazorg]

[...]No one with any knowledge about the subject is disputing that climates change. The disputed points are that human-produced carbon dioxide is or is not a significant factor[...]

At the risk of writing the asshat post of the month here, I'd say that these news about the Everest are very significant for the politics of this climate change matter: if the governments of that region (representing more than 2 000 000 000 people) assume that it is the human factor that is causing the climate change that is depleting their drinking water resources, their position at the negotiating table with the other governments is likely to change.

As an exercise of rhetoric, it is all very fine and dandy that the developing countries say that their present day pollution should not count towards negotiated limits in the way that England didn't have such limits during the XIX century... but now if the damage is visible in the medium turn and directly in the territories and population of India and China, then let's see if they will take the driver's seat in negotiations and mitigating the effects of their pollution.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[thestuckmud]

"Nonsense"???

We have a lot more than a few photographs supporting this. The worldwide retreat of glaciers is well established and is know to acutely affect the Himalayas, potentially threatening water supplies for millions of people.

Also, can you provide some sort of reference for your claim that the photos were taken in different seasons? I find this unlikely, since the regularity of the Monsoon storms and lengthy acclimatization process tend to force Everest climbers to focus their efforts during the same season each year. There are exceptions, but it is unlikely that Breashears would have intentionally chosen to retrace the old expeditions steps for documentary purposes off season.

Finally, why focus on the erroneous report, when the correct prediction suggests dire consequences for millions of people who rely on the rivers fed by those glaciers. "Several hundred years" might seem like a long time, but it is a geological blink of an eye. We should be very concerned.

Global warming and you.

[jcochran]

Sigh. When the global warming people are able to explain just a couple of minor details, then and only then will I believe them. Here are a few little facts that tend to be conveniently omitted when global warming is mentioned.

1. Yes, there is a definite positive correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. Using ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc., this has been confirmed. But the fly in the ointment is that the CO2 levels *lag* the temperature changes by 40 to 50 years. Excuse me? The "cause" of the global warming happens "after" things warm up? That little datum all by its lonesome is rather hard to dispute.

2. The major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere isn't CO2. It's H2O. Yup, plain old water. The effect of the CO2 is about 1 percent of the overall greenhouse effect. And of that 1%, mankind is contributing a much smaller percentage.

3. There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland. Yup, the glaciers are melting and in the process exposing abandoned farms. Hmm. Seems to me that if there were farms where there's currently glaciers, that would imply it being much warmer in the past.

4. And finally, the polar ice on Mars seems to be also shrinking. Guess those probes we've sent there have had a massive effect on Mar's temperature as well.

Seems to me that the global warming crowd have a bit of a secondary agenda running that has nothing what so ever to do with actual global warming. When the above independently verifiable but inconvenient little facts are explained, then I will consider the GW crowd to have done due diligence and be worth listening to. But until then, it's a transparent attempted power grab and quite frankly they can take their propaganda and stuff it into the nearest fireplace. Should make 'em quite happy since paper is carbon neutral and no fossil fuels would be used.

Re:Global warming and you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You would like to think that they get omitted, but your questions have been addressed.

1. But the fly in the ointment is that the CO2 levels *lag* the temperature changes by 40 to 50 years.

This has been answered.

2. The major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere isn't CO2. It's H2O.

This has been answered too.

3. There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland.

They have covered this one as well.

4. And finally, the polar ice on Mars seems to be also shrinking.

Wouldn't you know it, they forgot to omit this question.

Seems to me that the global warming crowd have a bit of a secondary agenda running that has nothing what so ever to do with actual global warming.

That's right, because the big companies behind the denialist movement couldn't have any agenda!

When the above independently verifiable but inconvenient little facts are explained, then I will consider the GW crowd to have done due diligence and be worth listening to.

So will you change your opinion now, or just ignore all this and move on to other pesky facts that the so called "warmers" have allegedly failed to mention.

Re:Global warming and you.

[alexibu]

1. Time lag disproves causality - true, but irrelevent, past changes driven by temperature caused co2 changes. This time we are driving with Co2 and causing temp changes. Coupled system - both effect each other. This is not good news as CO2 begets more temp which begets more CO2 and so on, also these changes happen much slower in past so who knows what happens this time when ocean thermal reservoir catches up.

2. H20 vs CO2. Yes lots more water - difference is that there arn't oceans of CO2 lying around H2o is in equilibrium with liquid water. We couldn't have any effect on H20 concentration directly if we tried. It would rain out if we added it or evaporate out of oceans if we took it out. CO2 on the otherhand is just the right powerful lever to pull and we are yanking it like it's never been yanked before in the history of earth - certainly since mammals were evolved anyway. CO2 also begets H2O which aggreed is most of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is a forcing H2O is a feedback.

3. Viking farm anecdotes. Climate changes - this was not a global phenomenon, and is interesting but doesn't disprove AGW.

4. So you are arguing the point about the temperature record on earth but you think that there is sufficient data on mars global temps to make that statement and use it to disprove AGW (one of the greatest scientific efforts ever) ? Thats just silly.

They have done due diligence but unfortunately - we have to watch the earth get stuffed seriously and rub your face in a post civil society - stuffed planet for you to get it. Plus we actually have to get it before major problems happen because of the decade time lags between action and response in the climate system and the political, engineering time lags, and tipping points.

Some of these points were probably worthy of discussion during the early 1990s.
Maybe this is one of the most important subjects out there and is worth more of your time investigating than just learning enough to parrot other ignoramuses.

Re:Global warming and you.

[PrecambrianRabbit]

These are pretty reasonable questions, but I've seen them answered before. I'll take a crack at them here:

1. Yes, there is a definite positive correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. Using ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc., this has been confirmed. But the fly in the ointment is that the CO2 levels *lag* the temperature changes by 40 to 50 years. Excuse me? The "cause" of the global warming happens "after" things warm up? That little datum all by its lonesome is rather hard to dispute.

CO2 has lagged global temperature changes in the past, but that doesn't mean it can't lead in the future. The geologic record has no precedent for the rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 we've seen since the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, the magnitude of previous warnings can only be explained by the CO2 rise: it didn't start the fire, but it kept it burning.

2. The major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere isn't CO2. It's H2O. Yup, plain old water. The effect of the CO2 is about 1 percent of the overall greenhouse effect. And of that 1%, mankind is contributing a much smaller percentage.

Water is a significant greenhouse gas, but it precipitates out of the atmosphere so readily that it's not as concerning as CO2, which can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Also, 1% is a very low figure for the total heat absorbed by CO2. I think it's more in the 15% neighborhood (but I'm only lightly fact-checking myself here, so please correct if I'm wrong). The larger issue is that global warming is a 1% type of problem. That extra percent can cause significant climactic changes, even if it appears numerically small.

3. There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland. Yup, the glaciers are melting and in the process exposing abandoned farms. Hmm. Seems to me that if there were farms where there's currently glaciers, that would imply it being much warmer in the past.

We do know that some regions have been warmer in the past, so it's entirely plausible that it was warm enough to farm there. It may have been a localized phenomenon, also. The issue with the current climate is that we're currently looking at a very rapid temperature increase, with few brakes in sight and possible feedback loops. We probably don't want to race past "farms in Greenland" and into hot water.

4. And finally, the polar ice on Mars seems to be also shrinking. Guess those probes we've sent there have had a massive effect on Mar's temperature as well.

Nobody (sane) ever claimed that there was only one variable affecting climate, so Mars could very well be warming for reasons totally different from ours. Climate models don't show that solar effects could account for all Earth's recent warming, AFAIK.

The bottom line is that we understand most of the major climate forcings, including CO2, and can model climate with enough accuracy to say that the globe is increasingly, if gradually, warming, and will continue to do so if we continue to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. There are climate fluctuations in the record, but they're useful more in calibrating the models and understanding climate as a whole, because CO2 release on a modern scale simply has not happened before.

Seems to me that the global warming crowd have a bit of a secondary agenda running that has nothing what so ever to do with actual global warming.

I don't have an agenda other than that people attempt to understand and accept what's happening, physically, when deciding on an appropriate political response. Personally, I'd like to see more efforts on deploying concentrated solar power, photovoltaics, wind turbines, and electric vehicles.

Re:Global warming and you.

[jcupitt65]

This is a standard list of objections, all of which are addressed by every "top ten climate myths" list every science magazine has ever published.

For example, here's the New Scientist (the UK equivalent of Scientific American) list:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html

It answers all your points (I think) and several others as well.

Re:Global warming and you.

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, there is a definite positive correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. Using ice core samples, tree growth rings, etc., this has been confirmed. But the fly in the ointment is that the CO2 levels *lag* the temperature changes by 40 to 50 years. Excuse me? The "cause" of the global warming happens "after" things warm up? That little datum all by its lonesome is rather hard to dispute.

The whole reason why GW is perceived as so dangerous is that it is a positive feedback loop - warming up means more CO2 means more warming up. Historically, some other reason for warming (e.g. Sun) would also trigger that cycle, so no surprise there.

The major greenhouse gas in our atmosphere isn't CO2. It's H2O. Yup, plain old water. The effect of the CO2 is about 1 percent of the overall greenhouse effect.

H2O is in equilibrium - if you add more to the atmosphere, the excess will fall out as precipitation. But if you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, it stays there. We don't care about the part that cannot change no matter what happens, it's just "always there" (similar to ocean albedo, for example). But that "tiny 1%" can grow practically indefinitely, and what's worse, it's that positive feedback loop again, so the effects are exponentially proportional to the amount we add, rather than linearly.

There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland. Yup, the glaciers are melting and in the process exposing abandoned farms. Hmm. Seems to me that if there were farms where there's currently glaciers, that would imply it being much warmer in the past.

Yeah, it's called a Medieval warm period, and it was pretty much localized to North Atlantic. The mean surface temperature during it was actually below what we had 40 years ago. Other places were actually much colder. North America had some major droughts, by the way - I presume you're planning your move to Greenland already?

And finally, the polar ice on Mars seems to be also shrinking.

Mars has different atmosphere and different orbit, and its caps are covered by frozen CO2 - dry ice - which likely changes their interaction with everything else. Also, the observed changes in the caps mostly have to do with dry ice, not with water ice.

Overall, it's a system that plays by entirely different rules which we don't presently understand anywhere nearly as well as those on Earth, so it's unclear what - if any - relevance it has to Earth GW discussion. Anyway, here is one take on why the Martian caps shrink.

Re:Global warming and you.

[Eunuchswear]

2. Still missing the point:

"It is however, not considered a climate "forcing," because the amount of H2O in the air basically varies as a function of temperature"

And the same thing with CO2 (see above). Wow, isn't that nice? The AGW crowd can't even remain consistent. So please do tell, what is temperature a function of? God forbid the sun right, that doesn't exist. Modern flat earthers.

No, you are completely missing the point.

Yes, CO2 increases as a function of temperature.

So in the past, without CO2 being released by human activity, CO2 lagged temperature rise.

But CO2 is now rising because it's being released by human activity. Which, as CO2 is a greenhous gas causes temperature rise, (which will, as in the past, cause more CO2 to be released).

What part of this is too hard to understand - oh, that's right, you can't hear it because you've got your fingers stuck in your ears as you sing lalallalala...

Re:Global warming and you.

[drinkypoo]

So your proof that CO2 causes a SIGNIFICANT rise in temperature is that CO2 causes a rise in temperature. Fantastic. AGW -- the new age anti-science religion.

The proof that CO2 will causes a significant rise in temperature lies in physics. CO2 is a known greenhouse gas and releasing more of it contributes to the greenhouse effect. Man puts out orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism which we know to be a major driver of global climate for a variety of reasons but most certainly including CO2 release. The simple truth is that by your own description the CO2 system is a feedback loop, which is another fairly simple concept today. So basically, you can try to ignore physics, but that doesn't usually work so well for people. If you would like to pretend that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, perhaps you'd also like to pretend that objects at motion do not tend to stay at motion, and throw yourself in front of a speeding bus.

I bet you deny that CO2 causes oceanic acidification, too.

Re:Global warming and you.

[Coryoth]

There seems to be some viking farms being uncovered in Greenland. Yup, the glaciers are melting and in the process exposing abandoned farms. Hmm. Seems to me that if there were farms where there's currently glaciers, that would imply it being much warmer in the past.

Do you actually have a cite for this, because it would be significant news to me -- not the fact that there were Norse farms in Greenland, but that there are Norse farms that are only now being uncovered by retreating glaciers. You see, as far as I know (and I've had an ongoing interest in the Norse settlements in Greenland) all the settlements that were ever mentioned in historical records have been accounted for -- the Eastern and Western settlements. For some time no-one quite believed in the Eastern settlement, until they eventually found it, not quite where people were expecting. So, two settlements known from records, two settlements found. Are either of those settlements under ice? It seems Google maps and satellite photos can come to out aid. Consider these Googlemaps images of the sites for the Western and Eastern Settlements:

  Eastern settlement area, and Eastern settlment map
  Western settlement area, and Western settlement map.

Just for reference, here is a zoom of the area of the Brattahlid and Gardar farms (two of the largest/richest farms), and a zoom of the Sandnes farm area from the Western settlement.

Want more? How abut on the ground photos of the ruins?
Gardar ruins
Bratthlid ruins
Hvalsey church

Obviously not "under ice", but rather sitting in what are nice green pastures (the benefits of being situated in fjords). So can you tell me where the newly discovered settlements that are being revealed by retreating glaciers are to be found?

Re:Yes, you can trust me, I'm a professor

[Eunuchswear]

Grants that in NO WAY influence the conclusions of such research?

Please explain the mechanism. How could a research grant affect the outcome of the research? Do you have any concrete examples.

Or are you merely trying to smear the honesty of all reseach scientists for narrow, short-sighted political reasons?

The present rate never just continues

[hsthompson69]

Gotta love the cherry picking here. Take two arbitrary end points, get a downward slope, and then simplistically extend that slope forever. Never mind that another two end points would provide an upwards slope and reverse the prediction. Never mind that the system behaves in a demonstrably non-linear manner.

This is like saying the temperature from July to December decreased 20 degrees, and if that rate continued, we'll be at -200C in another ten years. I call BS on the church of global warming.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[hsthompson69]

when the correct prediction suggests dire consequences for millions of people who rely on the rivers fed by those glaciers. "Several hundred years" might seem like a long time, but it is a geological blink of an eye. We should be very concerned.

The problem is that if we take the measures often suggested by warmists, and increase energy prices by eschewing the cheapest forms of energy available to us, we'll drive the poorest of the poor deeper into poverty and despair in several hundred days. If you're willing to assert we should be concerned about the fate of millions of people hundreds of years from now, surely you'll admit that we should be more concerned about millions of people hundreds of days from now, right?

Hubris?

[N0Man74]

I really don't know the answer to how much of climate change is man-made. I tend to think that it's possible we have had some impact, but I can't say to what degree. However, I do have a few thoughts on the matter:

Even if our impact on climate is minimal to none, we certainly do have impact on our habitats and environments. Even if we aren't creating a greenhouse effect, I think it's a very good idea to pursue renewable resources and cleaner living so that we can prevent discomfort, health problems, and harming ecosystems (that again might have long term and indirect impacts on us all). I may doubt that a household can shit enough on their lawn in order to make it uninhabitable, but I think they can make it unpleasant and unhealthy.

You say that it is hubris to suggest we could have an impact on the environment. I say it is hubris to think that we are so smart that we won't screw things up by accident. Not only that, it's in contradiction to history. By accident (or unintentional side-effects), we have created acid rain, we have brought many species to the verge of extinction (without even including those that may be victims of climate change), we have caused diseases and birth defects, we have ruined ecosystems, and we have many small areas uninhabitable. You question whether all the industry and waste of the world in modern times combined could have a negative impact on our environment by accident, when single industrial facilities in one city have been proven to be able to greatly harm local environments by accident.

There may be a question of whether we are doing it, but I honestly do not think there is any question of whether we could. I guarantee we could (if we tried), and it's in the realm of possibility that we might without even trying.

Man has split the atom, left our planet and returned, and mapped code of life. We have imagined strange and amazing things, and then have proven them to exist millions of light years away. We are currently researching ways to not only build artificial intelligence, but even recreating the spark of life itself, and the most incredible thing is that we've gotten to the point that those possibilities don't even seem absurd anymore! Man has done great and terrible things. We will very likely continue to do so.

I don't think you give man enough credit in what we accomplish, or how badly we can botch things.

Re:Hubris?

[AmiMoJo]

The whole "is global warming caused by man?" debate is a bit of a red herring IMHO.

Even if we didn't do it, it's happening. Even if it isn't happening, pollution and landfill are still major problems we have to solve. Oil is still going to run out.

This is a huge opportunity. People developing green forms of power generation, better recycling methods and more efficient devices stand to make a fortune selling them to the rest of the world. It also saves us money on petrol and waste disposal services (i.e. local taxes).

Re:Hubris?

[Pax681]

Even if we didn't do it, it's happening. Even if it isn't happening, pollution and landfill are still major problems we have to solve. Oil is still going to run out.

This is a huge opportunity. People developing green forms of power generation, better recycling methods and more efficient devices stand to make a fortune selling them to the rest of the world. It also saves us money on petrol and waste disposal services (i.e. local taxes).

hmmz well have a wee look at this, in general it's about recycling however at 21:45 it specifically goes on about lanfills. you might find it very interesting indeed.

seems from this that recycling, apart from tin, isn't the benefit most people think and is generally worse environmentally than making from scratch
Penn and Teller's Bullshit on recycling
Lanfills also can be used, as seen here to help generate power from the gases in it. it gets tapped and voila.. a groovy source of electricity.

if i have got you wrong on what you meant about lanbdfills then sorry bud, howevere it's worth a watch anyways.

Re:Hubris?

[khakipuce]

It's not hubris, it is our second-law-of-thermodynamics destiny. It is why we exist.

The sun is busy doing it's thing, chucking heat out all over the universe, except for this one little annoying planet that is covered in plants and trees. The damn things keep capturing the carbon and eventually store it as fossil fuels, all that energy locked up and unable to escape.

The gods of thermodyanics want an earlier return on their investment, so we evolve to burn the fuel, chop down the trees and generally put back as entropy what was rightly universal entropy before those pesky trees got in the way.

Re:Hubris?

[DavidTC]

What we need to do is stop worrying about separating out things it's inherently stupid to recycle, like paper and glass, which we have essentially an limitless supplies of(1), and start separating out things we really shouldn't be putting in landfills, like batteries.

Fuck 'recycling'. Call me when I have they'll come to my house to pick up smoke detectors. That's the problem in landfills, not people who don't recycle their newspapers. I'm perfectly fine with drinking water that seeped through newspapers. Are you fine with drinking water that seeped through motor oil?

Work on getting the 5% of the landfill that is unsafe from getting put in the landfill, and maybe everyone else will stop caring so much about where landfills are built in the first place. As long as the only only requirement is 'far enough away we can't smell them', we've got plenty of room for them.

1) If someone figures out it's more profitable to recycle glass and paper than to make more, by all means, they should set up some sort of infrastructure to do so...but they shouldn't be asserting it's good 'for the environment' or having government help with it.

Re:Hubris?

[N0Man74]

The above post may have a score of zero, but I think it brings up an interesting point (though I wouldn't have brought in the America vs China sentiment).

We live in a very disposable culture. Our goods (and even our entertainment) tend to be replaced constantly either due to lack of reliability, industries constantly pushing for cycles of obsolescence (either technological, or social) in various products, or even as an intentional feature of the product!

One of our problems is that stagnation, and conservation of resources are enemies to profit and capitalism. It's more profitable to make disposable goods, disposable entertainment, and disposable consumer electronics.

Conserving resources, making cheap and renewable energy, and making products that can last a lifetime are in direct opposition to the interest of businesses and could eventually lead to slowing down the economy in general.

People are talking about red herrings, and I think they are right. The real issue isn't even whether we are causing change, or whether the change even exists.

The real issue is how much money is it worth sacrificing in order to live in a sustainable and clean way. Really, that's what it's all about. Industries don't want to change because it cuts into profits, and conservatives don't want changes forced on them because they feel it takes away their rights (to make more profit).

I'm reminded of a line I vaguely recall from a Kurt Vonnegut novel, where he describes a future message left by an extinct mankind for any possible future alien visitors of Earth.

"Welcome to Earth. We could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap."

Re:Hubris?

[hypergreatthing]

Global warming is part of a cycle. It was warmer in the past, and it was cooler in the past. The water level has risen and fallen in the past as well. What we can't discount is the amount of change that humans have to this cycle. In the last 100 years we've changed the atmosphere more than it's changed over the past 10,000. You can't really fight that fact. How that affects the earth is unknown, hence why people study climate change and try to model predictions. As far as i know we're due for a cooling period, which may have been offset by human activity. Great! Now about that warming period with human activity...

The Ground Realities

[tanveer1979]

Since I live very close to himalayas, I can say with confidence, that things have changed quite a bit.
Is it global warming/regional warming or no warming, I dunno.
But over the past 6-7 years these changes have forced farmers to change crop cycles, modified travel plans of seasonal roads, etc., etc.,

Basically, in the Western himalayas, around November, snowfalls would start, seasonal roads would close by december, and jan feb were heavy snowfall months, with some in April and may.

Now from past few years, there is hardly any snow during December and even January, which leads to lousy apple crop.
Then in feb, it snows some, and in April may and june, well heavy snowfall in higher reaches.
This kills the standing crop.
The entire north India reels under heat wave as there is hardly any winter rain. We start getting summer in feb instead of April.
The mountains start getting snow.

So is it warming or cooling. No idea, but its a big change from what has been happening since 1900 or so(when record keeping started).

Winter rain, at the correct time, and winter snow at correct time is very important for healthy crops. all this cycle change has led to big problems.
To add to that, monsoon summer rain has also reduced. Thankfully, this year, though a bit late, monsoon is mostly adequate, but then here also instead of sustained rain over few days, most places get a cloudburst like havoc creating spell, and then its humid and dry. The dams will get filled up, but areas depending only on rain will suffer.
Such rains also lead to big landslides.

Part of the blame is on local deforestation, and micro climate change in the Himalayan region due to rapid commercialization and deforestation. Since protecting the environment is not yet a major election issue, its just a lip service on world environment day, when we switch of lights for an hour(and then get the routine 10 hour power cut due to overload of AC).

So all in all, pics or no pics, the local weather in western himalayas has changed. Hopefully, this weather pattern will stabilize, and farmers will switch there crop sowing times. But since its still too erratic, its a big problem.

As for global warming, when I see the temperature records for the region since 1900, the average temp has been rising steadily in most places, but whether this warming is caused by humans or not, I dunno. I am not a climatologist and like many people here, I will refrain from posting my theories on the changes.
All that matters to many, is that its getting hotter and drier, and rainfall patterns are shifting alarmingly.
Many glaciers in central himalayas are indeed receding, and its a fact. Not that they are warmer now, but because from past few years, there has been little winter snow in these areas.
The ski slopes of Auli, which used to be snowed out in winters, now are devoid of snow many times. Last year Auli did not get a snow season.
This year in June higher reaches of himachal got a few feet of snow. Not unusual, but definitely unusual in the peak of summer!

So the weather is changing, but who is changing it I dunno. I hope it can be fixed, because it causing a lot of food supply problems. Fruits are out of reach of many, and if this continues, even cereals will become precious.

Re:Wake me when that happens

[Namarrgon]

since you, the warmist, just mistook the deniers for the warmists...

Whoosh....

"That report" had a handful of factual errors in the WG2 section, dealing with the likely consequences of climate change, but no mistakes at all have been identified in the crucial WG1 section, where the veracity of anthropogenic global warming is firmly established. This despite it being one of the most closely-examined scientific reports of our time.

You are treating end results as fact without letting other scientists check your work.

Much of the WG1 data is in fact publicly available. I don't see any systematic analysis papers by reputable scientists challenging WG1's conclusions, only bloggers with an agenda presenting cherry-picked numbers and anecdotes as if they were somehow expecting to be taken seriously. Strangely enough, the thousands of climatologists who have systematically analysed climate data from a variety of unrelated sources and published their findings in peer-reviewed journals almost universally agree with WG1's conclusions. So on which side of the debate is the science fail, exactly?

Not sure why I'm bothering to respond, since your flamebait was modded as such early on this time. You did better when your rants were subjective opinions; it's not working out for you so well since you tried challenging the scientific conclusions of the nearly all the relevant experts on the planet.

Snow cover

[dargaud]

Talking as a mountain climber, and trying to put the discussion back on topic (I see 141 comments, mostly trolling and inevitable answers), I'll just say that comparing pictures for snow covers is misleading, even when taken at the same time of the year. A few inches of snow can be enough to make it appear as if you have lots more. Only depth samples and yearly layer comparisons can give you hindsight. Even comparing the length of a given glacier over time can be misleading: if it rains a lot, it will lubricate the bottom interface between ice and rock and the ice will flow faster, hence a longer glacier (for a while).

Re:Incontrovertible? What garbage

[dbcad7]

I don't think we they talking about yearly snowpack that has melted.. but really thick Ice that is gone or going.. glaciers are not just a bunch of snow.. Now whether or not mankind has caused it, doesn't matter.. What matters is how you plan for the future for people who benefit from the ice, and what will they do if it is no longer there, or diminished.. Water is a staple of life,, surely your not that young, or focused on your own backyard to ignore the famines in history caused by a lack of water.

Re:Incontrovertible? What garbage

[shutdown -p now]

The difference, of course, is that glaciers are much more stable, even on geological timescale. It's not something that can reasonably be compared to a pile of snow in your backyard.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[nothings]

It's true that they're not taken from the same spot, although what you describe could be true of photos taken from the same spot but in slight different directions, or just somebody screwing up the cropping.

However, comparing the prominent S-curves in the foreground reveals a significant difference in perspective/foreshortening that makes it clear that the color photo is taken from a higher elevation. The distant shapes seem to match pretty well so I don't think it's an aspect-ratio fuck-up, although that would be all too common in this modern world where nobody seems able to notice that effect either.

Error in summary - wrong year

[frank_carmody]

I RTFA and it mentions the date '1921' not '1929' as appears in the summary.

Simplistic Arguments

[LKM]

It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that humanity can change the Earth's climate that much, that fast

It takes quite a bit of arrogance to believe that a little virus can kill such a big human that quickly.

I'm sorry, but the real world doesn't work the way you imply. Nature doesn't care about your simplistic intuition of what's possible; the climate isn't a stable system that requires a lot of input to change in fundamental ways. It's constantly in flux, and small changes can cause the balance to shift in fundamental ways.

It's not about saving the planet

[LKM]

You are missing the point. This is not about saving the planet, it's about saving our own asses. Yes, the planet will continue rotating, and will still be here long after we're all dead. But, uh, we won't be here unless we make sure that the planet continues to be able to sustain human life.

The idea that we can't change our planet is defeatist bullshit. In the 80s, people thought that overpopulation would cause major world wars within a decade, that we would have revolutions in Europe, and that billions of people would die. It didn't happen. Why? Because of science. We managed to improve resource usage so much that we were able to sustain ever growing populations (and now we're seeing that at some point, human population stop growing naturally in developed nations without being constrained by a lack of resources, so there's a good chance that we might eventually reach a balance that doesn't involve billions of people dying due to a lack of resources).

Humanity is capable of doing awesome, great things, and there is no reason to believe that we can't solve this problem, if we accept that it is a problem and start actually taking it seriously before it is truly too late.

More than that, bacteria changed the Earth itself

[Kupfernigk]

You've actually understated the (correct) case you are making. The Earth itself is currently habitable by us because bacteria terraformed the Earth - not purposefully, but because their metabolic processes in the early Earth produced oxygen. There is a great deal of knowledge now accumulated about the processes involved. Jay Gould commented once in an article that, in terms of biomass and the effects on the planet, it is still the Age of Bacteria.

Of course, since the crazies posting here think the Earth was sneezed out by the Argleblaster six thousand years ago, there is no arguing with them.

It seems to me that the more scientists learn about the Earth and our place in the Universe, the more the religious fundamentalists disbelieve them. Galileo is bloody lucky he didn't live in Alabama in the 21st century.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[Aceticon]

You remind me about the story on slashdot a little while ago http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/07/14/1235220/Given-Truth-the-Misinformed-Believe-Lies-More

Clearly no amount of information will ever convince those who look at climate change as an "Us against Them" subject (it's all tribalism for them, logic has no bearing) instead of approaching it as a social/economic risk-cost analysis.

Re:Photos from the same spot but not the same seas

[foniksonik]

The poorest of the poor don't use oil for anything. They could care less what the world does with oil. Their great grand children may have a use for it but by then a suitable alternative would be much more useful to them since it's likely they won't be profiting from oil and it will be more scarce regardless of conservation measures.

Further

[sycodon]

In fact, I'll take the analogy even further.

The reason anyone feels the need to declare their environmentalist bonfides is because there is a new bigotry developing, which I will ball the EnviroBigot. This is a person who feels others who do not show the appropriate amount of deference to the "Environment" is any one or all of Stupid, Selfish, Evil.

It allows EnviroBigots to discount policy arguments with a simple dismissals such as "oh, he drives an SUV", or "ignore what he says, he works for Big (Insert most currently reviled industry here)". It saves the EnviroBigot the need to think critically and re-enforces the echo chamber that they call debate.

So everyone get ready. Soon you won't be able to say squat about the environment without first declaring that you are a "friend" to the environment.

Here are some handy dandy phrases you can use...

"I recycle, but I don't think I should have to pay a fine if I miss a can in the trash."

"I really support Alternative Energy, In fact, I have a solar array on my roof. But I think that at this time Nuclear Power is the best bet to reduce carbon emissions"

"I drive a car that gets 1000 miles per gallon and I never use the A/C, but we really do need to keep drilling for oil because it is used for so many other things than just fuel."

Phenology and Climate Change

[ajaxlex]

in the "what are you going to believe, your own eyes?" department...

Research in Phenology (the study of the seasonal changes of plant and animal life) shows significant advances in spring activity at points across the globe.

http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;324/5929/887
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15592880
http://www.seaturtle.org/PDF/Parmesan_2003_Nature.pdf

These are supplemented by anecdotal evidence - particularly in higher latitudes - that things are changing rapidly, and that surroundings are changing with in a generations living memory.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/the-great-global-experim.html

Video with better pictures

[jcaplan]

The photos in the linked article are small and hard to interpret. Better photos with commentary available at: http://asiasociety.org/OnThinnerIce Also check out the "Then and Now link". It shows several other glaciers in the region and shows measurements of the 300-400 feet (122 meters) loss of thickness of ice in several glaciers.

500 replies and no mention of 'Sublimation'

[scorp1us]

The problem is everyone sees ice loss, and assumes melt. It's not melt, it is sublimation.

Sublimation - when solid goes directly to gas is to blame. This is like water ice on Mars evaporating (not melting) into the martian atmosphere. Here on Earth the increased sublimation is caused by land use changes. What was once moist forest at the feet of the mountains, has become drier farm land. This drier air then travels over the mountain and picks up moisture directly from the ice.

How else can you explain ice loss at below-freezing temperatures? You can't just say the "ice melted" unless you show that it is warmer at the peak. These pictures are proof that man is modifying the environment, but only locally, and has nothing to do with temperature.

HO...LEE...SHIT.

[GameboyRMH]

Is this how AGW denialists picture the "post-AGW world?" Some kind of genocidal ultra-authoritarian oligarchic dystopia? Holy fuck, I don't know where to start. I'll just take a stab at it.

Look, it won't be too different from today. Your car will go weeng instead of vroom, there will be nuclear plants in place of coal plants, you'll see more dams and wind turbines, you'll put recyclable garbage in separate bins, and that's basically it.

The "post-AGW world" will look similar to a wealthy Canadian town full of eco-chic yuppies (but hopefully without everyone acting like a pretentious douchebag). No genocide and certainly no shortage of electronics.

I call bullshit

[2names]

6)Has to be able to support thousands of pounds while filled with liquid without breaking or deforming (this isn't an exaggeration. Cases of water will be stacked 6 or 7 tall on a pallet then two or three more full pallets will be stacked on top of that.)

A friend of mine owns the local Culligan water business. I have been in the warehouse many times and have NEVER seen one water bottle holding up 5 or 6 layers of cases of water on its own. In fact, each layer of the pallets have always contained [gasp] the SAME NUMBER OF WATER BOTTLES, which means if the cases are stacked 7 high, each bottle on the bottom only needs to hold up the weight of 6 water bottles and a little extra weight from cardboard and plastic packaging, which doesn't amount to much. Even if you do stack pallets 3 high of 7 layers, each bottle on the bottom layers is probably holding up roughly 30 lbs, which is much less than your "thousands of pounds" claim.

I should probably tell my friend to let the rest of the bottled water industry know that they no longer have to balance 6 layers of cases of water onto a single bottle. It gets tricky moving those stacks around with a skid loader.

Re:Dismissing your nonsense

[thestuckmud]

"Exceptionally ill informed"? Really?

If you don't believe Breashears' photos in this news blurb, try the videos from the Extreme Ice Survey. Or the conclusion based on data from NASA's GRACE satellites that the rate of glacier thinning in the Himalayas is 22 cm per annum. Or visit a glacier and see the signs of retreat for yourself.

You are correct that someone is misinformed here. Alas, my friend, it is not me.

Problem with the last paragraph

[sean.peters]

Now this is an interesting question. In the long term the most effective means would likely be to control the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth with space-based sunshades and mirors, but right now we don't really have many tools besides controlling the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

There are a lot of problems with sunshade methods of climate control. The most realistic methods involve putting reflective particles (sulfates or water droplets) into the stratosphere.

• These methods reduce the earth's average temperature, but (per modeling) still result in significant warmups in polar regions (they work by slowing down warming in equatorial regions). Problem: ocean currents are driven mainly by temperature differences between the warm equator and cold poles. If this temperature differential continues to be reduced, do the currents slow down or stop? If that happens, do the oceans become stagnant? Do they continue to produce sufficient O2, etc? No one knows.
• This does nothing to address another problem with high CO2 in the atmosphere: ocean acidification (sulfates might even make the problem worse, as they're acidic). We know that molluscs can't build their shells below a certain pH... if there's a massive mollusc die-off, what does that mean for the ocean ecosystem? No one knows. Are there other bad effects? No one knows.
• These methods worsen a less remarked-upon phenomenon: global dimming. Sounds funny, but the amount of light reaching the earth's surface has been gradually decreasing since measurements started to be taken in the 50's. There are real concerns that crops that require intense light (example: tomatoes) may suffer productivity losses. Are there other ecological effects? No one knows.
• Once you start with these methods, you're stuck: if you ever stop, all the warming you were holding at bay comes back with a vengeance, in a period of a few years. Catastrophic doesn't begin to describe it. There's also the danger that people will act as if the problem is solved and go back to profligate use of fossil fuel, causing warming to worsen again.

I won't even bother discussing space umbrellas and the like. If we can't afford to switch to green energy, we really can't afford these. It's pretty much pie-in-the-sky.

Bottom line: the whole idea of geoengineering on this scale is a giant exercise in "what could possibly go wrong?" Trying to do this on the only planet you have to live on is not much short of crazy. We know the cause of global warming, and we know how to mitigate it - burn less carbon. So why don't we just get started?

Re:Problem with the last paragraph

[ultranova]

Bottom line: the whole idea of geoengineering on this scale is a giant exercise in "what could possibly go wrong?" Trying to do this on the only planet you have to live on is not much short of crazy.

That being the reason why I said it's a long-term solution :). The thing is, the Sun is slowly but surely getting hotter due to its evolution in the Main Series, so eventually we must do this if we wish to keep Earth habitable. Of course it'll be a few million years more, but still... In a way we evolved in the last possible moment.

We know the cause of global warming, and we know how to mitigate it - burn less carbon. So why don't we just get started?

The Libertarians are against it because it'll require government regulation to force power producers to bear the external costs. The Conservatists are against it because it might lessen corporate profits. The Greens are against nuclear power, thus forcing us to keep using polluting oil and coal instead. Everyone is against windmills at sea because they "spoil the view".

Basically, any attempt to transfer to green power has to fight both the oh-so-fashionable right-wing ideologue and corporate lobbyists, and then run the gauntlet of NIMBY. It's hopeless. We'd better just get used to live with a superwarm planet, and energy shortage once oil runs out. Any attempt to do something about it runs against the brick wall of the usual assholes, both well-meaning and malicious.

I can only hope that humanity survives long enough to get over its fear of nuclear power, and uses it to colonizes a few other planets, to serve as our springboard to the stars. The other choice is that we die, and Earth dies once Sun gets bright enough.

I also hope there's a special place in Hell for BP executives and Greenpeace members both.