Global Warming's Silver Lining For the Arctic Rim

Pickens writes "According to Laurence C. Smith, an Arctic scientist who has consistently sounded alarms about the approach of global warming, within 40 years the Arctic rim may be transformed by climate change into a new economic powerhouse. As the Arctic ice recedes, ecosystems extend, and minerals and fossil fuels are discovered and exploited, the Arctic will become a place of 'great human activity, strategic value and economic importance.' Sparsely populated areas like Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States — the northern rim countries, or NORCs — will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets. Predictions in Smith's new book The Earth in 2050 include the following: New shipping lanes will open during the summer in the Arctic, allowing Europe to realize its 500-year-old dream of direct trade between the Atlantic and the Far East, and resulting in new economic development in the north; NORCs will be among the few place on Earth where crop production will likely increase due to climate change; and NORCs will become the envy of the world for their reserves of fresh water, which may be sold and transported to other regions."

Comments

Dutch disease

[robi5]

I haven't RTFA, but a bounty of natural resources may have serious drawbacks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Re:Dutch disease

[Dunbal]

As if Canada didn't already have a bounty of unexploited natural resources. Shouldn't make much difference.

Re:Dutch disease

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Economics is not a scientific discipline. Those studies are not very credible.

Re:Dutch disease

[GiveBenADollar]

Economics is not a scientific discipline. Those studies are not very credible.

On the other hand nobody would ever dispute a finding by a climatologist.

Re:Dutch disease

[zrbyte]

This is exactly what's happening right now in the so called BRIC nations. I don't know if it will be a drawback if the scenario in TFA unfolds.

Re:Dutch disease

[petermgreen]

That is really a drawback of richness in general. If a country is rich then producing labour intensive products there will be expensive.

Re:Dutch disease

[Jalfro]

While Europe was going through the Dark Ages, Islam was carrying the torch of civilization and culture.

Re:Dutch disease

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Yeah, let Muslims have their dark age. It's their turn, and every world religion gets the first one free.

Re:Dutch disease

[Attila Dimedici]

Sorry, that is not true. Byzantium was carrying the torch of civilization and culture. The collapse of Byzantium happened as the rennaissance was beginning in Italy. There is probably a relationship between the two. While rennaissance Italy gained much knowledge and culture from the lands of Islam, most of it was from non-muslims fleeing the oppression of Muslim rule. Most of the ideas and knowledge that Europeans got from Muslim lands had originally been developed by non-muslims. Arabic numbers is a prime example of this. Arabic numbers originated in India and were carried to Arabia after Muslim conquest of parts of India.

Re:Dutch disease

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad musicians is not a natural resource.

Now take recall your celine dion audio-terrorist!

You wouldn't hear about Canadian artists in the US if Americans didn't like them. It's not like Bieber could get big with just 500k screaming Canadian girls, you always need screaming american girls too

Re:Dutch disease

[commodore64_love]

>>>While Europe was going through the Dark Ages, Islam was carrying the torch of civilization and culture.

Bzzzz. The most civilized culture during the 500-1400 dark ages was the Eastern Rome Empire, centered around Constantinople (Istanbul). The only role the Muslims played was to surround and crush that capitol, but fortunately for us, most of the preserved Roman knowledge had already migrated to Venice, before the muslims could hold the ancient world's equivalent to a book-burning.

Re:Dutch disease

[commodore64_love]

The problem is that Canada's resources are frozen, which makes it difficult & expensive to extract (see ice road truckers). The thawing of the north will make the process easier, so there will be a boom.

Maybe Canada will be the new superpower and the US will be the second-class neighbor (the us squandered its coal/oil a long time ago).

Re:Dutch disease

[sznupi]

Though thawing should be still generally seasonal, with some fun consequences

(and wouldn't US "take over" Canada anyway? At least as far as population dynamics go)

Re:Dutch disease

[khallow]

Economics is not a scientific discipline. Those studies are not very credible.

Depends on your definition of "scientific". For example, science could mean:

a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws

or "science" could mean stuff that the scientific method can be applied to (which incidentally includes the field of economic game theory). Or falsifiable theories.

Economics definitely fits the definition I mentioned above. It is flawed to say it isn't a scientific discipline without saying what a scientific discipline is. Else we're stuck with the futility of arguing while ignoring that the other person defines the words differently.

Re:Dutch disease

[JWSmythe]

    It's amazing what people will do for an imaginary controlling being(s).

Re:Dutch disease

[GooberToo]

Anyone have any idea if any climate studies have been conducted which specifically excludes the weather/climate changes created by projects such as HARP? According to Tesla, this exact type of project could alter global weather/climate as well as create earth quakes where tectonic pressures are pre-existing.

Right now, the US has at least three (IIRC, two in Alaska and one in South America) of these stations operating around the world. Russia has at least one; which is one of the oldest units. There are at least sixteen others being operated by other countries around the world. Papers released by the US Air Force absolutely confirms that any one of these devices absolutely has the ability to indirectly modify global weather and climate.

As such, it would certainly be nice to know that climatologists are specifically excluding the human impact created by these devices in their studies. At such time, I seriously doubt any computer model includes these devices and their atmospheric impact in their simulations.

Re:Dutch disease

[tompaulco]

Canadian girls ARE American girls.

Re:Dutch disease

[operagost]

I truly am glad that, once they'd gotten done slaughtering all the infidels, that the Muslims found time to work on algebra.

Re:Dutch disease

[operagost]

Shh! You'll wake the amateur historians who will counter, "Well, the Christians destroyed the Library of Alexandria," which is of course false because it was either destroyed by Julius Caesar and/or Aurelian, according to contemporary accounts.

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

The US has gigatons of coal left, about 27-29% of the world's coal (Alaska is largely unexplored for coal) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves

Yes the US has used up much of it's oil and can't ever support itself, but there are unexplored areas (Pacific Northwest coast, Arctic Ocean, Bering Straights, Chukchi Sea and untapped regions like ANWR.

The US also has alot of Uranium, Natural Gas, Coalbed methane and shale oil (for when that becomes economically viable to exploit).

Not to mention the renewables, wind and solar.

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

Yes, if it came down to serious competing for energy, the US wouldn't have any problem with Canada.

The Stryker brigades at Fort Lewis would roll up I-5 and take Vancouver, the Army out of Colorado and Kansas could take the prairie provinces while 101st, 82nd and 10th Mountain took Toronto, Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa.

Canada has 35,000 troops in the Land Forces and only 100 fighter/interceptors, it would be trivial for F-15C and F-22s to take out the CF-18Cs Canada has.

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

Even during the "Dark Ages", Europe was publishing more literary works and maps than the Islamic world was.

Islam's carrying the torch was simply translating Greek works they captured when the Byzantine Empire fell.

Re:Dutch disease

[sznupi]

That's not what I mean, and quite certainly not what would happen... (and at the off chance it would - we have few interesting recent & semi-recent examples of how "smooth" fighting is in a hard terrain / conditions / not-desert)

For all we know, all manned fighters would be obsolete by then anyway. Generally - funny (again, IIRC), considering your sig.

Re:Dutch disease

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

Most of the ideas and knowledge that Europeans got from Muslim lands had originally been developed by non-muslims.

Most knowlege *everywhere* derives strongly from knowledge developed elsewhere. The Medieval Muslims depended on the Ancient Greeks; the Ancient Greeks depended on the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, and Egyptians. There's probably a Homo erectus who was entirely original, and we've been ripping him off ever since.

There's a lot that needs to be cleared up in this subthread:

The "torch of civilization" was indeed carried in large part by Islam for much of the Middle Ages. The intellectual aspect of 12th Century Renaissance was sparked in large part by the discovery of texts in Muslim libraries in Spain and Sicily, libraries that were captured by the Normans in Sicily and the Christian states of the Reconquista in Spain. There were Greek texts, the contributions of Islamic scholars on those texts, and Arabic mathematical and scientific texts. The Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas and his followers, which was the dominant mode of thought in the later Middle Ages and much of the Renaissance, was Aristotelianism as dervied from and mediated by Ab 'l-Wald Muammad bin Amad bin Rushd, aka Averroes. I must stress that it would be entirely wrong to view Averroes as merely a figure who passed on Aristotle. I mean, in a sense *all* philosophy in the West is, as is often said, a gloss on Plato and Aristotle, who loom over everything else. But Averroes was a major, major figure. More generally, there was a huge amount of translation from Arabic into Latin in the 11th and 12th centuries, lots of other names we could go into. People often don't understand the importance of this, but it was transformative.

The "oppression of Muslim rule" doesn't make sense in terms of the Middle Ages. Everywhere in the world was oppressive by our current standards; some parts of the Muslim world were much less oppressive than anywhere in Europe. I can enumerate the dates of the various expulsions of the Jews from various European countries in the Middle Ages and Renaissance if you'd like, for example. Yes, the Greek scholars who came to Italy in the 15th century were often fleeing the Turks, but it's important to realize that they were fleeing the Ottoman Turks, a specific group who were (and largely still are) the traditional enemy of the Greeks, and not the "oppression of Muslim rule" as a whole.

The collapse of the Byzantine Empire had a significant role in the second phase of the Italian Renaissance, beginning with the various Greek scholars who came to Italy in the 1430s as part of the negotiations over the proposed reunion of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Cardinal Bessarion was the most famous of these scholars, but there are many many more, and they helped bring about things like the reemergence of Platonism, the great advances in philology of people like Lorenzo Valla (which later culminated in the various great Biblical translations of the 16th century), and so forth. Italian art was also heavily influenced by Byzantine models for centuries, and really didn't break away from Greek models until the early 14th century. It's worth noting that these Byzantine models for art were from churches and so forth from parts of Italy that were Byzantine for great chunks of the Medieval period, most notably Ravenna and south Italy.

From elsewhere in the subthread:

The Byzantine Empire in the period after the sack by the Crusaders was never as politically, militarily, etc. strong as it was beforehand, but it did undergo a cultural and intellectual Renaissance of its own in the last century and a half of its existence. This was (ironically) triggered in part by contributions from the Latin West, such as the first translations of people like Thomas Aquinas into Greek. At its collapse the Byzantine Empire was culturally as strong

Re:Dutch disease

[DragonWriter]

Bzzzz. The most civilized culture during the 500-1400 dark ages was the Eastern Rome Empire, centered around Constantinople (Istanbul).

As if "degree of civilization" had a widely accepted, objective, measurable definition against which there were reliable, uncontroversial measures for historical societies which could justify such a claim.

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

Canada, while it has a great martial tradition in the World Wars and Afghanistan, really doesn't have that insurgency mindset that Iraqis who are allowed a full auto AK-47/74 per adult male or Afghanis have.

Strategically Canada would be easy to take, control the big cities, take out what armor and infantry units they have and it ceases to be a country.

I've driven through the wilds of western Canada, it'd be trivial to insert troops from Alaska to control the Canadian natural gas lines in BC and armor sent across the border in Montana and North Dakota could take the oil sand regions in two days.

Look at the invasion of Iraq, it was relatively easy for the US/UK to take and then control the energy production. 172 dead vs 15-45,000 enemies killed. Even if the number of US dead in taking Canada tripled, 15,000 Canadian combatants would be the bulk of the Canadian military, there wouldn't be alot of well armed and well trained people left to fire up a resistance.

Even during the darkest days of the Iraqi Civil War and Resistance, the oil never really stopped flowing.

Re:Dutch disease

[je ne sais quoi]

I'm not Canadian, but I'd just like to point out that this has been tried and tried again. Both times, the U.S. failed miserably. Now, you can argue that a lot has changed in the last 200 years, but I wouldn't write off the Canucks just yet. They can defend the eastern side of the country and the Canadian Rockies with ease.

With regard to the article and summary: there's no good soil in the Arctic rim. Good soils take on the order of a hundreds of years to form. Good luck trying to become an economic powerhouse with nothing to eat. For examples of places with mineral wealth but little food, see Wyoming and other western states, or Saudi Arabia. Their situation is profitable when commodity prices are good but often have large unemployment when the commodity price cycle goes bust (Saudi Arabia has 25% unemployment right now, even when energy prices are high).

Re:Dutch disease

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a key difference is Canadian girls weigh about 50 kg less. And then there's that whole God thing.

Re:Dutch disease

[abigor]

Sad that this guy was modded down. He is 100% right, and anyone who thinks otherwise knows nothing about the history of Russia and Finland, or about the Muslim immigrant situation there (summary: not good).

Re:Dutch disease

[abigor]

Who cares? It's today that counts. And as of today, Islam is about as compatible with the West as Android is with the iPhone App Store.

Re:Dutch disease

[Omestes]

Canada, while it has a great martial tradition in the World Wars and Afghanistan, really doesn't have that insurgency mindset that Iraqis who are allowed a full auto AK-47/74 per adult male or Afghanis have.

I think that the mindset for insurgency would develop rather quickly. The original British colonists weren't really insurgents either, until they needed to be. Look at the Occupied French, as well. When one thinks "insurgent" they don't think of the French, but the French managed to pull off a rather good show of it when the time came.

I personally think Canada could kick our ass in an invasion, personally. They would have a reason to fight, have a decent collection of skills, and have tons of small, individual, arms. State militaries are somewhat irrelevant in insurgant style fighting, we're not fighting the Afghan or Iraqi military, we're fighting armed and motivated civilians. Canada would have those, if we were to invade. It also would be harder to motivate our troops with convincing propaganda, or use xenophobia to motivate them, since the Canadians look like us, have a similar culture to ours, speak our language, and share a vast swath of our genealogy and roots.

As an unrelated note, why the hell doesn't Slashdot play nicely with Chrome? Typing this response made me feel like I was trying to use a computer from the 80's to play Crysis. Does it really need to eat 100% of my CPU, and hang for a full minute just to paste something? Or hang for 30 seconds, and once again spike the CPU, if I type to fast? It has to be as Slashdot problem, since it is the only site that has these problems.

Grr...

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

And in the 1800s it took 45 years of constant warfare to defeat 10-12,000 armed Plains Indians.

The Colonial and Regular Armies didn't have JDAMs, Hellfires, Reapers, F-22s, Abrams and Strykers.

Funny you should mention Wyoming as a place with nothing to eat. It and all the Great Plains and western states in the lower 48 are net exporters of food.

http://www.smallgrains.org/WHFACTS/growreg.htm
http://www.agclassroom.org/kids/stats/wyoming.pdf

Re:Dutch disease

[ultranova]

While Europe was going through the Dark Ages, Islam was carrying the torch of civilization and culture.

Well, sadly they aren't doing that anymore, but are instead known for as the most barbaric culture of today. I certainly hope that they can find their way again, but until they do, I want nothing to do with them.

All people are equal, but all cultures are not. Anyone who disagrees better consider whether they'd consider a version of their own culture minus some fundamental part - such as the freedom of speech - equally good. And the sad fact is that Islamic cultures tend to be far worse for those living in them than Western ones.

Re:Dutch disease

[commodore64_love]

>>>.....101st, 82nd and 10th Mountain took Toronto, Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa.

Yeah. We don't want that part.

We just want the provinces west of Ontario, because they'd be the ones with all the oil/coal/diamonds. Also we might not have to invade. We could just invite Alberta, Saskatchewan, etc to secede from Canada and join the US as states 51, 52, 53, and so on. That's how we took over Texico and made it Texas (more or less)

Re:Dutch disease

[commodore64_love]

The Eastern Romans/Byzantiums had running water and toilets.

The Dark Age europeans did not. That's a pretty damn good measure for why that culture is generally considered more advanced. That takes all kinds of advanced knowledge, not just in engineering, but also understanding of physical laws, how to mix concrete, and how to keep the aqueducts from collapsing on themselves. If the kings of Britain or France or Germany had ordered advisers to build running water for the city, the response would have been "Duh... we don't know".

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

Pretty much.

In the long run, 50-100 years, Canada is going to be in more danger of having a succession crisis than the US.

If the US did invade...

Roll the Strykers from Fort Lewis to take southern BC, Fort Rich Strykers and airborne down the Alaska Highway to take northern BC and the guys from Fort Carson and Fort Riley to take the Prairie Provinces and it's over.

From what I saw of the Yukon they'd probably wave American flags as the Strykers rolled past just in hopes of getting their roads fixed during the occupation.

Re:Dutch disease

[Loki_1929]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program#Conspiracy_theories

Are you sure the weather patterns you're seeing are being caused by the aliens inside your brain?

Re:Dutch disease

[blarkon]

The collapse of Byzantium happened when the 4th Crusade sacked Constantinople. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire Though I guess that fact doesn't align with the your Tea Party agenda. Neither does anything in the following article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

Re:Dutch disease

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

"the muslims" *bzzzzzt* it was Hindus, actually. Then they passed the torch, via slaves, to Venitians. The only thing muslims have to do with it is that they "owned" the slaves in question.

It's not because something gets discovered by an occupied people, that the occupier gets credit.

Re:Dutch disease

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

It's much, much worse than that. During the dark ages, about 30 million Christians (and a few tenthousand Jews) produced more literary works than 1 billion muslims do *today*.

islam and culture do not mix. islam only destroys, it does not create.

Re:Dutch disease

[GooberToo]

Are you sure the weather patterns you're seeing are being caused by the aliens inside your brain?

The article is wrong and misleading, which is hardly surprising given the source. They conflate several items and do an extremely poor job of separating fact from conspiracy theory. It is Wikipedia after all. Its what they are best known for.

The facts are, Tesla theorized it was possible to use Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) to heat an area of the upper atmosphere, causing it to change shape (bulge into space). As a result, the lower levels of the atmosphere follow, filling in the void, resulting in atmospheric changes which can change global weather patterns by change in heating/cooling cycles and jet stream wind patterns.

The Russians were the first to get a machine online. Papers from the Air Force confirmed the US government accepted the Russians were manipulating weather/climate. As such, HARP was born. Later, additional released papers from the US Air Force absolutely confirms Tesla's theories. So in this part, we're talking facts, not crank theories as you ignorantly suggest.

The conspiracy theories come in when discussing if international weather warfare is currently underway, if Russia caused the worst drought in California history (which occurred after Russia brought their machine online and an unexplained, to this day, weather pattern developed which preventing inflow of moist air into California), is the US also causing droughts and earthquakes around the world, so on and so on.

The reality is, the HARP project, and others like it, according to the US government, the Russian Government, and Tesla, is absolutely capable or manipulating climate/weather. Anyone who says otherwise, is ignorant of reality and in denial of official internal government documentation on the subject. The conspiracy theory arrives that this "research" is actually being used to do exactly that to the detriment of others. To wit, I have absolutely no idea if that's the case, but would hardly be surprised to learn its true, given the US governments extremely long history of doing exactly this type of thing. In short, it would hardly be a reach in the least to learn there is some credence to the conspiracy theories, assuming you're not some crackpot, completely ignorant of history.

You should really make an effort to educate yourself on a subject before you start casting stones. At the end of the day, you're the only one that sounds like an idiot/crackpot.

Re:Dutch disease

[Wyatt Earp]

The golden age of Islamic science and literacy was in the 800-900s, since then its all been a downhill slide.

Gulf Stream

[Zironic]

I havn't RTFA, but has he accounted for that climate change is predicted to destroy the gulf stream? If that stops flowing Scandinavia is predicted to become /colder/ even with global warming.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Vintermann]

Climate change isn't predicted to destroy the gulf stream, at least not to remotely degree of confidence we associate with other climate-related predictions.

Re:Gulf Stream

[h4rm0ny]

It used to be, didn't it? Wasn't collapse of the gulf stream one of the big risks put forward of global warming, at one point? Is that no longer supported by anyone?

Re:Gulf Stream

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what it destroys or benefits it brings, the fact is, the world is changing, nobody is doing anything about it, and humans will do what they do best, adapt.

Re:Gulf Stream

[WarJolt]

we won't know until it happens. So until then our government will institute policy as if it is a sure thing.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Policy stances on pissing into the wind make no difference on the direction the wind blows.

Re:Gulf Stream

[vadim_t]

Just like with other long term things, no?

I mean, do countries wait until it's clear there's going to be a war before they start training an army and making weapons? The US also has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, just in case. It's generally a good thing to plan ahead.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Again (I say `again' because I frequently make this point), this is the precautionary principle v the law of unintended consequences. For example, it may be the case that maintaining a strong army and large defence industry makes you more likely to engage in war, much like giving a child pads and a helmet will make him more likely to take greater risks when he rides his bicycle.

Re:Gulf Stream

[vadim_t]

But that's kind of what they're there for.

An army isn't so much protection against war as protection against getting invaded, and forcing others to do your bidding.

Pads and a helmet indeed are so that you can take greater risks. It's technically possible to sit on a box containing an engine and ride on it at 80 MPH. Nobody does it because that's too dangerous. A car on the other hand protects you enough that the tradeoff is worth it. If we could be safe enough at 300 MPH (as we are in an airplane or bullet train for instance), we'd travel at that speed as well. If it was safe enough to do on the road, then we'd do it on the road.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Vintermann]

It is a big risk in the sense that it would be bad in the case that it happens. It's listed in the IPCC proceedings under "nonlinear response of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation".

Warning that something bad can happen is not the same as predicting it. I don't think anyone is supporting it in the sense "this is very likely to occur", and it would be very odd if they did so at an earlier time (since the uncertainty would have been even greater).

Re:Gulf Stream

[aliquis]

Don't worry, we'll reverse it dumping all the cold outside the coast of Florida! Mohaha ;D

Nah, time will tell I suppose. But haven't it been said it's already slowed down somewhat?

If it slowed down because we got a better climate even without it I guess it wouldn't matter? I mean in case there's some temperature balance thing. Time will tell. But please no more cold :D

I wonder if Norway will claim more of the area, us Swedes are so lame. Norway most likely already is (or becoming) the worlds best place to live in. Major screw-up by us. Time to move across the border =P

GULEBÖJ o lusekofta!

(According to CIA world fact book Norways GDP per capita is #5 in the world, their social well-fare rating is #1 and they put their oil money in a well-fare fund for future generations. They even got a "prison" on an island outside of Oslo with no fences and no guards and with only 20% relapsed criminals. Take that US justice system. Though I guess they may not jail random drug abuser, time after time...)

Re:Gulf Stream

[Viol8]

"your strong military may be a threat to others and therefore you may be more likely to be attacked, not less."

Cite?

"To my mind even if the case is made that there is going to be warming, the economic "cure" is far, far, worse than the illness (cost of adaptation)."

For who? I'm sure all the creatures in the habitats that will be destroyed including in the sea are really concerned about the economics of trying to prevent it.

To hell with the short term economic effects. Its about time our species -people like you - started thinking long term. Global warming won't suddenly stop at a few degrees warmer - it will continue relentlessly until we change our ways.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Given that increased temperatures on Earth are associated with increased biodiversity, if the critters are going to start complaining, they should be more concerned with Human population increase, not carbon dioxide. Population and economic prosperity are somewhat correlated (the more wealthy the population, the fewer children couples have), you would surely agree that one solution to increasing population pressure is to make the poor richer. I don't think you'll be able to do that by replacing coal or gas fired power stations with a fucking windmill.

Where is this relentless warming? There's been no statistically significant warming since 1995. None of the models predicted that, did they? Why? Because they're wrong?

Re:Gulf Stream

[rve]

I havn't RTFA, but has he accounted for that climate change is predicted to destroy the gulf stream? If that stops flowing Scandinavia is predicted to become /colder/ even with global warming.

That idea never made sense to me...

The gulf stream is powered by the forming of ice in the north Atlantic during winter: water crystallizes to ice while salt is expelled, increasing salinity and thus density of the water, which causes a downward flow. An increase in temperature would lead to less ice formation, a slower downward flow and thus a slower gulf stream. Ok, this still makes sense. A slower gulf stream would lead to a lower temperature, ok this still makes sense, right? A drop in temperature causes more ice to form, a faster downward flow of salty water, and a faster gulf stream, which causes the temperature to go up again.

So an increase in temperature causes a drop in temperature, and a drop in temperature causes an increase in temperature? Hey, it looks like this system is buffered to keep the temperature more or less the same just with different amounts of winter ice. Don't say there's a lag of thousands of years without explaining how. Water flows from the equator to the north Atlantic in a matter of weeks.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Viol8]

"Given that increased temperatures on Earth are associated with increased biodiversity,"

Cite?

I think you'll find the most biologically diverse habitats are in the temperate zones, not , for example in the sahara. Same goes for the seas.

"Population and economic prosperity are somewhat correlated (the more wealthy the population, the fewer children couples have)"

Actually its more to do with education rather than prosperity.

"I don't think you'll be able to do that by replacing coal or gas fired power stations with a fucking windmill."

No , but you could replace them with nuclear.

"Where is this relentless warming? There's been no statistically significant warming since 1995"

Really? Funny then how 1998 is considered to be the hottest year on record by most climate researchers and its looking like 2010 may beat it. I suggest you learn to use google and educate yourself.

Re:Gulf Stream

[khallow]

For who? I'm sure all the creatures in the habitats that will be destroyed including in the sea are really concerned about the economics of trying to prevent it.

I'm sure they're just as concerned now about their habitats as they'll be after they're dead. If we're going to measure things by how "concerned" plankton is going to be about it, then we really don't have much to go on.

Re:Gulf Stream

[h4rm0ny]

. A helmet will not protect you in a serious accident and the slight increase in the risk taking behaviour you engage in by wearing one balances out the benefit you'd get from it, when compared to not wearing one when you're in a minor accident

It's a bit of a tangent, but I wear a cycle helmet for the protection, not so that I can be more reckless. Cycle helmet + non-idiot is safer than non-idiot without cycle helmet.

Anyway, do we really have to argue by analogy for something this basic? Can we not agree that the US, for example, treats other countries very differently because it can beat the shit out of them, than it would if it had no military advantage and had to negotiate with them purely on the basis of trade and niceness?

Re:Gulf Stream

[publicworker]

Climate change isn't predicted to destroy the gulf stream, at least not to remotely degree of confidence we associate with other climate-related predictions.

(disclaimer: oceanographer with only fleeting interest in global warming)

True, but I would like to elaborate. Some of the early climate models predicted the Gulf Stream to shut down* and naturally one of the objectives for building better models was to confirm or disprove these predictions. I don't think any of the newest IPCC models show the Gulf Stream shutting down but there are indications that it may slow down in the future. Not enough to off set the underlying warming though.

So it seems we don't have to fear rapid changes because of a sudden shut down. Last thing I heard about this predicted shut down was that it was being classified as "low probability, high impact event". The impact would indeed be high, but it seems the probability becomes less and less the better the models become.

*) I'm being very imprecise. What I mean is that the North Atlantic Current (an extension of the Gulf Stream) was predicted to slow down or that the northern branch would become weaker (from Ireland towards Norway) and the southern branch stronger (from Ireland towards Spain). Worst case scenario the northern branch would turn off.

Re:Gulf Stream

[gufodotto]

either that, or go extinct...

Re:Gulf Stream

[aurispector]

Attempting to argue with eco-communists is essentially the same thing...

Re:Gulf Stream

[Sique]

I have been in a bicycle accident recently, and I am glad I was wearing a helmet at the time. A car was turning right while I was alongside, and I hit the car door and was taking down the rearview mirror with my head. The impact marks on my helmet were quite impressive in the literal sense of the word.

I know, this is anecdotical evidence, but at least for me wearing a helmet has paid off.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Talla]

It's not the temperature change itself that can stop the Gulf stream, but a large flood of fresh water from melting glaciers. Especially if the water piles up in large dams (much larger than the ones we've seen in Iceland) that burst suddenly, it will change the salinity level a lot in a short time.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Glad to hear it. I'm talking broad statistical evidence of course. You can always find cases where it did make a difference, but then you never know if you would have "fallen" differently without the helmet, do you? :p.

Re:Gulf Stream

[drinkypoo]

The conveyor is powered by ice and the jet stream is powered by the conveyor. Dunno if the gulf stream is, too. If enough ice melts in the right place then the conveyor stops. People like to say that serious scientists no longer believe that this is possible but some doubt remains.

Re:Gulf Stream

[tbannist]

Scientific research shows that, for example, wearing a cycling helmet makes no difference. A helmet will not protect you in a serious accident and the slight increase in the risk taking behaviour you engage in by wearing one balances out the benefit you'd get from it, when compared to not wearing one when you're in a minor accident.

Actually, as I understand, scientific research shows that wearing a helmet has a tremendous benefit in prevent the sorts of injuries that leave people brain damaged for the rest of their lives. Apparently they reduce mortality rates by around 33%. The whole "you'll take more risks" thing sounds like neo-conservative pablum dolled out by idiots who care more about ratings than facts.

Here's some links to educate yourself:
http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm
http://www.bhsi.org/henderso.htm

Re:Gulf Stream

[drinkypoo]

Well, you see that's the thing. You can argue the case from both sides. Scientific research shows that, for example, wearing a cycling helmet makes no difference. A helmet will not protect you in a serious accident and the slight increase in the risk taking behaviour you engage in by wearing one balances out the benefit you'd get from it, when compared to not wearing one when you're in a minor accident.

I was in a single-vehicle accident on my bike (I fell off it and hit my head on a rock) and if I hadn't been wearing a helmet I probably wouldn't be here to tell you about it. While from the standpoint of some that is a positive thing, I can tell you that I don't believe that bullshit for a tenth of a second (about how long it took to fall off my bike.)

As a child I went out on my bike and I dimly remember falling off it, then nothing until I got home and was walking my (perfectly ridable) bike up my driveway. That was the incident that caused me to helmet up.

Likewise unless you're a hyper-power, or have a nice stash of nukes, your strong military may be a threat to others and therefore you may be more likely to be attacked, not less.

Unless you have a strong military, your strong military may be an inducement to an attack? Please rethink this ridiculous comment.

To my mind even if the case is made that there is going to be warming, the economic "cure" is far, far, worse than the illness (cost of adaptation). So let us assume the scientific case is made (I don't believe it is); the economics of mitigation are truly from the mad-house.

Citation needed. Which mitigation strategies are you considering, and why don't they work? What makes you think that a loss of all coastal cities in the world is cheaper than actually doing something about the problem?

Oh wait, insanity. I see now.

Re:Gulf Stream

[drinkypoo]

Glad to hear it. I'm talking broad statistical evidence of course. You can always find cases where it did make a difference, but then you never know if you would have "fallen" differently without the helmet, do you? :p

Only the kind of logic-challenged toolbags who deny mankind's impact on global climate could come up with that argument. The only negative impact from a helmet is on hearing. My mountain biking helmet is so light that I barely notice I'm wearing it except when I run my head into something, it certainly does not affect my balance and in this case the rider could certainly hear the vehicle and it did not help them. A helmet doesn't affect what happens when you get hit in the side. It does affect what happens when your head intersects another object at speed.

The ocean doesn't fix CO2 once it's already saturated with it. Unfortunately it has not actually reached this point and so it is still acidifying. Actually I guess it's fortunate since if it had probably all marine life not near a volcanic vent would be dead except for brittle stars. We are producing more CO2 than oceanic limestone can remove from the ocean. We're destroying our air (from the standpoint of supporting our lifestyle) and we're destroying our water with our air.

Re:Gulf Stream

[tbannist]

Let's put this simply so you can understand:

1) Warming is slow but steady.
2) Years are highly variable with several multi-year cycles.
3) Pretty much every year since 1995 has been warmer than 1995.
4) The statement there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 hasn't been true since 1995.
5) 2010 is on track to be the warmest year on record.

That's just a few quick notes on what's wrong with what you said you can get more in-depth explanations here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Re:Gulf Stream

[domatic]

You're probably thinking of "conveyor" ocean currents not the the Gulf Stream.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Idiomatick]

"Cite?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War ... Just saying...

Re:Gulf Stream

[sznupi]

Into swimming pool OTOH...

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Only the kind of logic-challenged toolbags who deny mankind's impact on global climate could come up with that argument. The only negative impact from a helmet is on hearing.

Look at the pro's and con's of wearing helmets. There are those in favour and those against. There is evidence of both sides. To put the negative case:

Robinson reviewed data from jurisdictions where helmet use increased following legislation, and concluded that helmet use did not demonstrably reduce cyclists' head injuries.[39] Mayer Hillman, a transport- and road safety-analyst from the UK, does not support the use of helmets, reasoning that they are of very limited value in the event of a collision with a car, that risk compensation negates their protective effect and because he feels their promotion implicitly shifts responsibility of care to the cyclist.[106][107] He also cautions against placing the recommendations of surgeons above other expert opinion in the debate, comparing it to drawing conclusions on whether it is worthwhile to buy lottery tickets by sampling only a group of prizewinners.[108] The prominent UK-based cycling activist John Franklin is skeptical of the merits of helmets, regarding proactive measures including bike maintenance and riding skills as being more important.[109] Cyclists' representative groups complain that focus on helmets diverts attention from other issues which are much more important for improving bicycle safety, such as road danger reduction, training, roadcraft, and bicycle maintenance.[110][111] Of 28 publicly funded cycle safety interventions listed in a report in 2002, 24 were helmet promotions. For context, one evaluation of the relative merits of different cycle safety interventions estimated that 27% of cyclist casualties could be prevented by various measures, of which just 1% could be achieved through a combination of bicycle engineering and helmet use.

The ocean doesn't fix CO2 once it's already saturated with it. Unfortunately it has not actually reached this point and so it is still acidifying.

Who's the toolbag here exactly? The ocean is not acidic by any definition. The term "acidification" is a complete misnomer. The alkalinity of the ocean has changed by a small amount. It's not more acidic. Get it? Attribution is impossible. Consequences are guesses. Models predict catastrophe. And it's all your fault. Who'd have thought small (relative) changes in a trace gas in the atmosphere would have such catastrophic consequences!

Re:Gulf Stream

[locofungus]

Actually, as I understand, scientific research shows that wearing a helmet has a tremendous benefit in prevent the sorts of injuries that leave people brain damaged for the rest of their lives.

Case controlled studies showed that HRT reduced coronary heart disease. It is now recognized that HRT increases the risks of coronary heart disease.

Case controlled studies have shown that cycle helmets reduce head injury rate. Whole population studies have failed to show any benefit whatsoever.

Tim.

Re:Gulf Stream

[locofungus]

The only negative impact from a helmet is on hearing

Drivers pass helmeted cyclists closer than unhelmeted cyclists.

I'm very glad that I wasn't wearing a helmet when I was hit by a car wing mirror passing me at 60+ mph. Couple of inches closer and instead of an impressive bruise on my arm I'd probably be dead.

Tim.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Wearing a cycle helmet may increase your risk of a collision, because drivers leave less of a gap when overtaking cyclists with helmets than those without.

Research

Robinson shows that, despite significant increases in helmet-wearing, there was no greater improvement in cycle safety than for pedestrian safety over the same period. On the other hand, there were substantial reductions in cycle use, amounting to a significant loss of the health and other benefits of cycling. Robinson says: "This contradiction may be due to risk compensation, incorrect helmet wearing, reduced safety in numbers (injury rates per cyclist are lower when more people cycle), or bias in case control studies."

Research

Paul Hewson finds no detectable relationship between helmet-rates and on-road cycle safety in Great Britain. A second article, also by Hewson (this one published in Accident Analysis and Prevention journal), reaches the same conclusion for child cyclists. Hewson emphasises that this doesn’t necessarily mean that helmets are ineffective; an alternative explanation is that there might be some benefits for particular groups and/or for particular types of cycling, and he points out that his own data cover on-road cycling only. However, he also argues that road safety professionals have no grounds for being involved in helmet promotion, given the lack of detectable benefits for on-road cyclists.

Research

A report on children’s cycling from the National Children’s Bureau includes a very useful appendix surveying the literature on helmets. It states, “Those of us who cycle should be under no illusion that helmets offer reliable protection in crash situations where our lives may be in danger. Neither should we believe that widespread adoption of helmet wearing would see many fewer cyclists killed or permanently disabled. The evidence so far suggests otherwise.”

[The citation is currently unavailable]

You will be able to find counter views, but don't accuse me of being a neo-con just because I demonstrated the law of unintended consequences by citing research concerning cycling helmets. I'm sure you look like a twat wearing yours and have spent years explaining to colleagues and friends how your brain is now invincible because you're wearing one, by way of justification.

In all seriousness, take care on the roads. I've got a 4x4 and sometimes you cyclists are difficult to see, even with your silly hats and high visibility pants.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

Unless you have a strong military, your strong military may be an inducement to an attack? Please rethink this ridiculous comment.

Don't put words into my mouth and congratulate yourself for pointing out I'm wrong! I said unless you are a hyper-power (the obviously strongest military), or you have MAD-type weapons. Both are relatively recent scenarios. I think game-theory would agree with my opinion here. I'm not taking account of the fact that stronger powers can potentially bully weaker ones, but all else being equal, arms races are not a good idea and neither is militarism. History would also agree with me.

Which mitigation strategies are you considering, and why don't they work? What makes you think that a loss of all coastal cities in the world is cheaper than actually doing something about the problem?

The mitigation strategy that, for example, will cost the UK almost £1,000,000,000,000 if it's going to meet its 80% CO2 reduction target by 2040. And even if it does meet that target, the policy will make no appreciable difference to Earth's temperature whatsoever, apart from an obvious reduction in the UHI affect from our now deserted towns and cities. Yes, you read that right no appreciable affect to the temperature, using the IPCC's own figures.

What makes you think that a loss of all coastal cities in the world is cheaper than actually doing something about the problem?

Why do you think coastal towns and cities will be destroyed? Do you still think that, as Hansen said, they will be destroyed by the year 2000? Do you think that the trend rise in ocean levels is any different than it was 100, or 200 years ago? I don't and neither did the IPCC! The trend rate has not accelerated. If you want, you can go and get your snorkel and flippers, but I don't think I'll fucking bother!

Re:Gulf Stream

[citylivin]

"Scientific research shows that, for example, wearing a cycling helmet makes no difference."

Sounds like something someone with some sort of brain damage would say! I wonder how it was caused...

Re:Gulf Stream

[dr2chase]

Off-topic, except for the demonstration of alternate explanations, but there is an alternative explanation for the cycling-helmet-uselessness statistics. The helmet may modify an individual cyclist's behavior, OR it may modify the behavior of cars around him (or her -- recall that this has been observed), OR it may modify the pool of people who choose to ride bicycles.

People make extravagant claims about the dangerousness of riding without a helmet; bicycle accidents are quite rare, and per-hour, a helmet is just as important in an automobile (head injury rates per hour are comparable). And in either case, the huge risk comes from not getting enough exercise; if legal or social pressure to wear a helmet causes someone to not bike at all, that is a net loss to health.

Re:Gulf Stream

[dr2chase]

If cyclists are difficult to see, why don't you drive more slowly in general? Isn't not-hurting-others more important than minimizing travel time?

Re:Gulf Stream

[Belial6]

Likewise unless you're a hyper-power, or have a nice stash of nukes, your strong military may be a threat to others and therefore you may be more likely to be attacked, not less.

Unless you have a strong military, your strong military may be an inducement to an attack? Please rethink this ridiculous comment.

I happen to think he is wrong, but you shame yourself with your response. You turned "Likewise unless you're a hyper-power" into "Unless you have a strong military". The parent poster was being quite clear about what he was saying, and you went out of your way to 'misunderstand' him.

His example was wrong (although the overall point is debatable), and you argued it by trying to twist his words, implying that you don't have (one of the many) legitimate arguments to it.

Re:Gulf Stream

[Burnhard]

I haven't killed one yet, despite years of trying.

Re:Gulf Stream

[dr2chase]

If you drove more slowly, perhaps it would improve your aim.

Re:Gulf Stream

[coolsnowmen]

For every war you find about people getting dragged into wars because they had armies (though you would be wrong because it was about a mistake in treaties and not the armies themselves), I'll find another two about people w/o armies getting destroyed because they had no way to defend themselves. One would be wrong to think iraq went after Kuwait because it had a good army, and wrong again to think the united states & others leave iran alone because it doesn't have a military.

just sayin...

Re:Gulf Stream

[Abcd1234]

In all seriousness, take care on the roads. I've got a 4x4 and sometimes you cyclists are difficult to see, even with your silly hats and high visibility pants.

Thus demonstrating why helmets might not statistically result in lower injury rates. A helmet does fuck-all if you're run down by an asshole in a 4x4 who's too busy compensating for personal inadequacies to pay proper attention to the road.

Re:Gulf Stream

[riverat1]

You are comparing the US temperature record with the global temperature record. That is not a valid comparison because the US temperature record is but a small part (2%) of the global area.

Did you even read the rest of the page you linked to? It's a total refutation of the part you quoted.

Re:Gulf Stream

[drinkypoo]

I happen to think he is wrong, but you shame yourself with your response. You turned "Likewise unless you're a hyper-power" into "Unless you have a strong military". The parent poster was being quite clear about what he was saying, and you went out of your way to 'misunderstand' him.

You're upset that I allegedly went out of my way to misunderstand him (we call this "disingenuous", HTH) but ironically I made that part of the comment specifically because I found it confusing. Anyone not a superpower is just another bitch in international politics. If you're not on the UNSC then you might as well STFU and go home in any modern military conflict. Sooner or later one or more members of the UNSC will come in on one side or another and decide the conflict.

His example was wrong (although the overall point is debatable), and you argued it by trying to twist his words, implying that you don't have (one of the many) legitimate arguments to it.

No, I argued that his words were bullshit, but I didn't put enough additional words next to it to make that clear to those with jerky knees.

Re:Deniers...

[h4rm0ny]

I honestly wonder if people will still deny global warming when we have freighters traveling through the north pole in the summer. I mean, what's it going to take?

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes. Someone can criticise AGW theories without also saying that the world is ever unchanging and will always be so.

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly wonder if people will still deny global warming when we have freighters traveling through the north pole in the summer.

I don't.

I think you're being extremely generous towards the denial movement. The only thing I wonder about is what excuse they're going to use for that.

They don't deny it!

[tygerstripes]

I'm no apologist - I think climate change is a very serious issue that is being dangerously ignored - but you've just raised a classic straw-man and it's very annoying.

Almost nobody denies the existence, to a greater or lesser extent, of "global warming." The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.

It's very important before weighing-in to an argument that you understand what the argument actually is, from both sides.

Re:They don't deny it!

[blind biker]

The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.

Is there, really? I believe this question has been answered pretty decisively by the scientific community, with a resounding consensus that man's actions are moderately to significantly affecting global warming.

Re:They don't deny it!

[biryokumaru]

Isn't recycling a net loss for the environment? It's not a stretch to recognize that we spend more energy reprocessing waste than making the original stuff in the first place. Thus, it's better for the environment not to recycle. Maybe when resources become more scarce, it'll be better all around to mine a landfill than a mountain. Until then, recycling is the choice that damages us all.

Landfills are a safe and proven technology. Recycling is a demonstrable net loss, economically and environmentally.

Why do you recycle? Do you hate the earth!?! Stop killing mother earth with your evil recycling plants!

Re:They don't deny it!

[jayveekay]

Even those who believe in human caused climate change will not reduce their standard of living to (possibly) make a difference in the rate of change.

"Tragedy of the Commons" where the Earth's atmosphere is the commons.

Re:They don't deny it!

[mdsolar]

You've got this quite wrong. Aluminum recycling is a stunning example of your error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling

Re:They don't deny it!

[Hognoxious]

Isn't recycling a net loss for the environment?

Isn't that an incredibly vague - and in consequence unbelievably stupid - question?

Re:They don't deny it!

[drinkypoo]

Isn't recycling a net loss for the environment? It's not a stretch to recognize that we spend more energy reprocessing waste than making the original stuff in the first place.

It depends on what you're recycling; this depends largely on what it's made of in the first place. Glass recycling is a failure because glass is made of sand and some fairly readily available additives, and the ocean is kind enough to vomit up a hell of a lot more sand than we can use year by year. Paper recycling mostly works because it takes a lot of energy to turn trees and/or cloth into fibers, and much of that process has already occurred. All types of metals are best recycled; indeed, steel is our best-recycled material.

Landfills are a safe and proven technology. Recycling is a demonstrable net loss, economically and environmentally.

Landfills are a proven unsafe technology. But thanks for playing.

Re:They don't deny it!

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Almost nobody denies the existence, to a greater or lesser extent, of "global warming." The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.

Fox News Headlines
2001: Global warming: Fact or Fiction?
2006: Global warming: Are WE Causing It?
2011: Global warming: Is it too late to do anything?
2016: This Summer's New Line of Coolsuits
2021: Rupert Murdoch purchases last remaining acre of shade.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Attila Dimedici]

You are correct. Of course by that standard, why do we now believe in a heliocentric solar system? Once upon a time the scientific community had pretty decisively answered the question of where the center of the solar system was. They had concluded that it was Earth. They did so for much the same reason that current scientific consensus says that man is the cause of global warming...philisophical predisposition.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Carewolf]

What??? The deniers are now denying the existance of deniers..

Wow, you are really knee-deep in this denial thing..

Check a few posts next to yours, there are plenty of people denying these simple facts, even if you are not. Nobody said you were one of the mentioned deniers, the only thing you seem to be denying is the existance of deniers, and their existance is easily proven by simply reading other comments in this thread.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Combatso]

Landfills are a proven unsafe technology.

care to elaborate on that, with a source that isn't from a NIMBY pamphlet

Re:They don't deny it!

[ShruggingAtlas]

I will never understand why the question of man's culpability is so important to anyone - except as a means of misdirection. If we can agree that global warming is a real phenomenon and that its effects are detrimental to our lives, then surely the logical next question is "What can we do about it?". Saying anything else is like NOT launching the life boats on the titanic, because the captain was not a fault. The mind boggles.

Re:They don't deny it!

[aliquis]

If it's on Penn & Teller it must be true ...

So, figure out the cost to clear out all the plastic particles in the pacific, good luck have fun!

Without actually knowing I assume our system may go around, but it probably depend on scale. Built for everyone and used by many = better margins than if only a few actually use it or mess up a lot.

Too lazy to check any info, but it may be possible, maybe I should mail and ask how the economical balance turns out.

For aluminum as mentioned but probably other sorts of metal and also glass I assume it works just fine.

Plastic I have no idea but it's a pain in the environment obviously, add chloride from PVC and estrogen-like softeners and such (some plastic got cadmium, lead and such in it to doesn't it?) and it probably gets worse. Also I guess it save resources.

Over in the US you had 11 states with a recycling system for bottles, 6 for plastic ones, 1 of them gave quite a high fee and had over 90% of the bottles recycled.

Looking at billions of plastic bottles per year that will make a difference.

Over here in Sweden a glass bottle has 0.5 or if it's 0.6 SEK deposit, aluminum cans 1 SEK, 1.5 liter PET bottles 2 SEK, and some used to have 4 SEK.

And I'm not trolling. It's a fact you suck.

We got systems for things dangerous to the environment such as paint, glue, solvents and such, batteries, florescent lamps, regular lamps, electronics, glass, metal, cardboard and paper packaging, newspapers and paper, hard and soft plastics (earlier separated though soft where often just burned so you could just have thrown it in the regular waste bin), compost and then whatever else in the regular waste bin.

(Of those I only got compost, regular waste, cardboard, paper, clear and colored glass, metal, plastic and batteries just outside the building, for electronics and dangerous stuff such as paint and florescent lights you've got to drop them at another place.)

Anyhow, saving oil, mining less, put less crap in the air, sea and soil, chop down less trees (not like we lack those in Sweden though, but there are better uses for them) got benefits to.

If you weren't as clueless you would had moderated my troll-posts insightful instead. Maybe in 10-20 years.

Re:They don't deny it!

[sznupi]

That needs to be described more directly than "tragedy of the commons" - it's also a case of some societal cycle convincing us what is the preferred standard of living...while demonstrably not being the best even on the level of individuals, in some important areas.

Re:They don't deny it!

[sznupi]

...you know, that was long before the practice of scientific method was developed (with quite rigorous standards of "decisively"), so I'm not sure what was that "scientific community" that you speak of.

(never mind how it's a case of relativity of wrong...and how geocentric is just a different, less convenient in the end, frame of reference; BTW, the barycenter of Sun-Jupiter lies slightly outside the Sun)

Re:They don't deny it!

[Attila Dimedici]

The point is that appealing to the "consensus of the scientific community" is an appeal to authority, not a logical argument. The problem with the global warming debate is that there are a large number of scientists who are saying, "Here is an issue. It is a problem and you must take this action to deal with it." The first part is science, "Here is an issue." Everything after that is not science, it is politics. If scientists would limit themselves to applying the authority of science to the first statement, we could have a much better discussion of the issues involved.
Whether or not global warming is a problem is a matter of interpretation. If global warming is a problem, the best way to deal with it is a matter of opinion. Is it better to spend money to attempt to reverse the warming trend or would it be better to attempt to mitigate the negative consequences of warming (assuming that there are negative consequences...a debate that we have not yet had in a meaningful way).

Re:They don't deny it!

[sznupi]

Again - no; you miss that the "authority" is in the form of the developed method.
And large part of the potential "issues" you mention are precisely political in nature.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Attila Dimedici]

And large part of the potential "issues" you mention are precisely political in nature.

That was my point. One of the largest problems with this debate is that scientists want to use the prestige of science in the parts of the debate that are primarily political, where scientific method does not provide any answers. Scientific method cannot tell us what the "best" solution to a problem is until we define what "best" means.

Re:They don't deny it!

[confused one]

Most of that idea conceptually comes from older landfills. There are numerous instances of old landfills leaching toxic chemicals into groundwater. Newer landfills with plastic and clay liners are safer...

Re:They don't deny it!

[Late Adopter]

That doesn't refute his point. Aluminum recycling has been going on for a long time, and centers will even pay for bulk waste aluminum. That doesn't mean that the vast majority of recycling isn't still wasteful.

Re:They don't deny it!

[biryokumaru]

Isn't that an incredibly vague - and in consequence unbelievably stupid - response?

Re:They don't deny it!

[sznupi]

That misses greater point. Not only scientific method is indeed able to lead to a very small set of recommendation - also a lot for a lot of people outside the scientific community the issue is a pure old political theater.

Re:They don't deny it!

[stupidfoo]

How is a "resounding consensus" on "moderately to significantly" any different than "whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth"?

You're just saying what tygerstripes said in a slightly different way, throwing in the worthless and exceedingly unscientific word "consensus". If it's attributable predominantly to man, then it is significant, if it's attributable predominantly to nature, then it is moderate.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Specter]

Fortunately there's an easy and succinct answer to your question: Nothing!

Oh, sure I suppose it's technically feasible that we could intentionally affect climate change on the planet, but practically speaking this will never be implemented. So stop worrying and start buying real estate in Canada!

Doing anything else is like NOT launching the life boats on the Titanic, because the no-one can agree how to patch the hole. The mind boggles.

Re:They don't deny it!

[NeutronCowboy]

Almost nobody denies the existence, to a greater or lesser extent, of "global warming."

I'll try to remind myself of this the next time I hear all the idiots complain about the lack of Global Warming when it gets cold in the winter, or those who think that 8 years after an all-time high (during a quiet solar phase, no less) constitutes Global Cooling.

Re:They don't deny it!

[bunratty]

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions does not mean reducing your standard of living. It means building power plants that run on energy sources other than fossil fuels (e.g. nuclear, solar, wind, biofuels), and improving energy efficiency such as using compact fluorescent bulbs and cars that get more miles per gallon.

I think this is why most people won't accept that it would be wise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They're under the impression it would cause them to suffer, and they don't want to suffer, and therefore they will not admit increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem.

Re:They don't deny it!

[mdsolar]

He makes a blankest statement and it is refuted by a single instance. Glass recycling also saves energy. Paper recycling saves trees. That is the majority. Nothing vast left. So?

Re:They don't deny it!

[SleazyRidr]

For the most part, recycling uses pretty much the same methods as the original refining process used. You just start with a feed that comes from a different place, which is probably cheaper, as you can skip the first few steps. (E.g. with metals you can skip the mining and separating ore from rock steps and just skip straight to smelting.)

Maybe with complex stuff like computers which are harder to separate into the various materials you could make that kind of argument, but I think that the potentially toxic materials that could leach out would be a big factor against you...

Re:They don't deny it!

[Late Adopter]

I stand corrected: Aluminum, plastic, glass, and paper are all less energy intensive to recycle than produce from scratch. Here's a cite:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/recycling/4291566?page=1

Re:They don't deny it!

[aliquis]

But as earlier said with liners and clay you probably don't get much leakage.

You still get a heap of various crap though :D

Re:They don't deny it!

[riverat1]

That was more of a theological position that was taken until we had sufficient knowledge to over turn it. I suppose you could say AGC is a theological position too but the knowledge keeps piling up in support of it. There isn't much against it.

Re:They don't deny it!

[Hognoxious]

No, it's not vague at all.

P.S. Mind your head - I'm going to drop a new shovel down to you.

To summarize:

[slasho81]

Arctic scientist says the Arctic will become super important.
Is it grant hunting season already?

Re:To summarize:

[Idiomatick]

Grats on playing into the summaries hands. Just because it says hes an arctic scientist doesnt mean that he is. If you think about it, it doesnt make any sense, there is no such position. The summary just goaded you into making an ass of yourself and succeeded.

Laurence C. Smith is a professor of geography at UCLA and a hydrologist. Sure he did write a book about the future importance of the north. That does not indicate that he is some how reliant on arctic study... Or something like that. Nor was there indication that he'd have written a book purely to get grants. It seems to be something he is interested in so he did research on and wrote a book. The science is real, we have found tons of oil reserves and gas reserves. This was obvious without even doing the science. We suddenly have new land available to us that we didn't have before. And new trade routes opening is obvious hell, it is happening to some degree already through Canadian waters.

If you dispute his claims then find science against him. If publishing a paper or saying something is important or being a part of the field you are researching is an inditement of fraud then science becomes impossible. You cannot force scientists to be in fields they don't care about. Write about things they find unimportant and are not educated in. It doesn't make sense.

The anti-science rhetoric coming out of /. these days isn't insightful. It is about as cute as the 'correlation != causation', true in some cases but it isn't an argument that can be blanket applied to everything.

You aren't insightful, you got played.

Re:To summarize:

[ninkendo84]

Grant hunting is a year-round sport, baby.

Re:To summarize:

[dasdrewid]

Not so much "grant hunting season" as "consultancy hunting season". "The arctic mineral and fossil fuel deposits are about to be accessible...and I know where they all are..."

/jk

Re:To summarize:

[Vlado]

I believe that Vladimir Putin said something along these lines:
Let the global warming come. We'll finally enjoy some moderate climate in Siberia.

Can't find the quote atm.

Re:Hooray!

[f3rret]

Denmark is on the Arctic rim?

I mean I know Greenland is technically part of Denmark, but far as I know it's cold as hell here but we're not in the Arctic.

6 months of night

[medoc]

The temperatures may stay nice up there but it will still be night 24 hours a day during the winter.

IMHO this is not really compensed by long summer days, and these places will not be good replacements for the Riviera.

Let's rather try to keep the world temperature steady while we still get a chance !

Re:6 months of night

[sznupi]

You know, 6 months is just the extreme in one point...

Re:6 months of night

[confused one]

dark 24 hours a day? I predict there will be a Geek migration. Maybe in a few centuries Geeks will become migratory, flying south in the summer and north in the winter...

Oh, excellent...

[blind biker]

as long as you can get there and survive there due to the hurricanes.

Increasing the total energy in the atmosphere will not result in a well-behaved warming, but in more variable and extreme weather patterns, and there will be more hurricanes and storms at seas. This little game humanity is playing with the Earth may well end up in tears.

Re:Oh, excellent...

[khallow]

as long as you can get there and survive there due to the hurricanes.

Yes, as we saw in the documentary, "The Day After Tomorrow", the superstorms sucked. Fortunately, the human survivors did that bonding thing and we don't have to worry about superstorms any more.

Re:Oh, excellent...

[ikkonoishi]

Hey its a better game than global thermonuclear war!

Re:Oh, excellent...

[Rockoon]

as long as you can get there and survive there due to the hurricanes.

Increasing the total energy in the atmosphere will not result in a well-behaved warming, but in more variable and extreme weather patterns, and there will be more hurricanes and storms at seas.

The science would like to have a word with you. The current theory is that increased warming will increase wind sheer in the atmosphere, decreasing the severity and number of hurricanes.

Unlike your unfounded alarmist (aka bullshit) claims, I am going to provide a source, from the NOAA.. a great friend of the warmers.

CLIMATE MODELS SUGGEST WARMING-INDUCED WIND SHEAR CHANGES COULD IMPACT HURRICANE DEVELOPMENT, INTENSITY

Re:Oh, excellent...

[IdolizingStewie]

Earl got awful close this year.

Re:Oh, excellent...

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah, and remember when those killer bees in Texas were going to move north and kill us all? I think there was an Irwin Allen movie made about it... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/ I wish I'd been tallying how many times I've been told the world was ending, and how many different reasons for it.

Look, let's just all agree that humans are evil horrible thoughtless creatures and we're going to blow up the world, do our little Charlton Heston "you maniacs!" moment, and move on to live our lives, ok?

Re:Oh, excellent...

[dr2chase]

Maybe. Note that the shear is not uniformly reduced, and that reference at least predicts no change north of Miami, so any storms forming or surviving in that part of the ocean, are thus predicted to be stronger than usual because of warmer water.

The problem is that it's not just hurricanes; climate models also predict widespread drought (pdf):

Climate models project increased aridity in the 21st century over most of Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East, most of the Americas, Australia, and Southeast Asia. Regions like the United States have avoided prolonged droughts during the last 50 years due to natural climate variations, but might see persistent droughts in the next 20–50 years.

Re:Oh, excellent...

[blind biker]

The guy who posts a link to actual research on the subject gets modded flamebait while the guy who makes unsupported claims, some of which are contradicted by that very research which was linked to gets modded insightful.

Some of the possibilities are:

(A) The guy making unsupported claims has a lot of sock puppets with mod points.
(B) Slashdot is filled with people that don't care about the facts.
(C) Slashdot is the victim of an organized astroturf.

Wow. I'm hurt Mr. Anonymous.

NO, I don't have any sock puppets. I don't have that sort of time.

But as for links, here a few:
Study links more hurricanes, climate change or
Warming doubles number of hurricanes both referring to this paper but containing their own research, too.
Then there is this: Research Meteorologists See More Severe Storms Ahead: The Culprit -- Global Warming

There is a very clear link between storms, hurricanes and increased atmospheric temperature. I actually thought it was common knowledge by now, so I didn't bother posting links. As to why or who modded the other guy flamebait, I don't know, but the idea that I'd spent extra time creating and logging in with sock puppets is so hilarious from my perspective, that it almost made me smile.

More alarmist bollocks.

[Burnhard]

There is no evidence the phenomenon – which brings a constant flow of warm water and mild weather to northern Europe – has slowed down over the past 20 years, climate scientists say.
‘The changes we’re seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle,’ said researcher Josh Willis, from Nasa.

Please stop repeating the same old alarmist conjecture, hypothesis, unfounded speculation, stupefyingly idiotic model predictions and start actually going out and measuring real world data.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

Of course you realize the people saying that also support AGW?

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[Burnhard]

Of course you realize the people saying that also support AGW?

Yes of course I do. They are in the business of successfully transferring money from the Government to their institution, so naturally they must append, "because of man-made Global Warming" to each and every grant proposal. But anyway, that doesn't change the facts and the facts are what we're interested in, surely?

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

And you do know what are some of the most wealthy corporations around, right? I'll give a hint: somewhat involved in sources of energy. And would be more than happy to make any scientists able to refute AGW fabulously wealthy on the personal level, any grant institution with assured funding.

(really funny how the facts are facts for you only as long as they reaffirm what you want... to hell with all the rest of "facts" the messengers bring)

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

(really funny how the facts are facts for you only as long as they reaffirm what you want... to hell with all the rest of "facts" the messengers bring)

Funny how one side always trots that out to use against the other side without quite realizing that by doing so they're doing the exact same thing.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Two-way street. Double-edged sword. Etc., etc.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[h4rm0ny]

And would be more than happy to make any scientists able to refute AGW fabulously wealthy on the personal level, any grant institution with assured funding.

I keep hearing this. Genuine question - what do oil companies have to gain by refuting AGW? Are people using less oil because of the fear of AGW? Oil is running out and that's not changing. We need to get off of oil whether AGW is significant or not and I presume that the big oil companies are already getting as much control over the non-oil energy industry as they possibly can already anyway. Knowing them, they'll find a way to charge us more for the same amount of energy whether they have to expensively pump it out of the ground or whether they get it cheap from some off-shore tidal barrier with government tax-breaks because it's green.

I'm just not sure that refuting AGW would make much difference to their bottom line.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

Are you for real? I don't have a problem with findings of American Geophysical Union about Gulf Stream...

But somebody above used only this one finding, in line with what he wants, ignoring some other things the AGU says:

The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system--including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons--are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

I see, you're above the whole American Geophysical Union...glad you cleared that out.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

Look, it's just a simple conclusion of "follow the money" argument that anti-AGW people try to keep throwing around...while totally blind to what would be the easiest, most straightforward way to do that (hey, if it's "the truth", just hidden?) Nothing more.

Plus you know, however we are dependent on those companies, there's always risk of lesser profits...

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[Burnhard]

I'm wondering what you mean by "the whole American Geophysical Union". Is it similar in nature to the APS?

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[drinkypoo]

I keep hearing this. Genuine question - what do oil companies have to gain by refuting AGW?

The primary mover behind GW is claimed to be CO2, and their product is made of sequestered carbon. We could replace the world's need for fossil fuels with biodiesel from algae using desert land currently not doing anything but taking up space, using seawater pumped inland with solar heat, so there is actually no need for oil companies to be producing fuel in the long term. If the world's citizenry discover that the burning of fossil fuels is the leading driver of human-threatening climate change, then they will reject fossil fuels insofar as is possible. In practical terms that means legislation limiting the consumption of fossil fuels; to the oil companies this translates into limiting profits since people will only pay so much for energy.

Further, an interim step would likely involve massive tariffs on all fossil fuels, which leads to other forms of energy gaining traction. If you double the price of oil energy then you have effectively halved the price of Solar for many purposes, though certainly there will be those who cannot afford ANY energy. These people will be placed closer to a state of riot, as they have less to lose. The oil barons' continued condition of privilege persists only so long as the status quo is maintained; France's history shows us what can happen when the people riot.

I'm just not sure that refuting AGW would make much difference to their bottom line.

The simple truth is that we haven't NEEDED all these oil companies for many years now, from a technological basis. They've done everything they could to maintain their stranglehold, down to actually buying battery technology and shelving it to make electric vehicles less viable. So yes, refuting global warming (what's with these unnecessary double negatives? use them only when necessary!) is very important to their bottom line, which is why they spend so much money attempting to do it. Luckily they have been unsuccessful; to me this pretty much proves that they are culpable, since they are trying to prove themselves innocent and failing utterly while others are successfully finding them guilty. Unfortunately it is somewhat irrelevant in that as long as they appear to be not entirely unsuccessful (see, there's an example of a need for a double negative — saying "partially successful" would change the meaning of the sentence too much) then there will be sufficient doubt in the small and easily confused minds of the people to permit them to continue buying the legislation that they need to continue raping the land for profit.

Re:More alarmist bollocks.

[sznupi]

My apologies - as I understand now, you are merely a part of a very small silenced elite among climate scientists.

Well ,at the least being sure that you will be certainly rehabilitated in the future must sound very uplifting. And elite.

Re:Hooray!

[WarJolt]

yes you are part of the arctic rim... I think you guys are too low in eevation to really tell.

Re:Hooray!

[WarJolt]

missed an l in elevation

Scuba gear

[Arancaytar]

It's going to become warmer, but won't people get wet feet when all that ice flows into the ocean?

Re:Scuba gear

[maxwell demon]

Too many people have dirty feet anyway. It will only be an advantage if those feet get in contact with water. :-)

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

It's not a straw man. Lots of people question that the climate changes, that CO2 is the cause, that increased CO2 concentrations are from human emissions. Just today I read an article by Norway's most prominent denier, and he asserted

1. CO2 concentrations can't possibly rise, because the ocean regulates it.
2. Even if it appears to be high right now, it can't possibly cause warming, because it's saturated.
3. The laws of thermodynamics contradict global warming.

I'm not going to judge all deniers by their least unreasonable spokesmen - for one, because they certainly wouldn't return the courtesy, and two, because they do very little to combat the more crackpot theories.

Now that you read my book...

[Snufu]

How much would you pay this prime plot of arctic tundra that I happen to be selling? Ten million dollars per acre? $500,000 per acre?

Would you believe for the low, LOW price of $99,000 per acre this piece of frozen wasteland...er, wonderland could be your very own!*

*Mineral, petroleum, and water rights not included with purchase.

Re:Now that you read my book...

[MacroRodent]

As an owner of a plot of land in one of the cities mentioned as beneficiaries, the article made my day... That ought to take care of my retirement fund :-).

Re:Deniers...

[gilleain]

There are not going to be any underwater ruins. You are watching too many bad Kevin Costner movies.

Hey, hey. Say what you want about AGW, but don't run down 'Waterworld'! I watched it again the other day, and it's really a great-bad film; as in, enjoyably bad.

What other films have fights between catamarans and jetskis (which seem incredibly robust - they can hang around underwater for hours)? Or Dennis Hopper being fitted for a false eye by his sycophantic minions? Or races through a pirate oil tanker? Great stuff!

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: Needless to say, these forces have coopted the discussion.

Nope, it's very NEEDFUL to say.

Firstly, what forces?

Secondly, are they coopting it?

Thirdly, is it wrong merely because someone has coopted it? If it is, why?

Quote: How about we solve global warming once and for all :

Why am I reminded of the Futurama episode with the comet running out of ice in "Crimes of the Hot"?

"This will solve the problem once and for all!"
"What about..."
"I SAID ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!!"

Quote: Policies like that, 95% of the denyer camp will support. IF the earth is warming, these will help.

Well, help, yes. It won't solve the problem once and for all, because dust would need to be continually being dropped out of the sky (who is going to organise this and deal with the expenditure [cf your earlier communist wet-dream fearmongering]?) and would have to be increased year-on-year if we don't also stop producing CO2.

Re:Deniers...

[h00manist]

They are not the main obstacle anymore, its greenwashing, lack of public information on effective actions, and political stalemates due to business interests, business as usual. For example, huge efforts to sell cars doing 45mpg only, instead of 25mpg, but almost none to encourage anyone to leave the car home, which would be 0gallon per mile, and everyone can try to do it, no fancy new car requirement and limitation.

Re:Deniers...

[FirstOne]

"The worse prediction are for a sea level rise of an inch or so over a 100 years. "

How much will sea levels rise in the 21st Century?

"For the lowest emission rate, sea levels are expected torise around 1 metre by 2100. For the higher emission scenario, which is where we're currently tracking, sea level rise by 2100 is around 1.4 metres. "

And it gets worse for the centuries beyond 2100. 2100-2199 ~+3 meters, and 2200-2299 ~+5 meters..
Needless to say.. but the the The Coast Is Toast: Take the Money and Run ..

PS.. For you mathematically challenged deniers, one(1) meter is 39.37 inches..

Pity about the geometry...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While it might be nice for the peoples of the Arctic rim to be able to move from a "shivering a lot and burning penguins for warmth" based economy(yes, I know, penguins are antarctic; but the arctic doesn't have any birds nearly as iconic), the fact that there are many more people, and a lot more land, closer to the equator is going to make that move a major net downer. Particularly since the inhabitants of the new equatorial desert are unlikely to take kindly to any plans that involve them dying quietly in their place, which will imply a certain amount of desperate migration, which never goes very well....

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[Peeteriz]

Of course it is so - but since I live far from the equatorial parts, for me the global warming has a potential to be a net benefit.

In fact, given this data, I wouldn't be surprised if the large and economically strong northern countries would deliberately continue the global warming trends, since it would benefit them a tiny bit, and greatly harm their future global competitors such as China, India, Brazil and all the SE Asian countries - which would clearly dominate the world soon otherwise.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[Burnhard]

What evidence do you have that there's going to be a desert across the equator? I mean apart from the fact that the UK Met Office decided to change its map to show all landmasses as brown, rather than green (when I fly over the UK, it looks pretty ****ing green to me - what they did was very Orwellian, if I may say so). If equatorial desertification does happen, it will be due to population pressure, deforestation and agricultural practices, not AGW.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the amount of angst and disruption caused by the relatively puny numbers of existing economic migrants, I suspect that things might not be so ducky.

Even in situations where the long-term basically turns out well(ie. the US's comparatively open immigration policy(with various historical exceptions based on whatever flavor of subhuman we are freaking out about today) has basically been reasonably successful; short, sharp upticks in migration, particularly the sort that is more desperate than entrepreneurial, can get really ugly.

China, large swaths of Africa, and central America are already a bit water-stressed. Their (large) populations aren't going to take kindly to the idea of just shriveling up and dying. Under sufficiently severe stress, local governments are either just going to fail, or going to adopt a deliberate "go north, young man" policy to make their excess populations somebody elses problem. At that point, places like the US, southern Europe, Russia, etc. enjoy the delightful choice of either absorbing a giant bolus of "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore", or the militarization and xenophobia of a society willing to just stretch out the concertina wire and start shooting to kill. Fun times.

Extra giggles will, of course, be had all around if doctors in the northern hemisphere have to start reading the Journal of Tropical Medicine as a matter of professional practice, rather than altruism...

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Doesn't really matter what causes desertification, the consequences are largely the same. More specifically, we are discussing an article proposing the notion that fair portions of the arctic are going to become more or less temperate. I am granting that the status of "true for the sake of argument". Given that, severe ecological disruption, and probable desertification, of equatorial regions seems fairly likely.

If TFA's projection is wrong, that may not be true at all; but there also isn't much to talk about.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[ebuck]

Deserts have more to do with soil composition and mountain placement then longitude and latitude. That said, the US did manage to turn a lot of grassland into "the great dustbowl" due to mismanagement of its soil resources. I hope Africa never does the same, as it took nearly a decade of hard work to get it manageable and another decade after that to get it desirable.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[sznupi]

...ignoring for a minute how effects of AGW might very well influence population pressures, and deforestations or agricultural practices.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[Burnhard]

Good lord, are you going to model that? Your chain of causation could go back a very long way. Poincaré anyone?

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[sznupi]

You look around you you climate does influence those things...and, I guess, keep telling yourself how since you can't conceive modeling that - nobody can.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[Arker]

Desertification as a result of warming seems quite unlikely, the usual pattern is the opposite, at least in terms of net effect. In the past, when climate has warmed (and yes, it's warmed far beyond what we see today, many many times) this has resulted in amplified monsoon patterns and turned areas like the Sahara green again, for a few millenia until the climate cooled and the Sahara went back to desert.

Re:Pity about the geometry...

[SleazyRidr]

(yes, I know, penguins are antarctic; but the arctic doesn't have any birds nearly as iconic)

Maybe they could burn baby seals for warmth...

Re:Deniers...

[ferd_farkle]

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes.

INHOFE: I think I was right on that, and I do believe — first off, let’s keep in mind, though, what the issue is. It’s not whether or not we’re going into a global warming period. We were. We’re not now.

You know, God’s still up there. We’re now going through a cooling spell. And the whole issue there was is it man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane. I don’t think so

Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?

[Vintermann]

Mean global temperatures have refused to rise for the past 20 years, now?

I wonder what you could get away with saying. Maybe there was a great volcanic eruption in Chile last week. Maybe there hasn't been any hurricanes over the caribbean for five years. Maybe global sea level has dropped two meters on average?

Because it's about as plausible to say any of that as saying mean global temperature has refused to rise for the past 20 years.

Re:Deniers...

[jayveekay]

If you believe the earth was created 6000 years ago, you probably are not going to be capable of a rational debate on the scientific evidence of long term (tens of thousands of years) climate change.

What percentage of adult humans claim membership in religions?

Re:Old news

[sznupi]

Could hypothetically get...interesting now that most of the international community said "to hell with territorial inviolability of european borders" (generally sort of a sanctity for the last half a century) by agreeing to independent Kosovo.

After all it's not fair how Finland won't get the best benefits (*); and all just because of loosing its Arctic coast ((*)however small they would be in comparison - always something) to the Soviet Union in a war aggression by the latter. Luckily, I can sleep well knowing the Fins won't push for something like that; at least as long as Greenland decides to rejoin EU...

Re:Deniers...

[Burnhard]

Is your comment satire?

Bow before your new......

[Anti Cheat]

Canadian Mosquito and Black Fly Overlords.

If Smith's unlikely “thought experiment” scenario was to happen. Wouldn't a lot of the Canadian arctic be a shallow sea, caused by the rising sea levels? So don't rush out buying land before checking an elevation chart.

Re:Bow before your new......

[Dunbal]

So don't rush out buying land before checking an elevation chart.

      Or get flood insurance?

Re:Bow before your new......

[Sique]

Are you willing to pay the premium to insure a low lying land against flooding?

Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?

[qmaqdk]

As consistently as mean global temperatures have refused to rise for the past 20 years?

Seriously, how long are we going to keep funding Chicken Little to squawk that the sky is going to fall tomorrow, 4 REALZ TIHS TIEM!!!!!1!!?

What? I read in earlier (Score:5 Insightful) and (Score:5 Informative) posts by h4rm0ny (722443) and tygerstripes (832644) that nobody was denying that global warming was happening.

In any case, dear politically correctly attributed AGW sceptic, which facts are you basing your above assertion on?

Somali pirates need a new job

[KayakFun]

This will also put an end to piracy in the eastern part of the Indian ocean, when all ships between Europe and Asia go the northern route. Time to get a decent job?

Re:Deniers...

[Dunbal]

Only idiots deny global warming. That it is anthropogenic, however, still remains to be seen.

Who is questioning it exactly?

[Viol8]

Its a law of physics that CO2 is an infrared absorber - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that CO2 levels are rising in our atmosphere - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that most of that rise is due to man - is someone questioning that?

No?

So what are they questioning then and who is doing it? I mean who of significance , not the kind of pig ignorant
arts graduates who couldn't tell you what CO2 is composed of or its physical properties if their lives depended on it.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[buchner.johannes]

Its a law of physics that CO2 is an infrared absorber - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that CO2 levels are rising in our atmosphere - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that most of that rise is due to man - is someone questioning that?

No?

So what are they questioning then and who is doing it? I mean who of significance , not the kind of pig ignorant
arts graduates who couldn't tell you what CO2 is composed of or its physical properties if their lives depended on it.

I think the question is whether the effect you describe is the dominant one (>1% contribution) to the observed and predicted temperature rise.

Unfortunately, people conclude from arguments against that, that they do not have to do any good to their environment and change their ways.
No matter if climate change is anthropogenic or not, we should not pump toxic chemicals in the air, fill our oceans with plastic, and destroy species and ecosystems. Continuing the inefficient handling of resources -- be it for energy production or food -- use will cause shortages.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Burnhard]

Climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the order of a few tenths of a degree. Even the IPCC states this. The "catastrophism" comes from the hypothesised positive feedbacks. Did we see such feedbacks with the previous CO2 doubling (from, say, 190ppm to 380ppm)? No, we didn't! So why do you think the next doubling will give you up 3-9C warming all of a sudden? Will the laws of physics be different this century from those of the 20th century? (probably, but only if Witten gets a clue). You are hypothesising that overwhelming positive feedbacks will kick in at some point and the temperature will "run away". You have no evidence whatsoever to show that CO2 has caused any such affect in the past. Indeed one can argue that given in the past CO2 was far, far higher in concentration than it is today, it is unlikely such an affect is possible.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the order of a few tenths of a degree.

No, it isn't. This is contradicted by both observational evidence and the laws of physics.

Even the IPCC states this.

No, it doesn't. The IPCC states that it's very likely between 2 and 4.5 degrees C. "Climate sensitivity" is defined to include feedbacks. If you want to artificially exclude them, the IPCC says you get something like 1.1 degrees, which is still larger than your claim.

The "catastrophism" comes from the hypothesised positive feedbacks. Did we see such feedbacks with the previous CO2 doubling (from, say, 190ppm to 380ppm)? No, we didn't!

We certainly did. You can try reading that IPCC report which you claim supports your views on, say, observed water vapor feedbacks, Clement et al. (2009) on cloud feedbacks, etc.

So why do you think the next doubling will give you up 3-9C warming all of a sudden?

3-9C? Now you're putting words in other people's mouths.

You have no evidence whatsoever to show that CO2 has caused any such affect in the past.

Oh yeah, "no evidence", other than 20th century warming, Holocene temperature fluctuations, the last glacial maximum, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and the Phanerozoic in general, all of which support climate sensitivities above 2 C. With a low climate sensitivity nothing ever changes because any forcing (natural or human) gets immediately suppressed. But the climate does change in response to forcings — a lot.

I think you can find citations to all of these climate sensitivity studies in the IPCC report which you claim supports your nonsense numbers. (Except for the PETM results; there you want to look for Panchuk et al. (2007) and Zeebe et al. (2009). Also, there are new results supporting what's in the IPCC report, such as Lunt et al. (2009) on Earth system sensitivity.)

Indeed one can argue that given in the past CO2 was far, far higher in concentration than it is today, it is unlikely such an affect is possible.

One can argue that, but one would be wrong. Rises and falls in CO2 have been associated with rises and falls in temperature, precisely in the expected range of climate sensitivity, both during high-CO2 greenhouse and low-CO2 icehouse conditions.

You are probably tempted to treat CO2 as an absolute control on temperature, so you can simply map CO2 concentration to surface temperature, but it's not an absolute control: there are many other controls on temperature (continental configurations altering atmosphere/ocean circulation patterns and ice and vegetation distributions, secular changes in the solar constant, etc.) X ppm 50 million years ago won't produce the same climate as X ppm today. Once you correct for differences in the baseline mean climatological state due to "boundary conditions", changes in CO2 produce the expected changes in climate. You might want to listen to Richard Alley's talk at the 2009 AGU meeting for a nice review of these findings; it's recorded on the web.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[mdsolar]

In Chapter Ten of James Hansen's book 'Storms of my Grandchildren' he says that a Venus Syndrome runaway is a dead certainty should we consume all fossil fuels including tar sands and shale oil. And, he gives justification for this including answering your argument. You should go to the library and read it. http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/storms_of_my_grandchildren.html

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Burnhard]

Are you serious? Venus has 95% atmospheric CO2 by volume, no liquid oceans, is much closer to the Sun and has no biosphere. It's a completely different world. James Hansen is a green activist. He gave up science a long time ago. I'm more likely to read a book by Al Gore than I am by that fucking lunatic.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[MacDork]

Its a law of physics that CO2 is an infrared absorber - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that CO2 levels are rising in our atmosphere - is someone questioning that?

It is also true that 500 mil years ago, Earth was a ball of ice despite the fact that atmospheric CO2 was ~4200ppm (about 12 times higher than today). Oh yeah, you guys always forget to include that 'law of physics.'

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Viol8]

"Climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the order of a few tenths of a degree"

Whats that supposed to mean? A few tenths of a degree for what increase in CO2? If there was no CO2 in our atmosphere the average temperature of the earth would be below 0C so why do you think doubling the current amount would have so little effect?

"You are hypothesising that overwhelming positive feedbacks will kick in at some point and the temperature will "run away""

No one has said anything about a runaway effect. If that was going to happen it would have happened after a large meteorite impact when most of the worlds biomass went up in flames. But that doesn't mean there can't be a significant rise in temperature that will severely effect the ecosystem - and hence us - as we know.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Daetrin]

"It is also true that 500 mil years ago, Earth was a ball of ice despite the fact that atmospheric CO2 was ~4200ppm (about 12 times higher than today). Oh yeah, you guys always forget to include that 'law of physics.'"

I am certainly not an expert in the subject, but my basic understanding of snowball earth is that first the continents got into a position that led to a runaway glaciation. More ice on the ground/water equals more light reflected equals more ice forming. Once the entire earth was covered in ice there was no photosynthesis going on, so carbon dioxide started to build up, mostly from volcanic activity. In fact according to the citations on wikipedia it didn't build just up to 12 times higher than today, but might have been more than 300 times higher before there was enough greenhouse heating to overcome the cooling effects of reflection from all the ice.

You seem to be implying that high levels of CO2 at the same time the earth was frozen over somehow contradicts global warming when in fact it supports the idea. Were you not aware of that? Or were you just hoping that we weren't? (And in any case, how is a fact or set of conditions a "law of physics"?)

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[Viol8]

Actually it was that high level of CO2 that caused the snowball to melt and a period of vicious greenhouse warming to ensue. But lets not let facts get in the way of your little rant.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

Those "toxic chemicals" and "plastics going into the oceans" don't have anything to do with global warming. Habitat destruction can have an effect. But increased CO2 in the atmosphere due mostly to human use of fossil fuel is the primary cause of global warming. Therefore it is something to pay attention to.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

Climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the order of a few tenths of a degree. ... Did we see such feedbacks with the previous CO2 doubling (from, say, 190ppm to 380ppm)?

Considering that the last time atmospheric CO2 levels were around 190 ppmv was at the height of the last glaciation some 20,000 years ago and that global temperatures have risen some 8 C since then I don't think 3-9C is really wrong.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[MacDork]

"It is also true that 500 mil years ago, Earth was a ball of ice despite the fact that atmospheric CO2 was ~4200ppm (about 12 times higher than today). Oh yeah, you guys always forget to include that 'law of physics.'"

I am certainly not an expert in the subject, but my basic understanding of snowball earth is that first the continents got into a position that led to a runaway glaciation.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner. I've got a graph just for you! (hint: Plate tectonics most likely caused the ice age I was referring to.)

You seem to be implying that high levels of CO2 at the same time the earth was frozen over somehow contradicts global warming when in fact it supports the idea.

That's what I love about you guys. No matter what someone says, you insist it "Supports global warming!" without the first shred of evidence.

Were you not aware of that? Or were you just hoping that we weren't? (And in any case, how is a fact or set of conditions a "law of physics"?)

I was _quoting_ the hyperventilating zealot from the Cult of Climate Change in the parent post, if you bothered to read it. (^_^)

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

Its a law of physics that CO2 is an infrared absorber - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that CO2 levels are rising in our atmosphere - is someone questioning that?

Its a fact that most of that rise is due to man - is someone questioning that?

No?

Just in case someone still doesn't get it - the 3 facts you listed above are not suitable as premises when you're trying to reach the conclusion that man-made CO2 is the direct and main cause behind global temperature rise. You would have to include something about no other chemical/elemental changes being observed in the atmosphere to even come close to asserting that man-made CO2 is the main cause - and that would still be an incredibly simplified explanation.

The first two are of course simple scientific facts, easily measurable. The third is more complex but the fact that the increase in atmospheric carbon (primarily in the form of CO2) year after year is less than half of the total fossil carbon emitted by human activities is a pretty strong implication that man is the primary cause. The first fact that CO2 is an IR absorber and the second fact that CO2 concentrations have increased would lead you to believe that IR absorption has increased leading to higher temperatures. That's my simplified explanation.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

I don't disagree with you at all on toxic pollutants as a serious issue. It's going to be an ongoing problem of civilization.

But it's very unlikely that the global warming we're seeing is just natural variation. If someone comes up with a different theory that explains global warming better than the current theory I'll accept it but no one has even come close yet.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

Well, you believe current theory does a terrible job of explaining current warming. To me it appears that it does a reasonably good job.

Climate models can not really make predictions of future climate because there is too much natural variability that can't be predicted. The timing and magnitude of things like the solar cycle and El Nino/La Nina (to name two of the bigger factors) can not be predicted in advance with any confidence. So climate models output can only be compared to reality after the fact by inputting the actual observations of those things that affect climate to see if they match the observations. They do a pretty good job of that. The projections that climate models make for the future are based on the assumption that solar cycles will continue to cycle like they have in the past and the El Nino/La Nina will roughly balance out, etc. Then they create scenarios of possible future levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and see what the models say if they were to come to pass. That is what the climate model projections are based on.

I think paleoclimatologists would beg to differ on your extreme warming statement. The impression I get from them is that we will see temperature changes in a couple of hundred years that would normally take thousands of years to occur. That is bound to be stressful on the natural world that humans are still totally dependent on.

Re:Who is questioning it exactly?

[riverat1]

It's meaningless. The tropospheric hotspot is an artifact of the moist adiabatic lapse rate, not global warming.

Re:Deniers...

[chrb]

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes.

It's not a strawman - there have been many claims that "the world is not warming", although it does seem to be a less popular position today than in the past. List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming - Position: Global warming is not occurring

Re:Antarctica

[sznupi]

Hey, even better for Arctic rim countries - as far away as they can be ;p

BTW, we're not sure where our limits of adaptability are until we hit them - so better to play safe; already causing one of the biggest and most rapid extinction events in geological history might be, at the least, not a good sign about the influence on the surroundings, on which we also depend.

There's a spectrum

[JSBiff]

I've observed a bit of a spectrum (with some people occupying an 'area' of the spectrum instead of a single point - not being absolutely positive of where they stand).

For example, I've heard the following from several different people:

* there's no possible way we have accurate temperature readings of the global temperature 'state' - you'll find out that someone placed the thermometer too close to the earth (too warm) or in direct sunlight in the Sahara, etc, etc (they don't seem to understand the concept of taking lots of samples from lots of places and averaging the result)

* I heard Rush Limbaugh spend most of a program once going on and on about the eruption of a volcano, and how it was putting out more CO2 than mankind would emit in like 200 years or something like that, and concluding there's nothing mankind could possibly *do* to change the climate.

* I've heard people say there might be warming, but it is related to Solar activity cycles and has nothing to do with human activity.

* I've heard people say "So what? Global warming means winter is less horrible. I'm all for that." - which, I suppose, if you live in Canada or the Northern States of the lower-48 (places like New England, NY, PA, the Midwest, etc), is true - some people, as this article discusses, will likely *benefit* from global warming; unfortunately, that benefit comes at the expense of a lot of other (some of whom are very poor to begin with and their lives will be made even worse) people.

* I've heard people say maybe global warming will/is happening a little bit, but that as it happens, cloud cover will increase, which will reflect solar energy, so it will be self-moderating.

* Then there are the folks who believe that any kind of problem is just the fulfillment of prophecy, and Jesus will come rapture the righteous, while the damned will suffer 'real global warming'.

So basically, among the deniers, there's a range of people from "it's definitely not happening", to "maybe it's happening, but I don't think we need to do anything about it", to "it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it, so eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die".

Re:There's a spectrum

[jlf278]

"* I heard Rush Limbaugh spend most of a program once going on and on about the eruption of a volcano, and how it was putting out more CO2 than mankind would emit in like 200 years or something like that, and concluding there's nothing mankind could possibly *do* to change the climate."

Yes, Rush likes to cite fictitious 'evidence' to support his moronic ramblings. Truthfully, volcanic activity pales in comparison to manmade C02 output.

http://www.frankodwyer.com/blog/?p=229

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/global_warming_misinformation_volcanoes.html

Re:Deniers...

[couchslug]

Denial can be an effective strategy for those who don't mind the consequences of global warming and look forward to useful geopolitical outcomes.

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

What percentage of adult humans claim membership in religions?

Since only humans can really claim membership in religions, it would seem the species reference is superfluous, and normal "adult humans" would've just said "adults". Or are you non-human and meant "you humans"?

But to address your question, the answer is who cares. I don't give a flying fish if you claim your earth worship as a religion or not. The less artificially qualified question is, what percentage of adults are religious? Answer: 100%. Everyone's picked something to be religious about.

Re:Deniers...

[Gordonjcp]

Ah, but that's not important. Mankind is producing eleventy billion trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide just simply by existing, and it gets into the atmosphere and by (handwave handwave) mechanisms too complicated to explain to someone so obviously stupid as to believe that climate change is happening (handwave handwave) it only absorbs heat from the earth and only releases it back to the earth and then the ice melts and the polar bears all die.

Either that or the pro-AGW believers are utterly divorced from reality.

Re:Antarctica

[Urkki]

Just consider that it won't be easy to replace 4 billions years of evolution.

Nah, not 4 billion years. More like, at most, 60 million years of evolution, or less if you count the lesser mass extinctions that have happened after that.

60 million years, not a big deal really, for nature, just something like 1,5% of the history of Life. Sort of like a human getting kicked back half a year in their education/career/family life (comparing human life span to expected life span of habitable Earth).

More to global warming than melting ice

[erroneus]

I find it amazing that people who report on climate change/global warming/armageddon fail to appreciate the nature of weather. Weather is *water moving in the air.* This simple understanding explains just about everything that happens with the weather.

Sure, warmer areas mean melted ice and areas that were before inaccessible or unusable. But there's more to it than that. There will be global weather pattern changes as well. Places that once got rain will dry up. Places that were arid will get wet. Conditions favorable to certain life and vegetation will change and that life and vegetation will simply die off and even become extinct. We have a global ecosystem that is being changed and upset in ways that simply cannot be predicted. Being able to reclaim some land is what I would characterize as some "short term gains."

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[Raenex]

Being able to reclaim some land is what I would characterize as some "short term gains."

Why not call them long-term claims, if these are long-term weather patterns?

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[cbeaudry]

So it gets dry here, wet there, hot here and cold there.

Things change. Its the nature of time.

No one has demonstrated without a doubt that it means the end of civilization.

We will adapt, migrate and flourish, because that is human nature.

Expecting to maintain the status quo because this is what we "currently" know as being comfortable and "optimum" is short sighted and frankly ridiculous.

And with all that aside. No one has demonstrated either that there will be DRASTIC changes yet. Its all speculation, based on unreliable computer models, unproven theories based on far fetched assumptions with no basis (I'm talking to you, runway climate change).

Honestly, all I see is allot of alarmism and not very much actual science.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[vadim_t]

No one has demonstrated without a doubt that it means the end of civilization.

I've never, ever heard of anybody say it would. Please link to any place where you've heard it.

What is there is a potential for things getting seriously unpleasant. There was an earthquake in Haiti recently for instance. That's the kind of "unpleasant" I'm thinking of, only in multiple places at once. Will the human race survive? Sure. Do I want to be there when it happens? Hell, no.

We will adapt, migrate and flourish, because that is human nature.

Oh, there's been a lot of flourishing in New Orleans lately? You mean that they quickly fixed everything in a couple of months and since then it's been awesome? And of course I'm sure you don't mind at all the amount of tax money that it took to fix it, as well as the loss the economy took from having all those people stop what they were doing and get to rebuilding.

There's a big difference between having to adapt quickly and having to adapt over centuries.

Let's say the sea level rises. If it rises a few meters in 50 years, you may see your house on the beach get flooded. If it rises in 5000 years, there's likely to be a point where one of your descendants decides that the sea came uncomfortably close a few years back, and moves somewhere else.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[Abcd1234]

No one has demonstrated without a doubt that it means the end of civilization.

No one is even claiming that, jackass. But nice strawman.

What it *will* lead to is great hardship. One need only look at the decades-long drought in Africa, or the flooding in Pakistan, to see what may be coming for many people.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[cbeaudry]

"We will adapt, migrate and flourish, because that is human nature."

Ah, yes, the most important species on the planet! Screw all other living beings! They can just go extinct! All that matters are humans.

More important than the Anonymous Coward species thats for sure.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[riverat1]

I like your post but weather is as much about energy moving through the atmosphere as it is about water. Of course water vapor is often the carrier of that energy through convection but energy also moves through radiative transfer and some conduction at the surface.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[riverat1]

No one has demonstrated without a doubt that it means the end of civilization.

What if the end of civilization is only 90% probable? Is that good enough odds for you? How about 50%? What's your cutoff of acceptable risk? Is it 100% or nothing?

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[cbeaudry]

Now now, no need for fear mongering.

Trying to appeal to the general populations fears does not an argument make.

There is no evidence to back up any of the numbers you just threw up there, not even for a 20% probability.

Come back when you have something to say other than, "What IF its the end of the world? Shouldnt we just jump off the bridge??".

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[riverat1]

Well, it was a serious response to the absolutist tone of your original statement. I don't think the human race is going extinct any time soon. We are an intelligent and adaptable species. As long as we can find air, water, food and shelter we'll survive. And as long as there are any substantial number of people around there will be some form of civilization. But considering the changes that are likely to occur with global warming there will be a lot of painful adjustments to be made adapting to it and we may not be able to support even the number of humans on the planet now in 100 years. Like it or not we're still completely dependent on the natural processes of the planet for the air we breathe, the fresh water we drink and the food we eat. If we disrupt those natural processes enough it could be pretty costly. But then I guess I'm just an alarmist.

Re:More to global warming than melting ice

[cbeaudry]

But then I guess I'm just an alarmist.

Indeed.

The "likely" changes are nothing of the sort. They are speculations at most, with no actual proof to back them up.

The changes might just be for the better, with some slight annoyances. The reports of meter high sea level rises are to say the least exaggerated and unfounded.

And saying we MAY not be able to support the number of humans on the planet... people have been saying that for hundreds of years. There has never been any basis to that, EVER.

The world produces more food than all 6 billion of us require. The problem we have is distribution, not production or sustainability. If all the money being wasted on fear mongering was spent on finding good solutions to those distribution problems, then thing would get better instantly.

We are good on fresh water. Its getting warmer, remember ? The glaciers will melt and supply us with fresh water. The air is fine and getting better every decade. Indeed we where polutting the crap out of our metropolitain areas, but there has been a SHARP increase in air quality in the last 20-30 years.

We definitely still need to find cleaner energy sources, ways to pollute less, etc...

What we dont need to idiotic policies like carbon trading. Which is the only reason the UN has been throwing money at this AGW fear mongering.

Transplanting Penguins

[PolygamousRanchKid]

(yes, I know, penguins are antarctic; but the arctic doesn't have any birds nearly as iconic)

Did anyone ever try to transplant penguins from the Antarctic to the Arctic? It would be an interesting experiment, and definitely worth a Ig Nobel. On the other hand, when folks start transplanting animals into foreign environments, it always ends in tears. Ask someone in Australia about rabbits, or someone in Florida about pythons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Pythons_in_Florida

Re:Transplanting Penguins

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Too dangerous. Antarctic ice is specially evolved to be resistant to the ice mites transmitted by penguins. Were the arctic ice to be infected, we could lose 90% of the arctic ice cover within just a few years due to mite infestation...

Re:Transplanting Penguins

[riverat1]

I don't think the penguins could survive the polar bears. There are no large land predators in Antarctica, just in the ocean around it and as clumsy as penguins are on land they are graceful and powerful swimmers able to evade leopard seals pretty well.

fuzzy... LOL.

Re:Transplanting Penguins

[mrxak]

Uh, what? This is probably a joke, but it's so bizarre that I feel I have to take it at least somewhat seriously and ask for sources on all that.

Even assuming ice can "evolve" to become resistant to something as a lifeless frozen chemical, I can find no useful results for wikipedia and google searches for ice mites.

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

The IIPC report disagrees with these numbers by a very large amount.

No, it doesn't. They're comparing two different things. The numbers in the IPCC report explicitly ignore any contribution from fast ice dynamics (read the footnotes). Those dynamics are precisely what have the potential for large sea level rise within a century.

You can run the numbers yourself.

Have you run the numbers yourself? Look at the papers on kinematic ice constraints (e.g. Pfeffer et al. (2008)) for upper bounds on how fast an ice sheet can lose mass.

It's also kind of ridiculous to say that Antarctica is "not important". The West Antarctic ice sheet could be an even larger contributor than Greenland, if eroding ice shelves accelerate the flow of land ice streams into the ocean (i.e., not "melting" the land ice but simply dumping it into the sea).

Yes, the dominant time scale of a melting ice sheet is hundreds to thousands of years, but there are enough fast processes out there (basal lubrication, ice shelf disintegration, etc.) to get a significant century-scale response. We don't know yet whether that is likely to happen, but as far as we currently know, it's at least physically possible.

Re:Deniers...

[ThePromenader]

If you want to look at the question objectively, all you have to do is examine the (vastly) available science and ask yourself "qui bono"? What would motivate a majority of the world's scientists to 'fabricate' climate change, or 'manipulate' the reasons behind climate change? Who are the most vociferous deniers, and what do they gain from their denial?

Personally speaking, I tend to group deniers - people who won't even try to examine the question objectively, but base their 'research' and 'conclusions' on predetermined opinions/positions - into two groups: Those paid by the very causers of the majority of CO2 emissions (and the emitters themselves, those who dare to come forward with their denial), and lonely blowhards seeking to attract attention to themselves through their 'controversial' opinion.

Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?

[Burnhard]

What happens if you remove El Nino 1998 from that graph? We know that's not an atmospheric phenomenon, it's an oceanic cycle, and it was the most powerful El Nino for a very long time indeed, nothing to do with CO2. According to Phil Jones, there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995. That's 15 years. Around 1/2 of your usual "significant" timescale. It's not looking good for the hypothesis, is it?

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Walking up to a stupid baby seal and clubbing it on the head is evil.
2. It's evil because it usually kills the baby seal (or at best leaves it with the worst headache of its life).
3. Polar bears kill baby seals (and being in the habit of doing so, are a constant headache for baby seal mommas).
4. Therefore polar bears are evil.
5. Ergo that which makes all the polar bears die is good.

Stop burning stuff perhaps?

[digitaldc]

"As the Arctic ice recedes, ecosystems extend, and minerals and fossil fuels are discovered and exploited,"...and ecological disasters are inevitable and we need to stop the exploitation of the natural environment in order to burn fuel.

Sorry, but this just annoys me, we should be working on green, renewable energy and NOT exploiting and damaging more of our natural environment. Our oceans are completely stressed as it is, and we don't need another BP oil spill in the Arctic or Antarctic.

Re:Stop burning stuff perhaps?

[KibibyteBrain]

Crude oil will still be useful for petrochemicals, regardless of innovation and policy in green energy. And using crude oil as the source for such chemicals can in some instances be more green than alternative processes, assuming they even exist for the desired compounds, and don't require price-raising re-purposing of the food supply for product materials, either. Probably the second best reason to stop burning fossil fuels for energy after environmental concerns is preservation for other useful purposes.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

It's foolish to think we aren't affecting the environment, while at the same time it's foolish to think we're going to turn into a fireball in the very near future. We obviously need to do something, otherwise one day it WILL get real bad...but that isn't going to happen tomorrow.

I'd like to think many people out there share that belief, but the crazies on both sides are too loud to tell if that's the case.

Adaptability is Being Completely Ignored

[divisionbyzero]

The argument is now whether the observable changes are predominantly attributable to man's impact on the environment, or to the natural climatic lifecycle of the Earth.

Is there, really? I believe this question has been answered pretty decisively by the scientific community, with a resounding consensus that man's actions are moderately to significantly affecting global warming.

Agreed. And regardless of how much, we are contributing *some* to global warming and reducing that contribution, especially in a non-linear system, seems to make sense. However I think that also means we need to accept that there may be nothing we can do about global warming and we need to spend more time thinking about how we are going adapt. Personally I look forward to having the weather of the Carolinas here in Boston when I'm ready to retire. ;-)

Re:Adaptability is Being Completely Ignored

[gilleain]

I agree that all options should be considered (except, perhaps, doing nothing). However, 'adaptation' may not be as easy to do. Although it's a crude analysis, consider what would happen if everyone moved with the changes in temperatures. In other words, those in tropical areas moved to temperate ones, and temperate to tundra, as the world warmed.

It should be pretty obvious that there is a geometric problem here - you can only move so far north or south before someone starts running out of room. When alarmists make apocalyptic predictions, they are not usually talking just about the physics or warming, but also the human geography and politics. What happens if everyone wants to live in Iceland? Well, or Canada/Russia, which are a bit bigger :)

Of course, humans can adapt to their environment with technology - but I don't think turning up the air-con will be enough, somehow.

Bottom Line.

[crow_t_robot]

The climate is changing. It is ALWAYS changing with or without us. Whether humans have an effect on the rate of change doesn't matter at this point. If you think we are going to turn this boat around, then get a grip. It's like trying to cure 6 billion heroin addicts at once. Expect the change and deal with it.

Arctic Boom

[malcreado]

Great the Arctic will be booming while the rest of the planet is uninhabitable.

My Wife's NORCS

[coofercat]

All I can say is that my wife's NORCS [sic] are definitely a source of some economic power, and the envy of some (me, in particular) for their reserves of natural resources.

(if that link is being slow, try the google cache instead)

Standard of living

[mdsolar]

Since a lot of measures that help reduce potential warming actually save money, there are people who are improving their standard of living as a result of doing something to help.

Re:Deniers...

[Gadget_Guy]

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes. Someone can criticise AGW theories without also saying that the world is ever unchanging and will always be so.

Oh my god, you are still going on about the term "deniers". Move on! Now I think about it, I don't think I have ever seen you write a post that actually criticises the AGW science. You always seem to be going on about how skeptics are not deniers. Interesting.

There are plenty of people out there who do deny global warming. To find an example, the first place that I look is the right wing columnist of some influence here in Australia. Was I surprised that his latest blog on this topic has moved from his usual line of "the earth is cooling" to "it's to expensive to stop it" arguments. Maybe he is warming to the idea that it is warming.

In any case, have a look at his followers on that blog entry. You cannot deny that they are denying global warming.

Re:Misconceptions fueled by misconceptions...

[Sique]

You know that in the 70ies it was common knowledge that the cooling cycle was about to begin somewhere in the late 90ies, but instead of the cooling, we got a warming.

Re:Deniers...

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Edit: I forgot to add,

"This is also true regarding the fantasy that anything more than a minority of the world's population can live anything like the "American lifestyle" without environmental consequences."

Re:Deniers...

[I(rispee_I(reme]

It's evil because it usually kills the baby seal (or at best leaves it with the worst headache of its life.

Here's the broken link in the chain.

I would say that it's evil because it's unnecessary for a human to behave in such a way in order to survive.

Hence, it's not evil when a polar bear does it.

In a similar way, most people wouldn't consider a person who steals bread out of hunger to be evil... but a person who steals bread from a starving person just for the enjoyment of stealing would qualify. It's stealing bread in both cases, right?

And no, it's not a case of whoosh; I just expect more subtlety in my humor.

Re:Misconceptions fueled by misconceptions...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that in the 70ies it was common knowledge that the cooling cycle was about to begin somewhere in the late 90ies,

"Common knowledge"? Maybe, by the public. But not among scientists.

Re:Deniers...

[rossdee]

Antarctica has the biggest ice sheets on the planet. It may take a long time to actually melt, but if (as is possible) they start sliding off the land into the sea, it doesn't matter whether it is melted or not, ice floating in water displaces as much water as it would if melted.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

We obviously need to do something, otherwise one day it WILL get real bad

Even that is alarmist, because the Earth has had much higher concentrations of CO2 in the past. The simple fact is our weather models aren't reliable enough for accurate predictions.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

It's not alarmist, it's a logical progression. We can't keep pumping shit into the atmosphere and water supplies thinking it won't have some major cumulative effect down the road. Again, that day is far off (likely after everyone reading this is dead). We are still well within a window to do something about it, but eventually it will reach a point where we can't fix it. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather do something about it now rather than scramble to do something about it once it's almost too late/is too late.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Burnhard]

According to Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it's probably less than 1C.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Hey global-warming robots, we can't change world economies on a dime. The evidence needs to be extremely solid, which it isn't.

Re:Deniers...

[drinkypoo]

Only idiots deny global warming. That it is anthropogenic, however, still remains to be seen.

No, only the extent of anthropogenic warming remains to be seen. We know that volcanism produces enough CO2 to alter our climate, and we put our orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism on average, even taking into account actual eruptions during our time on this planet.

Hansen

[mdsolar]

Then continue in your ignorance. But for anyone else reading, Hansen predicts a water vapor based runaway just as must have occurred on Venus. You might want to find out who wrote the book on Venus when you get a chance even though you love ignorance and hate knowledge.

Re:Hansen

[Burnhard]

Of course he does. He's the moron who started this whole scare in the first place.

My current book is The Hockey Stick Illusion - Climategate and the corruption of science, thus proving beyond a shadow of doubt that you get off on buying alarmist books and I get off on buying sceptical books.

Re:Hansen

[mdsolar]

Son, I told you to go to the library, not the book store.

Re:Hansen

[Burnhard]

Oh good lord, you work for or are running a fucking green energy company. Hoping to scam the public purse for your dinner are you? Conflicts of interest? How can you possibly give out an objective opinion on this subject?

What a fraud!

Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?

[Hognoxious]

As consistently as mean global temperatures have refused to rise for the past 20 years?

Did someone try asking them nicely?

Ego defence mechanisms

[microbox]

people are questioning the causes of climate change

And the group-ego continues full steam ahead, oblivious to new information.

Question all three

[microbox]

Deniers question all three facts that you have listed. Yes, I am afraid, the debate is really that stupid.

Ah the old "tolerant medieval islam" myth

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to read up on history. The list of muslim massacres from those times can fill entire books ("Granada massacre" is a good starting point, just don't think the phenomenon was limited to that region). And please, do not forget that "islam" means "a region that, while nominally islamic, consisted of a large majority of christians, both on the street, culturally and in government".

There are VERY few important scientists from that era, and the problem is that of the very few they had, a large majority were non-muslims.

It really is that bad, even when it comes to accomplishments that muslims claim for their own, like say the construction of the blue mosque ... it was built by a Jew (and anyone who thinks that's an example of tolerance needs to read up on the life story of that specific Jew, and exactly what "devshirme", the muslim practice of demanding children in exchange for "protection", has to do with it).

And this whole "detail" called slavery, followed by the systematic extermination of slaves (nearly all muslim slaves were black, and they consisted a majority in northern africa before islam). Let's just look past that, right ? Otherwise islam would look ... like a religion with a paedophilic genocidal slaver as a founder ... and adherents that follow in his footsteps in all the ways that matter ...

So medieval islam only was "tolerant" if you look past the
-> many massacres, mostly religious and racist massacres
-> slavery (including the use of kidnapped slaves, and don't forget that muslims are the only existing that killed slaves for amusement on a regular basis (even the Romans had the -small- amount of respect of using criminals if at all possible)
-> total repression and destruction of scientific knowledge (e.g. the destruction of the library of alexandria, followed by the destruction of all middle eastern libraries - and there were a LOT of them)
-> religious wars, segregated society, dhimmi laws and child-tax

Other than, that, sure, islam was tolerant. Of course, medieval islam makes Hitler look positively benign.

Islam was founded by a paedophilic genocidal thief and slaver. His followers, even today, outdo him in all the ways that matter.

Re:Ah the old "tolerant medieval islam" myth

[NeutronCowboy]

In comparison to what Christianity went through during the medieval dark ages, it was indeed benign and enlightened.

Re:Ah the old "tolerant medieval islam" myth

[Jalfro]

Tolerance? Who mentioned tolerance? You think Ancient Rome was tolerant? You think the USA is tolerant? Forget history, read the news: Muslim countries are far less a threat to their neighbours. BTW, since you think that tolerance is important, perhaps you should try to practice it. As for science, this seems to be a fairly comprehensive summary: http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/sciencehistory.htm

Re:Deniers...

[Bucc5062]

You forgot the best part, taking his girl down to see "real dirt". The sub parked in between city buildings softly back light by....doesn't matter. That little plastic bubble sure did the trick. Heck, the pressure at that depth could only have been, what... 200 psi or more. Now that is technology at its best.

I could have taken almost any of the "bad" stuff, even the beyond belief bubble drop, but the acting! "My boat, my boat" spoken worse then an automated digital recording...gag. They should have killed Costner's character and save the boat, that was the best part of the movie.

Re:Hooray!

[tbannist]

I know, just imagine a world where the U.S., Canada and Russia are among the most powerful countries in the world. Maybe they could form a group with a few friends and call it the G8 or something. Nah, that's just silly. They should call it the Arctic Superfriends League.

Re:Deniers...

[Nazlfrag]

The earth has been warming for around 9000 years. It is perfectly rational to dispute the claim that mankind is responsible for what is a natural trend. I accept mankind is responsible for emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. I accept this does have a warming effect.

I deny that current warming trends are primarily driven by this manmade component of our atmosphere. I deny that we are accelerating warming in any appreciable degree. I deny that there is any catastrophic tipping point we are supposed to be nearing. I deny a gradual warming of one degree per century, the IPCC predicted rise from manmade greenhouse emmissions sans the unknown feedbacks will harm mankind in any way we cannot quickly adapt to.

The only proof of catastrophic temperature and sea rise and ocean acidification and all the other components of the doomsday scenario are crude and faulty computer models which have failed every prediction they've made. Hurricanes are not increasing. Coral reefs are not dying. Pacific islands are growing, not sinking. Droughts and floods are not more extreme. Polar bears are thriving. The Artic icecaps have been growing these last few years, as temperatures are cooling despite ever increasing CO2 emissions. Every claim made is based on a hypothetical computer modelled planet, not the empirical evidence of how the world is today.

Can you proffer any evidence that a rise of one degree per century will have any adverse effects at all, and indeed not see a flourishing of life on the planet like every interglacial period experiences?

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Cyberax]

Then his prediction is already falsified with our current data.

And IPCCs predictions (even from the end of 80-s) are by now statistically significant enough and if anything they are too conservative.

Re:Deniers...

[inthealpine]

If you want to spend YOUR money on AGW feel free. If you want to NOT VOTE, your call.
Why is it progressive thinking people are always interested in what views they can impose on the public?

We have been told countless times that we are 'near the point of no return' on AGW and have surpassed that point by some of the more extreme climate evangelists. If it has really been so dire for so long that we do something 'now, now, now'...and did nothing; why do you still want my money?

Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[bradley13]

> Its a law of physics that CO2 is an infrared absorber - is someone questioning that?

No, this is clearly true.

Its a fact that CO2 levels are rising in our atmosphere - is someone questioning that?

No, this is clearly true

Its a fact that most of that rise is due to man - is someone questioning that?

No, this is clearly true.

- - - - -

But your questions are too simple. The last time I posted an answer like this, I was immediately modded troll. But hope springs eternal, so here is why I count myself as a skeptic. Here are some further questions:

Will increasing CO2 increase the temperature of the earth? This is not certain, because of the complex interactions of the climate. One example: raise the temperature, and you get more water vapor. More water vapor yields more clouds, which have a *massive* cooling effect. In short: it is entirely possible that CO2 has a negligible effect on the temperature.

Set the temperature question aside for a moment: is a higher CO2 level a bad thing? CO2's primary effect on the planet is "plant food". Commercial greenhouses deliberately increase CO2 in order to increase their crop yields. If we could magically reduce CO2 to 19th century levels, we would see crop yields fall substantially.

Back to temperature. If the earth's temperature does rise, is this a bad thing? Historically, warmer periods have been times of prosperity. Most of the earth is in the temperate zone, and warmer temperatures improve the climate, lengthen growing seasons, etc. Imagine frozen Siberia as the bread basket of Asia. It is not clear that a warmer earth is bad.

Finally, how do we measure the temperature of the earth? There are many temperature stations scattered about, but the majority of them do not comply with the guidelines set up to ensure accurate measurement. Many are at airports (lots of tarmac), others - especially in very cold climates - are placed conveniently near buildings. These and other siting issues make the temperature measurements inaccurate. Satellite measurements have their own difficulties. The more you read about these issues, the clearer it becomes that we do not currently have reliable temperature measurements.

So: on the basis of inaccurate temperature data and ineffective models, what should we do? Should we commit trillions of dollars to drastic policies based on questionable science? Or should we, maybe, invest in a decent network of weather stations, invest in climate science, and *understand* what is going on?

Climate is complex, and the one thing certain about all of the climate models developed to date is that they fail to model climate. If a model is to be useful, it must make falsifiable predictions of future events. To date, no model has done better than a random-number generator. Tropical storms were supposed to increase, but did not. Sea level was supposed to rise faster that ever. In fact, the sea level has been rising steadily since the last ice age,, but the rise has actually slowed in recent times. If one thing is clear, it is that our understanding of climate is woefully inadequate.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[TeethWhitener]

For God's sake, mod this up. It's possibly the only reasonable comment here.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[bunratty]

It may be possible that rising levels of CO2 may have a negligible impact on temperature due to the negative feedback of cloud formation. Current evidence suggests otherwise, specifically that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the average temperature by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. We have already seen the temperature rise by about 1 degree Celsius, even though CO2 has not doubled yet. The predictions of warming have not only not been falsified; they have been confirmed. Given that that is the case, wouldn't it be wise to start reducing CO2 emissions?

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[frogzilla]

One example: raise the temperature, and you get more water vapor. More water vapor yields more clouds, which have a *massive* cooling effect. In short: it is entirely possible that CO2 has a negligible effect on the temperature.

Some clouds warm and some cool. Clouds are complicated.

Set the temperature question aside for a moment: is a higher CO2 level a bad thing? CO2's primary effect on the planet is "plant food". Commercial greenhouses deliberately increase CO2 in order to increase their crop yields. If we could magically reduce CO2 to 19th century levels, we would see crop yields fall substantially.

You're forgetting that plants need water, nutrients and light as well. Not enough water? Extra CO2 makes no difference. And so on.

Back to temperature. If the earth's temperature does rise, is this a bad thing? Historically, warmer periods have been times of prosperity. Most of the earth is in the temperate zone, and warmer temperatures improve the climate, lengthen growing seasons, etc. Imagine frozen Siberia as the bread basket of Asia. It is not clear that a warmer earth is bad.

Warming temperatures means that the distribution of temperatures is shifting higher. If the width of the distribution doesn't change at all it will mean more extreme temperatures and therefore more stress on people and places. If the width also changes, say it gets wider, we could have more cold events and more even warmer events.

Finally, how do we measure the temperature of the earth? There are many temperature stations scattered about, but the majority of them do not comply with the guidelines set up to ensure accurate measurement. Many are at airports (lots of tarmac), others - especially in very cold climates - are placed conveniently near buildings. These and other siting issues make the temperature measurements inaccurate. Satellite measurements have their own difficulties. The more you read about these issues, the clearer it becomes that we do not currently have reliable temperature measurements.

This is baloney. Instruments work fine. Collectively, and processed thoughtfully and methodically, the data sets from historical and current instruments is, on the whole, extremely reliable and damning. The Earth is warming. Ocean based instruments confirm it. Atmospheric instruments confirm it. Tree rings confirm it. Radio isotopes confirm it. Seriously, the data is consistent across a wide variety of disciplines.

So: on the basis of inaccurate temperature data and ineffective models, what should we do? Should we commit trillions of dollars to drastic policies based on questionable science? Or should we, maybe, invest in a decent network of weather stations, invest in climate science, and *understand* what is going on?

We have done this and are continuing to do this.

Climate is complex, and the one thing certain about all of the climate models developed to date is that they fail to model climate. If a model is to be useful, it must make falsifiable predictions of future events. To date, no model has done better than a random-number generator. Tropical storms were supposed to increase, but did not. Sea level was supposed to rise faster that ever. In fact, the sea level has been rising steadily since the last ice age,, but the rise has actually slowed in recent times. If one thing is clear, it is that our understanding of climate is woefully inadequate.

Do you actually know anything about this? What do you suppose climate models model? Models are complex and computing resources are limited. Models are doing a great job of simulating changes in climate since the industrial revolution. Really. Forecasting is difficult work. Obviously we can't tell precisely what the future climate will look like until we are there looking back at the record.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[cgaertner]

Will increasing CO2 increase the temperature of the earth? This is not certain, because of the complex interactions of the climate. One example: raise the temperature, and you get more water vapor. More water vapor yields more clouds, which have a *massive* cooling effect. In short: it is entirely possible that CO2 has a negligible effect on the temperature.

Where did you read about that *massive* cooling effect? The last time I looked into global warming (three years ago), the strength of the negative feedback due to increased clound covering was still subject to quite a lot of debate, but it was suspected to be far less than the warming attributed to humans.

Also keep in mind that water itself is a greenhouse gas (it's the most important component of the natural greenhouse effect), so there's also a povitive feedback component involved as well: a higher atmospheric temperature means we'll get a higher concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere before condensation happens (curse you, Clausius and Clapeyron!)

Set the temperature question aside for a moment: is a higher CO2 level a bad thing? CO2's primary effect on the planet is "plant food". Commercial greenhouses deliberately increase CO2 in order to increase their crop yields. If we could magically reduce CO2 to 19th century levels, we would see crop yields fall substantially.

Too bad the CO2 won't stay in the lower atmosphere where plants can get at it, and then there's the problem of Liebig's barrel: an increase in CO2 means shit if you're lacking for some other resource...

Back to temperature. If the earth's temperature does rise, is this a bad thing? Historically, warmer periods have been times of prosperity. Most of the earth is in the temperate zone, and warmer temperatures improve the climate, lengthen growing seasons, etc. Imagine frozen Siberia as the bread basket of Asia. It is not clear that a warmer earth is bad.

Well, as long as you don't live in the Mediterranean area, I guess... But in Germany (that's where I'm living), the number of heavy rain (which causes nasty floodings...) has increased during the last century with, global warming as the main suspect; but at least I don't have to worry about hurricanes or rising sea levels - take that, Holland ;)

Finally, how do we measure the temperature of the earth? There are many temperature stations scattered about, but the majority of them do not comply with the guidelines set up to ensure accurate measurement. Many are at airports (lots of tarmac), others - especially in very cold climates - are placed conveniently near buildings. These and other siting issues make the temperature measurements inaccurate. Satellite measurements have their own difficulties. The more you read about these issues, the clearer it becomes that we do not currently have reliable temperature measurements.

That's where statistics comes in; the problem with the seamingly contradictory satellite data has also been solved some years ago, btw...

So: on the basis of inaccurate temperature data and ineffective models, what should we do? Should we commit trillions of dollars to drastic policies based on questionable science? Or should we, maybe, invest in a decent network of weather stations, invest in climate science, and *understand* what is going on?

Excuse me, but I have no idea what you are talking about here. Could you clarify to which policies costing trillions of dollars you refer, and why you think them useless? Global warming is a widely accepted fact, the debate has shifted to the question of who to blame; personally, I belive it's us pesky humans, but that's beside the point as we'll have to deal with the consequences anyway (according to the Milankovitch theory, the next ice age won't be triggered for quite a few thousand of years); and switching away from oil is recommendable for quite a few other r

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[bazorg]

So: on the basis of inaccurate temperature data and ineffective models, what should we do? Should we commit trillions of dollars to drastic policies based on questionable science? Or should we, maybe, invest in a decent network of weather stations, invest in climate science, and *understand* what is going on?

I'd vote for yes. The scientists have made a warning, with the information they have today, with the knowledge they gathered for years. It might be right, it might be wrong. Now it's time for political decisions, some will be in attempt to prevent unbearable climate change, some for mitigating the effects of such change.

On this matter, the same as many others, we can always claim that the information is lacking, the knowledge is incomplete. There is no limit to the validity of that argument in theory. What happens in practice is that we all have to act on incomplete information, with risk associated to all decisions and risks associated with the timing of a decision and of its execution.

It could all be wrong. Maybe in the future a number of countries will be known for their wasteful use of resources in attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change and some others will keep their money for something else.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BJ_Covert_Action]

You failed to address the point he made about a warmer Earth. What model or data is there that shows that having the temperature of the planet increase a few degrees, overall, would be a bad thing for our species or any other?

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[cgaertner]

What model or data is there that shows that having the temperature of the planet increase a few degrees, overall, would be a bad thing for our species or any other?

look here for a basic idea

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[bunratty]

Rising sea level will displace hundreds of millions of humans at a cost of trillions of dollars. I think that would be a bad thing for humans.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BCGlorfindel]

It may be possible that rising levels of CO2 may have a negligible impact on temperature due to the negative feedback of cloud formation. Current evidence suggests otherwise, specifically that doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the average temperature by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.

I'd like to see a citation for the 'evidence' of those effects for doubling CO2. All the journal articles I've found base their doubling numbers on climate models, not measured 'evidence'. More over, those climate models aren't always even in agreement over the sign to attribute to water vapor. When CO2 makes up about 5% of the greenhouse effect and H2O contributes more than 60%, I'm baffled that anyone can claim that the understanding of CO2's overall contribution is better understood than that of H2O.

Let me repeat that, because I think it is a sorely overlooked point. Climate models aren't well agreed on what sign to attribute to water vapor forcing. Water vapor forcing is known to account for more than 60% of GHG forcing. Meanwhile, CO2 is known to account for a mere 5% of GHG forcing. Can anyone explain to me how a climate model can have high confidence of the effects from CO2's 5%, when the sign for more than 60% of GHG's is uncertain?

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[Shotgun]

The last time I posted an answer like this, I was immediately modded troll.

At least no one pressed the button to blow you up.

No pressure, of course.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[Philomage]

Let's assume that "global warming" isn't totally bad. Most of the great plains region of NA is one good drought away from becoming a desert.

A lot of my fellow canadians think that a warmer world is to benefit Canada, but I imagine that with more arable land, a more welcoming climate, and lots of unused resources, a starving population ten times our size fleeing desertification of their once great plains would be quite the threat.

Even if Canada becomes an Eden, who says canadians will be the ones to enjoy it?

Or that Russia will hold Siberia from a billion or more chinese fleeing an expanding Gobi?

This increased incentive for warfare makes all the gains of global warming a loss.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[wigaloo]

One example: raise the temperature, and you get more water vapor. More water vapor yields more clouds, which have a *massive* cooling effect.

Bzzzzt. Completely and utterly wrong. More water vapor does not yield more clouds. Higher relative humidity (not the same thing) yields more clouds. What is going to happen with relative humidity isn't entirely clear -- the processes are not well understood. Even then, whether more cloudiness leads to warming or cooling depends entirely upon the altitudes the clouds form at and a myriad of other complex factors including interactions with aerosols.

You, and many others on slashdot, ought to consider whether or not scientists who have devoted their lives to studying this problem might actually know more about it than you. Trivial inspection of your arguments reveals completely flawed reasoning. The scary thing is that you probably have many of your friends and family convinced that you know better.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[riverat1]

You are confusing water vapor with clouds which while they are related are two different things. Water vapor is always a positive forcing. Clouds can be either positive or negative depending on a number of factors. Also CO2 alone accounts for around 20% of GHG forcing, not the 5% you said.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Thank you for actually supplying some papers and reading material rather than making a snarky comment. That does a lot more for your cause than the facetious response posted by the parent.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Next time I ask for a model or data, you might think about providing such resources, as cgaertner did in response to my inquiry. To folk who genuinely want to learn more about the entire climate controversy, such civil discourse earns you much more respect than providing a snarky comment that provides little evidence backing it up. Snarkiness may get you mod points on /., but it completely fails at generating interest and respect from someone who is genuinely interested in learning. In fact, it's pretty off-putting and just furthers the notion that folks who claim to know all about climate change are really just following a politically correct trend that is backed up by a few strict talking points and FUD.

In short, if someone asks you for evidence, provide evidence. Don't act like a smug asshole.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BCGlorfindel]

You are confusing water vapor with clouds which while they are related are two different things. Water vapor is always a positive forcing. Clouds can be either positive or negative depending on a number of factors.

My apologies, I should have said feedback not forcing. What is not well understood or agreed upon is what roll water vapor and the directly resulting cloud cover play as global temperature increases and decreases. Whether they are a positive or negative feedback pretty much dwarfs any other consideration regarding future projections. I still would love an explanation of how a much less significant feedback, CO2, can be so well known when the sign for H2O is unknown.

Also CO2 alone accounts for around 20% of GHG forcing

Which depends on how you measure it. The high end 20-25% numbers are all based on ignoring any overlapping absorption by other gases in the same spectra. No respectable scientist ever attributes that level of absorption to CO2 alone, it's dishonest. I can't be bothered to go back and dig up the journal entries, but even being generous and giving CO2 15% overall absorption, it is still crushed by the more than 60% from H2O(if we measure H2O as you did it is up around 75%) that is so poorly understood we don't even know the sign to attribute it as a feedback.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[riverat1]

I got my figures from a 2010 paper on "The attribution of the present-day total greenhouse effect"

With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapour is the dominant contributor (~50% of the effect), followed by clouds (~25%) and then CO2 with ~20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles.

They say that overlaps are accounted for in their attribution. But the real point is that water vapor and clouds, which again are two distinct things, are only feedbacks because their levels in the atmosphere are dependent on atmospheric conditions. CO2 levels on the other hand are independent of atmospheric conditions. Water vapor and clouds depend on the greenhouse warming of CO2 (and the other minor GHG's) for their levels. CO2 is the main driver.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[BCGlorfindel]

the real point is that water vapor and clouds, which again are two distinct things, are only feedbacks because their levels in the atmosphere are dependent on atmospheric conditions.

That's what a feedback is, your just saying they are only feedbacks because they fit the definition of a feedback.

CO2 levels on the other hand are independent of atmospheric conditions.

Nope, CO2 is both a feedback and a forcing. CO2 absorption and release from things like plants and oceans is dependent on temperature, making CO2 levels a feedback. Human CO2 emissions add an external forcing source for CO2 as well. It's both a feedback and a forcing.

CO2 is the main driver.

Except that we've been coming in and out of ice ages for millenia without the benefit of human CO2 forcing.

Let me repeat my question. Water vapor and the related cloud formations account for far more of the greenhouse effect than CO2. We do not understand the effect of cloud formation well enough to even attribute it as a positive or negative feedback. With our understanding of that being so poor, how can we have such a greater confidence in our understanding of the net impact of human CO2 emissions? Remember, CO2 has a much smaller impact, and human emissions are much smaller than natural CO2 emissions to boot.

Re:Serious question? Here's a serious answer

[riverat1]

You are right, CO2 is both a forcing and a feedback but it's feedback characteristics generally operate over far longer time periods than we are considering so CO2 feedback is not currently a significant factor in global warming. The main source of feedback CO2 is the oceans which release it when they warm. Ironically though the oceans are warming they are continuing to absorb CO2 because we've increased the partial pressure of it in the atmosphere enough that the oceans are not completely saturated with it yet. That situation won't last forever.

I probably should have said CO2 is the main driver of the current warming. The main driver of the glacial/interglacial cycles of the ice age we are currently in is Milankovich cycles (orbital variations) which operate on scales of thousands of years. CO2 is then a feedback which gives an extra kick to the warmth of the interglacials.

Water vapor and clouds, being strictly a feedback, can not sustain the levels they currently have without the support of the greenhouse warming from CO2 (and other minor GHG's) in the atmosphere. If you were to take CO2 levels in the atmosphere back to 190 ppm, the level it is at the height of glaciations, the greenhouse effect would immediately be reduced and water vapor (and the clouds dependent on atmospheric water vapor) would start dropping too. It would plunge us into a new glacial period. So again despite the fact that water vapor and clouds account for about 75% of the total greenhouse effect they are totally dependent on the level of non-condensing greenhouse gases, primarily CO2.

Regarding the fact that natural emissions of CO2 are larger than human emissions there is this thing called the carbon cycle. Every year the level of CO2 in the atmosphere varies up and down around 10 ppmv around a base level that usually changes only slowly. The fact that we are adding around 3 ppmv per year of CO2 from carbon that has been sequestered from the carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years by burning fossil fuels just bumps up that base level of CO2 in the atmosphere by adding to the total amount of carbon in the active carbon cycle.

One interesting tidbit in the paper I referenced in my previous post is that the greenhouse forcing of CO2 remains about 20% of the total regardless of the magnitude of the greenhouse effect. In other words, if you change the level of CO2 in the atmosphere the level of water vapor and clouds automatically adjust so CO2 remains about 20% of the greenhouse effect. That fact in itself pretty much proves that the level of water vapor and clouds are completely dependent on CO2 levels.

Re:Hooray!

[ebuck]

Hahaha, yes it's been horrible.

The real problem with the Arctic rim isn't heat, although lack of heat is a challenge. The real problem is sunlight. The northern regions of the Arctic rim doesn't get enough sunlight to sustain trees, then there's a belt of pine needle like conifers, then there's a transient belt of broad leaved trees.

Personally, I hope that we never develop the Arctic rim in a meaningful way. The broad leaved trees produce an unbelievable amount of oxygen out of CO2 in the relatively short growing season. We've already decimated the rain forests, the oceanic regions of oxygen production are down a bit due to phosphorus posioning (or some other pollution, they think it's phosphor), and the Arctic region's oxygen contribution becomes more important every day.

Re:Deniers...

[inthealpine]

I'm sure humans, all humans, could live far better than Americans live now with innovative thinking.
Energy is the key. Resources can be recycled over and over again if we have enough energy.

Or we can drink soy milk rations in our new socialist dictatorship, while sacrificing SUV's to the AWG god. That sounds kind of sucky since I doubt they would have chocolate soy milk which is actually quite tasty.

Re:Deniers...

[maxwell demon]

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes. Someone can criticise AGW theories without also saying that the world is ever unchanging and will always be so.

There are both. However, as the evidence of climate change grows, more people move from "there is no global warming" to "OK, there may be global warming, but it's not man-made".

FWIW: an inuit opinion

[dogsbreath]

The local CBC Radio 1 had an interesting interview with an Inuit hunter who expressed opinions which contradict some current conventional wisdom. He said his opinions were based on what he said was common knowledge among Inuit hunters. He was being interviewed along with an author who was giving a lecture at the U of A. :

1. Across the Canadian Arctic territories (NWT, Nunavet), polar bear numbers are increasing not decreasing. He questioned the methodologies of scientists and government agents.

2. Polar bears will survive quite nicely in an ocean environment as they are highly adaptable and they are more at home in the water than on ice. He said it is not unusual to see a bear swimming in open water 100 km from land. (Oh great... another ocean swimming phobia to go along with my fears of jellyfish and sharks).

3. The Inuit will adapt to the climate changes and circumstances will improve for them.

His expressed fear was not of climate change, but of the societies and processes which are contributing to it because they are not close to/part of the earth.

Caveat: I tuned in part way through so I didn't catch the names and I may be mis-remembering some of the items. Accuracy not guaranteed. ;->

Re:FWIW: an inuit opinion

[Abcd1234]

Across the Canadian Arctic territories (NWT, Nunavet), polar bear numbers are increasing not decreasing.

Or they're just being driven southward, thus increasing rates of sightings, thanks to... melting ice.

Polar bears will survive quite nicely in an ocean environment as they are highly adaptable and they are more at home in the water than on ice.

So, what, they'll turn into fuzzy dolphins?

The Inuit will adapt to the climate changes and circumstances will improve for them.

No, circumstances will change. It's completel speculation to assume things will improve. For example, northern communities could get cut off due to permafrost melt. But hey, no big deal, they're, like, attuned with the earth or some other primitivist bullshit.

Re:FWIW: an inuit opinion

[dogsbreath]

But hey, no big deal, they're, like, attuned with the earth or some other primitivist bullshit.

I don't think he was spouting "primitivist bullshit" as you so eloquently put it. He was attesting to the adaptiveness of his people and their capabilities to survive in a changing environment. He expressed concern about the industrial societies that are not paying attention to the side effects of pollution. Doesn't sound primitivist to me.

"Fuzzy dolphins", good one that! What can one say in reply?

"Driven South". Great observation. Well thought out. Considering that the Inuit population and polar bear distribution areas almost completely overlap, the bears must be moving south from a hitherto unknown location near Alert. Also, if melting ice is the problem then you would think the bears would be going North, not South. You might want to look at a couple of maps and then redraw your conclusions:

http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/rs/pubs/images/fg2-eng.gif (Inuit settlements in Canada)
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/maps-and-trackers/population-and-distribution (Polar bear distribution)

Also, understand that although the Inuit population is widely distributed and has low density, they communicate and stay in touch quite effectively.

Your opinions are excellent examples of what he said he has experienced: condescension and dismisiveness from people who do not have the benefit of his life experience or knowledge of his people's history.

Re:FWIW: an inuit opinion

[Abcd1234]

condescension and dismisiveness from people who do not have the benefit of his life experience or knowledge of his people's history.

No, I believe you mean condescension and dismissiveness from people who value verifiable data and observation over anecdote.

Show me a solid polar bear census and I will concede the point. But this Inuit man's personal beliefs and gut feelings are no more a basis for public policy than yours or mine.

Frankly, your post absolutely reeks of "noble savage" bullshit. His people are not privvy to some mystical knowledge, some secret world that those darn scientists just don't seem to understand. They're just people. People who could play a very important role in, say, evaluating the impact of human activity on the north, given they live there. But step one is to adopt a rigorous, verifiable methodology for gathering that data. "What that dude said" is, I'm afraid, insufficient.

Re:Deniers...

[StuartHankins]

You know, God’s still up there.

You're recommending letting an imaginary fairy sort it out? Really? I hope you're not in charge of anything important.

Re:Deniers...

[maxwell demon]

After all, the mathematician is taking it on faith that no right triangle exists in defiance of the Pythagorean Theorem

No, he isn't. He proves it strictly from the axioms of Euclidean geometry.
And no, the axioms are not faith either, they are what defines the field. When doing non-Euclidean geometry, right triangles do violate the Pythagorean theorem.

FIGHT!

[DarthVain]

I think at this point I just like arguing with people... :)

However as convincing arguments that climatologists make, and however rational it may be, their science seems to suck at predictability, and their models never seem to get anything right in reality. So while they very well might be right, the nature of their field makes it very hard to prove in any uncertain terms any of the claims they have thus made. Personally I think they have a sound idea, it's just the assumptions and methods that leave me wanting. Of course you've got to work with the best data you have, it's just that the stuff that they have is less than ideal, but such is life.

Of course I live in a Arctic country, so bring it on! Might suck if you live already in a desert zone, or don't have much land mass, but hey if its that important to you, then you can worry about it!

Doesn't anyone else think it is somewhat ironic that the most Major contributor to the CO2 (if we concede that it is causing it, and that its humans as well) is the production of Oil from the Middle East countries (they might not be using, but they are dealing... enablers to be sure!), and they are also likely they most sensitive to climate change. I.E. when the few rivers they do have dry up, they will be even less able to support their populations. Of course you have a few island nations that might go the way of Atlantis, but really none of them really have all that much population anyway, sucks just the same but, when I think of shoveling snow half the year, while they sit on a beach drinking rum and smoking reefer, well my sympathy evaporates, other than a sad feeling when trying to plan my next vacation.

Cheers and flame on!

Re:FIGHT!

[Vintermann]

Saudi Arabia is digging their own grave, no doubt about that. Not only is it hot already down there, but they are depleting their fossil aquifer at an alarming rate.

Same with pretty much the rest of the middle east, including Israel. Within our lifetimes, it's going to get really hard (or expensive, if you're optimistic) to live there at all - not even taking global warming into account.

Re:FIGHT!

[h4rm0ny]

Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. If the country goes (even more) to Hell, the ruling class will simply take their fat bank accounts and move elsewhere leaving the rest of the people there to rot.

The Torch of Civilization [Re:Dutch disease]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Sorry, that is not true. Byzantium was carrying the torch of civilization and culture.

True... however, "Byzantium" -- known at the time as Constantinople -- was, of course, a Christian city, not an Islamic city.

The collapse of Byzantium happened as the rennaissance was beginning in Italy.

The collapse of Byzantium happened when the 4th Crusade sacked Constantinople. Even though it was a Christian city, it was rich, and much easier to take than the not-terribly-rich-but-well-defended holy land.

There is probably a relationship between the two.

Undoubtably. The Italians not only eliminated a powerful trading rival, they sacked it and took the riches home.

I'm not sure what this has to do with global warming, but it's fascinating history.

Re:The Torch of Civilization [Re:Dutch disease]

[Attila Dimedici]

Byzantium stood for another 200+ years after the 4th Crusade sacked the city.

Re:The Torch of Civilization [Re:Dutch disease]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Byzantium stood for another 200+ years after the 4th Crusade sacked the city.

It did, although it never regained its former status. The crusaders took the empire and split it up amongst them.

And, more to the point, it remained over that period a Christian city, not Islamic.

Re:The Torch of Civilization [Re:Dutch disease]

[Attila Dimedici]

Exactly, which means that Islam never "carried the torch of civilization and culture."

Re:The Torch of Civilization [Re:Dutch disease]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Exactly, which means that Islam never "carried the torch of civilization and culture."

During the middle ages, Byzantium (at the time, Constantinople) was a Christian city, not an Islamic city. Discussing Byzantium does not say anything about whether Islam "carried the torch of civilization and culture" one way or another, since if Islam carried the torch, it was carrying it somewhere else.

To the extent that Constantinople carried civilization and culture (from the Roman empire), that torch was thoroughly doused when the crusaders sacked the city and burned the famed library, an event that happened centuries before "as the rennaissance was beginning in Italy."

Re:The environmental movement is where...

[Anonymous Coward]

The term was changed because morons interpreted "climate is in average getting warmer" as
"At any location of the world, the temperature in one year will be higher than the temperature today",
followed by "last year, it was warmer where I live therefore the AGW theory has been falsified".

Re:Deniers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right... Biking to work isn't happening (especially in winter). Oh and given how little busing is in this area that isn't an option either. Also those 45 mpg cars are worse for the environment than the 25 mpg cars. Why? Look at the energy it takes to make them verses the 25 gallon cars and you'll see my point. We would be far better off building new engines for the older cars than making these worthless hybrids.

Permafrost

[hcdejong]

What happens when the temperature increase melts the permafrost? ISTR reading that in region where this happens, solid ground turns into an impenetrable bog, so you may end up with a warmer climate but less usable ground.

(the silver lining here would be that hovercraft would become very popular).

Re:Permafrost

[Abcd1234]

Not to mention methane emissions from the melted permafrost, a gas which happens to be... a greenhouse gas that's far more powerful (though also more transient) than CO2.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

So let me get this straight: you are trying to say that we can put whatever we want into the atmosphere and water supplies at any rate we want, and it will never have any sort of effect on the environment? At all? Ever?

Is he? I can't quite make out where he says that. Is it hiding under his sig?

Re:Snowball Earth

[MightyDrunken]

Snowball Earth is an interesting hypothesis and shows us some things about the climate system of Earth - that it is a complex dynamic system with many variables.

The more recent snowball Earth glaciations are thought to have happened as three or four glaciation events with the most recent, the Marinoan, happening about 650 million years ago. At the beginning of these glaciations the CO2 was relatively low for the time and the continents were distributed around the equator.

The mechanism which started the cooling periods is not known, but if they are cold enough the resulting ice can spread down to close to the equator. As ice has a higher albedo, about ~60% compared to the sea which reflects about 6% of incoming light, we get a "positive" feedback where cooling reflects more of the suns energy away from the Earth causing more cooling. This locked the Earth into a frozen period for millions of years. This poses a problem how can the climate system unfreeze now most of the Sun's energy is reflected away?

With much of the Earth frozen, CO2 will build up as there is very little rock weathering as it is all covered by ice and not much photosynthesis either. By the end of the snowball Earth period, CO2 may have risen to 12,000 ppm. The warming effect of the CO2 would have been weaker in this frozen state then it is now, because CO2 traps infrared radiation while most of the sun's light was being reflected in the visible part of the spectrum. This is why the CO2 level had to raise to such a high level to bring us out of this cold phase even though we are presently in a much warmer climate with less CO2. This is physics!

Re:Deniers...

[I(rispee_I(reme]

You are obviously just taking it on faith that something can't be true and false at the same time. ;)

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

It's the only thing he can be saying. I'm pointing out that there is no way we aren't affecting SOMETHING, and his response continues to regard past CO2 levels with zero comment on other potential envrionmental and weather side effects of pollution.

Re:Deniers...

[arth1]

Hey global-warming robots, we can't change world economies on a dime. The evidence needs to be extremely solid, which it isn't.

Actually, we can. I have reduced my emission footprint by over 50% over the last few years.
"Think globally, act locally" is more than a fancy slogan -- it actually has an effect (just less the more selfish people there are).

And just why does the evidence need to be extremely solid? The stakes are so high that the wager is valid even with a small chance that what we do makes a difference.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Take a second and read what he said. I'll even quote it for you: It wasn't a fireball.

I know it wasn't. That's why I said it was foolish to believe that would happen in the near future. Go back and read my OP.

Is today "pay no attention to what was said"? WTF.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[dusanv]

And IPCCs predictions (even from the end of 80-s) are by now statistically significant enough and if anything they are too conservative.

Care to back this up? Probably not because the exact opposite is true: IPCC 1990 report predictions wrong.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

I'm a radical environmentalist because I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects?

Your definition of "radical" is pretty strange.

Re:Misconceptions fueled by misconceptions...

[Sique]

That's why I wrote "common knowledge" and not "scientific consensus". There is also the common knowledge, that "summa cum laude" means "with highest praise", while to a philologist it means "everything with praise".

Re:Deniers...

[BlackSnake112]

And according to ice core records, Siberia had a temp of 160 degrees for a long time. Maybe the Earth is going back to its hot phase? In human times we were coming out of an ice age. So perhaps the Earth is normally hotter then humans like it to be?

Re:Deniers...

[JWSmythe]

    If I found myself shipwrecked in the middle of frozen nowhere, would it be evil to kill a seal? You know, I'm pretty sure I'd choose the seal over the polar bear. Armed with a club, I can be fairly sure I'd win against a seal. I can't say so much about a polar bear. they look tough

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

It's the only thing he can be saying. I'm pointing out that there is no way we aren't affecting SOMETHING, and his response continues to regard past CO2 levels with zero comment on other potential envrionmental and weather side effects of pollution.

My body heat warms the Earth. My motion on its surface changes the moment of inertia. Everything affects everything when you look at sufficiently pedantic scales.

Merely asserting that something changes when we do things, isn't interesting. We're only interested in changes that have a considerable adverse effect.

You seem to be implying that we'll somehow, generations from now, stumble over some point of no return without realizing it, just because we didn't act now. I don't think that scenario is credible. And it ignores that our actions now won't mean much in the future when the problems actually happen (or don't happen as the case may be).

Let's go back to your original post:

It's not alarmist, it's a logical progression. We can't keep pumping shit into the atmosphere and water supplies thinking it won't have some major cumulative effect down the road. Again, that day is far off (likely after everyone reading this is dead). We are still well within a window to do something about it, but eventually it will reach a point where we can't fix it. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather do something about it now rather than scramble to do something about it once it's almost too late/is too late.

It's worth noting here that few things the human race produces are cumulative over long time frames. Even heavy metals (the prime example) tend to get buried and bound up in soil or silt. Carbon dioxide has a limited lifespan in the atmosphere and there's strong evidence that plant-based carbon sinks such as algae in the ocean and marshes, absorb more CO2 as concentrations of the gas increase in Earth's atmosphere and oceans.

So merely "pumping shit" into the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean that we have a cumulative effect.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Burnhard]

What data would that be? He demonstrated (in LC) a sensitivity of 0.5C in a recent paper. Which IPCC predictions are you going on about? Didn't James Hansen say we'd all be underwater by 10 years ago? Why do you believe the horse-shit these doom-sayers come out with?

Most of them really do deny change - any change

[dbIII]

and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes

No that's what they are questioning all right - change itself challenges the overly literal idea of creation which is the foundation of Christianity Lite. Climate change denial is just part three after rejecting an educated clergy and rejecting evolution.
Then of course there are those that jumped on the bandwagon just because their political party said they should and while they can make pretend rationalisations that they are only questioning the cause the REAL reason is simply that Rush Limbaugh or whoever told them so.
Once it became a Democrat vs Republican issue and once economists were pretending to be experts in a science it all became a noisy circus that is best ignored. You don't ask a fucking astrologer to put fillings in your kids teeth, so you just ignore them if they give dental advice and ask somebody with a clue. Why should we treat the climate issue differently and in such an incredibly stupid and impractical way waste everyone's time and money?

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

Actually, we can. I have reduced my emission footprint by over 50% over the last few years. "Think globally, act locally" is more than a fancy slogan -- it actually has an effect (just less the more selfish people there are).

A completely useless activity, but at least you don't feel guilty.

And just why does the evidence need to be extremely solid? The stakes are so high that the wager is valid even with a small chance that what we do makes a difference.

It needs to be extremely solid, else I and the vast majority of humans won't change our behavior. It's that simple. If you can't show it's broken, then I won't fix it.

Re:Snowball Earth

[Burnhard]

I did listen to an In Our Time postcast on BBC Radio 4 that suggested a link between Snowball Earth and the Edicara Biota (pre-Cambrian life-forms) in terms of cause and effect. Although the link was tentative, it was interesting.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

My body heat warms the Earth. My motion on its surface changes the moment of inertia. Everything affects everything when you look at sufficiently pedantic scales.

Your body doesn't drop millions of gallons of waste into the ground or water supplies. It doesn't destroy ecosystems, nor does it cause species to go extinct...species whose specialized purpose in the food chain is no longer fulfilled.

These are all things that would happen through natural disasters, but they also happen due to our actions. I fail to see how, for example, causing millions of gallons of oil to get into the ocean over a short period could be considered a pedantic example.

And don't give me that "oil seeps into the ocean all the time" line. It does, but not at the rate that happened in the Gulf of Mexico. If it did, there would be constant oil sheens that never dissipated.

Merely asserting that something changes when we do things, isn't interesting. We're only interested in changes that have a considerable adverse effect.

I see. So it's not worth looking into unless some activity, by itself and within an almost immediate time frame, was enough to mess things up?

You seem to be implying that we'll somehow, generations from now, stumble over some point of no return without realizing it, just because we didn't act now. I don't think that scenario is credible. And it ignores that our actions now won't mean much in the future when the problems actually happen (or don't happen as the case may be).

I also noted that the window we have is quite large, likely lasting longer than the lifetime of anyone reading this on the day that I've posted it. This was my point against "radical" environmentalists that insist the sky is falling TODAY, NOW!!!! when it clearly isn't.

That doesn't mean it won't.

It's worth noting here that few things the human race produces are cumulative over long time frames. Even heavy metals (the prime example) tend to get buried and bound up in soil or silt. Carbon dioxide has a limited lifespan in the atmosphere and there's strong evidence that plant-based carbon sinks such as algae in the ocean and marshes, absorb more CO2 as concentrations of the gas increase in Earth's atmosphere and oceans.

So merely "pumping shit" into the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean that we have a cumulative effect.

You're right...but we're acting like it definitively doesn't. I say that since there is even the smallest bit of doubt about that, we should do something about it. I'm not saying drop fossil fuels tomorrow, I'm not saying we have to spend trillions of dollars changing our energy policies overnight, and I'm not saying the planet is doomed.

I'm saying that we're in a position where we can start to do something about it BECAUSE nothing of major consequence has happened yet. Why pass that opportunity when there is a potential, no matter how slight, of things going wrong?

Re:Deniers...

[Deep Esophagus]

I honestly wonder if people who resort to ad hominem attacks ever actually study the science or just repeat what they are told to believe. There was a time when "skeptic" was a GOOD thing in science. Remember how we're supposed to question assumptions, test those assumptions, and test them again to prove or disprove a theory? Come on, drop the "denier" tag and engage in real science discussions.

Try reading some of the more prominent opposition, such as Anthony Watts' Watts Up With That or Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit or Roger Pielke Sr.'s climate blog.

Are you aware that prominent AGW proponent Judith Curry has turned on her colleagues and is now questioning their findings? Of course they call her a heretic; she's not just parroting what they want her to say. Are you aware that sea ice is not retreating at all, but growing? Have you given any thought to wondering why the AGW community keeps needing to change the terminology? In the wake of decreasing temperatures and increasing snowstorms, it's no longer global warming but climate change. Now *any* weather event can be blamed on AGW, or is that AGC?

So to answer your question, yes, I'll believe you when we have freighters sailing the arctic. Then, just like the vikings, we can start farming Greenland again. In the meantime, I'll continue to watch the numbers and see how they don't add up. If you have any constructive proof, pay a visit to any of the skeptical blogs and have your say. You'll find that unlike AGW blogs, your comments will not be removed and people who attack you ad hominem will not be tolerated.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

I'll skip over the drivel about oil spills and such except to note that oil is food. The reason you don't see permanent sheens in the Gulf of Mexico is because it gets digested rather quickly.

I'm saying that we're in a position where we can start to do something about it BECAUSE nothing of major consequence has happened yet. Why pass that opportunity when there is a potential, no matter how slight, of things going wrong?

So what can we do now, that we aren't already doing? My view is that we're already doing more than necessary to deal with the above problem.

Re:Deniers...

[BStroms]

I'm a AGW skeptic myself, but I'm also of the opinion that one should always consider the possibility that they're wrong. That's why I feel everyone, whether a skeptic or not should take some simple steps to hedge their bets against climate change. Such as painting your roof white, using single ply toilet paper, living as close to work as possible, and having fewer pets and kids.

You'd be amazed how much of a difference some of those simple things I listed can make. I believe solutions like that make far more sense than regulation and carbon taxing that can have severe economic repercussions. Meanwhile we can also continue research into geoengineering in case things do get really bad and we have no other option. Granted, thanks to the law of unintended consequences, most of the ideas being floated around should only be used as measures of last resort, but having those options could be quite valuable.

Of course, that's the same reason I don't want to push through major economic changes. Just like with geoengineering, you have the potential to seriously mess things up in ways you didn't anticipate.

Re:Deniers...

[bunratty]

Earth has been hit by large asteroids in the past. Therefore, if there is a large asteroid coming Earth's way, there is nothing to be alarmed about. The simple fact is that our models are not reliable enough for accurate asteroid trajectories. Good thinking! You're right, you're not in denial at all, obviously!

Re:Misconceptions fueled by misconceptions...

[confused one]

That's because in the '70s they thought forcing due to sulfur compounds in the atmosphere and stratospheric cloud cover (caused by high altitude aircraft) were going to cause global cooling. We cleaned up the sulfur emissions. The aircraft induced cloud cover was not as significant as thought. And... They underestimated the magnitude of and effects of CO2 production.

Yeah more oil rocks, but you missed the good part!

[Weezul]

Yes resources and trade are always nice, but the good news is :

Africa & Central America will turn into uninhabitable deserts unable to support life.

We westerners will finally free ourselves from our hated farm subsidies! yey!

Re:Deniers...

[tompaulco]

We can't keep pumping shit into the atmosphere and water supplies thinking it won't have some major cumulative effect down the road.
I wonder if the plants and trees have this same argument about how for millions of years they have been sucking all of the CO2 out of the air and poisoning the ground with their waste.

Agriculture will increase in the Arctic?

[wfstanle]

The point that agriculture will increase in the Arctic is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the temperature would rise enough to support agriculture. The soil in the arctic is very poor. It will not support agriculture on the scale that humanity will need. Maybe if growing conditions prevailed for many centuries the soil would improve.

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

Silly question Pojut - how would your statement reflect in terms of other life forms? Would you go back into previous geologic eras, and apply this radical environmentalism logic against say, mammals versus dinosaurs? O2 spewing plants changing the atmosphere?

At what point did you start believing that we could all disappear, and never dump a single bit of shit into rivers or the air, and *the world would stay exactly the same*, or *the world would take a predictable course which we're otherwise altering*?

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

I'll skip over the drivel about oil spills and such except to note that oil is food. The reason you don't see permanent sheens in the Gulf of Mexico is because it gets digested rather quickly.

Right, of course! What a waste it was to spend billions of dollars on cleanup, right? After all, it would have gone away completely and entirely on its own without affecting anything! Hell, why don't we just dump a million gallons of oil every day into the ocean! With all that food, I'm sure sealife population would explode!

There is some bacteria that finds oil to be tasty, but most of the creatures in the sea don't seem to like it all that much.

So what can we do now, that we aren't already doing? My view is that we're already doing more than necessary to deal with the above problem.

Ignoring NIMBY would be a huge start. Offshore windfarms, widespread adoption of solar power (both through solar power plants as well as solar cells on as many buildings as possible.) More widspread use of public transportation (this is more of an issue here in America than elsewhere.) Slowing or ending production on useless trinkets that just end up in land fills (like the random bric-a-brac sold at a truck stop.)

Just a few examples.

Re:Deniers...

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I honestly wonder if people will still deny global warming when we have freighters traveling through the north pole in the summer. I mean, what's it going to take?

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes. Someone can criticise AGW theories without also saying that the world is ever unchanging and will always be so.

I wonder when people calling themselves "sceptics" will finally stop feeling they are being adressed when somebody mentions "deniers", and instead tell the deniers that they are stupid.

Nobody to discuss it [Re:FWIW: an inuit opinion]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Since the right wing believes that global warming is not occurring, or that if it is occurring, it has nothing to do with humans and in any case is just a temporary fluctuation that has already turned around; there's nobody there to discuss whether or what part of climate change could be beneficial. The left is only interested in pointing out the adverse effects, and the right has abdicated any science discussion that involves climate.

Of course there are beneficial effects as well as adverse effects. But there's nobody there to discuss it. You would have to pay attention to the models to do so.

Re:never a benefit

[Geoffrey.landis]

This is just ONE of the big problems I have with the cult of global warming. It's always the doomsday predictions when the Earth warms. Good luck trying to find a story about the BENEFITS of a warmer climate.

That's not a problem with the "cult of global warming," it's a problem with the "cult of denying global warming." If you are blindly denying that the phenomenon exists and saying that all the science is wrong and the models are bullshit, there can't be any possible benefits, since to discuss possible benefits would have to admit the possibility that the effect is real and the science is right.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Silly question Pojut - how would your statement reflect in terms of other life forms? Would you go back into previous geologic eras, and apply this radical environmentalism logic against say, mammals versus dinosaurs? O2 spewing plants changing the atmosphere?

Those plants didn't bury nuclear waste. Those plants didn't dump toxic substances into water supplies, nor did they create landfills.

Also, how am I a "radical environmentalist"? I acknowledged in my original post that there are extremists on both sides of this debate, with moderate voices being drowned out.

At what point did you start believing that we could all disappear, and never dump a single bit of shit into rivers or the air, and *the world would stay exactly the same*, or *the world would take a predictable course which we're otherwise altering*?

I'm not quite following you...

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Do plants create landfills? Do they bury radioactive material? Do they crash tankers or blow up oil rigs, causing millions of gallons of oil to flow into the oceans over a very short period of time?

No. They don't. That's the difference.

Re:Deniers...

[Q-Hack!]

There are both. However, as the evidence of climate change grows, more people move from "there is no global warming" to "OK, there may be global warming, but it's not man-made".

The corollary to this is:

As the knowledge of climate grows, more people move from "there is Anthropomorphic Global Warming" to "OK, there is not sufficient evidence to make bold claims."

There will always be the people on the fringes that lack the ability to listen to anything the other side has to say. The rational people have decided to take the middle ground and call for more evidence before having a panic attack.

Me? I am buying a boathouse and extra parkas just to be sure either way.

More oil, yay!

[sorak]

So, if global warming turns the arctic into a temperate zone, then they can dig up more oil. If we ever reach that point, can we agree that "more oil" is not the answer to our problems?

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

It's too simple to just say there are crazies on that side, there are crazies on the other side, I take the golden middle road.

The problem with global warming - the core problem - is that it happens on timescales humans aren't good at dealing with.

The carbon we release today will take five years before we could possibly hope to see any effect, and the slow feedbacks, such as the albedo feedback from melting ice sheets, may take hundreds of years to fully kick in.

That this train took a long time to put into motion, also means that it will take a long time to stop. It's precisely because it isn't going to happen tomorrow that we need to act now.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Is today "pay no attention to what was said"?

You have no standing to complain. I made one simple statement about historical levels of CO2 (you know, actually looking at historical evidence), and you turn that into:

"So let me get this straight: you are trying to say that we can put whatever we want into the atmosphere and water supplies at any rate we want, and it will never have any sort of effect on the environment? At all? Ever?"

My comment was in response to what you said earlier: "while at the same time it's foolish to think we're going to turn into a fireball in the very near future. We obviously need to do something, otherwise one day it WILL get real bad"

I was responding to your fireball comment, which immediately segued into an eventual doom scenario, which we just don't have the evidence for with regards to CO2. Historically the planet has been at much higher levels.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

Predicting weather and predicting climate uses similar models, but the former solves an initial value problem, the latter solves a boundary value problem.

What it means is this: I can't tell you what the weather will be tomorrow where you live. However, if you live in the northern hemisphere, I can pretty confidently say that the average temperature for the next six months will be lower than for the previous six.

The earth has had much higher concentrations of CO2 in the past, it's true. The earth has also been tropical to the poles, and frozen to the equator, if you go far enough back. The earth can handle it. We, however, probably won't, especially if the change happens quickly - and compared to other changes in geological history, this change is happening in the blink of an eye.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

You surely cannot assert that things are both uncertain, AND that someone's CO2 reduction is a completely useless activity. A consistent position is, "we don't know enough", and "we don't know if your reduction was useful or not".

The difficulty with waiting for certainty is that when that comes, it will be too late -- at least, according to theories of CO2 residence in the atmosphere, which you no doubt will say are ALSO uncertain.

Uncertainty-based inaction is also a largely American (US, Canada) sport -- the rest of the wealthy world already has a much smaller CO2 footprint, and are demonstrating that CO2 reduction is not especially costly.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

Aha, so the fireball theory is discredited.

Now, where were those environmentalists who proposed the fireball theory, did you say?

Casting fireballs at strawmen sounds like fun, but please leave it for another time.

Re:Misconceptions fueled by misconceptions...

[NeutronCowboy]

And even that common knowledge is false, because it was at most restricted to the US. Europe was already aware in the seventies that Global Warming was a more likely issue than Global Cooling.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

What a stupid analogy. We know the effects from large asteroid hits are devastating.

Now what are the effects of historical CO2 levels, when in the past there was much more CO2 than there is today? Was the Earth an unlivable fireball? No.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

I'd side with the mammals, and the oxygen-producing cyanobacteria (not "plants", back to school with you). You see, I am an oxygen-breathing mammal.

The earth will do fine! It's my children that won't, if we keep this up.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

I was responding to your fireball comment, which immediately segued into an eventual doom scenario, which we just don't have the evidence for with regards to CO2. Historically the planet has been at much higher levels.

Bad writing form on my part, then. I didn't mean to imply that "something real bad" would mean "fireball"...the "fireball" comment was touching on people who insist that the sky currently is falling (or will be tomorrow). The "something real bad" comment was in reference to things like weather, ambient temp changes, mass extinction of species, that sort of thing.

Should have been clearer about what I was trying to say -_-;;

Re:Deniers...

[FurtiveGlancer]

It is becoming more widely accepted that CO2 is actually a trailing indicator of temperature change. From analysis of ice core samples, CO2 content changes actually trail temperature changes by 100s years. This is certainly sufficient cause to re-evaluate the commonly proposed causes of global warming.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Now, where were those environmentalists who proposed the fireball theory, did you say?

It's hyperbole I picked from the person I responded to, but where's the evidence that "We obviously need to do something, otherwise one day it WILL get real bad"? The climate models are not accurate, and historical levels of CO2 don't support the position.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

That was originally done by me...it was an exaggeration.

See here.

Re:Deniers...

[Q-Hack!]

What would motivate a majority of the world's scientists to 'fabricate' climate change, or 'manipulate' the reasons behind climate change?

Most scientists? Would that be the IPCC's "831 highly qualified experts" that make up the authors of AR5? (I noticed that they don't use the term scientists anymore)

Compared to the 700 Scientists that currently reject AWG?

Even if you added both groups together, you still wouldn't get into the numbers of "Majority of scientists". Most of the worlds scientists have not studied AWG and have no professional opinion on the subject.

Re:Deniers...

[DragonWriter]

I wonder if people using the term "deniers" will ever stop setting up strawman and accept that people are questioning the causes of climate change, not whether the climate actually changes.

Its not a strawman. Deniers do, among other claims, deny the fact of the current, unprecedentedly rapid, climate change, not merely the attribution of much of it to human-produced causes.

There are also some that posit alternate causes for the current change (often, simply by asserting that as the main factors those which research has established are either not factors or are contributing factors that make a much smaller contribution than himan causes.)

These groups of deniers have some overlap, as well, as some deny both the significance of the current warming trend and the atttribution of much of it to human causes.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

And as I've said many times, CO2 isn't the only thing we have to worry about. This is what pissed me off about your response earlier in the thread...I touched on a number of subjects, yet every time your answer involved CO2.

What about nuclear waste? What about landfills populated by material that never degrades? What about cutting down billions of trees (i.e. filters)? THOSE are the things (amongst others) we need to worry about).

CO2 doesn't represent the whole problem. Ever seen Idiocracy?

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

Thanks for the effort, but though you have reduced your emission footprint by a certain number of tons, you have not reduced total emissions by the same amount. Not remotely.

The problem is that each gallon of gas you save, drives gas prices slightly down. The slightly cheaper gas is then available to someone who couldn't afford it before.

All the oil we pump up, and the coal we dig up, is getting used. Theoretically, the reduced demand from people like us may lower prices enough that some fields are left unexploited.

But we can't count on it. Fossil energy is just too damn useful. Without legislation and taxation to price in the external costs, pretty much all of it will end up in the atmosphere eventually. Humanity can't afford that.

What Dick Cheney sneeringly referred to as "personal virtue" will not save the world, unless it's followed up with political action.

Alright you kids

[Dhrakar]

Get off my rapidly-melting Alaska lawn!

Re:Deniers...

[DragonWriter]

Hey global-warming robots, we can't change world economies on a dime.

Actually, we can. And have.

The evidence needs to be extremely solid, which it isn't.

The direct evidence that global temperatures are rising at a rapid and accelerating rate is extremely strong.

The direct evidence that this is linked to concentrations of CO2 and other so-called "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere is extremely strong.

The evidence, outside of the realm of specific current Earth climate studies, of the mechanisms by which greenhouse gas concentration would contribute to warming is also extremely strong.

There is no component for which the evidence is not extremely strong.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Burnhard]

Well, pretty much all historic temperature and forcing data, paleotemperature and forcing data, and direct observations of feedbacks. Stop pretending to have read the IPCC report and actually read it. With a 0.5 C climate sensitivity, you can't reproduce any past or present climate changes.

There is no such data, unless you are talking about data output from models. But models are conceptual representations of the entities as we currently understand them. They have little predictive power when it comes to climate. The one firm fact we have is that the models are wrong; this should be obvious from their many predictive failures. How can they be right when they don't operate at anywhere near the required resolution and so many of the forcings are just guesses at unknowns? It's an exercise in curve fitting, nothing more. At least Lindzen works with actual data, not models. If more people in Climate Science actually did this what a fucking difference it would make!

As has already been pointed out to you, this result has already been disproven.

No, it hasn't. The paper in question was criticised (at real-climate amongst others), but the revision dealt with all of the criticisms without changing its central finding. It has not been retracted, has it?

I could ask you the same about Lindzen.

His position is more reasonable. He says he's a denier. What's not to like? I note Judith Curry ("high-priestess of global warming") is asking how it's going lately in the warmist community. She's really distancing herself from you alarmists at quite a speed.

Rather, you rely on picking the studies that support your prejudices and ignoring the ones that don't. You are aware that there are estimates other than Lindzen's, right?

I'm a layman. I can have an opinion. I can say, yes, I agree with what you say or no, I think you're talking horse-shit because you underestimate the uncertainties in your work and furthermore, I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw you because I've read the ClimateGate emails and the associated books. If this scare was about Human affects on plate tectonics, I'd be all in. The thought of Scotland flying off into the Arctic Ocean, taking our naval bases with it really scares me. But to my (left-brained) mind, the idea that we can control what are probably natural climate cycles is absurd. No, it's ridiculous... and I don’t understand why you don’t question it.

P.S. I’m not a neo-con.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Cyberax]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Comparing-IPCC-projections-to-observations.html - a nice summary.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

They are more accurate than your handwaving. And yes, historical CO2 levels support the position that high CO2 levels will lead to a warmer climate - they would even if we didn't have the physics to assume it, which we do.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Predicting weather and predicting climate uses similar models

Short-term weather predictions have gotten quite good. Long-term climate predictions are shit -- they've never demonstrated any reliable accuracy.

The earth can handle it. We, however, probably won't, especially if the change happens quickly

But we still don't know what unchecked emissions of CO2 will do to today's climate.

Economics as a Science

[catchblue22]

Economics is not a scientific discipline. Those studies are not very credible.

I'm not sure if I would to that far as to say that economics isn't a science. It does follow the scientific method in that it has hypotheses that are intended to model human economic behavior. The experiments done to support or refute the hypotheses can consist of measurements of different economic parameters.

All science is inductive, that is, it only gives probabilities of truth. It is only probable and not certain that the sun will rise again tomorrow; we only know the sun will rise because it always has. Bertrand Russell wrote about this, giving a story of a chicken who every day of its life saw the farmer coming and was then fed. One day, the chicken saw the farmer coming and inductively concluded that it was going to be fed, only to have its neck wrung. Science is never absolutely certain.

So then, if science is inductive, this provides us with a means of judging the "quality" of particular scientific hypotheses. Newton's Laws are highly accurate in their predictions of motion for speeds sufficiently slower than the speed of light. We might say that Newton's laws have a high degree of inductive validity within a particular type of motion. Can we say the same about one of the primary hypotheses of economics, the "Efficient Market Hypothesis"?

In a nutshell, the Efficient Market Hypothesis implies that the price a market decides for a particular good, service, or security ALWAYS reflects ALL available information. This implies that price distortions such as speculative bubbles or panicked market collapses are impossible. I think that the recent real estate collapse poses substantial problems for the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Does the EMH meet the standards of high inductive validity or probability? Questions and problems like this often lead thinkers to label economics as the "Dismal Science".

Re:Deniers...

[AshtangiMan]

That is logical, but you also have to look at the ecosystem as a whole, and the kind of flora and fauna that were supported. And then compare that to our current ecosystem. Thing is, the planet will survive regardless. What is at question is how much of the ecosystem that we (humans) rely on will, and the look into the past indicates not much.

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

Those plants didn't bury nuclear waste. Those plants didn't dump toxic substances into water supplies, nor did they create landfills.

The point is that those plants dramatically altered the composition of the atmosphere by adding something that hadn't been there before. The point is that various animals have dramatically altered the planet by doing something that would not have happened if they weren't there. If "environmentalism" means fighting to preserve the status quo, doesn't this mean that the "environmentalist" POV depends solely on arbitrarily picking a status quo?

Also, how am I a "radical environmentalist"?

You stated "I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects". The implication here is that if we all disappeared, and had no further environmental impact, that somehow things would be "better" - either the status quo would be preserved, or the "natural" course of the earth would go on unhindered (begging the question as to whether or not we know what that natural course would be, or whether it would be better or worse by any specific definition of morality).

Now maybe, you didn't mean "shit" literally, and maybe you didn't mean that CO2 was equivalent to "shit" - you and I might agree on nuclear waste in rivers, and radioactive clouds of dust in the air as "bad". But if I read it right the first time, and your assertion is that "we can't put CO2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects", I think you are making a pretty radical leap. We could just have easily insisted that prehistoric plant life not put O2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

Nuclear waste is tomorrow's fuel. (I'm not of those who will bet on breeder reactors to magic us out of the current mess, but one day they will be economical. One day. Meanwhile, there's little enough of it that we can afford to store it.)

Landfills may look ugly, but they're not going anywhere.

Deforestation and CO2 emissions are two sides of the same coin. See, the trees don't exactly "filter" our air. They make oxygen as a byproduct of binding carbon into plant matter. The problem isn't lack of oxygen - there will be enough of that for the foreseeable future - it's too much CO2.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

CO2 lags temperature.

Re:Deniers...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I might be missing something, but how the hell did something like this get modded up on /.?

Re:Deniers...

[arth1]

I didn't know that "teabaggers" was a slur; after all the politicians (including your own president) uses the expression.

Would it have been better if I had said "the populist right and other nay-sayers"?

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

And as I've said many times, CO2 isn't the only thing we have to worry about. This is what pissed me off about your response earlier in the thread...I touched on a number of subjects, yet every time your answer involved CO2.

The original post I talked about only mentioned the effects of CO2. I'm not going to go with you off on a tangent when you try to refute my comments on the topic I replied to.

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Cyberax]

"What data would that be? He demonstrated (in LC) a sensitivity of 0.5C in a recent paper."

[citation needed]

"Which IPCC predictions are you going on about? Didn't James Hansen say we'd all be underwater by 10 years ago?"

No. And IPCC's predictions on sea level rise are actually lower than the reality.

"Why do you believe the horse-shit these doom-sayers come out with?"

Why do you believe the horse-shit these sooth-sayers come out with?

Beachfront property

[AJWM]

I (or my kids) am gonna be rich!

1. Buy shoreline property on Hudson's Bay
2. Wait.
3. ??? = Sell to beach resort developers.
4. Profit!

Re:ROFLMAO! Few tenths????

[Cyberax]

"P.S. I’m not a neo-con."

Yes, you are just an idiot.

Care to link to a few articles disproving AGW in peer-reviewed journals with nice impact factors?

No? Oh, that's what I'd expected.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

they've never demonstrated any reliable accuracy.

Yes, they have.

When climate prediction started in earnest, the earth had even been cooling slightly for four decades. Nonetheless, the scientific community predicted warming. Why bet against the trend? Study the science and you may find out.

What happened? The eighies were warmer. Then the nineties were warmer still. Now the previous decade is the warmest on record. Pretty good for a wild guess, huh? Want to bet whether the next is going back to 70's levels?

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

They've been predicting the past for well over 20 years now (great accomplishment, that -- tweak the model until it matches your data). They've been inaccurately predicting the future for almost as long.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

You stated "I recognize we can't dump shit into rivers and into the air for all eternity with no side effects". The implication here is that if we all disappeared, and had no further environmental impact, that somehow things would be "better" - either the status quo would be preserved, or the "natural" course of the earth would go on unhindered (begging the question as to whether or not we know what that natural course would be, or whether it would be better or worse by any specific definition of morality).

I just meant that we can't expect to create landfills and clog up rivers and the ocean while simultaneously expecting zero side effects. Note that this doesn't only equate to global warming.

Now maybe, you didn't mean "shit" literally, and maybe you didn't mean that CO2 was equivalent to "shit" - you and I might agree on nuclear waste in rivers, and radioactive clouds of dust in the air as "bad". But if I read it right the first time, and your assertion is that "we can't put CO2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects", I think you are making a pretty radical leap. We could just have easily insisted that prehistoric plant life not put O2 into the air for all eternity with no side effects.

Putting words in my mouth. Never said CO2. I was referring to everything (which includes, but is not limited to, CO2.) The "for all eternity" was a reference to extremists on the side that think we aren't affecting the planet in any way.

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

Sorry, I wasn't sure whether or not to call them "plants" or "algae" or "oxygen-producing cyanobacteria" - I'll be sure to be more specific next time :)

I have a question though - why do you have any expectation that your children will do fine if we *don't* keep this up? There is so much uncertainty to weather, climate and the environment, isn't it dangerous to assume that we've got a solid lock on the most dangerous thing to our children? If the whole CO2 issue is really just a minor player, and we spend all of our effort mitigating that, but later find out that, say, eating grains and cereals is going to lead to the extinction of humanity, aren't we misjudging risk and misallocating resources? Kinda like wearing a full crash suit and parachute whenever you walk to the kitchen, but driving drunk without a seatbelt at 120mph - spend too much time worrying about low probability, low risk items, and you'll miss out on the high probability, high risk items.

For my kids, I'm more worried about whether or not they get a decent education, find true love, and become self-sufficient, than whether or not a 2C change in temperature over the next 100 years will somehow cause them to spontaneously combust.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Really? That's funny, because I mentioned the hyperbole of a fireball in my first post. A post in which any reference to CO2 is completely absent.

Re:Deniers...

[Blakey Rat]

When climate prediction started in earnest, the earth had even been cooling slightly for four decades.

Why was it cooling when we were burning the shit out of coal and wood back then? It's not like slash-and-burn agriculture or using coal for heat/power was brand new in the 1960s.

Not so sure about that

[LongearedBat]

Sparsely populated areas like Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States

Eh, that's called Canada. And if you ask any Canadian if Canada is part of the USA, then expect some form of... unhappy reaction.

Also, there's the saying "No jobs on a dead planet."
Although I don't believe the world will actually die, it certainly will be (further) badly injured.
That injury will extend to the health of human societies and, as a consecuence, the health of humans' ability to trade.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

As you would expect when no humans were are around.

A warmer world means a warmer ocean. Warm water dissolves gases less efficiently, so large amounts of CO2 are released. This drives further warming. And so on and so on (don't panic. Each step is smaller than the last. It's a convergent series, so temperatures on earth won't rise to infinity). Then you have an interglacial - that's what it is.

What's the nudge that sets the ball rolling, turning ice ages into interglacials and vice versa? (another thing you shouldn't panic for: the feedbacks work the other way too!) Orbital anomalies.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Actually, we can. And have.

You can change an economy on a dime, but at extreme cost.

There is no component for which the evidence is not extremely strong.

The models are not extremely strong. They have been demonstrated to be extremely weak.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

Why bet against the trend? Study the science and you may find out.

Ahem

[olau]

Sparsely populated areas like [...], Scandinavia, [...] will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets.

Will become?

Back in the age of the vikings, we basically stole all the nice chicks from the rest of Europe (together with the all the gold and silver the good people of the church was kind enough to collect for us). The rest is history. Today, Denmark is the happiest place on earth.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Oh cut the bullshit. Your post was in reply to a thread about CO2 levels. The fireball was in relation to global warming from CO2. You changed your scope after my reply.

Re:Deniers...

[h4rm0ny]

but the crazies on both sides are too loud to tell if that's the case.

Indeed they are loud. But one of the main problems is that people prefer to point at the crazies on the other side rather than address the more reasonable ones. For example, the strawman at the start who implied that skeptics were "deniers" (terrible biased word) who thought that there was no changing of the climate whereas the majority of skeptics are merely unconvinced of the primary factors being mankind's actions. And similarly, there are muppets on the side of the doubters. I got a nasty brush with that in a shop a few weeks ago when someone randomly picked up a copy of "Inconvenient Truth" and kept loudly exclaiming to his friend what a load of rubbish it was. Now I *am* a climate skeptic, but I didn't like his unshakeable certainty or outspoken contempt for the theory of AGW. Exposure to someone like that made me understand why some AGW proponents keep crying out about "deniers". It's because they're seeing people like him. That the majority of people I've talked with who are skeptical of AGW are rational people (well marginally more rational than the average person which still isn't that rational but about as good as you can hope for) and are simply demanding more proof and better science gets lost. Just as it gets lost that a lot of AGW proponents aren't in fact crying that the world will end next week. It's up to people on all "sides" to ignore the crazies not just on their own side but on the other side's as well, so that we can have a constructive debate. Otherwise we just get people attacking the least representative and easiest targets of the other side of the debate and patting themselves on the back for how much more right they are than the other.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

I was responding to Vintermann's (original poster) and khallow's (post I originally responded to) own opinions that were on opposite sides of the debate, with no concession in either direction.

This is evidenced by the fact that I didn't single out any specific portion (or viewpoint) on the topic of global warming in my post...merely the topic itself. Like so many things, absolutes are rarely the answer, which was the entire point of my post.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Study the predictions in earnest. Were they accurate? No, besides "warmer". They predicted much more warming than we have seen.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

You, and the posters before you, were talking about global warming, not every pollutant known to man. You threw that in after my reply. I'm not going to argue with you while you keep moving the goal posts.

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

The Earth may have had much higher atmospheric levels of CO2 in the past but not since long before the genus Homo evolved. Humans have never experienced CO2 levels this high in their existence.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

You, and the posters before you, were talking about global warming, not every pollutant known to man

And does every pollutant known to man not have the potential to affect global warming? I would think the destruction or damaging of entire ecosystems (such as swamps on the Gulf coast or rainforests in South America) would directly impact the overal weather pattern and temperature of the Earth.

Or are you saying these things have no bearing whatsoever?

Re:Deniers...

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

You know, God’s still up there.

You're recommending letting an imaginary fairy sort it out? Really? I hope you're not in charge of anything important.

Errm, that is still part of quote uttered by denialist #1 Senator James Inhofe.

Re:Deniers...

[bunratty]

It's not an analogy. I'm showing how stupid that argument is if you apply it to anything other than global warming. Obviously the argument is completely flawed, so why would someone be so desperate to use it as a excuse for not believing that global warming could be a problem? Because they have an emotional desire to deny the problem. It's only human.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

Your analogy is dumb because it doesn't apply to global warming.

One is base on solid and irrefutable evidence based on simple physics and worldwide evidence of planet-wide destruction. Obviously it would be dumb to ignore that evidence.

Now what's the evidence for CO2? We have some inaccurate climate models. We also have historical evidence of much larger CO2, and it's not the unlivable planet event you're making it out to be.

Re:Deniers...

[bunratty]

I absolutely never said that CO2 will make the planet unlivable. I'm simply pointing out how stupid the argument is that the Earth has been through X before means that X is nothing to fear. The evidence that a higher amount of CO2 will be a bad thing is that it will cause higher temperatures, causing a rise in sea level, causing hundreds of millions of humans to be displaced at a cost of trillions of dollars. If there's any inaccuracy in that prediction, I would say that's all the more reason to start reducing carbon dioxide levels immediately, because we have no way of knowing how much we need to reduce carbon dioxide levels to avoid certain levels of catastrophe. By catastrophe I do not mean the end of mankind. Don't be melodramatic.

Re:Deniers...

[tompaulco]

Can you call yourself a scientist if you believe that you must follow certain traditions in order for your space flight to be successful?

Re:Deniers...

[BCGlorfindel]

Do plants create landfills?
How do landfills contribute to global warming exactly?

Do they bury radioactive material?
How does buried radioactive material contribute to global warming exactly?

Do they crash tankers or blow up oil rigs, causing millions of gallons of oil to flow into the oceans over a very short period of time?
How do oil spills contribute to global warming exactly?

All the theories around AGW are based around human CO2 emissions. An extraordinarily harmless gas that plants require to survive, and naturally convert into oxygen. The potential harm from our CO2 emissions is it's contribution to the greenhouse effect. All your raving about toxic waste and oil spills just proves your more interested in declaring the sky is falling than you are in the actual science.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

You surely cannot assert that things are both uncertain, AND that someone's CO2 reduction is a completely useless activity. A consistent position is, "we don't know enough", and "we don't know if your reduction was useful or not".

I don't see why not. The former is uncertain because of the scale of the effect.

The difficulty with waiting for certainty is that when that comes, it will be too late -- at least, according to theories of CO2 residence in the atmosphere, which you no doubt will say are ALSO uncertain.

Ignoring that theories, by definition, carry a degree of uncertainty, it's worth noting here that your feelings above are not backed by scientific evidence. Evidence points to global climate being both a slow thing and something that won't have a significant impact on human or non-human life except over long, adaptable periods of time.

Needless to say, I found your boast of reducing your "emission footprint" (assuming you actually did, there's a lot of counterintuitive and bad information out there) to be lacking in substance. Normally, I wouldn't care, but I am concerned that displays like this will become the new cultural fad. I'd rather not be ostracized or worse by a bunch of religious idiots who can't understand why I fail to conform.

Re:Deniers...

[rwa2]

Hmm, what qualifies as solid evidence to you people?

If the record for past environmental legislation is any indication, no one will feel compelled to do anything until some kind of mass death occurs (as was the case with the London Fog and the Clean Air act of 1956 )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog

Or maybe it could be done sort of like when we found the ozone hole over the arctic and managed to regulate CFCs out of the atmosphere before it grew over populated areas in the late 80s.

But hell, let's go do it like it was done in the 50s! And as long as we can cast "reasonable" doubt on the science, it's not like they can blame us for not taking action sooner... in fact, we can turn it around and blame the alarmists for not doing a better job on convincing us with the science in the first place! And no one's going to give *ME* a tax break for doing things more efficiently! Why, if everyone lived more efficiently, we'd be doing more with less, and less is bad for the economy! Plus it might make room for more people, and we don't want more people. But if anyone tries to regulate population growth through limiting our God-given reproductive rights, they're obviously just trying to outbreed us into a voting minority to further their agenda.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

Right, of course! What a waste it was to spend billions of dollars on cleanup, right? After all, it would have gone away completely and entirely on its own without affecting anything! Hell, why don't we just dump a million gallons of oil every day into the ocean! With all that food, I'm sure sealife population would explode!

You are confusing short term action with long term consequences. A classic example of that was US forest fire management (and other places in the world) in the first half of the 20th Century. For a considerable time, forest fires were considered so bad that they were suppressed from the moment they were discovered. The long term consequences were that huge amounts of fuel built up leading to extremely large fires, some which still occur today.

Conversely, just because most oil spills don't have long term consequences, doesn't mean that they can't have serious short term consequences.

Ignoring NIMBY [wikipedia.org] would be a huge start. Offshore windfarms, widespread adoption of solar power (both through solar power plants as well as solar cells on as many buildings as possible.) More widspread use of public transportation (this is more of an issue here in America than elsewhere.) Slowing or ending production on useless trinkets that just end up in land fills (like the random bric-a-brac sold at a truck stop.)

We already have windfarms and solar plants, we already have mass public transportation, and we already penalize people for buying random bric-a-brac through garbage fees.

As I said, show us something that we should be doing, but aren't already doing.

Re:Deniers...

[BCGlorfindel]

It's not alarmist, it's a logical progression. We can't keep pumping shit into the atmosphere and water supplies thinking it won't have some major cumulative effect down the road.

Which has exactly NOTHING to do with global warming. For all that you've said, we might as well be terrified of the terrible global cooling effect that we are facing from human smoke and smog emissions.

Your argument is pure fear mongering and has absolutely nothing to do with the actual science of what is happening around us.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

It's not a matter of "crossing points of no return". It's a matter of there being tremendous economic, carbon cycle, and climate inertia. The time difference between "deciding to do something now" and "lasting effects taking place" is pretty large.

You should have stopped right there because that renders most of the rest of your post irrelevant.

And if you're tempted to say "the insurance is too expensive", no, it's not. If we got up to a 5 C warming, that's pretty much the difference between an ice age and today, all compressed into a hundred years or two.That's not something humans are just going to trivially adapt to, no matter what faith you have in technology.

The insurance is too expensive and a 5C change is trivial. Next.

. Even if you did believe that climate policy was ridiculously expensive, that's still no excuse for avoiding testing your belief.

And we "test" this policy by going whole hog. We have records of thousands of government programs which all attempt to address some problem, real, imaginary, or contrived. Government interference drives up costs, puts people out of jobs, etc. We already know this, even if we chose to ignore it.

I have an alternate test. We simply leave things be and see what happens. It's just as much a test as what you propose and if carbon dioxide emissions prove to be a minor problem over the following millennia, then we'll be ahead economically of where we'd be with emission mitigation efforts.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

We already have windfarms and solar plants

But not enough of them, which is what I said. Wind and Solar Energy, combined, account for only 1.12% of all electric production in the United States as of 2006.

Same with public transportation. We need more of it, and more people using it.

And we already penalize people for buying random bric-a-brac through garbage fees.

That does nothing to prevent those things from using up resources when made or transported, nor does it cut down on the space they take up in landfills.

As I said, show us something that we should be doing, but aren't already doing.

It's not a matter of what we are or aren't doing, it's a matter of how much we're doing it.

Re:Deniers...

[Vintermann]

I have a question though - why do you have any expectation that your children will do fine if we *don't* keep this up?

I don't plan on doing anything extreme. I just want to put a price on carbon emissions, like any other pollution. People who say it will bring communism and an end to life as we know it are the scaremongers, not me.

Since this is a modest change, I expect to see modest economic and social fallout from it.

Of course, it could be that maize suddenly collectively mutates into a ravenous flesh-eating plant. In that case I would have made the wrong priorities, in retrospect. Still, I'll go by the best information we have, and that leaves me with two major concerns: global warming and peak oil.

For my kids, I'm more worried about whether or not they get a decent education, find true love, and become self-sufficient, than whether or not a 2C change in temperature over the next 100 years will somehow cause them to spontaneously combust.

The fallout from a 2 degrees C change (which is a best-case scenario, including immediate action) is highly likely to harm your kids. Also, it will kill other people's kids.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Read through the whole conversation...it's been well established I'm a fuckwit that went off-topic and started talking about our effect on the planet in general, not limited to just global warming.

Not trolling or being snarky...that's what really happend :)

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

But not enough of them, which is what I said. Wind and Solar Energy, combined, account for only 1.12% of all electric production in the United States as of 2006 [wikipedia.org].

We have a considerable portion of US electricity provided by solar and wind, and the share is growing. I don't see the issue.

Same with public transportation. We need more of it, and more people using it.

We already have it in places where it makes sense. I don't see the reason for expanding an already generous presence.

That does nothing to prevent those things from using up resources when made or transported, nor does it cut down on the space they take up in landfills.

That wasn't important, last I checked. Sure there isn't much of a penalty to buying knick knacks and tossing them. But then there shouldn't be until there actually is a problem worthy of the disincentive. I find the US effort quite adequate here.

It's not a matter of what we are or aren't doing, it's a matter of how much we're doing it.

My point as well. We're already doing these things and at quite adequate levels. But the environmentally religious want us to do more simply because it is possible to do more.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

You are confused about who is claiming what, though it is likely that I, too, have reduced my CO2 footprint by about a ton per year.

"Gradual" is in the eye of the beholder. My childhood home was a zone 9, now it is a zone 10; I have seen the changes with my own eyes. Plant zones have moved about 100 miles north in 16 (?) years. (The baseline might be from earlier, so perhaps it is longer.) Assuming this continues, this should put pressure on peaches and pecans in Georgia and South Carolina in a few decades -- those are two crops that I know don't do especially well in zone 9. We can, of course, move our orchards north, but we had better start soon; some trees take a long time to grow to full production. Other annual crops, we can move more quickly.

My "feelings" are backed by scientific evidence, I merely did not include links. An earlier version of this is what first caught my attention, back in the early 1990s. That does not establish a causal link, but it does establish both an increase in CO2 and a hemisphere-wide warming trend. This is a nice discussion (with references) of direct measurements of predicted CO2 greenhouse effects; so it is a greenhouse gas, both in the lab, and in the atmosphere.

SO. Do you have scientific evidence that (a) it is not getting warmer or (b) there is not more CO2 in the air or (c) CO2 is not a greenhouse gas? I am quite familiar with all the usual claims about water vapor, alternate sources of CO2, solar radiation, etc, and would rather not preemptively post links to debunking sites, but seriously, what is the case for your position? Could you, perhaps, define "gradual", "long", and "adaptable"? Those are mighty squishy words from someone who insists on the use of Science.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

My point as well. We're already doing these things and at quite adequate levels. But the environmentally religious want us to do more simply because it is possible to do more.

It looks like at this point we're just circle-strafing each other.

Let me be clear that I'm not "environmentally religious", as you put it...I don't yell at people for driving SUVs or watering their lawns, I don't get mad at them for not using reusable shopping bags, and I don't subscribe to the theory that every little thing we do is harming the planet.

I do believe, however, that despite our technological advancements and changing way of life, we're still connected to nature, and that it deserves our respect.

Re:Deniers...

[bunratty]

Last I heard there were plans for high speed rail in the US which would cut oil use by 125 million barrels per year.

Re:Deniers...

[tompaulco]

Um, so you think all of a sudden after millions (billions?) of years, the Arctic Ice Shelf is melting enough to travel across it just COINCIDENTALLY.
Not to take sides at all, but studies have shown that the last breakup of the ice shelf likely occurred in the mid-Holocene era. The Holocene is an era which started around 12,000 years ago. From a geological stance, we are still in this era.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

My childhood home was a zone 9, now it is a zone 10

So? Even if it is true and due to current rather than past global warming (which frankly I doubt), it just proves my point. We would have here plant life adapting within a partial human lifespan.

More likely is that it always was a mixture of zone 9 and zone 10 plant life, but you didn't notice until you started looking for things to validate your belief system.

For the rest, I see a lot of posting of irrelevant scientific articles. Let me reiterate my point. You claim that there won't be "certainty" before it is "too late". You have yet to post anything that supports that assertion.

SO. Do you have scientific evidence that (a) it is not getting warmer or (b) there is not more CO2 in the air or (c) CO2 is not a greenhouse gas?

Irrelevant to the discussion. The nature of CO2 doesn't have anything to do with the ability of humans to observe or adapt or to other life to adapt.

Could you, perhaps, define "gradual", "long", and "adaptable"?

Gradual:

Advancing or progressing by regular or continuous degrees

Long:

Of relatively great duration

Adaptable:

Capable of adapting or of being adapted

Adapt (since it is a dependency):

To make suitable to or fit for a specific use or situation

For example, a reoccurring claim is that global temperature will rise by 1-2C over the course of the 21st Century and sea levels rise by less than a meter. From a human point of view, that is absurd slow. Temperature and sea level changes over the next few centuries are still modest. That's too far in the future to make the sort of predictions that have been made. I don't even think it's obvious that we'll have fossil fuels (aside from a few developing countries) by the end of the century. And as I mentioned earlier the bands of vegetation allegedly responding to human CO2 emissions over the course of a human lifespan are, if true, an indication that non-human life responds quickly as well.

And don't capitalize science. It is not a proper noun.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

More likely is that it always was a mixture of zone 9 and zone 10 plant life, but you didn't notice until you started looking for things to validate your belief system.

Untrue. Banyan trees could not survive in St. Pete when I was a kid, but could south of Tampa Bay. They now grow 35 miles north of St. Pete. That Passiflora (you DID click the link, right?) is not a subtle indicator, either. Furthermore, the gardening world is full of people who try to push the limits with interesting stuff, looking for microclimates where they can find them. My dad tried to grow papayas, and failed because they froze. They survive now, in the very same neighborhood. Your claim of a zone 9/10 mix also contradicts the climate charts; there are indeed plants that can grow in multiple zones, but for each zone (and even each half-zone) there are indicator species, that grow in one zone, but not the next. If you've got banyan trees, papayas, and passiflora alata, your zone is not 9, it is 10.

A second datapoint, not plant related, is the water supply. There's also been recent predictions of widespread drought in the 20-40 year future, based on climate models. We can "fix" this with population migration. Tampa, FL, is looking into recycling sewage into drinking water.

I also note you conveniently snipped out the bit about the trees. It is well known that annual weeds are happy colonizers; trees are a good deal slower. If climate zones are really moving 100 miles every 16 years in the Southeast (I actually doubt that, I think the 1990 baseline was not kept up to date), I think that some tree crops may cease to be viable economically because of the long "investment" time.

As to the matter of "waiting for certainty is too late", that derives from two things. #1,the excess CO2 will be with us for a long time (centuries -- see, was that so hard?). #2, the temperature increase lags the CO2, because so much heat is sunk into the oceans. #3, as someone noted, you cannot turn an economy on a dime, so even once we decide to cut back, it will take years to do so. So, whatever observed temperature rise it takes for us to decide to put on the brakes, it will take us years to activate the brakes, AND we will have that higher level of CO2 for a century or so, AND the temperature will continue to rise for decades.

The one place I don't have good data, is on what constitutes "certainty", nor on how fast we could actually turn the economy. If our threshold for "certain" is actually not that far from where we are now, then I am wrong, assuming we flipped from skeptic to certain (as a society) in the space of five years (and stayed there). But as near as I can tell, that is not how things are -- you are certainly an example of someone who has taken the tribal approach (to an insulting level, I might add) and cloaked it in a bogus reverence for Science.

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

When the model results don't match they don't "tweak" the models. They are not merely trying to match the curve of the real data. Instead they examine the underlying physics the models are based on to see where they got it wrong, fix that and update the models.

As far as the accuracy of projections of future climate go they have been not that bad. The problem with trying to project future climate is that there are a number of things that affect climate that are not easily predictable on a short term basis. Things such as the timing and strength of El Nino/La Nina episodes, the current longest solar minimum in more than a century and the exact level of CO2 in the atmosphere which depends largely on how much fossil fuel we burn. So what the climate scientists and model builders do is devise several realistic scenarios to feed in to the model. The model projections are only accurate to the extent that the scenarios they feed in to it are accurate. Regardless of how accurate the projections are they all say that continuing to increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to increasing global temperature.

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

I was referring to everything (which includes, but is not limited to, CO2.)

Which I think is your mistake - including CO2 in the list of "bad" things drives you to some odd situations when you consider the past history of the earth. I'll grant you that there is no precedent for the nuclear waste from breeder reactors in the history of the planet. But atmospheric changes, on the other hand have been variant in all kinds of ways in the past. Conflating the two just isn't proper, and I argue, is a radical departure from common sense.

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

LOL, if the temperature is 160 degrees there is no ice core record (unless you're talking about 160K).

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

To trot out the tired old /. cliche, correlation is not causation. Just because CO2 levels trailed temperature rises coming out of glaciations as shown by ice core data does not do anything to prove that rising atmospheric CO2 levels can not lead to increases in temperatures on their own.

Re:Deniers...

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Translation: "Lalala - I can't heeeear you!"

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

Since this is a modest change, I expect to see modest economic and social fallout from it.

I guess it depends on how much you price them - a penny per year for the entire carbon emissions of the US might be negligible, but a penny per exhaled breath of CO2 might be entirely devastating. The devil here is in the details on how much you want to slow down economic growth, or more particularly, how much economic slowdown can you justify against the risk. With a nebulous idea of real risk involved, any arbitrary point chosen is likely to be way off.

The fallout from a 2 degrees C change (which is a best-case scenario, including immediate action) is highly likely to harm your kids. Also, it will kill other people's kids.

Exactly how would that harm my kids? If today was 2C warmer, they probably wouldn't even notice. Asserting that it will harm my kids is complete speculation. Asserting that it will kill other people's kids is also pure speculation.

Simply guessing about potential natural disasters in the far future (hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes, droughts, cold snaps, heat waves), and asserting that they can all be attributed to average global temperature is a real stretch.

For bonus points, tell me what the current average temperature of the planet is today, and what the spread between high average and low average is over the course of a year.

Re:Deniers...

[hsthompson69]

As an example of monthly variation of global temperature, see:

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe-m.html

You'll see a span of about 1.2C from 1983 to 1997 (low point to high point).

Considering that we managed to survive a 1.2C change in less than 20 years, why would I believe that a 2C change over 100 years is going to harm me or my children or my grandchildren?

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

IPCC predictions have if anything proven to be too conservative about what will happen in general. I think you need to look at the time frames they have put on their predictions because most of the worst stuff they have predicted is scheduled for later this century.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

I was going to post a long rant about things. But I realized it's all simply explained by the fact that the St Petersburg/Tampa Bay is far more urbanized now than before. You have failed to take into account the urban heat island effect. You've also failed to take into account that all the plants you mention above (which all happen to be cultivated, invasive species) experience extreme evolutionary pressures to live in cooler winter climates.

Now, one can reasonably ask here, why didn't I take you at face value before I had come up with an explanation? Because that sort of zone change, if due to global warming alone, would indicate a far greater rate of temperature change than we actually observe. The only people in the past I've seen make those sort of claims are biology people who were a bit clueless about the effects of local climate changes (for example, there are regions near the tree line in the US Rockies that have spring start a month earlier than a few decades ago, these areas also have far smaller glaciers than they used to have and hence, just from that alone, a warmer local climate).

Anyway, I decided to look into this further. Here is a map of the US's "hardiness zones" (click on the caption to get an explanation of the colors on the map). I noted that the western plains from Big Bend up to the border with Canada had roughly equally spaced bands of zones. The bands range in color from a dark olive which corresponds to zone 8b, with minimum winter temperatures of 15 to 20 F (the USDA uses the Fahrenheit scale) to brick red in North Dakota, the zone corresponding to minimum winter temperatures of -35 to -30 F. Further, note that most of each zone I mentioned is in the US. So that's roughly a 55 F drop in temperature over a roughly 2500 km distance (Google maps indicates that I'm pretty close to correct here, definitely within 5% of the true value).

I get roughly 1.2 C change in minimum winter temperature over a north-south distance of 100 km. If climate zones really are moving 100 miles in 16 years, then that much movement corresponds to a 2C difference of winter temperature in 16 years. That's pretty noticeable.

However, global mean temperature has risen about 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. If winter minimum winter temperature really were changing that much globally (more than 1C per decade!), then why isn't it being used as solid evidence of global warming?

Re:Deniers...

[Loki_1929]

They are more accurate than your handwaving. And yes, historical CO2 levels support the position that high CO2 levels will lead to a warmer climate - they would even if we didn't have the physics to assume it, which we do.

Historical records seem to indicate that, rather than higher CO2 causing a warmer climate, it's instead a warmer climate which causes higher CO2.

Re:Deniers...

[Raenex]

I'm glad you finally admitted it. Peace out.

Re:Deniers...

[Pojut]

Not the first time I've made an ass of myself on here, and certainly won't be the last

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

Well, it's clear that you've explained it to your satisfaction. Of course, that leaves all the other data untouched, in particular our good friend the Keeling Curve.

Unfortunately, St. Pete has been consistently urban since I was a wee tot. The areas to the north, they have developed since then, but St. Pete WAS a zone 9 (urban as it was and is), and is NOW a zone 10 (still urban). It is of course confounding that areas to the north are both warmer and more developed, but the change in St. Pete seems indicative, since it has been consistently "urban" for some definition of the word. In any case, the nearby water has a huge effect throughout the region; that's why south of Tampa Bay was (and still is) a zone 10.

I assume you know that in most cases, "freezes" in Central Florida are radiative, meaning the air gets dry, clear, and still, and the temperature just drops at night (the freeze Christmas Eve of 1989 was an exception, but I am sure you knew this already). This means that "frost protection" can be as trivial as a sheet tossed over a tender plant. It seems unlikely that the re-radiation of heat from excess CO2 would blunt this (to do so, it would have to be a huge effect, I think), but it would be fun to know the exact answer.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

Whoops, mistake in my reply. Bigger mistake in your reply. The Arbor day map, purports to tell you where you can plant stuff. They say "climate change", but strictly speaking, either they are not qualified to make that judgement, or they define the term broadly. What they ARE experts on, is what will grow where -- the intended audience for that map, is people who want to grow stuff, and if they are wrong, they will waste gardeners' time and money.

And in the one place where I am able to check their data directly, comparing what-grew-then with what-grows-now, I see that they are correct. Whether this is caused by urbanization or by climate change where I observed it, is irrelevant -- what is important is that the data in the map is confirmed (at least in that place). This suggests that perhaps they did their homework.

However, the changes in the rest of the map, do not look like patterns from urbanization; this suggests that we are looking at climate change, in the global warming sense. And, since we know that they have an incentive not to screw over gardeners, and because in at least one instance they were proven right in the details, I think we have to suspect that it might be correct.

Having seen this map, I've been trying to get a fix on the exact location of the 6a/6b line (Japanese maple is an indicator species -- this is where I live now), to see if it has moved, too. This is a little tricky, because the existence of a tiny plant might merely imply that a gardener is being adventurous, and got lucky for a couple of winters -- but because the change is recent, there will not be large plants.

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

Actually the Holocene climactic optimum occurred from about 9000-5000 years ago and the Earth has cooled off a bit since then. But temperatures within the last decade or so appear to be a bit above what they were during the HCO.

I'm not going through your whole list but coral reefs dying is a documented fact. You can argue that it's not due to global warming but not that it isn't happening.

The 2010 arctic sea ice minimum was the 3rd lowest on record (after 2007 & 2008) and below the 2009 minimum. They are still the 4 lowest on record. I wouldn't call that really growing.

2010 has been the warmest year on record so far (until the end of September) but it may not set the new record depending on how strong the developing La Nina is. The decade from 2000 to 2009 is the warmest on record. I wouldn't call that cooling.

Sure you can.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

We can't keep pumping shit into the atmosphere and water supplies thinking it won't have some major cumulative effect down the road.

Sure you can. If you don't pump it in faster than it is cleared it doesn't accumulate.

In particular, take the case of shit into water: That's where it's been going since early ocean life invented shit. (Before that it was things like dead bodies of bacteria...) One life form's shit is another's dinner.

Meanwhile, destroying one's own habitat is normal for many higher animals. One example is the three-way cycle of migrating elephants, hippos, and (i forget the third beast), where each destroys the local area for itself (while making it suitable for the next) and migrates on, coming back many years later after the other two species have rehacked things and made the location suitable again. (That's one we get to manage now that we've broken the normal migration pattern. Similar to having to cull and drive deer around now that we've eliminated many of the predators that used to chase them to fresh food and kept their population in check.)

= = = =

The issue with the environment isn't whether we're affecting it. Of COURSE we are. The issue is a stack of stuff related to the Global Warming Catastrophe claims and prescriptions.

We recently got instrumentation and techniques in place capable of coming up with a reasonably good set of data for global temperature for the last several hundred years. And of course we discovered that the temperature is different in different years. Well, duh! We already knew that. We already knew about ice ages and that human civilization rose during the warmup at the end of one. No surprise there.

But the Global Warming mongers jumped on it and started promulgating a complete kit of sky-is-falling predictions, prescriptions for fixing it that involve a massive transfer of power from populations to governments and wealth from populations to new institutions - set up by the same people (example: Al Gore's new companies to trade carbon credits and manufacture and sell carbon offsets), and cries that this must be done RIGHT NOW or we're ALL GOING TO DIE! And of course claims that it's "settled science" (an oxymoron) and demonization of anyone who wants to check the work as a "denier" (as in "holocaust denier" with all the genocidal NAZI references that implies.)

We've heard that before. Look up Malthus and the "Club of Rome" simulations for one example. Or the "new ice age imminent" predictions from the mid 20th century. So before we enslave and impoverish ourselves we need to check the claims - ALL of them:

Is the temperature really climbing as a result of human action? Some other possibilities:
- We're still coming out of that ice age.
- It's an honest artifact from things like cities growing out around locations of the long-term temperature measurement instruments.
- There's a long-term oscillation around a stable or slow temperature change trend, the measurements got it during an upcurve, and this was extrapolated with an exponential, turning a gentle wave into a discontinuous "hockey stick".
- It's just errors in the model.
- The data was faked.
- Maybe we've been holding off the next ice age with our carbon emissions and once we throttle them back (or run out of fossil fuel) we'll freeze over - and all this cutback does is start it earlier (and push us off a "snow reflects solar heat" positive-feedback cliff).

If it's really happening, is it bad?
- How much will it warm up, and how fast?
- Does this kill things off? Or does it just mean that animal habitat moves a few hundred miles toward the poles over a couple centuries and farmers switch to crops that used to be grown a couple hundred miles farther south.
- Maybe global warming IMPROVES things food-wise: Growing grapes in England and veggies in Iceland like in the Medieval Warm Period, turning the permafrost tundra into anothe

Re:Sure you can.

[gartogg]

First, you are wrong.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/03/new-study-clinches-it-the-earth-is-warming-up/

I dislike the power grab by governments, but... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/09/im-skeptical-of-denialism/

Don't claim it's not true, point out alternative solutions. Unless you have been doing the research and have access to some data no-one else does that casts these claims into any REAL doubt.

Re:Deniers...

[riverat1]

The 1+ metre rise in sea level prediction was published after the last IPCC report was finalized. It was recognized by the authors at the time that the IPCC prediction was extremely conservative.

Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?

[riverat1]

That didn't deserve to be modded down. Must be the RealClimate reference.

Replying to Burnhard about what Phil Jones said, here is the transcript:

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

Phil Jones: I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

I believe the confidence level Jones calculated was 93% so not that far from being statistically significant. As Jones said statistical significance is less likely with shorter time scales so your 1/2 of the significant time scale is meaningless.

Fraud

[anunperson]

Global Warming is the biggest fraud in history! http://ditelhead.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/global-warming-science/

Fantasy Gaming NORCS

[Vastad]

Offtopic but whatever: Could Norcs be the foul progeny of Northmen and Orcs?

Re:Nobody to discuss it [Re:FWIW: an inuit opinion

[dogsbreath]

Yeah, I agree about the right/left politics and the way that observation/analysis gets coloured and distorted by political positioning.

The interview I heard was from the local CBC station and I haven't found it in the CBC podcast archive. Too bad because it was a good interview. The fellow was not taking a political position. He was just saying that he did not have any great fears for either his people surviving or for the future of the polar bear based on what is being seen by people who live in the high Arctic.

He also expressed some frustration with the way that his people's observations are ignored and gave some examples. For years, scientists have dismissed Inuit observations that there has been change in the position of sky objects with respect to the landscape. Attention is now being paid to the atmospheric effects of the warming air mass above the arctic, including how changing refraction causes objects to shift.

The Inuit are careful observers.

Re:Hooray!

[dogsbreath]

Arctic rim job?

hahahahahahahaha ROTFLMHO

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

Well, it's clear that you've explained it to your satisfaction. Of course, that leaves all the other data untouched, in particular our good friend the Keeling Curve.

It also should have been to your satisfaction.

Unfortunately, St. Pete has been consistently urban since I was a wee tot.

The area around St. Pete hasn't been consistently urban. For example, the current Tampa-St. Petersburg Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population (2.7 million people) as large as Florida was in 1950. I can't find historic population for the area, but I imagine we'll find massive growth in population in suburbs in the past 20 years, just like everywhere else in Florida.

The Arbor day map, purports to tell you where you can plant stuff. They say "climate change", but strictly speaking, either they are not qualified to make that judgement, or they define the term broadly. What they ARE experts on, is what will grow where -- the intended audience for that map, is people who want to grow stuff, and if they are wrong, they will waste gardeners' time and money.

What changes in the map? I simply used the USDA map to figure out the width of the hardiness zones. And get a temperature per distance metric that seems to apply over a broad part of the temperate zone that the US fits into (and which Florida is at the southern edge of).

Now, I gather that nighttime temperature is supposed to be more affected by higher greenhouse gasses than global mean temperature, but a global (well at least in temperate zones) 1C per decade increase in minimum nighttime temperature seems to be one of those things that would become a common talking point among climatologists, if it were real.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

Arbor day map (follow links in previous posts) shows their changes from the 1990 map. It is not the USDA map. On-the-ground observation shows that in at least one instance, the Arbor Day map is the more accurate one, though the reasons for this in northern Pinellas County surely do include more urbanization. St. Pete itself, a pretty good-sized area, has been Florida-urban since I was a kid.

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

Ok, then. If the trend is real, we'll see these hardiness zones continue to move north. Another ten years should see a significant enough shift to be relevant. And if not, we can always wait another decade or two. As I see it, a 100 mile shift in 16 years could be imaginary. A 300 mile shift in (that is, 30 years from now, plus the data from 1990) years (which would be roughly 20% of the distance between Big Bend and the Canadian border) separates global warming from that hypothesis.

We should also be able to nail down the extent of human contribution to global warming, get some feedback on the accuracy of current climate model predictions, and get a feel for what the endgame for petroleum and natural gas production looks like.

But what I don't see evidence for, is the claim that definitive knowledge will come "too late". Sure there might be elevated extinction of species (we still have the choice in many cases of moving the less mobile species at relatively low cost to appropriate areas to avoid species extinction). And we may be inconvenienced by having to move farming or structures near sea level. But it strikes me, that when one makes decisions on a global scale, effecting all of humanity (or at least the portion that chooses to participate), it is reasonable to make sure they're good decisions.

Re:Deniers...

[tompaulco]

Do plants create landfills?
Yes they do, but not intentionally. We call them Peat Bogs, Oil Reserves, Coal Veins, and so forth. But trees mostly just leave their trash wherever the wind blows it.
Do they bury radioactive material?
Yes, if they absorb it, then they bury it with them when they die.
Do they crash tankers or blow up oil rigs, causing millions of gallons of oil to flow into the oceans over a very short period of time?
Well, a tree probably can't do that, but I would imagine that seaweed could if it was thick enough to foul the props.

But my point is, while we are wondering what harmful effect putting all this CO2 into the air may cause, do you suppose that the trees have the same concern regarding all of the CO2 that they pull OUT of the air, then end up burying the carbon underground when they die.

Re:Deniers...

[dr2chase]

I assume that you noticed my disclaimer, that I do not necessarily believe the baseline date, and that it might be more than 16 years (that is, I find it highly likely that the USDA continued to print a map based on old observations). However, it is probably less than 40, because I recall stuff getting frozen out in the 60s.

I did in fact post links to discussions and aggregations of references, suggesting that warming lags CO2 content by 40 years. Add to that, that we cannot turn the economy on a dime, and that a lot of our efforts are (and will be) boneheaded anyway. So add a decade. That means, we get to see 50 years of additional change AFTER we are certain, and then we get to live in those conditions for about a hundred years, maybe more.

And, we have a pile of relatively recent (hence, best quality) climate simulations suggesting drought conditions for almost the entire US (excepting Alaska) 20-50 years from now, and continuing to worsen after that. (Link appears above, somewhere, it's a PDF.) Canada, Scandinavia, Russia do fine. China, not so much. India, wins in some simulations, not in others. I assume that there will be geo-engineering if things turn out badly for China or India, and I would be surprised if they were not already studying the problem.

So how, exactly, is it not too late already? I believe your counterclaim is "we don't know that will happen", and you are, strictly speaking, correct, since nobody can predict the future with complete accuracy. Do note, that the IPCC has demonstrated this already -- where their predictions have been tested, they have mostly been exceeded by reality. That's not the sort of error I want to see -- ideally, they would overshoot something like 1/3 of the time.

The difficulty is, if those simulations (and it is an overview of multiple simulations) are correct, or even near-correct, then it's too late already, and we will end up not just relocating people from barrier islands (they moved there once, they can move away again), but also abandoning farmland in huge hunks of the center of the country. It's a combination of what I would call middling (40-80%) probability with a terrible outcome. Me, personally, I will probably make out ok -- high ground near Boston, and as a colleague remarked, "One thing I noted when I moved here was that they have a really robust water supply".

Re:Deniers...

[khallow]

So how, exactly, is it not too late already? I believe your counterclaim is "we don't know that will happen", and you are, strictly speaking, correct, since nobody can predict the future with complete accuracy. Do note, that the IPCC has demonstrated this already -- where their predictions have been tested, they have mostly been exceeded by reality. That's not the sort of error I want to see -- ideally, they would overshoot something like 1/3 of the time.

Point is that you're speaking of making global-scale decisions on somewhat weak knowledge and poor justification. I won't go along with that. Even if waiting means we miss a desired climate state by a little more, that is acceptable to me. Bottom line is that there's no reason not to wait a few more decades to see if climate predictions and trends are validated or not.

Pity the indigenous Eskimos

[lsatenstein]

These are the people who live in the land, need the cold to allow their hunting for meat and poultry, and cultivate in the short 24hr/daylight in the summer. Surely the land belongs to them. I guess now is the time for them to stake claims, or be treated the way North Americans treated their native indians in the last and current centuries.

Re:Deniers...

[h4rm0ny]

Post a few genuinely skeptical comments about AGW here or on the comments section of some mainstream UK newspapers (Independent, I'm looking at you). You get outrage and called a "denier" immediately.

Denier is a very pejorative term as it (a) unscientifically assumes something is uncontestable and (b) carries some unpleasant and deliberate connotations of holocaust denial.

Note your implication that skeptics should start telling the "deniers" that they are stupid presumes too false things. One - people who feel the science isn't good enough yet are compelled to offer an alternative certainty and tell others they are wrong, which misses the whole point of skepticism. And secondly, that people such as myself [i]don't[/i] pick holes in arguments wherever they find them. If someone, such as the OP was strawmanning, actually did come along and say "the climate never changes" I can assure you that most skeptics would turn on them like a pack of wolves. But the truth is that I've never come across such a person. Not in real life and not, as far as I recall, online. Find someone who states that the climate never changes and by all means, go and throw some data at them that shows otherwise. But look at all the posts you find on Slashdot or in the comments section of mainstream UK newspaper or other reasonably popular sites, and 99% of the people that get shouted down as "deniers" aren't arguing that. They're stating that they have problems with the case for AGW. And usually those problems are quite specific. Making generic and dismissive comments of "denier" as the OP did is unfounded.