Slashdot Mirror
2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record
The Bad Astronomer writes "Last year was the 9th hottest year out of the past 130, according to NASA and the NOAA. That's no coincidence: nine out of the ten hottest years on record have been since the year 2000. It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy."
Is it a bad thing? Or did we just dodge an ice age?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not everyone denies that the earth is getting hotter (facts), but some related claims like that it's getting hotter because of human activity, greenhouse gases, etc.
That it's getting hotter is science: you can't disagree with measurement.
The rest is a mixture of pseudo-science and politics.
Fact is that nobody knows why the Earth is getting hotter.
It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy.
Nobody is denying that it got like 0.2 degrees hotter in the past 10 years, it's the fact that some people seem to be making the leap between it getting hotter and humans not trading enough carbon credits, now that is an exercise in fantasy.
Bow before me, for I am root.
I live in Minnesota. We're presently at -12C with a forecast low of -21C tonight. If this is what you call a warmer Earth you could have fooled me. However, I for one would very much welcome a warmer Minnesota--during the winter at any rate.
Global *averages* are rising. And by the models I've heard it means that winters don't necessarily get warmer (yet), but they get shorter. I live in Ontario, and I can remember having snowball fights before Hallowe'en when I was young. This year, we didn't start getting lasting snow until mid-December, and we have had winters in the past few years where we didn't get lasting snow until mid-January. It still gets down to low temperatures (it was -35 here this morning, with the wind chill factor... -21 without), but it does it less often, and it doesn't stay cold for as many months. It's "good" for northern latitudes (for varying definitions of "good"... the reduction in permafrost is wreaking havoc on the transportation network in northern Canada, as we discover that some of the landing strips on fly-in communities are in swamps), but it's really bad for those in equatorial latitudes.
If only the deaths due to famine could be limited to those who are most responsible for causing the problem - but it will be limited to the poor people mostly in the third world.
Meanwhile we have all the climate change deniers to help prop up the corporations and countries who are causing the problem and ensure that it gets worse faster.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If this is the 9th hottest year, and 8 of the past 12 have been hotter, then wouldn't that technically also make 2011 one of the four coldest years out of the past 12? Doesn't change the fact that the past decade has been hotter than the others, but the phrasing is considerably more alarmist than "2011 4th coldest year out of past 12!!"
There were also giant forests and jungles and ocean ecosystems supported by that carbon. That meant a lot of it was in the midst of the metabolisms of plants and algae and stuff, not floating free in the atmosphere. It was a generally thicker atmosphere, making more OXYGEN available, that let the world grow ____ing great lizards (also, they weren't lizards).
We, on the other hand, have increasingly small jungles and forests, and increasingly puny ocean ecosystems, which means that carbon doesn't spend much time trapped in living things. It stays in the atmosphere, which leads to something beyond "warm and cozy."
We also have this lovely whirlpool of tiny plastic molecules filling the upper current of the Pacific Ocean, which is effectively choking increasing numbers of life at the bottom of the foodchain. Can't see it from Iowa, but it's there.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years. The Earth is not getting hotter, it got hotter and then, a decade and a half ago, it stopped. This may well be a blip; noted climatoligist Professor Phil Jones, Director of Research for the University of East Angliaâ(TM)s Climatic Research Unit certainly thinks so. But claims the Earth hasn't been getting warmer for the last 15 years are not fantasies; they are the actual consensus of real, respected climate scientists, based on the best data available.
I hope that by suggesting that we can't be totally sure, that you are not somehow suggesting that we shouldn't respond to the most likely theories out there. When people ask if I believe in climate change I always say yes, but do I know for 100% sure? Nope. But rarely does life produce certainty like that. And science even less. I'll trust experts in that field in the same way that I trust my mechanic, or my doctor, and they trust me in what I do best. Society doesn't rely on knowing everything- because we can't. That's why we all look to experts in their respective fields, and rightly so. I have heard absolutely no credible person who isn't backed by a religious or oil group who doesn't agree on the general framework. But hey, show me the light.
Mod parent up. I farm, I also trade commodities. I'm outdoors a lot and have been monitoring all this since '80 or so. It's getting warmer for certain. I like it warm, but some of the things I grow don't. And pests that used to stay south of here have moved north to here and we are getting new problems from that. They can migrate quick, but trees cannot...I'm not going to die from the change we have, but another 30 years on this same track - what was productive farmland will be a desert. So, someone will have to tear down that city you live in to grow crops in, because some of the best land on the planet - right here, won't be anymore, and that food's gotta come from somewhere. At our human density, everything that isn't city is farm...more or less. It's not going to be pretty. Gonna vote NIMBY against tearing your city down while you starve? GoodLuckWithThat. Who cares what caused it - we better look into how to change it back!
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I think it would be even more foolish to try to "change it back" than it would be to just learn to adapt. What happens if you change it back and end up going slightly too far? What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?
which is totally what she said
Civilization itself is unusual. Could it be related to stable weather?
so many uneducated fools going on like there ignorance should hold the same value as an experts.
For those people saying 'there will be a benefit because of more [whatever]. You might want to wonder why you think after there is more arable land, or warmer Canada, the temperature wont continue to rise?
What the cap are gone, are only buffer will be gone. Right not, they are acting as a heat sink. SO all the new land continue to with :
a) get get hotter and then drier, or
b) so much cloud cover appears plant find it difficult to grow.
Oh, and there is less sunshine hitting the ground, and it has started to impact plant growth. granted a tine amount, so far.
read up on why you are wrong:
http://ncse.com/climate
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I never said blind trust. Just that we can't know everything. That was the crux of my point. I'm not a climatologist and I doubt you are as well. So while I don't throw away my critical mindset, I also know when to default to others, and when I'm being conned. Just follow the money. Oil, evangelicalism, and the like vs. scientists who while not all perfect have far less motivation to flat out lie. It's never black and white, and I know both sides can lie. But I also know grayness doesn't mean no judgment can be passed.
All this talk about whether global warming is natural or is caused by burning things doesn't really matter. Why are we looking for a scapegoat? All that matters is whether or not the earth is getting warmer. If it is, whether it's natural or not, we had better start preparing. I have yet to hear a single credible plan about how anyone is going to stop the billions of humans on the planet from burning stuff to survive. Let's face it. It's just not going to happen.
Maybe SUVs will get outlawed in the US. Hooray! I hate the things. Maybe a 70 mpg minimum will be required for any non-commerical vehicle sold in the US (if you tried that for commercial vehicles you'd have mass starvation which could be another 'solution' I suppose). Maybe we'll build a few more nuclear power plants although I think NIMBY will prevent most of that.
Maybe England and Canada and Australia will follow along as they so often seem to do with whatever silly idea the US comes up with. Or maybe not. In any case the rest of the planet representing the majority of land area and population will just laugh and continue to burn things until they run out of things to burn. And yes this includes trees and coal. And those laughable drop-in-the-bucket schemes that the US will come up with wouldn't have delayed the end by much anyway. People are going to do what they must to survive and that usually involves burning things.
So if AGW is true then our species is doomed and there is no way around it. I propose a possible solution. The end will take at least a millenium. That gives us (especially the US) the chance to start putting all the money that would have been spent catching, imprisoning, and executing millions of climate criminals and building hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants everywhere and cleaning up the inevitable accidents into a new era for the space program.
See how I did that? The greens have their agenda (although they are pretty vague about what exactly that is), and I have mine. Let's start devoting every dollar we now spend on the defense budget into building an interstellar generation ship big enough for a few thousand people to live on. That will be a start. Maybe by the time the end comes in 1000 - 100,000 years we will be fully prepared to live off world and will have colonized other star systems. It is funny that the very thing that allowed us to flourish as a technological species, heat engines which create electricity and do the work that we used to require things like horses or rivers to do, will have become our doom.
While the US and maybe a few close allies could Francify their electricity production by going nearly 100% nuclear and introduce bumper car like transportation systems with electric cars that are powered by nuclear powered overhead wires once they reach the major highways, is the rest of the world going to be able to do that? Maybe eventually but not right now. I think much of AGW is based on the idea that we will essentially never run out of fossil fuels, but nuclear fuel will eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of uranium etc on this planet. So then it's either burn or face massive die offs of just leave the planet. So we should start preparing for that. We have no idea whether intelligent life in the galaxy is rare, but it may be. We should do everything we can to preserve our species regardless of what may happen to this particular planet.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
It has nothing to do with people's skin melting off, or even being comfortable outdoors. It has to do with polar ice levels, seasonal weather stability and farmland stability. The world population may inflect at 9billion in a few decades, but that doesn't give us unlimited carrying capacity.
American (and global) policy today may direct decide the life or death of billions of people 100 years from now. It's really interesting to consider. If there is a 1% chance that your decision will kill 500 million people over the next 200 years, what is the economic value of that choice?
Since according to US actuarial tables, a human life is worth about $13 million, 500 million people is worth about $6,500 trillion. Given a 1% chance of this happening, this is an opportunity cost of $65 trillion. Given the time value of money over 100 years (the average between now and 200 years from now), it's worth about $3.3 trillion today to prevent those deaths.
Obviously, I'm just making these numbers up, but it illustrates the point. This is a rough calculation that a rational liberal economist might put on the value of trying to reduce the impact of anthropomorphic climate change.