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.
... for very short values of record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
it's in my head
If you're Canadian or Ukranian, buy agricultural stocks. Your growing season is about to get a lot longer (enabling multiple harvests per year which used to be limited to lower latitudes), several of your competitors in agricultural products are going to be less productive, and your agricultural lands a LOT more productive.
For every loser, there is a winner.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now. Even then, the odds aren't in favor of human beings maintaining Business As Usual given the typical political, economic and social miseries that we tend to inflict upon ourselves and each other.
Now, add some major shifts in food production, water availability and the ability of the coastal areas to support large populations then you make it even less likely that we'll see unicorns and ponies in our future.
Of course, the rest of the planet might consider this a major plus. Your kids, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No, a 130 year history is not enough, but it is also not the only evidence of a problem.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I love it when amateurs try to second-guess experts.
"Mr. Einstein, are you sure it's not just an issue of measurement?"
"Billions of people in the world? You expect me to believe that? Have you actually met them all? I thought not!"
97% of scientists who are experts in this field are sufficiently convinced. They may end up being wrong, but they are in the best possible position to assess the evidence. You are not. Even if you *are* a climate scientist, you don't get to overrule the rest of your peers just because you think you're smarter than they are.
If you're not a climate scientist, please SFTFU with your denial. If you are a climate scientist, then do good research and talk to your peers.
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
Funny, because a lot of real scientists disagree with you. We know humans have influenced it. It's pretty simple, really. You get into politics when you start claiming "nobody knows" when, in fact, we have a damn good idea. Are you a creationist?
Great Intellect...
That and some volcanoes.
Without those, we're talking an ice free passage in the Arctic from Greenland to Alaska, the melting of enough of Antarctica to raise sea level 4-5 meters (that's 20 feet GW deniers), and hurricanes with enough energy input to make Florida look like a 24/7 disaster zone.
That said, I will bet Mittens' $10,000 that GW deniers will try to mod this entire topic down, using some of the $50,000 I have invested in energy stocks to pay for the posters.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now.
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
Xerxes ordered his slaves to whip the waves to keep the waves from coming in. He was trying to control something he couldn't in a way that wasted time and energy and probably lives. People who ignored the fact that the sand spit they were building million dollar houses on wasn't there 100 years ago are demanding that something "be done" to keep the spit from eroding today.
As a society, humans are very good at seeing "how things are today" and leaping to "this is how they should always be", even if that means "doing something that doesn't change what's happening".
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."
Porquoi?
The rest is a mixture of pseudo-science and politics.
Fact is that nobody knows why the Earth is getting hotter.
No, the study of the Earth's climate is hardly a pseudo-science. It is a hard science based on observation, computational models, making hypothesis and testing them. There have been satellites collecting observations for decades, surface measurements for over a hundred years, and ice core samples going back thousands of years. We can directly observe the output of the sun on the surface as well as in space, the concentration of various gasses in the atmosphere, etc.
How in the world is that a pseudo-science?
There's politics involved because it would be expensive to try to take corrective action. The change would need to be done on a massive scale, which is going to necessarily require the involvement of governments. The ozone hole would have never been closed if not for the governments of the world agreeing to stop producing CFCs.
What amazes me is that people think we can't affect the climate when we just recently formed large holes in the ozone later, passed policies to stop it, and those policies worked and mitigated the ozone hole at the poles. Clearly, the actions of humans can have global impacts.
The next argument is that the climate is always changing. While that's true on a geologic timescale, it isn't for a human timescale. We have never seen such a sharp increase in the concentration of CO2 gas in the atmosphere, even going as far back as ice core samples allow. What non-human reason could possibly be behind such a sharp increase that has never before occurred? In addition, we have good estimates of how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere every year and this amount is sufficient to account for the increased levels of CO2.
We know humans have influenced it. It's pretty simple, really.
If you think the global weather system is "pretty simple", you need to get out more. The fact is that correlation isn't proof of causation, and most scientists would never accept such "proof" in their own fields, but are expected to accept it from climate scientists.
Until you show that a system that differs only in the amount of CO2 released by humans but is otherwise identical does NOT show the temperature increases, you've tied your wagon to the correlation proof. Otherwise, any of the other differences between the two systems could be the cause or a mitigating factor.
The fact is that there is abundant scientific evidence that human activities are causing global warming. A good summary is here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-we-know-were-causing-global-warming-in-single-graphic.html
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Farmers, maybe? Their profession is only...you know...the foundation of modern civilization and intimately tied to climate conditions.
Porquoi?
doesn't make it pseudo-science.
First the Republicans denied that the earth was warming
Now they're denying it's man-made
Next they'll say it's too late to do anything
Why have Republicans become the party of ignorance?
- denying man-made climate change
Probably 95% of all climatologists support it
- denying evolution
Probably 99% of all biologists agree it is central to Biology
- denying stimulus economics
Probably 95% of all economists (like me) agree it got us out of the Great Depression
Do they honestly believe Faith trumps Facts? Whose Faith? Only evangelical Christains? What about other Christians (I heard the Vatican doesn't have a problem with evolution), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or (gasp!) Atheists?
Or, on the other hand, why does anyone who claims to stand against ignorance and (to be honest) superstition remain a Republican?
I shudder to think what would happen if these views gained (even) greater credence in the U.S. Would we start segregating women like ultra-orthodox Jews want in Israel? Or deny them an education (and many rights) like in Islamic countries? Why can't all these religious people keep their Faith to themselves? And for issues that affect us all, stay with Facts not Fiction.
Only when the last tree has been cut down,
the last river poisoned,
and the last fish been caught,
will people realise that they can't eat money.
18th century Cree Indian proverb.
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
Nice straw man. The planet will be fine, life will move on. It's us we are concerned about.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The best thing you can do to reduce carbon emissions is to not procreate.
Seriously, think it through. If you have children, each of them and their descendants will be CO2-producers. They will consume energy, they will buy manufactured goods, they will eat, they will travel. All of these activities create CO2.
Save the earth. Chop your dick off.
Now, about places in the world where population growth is occurring...
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
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.
And without knowing how individual regions are affected...there's really reason to think you'll be affected. Sure... some people think Greenland will melt and shut down the Gulf stream and cause Europe to ice over. Which is a nice theory with no way to know if it will pan out or not.
Shills? Stop being an ass.
There is no other explanation for what is happening.
http://ncse.com/climate
http://ncse.com/climate/climate-change-101
http://ncse.com/climate/denial/why-is-it-called-denial
http://ncse.com/climate/denial/pillars
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But who the fuck cares?
I do. But only because it's where I keep all my stuff. ;-)
Eh? What are you talking about? We've been storing the damn things for you yanks for decades now.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
There have been many significant climate changes over the billions of years since the Earth was formed. And you know what? They have usually been *really* bad for the dominant species at the time.
You've never heared of the 'little ice age' ?
New things are always on the horizon
In reality, farmers care a great deal. Even a few days' change in the growing season, or an increase in the temperatures during the hottest part of it, will change what crops are able to grow and the taste that'll come from them. Wineries in particularly are heavily affected by even one or two days' difference in warm or cold temperatures at the right or wrong time for the grapes.
Civil traffic engineers should care, since temperature changes impact what planned maintenance needs to be done on roads. A colder or snowier winter (one doesn't necessarily mean the other, oftentimes a severe cold snap removes enough moisture from the air to limit snowfall while a milder winter can mean more snowfall) means a need to stock up on road salt and gravel. A hotter summer means a need to resurface roads more often and a need to plan against using looser surfacing that can fall apart in high heat (ever noticed a freshly pave asphalt road in midsummer a bit too far south?).
Tourism? Shifting weather conditions can reduce the skiing season in many regions. Even one lost week can mean going out of business if it happens 2-3 years in a row for the smaller operations such as restaurants or private home renters, and the employees suffer too since they don't just lose tips; most of them lose working hours. Too-hot summer weather makes people avoid some destinations in the middle of summer as well.
Don't forget your power bills. Use a lot of air conditioning?
This stupid temperature debate sucks up all the oxygen in the room while all of the really important environmental issues are summarily ignored.
Boo hoo to the farmers. They had their day.. in the middle ages.
Food comes from the supermarket these days, smartass.
Global warming is a hoax, just like the science of modern field crops.
Bah to science, let all stories about global warming get 150+ comments bitching about nothing!
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
It isn't clear that we don't have control over at least some of the major inputs. We could drop carbon emissions fairly rapidly which might mitigate some of the change. We most likely won't.
My point is that, given that the population of humans is either very close to or above the carrying capacity of the environment, then the only way to keep mass human die offs from occurring is to keep Business As Usual humming along. By doing that we have a small chance of dropping the human population over the next century or two to a more reasonable (for the earth) value. Any major change in the economic or resource environment is likely to change things rather quickly. Quickly is going to be unpleasant for a whole lotta folk. You might think it's a problem when you can't get an iPad, but just wait until someone wants to kill you because you have some canned vegetables.
Now, a couple of centuries from now, our progeny will look at the early 21st Century a bit differently but we're faced with a potential Big Mess within our lifetimes. Of course, since the dawn of the nuclear area, we've been at that point but climate change is going to be just another tool in our basket of tricks for messing up things.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
You've never heared of the 'little ice age' ?
They are little ice age deniers.
The real deniers are the ones who think the earth can be saved and that humans can and should inhabit it indefinitely.
So, short term changes are weather, not climate, except when they "prove" something you agree with.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I don't recall us closing any ozone holes... By contrast, according to the wikis, the ozone layer is thinning in the Arctic now as well. I'm not disagreeing with the majority of what you're stating, simply stating that I don't believe there have been any effective policies put in place to mitigate it.
From the "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2006, Executive Summary"
The previous Assessment presented evidence that the tropospheric abundances of most ozone-depleting substances, as well as of stratospheric chlorine, were stable or decreasing due to actions taken under the Montreal Protocol (see schematic Figure 1a, b), with the stratospheric abundances showing a time lag due to the time for surface emissions to reach the stratosphere. Based on these facts, it was stated that "The Montreal Protocol is working, and the ozone-layer depletion from the Protocol's controlled substances is expected to begin to ameliorate within the next decade or so ."
(My emphasis)
Patience, grasshopper.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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!
It would indeed be wonderful if the ancient Saharan monsoons returned. But from the last page of your link:
Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.
Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added.
"Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
It most definitely does not mean just because it happened before there is no way we can control it. China has started noticeably modifying their rainfall in certain areas. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level. The lands around the Nile, Colorado, Yellow and many other rivers were subject to regular large and "uncontrollable" flooding until systems of dams and reservoirs were developed.
It might not be *easy*, but claiming something is technologically impossible just because we don't have a solution yet is ridiculous. And that's why it is also ridiculous to ignore the data on this issue while there may still be time to figure out solutions.
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
Are you serious? You'd better learn some things about your car, so that you can take what he's telling you with an appropriately sized grain of salt. If your mechanic is at a deanship, it is practically guaranteed he is trying to sell you maintenance your car doesn't really need.
This is nonsense. You have no ability to property vet information presented to you unless you have a well rounded scientific background. But you know what? That's not as difficult to get as it sounds. And it beats the shit out of blindly trusting "experts". You should always look into claims being made, and come to your own understanding of evidence presented. Nothing short of that is effective. Taking things on faith, no matter how much you trust the source, makes you a tool.
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
Changing it back might be foolish, but it'd be nice if we could at least try to stop the change that is still occuring.
Dilbert RSS feed
"There's a bunch of charts and data to indicate that this might be the earth's natural cycling
no, there is not. we passed that 15 year ago.
I like when people invoke solar activity with out actually thinking.
There are sever types of deniers:
http://ncse.com/climate/denial/climate-change-is-good-science
who deny that significant climate change is occurring
who acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring, but deny that human activity is significantly responsible
who acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring and that human activity is significantly responsible, but deny the scientific evidence about its significant effects on the world and our society
who acknowledge that significant climate change is occurring, that human activity is significantly responsible, and that it will have a significant effect on the world and our society, but who deny that humans can take significant actions to reduce or mitigate its impact
also:
http://ncse.com/climate/climate-change-101/how-much-human-responsibility-for-climate-change
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because the "no warming between 1998 and 2008" is inaccurate and misunderstood. The RATE of warming was a bit lower than the previous 2 decades, especially since the 1990s were dominated by El Niño events and 1998 was a peak of the rate of warming because of the STRONGEST El Niño EVER recorded.
After that, the ENSO events weren't as pronounced and were mostly La Niñas.
However, 2011, despite have a strong La Niña, still made it into the Top Ten warmest on record.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Ice ages, hot periods, floods, land scape changes, saltier oceans. The climate and Earth is always changing. Always has been and always will be. With or without us.
Yes. Obviously. The question is how much is it changing, and why. Is it a change that would happen without us anyway, or is it a change that is due to our behavior that can be changed? And is it sufficient that future changes will be occurring without us because we won't be around?
I have no idea how anyone can actually think this "the earth has always been changing" is an answer to anything. Would you say "People have always been dying" to either discount the existence of murderers, or to suggest murder isn't a big deal? It's insane!
The enemies of Democracy are
Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying. The earth doesn't need saving from us... It can shrug us off. In fact, we barely register on its lifespan just like the current warming period doesn't stray much from its long term average. Sure if you want to narrow it down to 130 years, it's a terrible upward slope. Zoom out 100 000 years and have a little perspective, will you?
Mind the frickin' laser...
many of us are. Sadly the media love to stir up controversy where their isn't any, people in power don't understand science, some large corporation spreads money to people who claim it isn't so. SO people don't think it's real.
The temperatures are above normal cycles, and it is well beyond statistical blip.
It's like all the argument that where shown wrong in the 80s just wont die. It's not like the issue you have brought up haven't been investigated.
And if too much carbon gets into the air, the earth can become a heat trap. We are releasing almost all the carbon from all of history into the air.
http://ncse.com/climate
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you don't think people are denying it you are missing something. Have you read this thread at all?
Actually, the third world countries tend to care the most... This (I'm an American) First World country is usually the one holding everything up.
Go look at the handy map on Wikipedia about which countries wouldn't get behind the Kyoto protocols...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol
Yeah. And they all managed that without a world government or death squads. No destruction of all human life. So.. bascially, you're an idiot.
Come ON! The complete solar/galactic cycle for the Earth is 110,000 years giver or take a few years and it has done that for at least the last 2.5 million years again and again.
That cycle from ice age to hotter has not been documented enough to claim that 130 years can statistically be significant to claim that 130 years out of 110,000 represents CERTAINTY.
Sorry, but I do NOT buy the argument.
Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying.
Do you think evolution works like an X-Men comic? Are you expecting to grow gills, or absorb infrared radiation in the next couple of decades?
Most climate "alarmists" (aka scientists) are not worried about "harming Gaia" or somesuch bullshit (though *you* were the one to anthropomorphize "nature", which doesn't "expect" anything, so I'm not sure what that's all about). They are pointing out that yes, many of the changes ARE the dominant species fault, and are collectively blaming that species of which they are members. And they are hoping that the data they provide will help this species - through technology, and not fantasy - better understand just *how* to adapt (both by reducing the change and compensating for it) to what's happening.
Of course the world won't end. But if you don't think it's a good idea to plan ahead and try to reduce potential disaster to the human race long term, you might as well just restate your position as "fuck everyone else". But then don't be surprised when everyone else tells you to go fuck yourself...
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.
So the year is hotter. Wat does this prove about the cause? Nothing really, because as mentioned, there have been many such climate changes prior to mankind having the ability to cause it. Wat is apparent that certain parties r using theories of a correlation to force change upon the masses which amounts to control. There r some who r aligned in such a way to profit greatly from forcing these changes upon us. We have absolutely no idea whether we r causing this and absolutely no idea whether there is anything we can do to stop it. I do believe we need to be aware of wat we r doing on mass and limit or stop things which ARE causing real harm. However, I think the most real and significant issue for our future is simply the limited supply of worldwide oil. And the more drastic steps in direct destruction of the earth we will need to take to supply our demand for it. Because there is no question that this is REAL... and we r the cause of it. So I support any rational or irrational behaviour that leads to alternate energy research. I just mean to say that simply because we can show the earth was warmer last year does not prove that we r the cause of it. And I feel those who focus on global warming r the real one with their head in the sand when it comes to the present and real short term realities of limited energy supply.
Man has a nasty habbit of thinking the things he does result in unrelated outcomes. Native Americans (Indians) used to do a special dance because the last time they did that dance, it rained. They believed that it rained because they did a little dance. Surely, we've advanced beyond such superstitions, right? Pay attention to football fans. How many do stupid things like never washing a lucky jersey or sitting in a lucky chair during the game. I have friends, really smart friends, who do things like refuse to watch their favorite team play live because the last time they watched a game, their team lost and the last time they didn't watch, they won. Against all logic, they honestly believe that the team's performance changes depending on if he is watching the game on TV.
Just like the current global warming debate, climatologists noticed and extremely slight rise in average temperature (less than 1 degree C), and immediately started asking what WE were doing to cause it. Just like this recent warm winter is more likely associated with La Nina rather than a Jeep Laredo, man will immediately consider his own actions as the cause before looking at more mundane causes like a repeating weather cycle.
By the way, last year's warm weather average was caused by an unusually warm summer mixed with a La Nina event that delayed winter in this year. Any year without a winter is going to be warmer on average than any year with a winter, just as a class's grade average is better when the stupid kid is absent.
I'm not saying that global warming is or is not happening. I am saying that it has been warmer and it has been much colder, all before the first ape stood upright and starting carving porn out of a stump. Maybe we should consider more natural reasons for the extremely recent rise in temperature and stop wondering which dance moves caused the rain.
(if their are misspelled words in this, it's because I suck at spelling and Firefox's spell check is not working all of a sudden.)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Global warming has gone too far to change back in the lifetime of anyone alive today. The best we can do is stop making it worse in 40 or 50 years if we work hard at it. It's a pretty glib assumption that warmer temperatures further north will make the farming better. Temperature is only one factor among many in farming.
The question is; will evolution weed out Republicans faster than abortion weeds out liberals?
I'm not worried about misspellings as much as the fact your entire post is a giant straw-man. Special native American dance? Really?
The drastically oversimplified correlation was that the 1C "slight rise" in temperature was perfectly aligned with the modern industrial era: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png Causation? Not by itself. But there are plenty of other research in that area as well.
And if you think "minor" changes like that can't have drastic effects on ecosystems you obviously have not read enough research on the topic to make your opinion count for anything. Same with your opinion on whether the THOUSANDS OF CLIMATE RESEARCHERS may have actually thought to consider natural causes before doing YEARS OF RESEARCH and coming to the firm conclusion that it's due to man-made causes.
Most climate "denialists" (aka psychopaths) are worried about earning even more profits. Profit is driven by politics, politics are driven by public opinion and lobbyists, public opinion is used to driven by mass media. Mass media and lobbyists are owned by and controlled by a handful of psychopaths. A handful of billionaire psychopaths get beaucoup money/power on keeping the existing consumption and pollution with out limit business model. Irony: Energy conglomerates (oil) have very deeply vested interest in keeping the old consumption and pollution with out limit business model.
There you go fixed it for you ;D.
Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in psychopathic GREED." Fixed the heading too. Basically the core of global warming denial are psychopathic billionaires who don't give a crap about the world beyond their own personal existence, their self aggrandisement, their insatiable greed and their truly bloated egos. As far as they are concerned it can all burn as long as they are on the top.
So let's do the comparison scientists who can generate income working in a whole range of areas currently work in climate change (which provides zero opportunity for huge patent bonuses) versus billionaires who derive billions in profits by maintaining the existing insane model of consumption and pollution without limit. Now who has the greater motivation and which in reality is the most likely.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The real question should be "Do you want to live in a garbage coated toxin filled snowglobe?" Regardless of if climate change is happening, getting rid of dirty technology (fossil fuels) should be a priority. It's non-renewable which means sooner or later we'll need to switch away from it. It's dirty, smells bad, and destroys huge swaths of land that could be used for farming, or living in. It makes it hard to breathe in the immediate time frame and fills your body with stuff that can't possibly be good for you, look at smog/drive through NJ/blow your nose after working for a few hours at a refinery.
I can't fathom how people can deny it's happening, but in the end, it doesn't matter. All of the talk about how it's lining the pockets of people like Al Gore and how it's just a cash grab means nothing. It's either going to be the people trying to make things a bit cleaner that are making money, or the people that are stoked to keep filling the sky with stinky gasses. I for one would rather not smell diesel and burning coal everywhere I go, regardless of if one is saving and the other is damning the planet.
It just really, truly, doesn't matter if it's humans fault, or not. It doesn't even matter if we can prevent it. We can make the world a nicer place to live in by reducing pollution.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
I think it would be even more foolish to try to "change it back" than it would be to just learn to adapt.
You guys can't even learn to accept what is going on, and you want to tell others to "just learn to adapt"? What if that involves tripling your taxes to pay for the adaption?
Fandroids hate facts.
But if the information they posess is based on BS, should they not be called out. Last year was the coldest in the last 30, which is recorded by the local news, and the local wweather stations.
Are you talking about your town? Who cares!
2011 was the 11th warmest *globally* since records were kept in 1880, and is the 35th year on a row where temps are above the 100 year average. And that's with La Nina helping to cool things. Your information is just plain incorrect.
Please tell me what the "correct" average temperature is for the Earth? Even if you could, based on 130 years of temperature data why would you pick the temperature today as the point at which you would stop the change as "correct", when the Earth has been around for 1000s (throwing the biblical types a bone here) to billions of years and based on THAT scale the "correct" temperature might be some thing far different (much hotter, in fact, even if you only include the last 65 million years?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png (ok, not billions of years, but the geologists are working on improving that, I am sure, and it won't look any better for warmists)
I am all for reducing for man made emissions as it is economically feasible to do, I am all phasing out the use of petroleum products for transportation and other purposes as we find ways to do it that don't require making Peter destitute to subsidize Paul to do it. But I just don't have the hubris to say today (or any in the last 30 years) is the "correct" average temperature for the earth and not 2 or 3 degrees warmer or 2 or 3 degrees colder based on a starting date for data that makes today look bad when other examinations of data based on different starting dates make it look like today is really cold compared to where the Earth more commonly has been. I also can't ignore the fact that ice ages come and go and they tend to do so with great rapidity. The only constant is change. If scientists and engineers actually could create a stable environment at a particular temperature set point, chances are we would find out the results of that would be far worse for people than any predictions of anything short of a runaway greenhouse effect.
You mean... like Canada and Russia?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/16/russia-canada-kyoto-protocol
3rd world countries didn't get behind Kyoto because they cared about the environment as Kyoto. 3rd world countries foresaw no negative impact on their GDPs as a result of Kyoto and thus signing Kyoto couldn't hurt them, only help them. 3rd world countries got behind Kyoto because it was a massive transfer of wealth from developed countries to lesser developed countries, justified or not. They wanted to laugh all the way to the bank, not the thermostat.
Carbon credits are merely a capitalist proposal on how to deal with carbon reduction - nothing more, nothing less. And the "trillions of dollars of harm to the economy" is of course a pack of nonsense. Saving energy is saving money in the age of peak oil. We can keep our current lifestyle while drastically reducing our carbon footprint using technologies that have been around for decades.
But then, it's hard to get deinialists to understand something when their ideology is dependent on their not understanding it.
It's also perfectly aligned with the building of the Panama Canal and population decline of the bald eagle.
Awesome analogy, considering bald eagles are one of the most famous modern examples of how biologists clearly identified a human-caused problem (most notably DDT in their food source leading to reproductive issues), spoke loudly against it resulting in massive legislative and environmentalist reaction, and due to that effort bald eagles have gone from near extinction in the US in the 70's to off of the endangered list entirely in 2005.
Yeah, because Europe isn't industrialized at all. No way.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Most people unable to do even simple calculations or totally unfamiliar with basic biology simply have no idea of just how significant a seemingly small increase in the global mean temperature will be or that fact that all indications are that it will increase 3-6 C within one hundred years. They tend to think in terms of extremes and given the large differences between daytime and night time temperature, or between winter and summer temperatures and think this small change is insignificant. However, as all models show the effects over time will be staggering, completely ignoring sea level rises of more than 1 m within 100 years. Presently Kansas City, roughly near the center of the conterminous US, experiences several days on average above 100 F per year. With a 3-6 C global mean rise, Kansas City will experience temperatures over 100 F, 50-100 days out of the year. If you are a farmer, or if you only appreciate eating, that is a very big deal.
Next time you hear a climate change denier, recognize them for what they are extremists advocating for dramatically higher food prices.
"What about all those areas that are going to become better farming land due to a warmer climate?"
The reality is that there will be very few such places, because historically they have been very poor for growing things and consequently have very poor soils. Just because the Greenland ice sheet is soon to melt does not mean the ground underneath is going to be great for farming. There is also the problem that most plants are extremely sensitive to the duration of day and night, particularly for flowering. Higher latitudes may have very long days during the summer, but have very long nights in the winter. Consequently, many plants will not grow under such conditions without massive amounts of additional energy for artificial lighting. Replicating the disastrous Biosphere II experiment on a planetary scale is not going to turn out well.
Ending carbon dioxide pollution is the only realistic thing that humans can do to assure their survival. The sooner we get started the better our chances of success.
It would be interesting to see the responses on Slashdot if the title of the submission were "Global Climate Continues Its Self-Correcting Trend"
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
No they are having a problem because of storm surges are getting incrementally higher producing more erosion and because as sea levels rise it influences the water table, making it impossible for things (humans included) to grow.
Another problem is that corals themselves can not tolerate extremely high temperatures, so their growth rate decreases.
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.
We will overflow the petri dish regardless of environmental conditions. We are life, and we breed to the limits of available resources like all life does. Intelligence does not seem to supercede this primitive nature of life to consume all available resources and then die for lack of resources. The only hope seems to be to escape the dish.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The poorest people are hit hardest. It's altogether different to live in a nation which produces industrial foodstuffs than to try to cope with the change with what you have by yourself. The international treaties are there to prevent mass migrations and the crash of social order.
It's this why the third world countries are so eager to support global action. They experience the effects first.
But the reality is, it will be a *very* long time before the current generation(s) get into a position to directly control the taxman. The old people are living longer, the rich old people are exceeding even that, and they retain a very tight control over our government. That's quite aside from the very true observation that kids today really don't care anyway -- they already let the government stomp all over pretty much every right they used to have without doing so much as getting out and throwing down a vote. Too busy posting to Facebook, no doubt.
The US government serves the corporations, because the corporations control the flow of the vast majority of the monies that reach congress. Until the corporations can be made to care about an issue, there will be no significant change in the stance of the US government. So if you want something done, you'd better figure out how to make it matter to the people that control the lobbyists in Washington, or all you're doing is expelling (more) heated air.
You just had a big hint -- that Internet blackout actually put a monkey wrench in SOPA/PIPA. Corporations don't like threats to their bottom line, and they told the politicians it was a no-go... and in ONE day, those bills were no longer supported. The question is, will the public do anything worthwhile with the answer that is staring them in the face?
Somehow, I doubt it. While the IT community is smart enough to recognize that extra-judicial, arbitrary power applied to their livelihood is a very bad deal, we already know that extra-judicial force in the form of the EPA, the FCC, the IRS and many more arms of our TLA-ridden government has been casually accepted by the general public -- I don't see any Internet blackouts happening in response to the public abuse exemplified by the very existence of those equally odious institutions.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. "
You are confusing the cause of the warming in the past with the cause of the warming in the present. Although carbon dioxide has been the primary driver of climate change for the past few hundreds of millions of years at least, the rate at which it changed in the past was significantly smaller than it is today.
In the past the primary net producer of additional carbon dioxide is volcanoes, which on average produce on the order of 225,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Yes plants take up much carbon, but they also release it both annually and over the course of their lifetimes, so that effectively the force of carbon fixation and release upon decomposition roughly balance one another.
The big net difference is obviously humans, particularly in the burning of fossil fuels. Humans generate about 330,000,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. We know this by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the air and by calculating the amount produced from the amount of oil pumped and coal mined, neither of which are stockpiled for extended periods of time. The fact that both sets of numbers largely agree, leads to the inescapable conclusion that these re the sources for the carbon dioxide (not to mention the fact that no one has noticed about 1000 extra hidden volcanic eruptions).
Consequently, the radiative forcing produced by C02 given that it absorbs and reradiates IR energy given its asymmetrical configuration, is about 4 W/m^2. We know that although the sun produces a tremendous amount of energy, the variability of its irradiance is only about 0.25 W/m^2 so perturbations in solar output can not be responsible for the amount of warming we are seeing, because its simply not enough variability in solar output. Thus one is forced to conclude that what is causing the warming is carbon dioxide primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, although land use, particularly clearing forests and building cities also adds to the warming but the relative effect is small in comparison to the burning of fossilized carbon based fuels.
This IS something we can do something about, but only if we hurry. That is what the climatologists are telling us.
"So my own ox isn't being Gored as much as I expect others will be.)"
You sound like the guy who wasn't affected by the collapse of the credit default swap market, because he personally hadn't invested in any.
Rest assured, it won't matter how rich you are or where you live or what you do for a living. Going forward until the effects of carbon dioxide pollution is addressed, it is going to impact your life more than any other event. It may do so indirectly and you may be too thoughtless to notice, but rest assured you will be affected far more dramatically than you currently realize.
You talk about trillions of dollars being lost addressing the problem and therefore we should do nothing but let the fossil fuel industry dictate to us the fate of the planet. Unfortunately, those costs will pale in comparison to the losses that will occur if we don't start taking action to reduce carbon dioxide pollution as quickly as possible. If you want food prices to go up, keep ignoring the problem. The cost of trucks will be the least of our worries. Without addressing the issue, eventually, there won't be enough food being shipped anywhere to need trucks.
The earth will be fine no matter what the temperature is, but humanity and civilization flourished under current conditions.
Just like the current global warming debate, climatologists noticed and extremely slight rise in average temperature (less than 1 degree C), and immediately started asking what WE were doing to cause it.
You are quite mistaken on cause and effect.
Actually, the theory of greenhouse gases was understood over 100 years ago, and scientists like Arrhenius made some early predictions that increased CO2 could increase the climate. This was long before we were able to measure a significant increase in global temperature.
If you have an explanation for why increased CO2 would not have a greenhouse effect, please submit your results to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal.
Don't ask people what their life is worth. Watch their behavior.
For example: If someone will take 1/1000 chance of dying to save $1, he has just valued his life at $1000.
So:
A person with a DUI's life: (Price of Cab ride)/(probability of dying on drunk drive home).
A Jaywalkers life: (His hourly income)*(time saved by jaywalking)/(probability of dying while jaywalking)
(Arguably, assuming time in prison has no value) A financial criminals life: (His financial gain)(% of his life spent in prison if convicted)/(probability of getting convicted)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'