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Climate Change To Drive Weather Disasters, Say UN Experts
mdsolar writes "Climate change is amplifying risks from drought, floods, storms and rising seas, threatening all countries, but small island states, poor nations and arid regions in particular, UN experts warned on Tuesday. In its first-ever report on the question, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said man-made global-warming gases are already affecting some types of extreme weather. And, despite gaps in knowledge, weather events once deemed a freak are likely to become more frequent or more vicious, inflicting a potentially high toll in deaths, economic damage and misery, it said."
Or you could get your head out of your ass and learn something.
Nice start AC. Let the food fight begin!!! ;-P
woot.
Can't wait for all the AC right-winger and libertarians to pile in -- who will rail against the science because they disagree with the policy implications of climate change.
Funny how the Right love science when it produces weapons to bomb brown people, or enriches multinational corporations. But go NUTS if it means that their rich friends endure more regulation.
There is 7 BILLION people on this planet, and nearly 1/3 of the forest has been cut down in the last century. With all the polution humans cause, and millions roads that we built, how can anyone dispute our involvement in climate change?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Climate scientists sprout when it's getting warmer, so it's not only gloom&doom.
You can find studies that show more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more sever hurricanes all due to global warming. It's getting old attributing every possible outcome to Advance Global Warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm
It all starts at 0
Ok, so.. Less hurricanes, but about a 50% chance wind speed might increase (by how much? 1mph? 2? 30? 5000000?)
I just hate how they take the conclusion "the same number of hurricanes, or less" and yet still spin it into a scary prediction, by leading it with a "the wind might blow harder". I guess that truth needed a little bit of PR work to make it convenient.
It also predicts larger economic damages due to weather. Well, no duh. We're building more and more expensive stuff. The weather could stay the same and this will be true.
Missing is any mention of anthropogenic CC, CO2, or anything like that. So yeah, it's pretty safe to predict the climate will change with 100% confidence, if you don't tag it with that.
... blueprints for a sustainable underground city as functional as a surface city!
And while I am at it, Bond villain lairs for all the rich types.
Actually, screw it, where is the space cannon? Earth is screwed.
I'm moving to Mars. I hear the local population are quite nice.
There is nothing to learn from pseudo-science. This isn't the "Law of Man Made Global Climate Change" ... it’s a theory at best. Having some politicians claim that it is anything more than theory-status just adds fuel to the fire and makes real scientists that accept the idea that ANY THEORY can be wrong not want to get involved. Instead you have a field of activist-scientists on both sides that are just trying to confirm their bias instead of using the accepted method to support or disprove the theory.
Isn't that the prize Boo Boo won for doing basically nothing at all?
You only have to feel guilty if you're a *white* Homo sapiens sapiens. Everyone else can be proud!
more regulations, taxes
Think of the billionaires' children!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I wonder how the worlds scientists who are all in consensus about the fact that climate change exists and it's causing weather patterns to be unpredictable would respond to your comment. It was fact long before it became political fodder to be poked and prodded and written off as pseudo-science...
That's like an obese person who eats junk food all day, and says his diabetes has nothing to do with his diet!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Is there consensus on that second part? What is your source? Because that is not what is said on the first page of the report the IPCC just released.
Don't waste any effort having a conversation with AC and his/her ilk. They won't believe anything that is in conflict with their world view. Their motto must be ignorance is bliss!
You are playing fast-and-loose with the words "all" and "fact", which seems to be the standard mode of operation for left-wing nutjobs. The facts are: 1. We have a lot of evidence suggesting that climate change is happening. 2. We have some evidence that human pollution has caused some of the symptoms of climate change. 3. We also know for a fact that the overall climate of the earth has changed and fluctuated to extremes without the help of humans, in FACT, before humans even existed.
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
'nuff said
They've been perpetuating disasters since 1945!
it's a theory
You keep using that word. It doesn't mean what you think^W suppose it means.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Wow. You really got screwed over by your school system. This isn't pseudoscience, this is the real deal. And just because you seem to not understand the words the scientific community uses to describe the validity of a hypothesis and the evidence supporting it doesn't make it any less real.
more regulations, taxes
Think of the billionaires' children!
Don't you worry! Those kids will be just fine. I fear, however, for the children of those that work for the billionaires.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You are painting a painfully simple version of the field of climate science, missing out on practically all the actual science and just summarising the findings in a hideously-childish fashion, one presumes for some sort of critique which never really manifested...
Open your mind, and learn the difference between climate and weather. Note that it isn't the IPWC. It's the IPCC. Big difference.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You can find studies that show more hurricanes, less hurricanes, more sever hurricanes all due to global warming. It's getting old attributing every possible outcome to Advance Global Warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html http://www.science20.com/news/global_warming_may_mean_fewer_hurricanes http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0109-global_warming_causes_severe_storms.htm
You do realize that a hurricane and a "severe storm" are rather different things, right? Your last Science Daily citation is about severe storms, not hurricanes. It never even uses the word "hurricane" nor does it indicate that it's talking about storms that only affect coastlines. A thunderstorm and a hurricane are two very different events. Are you going to complain that global warming reports are in direct conflict over precipitation figures and then link to stories about increased monsoon seasons and decreased snow fall?
That's like an obese person who eats junk food all day, and says his diabetes has nothing to do with his diet!
But you can't prove that it's the diet that is causing the diabetes. Might as well be lack of excercise, or too much wanking, or whatever. Correlation != causation and so on.
That said, if I was fat and started to develop a type 2 diabetes, I would fix my diet, just in case.
2. We have some evidence that human pollution has caused some of the symptoms of climate change
We have controvertible proof, and there was consensus on that in the 1979 NAS report. Fixed that for you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There is now consensus that it sucks to be poor, to live on small island states and arid regions.
Some change should become take place when richer countries start getting hit more regularly.
More doom and gloom. Doom and Gloom.
There will always be climate change. The problem being, each agency seems to have its own criteria for determining what constitutes an issue, what contributes to the issue, and what examples there exist of the problem.
Sorry, but I come to realize anything coming out of the UN requires increased scrutiny. Just look at the wording, they refuse still to be locked down. They have learned their lesson after the fear mongering following spectacular events like Katrina. Words like "likely", "hard to gauge", "extreme", and more.
Its a FUD festival.
Yes there is climate change. Is that bad? Depends on where you are and what change you experience. We do know it has been hotter before. We certainly cannot know the types of rain storms across major portions of this world much over a hundred years ago, let alone hurricane/typhoon frequency simply because no had the ability to find them all.
Still it makes great press. It gives people who an agenda leverage. Most important it allows some groups to extort money from others while ignoring those groups who would tell them to bugger off.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Care to share the secret where you want to go once this planet became inhabitable? I wanna come with... no scratch that, I don't want to share a planet with someone like you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Huh, IPWC.... I'm looking at the IPCC report this slashdot article is about, right now. It does not sound anything like "consensus". It sounds like properly nuanced presentation of their analysis. This is not what you will read in the news:
There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including
increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led
to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence
that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is
likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in
mean sea level. The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical
mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide
only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic
influences. Attribution of single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging.
Because the call to action is called after the Scientist makes an Hypothesis not when they make the conclusion.
How many laws are put on the table before these is strong evidence. Banning chemicals in plastic without conclusive evidence that it is causing health problems. Cellphone regulations because someone who is a Scientist says that Cell phones may cause cancer.
The problem isn't as much the Scientist but the Psuto-Scientist who did OK in their High School science class. Who take everything from a Scientist as fact, vs. Asking for their data, and checking it out. And wants to be the guy who said I told you so, if something was actually harmful.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Don't waste any effort having a conversation with AC and his/her ilk. They won't believe anything that is in conflict with their world view. Their motto must be ignorance is bliss!
I'm having trouble telling you two apart.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Erm... how much more than a summary would you expect in a single post on slashdot?
I have no real opinion on it all, but was there some part of what he said that you actually disagreed with?
If and when the next natural disaster happens, how will we know if it is spawned by climate change, or if it is something that would have happened anyway? How do meteorologists make that determination? I seriously would like to know.
it’s a theory at best.
So is relativity, but your GPS wouldn't work if it didn't compensate for relativistic effects.
(Not that I am in any way defending or condemning AGW. I just hate seeing misuse of terms.)
Or, in plain english: "Climate is changing, we screwed it up, now we're going to get more flooding. Not sure about the cyclones though."
Genius, the true cause of climate change: "Too much wanking". That's something the republican party could get behind.
And the "world scientists" who are all in consensus that disagree? Are they just thrown to the sidelines because of political reasons? or just because you personally don't agree?
It's a theory at best ... most of it is still theoretical. If "world scientists" are drawing hard line conclusions from that then they are really bad scientists.
Climate has changed before - those with the brains to adapt survive, those dinosaurs who can't will die off. Climate change drives evolution.
I, for one, welcome our new carboniferous age.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Do you know what "likely" refers to when used by the IPCC? What about "medium confidence", etc? If not, are you qualified to interpret their statements? Please at least skim the report that millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have produced for you. First, go to page 21.
At least, that's what the right-wingers are gonna say when their home states get inundated by successive and increasingly bad tornado seasons.
The folks behind some enormous word-wide climate rallies, 350.org, just launched a campaign to connect the dots between weather anomalies and climate: http://www.climatedots.org/
I wonder how the worlds scientists who are all in consensus about the fact that climate change exists...snip
Arguing with climate deniers is like arguing with Christians. Pesky facts don't matter to people KNOW they're right.
Is it anymore painfully simple than "our current climate change is caused by human causes?"
If there is no God then free will is an illusion.
Still it makes great press. It gives people who an agenda leverage. Most important it allows some groups to extort money from others while ignoring those groups who would tell them to bugger off.
It's a 594 page report with 220 authors from 62 nations leaving 18,611 review comments published by the United Nations. And that's what your professional assessment of this effort? Great press? Extortion?
Yes there is climate change. Is that bad? Depends on where you are and what change you experience. We do know it has been hotter before.
So I have two things here, I have a six hundred page report with many many many citations from peer reviewed journals. And I have your two or three sentences of cheap rhetoric -- you don't live on the coasts so you say "depends on where you are and what change you experience." And we should just all turtle inwards and say "fuck commerce and 90% of the world population"? You say that we know it's been hotter than before yet you don't explain how the temperature slowly got to that point, slower than a hundred years, slow enough for it not to totally destroy a key link in the food chain. Nobody's depending on polar bears, but what happens when the fisheries in the ocean start coming up drastically short or we get another dust bowl? This report, it's not worried about Earth, animals, plants, etc. It's worried about humans. We depend on those other things but the reason to worry is not FUD and your idiotic assertions aren't doing anything to calm anybody. So please shut the hell up until you have something meaningful to contribute.
My work here is dung.
Attacking the source when the comment is not liked (but mostly accurate) has been a staple of man for eons.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Whats on page 21? Is it a picture?
and it's causing weather patterns to be unpredictable
It occurs that weather patterns on earth have not been that predictable, ever.... prediction of weather is inherently hard. Scientists have done a good job explaining away weather phenomena in the past, such as ice ages. But the state of the art has never been any good at predicting changes in weather patterns like that.
Extreme weather goes in cycles, usually a rough multiple of solar cycle. this was taught in universities decades ago because it is true. what we have is urban sprawl and overdevelopment putting more real estate and people in harms way from weather (and earthquakes too). As for these "island natives threatened by rising seas", the sea has been rising since the last ice age, these lands that are essentially at sea level or an inch above are doomed anyway, whether now or in the next couple hundred years, they might as well move now because their population will only grow with modern benefits. Those half a century old and older see the patterns, while the young think they are living in some new era.
Tough luck; politicians in the largest superpower, which is neither a small island, poor nor arid, have determined through extensive consulting of industry lobbyists and religious leaders that global warming does not exist.
Likely has a specific definition in the report. It is then a risk-management decision to evaluate how important this is. Agreed? Well, it doesn't matter, because your insurance company has already agreed, and they'll be setting your premiums.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
By the year 2005, young children won't even know what snow is. (It's funny how all these dire warnings from the UN and other nation-level climate bureaus never seem to come true. - ed.) BTW the rate-of-rise of sealevel on these island nations is only two-thousandths of an inch per year. Hardly a great tragedy.
LINK Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
LINK # 2 http://www.uncommondescent.com/science/no-more-snow-in-england-say-global-warmists/
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm still pretty skeptical about AGW (though not global warming itself, the temperature records unquestionably and unsurprisingly show a warming trend).
But here's the thing: it doesn't fucking matter.
We are spewing toxins into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. Air advisories are more common by the year and I can barely stand being in big cities for an hour before the saturated odor of pollution gets to me (no not physically, I'm not a whiner about such things... it just... gets to me... I want away from it).
So why the fuck are we even discussing this in light of what might possibly happen if the data isn't as bogus as it seems at times and the models that have never been right might possibly be right this time?
All of the same things that allegedly contribute to AGW are polluting the air and water in real, tangible, short term ways. How about we focus on that right now and keep an eye on the still unanswered question of exactly what it means to the climate.
Haha, there is a picture. The point was that is where they explain the "Treatment of Uncertainty".
There are even worse examples than that. "Silent Spring" caused huge reduction in the use of DDT as a pesticide, as it reported environmental consequences along with some studies linking it to cancer. Of those studies, one had design errors and the others people haven't been able to reproduce. Meanwhile, the reduced use of DDT in Africa and South America caused a huge increase in deaths from malaria, projected to be in the tens of thousands. Countries where malaria is a problem are now starting to use DDT again, and are seing malaria infection rates drop dramatically. Meanwhile, Americans are happy because the population of their national bird has increased.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
it’s a theory at best.
I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that you use the same argument against evolution.
If that's true, there needs to be more competition in the insurance industry. What is stopping them from raising premiums for any reason whatsoever?
Do you just keep pulling these numbers out of your ass?
Surface area, water: 361,132,000 km2[0]
Surface area, water, in acres: 89,000,000,000[1]
People on earth: ~7,000,000,000
Surface area (water, acres) divided by people: 89,000,000,000 / 7,000,000,000 ~= 13.
13. Thirteen. Not 1285. You're off by a factor of 100 this time!
Btw, not saying that "water surface area" has any relevance whatsoever in this case (it may or may not, I would have guessed volume mattered more than area, but I don't know) - but please, for the love of FSM, stop making numbers up just to use them in your arguments.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=361%2C132%2C000+km2+in+acres
May we live long and die out
The scientific community also suppressed evidence of Lamarckian-looking evolution because it didn't fit the consensus view that Darwinian theories were the answer. And now what do we find? OOPS! Consensus was wrong, for something like 150 years, and there is plenty of evidence showing that Lamarck was on to something. He didn't understand the mechanism, but he was right - ACQUIRED TRAITS CAN BE INHERITED. The scientific community can be wrong, and shouting down dissenting views isn't good science. There's a lot more to the world than "scientific consensus" can understand.
Could be the volcano-load of fossil CO2 that human civilization is spewing into the atmosphere every 3 days or so. Just an idea.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No one except you thinks the planet will become uninhabitable. Please stop repeating this.
So if it gets hotter, it's global warming. If it get's colder, it's global warming.
It shocks me when people equate more snow with "being colder." You do realize that it can snow at a very wide range of temperatures, right? "Snowing harder" means an increase in precipitation, not a decrease of temperatures.
If that's true, there needs to be more competition in the insurance industry. What is stopping them from raising premiums for any reason whatsoever?
I knew that the denial crowd would leap for this. Everything has to be interpreted as a conspiracy, or people lying, or being dishonest, or evil, or stupid. Anything but accept that intelligent people are trying to tell you something.
/counter-evidence/, like a good skeptic actually would.
Well, the actuaries in the insurance industry have done the math, and worked out that they need to raise premiums to deal with the already measurable risk. You can dismiss this out of hand if you like, but you'll still have to pay. Instead, you could, of course, extend yourself by learning something about he issue. And that means you should stop reading partisan blogs, and find
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
um... First of all, so far I'm the one in this thread actually referencing the IPCC report the discussion is supposedly about.
Insurance companies have a financial incentive to overestimate risk. This is obvious. The disincentive is supposed to be that if they do it too much they will lose business. What conspiracy are you talking about?
Insurance companies have a financial incentive to overestimate risk. This is obvious. The disincentive is supposed to be that if they do it too much they will lose business. What conspiracy are you talking about?
Well, obviously the insurance industry thinks they need to make this assessment, and that those who do not are at risk of going out of business.
btw, kudos on actually referencing the IPCC report. Most deniers haven't even cracked it open.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
That is impressive. Toot-Toot
>>>where you want to go once this planet became uninhabitable
And global warmers wonder why we laugh at them. The planet will not become uninhabitable, but will merely revert to a state that existed before the current ice age. (No ice on the poles; tropical jungle as far north as the Great Lakes.) In fact the planet will be MORE pleasant to live upon, as the flora and fauna will florish in the warm snowfree climate.
Jeez. At least make SOME attempt to educate yourself, while espousing your global warming theories.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Most people haven't ever cracked any IPCC report open, yet there is an endless stream of arguments between those who hold strongly held beliefs about climate change. I am probably in 99th percentile just because I have spent some time reading them.
Also, you really don't understand the point I was making about insurance companies, do you?
Actually the republican party would prefer someone gets behind them, as they are known for having quite a wide stance.
Theory....you keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
A few examples.
Theory of gravity
germ theory
cellular theory
theory of evolution
quantum theory
chaos theory
atomic theory
For fucks sake... It's "Man Made ACCELERATION of Global Climate Change" and NOT "Man Made Global Climate Change"
if people understood the difference then maybe it'll be more acceptable. The deniers ALWAYS misinterpret this either deliberately or through lack of comprehension
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The claim that Silent Spring killed untold millions is one of those falsehood that people love to slander environmentalists with. That way, we can all feel great about ignoring them!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
I think you'll find its RIGHT-wing nutjobs - see Republican Party for details.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Climate" and "climate change" have at their very heart by definition, the perception i.e. psychological state of the human who is preceiving said "climate" and "climage change".
Therefore the psychological state of the UN experts appears to be one of psychosis related to hysteria and unreasonable fear.
"Arguing with climate deniers is like arguing with Christians. Pesky facts don't matter to people KNOW they're right." - i agree with that but add TeaParty'ers and Republican Politicians to that list as they fall into both camps.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
If you believe that nowadays, you're just a denialist. At least try to keep up, most other denialists have moved onto "global warming's not bad" or "you're totally right but I refuse to participate in a solution, I'd rather live in a biodome."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well, I don't know about suppressed. As far as I know, the evidence for lamarckian inheritance wasn't strong enough for most researchers to accept it without a plausible mechanism. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Come on, guys, this is Slashdot. In 100 years or so I won't care about the state that the planet was in because I'm an upload that doesn't live on it anymore, and in any case, plans are underway to disassemble it completely for raw materials.
Besides, who wants to drag around an ENTIRE PLANET when the simulations are so much better? It's the same reason we have iPods in our pockets instead of a forklift full of 78s following us around wherever we go.
if Lamarckian-looking evolution was real, we'd ALL be war mongers, slave traders, homophobes, still living in the trees etc etc. if there was real evidence they use it. Its a hypothesis with no falsifiable evidence by the Lamarckian believers.
where do you get the idea of "suppressed evidence"?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
And at what point did you accept AGW? How much evidence did it take to convince you?
Given all the money sloshing around in recent years that drove demand for silly stuff like CDOs, etc, there's ample opportunity for someone with a more-accurate assessment of the risks to undercut anyone charging too much and make a killing. Hurricane-related insurance costs in Florida spiked a few years ago -- my parents eventually dropped that part of their coverage, and spent money on storm-proof shutters for their windows instead.
So, does the invisible hand not work so well after all, or are the insurance companies pricing risk close enough to what it really is?
The earth will eventually become uninhabitable by humans - the sun will get hotter and make this planet so hot nothing will grow or live on the surface. Mind you, you still have a billion or so years before this happens
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Well the global warming theory has been solid from day one, the anthropogenic part I'd say was pretty well-established by the early/mid 2000s. I've been somewhat keeping up with new developments since the late '90s.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I believe that most if not all the insurance companies are organized as mutual companies which means the company is owned by the policy holders and excess profits are returned to them. State Farm for example is a mutual insurance company and they've sent me checks twice in the past 20 years returning excess profits due to fewer claims than predicted. They are also allowed to raise rates when claims are higher than predicted.
So there is not really any financial incentive for insurance companies to skew their risk models.
He's talking about inheriting epigenetic patterns... which occurs alongside normal genetic inheritance.
I am unfamiliar with the idea this was suppressed though.
The state of the art has been pretty good at predicting rates and ranges of maximum and minimum temperatures. We don't know for sure what the temperature will be, but we can state with pretty good confidence that it will be between a lower and upper limit. For example, it is a good bet that on any given day, the temperature that day will stay between the maximum and minimum temperatures observed that day in the last 100 years. And it should be a safe bet (in general) that it's equally likely that we would exceed the minimum or the maximum temperature.
However, recent trends have made these two bets not so safe; it is more than normally likely that we will set a record, and the distribution is skewed warm -- we tend to break high records, not low records.
[quote]threatening all countries, but small island states, poor nations and arid regions[/quote] So what, has mother nature turned greedy? "Mommy only loves you if your GDP is soooooo big".
However, people saying that the storm cares if the GDP is so much just gives these guys [Climate Change Deniers] more credit...
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Sounds like the Christian End of Times to me. Great, now we've got a bunch of Christian scientists. Who are we going to make fun of now?
What pieces of evidence though?
Pics or it didn't happen.
And no, the three boobed prostitute in 'Total Recall' does not count.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why? With DNA checking, they can quite easily prove that the master was diddlying the upstairs maid. And the downstairs. And the scullery girl. And the three guys who worked the grounds.
You're expecting all of those folks in the slow lane to understand 'acceleration'?
A quick trip down any four lane highway in the US should give you some idea of what we're up against.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't really follow your last question.
Not so fast. There's a low-but-larger-than-happy-making probability of the oceans going anoxic, and that would make the planet uninhabitable. Latest I've read (don't have a citation handy, sorry) says that things would have to go pretty far out of spec to make this happen, but there's error bars on both good and bad news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event
Do I think this will certainly happen? No, not today, but I'd like to be a good deal more certain that it won't. In my opinion you overstate the certainty that it won't happen. The risk is affected both by the range of warming and the rate of warming -- slow warming releases frozen methane slowly (it has a relatively short residence time in the atmosphere compared to CO2), rapid warming might deliver it all in one geologically quick burp.
And all of those untold billions of people who live in the current equatorial belt whose ability to obtain food and water and shelter drop to near zero are just going to sit there and calmly give up as their local environments are rendered markedly less habitable?
You should look up the idea of a 'resource war'.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Interesting, thanks. How are "excess profits" determined?
"The best match for current changes was the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum of 55 million years ago, when vast amounts of methane were released into the atmosphere causing rapid global warming, ocean acidification, and mass extinction. But even then, it took at least 3000 years for ocean pH to drop by 0.5. "That is an order of magnitude slower than today," Hönisch says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21534-oceans-acidifying-at-unprecedented-speed.html
A key point (indirectly pointed to in the article) is that the *rate of change* of acidity is what's critical. We've got the accelerator floored and we're close to the cliff.
"a theory at best".... A theory is something testable that has withstood the tests subjected to it (contrast that with a hypothesis, which may not be yet tested). The word you and other "let's legitimize the scientific method" people are looking for is a "hunch". Global warming is not a "hunch".
I didn't overstate anything. I said no one thinks this is going to happen. I was unaware there was work predicting an anoxic event due to CO2 emissions.
To restate -- it does take money to form an insurance company, so if there is not money out there looking for investment, it's not too likely someone would invest in the insurance business. The existence of a healthy (urk) market for CDOs and similar investment gadgets, pre-bust, indicated that there was money out there looking for profitable investments. If an insurance market is overpriced (and my parents certainly believed that it was, relative to buying storm shutters), then an investment in entering that market and charging lower-but-still-risk-profitable rates should be profitable.
And if the invisible hand (of the market) works, those profitable investments will occur, especially since no innovation is required, just fair and accurate pricing. People are always looking for a way to make a buck.
So maybe the invisible hand doesn't work, or maybe insurance is priced close enough to actual risk that the investment in forming a new insurance company would not be profitable. But insurance rates have definitely gone up in recent years. Hurricane-statistically, the year Katrina occurred was damn creepy; I believe that year half of the top-6-most-intense storms for the Atlantic were replaced (Katrina, Rita, Wilma).
The work exists, some people are studying the problem (I know references would be helpful, but so would lunch, and Google works for this). I am sure that there are *some* people who think this is going to happen, but I am not sure that any of them are (at this point) climate scientists. The Wikipedia article alone ought to be enough to inspire some small percentage of them.
Well, before talking about any invisible hands you need to address the degree of regulation. Often this factor adds substantially to the barrier to entry (e.g., only so many insurance companies can be licensed per region, etc). I am unfamiliar with insurance regulation.
We would have to look at the history of insurance rates for various regions, adjust for inflation, the definition of "excess profits", etc to draw any further conclusions. Interesting info though, thanks.
Europe lost maybe 20 million people or more to the effects of a multi-decade cooling due to lack of sunspots starting in the time of Galileo who discovered the spots.
See! If the Catholic Church had taken care of Galileo properly they would not had this population loss.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I will try to look into it. For what it's worth there is no mention of "anoxic event" or "anoxic" in this IPCC report. I assume it would be mentioned if thought possible since the report is entitled:
MANAGING THE RISKS OF EXTREME
EVENTS AND DISASTERS TO ADVANCE
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION
It could be under a different name though. All I did search for the terms.
That is different. Who is saying their ability to obtain food, water, and shelter will drop to near zero? Is it in this report? I haven't really looked through it yet but I assume they have a better estimate than "near zero".
After all, being a recent escapee from the US of A, to dear olde England, I'd have to say the average Londoner looks close to starvation compared to the average Californian. Mind you,there is a chance that that's down to people actually walking places as opposed to getting in a car to travel a 1/3 of a mile.
The IPCC are notoriously conservative in their worst-case scenarios.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Are they? So much so that a possible extreme event is not even mentioned in a 596 page report? How is degree of conservatism assessed?
To be more precise, malaria control is the main indication that DDT is indeed still allowed for. Where the hell did the crowd of DDT liars pop up from? I noticed their bullshit coming up with increased frequency since about two years. Wonder who set that meme in motion.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Maybe you aren't aware of them, or perhaps choose not to be aware of them. Then there's Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley, Kevin Trenberth (Mr Katrina is just the start). Other than that, last I noted, the consensus(?) is that warming can no longer be stopped, although I think that's more of an IPCC thing.
Anyhow, stop being such a tosser and come back to the real world, it's nice and warm here.
IPCC is hardly the last word; they're quite conservative in their predictions, and this is (I think) generally regarded as a low-probability event even by the people studying it. But note, asteroid strikes are also low-probability, and we study those.
Here's an example: http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/36/3/231.abstract (from searches for "global warming anoxia")
yea, sorry... my bad...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Fixed that for you.
With controvertible proof? You don't own a dictionary. Do you?
Mods, please increase the parent with +1 Funny. It's hilarious.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Surveys show that the public believes in AGW and wants the government to do something. However the public is against taxing gas and electricity and is in favor of offering tax breaks to produce clean energy and encourage clean products. I see that as us wanting change without the pain.
I think the GP and GGGP posts are arguing, and justifiably so, that "likely" does not convert to scientific law. It is theory. And not evolutionary theory, but a lower level theory.
Remember, we are talking science. Not democracy. The majority doesn't win the day. Statistics don't win the day. Proof wins the day.
what's causing it? climate change. The climate has been changing forever too. The whole summary was like...so?
You are correct however one can look at past years dates to determine patterns and apply a deviation to that model (that's what meteorologists do sometimes). If the standard deviation grows year after year it's a suspicious factor which is what climatologists look for. It's no secret that these climatologists (of whom I reference in my post as "world scientists", should have said "world climatologists" instead) look at this data as well as past temperature/precipitation/drought/and wind patterns to effectively predict next decades worth of climate "patterns" and the patterns are getting more and more wild because the standard deviation is growing. Thus the reference to "weather patterns to be unpredictable" cause more often then not, if the deviation is greater than your standard, your predicate model is not accurate enough to predict real world outcomes. The only scientists who disagree about this "theory" are most likely those who either are without the model "knowns" or are not specialized climatologists to begin with. Though I don't know their personal backgrounds to be sure but it seems that way. 99% of the worlds climatologists have agreed that there is climate change and that it will alter our weather patterns as well as ecosystems and biological makeup of the planet.
Most people haven't ever cracked any IPCC report open, yet there is an endless stream of arguments between those who hold strongly held beliefs about climate change.
This is completely true. However, the arguments that /scientists/ make are never answered by "skeptics", who are operating on intellectually vacuous territory. In fact, "skeptics" will say anything that sounds good, and just ignore what scientists have to say on the issue, which is why it is called by its true name: denial.
Your complete valid point not-with-standing, I am interested in the scientific debate on the issue -- as so are the actuaries at insurance companies, it would seem.
Also, you really don't understand the point I was making about insurance companies, do you?
Yeah I got it. This could be a price-fixing scam of insurance companies. i.e.: a conspiracy theory -- although a believable one. So it is possible; however, the actuaries are working off actual science. So I think the burden of proof is to show that this is actually a scam.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You seem to be conflating studying anoxic events with thinking they will occur due to AGW. Yes, this should obviously be studied. That particular paper says nothing about AGW other than barely hinting at it in the final sentence:
The integration of the Mo isotope system with other proxy indicators of environmental change is able to increase our understanding of the evolution of the oceans and atmosphere over Earthâ(TM)s history and has the potential to indicate how the ocean-atmosphere system might evolve in the future.
...and add niggers and jews too -- just for good measure. Right?
Just look as the Vostock ice core data. "Stable climate" is nonsense historcially - whether simply changes over time. Humanity gained technology during a 10000 year anomoly where whether patterns were somewhat stable, but that's otherwise unseen in the past million or so years. We should expect climate change; it's normal. We're in an ice age, and either we'll return to normal glaciation quite soon (in geological terms) wth most of europe, Russia, and Canada wiped off the map, or by some quite unlikely coincidence we happen to be around for the transition between an ice age and a warm Earth (which happenes every few hundred million years).
A warm Earth, BTW, supports far more land (and likely sea) life than the current ice age, as most of the warming happens at the poles. And if humanity with all our technology can't survive a few storms, we don't deserve to.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
More arable land results in a "resource war"? And global warmers wonder why we laugh at them.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Does anyone think that maybe the fact that there are 7 times as many people in the world today than there was only 200 years ago could be a contributor to global warming? 7 billion people breathing out carbon dioxide...
Just read an IPCC report. It's all in there, and the language is very precisely defined. I imagine the cognitive dissonance will be too much, and you'll just say something black-and-white, like "The IPCC is biased", rejecting it on the basis of reading partisan blogs.
The actuaries have the same data available to us... honestly I have no idea why actuaries are suddenly an authority on climate science but whatever.
There is no scam necessary. If the insurance company can make more money by justifying higher premiums (for any reason), they should be expected to do so up to the point it loses them business.
Really, this is a very convoluted argument with regards to AGW. It unnecessarily adds all sorts of business, regulatory, and social factors. It makes much more sense to simply look at what the IPCC has said and discuss that.
I think the GP and GGGP posts are arguing, and justifiably so, that "likely" does not convert to scientific law. It is theory. And not evolutionary theory, but a lower level theory.
If you actually look at the very start of the IPCC, you will see statistically precise definitions of terms like "likely".
Almost all science relies on statistical proofs and there is always uncertainty.
It is a question of risk-management -- like what insurance companies do, and business managers. An insurance company doesn't need proof that your house will burn down at a certain date in order to sell you insurance. They just need the expected risk and costs.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Considering that none of the IPCC's predictions -- not a single one -- has come even close to reality since their first Assessment Report back in the 90s, I very much doubt the label "experts" is appropriate.
Also, how is the degree of conservatism assessed? Have they underestimated some aspect of climate change in the past? People keep saying this but I never find out where the idea is coming from.
The funny thing is that global warming deniers who have problems accepting conclusions from scientific studies have no problems believing crackpot theories about "overpopulation" or "islamification".
If that's true, there needs to be more competition in the insurance industry. What is stopping them from raising premiums for any reason whatsoever?
DOI. Insurance is highly regulated, and an insurer cannot raise rates without actuarial justification.
Catastrophe models have shown an increase in projected damage from storms, and those models are factored into your insurance premiums. Those models have become more aggressive because the underlying data has shown an increase in property destruction storms.
Bottom line is more storms, more premium. But the insurance company is not making any more money.
There is no scam necessary. If the insurance company can make more money by justifying higher premiums (for any reason), they should be expected to do so up to the point it loses them business.
Except for the realities of a free market dictates the opposite. Are you saying the the insurance industry needs to be regulated?
Really, this is a very convoluted argument with regards to AGW.
It's a straight-forward real-world example of the consequences of AGW and risk-management. The argument for the evidence of the expected costs of AGW is a different matter. Read the IPCC and follow the references; I don't need to hold your hand.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I couldn't point to any handful that made a big difference, it's mostly been gradual confirmation of the basic theory and disproof of alternates. The recent studies on the CO2 output of volcanoes were a pretty big deal, that was a guesstimated factor for a long time and a major "skeptic" talking point. The BEST study was also a pretty big deal in terms of additional confirmation.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, I am not conflating, that is just the first paper (as opposed to panicky science-light article, which are plentiful) that a search turned up. And that was the abstract, not the article.
i guess i missed the phone call.... when were weather patterns ever very predictable?
The studies you mention were only reported on in the last few years, and were necessary in my opinion. The "skeptics" are just forcing the research to proceed as it should.
I wonder how life has survived on for so long on this planet? For a majority of the Earth's history, the temperature has been warmer than it is now and there have been no polar ice caps.
A phenomenon like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum must have had a very detrimental effect on life on this planet, but the geologic record doesn't show that. It shows there was an explosion of diversification of species during that time, particularly with mammals.
I read the article. They mention future climate in the abstract but it is irrelevant to the paper. They compare total organic carbon (TOC) from a sample of sediment layer from millions of years ago (I am no expert in this) to estimated ocean redox state based on Mo sequestration. I don't know how to convert TOC to atmopheric CO2, but in this case TOC rose a max of 15%.
I also realize it was basically a random artical you came up with. My main point is that anoxic events clearly aren't considered to be likely to result from AGW (you appear to agree with this), so the poster who keeps talking about the earth becoming inhabitable should shut up about it.
CO2 is currently under 0.04% of the atmosphere and according to the historic record is the effect, not the cause, of warming (Temperature has always increased before CO2 levels). Now I understand that it has been shown that CO2 can help increase temperature ... but by what amount? Where is the equation that shows that X increase in CO2 increases temperature by Y? If we doubled the CO2 amount from 0.04% to 0.08%, which may not even be possible if we wanted too, how much would that warm the planet?
Once we know the results of the equation then we can know by how much humans are the driving force for so-called Climate Change. If humans are in the vast minority of the forces that create climate change then you are going to have a really hard time explaining why everyone needs to live beneath their means so we can get our hand in a wrestling match between titans.
I am saying that they are probably already regulated (although I know little about this). If this is the case (which I am 99% sure is true) it is not a free market... and we should not expect insurance companies to act as if it was.
The actions of insurance companies are not a good way to assess the legitimacy of climate change research. Although I see where you are coming from, using this as a metric only adds confounding variables.
I was not asking you to hold my hand, it should be clear to you that I am already familiar with the IPCC reports. You claimed to wish discussing the science, but so far all we have seen from you is ad homs and arguments from authority.
Sure. Blogwhoring, but here: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/this-looks-bad/
And it's that ice cap melting that I think is the subject of a lot of current head and chin-scratching -- is it changing the weather, and if so, how? Apparently some models say yes, some say no, hard to tell. But it would be surprising if it did nothing. Medium-term, a whole lot depends on that ice cap -- the more open water, the lower the albedo, the more heat accumulates in the summer, the more chance of releasing methane when the water warms.
The 2007 report also explicitly ignores sea level chance from Greenland/Antarctic ice sheet melting, largely because they did not feel that they had good models for this yet (I think they say this), and the geological record shows it occurring slowly (they say or imply this), and the actual energy required to melt the ice sheets in place is quite enormous (as opposed to sliding them off into the ocean and melting them there, where ample heat is available -- math here: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/numbers-that-were-larger-than-i-had-imagined/ )
That's what I mean by conservative -- they didn't make predictions, unless they had a bunch of models and data to back up the prediction.
Once again we get a report that gives sensational headlines and no substance. I have seen these continuously for the last 30 years.
Get back to us when one of these predictions actually comes true. So far they are 0 for about 30 tries. First we were all going to freeze to death in 20 years, then we were all going to cook to death in 20 years. Now it's not 20 years, it's 100, or 200, or 300. How is this any better than rank superstition?
We need Science, not politics. Both sides in this debate don't know what they are talking about!
get back to me when Climate Science is more than just random guesses.
All you have to do is answer one question to figure it out...
'How has the temperature changed over the last 20 years for every planet in our solar system?'
From the article:
This isn't a 7 day weather forecast. The quote from the article is talking about predicting the rate of record breaking temperatures through the end of the century. That's longer than an 85 year period. They have extrapolated, but there's no way of knowing how accurate these long term climate predictions are. We should think long and hard about making any political decisions based on long term predictions like these.
I don't understand then. Is being conservative a good thing or bad thing? Conservative sounds normal, while the alternative sounds like sensationalism and jumping to conclusions. In other words, people who accept the non-conservative approach are not basing their "beliefs" on science.
.I was not asking you to hold my hand, it should be clear to you that I am already familiar with the IPCC reports.
This is just a plain fabrication. You might know where they are, how long they are, and what you might expect to find in them, but you are not familiar with them. These are extraordinary long and detailed documents. It would take the work of a graduate student to become familiar with them. Be honest with yourself.
Furthermore, you think I'm talking about science, but I'm talking about risk-management, which is the basis upon which policy should be discussed. There are no certainties in science, and none in risk-management. It seems that only "skeptics" and a bunch of anti-science-green-freaks are certain about climate science. The scientific debate is wholly apart from that morass. The political debate is only just beginning. The propaganda war has been in full force since the 90s.
If you are interested in the science, then go for it. The IPCC reports are full of references to all points of view on the discussed topics -- including Lindzen, McIntyre, and other contrarians. If you are interested in policy, then it is much harder to find good sources, but they do exist. There is a long essay (short book) on the topic "Quarterly Essay 44: Choosing Between Progress and Planet", by Andrew Carlton. If you are interested in the politic discourse around the topic, as chilling as it is, then I would recommend Naomi Oreskes' "Merchants of Doubt".
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
CO2 is currently under 0.04% of the atmosphere and according to the historic record is the effect, not the cause, of warming (Temperature has always increased before CO2 levels).
I assume you're talking about the ice age CO2/heat lag? In those cases the warming cycles weren't initiated by CO2 but that doesn't mean CO2 can't initiate or be directly responsible for warming:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
Now I understand that it has been shown that CO2 can help increase temperature ... but by what amount? Where is the equation that shows that X increase in CO2 increases temperature by Y? If we doubled the CO2 amount from 0.04% to 0.08%, which may not even be possible if we wanted too, how much would that warm the planet?
The equation's pretty complicated and always being refined, that's basically the main purpose of a climate simulator.
If humans are in the vast minority of the forces that create climate change then you are going to have a really hard time explaining why everyone needs to live beneath their means so we can get our hand in a wrestling match between titans.
We're responsible for the vast majority of fossil CO2 release and a very meaningful chunk of the warming overall. Now who said anything about living beneath their means? Your car will go weeng instead of vroom and your electricity will come from different sources that probably won't cost any more, what's the big deal?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Very interesting if true. I doubt this data is publicly accessible. Although if the pricing is government enforced it may be.
Ok, "more familiar than 99% of people." I agree that risk management is what we should be discussing.
No doubt it's from one of Rupert Murdoch's properties.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
We've moved the start of tornado season to January.
Enjoy, red states!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
global warming is a hoax that is used by communists to gain control of world governments. slashdot is their lapdog.
You don't make political decisions based on the long term predictions, you make them based on the cost-benefit analysis. Almost all of the economists who have studied the matter, predict that taking action to reduce CO2 emissions now will save a few trillion dollars in expenses for the U.S. I'm not sure what the world wide savings would be.
However, the basic truth that if the average temperature increases we'll see more hot days should only be doubted by the insane. The exact increase in frequency might be different, but it's probably reasonable accurate. It's based on an analysis of temperature distribution and projected onto the warming trend caused by AGW. If the warming trend continues, there would have to be a fundamental change in the amount of variability in weather patterns to make the prediction wrong.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
People who are truly experts in a field do not work at the UN. They work in their field as actual scientists/engineers/whatever.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/03/handy-bullshit-button-on-disasters-and.html
"A few quotable quotes from the report (from Chapter 4):
"There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change"
"The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados"
"The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses"
The report even takes care of tying up a loose end that has allowed some commentators to avoid the scientific literature:
"Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.""
How do we get from "their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research" to "climate change to drive weather disasters"?
Really?
I don't know, is calling people crackpots, unscientific, or idiots suppression?
Won't bet the farm against that.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
According to wikipedia the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was a 6 degree rise over 20,000 years. That's a lot of time to adapt. Compare that to the rate of change happening now. See the difference?
Current political "conservatives" are mislabeled in my opinion. In the scientific sense, "conservative" predictions are those that are supported by as much proof/data/modeling as possible.
In the case of the IPCC, to me, their conservativism says that we should (all) expect AT LEAST the change that they are predicting, and that is precisely what political conservatives are NOT doing. The closest they get to recognizing the work of the IPCC is when they cite it as either (a) an upper limit on what could happen ("and that's not so bad, is it?") or (b) misinterpret it in bogus games of "gotcha" (Monckton apparently did this, conflating equilibrium temperature projections at particular CO2 levels, with the temperature observed when the CO2 level first reached those levels -- it takes decades-to-centuries to hit equilibrium.)
There's a third sense of conservatism, which suggests that we should not only avoid high risks, but that we should also keep an eye out for low-likelihood high-cost events. A bird flu epidemic; that would be bad. An asteroid strike, that would be bad. Some of the we-haven't-ruled-this-out-completely climate projections would also be bad -- on the emissions path we're on, how sure are we that the anoxic oceans won't happen? There have been well-researched possible-predictions of a sudden onset of rapid sea-level rise (5cm/year, for a century or two). At the higher limits of projected temperature rise, some parts of the world are supposed to become uninhabitable -- sometimes so hot and humid that a person could not avoid fatally overheating in the course of a few hours. And all these things, when they appear in the press, are OMG-we're-all-gonna-die!, which is ridiculous, but that doesn't mean that the risk is anywhere near zero, and the cost-weighted risk is pretty high because the outcome is potentially very costly. The fear-mongers are not exactly helpful to anyone.
This is my main problem with current political "conservatives", because in these two traditional senses of the word, they're not. They don't respect sober, conservative science, and they don't take a conservative approach to low-probability-high-cost risks -- excepting terrorism, in which case, the one percent doctrine applies.
The source of the "meme" is the World Health Organization, the USA and other organizations that are working to save peoples lives and it started around 6 years ago.
And to correct your false thinking on theses "DDT liars" whatever that means, DDT was almost stopped everywhere where malaria was the largest killer of people. While it was not banned in a lot of countries its used dropped to almost none because the industrialized countries placed funding restrictions that if you used DDT you would not get any funding.
While some countries did have banes those started going away around a decade or so ago and then some of the restrictions on funding and DDT starting being removed. Some people start working more about eradicating malaria verse the false science of was common knowledge, and DDT use started to spread
I never said there was a global ban, just a sharp reduction in use. Wikipedia supports this, and adds that malaria infections were reduced by 60% in Ecuador when the country started increasing DDT usage again. Also, I said tens of thousands, not millions. As the WHO points out in its 2008 report, there are 800 000 deaths yearly from malaria, so a 5-10% increase is hardly unlikely.
Look, I'm not some anti-global-warming-nut, I'm just pointing out an unintended negative consequence of environmentalism.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
I didn't overstate anything. I said no one thinks this is going to happen. I was unaware there was work predicting an anoxic event due to CO2 emissions.
I also don't expect the planet to become uninhabitable. *However*, we may be dealing with a non-linear system that will undergo a catastrophic state change if pushed far enough from it's current stable state. AIUI, some scientists speculate that's what turned Mars into a desert world.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
But note, asteroid strikes are also low-probability, and we study those.
And we fairly often hear serious calls to do something about the risk.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Sure. Blogwhoring, but here: http://dr2chase.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/this-looks-bad/
I only follow it casually, but it looks to me like they've consistently underestimated the rate of melt-down at both poles.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't understand then. Is being conservative a good thing or bad thing? Conservative sounds normal, while the alternative sounds like sensationalism and jumping to conclusions. In other words, people who accept the non-conservative approach are not basing their "beliefs" on science.
Science tends to be conservative. Come out with a weird new idea like continental drift, expanding universe, mobile genes, etc., and people want to see some evidence. (Sometimes, ISTM, *too* conservative.)
OPERA apparently played it straight with the scientific method on the FTL neutrino thingy, but even so the director feels like he needs to resign now that it turned out to be wrong.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I understood you meant conservative in what you describe as the "expect AT LEAST the change that they are predicting" sense... Although I highly disagree with your characterization of conservative science here.
A conservative approach to science simply means being as un-speculative as practically possible. Wait until you have strong results before drawing any conclusions. This is the way research with such huge societal implications should be reported. When the media is looking to sensationalize anything and everything you say, this is the only ethical way to report your results. Even then they will still be dumbed down and sensationalized, but it is the responsibility of the researcher to minimize this as much as possible. It is unethical to do otherwise.
Read the stories on the PI of the group that reported FTL neutrinos, he was forced to resign even though he was quite conservative in his statements compared to many climate change researchers. Why? Because an uproar like this over a false positive seeds public distrust in science, it is bad for everyone. These things need to be communicated to the public very carefully and some climatologists do not appear to have been doing so.
This is why many scientists from other fields get disgusted with the few big mouths in climate science, and then the entire field for not taking care of their own.
You can witness the results of this non-conservative scientific reporting for yourself, half the public does not trust them and the other half know almost nothing about climate change but believe whatever the media feeds them, appearing as drones to former.
More arable land results in a "resource war"? And global warmers wonder why we laugh at them.
The problem is, some countries are going to end up with a better environment for agriculture than they have now, and others are going to end up with worse.
The have-nots will undoubtedly be happy to become haves, but the haves aren't going to be very happy to become have-nots.
Look at the long history of the Western Powers manipulating the Middle East to ensure their oil supply, tough shit if you happen to live there. Then imagine what's going to happen if those same Powers find themselves needing to ensure a food supply.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The funny thing is that global warming deniers who have problems accepting conclusions from scientific studies have no problems believing crackpot theories about "overpopulation" or "islamification".
I think the people with their panties in a bunch over islamification are just theocrats who don't want the competition.
Not sure what you're talking about on the overpopulation thing, but the basic cluster (f) of denialism and paranoia is just a correlation that comes out of the socio-political organization of the USA. In particular, the rich (who don't like the fact of global warming, because doing something about it would cost them money) have gotten in bed with the religious right (who imagine all manner of terrors and fantasies), because the rich have to deal with those troublesome elections in order keep running the country.
So you get social conservatives believing that global warming is a plot by liberal scientists, and plutocrats happy to ignore or even fan the flames of *phobia.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
2. We have some evidence that human pollution has caused some of the symptoms of climate change.
Do you dispute the science of greenhouse gasses?
Do you dispute the fact that we've spent over a century spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere?
Are you clutching at straws?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
For example, it is a good bet that on any given day, the temperature that day will stay between the maximum and minimum temperatures observed that day in the last 100 years.
Well, first of all, there's no reason to believe that the last 100 years are representative. Human civilization has existed for over 20,000 years, and here you would be sampling 100 years, less than 0.5% of that and less than 0.000001% of the time life existed on earth.
Going with last 100 year's data is essentially guessing that last year's minimum/maximum temperature won't be exceeded since a very small amount of time has passed, and things probably don't usually change a whole lot year to year -- things plateau, and depend on recent temperatures around earth, and most of the temperature variation is attributed to the earth's rotation and orbits and small random variations.
Just because that worked on year 101 though, is not necessarily a reliable basis for expecting the same will work for every day on year 102.
"Good bet" is very tenuous in this case. It's like looking outside and recording daylight for the past 20000 seconds from 10 am to 4 pm, and assuming based on this recorded information, that the intensity of light visible every millisecond will fall within the minimum and the maximum seen in the last 20000 seconds.
The data for the past 100 years can't account for "falling off the cliff"; e.g. weather events where the conditions for a significant abberation to happen build up over many thousand years, and then suddenly, on one day, when a threshold has been reached, a series of cascading changes will invalidate any assumptions based on previous recent observations.
For example, the sun falls below the horizon, and then suddenly in less than 600 seconds, at some moment, the amount of visible light is way below the minimum seen over the last 20000 seconds; a remarkable and drastic change one could not really have anticipated, except having observed that longer term cycle.
Now if the average human life was 60 seconds, it might be many thousands of generations before this cycle was seen.
To go from "day/night" to "weather patterns" convert "seconds" to "decades"
The IPCC report is unspeculative, as much as one can be when talking about future outcomes. I think we are in violent agreement on what constitutes conservative science, we merely disagree whether the IPCC is an example of that. The basic science behind global warming is old, simple, and well-understood. The devil is in the details -- the feedback loops, the delays, and the buffers.
"huge societal implications should be reported"
I assume that you're talking about recommended changes in how we produce energy as having huge societal implications. It might not hurt to have models and evidence to justify that. Big industry in this country has a long track record of crying "wolf" about the economy-destroying implications of various regulations (and conservative have a pretty good track record of mispredicting economic outcomes). We could, for example, add a carbon tax, but reduce some other tax (e.g., social security) in a revenue-neutral way. Small taxes (I've heard $40/CO2-ton initially, roughly $.40/gallon for gasoline) would get people's attention, yet not destroy the economy -- anyone who really wanted to drive somewhere, would have extra money in their pocket to spend on gasoline. We also have quite a few existence proofs for countries full of happy healthy people who pay far more for gasoline than we do. So when you say "huge societal implications", suddenly *I'm* going to be a tad skeptical :-). I just don't buy it -- we've actually had other countries run the experiment, and it seems to work okay for them. Why are we so different?
I wonder how life has survived on for so long on this planet? For a majority of the Earth's history, the temperature has been warmer than it is now and there have been no polar ice caps.
A phenomenon like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum must have had a very detrimental effect on life on this planet, but the geologic record doesn't show that. It shows there was an explosion of diversification of species during that time, particularly with mammals.
During the Paleocene-Eocene we didn't have to feed and water 7,000,000,000 people, of whom a large fraction live in coastal areas near the sea level.
Sure, we can let the climate go wild and ourselves go back to a species of about a million hunters-gatherers. Is that what you want?
If not, pointing out that this planet has been very hot before is utterly irrelevant to the discussion.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The scientific community also suppressed evidence of Lamarckian-looking evolution because it didn't fit the consensus view that Darwinian theories were the answer. And now what do we find? OOPS! Consensus was wrong, for something like 150 years, and there is plenty of evidence showing that Lamarck was on to something. He didn't understand the mechanism, but he was right - ACQUIRED TRAITS CAN BE INHERITED. The scientific community can be wrong, and shouting down dissenting views isn't good science. There's a lot more to the world than "scientific consensus" can understand.
Suppressed?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I quite like extreme weather. Mild weather is boring. I just hope we actually get to see some during my lifetime instead of 10,000 years from now.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You are getting it all wrong.
It's getting hotter globally. The last decade was the warmest on record.
However, there are local variations.
It seems that you are merely a victim of your own ignorance and inability to educate yourself on the matter.
Nope. You are getting it wrong again. Why is it that you can't be bothered to educate yourself before commenting on this?
The sad part is that you are either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest, because just about everything you just wrote is complete and utter nonsense.
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Nice start AC. Let the food fight begin!!! woot. ;-P
Hehehe. I am that same AC. It was just too irresistably easy. I had to troll. For the laughs.
... Yes, this harvest was quite fruitful.
Looking at my orchard of troll-bait trees, I can honestly say
I think you were the only one wise enough to see what I was doing. The rest saw others responding and well, it was like this skit... a wife is in bed and calls for her husband to join her. Her husband is sitting at a desk typing on his computer. He replies, "sorry honey, I can't come to bed yet, because someone on the Internet is WRONG!" Fish in a barrel, man.
Conservatives have argued that if there's even a one percent chance of a nation attacking us, we should start a war.
The conservative approach to climate change would be to proceed on the basis that if there's even a one percent chance that the people who spend their lives studying climate know what they're talking about, then we should reforest, build more nuclear power plants, and generally do things that are good ideas anyway.
See ya'll at the re-education camps!
http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2012/3/simultaneous-action-needed-break-cultural-inertia-climate-change-respons
Really, you AGW people aren't going to be happy until there's shooting. news for ya...you are pussies and don't know how to shoot.
So add a 40 cent tax on gas and AGW will go away? What are you basing this on? I really don't understand where you are coming from.
That's a start -- that's the initially (several years ago) recommended carbon tax. It's enough to change behavior and create markets for products that support further future change. If we tried to go from our current habits to zero (or rather, low) carbon in one year, that would probably be unpleasant, and would in fact be bad for the economy. Start small, change gradually, not so bad.
The longer we put this off, the faster we'll need to change to get the same (lack of) effect on the climate, and the larger the actual societal implications. From my POV, someone who advocates delay in order to avoid drastic and unpleasant economic change is setting us up for exactly that just a few years (decades?) down the road when AGW has progressed to a more-obvious state.
And what will the additional tax revenues be spent on?
Almost all the economists...
Reducing other taxes, preferably mostly on the poor, because gas taxes are regressive and we'd like to stay not just overall revenue-neutral, but per-class revenue neutral.
On another post, the very warm temps seen in March were reported and a discussion followed that. What people appear to have forgotten is that for most of America, excluding the Pacific Northwest, the winter season was very mild. What happened in the PNW, was winter, you know, snow, ice, rain, wind, bitter cold. That is normal yet the rest of America did not see this. Why? And why were the temps in March itself so high, except in the PNW, when the planet is tilted away from the sun?
I didn't even have to read that it was an IPCC report -- I just needed to see "UN experts" in the headline.
International Perpetrators of a Criminal Conspiracy. "Oil for Food" was reasonably profitable, but their goal is to steal trillions with the climate scam.
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about." -- Wayne Dyer.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Wow, an argument from ignorance. That's... novel.
So what? That doesn't make the facts any less factual.
No, politicians do decide on the results of the actual research. You are extremely confused, it seems. The science is right there, in actual scientific journals.
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I'm sorry, you must be looking for the "Why won't congress fund my perpetual motion machine research" debate over on the next server.
Right, I'm just wondering if raising the quality of life of "the poor" may require increased carbon emissions.
So all weather events are due to climate change. What a bunch of fraudsters. Look a warmer world is a wetter world, a colder world is a drier desertified world. Yes the UN has shown themselves to be incompetent. So 600+ pages and 220 authors. Let's see what the details are. Maybe like previous UN reports from the IPCC we will find blatant errors and misrepresentations forming it.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
According to this guy, yes:
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/09/transgenerational-epigenetic.html
I was originally made to be suspicious of this in high school, when my biology teacher, who was really quite excellent, strangely told us a story not in the textbook about how mice were observed to develop webbed feet in one generation when a swamp was flooded. The he got a puzzled look on his face, and explained that it couldn't possibly happen, because evolution and mutation were not single-generational, fully-developed mutation mechanisms. He was great to acknowledge the anecdote (I could never find a citation), but had no explanation.
Interesting read here:
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/09/transgenerational-epigenetic.html
See my other post down a few on my high school bio teacher. Really got me curious.
That link is wierd. What does any of this have to do with religion? Epigenetic inheritance is just much less obvious than genetic inheritance.
It is a little weird. You can find other references to this phenomenon, though. I think what he's saying is that "scientific consensus" can be a lot like religion; it can go from a general agreement on reasonably vetted attempts to understand the natural world into a faith-based, group-membership based mindset, and it's hard to tell sometimes when that happens. It's about scientists being human and social creatures, and the risks that go with it. Scientists are supposed to be above that, and often are, but sometimes are not. They're people.
All the whys aside, global temperatures are rising. Higher temperatures directly correlate with increased evaporation rates. Increased evaporation rates result in increased volumes of water vapor in the atmosphere. The latent heat energy in the water vapor means more available energy in the atmosphere. Why would anyone be surprised by larger releases of this energy in weather events, its not like it is going to be destroyed you know. wabi-sabi matthew
I agree on that. Argument from consensus should be recognized for what it is: A useful heuristic but logical fallacy.
"ACQUIRED TRAITS CAN BE INHERITED" -- except, of course they by and large can't (ask any Jewish male). The fields of genetics and evolutionary biology haven't been binned if that is what you are implying ... sorry to disappoint. Just because we occasionally discover new effects and odd cases doesn't mean science has been "supressing" dissenting views for 150 years. If that were true science would be a religion and we'd still be stuck in the dark ages.
It seems that too many people mistake local, short-term climate effects for global, long-term change. We know from our sketchy histories of Northern European people that climate has swung rather rapidly and far from cool to warm and back again in the past. The changes are centuries long and at any moment seem like the new reality to current inhabitants. These oscillations appear to be part of life on earth.
The folks who spew all of their drek about CO2 levels don't seem to realize that ice cores show that we are currently way below levels from the past. Yes, CO2 levels are involved in oscillations, too!
Perhaps we should simply plant more trees (they live off of the CO2!) and be good stewards of what we have.
You will observe that the driving factor behind all of the histrionics is the love of money. All of this research, which we MUST do to save our planet, is costly. Therefore, fork over lots more money and let the scientists work their magic. Of course, the scientists who get the money are the ones we TRUST to be honest! Like the folks at The University of East Anglia? Or the ones who told us the glaciers will al be gone from the Himalayas in a few years?
TRUTH: Figures don't lie, but liars figure. Go ahead and look at the figures, but be careful with the liars.
Further on your analogy...
Not everyone that eats junk food is fat. Not everyone that is fat gets diabetes. Some people have a genetic disposition to it. There are many causes. Being fat, or obese is a significant indicator, but I wouldn't say it is the "cause" of it.
You could say the same thing about climate change. Human CO2 emissions I am sure are not helping matters much, however to trivialize such a complex system to say FACT: Human CO2 Emissions are causing climate change, might be a bit much.
Or not. I'm inclined to believe we should be trying to reduce our pollution regardless one way or another.
Anyway I wish more people would think critically with a healthy dose of skepticism rather than blindly accepting whatever is shoveled at them as "truth" or "gospal". Not that I am saying that is what is happening in this instance, only that many just seem to be parroting rhetoric (on both sides of the argument).
People involved in promoting the radical and impoverishing lifestyle changes with fixing global warming seem to be wealthier, elitist or foolish types with their eyes fixed far more on the future than now. The very fact of the matter is that for most people, caring about the earth is actually pretty stupid. It makes your energy prices higher - because solar and other supposed green technologies are simply more expensive, or they would be being sold, it makes food prices higher, and it means you have less stuff. That translates into increased poverty. So, to save the planet, in your eyes, you are talking about screwing the human race today.
And, let's not forget one most important part of science that the greens leave out of the debate.
1) If climate change were as dramatically terrible as they say, why should we wait for solar and wind to come online, when we could, even in our present bankrupt state, nationally afford a rollout of nuclear power and completely replace all of our fossil electrical generating stations in the USA for under 2 trillion dollars and be done with it in a decade?
2) Even if we did point 1, and did so worldwide, it would still take 800 years or so for CO2 levels to fall to pre-industrial levels.
So it is not that people are being deniers per say, they just deny it partially because they think what the greenies are saying makes no sense. It's not so dangerous that the obvious answer is the one we should take, being poorer (with pre-industrial per capita energy consumption), would really suck, and for all of that, its not going to make a difference anyway within our lifetimes. It's like, the greens are saying, let's just be poor without actually doing the real thing (nuclear), to solve the problem, and then not really solve it anyway.
Whose really being scientific here?