Global Warming Felt By Space Junk and Satellites

Faulty headline by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

So global warming has nothing to do with it? It's all about the carbon dioxide buildup?

Re:Faulty headline by approachingZero+ · 2012-11-11 22:17 · Score: 4, Funny

Good insight. I didn't pick up on that. Heretic.

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Re:Faulty headline by Coisiche · 2012-11-11 22:23 · Score: 1

It was a bad label in the first place. I wonder if whoever coined it even suspected that decades later people would still be quibbling about the semantics instead of the actual cause.
Re:Faulty headline by Kokuyo · 2012-11-11 23:08 · Score: 3, Funny

No, no, no... we are quibbling as much about the actual cause as we quibble about semantics... and if we can't quibble about those things, we'll quibble about the effects. And during all those shenanigans, we're playing the blame-game.
You didn't really think this was about identifying and solving a problem, did you?
Re:Faulty headline by tgd · 2012-11-12 00:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, no, no... we are quibbling as much about the actual cause as we quibble about semantics... and if we can't quibble about those things, we'll quibble about the effects. And during all those shenanigans, we're playing the blame-game.
You didn't really think this was about identifying and solving a problem, did you?
Joe six-pack, politicians and the media are quibbling about those things. There aren't any scientists trained in relevant fields who are, about the cause, semantics, or effects unless they're doing so for money or a bizarre reaction to "publish-or-perish".
Re:Faulty headline by gr8_phk · 2012-11-12 02:32 · Score: 1

So global warming has nothing to do with it? It's all about the carbon dioxide buildup?

Yes. In fact the carbon dioxide in this case is causing a cooling of the atmosphere.
FTFA:

The main effects of carbon dioxide up there come from its collisions with oxygen atoms. These impacts excite carbon dioxide molecules, making them radiate heat. The density of carbon dioxide is too thin above altitudes of about 30 miles (50 kilometers) for the molecules to recapture this heat. Cooling the upper atmosphere causes it to contract, exerting less drag on satellites.
Re:Faulty headline by davester666 · 2012-11-12 06:26 · Score: 1

Yeah, one side seems keen on reframing the idea as one of "belief", like a religion, instead of whether or not there is actual evidence of global warming.
"Do you believe in global warming?"

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Re:Faulty headline by JackieBrown · 2012-11-12 06:27 · Score: 1

No, all the scientists who agree with me are correct/honest and the ones that don't are doing it for money or a bizarre reaction to "publish-or-perish".
Re:Faulty headline by Genda · 2012-11-12 08:59 · Score: 1

How about just the vast majority... i.e. >99%
That doesn't make them right, but it does make for a much stronger case than "Nuh Uh... that doesn't fit into my world view!
Re:Faulty headline by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 15:16 · Score: 1

There's nothing wrong with the term "global warming". I've seen references to it in scientific literature from as far back as the 1950's. And even though Arrhenius didn't use that specific term he was talking about global warming when he wrote:

if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
Global warming is simply a subset of climate change (which also got mentioned in the 1950s) since warming is only one of the effects (albeit one of the major ones) of the buildup of excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Increased drought and precipitation in different regions are another effect. Outside the realm of climate change ocean acidification and the contraction of the upper atmosphere mentioned in this /. post are others. The contraction of the upper atmosphere is actually a good thing for LEO satellites, reducing the drag they experience.
Re:Faulty headline by Gallomimia · 2012-11-13 07:29 · Score: 1

There is no ocean acidication.
There is also no atmospheric contraction due to CO2 (there is due to changes in solar wind and magnetic influence).
I'm glad you brought all sorts of facts and citations to this intellectual discussion.

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Re:One is not like the other. by gagol · 2012-11-11 22:23 · Score: 5, Informative

The process cool the upmost strata, but keep heat inside. RTFA

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Re:One is not like the other. by TapeCutter · 2012-11-11 22:23 · Score: 3, Funny

So you're saying hot grits are not cool?

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Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's because you like a number of people think that CLIMATE CHANGE only causes warming. It causes a rougher cycle of warmer highs and colder lows. Overall it causes the planet to warm, but the effects felt are not always to warm.

On the other hand, if this might effect american's TV channels perhaps we can get the majority of people in the US to start believing in science....

Ok maybe not, but a boy can hope.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:27 · Score: 1, Insightful

Does it really surprise you that CO2 reduces the temperature away from the surface of the planet? Cannot you see that is energetically required for the planet to increase in temperature due to the greenhouse effect?

No (of course you can see this). You have simply turned off your brain because you do not want to believe in something. Please: stop talking before you stop thinking.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:31 · Score: 1

Your attempt to equate "cooling of upper atmosphere" to "global cooling" is cute.

Enough said... by WOOFYGOOFY · 2012-11-11 22:32 · Score: 1, Interesting

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/world-on-course-for-catastrophic-6deg-rise-reveal-scientists-1822396.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-on-track-for-nearly-11-degree-temperature-rise-energy-expert-says/2011/11/28/gIQAi0lM6N_story.html

http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm

Re:Enough said... by GameboyRMH · 2012-11-12 01:24 · Score: 3, Informative

I read that article before so I know you've done an excellent job of misunderstanding it. But then The Register presented an inflammatory headline for a reason...

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No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

Because there's no extra heat coming in from the sun (indeed, slightly less), but because the CO2 is trapping heat in the lower atmosphere, the heat input to the upper atmosphere is reduced.

And what happens when heat input is reduced?

Cooling.

What happens in the lower atmoshere, where the heat input is increased?

Warming.

Indeed, one of the fingerprints that shows it ISN'T the sun doing it is the cooling upper atmosphere: in a warming sun, the entire atmosphere is being warmed because the heat input and throughput is increased.

Whereas the fingerprint of a greenhouse effect is that there is no extra input, but the throughput has changed.

In other words, this is yet more evidence of AGW.

Re:No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-11 22:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

...
In other words, this is yet more evidence of AGW.
Umm, no.
Strictly speaking, it's just evidence of more CO2 in the upper levels of Earth's atmosphere.
Of course, you are free to leap to conclusions...
Re:No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 01:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why is it even relevant? What if there is a naturally occuring global climate change that will make this planet inhabitable for humans? Should we just let it happen becasue it is "natural"?
Oh wait, I tend to forget that the cause, the problem and the solution was decided upon even before the research was done.
Re:No, headline is right. by tbannist · 2012-11-12 01:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's about "net production". Nature's net production of CO2 is nearly zero and currently over long periods it's slightly negative. Humanity's CO2 production is almost entirely net positive, we sequester very little CO2, so we are increasing the CO2 level in the atmosphere. It may represent only a small amount of the total carbon in the atmosphere each year but we're putting all of the extra CO2 into it.
It's a like a guy standing by a half-filled swimming pool with a hose pouring water into the swimming pool. While we can't show that any particular molecule of H2O came from his hose, we can observe that the water level is rising and few people would doubt that the reason the level is rising because of the hose pouring water into the pool.
If there are 720 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere and humans add 10 gigations of carbon a year, you should be able to figure out roughly how long it takes to double it.

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Re:No, headline is right. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 01:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

There is an utter lack of explanation for this extra CO2. Humans don't produce that much CO2 relative to nature each year
Citation needed. Have fun, because you're dead wrong. For example, we produce on average two orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism. Are you getting paid to spout this shit, or are you telling lies for free? That's not a very good deal.

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Re:No, headline is right. by hamburger+lady · 2012-11-12 02:07 · Score: 5, Informative

isotope analysis shows increases over time of fossil carbon as a percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere.
add to that the fact that we pump gobs of fossil carbon into the atmosphere every year, and can find no other natural phenomena doing such on that sort of scale.

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Re:No, headline is right. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 02:09 · Score: 1

That's actually pretty simple to explain, really.
Nature does release more CO2 then humans (and by humans I mean fossil fuel burn, etc), but it's balanced out by natural absorption by the same oceans and vegetation that releases it (but it does fluctuate naturally).
Now, about 40% of man made CO2 emissions are capture by nature (vegetation, oceans, etc), and it leaves roughly 60% that nature can't capture (well, it already captures the natural emissions plus those 40% of human emissions) and that offsets it all. Normally a change of 100ppm takes 5000 to 20000 years to occur (naturally), but in this case it took roughly 120 years for the same increase to occur, giving us an all time high for the past 800 thousand years.
Also, the proof that man made carbon emissions are the culprit comes from the isotopes found and the ratio (C13/C12). Isotopes don't really lie and points the finger at fossil fuel and byproducts.
Apart from that, I could also say that's because TFA says that (but simply saying that wouldn't say much about proof, would it? Critical thinking and trying to understand the phenomenon with a skeptical approach and from there try to make up my own opinion it's clearly better).
Re:No, headline is right. by jittles · 2012-11-12 02:22 · Score: 1

Citation needed. Have fun, because you're dead wrong. For example, we produce on average two orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism. Are you getting paid to spout this shit, or are you telling lies for free? That's not a very good deal.
Even after a major eruption event? I know these don't happen very often, but I have a hard time believing that we output more CO2 than a volcano can potentially output. But if you're talking dormant, or mostly dormant volcanoes, who would be surprised by that statistic?
Re:No, headline is right. by slim · 2012-11-12 02:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Even after a major eruption event? I know these don't happen very often, but I have a hard time believing that we output more CO2 than a volcano can potentially output.
Yes, even after a major eruption event. For example when Pinatubo blew in 1991, it released about as much CO2 as 10 days of human activity.
Here:

The published estimates of the global CO2 emission rate for all degassing subaerial (on land) and submarine volcanoes lie in a range from 0.13 gigaton to 0.44 gigaton per year (Gerlach, 1991; Varekamp et al., 1992; Allard, 1992; Sano and Williams, 1996; Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998). The preferred global estimates of the authors of these studies range from about 0.15 to 0.26 gigaton per year. The 35-gigaton projected anthropogenic CO2 emission for 2010 is about 80 to 270 times larger than the respective maximum and minimum annual global volcanic CO2 emission estimates. It is 135 times larger than the highest preferred global volcanic CO2 estimate of 0.26 gigaton per year (Marty and Tolstikhin, 1998).
Is that really surprising? Think about how many billions of cars, homes, offices and factories there are, spread across the whole world, all directly or indirectly burning fossil fuel and releasing CO2.
Re:No, headline is right. by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

In my experience, no-one wants to take corrective measures to reduce global temperatures because "that would be the easy way out" or some such nonsense. They instead want to shut down industry and starve Africa.

I don't think that CO2 causes global warming (from my own calculations, for which I have been repeatedly ridiculed by simpletons who don't even know what IR and Raman spectra represent, but which seem to match what is happening in the upper atmosphere), but I wouldn't be opposed to a little geoengineering to reduce global temps by a half a degree. Much better than trying to artificially limit CO2 emissions.

If you REALLY want to get rid of CO2 emissions, you have to find a CHEAPER source of energy. Doing anything else will simply drive industry to non-compliant countries, or, lacking those, will shut it down, or make all goods more expensive, especially food commodities, which means Africa starves.
Re:No, headline is right. by RockDoctor · 2012-11-12 03:04 · Score: 1

Your analogy needs it to be raining lightly, and for the man to be using a large-bore hose going full power. There is a natural production of CO2, but it's between a tenth and a hundredth of the human production, depending on the volcanic activity in any particular year.

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Re:No, headline is right. by justthinkit · 2012-11-12 03:28 · Score: 1

Your analogy needs it to be raining lightly
.
I was thinking more like it needed the pool to be full of kids, producing water a different way.

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Re:No, headline is right. by moderatorrater · 2012-11-12 03:45 · Score: 2

While the GP is wrong in his conclusion, he's right in saying that humans don't product that much CO2 relative to nature. From http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm -

Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year.
You're right that volcanism is a very small modern source of CO2, but human activity is still a very small minority of global output. Choosing to use volcanism as the comparison is misleading at best. The science is conclusive in favor of global warming, so accuracy and facts are enough to combat bad conclusions.
Re:No, headline is right. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 04:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year
And consumption of CO2 by vegetation accounts for what? Here's a hint, plants are made almost entirely out of carbon, and almost all of the carbon comes from the atmosphere. Rainforests produce about as much CO2 as they consume, their "job" is to filter. But other types are carbon sinks. And the ocean is a net carbon sink; it takes in CO2 from the air, which makes the ocean more acidic. It's fixed out from the ocean primarily by reaction with subaquatic limestone. It's disingenuous in the extreme to discuss CO2 production of the ocean or of vegetation without simultaneously discussing the fixing of CO2 in the ocean or by vegetation, or foolish in the extreme to believe it when someone else does it.

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Re:No, headline is right. by SleazyRidr · 2012-11-12 04:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, to be completely accurate, it's raining, but there's a drain that's only big enough for the rainwater to drain out. When the man comes along with his hose (it doesn't have to be a big hose, we can be patient) he breaks the equilibrium and it starts to rise.

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Re:No, headline is right. by moderatorrater · 2012-11-12 04:49 · Score: 1

I know. I'm just saying that if you combat ignorance with condescension and hostility, then the ignorant are going to continue being ignorant because of their knee-jerk reaction to the assholes on the side of science.

Or we can keep this argument in the realm of emotion, assholery, and dogma and continue in the way we've been going. I'm sure that'll work out for us in the long run.
Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 04:55 · Score: 5, Informative

I recently tracked it down and the major eruption of Pinatubo in 1991 released around 40 million tonnes of CO2 over several days compared to around 23 billion tonnes of CO2 released by humans that year. Current human emissions in 2012 are around 30 billion tonnes of CO2.
Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 04:59 · Score: 1

It's disingenuous to mention the CO2 emitted naturally every year in the carbon cycle without mentioning at the same time the natural sinks that make the natural carbon cycle closely balanced over the year.
Re:No, headline is right. by danbert8 · 2012-11-12 05:20 · Score: 1

I completely agree about CO2, however CO2 is the least harmful emission from volcanoes. Particulate and SO2 are the real bastards that volcanoes spew. In fact, aren't volcanoes usually to blame for cooling, not warming?

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Re:No, headline is right. by moderatorrater · 2012-11-12 06:16 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, but what lies and bullshit am I using? I pointed out that human CO2 production IS dwarfed by natural production. I didn't go into the other facts because it didn't factor into the point that I was trying to make, that while combating people who disbelieve AGW we should be accurate. The link I gave you went into the full details. I didn't go into the full details because my point was that your comment wasn't accurate about why he was wrong and it was overly combative to boot. I'm curious as to why you're attacking me so strenuously. I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, just that the way you've said it is overly combative and not a full answer. Yet you're attacking me by saying I'm spreading lies and bullshit.
Re:No, headline is right. by moderatorrater · 2012-11-12 06:18 · Score: 1

It wasn't pertinent to the point I was trying to make and is covered in full in the link that I provided. Sorry if that was legitimately misleading, but my point wasn't that natural sources are so much larger than human ones per se, but that choosing volcanism was misleading and that the overall tone was too hostile.
Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 06:24 · Score: 1

Gaseous CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (heat) in certain spectral bands. This is easily shown in the laboratory. The amount a IR radiation that it absorbs is affected by the concentration of CO2. The IR radiation that CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs is mostly from the Earth's surface absorbing incoming solar radiation, mostly in the visible range, and re-radiating it in the IR range. More concentration of CO2 means more IR absorption.
In natural warming coming out of a glaciation (ice age in the common usage) the warming initiated by Milankovitch cycles causes the oceans to start warming up. This causes the oceans to release CO2 as warmer water is less capable of holding it than colder water. This is the source of the "lag" in CO2 concentrations to temperatures but it's also true that if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere didn't increase the ultimate warming reached in the interglacial period would not be nearly as high. But that in no way precludes CO2 from leading temperature increases too. It's not an either/or situation. Both can be true.
Re:No, headline is right. by Bengie · 2012-11-12 07:09 · Score: 1

I think what you were going for is natural processes tend to have a net neutral or even negative, but human activity is almost entirely net positive.
Re:No, headline is right. by Vintermann · 2012-11-12 08:41 · Score: 1

It isn't the CO2 in the upper levels of the atmosphere itself which causes the mentioned effect. It's the effect this upper-level CO2 has on temperatures up there.
But this effect is part and parcel of the increased greenhouse effect. Increased greenhouse effect has two prominent effects on atmospheric temperature: warming the lower parts, and cooling the upper parts. It's just that you don't hear much about the latter part (well, unless you read sites like skepticalscience.com, where they point out it's a greenhouse warming signature) because the warming surface temperatures are a far bigger deal for us on the whole. The effects can't be separated, though: If you accept that CO2 is cooling the upper layers of the atmosphere as described, you implicitly accept that the lower are warming.
It's predictable that the denier contigent of slashdot downplays this and says it "just proves increased CO2". But fact is, it also gives us yet more evidence supporting the physical models of the impact of increased CO2.

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Re:No, headline is right. by Vintermann · 2012-11-12 08:43 · Score: 1

What if it's really dragons on Mars, breathing fire towards Earth? Oh wait, I tend to forget that this theory was rejected before there was even done research on it.

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Re:No, headline is right. by almitydave · 2012-11-12 08:46 · Score: 2

"-1 Overrated" with no other mods? Is this the mythical "-1 Disagree" I've heard so much about?

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Re:No, headline is right. by Vintermann · 2012-11-12 08:46 · Score: 1

And drinking the pool water. Ugh, these metaphors got disgusting pretty quickly.
Point is, non-anthropogenic production of CO2 is on balance with non-anthropogenic sequestration of carbon - at least on the time scales which would otherwise have been relevant for us.

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Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 09:14 · Score: 1

The real problem isn't and has never been burning fossil fuel. The problem is the wealth and power that burning fossil fuel has awarded a vanishing few, and they've gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that we will continue burn fossil fuels until they can come up with a decent model for charging us for sunlight. The rest is FUD, smoke and mirrors to ensure that we debate this topic endlessly defending ideologies and political frameworks.
We now have solar cells printed on GLASS, dirt cheap, with 33+% efficiency. Its time to combine technologies, make the first run of cheap efficient solar power for global consumption, then use future solar power to manufacture more. We can then use new energy technology to sequester carbon from the atmosphere as methanol and synthetic petroleum products for use in energy storage (burn methanol at night) and the production of plastics, drugs and fertilizers. Ta Da... sanity. But no, we will continue to argue about safe nuclear and renewable sources until these old greedy bastards have sucked every last drop from the crust and our planet is no longer fit for human existence. Shame on you all.
Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 09:38 · Score: 2

Depends on what you attribute to human activity. For instance beside burning fossil fuels there's the burning down of the global rain forests. There's the methane produced by agriculture (a gas 20x stronger than CO2 in its greenhouse effect), and then there's all the secondary effects, warming is uneven, it strikes the poles hardest melting permafrost all over the planet and liberating unprecedented amounts of both CO2 and methane (potentially more than caused be the initial burning of fossil fuels.) There are even strong indications that temperature and chemical changes in the oceans are beginning to liberate methane ices at the bottom of the ocean. All of these things are a result of the initial human activity, resulting in shifting critical natural tipping points. You can't talk about this without looking at the big picture which is why when scientists talk about this, it isn't just climatologists. Its biologists, chemists, atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, climatic paleontologists, geologists... hundreds of different diverse fields and tens of thousands of individual researchers.
Really, I'm sorry all that science has gotten in the way of your "Atlas Shrugged" belief system. It put a smack down on the Flat Earthers too and they never recovered. Rather than ignoring the simple fact that the process of living produces excrement, and that the cost of living BIG produces a lot of excrement, which must be dealt with sooner of later. Perhaps you would all be better advised to figure out a clever way to use that excrement, there must be very bright children who can make silk purses from these sows ears (that's a hint son, there are geniuses working on turning industrial waste and effluents into the next gold mine.) That would acknowledge to growingly obvious while also applying your penchant for human enterprise. By all means, have at it.
Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 10:00 · Score: 1

And its either ignorant or disingenuous of you not to mention that the rise of carbonic acid in the world's oceans is at this very moment threatening the collapse of zooplankton (because a growing number of larval forms that need to make carbonate shells are unable to do so in too low a ph.) So the largest carbon sink on the planet (the oceans) is now showing real signs of failing, and failing catastrophically. Check here for details on Ocean acidification.
Also wrong on the rain forest, recent research suggests that heat stress is reducing the rain forest's ability to function and therefore sequester carbon, add to that the massive human burning of the rain forests and the carbon output is a huge net positive.
Finally add to the growing areas along the southern arctic in Russia and Canada/Alaska where huge areas of permafrost are beginning to melt, and once melted decompose releasing simply mind boggling amounts of CO2 and Methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas) and your carbon sink is sadly itself sinking.
There are some places where plant life is increasing, but what is increasing even faster are deserts and my friend deserts are lousy for sequestering carbon. So, looking at this whole thing, using THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC information available. What becomes shockingly obvious to anyone even taking the smallest opportunity to do the research, is that we live on a planet in deep thermal stress due to the unwholesome practices of its one industrial species, and that real remedies exist, but those in wealth and power refuse to give up what they know and want. Say what you will, believe what you want. The research is in, the facts are laid bare and even the skeptics are now convinced. Human beings are at the root of a changing global climate. Now do something about it (and no I'm not suggesting we start eating African babies... jeeze!) We have big brains, let's use them puhleeze!!!
Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 10:09 · Score: 1

No he's saying that its time for men (and women) of good will to speak to one another in a civil manner and open their minds (on both sides of the conversation) such that enlightened discourse might lead to real and productive action upon which all sides might come to consensus. Rather than scream and shout and call each other all sorts of horrible names, certain in our tiny warm and cozy ideologies that we are right and justified and that the only answer is ideological jihad (a sad affair without even the benefit of virgins when you get to paradise.)
So rather than leading with a poke to the eye and a kick to the groin, mayhaps you could take that simmering rage off the stove for a wee bit, and discuss this topic like a higher primate. Perhaps we could all do this. You know use the frontal lobes instead of the adrenal glands. Try it, you might even finding it enjoyable.
Re:No, headline is right. by Genda · 2012-11-12 10:19 · Score: 1

As well, the growing disparity between temperatures increases the chance that serious storms can occur. Storms are heat engines. Drive low level heat up you get bigger, wetter, stronger storms. If a really huge storm should punch a hole through the thermal division you now have a monster because you've now increase the temperature differential a hundred or more degrees. Read about hypercanes, or superstorms. The ultimate return to equilibrium could put world climate in a very different place and by definition, sudden global changes are bad for life as we know it. We're playing Russian Roulette and the gun has an 8,000 mile diameter.
Re:No, headline is right. by budgenator · 2012-11-12 11:27 · Score: 1

There is a lot more to natural CO2 emissions than just vulcanism, like fermentation and respiration. Even green plants consume O2 and carbohydrates and give off CO2, especially when photosynthisis isn't occuring.

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Re:No, headline is right. by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 14:44 · Score: 1

I debunked this argument hours before you posted this comment, in a subthread above. Why even bother coming to slashdot?

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Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 15:25 · Score: 1

It might be more accurate to say that CO2 affects the energy balance of the Earth in various ways depending on where it is. Warming near the surface and cooling in the stratosphere and above. Since we all live below the stratosphere we experience global warming.
Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 15:29 · Score: 1

And Mega-gazillions of plants consuming CO2 and releasing oxygen. You have to look at both sides of the equation.
Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? If not educate yourself.
Re:No, headline is right. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 15:41 · Score: 1

Ok, you're right about the volcanoes. Too many people think they're a much bigger factor than they are.
What got to me is that you left out the second half the opening paragraph in that Skeptical Science article you cited which said:

However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.
Re:No, headline is right. by sjames · 2012-11-12 16:21 · Score: 1

I don't imagine evil faeries put it there.
It greatly simplifies the problem by eliminating solar changes as a cause. It's down to natural CO2 emissions vs. human sources.
Now, between those two, we KNOW human sources have ramped up considerably in the last century or so and I know of no evidence for natural sources ramping up at all.
Unless or until evidence to the contrary comes in, AGW is the more likely explanation.
Re:No, headline is right. by RockDoctor · 2012-11-13 02:47 · Score: 1

What did Occam say about needless introduction of entities?
Whatever, it's an analogy. Pass some grease and we can have fun with it.

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Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re:No, headline is right. by Gallomimia · 2012-11-13 08:28 · Score: 1

I've long advocated that the cause is deforestation. We have way fewer forests in the world sequestering carbon naturally than we did before clearing all the land for short term farming and concrete jungles. I'm dismayed that these discussions go forward to talk about ocean acidification and I've heard a lot of discussion about natural GHG emissions such as from volcanoes, but I find it a very rare thing to mention how much slashing and burning has taken place and has reduced nature's ability to absorb these things naturally.

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Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by flyingfsck · 2012-11-11 23:01 · Score: 2

Oh, no, hell will freeze over after all: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/09/peat_ice_age_coming_only_co2_can_save_us/

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Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!

What is CO2 doing up there? by rossdee · 2012-11-11 23:01 · Score: 1

I thought that CO2 was heavier than air, so there shouldn't be any of it in the upper atmosphere.
(at least not the stuff emitted by burning carbon based stuff at ground level. There could be some Methane at high altitude that gets converted to CO2 by solar radiation., and maybe jet exhaust and large volcanic eruptions.

Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by aug24 · 2012-11-11 23:19 · Score: 5, Informative

Even if it is heavier stochastic processes will push a proportion of it up. Increase the total proportion and the proportion at high altitudes will increase.

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You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by cryptolemur · 2012-11-12 00:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

You are right, and we have all suffocated!! Or, maybe you are not right...
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by berashith · 2012-11-12 02:05 · Score: 1

slow clap for this one!
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by You're+All+Wrong · 2012-11-12 03:04 · Score: 5, Informative

Nice, but simplifying matters, and perhaps misleading. Gasses of different densities are *perfectly* happy to settle out. It's only the continual stirring of things like what we locally call weather that makes them mostly homogeneous in the layer above the earth's surface most of us experience. The words "homosphere" and "heterosphere" thus got their names. I can't do better than wackypedia, so I'll just lift the pertinent section:
"""
Above the turbopause at about 100 km (62 mi; 330,000 ft) (essentially corresponding to the mesopause), the composition varies with altitude. This is because the distance that particles can move without colliding with one another is large compared with the size of motions that cause mixing. This allows the gases to stratify by molecular weight, with the heavier ones such as oxygen and nitrogen present only near the bottom of the heterosphere. The upper part of the heterosphere is composed almost completely of hydrogen, the lightest element.
"""

The reason we do not suffocate is not because gases do not separate out, it is because we have not just a source of O2 and a sink of CO2, but also constant stirring.

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Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by You're+All+Wrong · 2012-11-12 03:09 · Score: 1

Ug - by "settle out", I don't mean "form clearly identifiable layers like oil on water", there would be transitions of different gas density mixtures (in the same way as there are varying molecular speed for each of the different molecules in the mix). The fastest moving CO2 would end up higher than the slowest moving N2. (However, it would happily share its higher energy with the lighter mass molecules it collides with, and eventually end up lower again.)

The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is your friend.

--
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by flyingfsck · 2012-11-12 04:23 · Score: 1

Yup, that is one of the reasons why the sky is blue. The ozone likes to settle in a layer up there.

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Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by findoutmoretoday · 2012-11-12 04:39 · Score: 1

So you have never been in a CO2 cave?
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by jbengt · 2012-11-12 07:31 · Score: 1

FYI, CO2 gets up there up by mixing (wind, turbulence, & diffusion); but since it's heavier than N2 & O2, CO2 is a lesser percentage of air at higher altitudes than at lower altitudes.
Re:What is CO2 doing up there? by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 19:10 · Score: 1

Ozone is very reactive so it doesn't last too long in the troposphere. The ozone layer in the stratosphere is there because that's where it was formed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer#Origin_of_ozone

Re:less drag? by gagol · 2012-11-11 23:26 · Score: 2

Imagine a ball, now imagine it contracts... the ball get smaller, right? This means less atmosphere radius and thus more satellites sits above it. Someone correct me if i am wrong.

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Tomorrow is another day...

Re:less drag? by gagol · 2012-11-11 23:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

You forgot to factor in gravity and density.

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Tomorrow is another day...

Its molecular weight is irrelevant by Viol8 · 2012-11-11 23:46 · Score: 2

When 2 liquids can dissolve with each other the weight of the molecules is pretty irrelevant. How do you think alcohol and water mix when water is so much denser? You don't see the alcohol sink to the bottom in a wine bottle left for decades for example.

Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by Viol8 · 2012-11-12 01:18 · Score: 1

Um , no, you don't. Go get yourself a clue.
Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 01:31 · Score: 1

No, no you don't. Wine is a colloid. When you know what that is, go create yourself an account, and log in so we can mock you personally.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by fatphil · 2012-11-12 02:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

Liquids and gasses are very different beasts. One has enough intermolecular forces to bind the molecules into an effectively incompressible mass, the other hasn't, and has components that only interact with each other through random collisions. You're comparing apples to class III orange stars.

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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by Viol8 · 2012-11-12 04:22 · Score: 1

Liquids and gases are both fluids. If the weight of the molecules in a mixed gas made any different then earths and every other planets atmosphere would have seperated out into layers billions of years ago.
Re:Its molecular weight is irrelevant by fatphil · 2012-11-12 06:51 · Score: 1

Fluidity is irrelevant. Intramolecular forces are relevant. Liquids have them. Gases pretty much don't.

For ideal gases, free of intermolecular attractions, what's really most relevant is molecular speed, but (mean) speed is inversely proportional to sqrt(molecular weight). Therefore molecular weight *is* important. And for most of the atmosphere by volume, density is so low that intra-molecular attractive forces are indeed negligible, and so in the largest part of the atmosphere the gases do indeed behave like ideal gases.

Why else do you think the outermost region of the earth's atmosphere is mostly hydrogen? And the layer below that is mostly helium. And has been for your billions of years.

So please do some research before posting nonsense on slashdot. Here's a good place to start:
http://www.shodor.org/os411/courses/411b/module02/unit01/images/heterosphere.gif
The atmosphere's *way* thicker than just the blue thing that has the fluffy floaty rainy things in it, you know.

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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863

Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by Viol8 · 2012-11-11 23:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

They have a global warming potential thousands of times higher than CO2 and are being released into the atmosphere in large quantities. HCFCs replaced CFCs because they don't react with ozone so don't destroy the ozone layer. The downside of that is they don't react with ANYTHING in the atmosphere so no one has an idea how they will ever be removed. This is a potentially major issue which isn't being taken seriously enough.

Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by GameboyRMH · 2012-11-12 01:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Very good point but I wouldn't say "never mind CO2." I'd say it's an equally big problem.

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by khallow · 2012-11-12 02:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

HCFCs replaced CFCs because they don't react with ozone so don't destroy the ozone layer.
HCFCs do react with ozone and more so than CFCs. But since they're more reactive, they're more likely to decompose before they get to ozone-destroying altitudes.
Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by khallow · 2012-11-12 03:44 · Score: 3, Informative

And come to think of it, another effect is that they have a shorter half-life in atmosphere and hence less of a greenhouse effect than CFCs would have in the same situation.
Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by mcpheat · 2012-11-12 05:40 · Score: 3, Informative

HCFCs generally have a shorter atmospheric lifetime than the CFCs they replace as the hydrogen carbon bonds are weaker than halogen-carbon ones. The problem is PFCs which are composed of hydrogen and fluorine atoms only. The bonds are so stable the most likely way they will be destroyed is by diffusing to the mesosphere & being hit by cosmic rays.
Re:Never mind just CO2 , what about HCFCs? by jbengt · 2012-11-12 07:37 · Score: 1

HCFCs have more or less global warming potentials than CFCs, depending on chemistry, half-life, etc. Furthermore, HCFCs are being phased out; e.g. you can't buy new commercial equipment with R-22 anymore.

Your BS detector slept through 6th grade science. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 00:04 · Score: 1

Define the average distances, temperature and densities for the following layers of the Earth's atmosphere:

Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Themosphere, Exosphere.

Bonus points if your BS detector notices the temperature does not uniformly trend with radius.

Even more bonus points if you can explain why, though I figure that your BS detector didn't take basic physics or slept through that too.

The world is more complicated than first order theory. Adapt or die.

Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by mangu · 2012-11-12 00:05 · Score: 5, Informative

So global warming has nothing to do with it? It's all about the carbon dioxide buildup?

Why are you still trolling this bullshit?

It's all about burning fossil fuels. This has many effects, of which global warming is the most dangerous to humans right now, but raising the dangers of space junk is another bad effect.

What you are trying to imply is like saying cigarettes have nothing to do with lung cancer, because there are people who die of emphysema as well.

Go away, oil industry shill!

Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Third+Position · 2012-11-12 00:28 · Score: 3, Funny

Climate change! Is there nothing it can't do?

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American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by DiamondGeezer · 2012-11-12 01:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

Please prove that the commenter was bribed by the oil industry, that there exists any attempt by oil industry companies and that any money is on the table. I want receipts, invoices or funding statements in company records. Otherwise you're just full of shit.

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Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Bigby · 2012-11-12 01:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, he is saying something more like "lung cancer doesn't cause second hand smoke". Because the title would read something like:
Lung Cancer Affects Health Of Those Around You
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by hamburger+lady · 2012-11-12 02:09 · Score: 1

make people put down the sippy cup of bile and fucking think for once in their miserable lives. it can't do that, apparently.

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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by hamburger+lady · 2012-11-12 02:13 · Score: 4, Funny

please prove that the commenter is 'full of shit', that this person's body is at least made up of a majority of actual dung. i want pictures of said shit, testimonials from manure experts, or pictures from an MRI or a colonoscopy.

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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by silentcoder · 2012-11-12 02:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

>Please prove that the commenter was bribed by the oil industry, that there exists any attempt by oil industry companies and that any money is on the table. I want receipts, invoices or funding statements in company records. Otherwise you're just full of shit.
Of course, because it's standard practise for companies to keep careful, public accounting records of illegal or deceitful activities (paying shills is sometimes the former and always the latter).

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by slim · 2012-11-12 02:54 · Score: 3, Informative

Or alternatively, the People know that the global warming story is white middle-class hysteria and refuse to fund fantasies any more.
The people I've most recently encountered who were dead worried about climate change as an issue that was affecting them RIGHT NOW, were Eskimo in Northern Alaska. They're far from middle class. They see the ice fields they rely on for hunting forming later, and melting earlier, each year.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

"World-raping, destructive assholes" that provide you with everything you eat, drink, wear, and use in your entire life, from the cradle to the grave. If "they" are evil, it is because YOU are evil, and produce demand for what "they" are selling.

How about you stop framing things in terms of "good" and "evil"? No human sees himself as a villain in his own life story. Those people who burn fossil fuels don't do them so they can audition for a spot in the new Captain Planet movie. They do it to produce the goods and services that people need to live. If you increase their costs to stop global warming, you WILL make those goods and services more expensive. This WILL result in additional starvation among marginal populations, like, say, all of Africa.

If you want to stop CO2 emission WITHOUT causing mass starvation, you need to start advocating for non-CO2 emitting technologies, namely LFTRs, or whatever other promising technology tickles your fancy. Just don't demand that "they" simply stop. People will die if they do.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by fuzzywig · 2012-11-12 04:32 · Score: 1

If it helps, most humans have more bacterial cells inside them, than they do human cells, and approximately half your faecal is made up of dead bacteria. I'm not sure how that will help but there's a joke in there somewhere.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by khallow · 2012-11-12 04:59 · Score: 1

I'm not talking about the consumers, I'm talking about the forces keeping us needing to use those things to exist, be competitive, whatever.

You mean like your body? It forces you to eat, breathe, and other processes that cause all sorts of trouble. Good luck with that.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 05:25 · Score: 1

You mean like your body? It forces you to eat, breathe, and other processes that cause all sorts of trouble. Good luck with that.
If you really think that we need to consume fossil fuels to eat, you're sadly deluded, and you deserve what you get, but I don't deserve what I get as a result of you believing that. Get over it.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by sycodon · 2012-11-12 05:52 · Score: 1

A good way to sort out the enviro-wackos in this debate is to just ask them about nuclear energy. If they are for it, then they are sincere in their belief that we need to reduce carbon emissions.
If not, then they are likely just using this debate as a means to advance their wacko agenda that involves people biking to work (in 100+ degress or 30 or less degrees, mass urbanization, enforced reductions in power, then rationing, etc. etc. etc. Just imagine Earth Firsters wet dream agenda.
Hell, Hansen is for Nukes. I don't know why he hasn't been more effective in advocating for it. Maybe getting arrested for a stupid pipeline is tarnishing him as a wack-job.

--
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 07:38 · Score: 2

Or like me they're not against nuclear power per se' but think more needs to be done to ensure the proper handling of nuclear waste and that currently the cost of building nuclear power plants makes it one of the most expensive ways to produce electrical power. If those things can be solved then I'd be more interested in it.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by khallow · 2012-11-12 08:34 · Score: 1

If you really think that we need to consume fossil fuels to eat
We need to consume something to eat. And it's usually not growing on our dining room table. So someone has to make, deliver, and cook that food for billions of people. That requires a lot of infrastructure, much of which is fossil fuel-based.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by sycodon · 2012-11-12 09:02 · Score: 1

The problem is that these things can't be solved because every time someone suggest it be looked into, they get shut down. Or, when a solution is proposed, it is dismissed out of hand because it doesn't solve the problem 100% or there are perceived or made up deficiencies. Don't underestimate the anti-nuke crowd.
There is no chicken and the egg here. They just shoot the chicken.

--
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Vintermann · 2012-11-12 09:04 · Score: 1

> that provide you with everything you eat, drink, wear, and use in your entire life, from the cradle to the grave.
No, they don't do that, and to the degree they do, they are certainly well enough compensated that we don't owe them a debt of gratitude.
The people we are talking about here aren't the people just doing their jobs to get by, as oil field workers or truckers or HR managers at power plants or what have you. It's the people consciously lobbying and manipulating the public against climate action, despite actually knowing they are wrong. It's like the tobacco lobbyists - in many cases, it is actually the tobacco lobbyists. People like S. Fred Singer have been on the wrong side of virtually every single scientific issue which called for government action and regulation, from tobacco to asbestos to CFCs to acid rain to global warming, for the last 40 years. They have a whole cottage industry of think tanks based on one of two ideas:
1. the one that the market can't possibly be wrong, ever, or
2. Every idea, no matter how bad, wrong, or evil, is entitled to an attorney defending it to the public as if it were an accused in a court of law.
Sometimes a perverse combination of the two.

--
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by pastafazou · 2012-11-12 09:05 · Score: 1

You're an idiot. Fossil fuels heat our homes, power our farm equipment, generate electricity, power the transportation system that gets the food to the stores, heats the greenhouses that allow us to grow food in climates and seasons where we normally couldn't, and so much more. Do you think we can just stop using them? If you do, you're delusional. We might be able to phase them out over time, but that's going to require some huge capital investment in nuclear. And it will HAVE to be nuclear, there's no way you can replace our energy requirements with wind and solar.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Genda · 2012-11-12 10:45 · Score: 1

I'm sorry but there are people bred and lead into a corporate mentality that think nirvana is the subjugation of the planet or that we can and must for reasons of profit consume then entire planet at least until they get their nut. That my friend is evil. Rationalize it all you want. People are greedy, self obsessed nasty primates, and unless we teach them from an early age that we are all responsible for ourselves and our relationship to one another and life on this planet, we get precisely this me first screw all y'all world that we now live in. Or haven't you been paying attention to the economy for the last 10 years?
The economy, the global climate, war in the middle east, if you can't see the same threads at play, you need to look a lot harder... no, no , don't help him, he needs to see it for himself. We don't need to pillage the planet to live well. A person doesn't need to generate 50 tons of garbage or burn the equivalent of 20 swimming pools full of fossil fuel a year to have a rich a rewarding life. We don't need to eat food made half way around the world. We don't need to dump millions of gallons of fresh water to make deserts into golf courses. We live a nonsubtle insanity in the US and its caught up with us. We've been living on the credit card in every possible way including environmentally and the bill is coming due, and they won't let us work it off by washing dishes. Why is this so hard to get. The dream was corrupt from the get. It was based on killing indigenous people and stealing their stuff. It was based on tearing down the world to feed our egos. All it cost was everything. We've left our children a smoking hole. Yes, the common man is as guilty as anyone. But the men in power, the men with wealth spent every penny they made perpetuating the madness, removing the checks and the balances. They cut the breaks and locked it in high gear while we were in motion. Because they were getting off on the speed. Now the rides scary and all we see are curves up ahead. Talk fault if you want. That's a waste. Responsibility, now that conversation has some teeth. Taking a little responsibility, that makes a difference. Creating new technologies, that both gives us rich and fulfilling lives while allowing us to become increasingly responsible for the mess we make. That would be a worthy conversation. Or you can keep howling about how your shit doesn't smell all that bad. Good luck with that.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Genda · 2012-11-12 10:50 · Score: 1

Yeah and there's the lean healthy guy over there eating from his organic garden, looking down the barrel of 8 decades of active interesting life, and the fat body over there fed and bred on fast food who'll be lucky to see 45. Same bodies. It depends on how you feed them, about taking responsibility for not doing what that nasty little black box in your living room tells you to do endless hours a day.
Nobody said stop metabolizing. We do say take what you need, what serves your best interest, be a responsible global citizen. Or you can be a pig. Your ball.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Genda · 2012-11-12 11:06 · Score: 1

Bingo, its what we let happen. The distance the average dinner travels in France is about 5 miles. In the United States that not so happy meal logs thousands of miles. Beef grown in South America... on and on, there is no reason we need to transport food as far as we do, it just happens to feed an insane machine that has nothing to do with human values and everything to do with commodities, and retail groceries, and a hundred other crazy things. The French are so much healthier than us, its really shocking. Their food is so much more delicious and healthier than ours, also shocking.
The way of life is the problem. Why are we even having this conversation. Why aren't 80% of the office people telecommuting? A single act, improve human life, reduce a meaningless waste on the global infrastructure, How many hundreds of billions of gallons of fossil fuel would that save? That's what I'm talking about. Just having an open mind and looking for even the low hanging fruit. We could begin to transform life, people could walk and ride bicycles, get out and play with their kids. Do that life thing. Instead of spinning on their thumbs waiting for the iPhone 2431. Get a life. Borrow a life. Rent one if you have to. Get over the craziness infecting this society. Look at where people are really healthy, happy and productive and rob them blind of their good habits. Stop actively working against life. We built this life to suck, We can rebuild it not to suck. It simply a matter of will and appropriate action. Who's in?
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by Genda · 2012-11-12 11:10 · Score: 1

The technology is so close to there. Sad problem is that the Chinese are going to do all the work perfecting and they'll own all the technology. There are safe, clean, small, reactors that could power neighborhoods across the country. The people who drill and mine carbon, won't have it.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by budgenator · 2012-11-12 12:09 · Score: 1

So lead by example, you can start by getting rid of that gas-hog F250.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by khallow · 2012-11-12 14:07 · Score: 1

I have a solution. If there's an actual problem, then let us do something about it. But if there isn't, and what you mention falls in that category, then let's move on to an actual problem.

Transportation is not a significant cost either as money or "responsible global citizen" viewpoint. It doesn't matter that much, if my food had to travel thousands of miles rather than the alleged "five miles" of the french dinner (which I might add, I don't believe, simply because of the number of people packed into urban areas like Paris and Marseilles).

The French are so much healthier than us, its really shocking. Their food is so much more delicious and healthier than ours, also shocking.
My suspicion is that has to most to do with their lesser valuing of time. It'd be nice to have the sort of leisure that the French have. But then we'd have to give up the benefits of working as much as we do.

Why aren't 80% of the office people telecommuting?
Because they wouldn't work otherwise. There are businesses and people who in combination are disciplined enough to make telecommuting work. And there are obvious advantages once you do get it to work (no need to commute is a powerful incentive from the worker's point of view). But I think it needs some substantial infrastructure for it to work on a large scale, such as dedicated office space in the residence (or nearby) and good video conferencing.

We built this life to suck, We can rebuild it not to suck. It simply a matter of will and appropriate action. Who's in?
I think it's a matter of choice. If people didn't their lives the way they are, then they can easily change that and themselves. They don't. Hence, I see no reason to do something for them that they are choosing to avoid.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 14:48 · Score: 1

The single biggest reason that few nuclear plants have been built since the 1970's has nothing to do with anti-nuclear activists. It's economics. It's because it was far cheaper with a quicker return on your investment to build new coal plants and lately natural gas power plants. If nuclear had been/was cheaper than those then I guarantee more plants would have been built regardless of activists objections. And if you want to complain about excessive regulation, I'm sorry, nuclear power badly handled has the potential to render large areas of land uninhabitable. I'm not interested in letting the profit motive override safety considerations. I'm willing to see tweaks to the regulations to improve them if solid evidence can be presented to make the case but wholesale revisions are out of the question for me.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by drinkypoo · 2012-11-12 15:25 · Score: 1

So lead by example, you can start by getting rid of that gas-hog F250.
What a staggeringly stupid thing to say, it's almost like you're... well, as stupid as usual. First, it cannot be a gas hog, because it doesn't burn gasoline, it burns diesel. Second, my F250 gets better mileage than a smaller truck, not worse, because it has a diesel. It gets better real-world unladen mileage than a V6 taco 4x4. I haul heavy things, like loads of firewood, and I tow heavy things, and you are simply not permitted to rent a heavy thing if you don't have a 3/4 ton truck or heavier to tow it with. Where I live, and where I go, I need my truck to have 4WD. Meanwhile, I only use it when I need to haul something in it; otherwise I drive a 1982 300SD that gets 30 MPG freeway and which has over 250,000 miles on it. Atop that, I buy biodiesel when I'm where you can do that. You cannot currently purchase any direct-replacement biofuels for gasoline-fueled vehicles. And finally, I am maintaining these vehicles rather than buying new vehicles, which further reduces my energy consumption.
You can lead by example in making slashdot a better place by fucking off immediately instead of making any more ignorant suggestions.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by tmosley · 2012-11-14 15:05 · Score: 1

Jesus Christ dude. I don't think I have ever seen a bigger hypocrite than you outside of politics.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by tmosley · 2012-11-14 15:08 · Score: 1

Yes, kill all humans. I'm with you brother. Do your part by ending your own life immediately, you greedy, self-obsessed, nasty primate.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by tmosley · 2012-11-16 10:21 · Score: 1

Good luck feeding Africa without American grain grown by "evil" farmers who use "evil" fossil fuels.
Re:Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with it by pastafazou · 2012-11-22 08:12 · Score: 1

citation for what dumbass? The fact that fossil fuels heat our homes, generate electricity, power our transportation systems, etc? I don't need to cite that, it's obvious.

Push or pull by wonkey_monkey · 2012-11-12 00:31 · Score: 1

Rising carbon dioxide levels at the edge of space are apparently reducing the pull

Isn't it more of a push?

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

Re:Push or pull by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 01:01 · Score: 1

Rising carbon dioxide levels at the edge of space are apparently reducing the pull
Isn't it more of a push?
I'm no specialist, but I'd imagine the particles slow the satellites down -- if only very slightly. This combined with gravity would mean the satellite tends to fall.
Re:Push or pull by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 19:14 · Score: 1

No, as the article states the result of this contraction is to reduce drag on the satellites extending their orbital life.

What would it be like today? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 00:42 · Score: 1

What would the world be like today if Humans in the 1300s could measure climate? Would they have banned draft and livestock animals because of their methane production? Would they have banned using candles and camp fires and other CO2-producing activities?

Since, you know, when discounting Michael Mann's fabricated data, it was warmer in the 1300s than it is now, without the help of any modern technology..

Re:What would it be like today? by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 19:20 · Score: 1

Sorry to burst your bubble but none of those things you mentioned would change the total amount of carbon in the carbon cycle so they would have had no long term effects. It was all just getting circulated through various parts of the cycle. It's the carbon that has been buried for 100's of millions of years that we are digging up and putting back into active circulation that is the problem.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by khallow · 2012-11-12 01:35 · Score: 1

That's because you like a number of people think that CLIMATE CHANGE only causes warming. It causes a rougher cycle of warmer highs and colder lows. Overall it causes the planet to warm, but the effects felt are not always to warm.

I imagine flyingfsck's BS detector is pegging on this bit of rhetorical dodge. Normal people would call this the much more accurate "ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING" not the vague "CLIMATE CHANGE".

The extra CO2 is pretty well explained. by cnaumann · 2012-11-12 01:36 · Score: 5, Informative

We add an additional 4% each year and there is nothing to balance that. We can also look at isotope ratios (fossil fuels are ancient carbon). It is our CO2.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions-intermediate.htm

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by gsgriffin · 2012-11-12 01:38 · Score: 1

Take a walk in a redwood forest and see a cross section from a tree that was 2000 years old. It is obvious to even the simple minded that the rings on the tree show large and long cycles of strong grow and slow growth...none of those cycles of climate change in the past were due to man.

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jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?

Re:less drag? by nedlohs · 2012-11-12 01:45 · Score: 1

Obviously. Are you merely illiterate, or just plain thick?

Re:Yawn by khallow · 2012-11-12 01:49 · Score: 1

If those predictions are true, then we are fucked. FUBAR

"IF".

Re:more bad science by DiamondGeezer · 2012-11-12 01:52 · Score: 1, Troll

If we won't credit carbon dioxide with these extra superpowers, then the terrorists win.

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Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question

So... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-12 01:56 · Score: 4, Funny

...the sky is literally falling

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by berashith · 2012-11-12 02:04 · Score: 2

that cant be possible. I think God placed that tree there to test our faith.

Re:less drag? by silentcoder · 2012-11-12 02:31 · Score: 5, Informative

There is no contradiction.

Go put your hand behind your fridge - notice that the iron grid there is quite a bit warmer than room temperature ?
But the inside of the fridge is cold...

See to make the fridge cold, we have to MOVE the heat inside it somewhere, that grid is where it ends up being radiated away from.

The grid gets warmer, so the fridge can get colder.

Is that a contradiction too ?

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Unicode killed the ASCII-art *

Re:One is not like the other. by gr8_phk · 2012-11-12 02:37 · Score: 3, Informative

When you take energy from the oxygen molecules and the radiate it, you don't get to pick a direction. Some will come down, some will go out to space. The net effect (of this phenomena) is cooling.

Re:how did they tell them apart? by slim · 2012-11-12 02:48 · Score: 2

No, no, the CO2 from "volcanoes and stuff" is a factor, I'm sure.

But we should probably deal with the 99% of CO2 that comes from humans burning stuff, before moving on to the volcanoes releasing the other 1%.

Summary by Botia · 2012-11-12 03:16 · Score: 1

So to sum up the summary, global warming is causing cooling that is reducing gravity and making satellites more efficient.

"Global warming" has "a cooling effect" that is "reducing the pull that Earth's atmosphere has" and "exerting less drag on satellites."

What great news!

Re:Summary by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 19:32 · Score: 1

If you really knew anything about it you'd realize that the reason there is less drag on satellites is because the atmosphere by contracting has become less dense at the altitudes the satellites are orbiting. It has little or nothing to do with gravity. I guess the contraction could change the gravitational gradient slightly but I wonder if even the GRACE satellites could measure it.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

Not really. GW is caused by conversion of high energy photons (light) into low energy photons (heat). If CO2 increases this conversion rate, then the result should be increased warmth at all levels of the atmosphere where increased concentrations of CO2 are present. This observation throws the fundamental axion of AGW into doubt--something I have been talking about for some time, as the heat capacity of CO2 is slightly below the average of other atmospheric gases, meaning that an increased fraction of CO2 should cause very minor cooling rather than warming. This article (or summary) seems to imply that this is the case. If there is global warming going on, it is likely to be from a different source than CO2 (I propose water vapor as the primary driver, as it's continuous output rise matches the slow rise in CO2 over relevant time scales, but I am open to alternative hypotheses). If that is the case, then REJOICE, because if we can find it, we can fix it. CO2 is the only one that we can't fix without a radical overhaul of worldwide energy infrastructure (which we would still benefit from, but which should be motivated by economic concerns rather than the threat of impending doom).

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by tmosley · 2012-11-12 03:25 · Score: 2

Your ability to explain any phenomena with the same cause is a strong indication that you are not a rationalist.

Re:One is not like the other. by Bartles · 2012-11-12 03:48 · Score: 1

What sort of idiot eats chilli from a plate. I think we need an independent corroboration of this study. Has it been peer-reviewed by an acceptable scientific journal?

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by flyingfsck · 2012-11-12 04:19 · Score: 1

I'm Canadian eh. Global warming means that one can farm the tundra in Canada and Russia and will enable the planet to sustain a few billion more people. It is generally a good thing.

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Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!

Re:less drag? by VortexCortex · 2012-11-12 06:11 · Score: 1

The grid gets warmer, so the fridge can get colder.

Is that a contradiction too ?

No, it is merely a phenomenon caused by an omniscient deity to test the faith of their believers -- Now THAT'S a contradiction.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by jbengt · 2012-11-12 07:26 · Score: 1

Not really. GW is caused by conversion of high energy photons (light) into low energy photons (heat). If CO2 increases this conversion rate . . .

Stop right there. CO2 does not convert light into infrared. It absorbs infrared. The conversion from visible light to infrared occurs when the earth absorbs visible light, heats up, and subsequently re-emits the heat as infrared waves.
Re-read TFA (if you really read it the first time) and note that this is about the increased CO2 in the upper atmosphere gaining energy from collisions with O2, and re-emitting that energy as infrared, much of which makes it into space, since it is happening above most of the atmosphere. Has nothing to do with trapping heat from the sun that is causing gloabl warming, other than both involve CO2 & infrared.

Re:The Best of BOTH Worlds! by jbengt · 2012-11-12 07:42 · Score: 1

FYI, they are not "blaming" global warming for the reported cooling of the uppermost layers of the atmosphere, they are demonstrating that the increased CO2 measured at those levels has a cooling effect that causes that layer to contract.

Massive mountain of ...nonsense. by dtjohnson · 2012-11-12 13:10 · Score: 1

Doesn't anyone in the climate warming business know anything about the basic physics of gases? To paraphrase TFA for brevity: CO2 'collisions' with O2 molecules are exciting the CO2 molecules making them radiate heat??? It is basic physics that ALL gases in the upper atmosphere are constantly colliding at a rate proportional to their temperature and are constantly radiating (and absorbing) photons at frequencies determined by their molecular structure. Both O2 molecules and the very scarce CO2 molecules (and the far more abundant N2 molecules) are continually radiating heat into space. And then we read: "The density of carbon dioxide is too thin above altitudes of about 30 miles for the the molecules to recapture this heat" which is utterly meaningless. The only way that anything about this article makes even a tiny bit of sense is if we assume that the author is attempting to claim that the upper atmosphere is cooler as a result of heat being blocked by carbon dioxide in the lower atmosphere and that is, itself, a ridiculous claim as the planet heat balance between the heat arriving and the heat being radiated is always very nearly in balance or the planet would overheat in a matter of days as a result of the massive amounts of heat arriving and leaving every day. A change in the atmospheric heat flux sufficient to significantly change the temperature of the planet's outer atmosphere on a short term basis is obviously from something other than carbon dioxide and is probably due to a change in solar radiation or a change in interstellar radiation or some other less understood effect.

Re:Massive mountain of ...nonsense. by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 19:43 · Score: 1

O2 and N2 are both basically transparent to IR radiation. CO2 is still the most abundant and likely molecule at those altitudes to possibly capture the IR radiation..
Re:Massive mountain of ...nonsense. by dtjohnson · 2012-11-13 08:27 · Score: 1

While O2 and N2 don't absorb in the infrared spectrum, they do (like everything) emit in the infrared spectrum. Any H2O or CO2 molecules which absorb infrared radiation (and thereby increase in temperature) will essentially instantaneously collide with far more abundant O2 and N2 molecules and transfer the absorbed energy to them via the collision. As a result of these collisions, the temperature of all of the gases in the upper atmosphere in any particular location will be...the same...and all of those gases will radiate heat into space. TFA, however, is attempting to claim that the upper atmosphere at those altitudes will be...cooler...as a result of the presence of CO2, not warmer and is just one more example of pseudo-scientific nonsense that sputters continuously from the lips of AGW believers. The only things they know with certainty are that CO2 absorbs IR radiation and that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing. All of the rest of their 'knowledge' is...opinion masquerading as fact.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 18:42 · Score: 1

CO2 is essentially transparent to visible light (your high energy photons). The visible light is absorbed (or reflected) by things that aren't transparent to it. That absorbed energy is then emitted sooner or later as energy in wave lengths according to Planck's law, generally in the infrared range at normal Earth temperatures. CO2 is not transparent to certain wave lengths of IR radiation so it captures it. The heat capacity of CO2 has nothing to do with it, it's strictly a matter of radiative physics.

It's impossible for water vapor to drive global warming. The level of of water vapor in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature. If the feedback from additional water vapor were high enough to drive global warming it would have driven the Earth to get so hot the oceans would boil and totally evaporate long ago.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 18:44 · Score: 1

The physical world is not always as simple as you'd like it to be.

Re:Chicken Littles always... by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 18:48 · Score: 1

AC didn't deserve the Troll rating. In a sense the sky really is falling because the upper atmosphere is contracting. The top of the sky is getting closer to the surface of the Earth. I thought it was a nice turn of phrase.

Re:Yawn by riverat1 · 2012-11-12 18:54 · Score: 1

We have more to lose if the predictions are true and we don't try to do anything about it than if they are not true and we do try to do something about it. The first situation could be existential, the second merely financial and we get a cleaner world.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by tmosley · 2012-11-14 15:00 · Score: 1

Waving away criticism by saying "it's complicated" is not rational. This is a curiosity stopper, and should be avoided.

Re:Global warming causing global cooling... by riverat1 · 2012-11-14 15:23 · Score: 1

Ok, do you want me to write a tl;dr reply? The fact is warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper atmosphere is not contradictory when it's caused by an increase in greenhouse gases. If the warming were caused by increases in solar radiation then both the lower and upper atmosphere would warm. All it takes is some physics to understand why.

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