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"Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals
An anonymous reader writes "Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark. More than half of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 if current trends continue."
Isn't it about rising temps and sea levels? THAT'S what's supposed to reduce habitat. Not just CO2 levels by itself. Just sayin'.
If species are losing their living space it's due to increasing populations of humans burning their habitat, not from a little CO2. Or from humans using the wrong farming practices, but again not due to CO2 levels.
And NYC was supposed to be 3 feed underwater by 2015.
It was, briefly.
Chicken little's hypothesis was based on one data point though. Sadly, this is not the case for climate change.
for your Grandchildren. Those ignoring or making fun of it don't care about their
descendants. I guess Slashdotters may be clever, but not very respectful of science
itself. Very sad indeed !
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
enough already
I know! The next thing you know, those heathen liberals will be telling us the Earth is round and goes around the Sun! Why can't we get back to the simpler times when we worshipped the Sun and the Moon as powerful gods?!
I'm surprised about how Slashdot seems so overwhelmingly anti-science on this issue. Only a few posts in and I've already won ""idiotic anti-global warming arguments bingo".
I'm pretty sure some deniers conclusively proved that this is all bunk in the last article. The problem is that 1) the scientists didn't know that the station is on a volcano, 2) they did know it was on a volcano and they still put the CO2 detector inside the volcano right above the liquid-hot magma, 3) there are no ice cores on Hawaii, 4) ice cores are completely unreliable for anything anyway, 5) the CO2 monitored is only applicable to Hawaii, more specifically a few meters around the detector and does not register global CO2 levels, 6) China still exists thereby making all readings void, 7) these readings don't matter, 8) these readings are all faulty because I don't know how they get them, 9) these readings align well with other CO2 stations across the globe, and we all know that repeatable and reliable numbers are a sign of confirmation bias not accuracy, 10) these numbers are void because of Climategate probably, 11) these numbers are valid but don't matter because I don't know why, 12) plants like CO2 therefore any changes in the environment are offset by wonderful new foliage, and 13) these numbers are void because Al Gore still exists.
Why are we still even discussing this? It has been demonstratively proven false.
It doesn't matter, because there's not one D thing that we can do about it anyway. Stop burning fossil fuel? Sure, if you want to kill millions of humans, because they / we all need the fossil fuels to get along. Casting people into abject poverty is not a valid solution, either, which is what happens when you deprive them of the cheap fossil fuels. That results in an average 6.5 years shorter lifespan, and if the poverty is experienced as a child, the life shortening is not reversible. Just get over it, whatever is going to happen will happen, and we'll either adapt or we won't. I'm expecting that if push comes to shove, some serious geo-engineering projects will be undertaken, such as dykes along key seaboard areas, and we'll just lose the polar bears - who needs 'em, anyway. When the choice is dead people or dead polar bears, I'll take the dead polar bears.
Meanwhile, if we could get _this_ to work:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/07/solar-thermal-electrochemical-photo.html
then we could actually take CO2 concentration back to before the industrial revolution. Just get prepared for the sort of winters that George Washington had to deal with at Valley Forge.
It seems that the 'talking point' of the eco-marxists today "unprecedented" levels of CO2...was actually disproven in 2008:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf (from 2008)
"The record clearly demonstrates that [CO2 levels were] significantly higher than usually reported for the Last [Glacial] Termination, with levels of up to ~425 ppm about 12,750 years ago, which exceeds the present CO2 concentration of 395 ppm."
This explains thoroughly that
a) it's fundamentally a fallacy to compare Vostok data with Mauna Loa CO2 results (from 3000+ m altitude), and
b) that CO2 values frequently exceeded 400 in both this and the last centuries (as high as 480 depending on how you look at it).
-Styopa
By the year 2081, more than half of these types of predictions are likely to be shown to be more than half true.
Seems we're suffering from a bit of Climate Change Fatigue... which suggests that the less than 1% of credible scientists who doubt AGW have managed to sow enough seeds of dramatic dissent for the rest of us to lose interest.
Or perhaps, it is something a little simpler in the human psyche. Whilst we bemoan politicians who have no more future vision than the end of their current term, it seems that we too are particularly short-sighted about the future of this planet. I suspect that the majority of us look little further than how we're going to satisfy the physical aspects of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs.
When our life expectancies are extended to 1000 years (or more), and we face the very real prospect of living on the planet we are currently terraforming, we may take a slightly different view. Somehow, I doubt it. Most of the people alive today will live to see an increase of 4-6 degrees C... and yet, we're far more interested in gun control and the Kardashians.
I feel sad for our children (and their children) when I think about the world they will inherit from us.
You mean like elevated temperatures, arid conditions, or being underwater?
caritj.org
so I dont see how more co2 will harm plants
Don't say it so loudly, you'll provoke someone to write a paper on it!
"so I dont see how more co2 will harm plants". Yes you do, you just wanted to do a quick denial thing. From the article:
"An international team of researchers looked at the impacts of rising temperatures on nearly 50,000 common species of plants and animals."
"They looked at both temperature and rainfall records for the habitats that these species now live in and mapped the areas that would remain suitable for them under a number of different climate change scenarios."
"The scientists projected that if no significant efforts were made to limit greenhouse gas emissions, 2100 global temperatures would be 4C above pre-industrial levels."
"In this model, some 34% of animal species and 57% of plants would lose more than half of their current habitat ranges. "
So the models very much in line with the UN one at 4 degrees, it will expand the dessert along the equators and push species north into a smaller area presumably. But hey, if you deny it, it won't happen right?
I just ran across Kevin Anderson's lecture again. Watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U
thegodmovie.com - watch it
You mention cherry-picking, but seem to be doing the exact same thing yourself. Well, except you're not even providing citations so we know WHICH models you're talking about and can provide the dozens of responses refuting the claims you are making. So it's more like "talking about a cherry on a tree in a vast orchard without specifying which one."
The "dessert" band along the equator? Is that your belt?
No more CO2, or we'll run out of pie!
A more recent poll showed that 2/3rd of statistics are made up.
How about you get labeled a Climate Hysteric? There are too many of those for my liking.
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists' they just might have diferent priorities, and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
"With us, or Against us" has been used many times in history; but it's not always true.
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period. from: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/understand-cc-long-term.aspx
I tried to think, but nothin' happened!
"And NYC was supposed to be 3 feed underwater by 2015. "
2015 hasn't happened yet - its still 2013 where I live.
No, "they" didn't 400 ppm has always been the big concerning level, after which positive feed back systems may be triggered. The truth is nobody really knows - although we are about to.
The statement that 'plants breath CO2 so extra CO2 is good' indicates that you've been smoking way too much of your ganga to understand that an ecosystem is a bit more complex than your hydroponics setup.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period.
from: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/understand-cc-long-term.aspx
And how were mammals handling those environmental conditions? What's that? They didn't exist yet? I'm sorry, what? Yes, apology accepted. No, no, it's okay, we put up with demonstrations of subpar intelligence around here all the time. All is forgiven. :)
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists'
Indeed; people who don't care one way or another are people who don't care one way or another, and people who don't care one way or another don't generally bother posting. People who post endless screeching copypasta rants denying overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, are best described as denialists.
and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
All of these are important things. So is global warming. See, it's actually possible for many things to be important at the same time. Welcome to reality--take a look around, and be warned that some of it may be a little confusing, but it's in your interest to try to figure it out.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Sorry, that's irrelevant. And you can't even see it. The rate of increase in CO2, and the rate of increase in temperature, is the problem. Because today's organisms (and not those of 450 million years ago), on which depend, have evolved under the stable climate of the recent past, and many will have difficulty adapting to such rapid changes. And other things, like glaciers, don't adapt--they were in equilibrium with the stable climate of the past, which is why they are now undergoing changes. Why are you so eager to accept the science that you *believe* supports your "side", and so eager to dismiss science that doesn't? That is fundamentally dishonest.
DERP!
Allan Savory gave a really good Ted Talk a few months ago backing up that claim with a substantial amount of science and experience. I hope you're not too lazy to watch all twenty-two minutes of it, but if you are, let me give you a quick synopsis. Dr. Savory states that the majority of our global warming issues are due to desertification (the destruction of grasslands and their transformation into desert areas), and he claims that 50% of the CO2 in the atmosphere can be removed simply by ceasing unsustainable agriculture practices and converting these lands into grasslands for grazing.
Yeah, life on earth was different then. Mamals didn't even exist, much less humans.
Reading the comments on this post today so reminds me of the movie and ideas behind Idiocracy. The future, today!
Convince the movie studios that carbon dioxide causes increased piracy (and therefore loss of income) and you'll start to see effective strategies and International Treaties put in place to manage or even reduce it: DMCA == DRM Millennium Carbon Act; ACTA == Anti Carbon Trading Alliance; COPA == Carbon Obliges Piracy Act; ad nauseam.
wow, 3 dupes. Is that a record? Oh, I guess this one isn't a dupe because some idiot failed 5th grade science and doesn't understand that plants like carbon dioxide.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
http://redd.it/1cswmm http://redd.it/1b6roo read these please.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
you dont want that to happen pph, trust me. http://redd.it/1cswmm http://redd.it/1b6roo read these please.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Well, lets face it, the most important thing is the economy grows, and if indefinite human population growth is required to achieve this, then so be it.. who cares about anything else?!
And yet.... your insurance company IS taking this seriously. THEY have access to a whole pile a data too showing how often floods, tornados, storm surges etc etc occur and they see a trend of them happening more often which is why insurance premiums are increasing.
You can deny all you want, they will on the other hand look after themselves and charge accordingly , and if they decide large parts of the populated USA are too high a risk they WILL pull out or make the premiums so expensive that it amounts to the same thing.
Thats is the nice side of the free market, they are free to make their own assessment, and they are. They are changing policies, making things like fences, driveways, pools, etc uninsurable, they are putting up premiums, putting up excesses.
Insurance companies are not in either camp of denial or belief in global warming, they are in the business of risk management and at the moment the facts are telling them global warming is producing higher risks, so they are managing their risks accordingly. So one way or another, those who deny global warming is happening WILL pay for it because the increased insurance costs for businesses will get passed on, lower crop yields means higher food prices, more frequent more severe storms means more social disruption and costs, higher crime, etc etc etc, all of which will cost in taxes,insurances, etc.
Thing is, if global warming is WRONG, the worst that can happen is we end up with a cleaner planet.
plants "breath" co2 so I dont see how more co2 will harm plants.
Well, you breath oxygen, so breathing 100% pure oxygen is no problem, right? Well, actually, it is a problem if you breathe it for any prolonged period of time. Read up on hyperoxia.
It just doesn't follow that because plants need CO2 that more CO2 is better for plants... or at least the plants you want growing.
Except that life rarely responds to toxic exposure linearly. At some point it will become increasingly difficult for radically larger percentages of the population to breath. Of course, summers will be 65C by then..
[citation needed]
How many plants and animals are going to see their living spaces increase?
An international team of researchers looked at the impacts of rising temperatures on nearly 50,000 common species of plants and animals.
They looked at both temperature and rainfall records for the habitats that these species now live in and mapped the areas that would remain suitable for them under a number of different climate change scenarios.
The scientists projected that if no significant efforts were made to limit greenhouse gas emissions, 2100 global temperatures would be 4C above pre-industrial levels.
In this model, some 34% of animal species and 57% of plants would lose more than half of their current habitat ranges.
The interesting part is that they looked at the "habitats that these species now live in". They did not look at habitats that are not currently suitable for the species to live in. For all we know there could be more area that species could live in when the climate changed. By concentrating on current species ranges the scientists are skewing the results. One should look at the whole system before coming to a conclusion.
Are you claiming that temperature proxies (tree rings, ice cores, lake sediment, etc.) from around the world do not show the Medieval Warm Period and the following Little Ice Age as global conditions?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I've seen so many studies in the last 2 years debunking the co2 theory that there's no way the premise could be true. Yet we still see this special interest group 'science' coming out and widely promoted by the mass media. If the facts don't fit the theory, it's not the facts which are wrong.
The whole co2 climate change field is just being used to promote fear as a distraction from the truth.
Sorry, got to call bullshit on that one.
(Quality argument adapted from here; I'd have simply modded down but I didn't have points).
I had put this as an article but it was declined.
2-3 million years ago 300km inside the arctic circle CO2 levels were 400 ppm and temps were 8C above present. This according to an article published last week in the journal Science covered by Scientific American (link to journal in that article). Lake sediments find 7 varieties of fir tree pollen. This verdant period doubtless had countless bacteria, plants, insects, mammals now extinct because between then and now have been a whole lot of very cold years interspersed with some brief 10-15000 year periods of temperatures like the current. These species failed to adapt to the climate that is our current day. Firs don't grow there now. Humans are not to blame for that - there weren't any. This condition had likely persisted for millions of years prior, though intermittent rapid cold/hot spells did punctuate the climate cycles and cause widespread extinctions.
Life adapts. That's what it does. Life is a plague that cannot be stopped short of a supernova or the impact of something the size of Mars that sterilizes the entire surface by turning it to magma to 4km depth - and I'm not even sure about the latter as such an impact will kick the life off to circle the sun to land again when the planet has cooled enough to accept it. Species go extinct all the time and new species are born every minute. Every corner that has any form of energy will be populated by forms of life that use that energy and higher forms that feed on those, ultimately capturing carbon in stable forms. That is another thing that life-as-we-know-it does that has led to our current bitterly cold climate.
Humans use intelligence and common effort to surmount environmental challenges - that's what we do. There are humans that live on Antarctica and in the furthest terrestrial reaches of the arctic circle. If the Arctic Circle rises in temperatures by 8C again - or even 16C - then Mankind gets more arable land and living space, not less, because polar temps increase disproportionately to equatorial temps. Plants and animals move north quite rapidly. The vast Alaskan, Canadian and Russian permafrost becomes cropland. We move freight over the poles year-round, opening ports and resorts on the northern shores. And we lose Florida, New Orleans and South Texas. That's inconvenient. People have to move. The US probably has to annex Canada. I'm not buying the whole coral reef thing since those reefs are over 3 million years old and have survived the descent into the cold and back again very many times. That means they evolved in a climate that wasn't as crisp as our current era and should thrive when their natural habitat is restored.
You can complain about this if you want to but you cannot change the outcome. For every person on Earth who cares enough to act to reverse climate are fifty who either stand to benefit from climate change or have too many more pressing issues to care, and their efforts are more than enough to counteract any green movement that could occur short of a world government with levels of control that is not to be wish'd. Do you think Canadians and Russians live in fear of global warming? Do you think if the US converts entirely to hydro, nuclear, geothermal, solar and gas that we will stop digging up the coal? No. We will just export it to absolve ourselves of the guilt of burning it and the CO2 will still happen someplace where our clean burning regulations don't apply. Those coal mines have debts to pay. Same with high-sulfur oil.
These cycles are how nature motivates humans to evacuate equatorial regions and inhabit a wider world. It's what drove us out of Africa time and again. And the relapses to the cold drive local populations to equatorial regions for long times, increasing differentiation in the isolation periods, which leads to competition and strife when warmth and commerce resumes and finds a winner amongs
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Ever breathe out on one of those conference room CO2 detectors?
Plants and animals? That's me!
Yet we make decisions based on predictions constantly. When someone had a tumor identified, it is predicted that unless treated it will kill them. We don't sit around waiting to find out if we're right; we commence treatment.
Your argument is no more convincing than 'but evolution is just a theory'.
The other thing I've noticed is the gradually creeping goalposts. As a child in the '70s, we were told that coming ice age brought about by the pollution we were generating by burning fossil fuels would wipe out half the world's species by the year 2000. (That was also when we were supposed to start running out of oil and most useful metals, but that's another discussion.) Then in the '90s, the target date was 2030 or 2050, depending on which study you were reading. So now, we've got 'till 2080? The time at which we render the planet uninhabitable keeps shifting, as does the exact means which the same effect is going to destroy all life on earth. Yet the solution being proposed remains the same. And we've always got to do something Right Now! or there will be catastrophic consequences 50-100 years down the road. At some point, a guy starts to ask himself if there might not be something else going on.
If you burn all the methane in the atmosphere you'd lower the greenhouse effect.
Methane is 72x better at trapping heat.
CH4 + 2(O2) = CO2 + 2(H2O)
There are other compounds worse than CO2 too. Like nitrous oxides produced by plants fed with high nitrogen fertiliser.
Climate change will cause one half of species to decline, but the other half will take their place, that's how nature works. Question is, which half will we belong to?
Does your image show desert at the equator?
I know it doesn't without even looking at it.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Um, we're killing off plant cover, while increasing CO2. So there IS a problem.
HOWEVER, I fail to see how being fixated on a single source of CO2 measurements (Mauna Loa) is helping the issue.
I was on the island which houses the Mauna Loa observatory last month. There has been a recent (since the last 2-3 years) rise in emissions from volcanoes some miles adjacent to the observatory (so much so, there is an issue with 'vog' -- volcanic smog -- on the island).
Now, I've read about techniques the observatory uses to sidestep that issue, but ...
What is the *global* (not just Mauna-Loa) CO2 average? Is it rising precipitously? How fast? Its hard to get a straight answer for these questions from Google.
I would respond in more detail, but why bother responding to someone who obviously doesn't even believe what he is saying (Mr AC)? You like the other Alarmists at this point are just global trolls, trying to waste people's time. Pathetic. I Note you didn't yourself bother to address a single point I made which did in fact point out why the basic argument was flawed.
At this point you guys also post AC I think because you are hiding from response, hoping that more reasoned people overlook what you say...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
CO2 levels have fluctuated a *lot* in our planet's history. The amount of time we've spent measuring these concentrations is tiny by comparison. The long term trend for our planet, human influence aside, appears likely to be a virtual elimination of atmospheric CO2 as it becomes trapped in landmasses. This of course would result in the elimination of most terrestrial life on Earth as we know it, and won't be a concern for billions of years, but it is the likely trajectory nonetheless.
Write failed: Broken pipe
TFS:
[...]reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said.
There weren't any humans around 450 million years ago.
Furthermore, you copy-and-pasted directly but left out the rest of the paragraph
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period. This has been used by some to attempt to disprove the link between temperature and CO2. Royer et al. (2006) considered the CO2 forced climate thresholds over the Phanerozoic eon (the last 545 million years). It was found that there is insufficient proxy data to determine that a high CO2 event coincided with the Ordovician-Silurian glacial event. The only proxy CO2 data near this glacial event could be up to five million years younger than the event. Further, the Earth was a very different place during this period including differences in solar luminosity, albedo, distribution of continents and vegetation, orbital parameters and other greenhouse gases.
You should try to think more, brah. It can actually save you from embarrasment.
Question: do you know how to use a map? Do you understand what those "latitude" and "longitude" lines mean? Do you know what the equator is? What countries does the equator intersect?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
your insurance company IS taking this seriously. THEY have access to a whole pile a data too showing how often floods, tornados, storm surges etc etc occur and they see a trend of them happening more often which is why insurance premiums are increasing.
Wow, that sounds really scary!!!
Except my house insurance premiums have not gone up. In fact, I don't remember any news stories whatsoever about premiums overall being on the rise across the globe.
But really any issue with premiums going up in one area is no mystery - climate changes and will continue to change, altering conditions over time at various locations. If insurance rises somewhere because there is more risk but fails to fall somewhere else risk is now reduced, you would attribute that to climate change - but why is it not simply greed? Why would an insurance company after all reduce rates for people who are happily paying already... so any altering anywhere would tend to ratchet up rates, making any argument even based on insurance rates invalid.
But again, that's even IF insurance rates were going up all over because of climate change and not simply greater regulation...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At some point, a guy starts to ask himself if there might not be something else going on.
You're absolutely right. People love to complain about Big Industry concerns related to fossil fuel production and consumption, but they don't seem so inclined to talk about the sprawling industries built around various forms of alternative energy production (with all their spectacular fiscal abuses, corruption, and failures of other sorts), climate change studies, government programs to research and produce reams of new legislation every few years, etc. Meanwhile, our society continues to be okay with current death rates from an assortment of diseases and widespread famine. People say they care about those things, but their focus and money say otherwise. Apparently, it's cooler (no pun intended) to care about CO2 levels in the atmosphere than it is to do a better job of dealing with things that are killing millions of people right now.
Write failed: Broken pipe
"The US probably has to annex Canada."
Speaking as a Canadian, on behalf of Canadians, you can go fuck yourself.
pesky plants and animals be gone.
-Lod
I'm sure we can sell it to the point where Canadian provinces apply for statehood. You might not like it but in a half century and given sufficient means to sway the public it can be done. It won't be an invasion. We have marketing people and they're very good. Also, you guys have a very fungible form of government and few domestic resources to influence them. You would be surprised what the CIA can to for $15,000 CDN.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Life adapts. That's what it does.
Until it doesn't.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Life adapts. That's what it does. Life is a plague that cannot be stopped short of a supernova ...
In the past, a rather large body of evidence supports the idea that Mars had liquid water and an atmosphere. Due to lack of gravity, over millions or billions of years it lost both its atmosphere and the atmospheric pressure to maintain liquid water.
The odds are Mars had life at one point, although the complexity is unknown.
And today it doesn't. At least not substantial enough to easily detect.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I've noticed that almost every climate-science story on slashdot is quickly followed by a bunch of comments that seem to come from people with the science education of young earthers, and then the conversation normalizes after a while. Wouldn't be surprised if astroturfers are trying to skew the discussion. That's how politics is done these days. There's lots of money for politically active groups with goals aligned to big carbon. I'm sure the astroturfers think they're doing a good thing, but I find it pretty despicable.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
How about you get labeled a Climate Hysteric?
About the only hysterics I hear are those who claim the sky will fall in on the economy if carbon pollution is taxed. The audacity of calling scientists alarmists. GOP post-modern projection.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
But: The Internet.
there's not one D thing that we can do about it anyway. Stop burning fossil fuel? Sure, if you want to kill millions of humans
This is just simply wrong. A carbon tax would (in part) account for the cost of pollution, and encourage the search of alternatives. Works overseas. Works in the USA. Don't be so glum. The only thing stopping change is the stranglehold of big carbon on republican politics.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I knew I was going to get the AC with the Reality Drop when I posted that.
Frankly, you could represent your crew better than this frenetic and fragmented post but I will try my best to address it anyway.
If life hasn't adapted to live in the desert in millions of years, how will it adapt now, in just 50-100 years? I don't believe evolution can save us.
There is no place on Earth that we know of: not the fiercest desert, not the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, not in the deepest borehole ever made, nor even in the insanely radioactive core of active boiling water reactors - where life does not thrive.
And you'll be losing the big food producing areas including across the USA:
I believe I mentioned that this local increase in atmospheric temperature trended toward the poles. Implicit in that is that equatorial regions are less affected. It has to do with your own assertion: Earth is a sphere.
I think for that human ingenuity to kick in, we need to stop lying to ourselves about the reality here.
I think for human ingenuity to kick in we have to start with having a rational, fact-based discussion informed by all of the science.
/There was some other stuff in there, but I can't make out where you're going with it. Give it another go sober.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And yet.... your insurance company IS taking this seriously.
Your insurance company found an excuse to charge you more? Do you really take this as evidence of......anything?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
where should i send the money?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Except that life rarely responds to toxic exposure linearly
That is correct. If your breathe in someones face repeatedly, you may be slapped.
Although it might have more to do with your last meal than CO2 content.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Chicken Little said the sky was falling. The earth may be getting warmer, but is that so bad? Where was all that carbon, some of which now is being liberated by our modern civilization? The global warming scare mongers tell us that the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of the earth getting warmer. If that is true, the carbon that is now being released must have once been in the atmosphere for living things to use while they were alive, then died and were buried. Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air. Therefore, when the fossil fuels were formed it must've been much warmer than today, but not warm enough to harm life on earth. Most living things generally do better in warmth that in freezing cold. Therefore if mankind managed to liberate ALL carbon now stored as fossil fuels, the cycle would repeat itself.
Recycling is generally considered good, so why is recycling the carbon be considered bad? We know most plants do better in warm places with a high carbon content in the atmosphere. This has been unequivocally established by EXPERIMENT, not mere mathematical modeling based on faulty assumptions. One real-life experiment is worth much more than hundreds of thousands of hours of computer time using up energy for mathematical modeling based on faulty assumptions and insufficient data. So far humanity has managed to release only a tiny fraction of the total carbon stored in the form of hydrocarbons in the crust of the earth.
Global warming, bring it on! If the earth were warmer, humanity would need less fuel to keep warm and would have much more land available which is now freezing cold. There is a whole CONTINENT at the bottom of the earth that could become inhabited by people if it were warm.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Matching the right's hyperbole with bigger hyperbole makes the right look more sane as a result.
And what hyperbole on the "right" is that exactly?
It's easy enough to find older papers saying that the tip off point was a time that was in the future then but is now in the past.
Proclaiming the tip-off points were no-where near those points before the time had past, WAS considered hyperbole - before it was shown to be wrong.
Was is so wrong about wanting careful scientific study or merely wanting to open data-sets to confirm theories based on them? There is no hyperbole in that, or at any rate NOTHING approaching the level of hyperbole in a statement like "we are all going to die when Co2 crosses point X". All anyone on the other side has ever said is along the lines of "are you sure it's actually warming even though CO2 levels are increasing" and "how exactly will we all die again"? and "why should we spend billions that could otherwise go to advance medicine or poor people when we can't accurately predict how climate change will affect us"?
And going back to your fist point, this is not "right" vs. "left". This is about conformists vs. individual thinkers. It's about people who simply believe whatever "science" tells them to say, filtered through politicians and the media - with no question. It's about that kind of person vs. the kind of person who gets told at some point food X is bad for them and says "why" and "are you sure", then eventually comes up with new scientific research showing the old models of thought were totally backwards.
Always be suspicious of anyone who claims you are stupid for asking questions and not believing outright what they say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is what counts as evidence for you. Did you ever find some counter evidence? Almost certainly not, right?
For those who are interested, you can read about Beck 2008 here, here, and here.
For the full effect, make sure you actually read through Beck 2008.
Proof that you only need a few bits of junk our there, and that's enough for politics.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Species go extinct. Life goes on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All the signs point to life on Mars - not just in geologic time but right now. We haven't found it yet but then we haven't looked in the most likely places either. You can't use Mars as an example of how rare life is until we have explored it further.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Don't worry that won't happen in your time or in your great grandchildren's time. So don't get excited and use bad language
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
I'd have simply modded down but I didn't have points
Response is always better than modding down because if one person said it, other people are thinking it, and your response will help educate all of them (unless it's GNAA, mod them down). That's why there's no "-1 Wrong" mod.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah! Let's go back to 4000ppm! After-all, that's what it was 450 million years ago, so it must be good!!!!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Back in 1975 we were supposed to be freezing by now. Anyone remember that?
As in some scientists asked the question, studied it, and rejected the theory after 5 or so years. There was never consensus, but the story was too good not to run in major newspapers.
Do YOU remember it?
More Big Scare tactics. These articles belong in the Science Fiction category so far. We don't know what's going to happen, we've never been there before, but we're assured that it's going to be bad and only by taking and transferring hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to someone else who is more Progressive than ourselves can we save us all.
The only big scare tactics I see are those who preach that the economy was crash if we tax pollution. It is baloney of course. There is empirical data that shows that the effect on the economy is * negligible*. The effect on the Koch brother's political influence will be non-negligible, but that's crony capitalism for you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Guess who are developing their prediction models? The same people who make global warming predictions. It's no surprise they support each other.
You think you know that, but if you think about it, you don't know that they are the same people at all. Acturies calculate risk for insurance companies. They aren't authors in IPCC reports.
Birds and plants aren't authors either, and they're moving/changing. So are glaciers. That's one hell of a conspiracy you got to explain there.
But yeah, some guys working for "big-eco" are making the models deciding the fate of the world and you're fighting the good fight, right?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
350 ppm is not 100% CO2, 400 ppm is not 100% CO2, 5000 ppm is not 100% CO2. Why does the inability to recognize a strawman argument cease when it is your argument? Reductio ad absurdum doesn't work the way you think it does in response to his statement, since his statement is replying about and referring to the current (and projected) levels of CO2. While you are right that it doesn't follow that more CO2 is better for plants, it also doesn't follow that there isn't some level of increase that is beneficial. That is where research is needed and being done. Jeesh, my kingdom for some classical debate technique knowledge pour les paysans.
You can't use Mars as an example of how rare life is until we have explored it further.
Mars doesn't have slugs or centipedes or apes running around.
You can't use Mars as an example of how rare life is until we have explored it further.
I already did. And if there life on Mars today, it isn't thriving life making itself known. If that is your definition of "life adapting", you have very low standards for what the idea of "adapting" means.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I agree with you that this is just a moneymaking scheme so the ultra-rich of this world can get even richer at the expense of everybody else. It has no basis in science whatsoever, because it is well-known that living things do way better in warm places than in freezing cold. If human activities such as fossil fuel burning will make for a warmer Earth, let's do it. Let's scrap all these worries about carbon and bring as much carbon as possible to the surface and into the atmosphere where it used to be and make it available for plants to use. Let's RETURN the Earth to the conditions that prevailed before all that carbon was buried in the ground. Living things thrived back then, including dinosaurs! The latter became extinct because it became too cold for them. We are today burning the carbon that used to be a part of the dinosaurs and the food they ate.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
If you've thoroughly explored Mars I'm going to want to see your mission logs, particularly polar ice samples and 2km deep drilling cores.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Don't worry, you can just burn their white house to the ground like you did last time they invaded.
I give the Slashdot posters a collective D- failing grade.
The early posters get a D- for their really weird inability to say three fresh and funny things about the OP.
The middle posters, get a D- because 90% of the posts are tired sighs.
The tired sighs of many previous posts are an important sign that the global warming problem is a slow moving massive event where the principal indicator of it's progress ( CO2 levels) has not gone down even though we have been through a 5 year economic depression. The abating economic depression did not slow down society enough to affect CO2 levels. (There was a little decrease in the rate of increase, but not in the fact of increase.) The sighs reflect the disappointment and fatigue of many people on this list who have tried to reduce their CO2 footprint and see that all the effort produced no result. CO2 increase is an intractable, slow moving, massive problem.
And lets issue another D- to everybody that cites an expert and therefore excuses themselves from engaging with the global warming problem. If you live a typical drive to work life you are contributing 3,000 to 10,000 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere every year. Could you possibly reduce your CO2 emission to the level of a 1776 pre steam engine individual? In this case, the phrase "massive problem" means exactly that: a large amount of human generated mass. No matter how subtle the argument, 3000 pounds turned into infra-red absorbing Carbon oxygen bonds is about the mass of your car. Rhetoric is not enough.
Welcome to the lonely world of social change. The problem in front of us is still how to emit 1/2 as much CO2 every day for you, your wife and your kids without losing the happy and fun mechanical conveniences we enjoy and maintaining economic and social stability.
(I am not a chemist, but 2 gallons of gasoline x 7 lb per gallon x 365 days => about 5000 lbs, not counting the weight of Oxygen from air making CO2.)
In my experience people are fine to talk about the industries built up around alternative energies. You talk of "spectacular" fiscal abuses, but it's almost certainly overblown in your imagination. For example, Solyndra was just a small blip in the larger loan guarantee program. It is peanuts compared to $4 billion that is *given* to big carbon each year in tax breaks. Note, it costs the government more to give away $4 billion each year, than to offer loans to start-ups which have a bankruptcy rate of 11%. Not all money is lost when a company goes bankrupt -- only 4% of it is at risk.
But I'm sure that's a *spectacular* fiscal abuse, and just forking $4 billion a year over to big carbon, because otherwise the the most profitable industry in history wouldn't have enough money to line the pockets of conservative think-tanks and politicians.
Do you see the double-standard there?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
What is the *global* (not just Mauna-Loa) CO2 average? Is it rising precipitously? How fast? Its hard to get a straight answer for these questions from Google.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you never heard of the IPCC reports, or wikipedia.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If life hasn't adapted to live in the desert in millions of years, how will it adapt now
This may be counter-intuitive to some, but still:
Cold == dry == desertification
Warm == humid == more plant life (both through the humidity and through the increase in CO2
Gee, you sound like a climate expert! CO2 has changed heaps in 4.5 billion years all right. So has the temperature of the earth. You think scientists don't quantify all of that with error bars? It is the fact that this has been done that we're having the discussion at all.
There is no long-term trend to remove *all* CO2. That is plain ridiculous. The carbon cycle will reach a plateau because volcanoes are always producing more CO2. If this didn't happen then there would still be glaciers at the equator, and the earth would be one big ice-sheet.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
arid conditions
Actually: Cold == dry == arid, warm == wet == quite nice conditions. Oh, and no, our deserts are not deserts because of the heat, they are deserts because of the humidity level (see weather systems).
$4 billion that is *given* to big carbon each year in tax breaks.
Itemize them for me.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Science demands proof, evidence and not just an open mind but skeptism too. The chief human flaw is to "screen evidence for whatever one wants to believe", science is done by overcoming this.
So if you are just going to blindly state "life flourishes" but crumble under the Mars question, don't look to me as the problem. I'm just asking the questions.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
You should look at that map once again. Find the equator. Look at where the deserts are. See? They are nowhere near the equator. Deserts are not caused by heat, they are caused by dry climates. Hot == wet. Cold == dry. The biggest desert on this planet is called Antarctica.
There is no place on Earth that we know of: not the fiercest desert, not the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, not in the deepest borehole ever made, nor even in the insanely radioactive core of active boiling water reactors - where life does not thrive.
Bullshit. The Dead Sea.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Assuming you didn't forget the /s:
Are you aware of the state of the biosphere back then? You may want to look up what kinds of plants and animals lived back then.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
We don't know what's going to happen, we've never been there before
Depending on what you mean by "we" this is inaccurate. If you mean "we" as in "you and I" then you are correct, if you mean "we" as "planet earth and the life on it" you are wrong. For "us" in that definition, 400 isn't uncommon or particularly high.
Yeah, German re-unification worked exactly like that. Canada and the US were only separated because the Brits occupied the Canadian territories, just like the Soviets occupied East Germany. Right?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
My Firefox doesn't like your IPCC link. Do you have another that has a trusted certificate?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I am not talking about evolution but that other areas will support plants and animals that it currently can not. There are areas where it is currently to cold to support Maize. When it warms up it will be hot enough. The point is the old area will be unsuitable but other areas will be suitable. Since this study did not look into new areas that can support the plants it only shows part of the picture. I live in Canada and global warming will lengthen our growing season and broaden the kinds of food we can grow here. The study concentrated on decreased suitability of current ranges and ignores increased suitability of currently unsuitable ranges.
We're seeing a number of feedbacks already being triggered - the arctic ice cap melt being the glaringly obvious one.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Nobody has those kinds of energy resources. Even in Dubai where they have an abundance of hydrocarbons, their islands don't amount to much more than a few meters of dredged sand in relatively restricted areas. Have you attempted to work out the energy requirements for moving such masses of sand and rock? Just think how expensive it would be just to get it from the sea to the mountains, much less on the barge in the first place? Do you have any idea how much CO2 you would generate in the process raising sea levels even further.
It seems your ideas are not very well thought out. You might have figured that out had to taken even a moment to reflect on your silly idea. Take a few more bong hits and get back to us.
Well, I can't really blame them. When I was a teenager (in the 1980s), I thought the Equator must go through the Sahara Desert, that's why it is so hot there.
Even after Geography class and traveling, it is still a misconception my brain refuses to give up.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
There is no place on Earth that we know of: not the fiercest desert, not the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, not in the deepest borehole ever made, nor even in the insanely radioactive core of active boiling water reactors - where life does not thrive.
Especially for universes where "thrive" = "not thrive", honest discussion means willful ignorance and overwhelming evidence means grasping at straws.
We cook food in ovens because it kills, we boil water because it kills. But at this point, I have to concede you aren't rational and there isn't a point to further discussion. May you grow wiser in the future and see the difference between dogma versus observation.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
The side that demands proof is clueless about the scientific method. There is no such thing as proof in science, only in math.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Insurance companies make money by selling insurance to people.
They would have absolutely no incentive to sell expensive insurance to people scared that something might happen EVEN if there was little chance of it happening.
Translation, insurance companies are big business. They will do everything they can to increase their profits, including profiteering on peoples fears.
"Life adapts. That's what it does."
Actually the fossil record suggests otherwise, if the amount of change is too abrupt. In that case most higher life forms go extinct because they are too dependent upon specific lower forms of life that often can not adapt. Most organisms have very specific environmental requirements. Go outside of those physiological limits and they die. Humans aren't much different in many respects. We do a lot of things, but seldom do we really get too far out of our physiological comfort zone. A world that in 80-100 years has temperatures of 130-140 degrees F in the shade for weeks on end will be a whole experience.
Keep in mind that this time its totally different, because of the rate at which CO2 is rising. Its going up more than 26 times faster than during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum, which changed the forests of what is now northern Wyoming from redwoods to palm trees in a couple of thousand years. It will be hard to imagine many organisms surviving that kind of change over the course of a few hundred, much less most of their pollinators.
"Do you think Canadians and Russians live in fear of global warming?"
They should. The vast bulk of the warming that will be seen is occurring in the Arctic and generally speaking even Russians and Canadians need to eat. With food crops under threat, they may well find themselves stressed as well. Some 56,000 Russians died in the heat wave in 2010. Some 40,000-50,000 Europeans died from a similar heat wave in 2003. If the Lake El’gygytgyn results are a direct indication that the global climate sensitivity is 8 degrees Celsius which it appears to, rather than what people have been indirectly inferring and using in their climate models, then its pretty clear that we can expect many more to die as we now move into the Arctic amplification phase of global warming.
As for the high latitude North providing more arable land, don't count on it for several reasons. 1) Arctic soils are very poor, 2) few commercial plants can tolerate the long winters so most crops that require more than one year to produce, such as fruit trees won't be among them, 3) just because the Arctic is warming doesn't mean that it may not yet see many days with freezing temperatures, so most plants adapted to more southern latitudes simply won't be able to adapt to growing conditions which are interrupted by severe frost in an unpredictable way, 4) it may be almost impossible to take pollinators with them given the different wind and percipitation/abruptly changing temperature regimes. Keep in mind many plants used for human consumption, such as corn, rice, coffee are tropical or tropical highland species, 5) many others such as wheat are highly susceptible to rusts and fungi and will likely fare poorly as there is too much moisture in the atmosphere such as in early spring, and 6) simply because you have high latitude does not mean that abundant, year around sources of freshwater will be uniformly available throughout the entire landscape.
Obviously, a lot depends on how fast the change.
The GOP would never go for it, especially with even more people pouring over the border from the South.
Actually it is already happening. Its just that we tend to take so many things for granted we don't notice the small, almost imperceptible changes until the trends are very far along. Take a look at all the new tropical diseases that are now found in the US in the past 10-15 years. Until you get one, who pays attention. Generally speaking, people's knowledge of biology is incredibly low. Even for people who have studied biology their entire lives and have advanced degrees in the subject the level of knowledge is still pretty low. Life is complicated.
Yeah but the boomers won't be alive then. Hell, the Koch brothers won't be alive in 10 years. What do they care? I got mine while I was alive, fuck you all, suckers.
I have a dream.
I have a dream where one day the people who today, in editorials and online, deny science, deny global warming will be forced to personally, individually, away from and distinct from the rest of the population be forced to directly bear the consequences of their beliefs. I have a dream .
I have a dream that one day the people who deny evolution will also be systematically and permanently denied the medicine and treatments which exists only because doctors and researchers applied evolutionary theory to the problems of diseases . I have a dream.
I have a dream that each individual, no matter who or how small, will be given the opportunity to live out in full the consequences of what they today advocate for the rest of us and the rest of us will live out the consequences of our own decisions, unencumbered by the science deniers who used to live freely amongst us.
I have a dream.
In your comment above you claimed to have thoroughly explored Mars. I am breathlessly awaiting your report on the situation there, replete with samples, analysis and a vast trove of discoveries.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My Firefox doesn't like your IPCC link. Do you have another that has a trusted certificate?
Ha, this is proof, even Mozilla is part of the anti-AGW conspiracy! ;-)
But on a more serious note, my Firefox does not have an issue with the certificate.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
By then the GOP will be doing their best to sell stickers, and trying to persuade their base to remove their old stickers.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"There is no place on Earth that we know of: not the fiercest desert, not the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, not in the deepest borehole ever made, nor even in the insanely radioactive core of active boiling water reactors - where life does not thrive."
Sure bacteria and microorganisms will make it in very harsh environments, some can live in near boiling mud pots or in Atacama desert sands, where it hasn't rained in 100 years. However, its not going to be the same species of vertebrate organisms that we tend to think of. So knowledge of this fact doesn't exactly get us out of the predicament we are in.
If higher life forms are to be saved several things must be accomplished within the next 50-100 years.
First you have to educate the deniers and those who can't be educated probably have to be locked away in a fashion where they can do less harm or perhaps sent to a moon base, where they can either better appreciate Earth or feel free to ravage the lunar atmosphere to their hearts content.
We then need to move toward massive solar energy projects, as well as wind, hydrothermal and tidal. Some shift through natural gas and nuclear are probably unavoidable from oil and coal will probably be unavoidable, but we will need to move away from all fossil fuels quickly, except perhaps for tasks that can not yet be accomplished otherwise and as necessary for emergency situations. Fossil fuels will need to be banned for all other purposes. This will require a total transformation of cities and transportation of all kinds.
It will be essential to figure out ways to get people and nations to work together collectively rather than individually so that maximum results can be achieved quickly with minimal waste and contention for resources. That may be the biggest hurdle along with the unavoidable displacement and disruption that is now almost certain to be massive.
This kind of mindless simplicity won't go too far as global warming is far more likely to produce more violent extreme weather, not some for of Goldilocks like conditions where everything is "just right".
People who think this way only really show a remarkable lack of knowledge about biology and biological systems.
Who cares if life as a whole flourishes. The question is whether humans will flourish. Heck, for life as a whole it would probably be good news if the human species got extinct!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Back in 1975 we were supposed to be freezing by now. Anyone remember that?
No, and neither do you, because it never happened.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yeah, it does. Life will survive this as it survived worse things than that.
But our societies and economies as they are will not. That's the point. You can have "life" adapt perfectly well in the long run and still have global mayhem happening while it is adapting.
Also, "life will adapt" just ignores the fact that changes that happen over thousands of years are easier to adapt to than changes that happen within decades. There's no time for slow migration, ecosystems and economies gradually changing and adapting. Fast changes are incredibly hard to adapt to and the changes we're looking at are happening really quick.
It's the typical jump from "nothing is happening" to "life will adapt" while totally ignoring all the major shit happening to real people and real economies that makes me wonder about the will to face reality in many people. First they close their eyes while pretending "it's a lie, nothing is really happening", then they jump to "life will adapt". Yeah, but life may adapt by you and your children starving.
Over time the capture of carbon in limestone removes it from the atmosphere. However, the rate is miniscule and the processes take hundreds of thousands and millions of years to effect. Consequently, we can't expect to rely on these natural processes to remove carbon dioxide for us. We will probably have to rapidly cut back on fossil fuel use to close to zero use to survive as a species as we move into the next couple of hundred years.
No, German reunification was pretty much a do it or die kind of thing, which is technically persuasion but not really relevant to the context. We're getting dangerously close to a Godwin here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That's not what our intelligence tells us.
Our intelligence tells us that if we were to annex Canada, most Canadians would welcome us with open arms.
Weird bacterial life in the Dead Sea
Thanks for being specific. Care to try again?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Tell me this: How long did a bacterium that thrives in the core of a boiling water reactor have to evolve?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"400 is just a number."
Your right. Its just like the speed of that locomotive that is about 100 feet down the tracks bearing down on your vehicle parked on the tracks with the doors locked and the windows rolled up, while you try to figure out where you put your keys. Of course,when that number reaches a certain threshold, its just a matter of "emotional investment" so why bother to start the car?
Don't worry about Goldman Sachs. It seems the Chinese have set up their own carbon trading market and will probably eventually start using it as muscle in trade talks. Why let any American companies get in on the action, when we can turn the entire market over to the Chinese like we have done with manufacturing and increasingly with solar production?
What people like these don't realize is that one Solydra failure here and we stop investing in solar technology. In the meantime China ramps up its production to double our own, is more than happy to subsidize 10 firrms the size of Solydra for every success and is rapidly taking over the lead in solar investments and technology. This year the Chinese spent twice what we spent on solar power. Next year they will double that again and are planning an increase of 5 times next years output the following year.
In the meantime, Tea Partiers here are tyring to take food out of the mouths of old women and children to avoid paying a dollar more in tax, much less invest in anything as a nation that might allow us to even stay competitive. We are literally walking away from technological leadership so essential to addressing global warming that its hard to imagine how we are going to survive as a nation, much less compete in such an every warming world, particularly one in which foreign markets will soon impose carbon tariffs on our products.
It will be a problem in many areas because the elevation profiles are very nearly flat in many areas, such as Bangladesh and much of Oceania. The problem with the climate models is the assumption that 3-4 degrees C is what we are going to get by 2100. Newer data suggest that the sensitivity is much higher because the models do not account for the highly non-linear response to the loss of Arctic ice. Thus what may be 1-2 meters of sea level rise in 100-200 years, we may be looking at closer to 3-8 m or possibly higher in some places. Because the bulk of human population is in coastal areas, that is a huge number of people and an incredible amount of infrastructure that will have to be moved, abandoned, or rebuilt, all of which is likely to require tremendous amounts of new CO2 to accomplish.
I've had a few bong hits, his ideas are hilarious.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Good to see that the religious nuts (that is you) are out in force again. Sorry, but what you say simply doesn't match observed realities. In the past, when CO2 levels have been substantially higher than they are today, and higher than the predictions for AGW too, life thrived on this planet. In fact, in volume and diversity, it did a lot better than it currently is.
Yes, there is no doubt that the predicted warming will cause many issues for human kind, and it will even be traumatic for a good number of species tied to current habitats (but they will adapt quickly), there is no reason to think that the warming will be generally negative to life as such. Quite the opposite. When the earth warms it is far more likely that the earth, as was the case before, becomes a better place for life as such.
To argue otherwise is to argue against observations, and it will take a lot of very, very strong evidence to argue that the next warm period is going to have a significantly different impact on life as such than the previous ones. There simply isn't any evidence for that.
Sterilized scalpels. They are clearly on earth. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is an animated synthesis of global CO2 measurements, with some historical records added afterwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7tfz3k_9A
Life adapts, but only given the opportunity. There are 5 massive epochal die-offs that prove your point. They also prove that you're not thinking this through very well. Many of the humans you're talking about adapt using rather violent tactics. It's called war. If you believe that the geopolitical considerations will just sort themselves out, then you haven't read much history. The logical limits to growth are also the logical variables that lead to armed conflict if and when diplomacy fails.
Currently a good portion of the cause for the success of the world's dominant economic powers revolves around the development of technology, but it's also predated by the accident of unimpeded access to abundant natural resources. Accidental in the sense that water, arable land, lumber and minerals existed as those political powers developed their technologies. The modern construct of ownership has always been enforced through warfare.
What do you think will happen when climate challenges the ability of the current geopolitical regimes? It's not going to be orderly or pretty if, "humans (attempt) to evacuate equatorial regions and inhabit a wider world." The Maldives and other island populations are the first to confront such a reality, but they'll easily be able to integrate into other areas. What do you think will happen if most of the existing population below 30 degress latitude in both hemispheres is forced to evacuate?
Dude I don't know if you know this but before this redupe and the dupe that it's duping hit the /. front page I was the submitter on the original /. article on this topic . I care.
But real numbers being what they are, this figure matters little more than any other. Make 400 your rallying cry if you must. I would, if I had the fever. But I don't. Try not to paint me as a prick because I don't. Obviously I'm getting your cause good press doing my own bit.
It's a fun game but I could play it the other way if you want to be a pain. I can be a ferocious competitor if you want to put me on that footing.
I think I would enjoy that. It has been a long time.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
With presumably a few good hackers here, shouldn't it be possible to better characterize the source of all the denialism? I've notice that on many other sites, where now there is active talk concerning the issue of global warming there seems to be a feverish attempt by the denialists to out shout and out insult everyone and anyone, with the hope of keeping reasoned and legitimate thought and conversation as crowded out as possible.
If Slashdot is going to be something other than a place for technophiles to vent their spleens and demonstrate the reality of the Dunning-Kruger effect, then some thought needs to to be given to how a more effective and positive community can develop here or perhaps elsewhere with more rigorous moderation.
Yes, there is a long term trend to remove nearly all CO2 from the atmosphere. However, your lack of reading comprehension ability has resulted in your failure to note the part where I said "won't be a concern for billions of years." Try again.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Tell me you're not headed toward some homeopathic theme here. Please. I thought better of you than that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wrong... you forgot the involvement of the French and the Iroquois.
I never said we don't have a major problem with special interests on the "pro-carbon" side of the aisle getting undeserved benefits; quite to the contrary, I agree with you on that point. That's money that should absolutely be reallocated to better causes. Saying one thing doesn't mean a person believes something entirely different, and you'd do well to take caution before assuming such things, as it tends to make reasonable discussion difficult and may result in your position being taken less seriously than it otherwise would.
The point here is that we have hordes of immediate problems in society that no reasonable person would say he doesn't care about, but that statement of caring rings hollow when it isn't backed by money and action. Instead, we as a society seem to like to adopt elitist, knee-jerk, "favorite sports team" style positions on matters that may be fairly described as extraordinarily difficult to even get agreed quantification on. Meanwhile, kids are living under bridges in our nation's cities, and folks are dropping dead from chronic disease at relatively young ages left and right.
Do you want to carry on with your knee-jerk reactions and stay in your comfortable little bubble, where you can safely think about things on a time scale that ranges from 50 to perhaps hundreds of years or more, or do you want to take a moment to consider that maybe your energy might be better placed somewhere else, some place that might make a different on matters that are killing millions of people right now? Should you choose the former, don't worry, you'll be the company of most of the rest of society. I suppose that's some consolation at least.
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So where is YOUR data?
I am always asking those who don't believe in the theory of global warming to explain how if its not warming:
1) all the world's glaciers are receding?
2) why has 85% of the permanent ice in the Arctic Ocean disappeared?
3) why did we have more than 36,000 record daily high temperatures across the US in 2012 as opposed to only about 6,000 new record daily lows?
4) why has the past 20 years seen 11 of the warmest years on record?
5) why is the jet stream slowing down?
One could go on asking for some other data that would actually support a theory OTHER THAN forcing that results from the burning of fossil fuels (AGW), but one never gets an answer. Only some vague hand-waving and assertions that scientists don't seem to know how to do science.
However, now that we have before us SuperKendal, who only accepts big and strong PROOF, I will finally get my answer.
Lets all take a close look at what SuperKendall has to say in answering these questions. If its not carbon dioxide, just how do you explain what looks like to most thermometers at least and the vast majority of scientists, who have looked closely at these issues that its global warming that results of burning fossil fuels?
Did life end? No.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I am thinking this through very well. I am thinking on a different scale of time than you are but that is a different thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That and the stranglehold of big carbon on way too many democrats as well.
The average guy is just going to have to invest in electric cars and solar power and do what they can individually to remove the economic viability of fossil fuels, while there is still time. Yes, there will be many determined to try to cause global warming all by themselves, just as there are sociopaths everywhere. However, over time selection does work in the favor of the rational, we just have to apply more selection and work a lot harder than we otherwise would.
Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air. Therefore, when the fossil fuels were formed it must've been much warmer than today, but not warm enough to harm life on earth. Most living things generally do better in warmth that in freezing cold. Therefore if mankind managed to liberate ALL carbon now stored as fossil fuels, the cycle would repeat itself.
You are completely ignoring the speed this change happened in the past (geological scale, millions of years) and the speed global warming is moving now (tens or hundreds of years). Yes, in the past earth was indeed warmer. Antarctica was a green continent full of life but also areas around equator were dry deserts without life.
Note that there were also periods of time when earth was much colder then today. Even equator was frozen and life survived only in oceans. See Snowballl earth on wiki.
Whenever in the past, there was sudden change of temperature like we are seeing today, it was accompanied by massive extinction of species (90%+ of species died, generally everything larger then mouse). Sure, live will probably prevail but if we don't prepare for this change it will cause big problems. Large areas of the earth will become uninhabitable, nations will move, territorial wars will erupt, seaside cities will be slowly flooded etc.
In my opinion it is very reasonable to study climate changes, the implications they will have on life on earth and try to adapt to them or prevent the biggest problems if possible.
Normally I do not care to answer to AC; here, however, I make an exception. I suppose that systematic denial of climate change is simply a comfortable position. is connected, IMHO, to a certain intellectual laziness: "After me, the deluge".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Thank you for giving me hope. Clearly a sign of progress! Yes we can!
The long term trend for our planet, human influence aside, appears likely to be a virtual elimination of atmospheric CO2 as it becomes trapped in landmasses.
You really should study WP in a bit more depth, the following is mainly from Attenbourough's documentaries but the terms are all in WP. Between 450 -500mya we went from a near dead "snowball earth" to the advent and explosion of multi-cellular life that lead to you, me, and every other animal alive today. What melted the ice was a build up of volcanic CO2 that could not be subducted due to the global ice coverage. Melting glaciers carved nutrients off the continents and (re)-formed the oceans, algae sucked up CO2, incoporated the carbon into their body and spat out O2 - collagen (the stuff that hold cells together in animals) can only form in an O2 rich environment. Our O2 rich environment is a bi-product of plant life.
The long-term fate of the Earth's climate is fairly well established science (humans or no humans), it's similar to that of Venus, our magnetic field will decay, H will be stripped from H2O in the upper atmosphere and bleed into space, the O2 will bond with C to form CO2 warming the planet, the oceans will start to steam, then boil, eventually even the limestone will burn off the surface- it's called a "runaway greenhouse" and it's not due for another 500million years but when it does all traces of life will be obliterated. On the bright side, a billion years is not a bad innings for we animals.
Disclaimer: I've been interested in reading this sort of science since the 70's, I'm not an expert but I do think there is way too much ignorance of how our life support systems operate and way, way, too much hypocrisy when it comes to accepting the results of Science (with a capital 'S'). This entire thread is a prime example, right now at least 2/3 of the comments look like they were written by drunken teenage trolls wielding crayons.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"H will be stripped from H2O in the upper atmosphere and bleed into space, the O2 will bond with C to form CO2" I'm obviously not a chemist, WP will put you straight on what I'm trying to say.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Good to see that the religious nuts (that is you) are out in force again. Sorry, but what you say simply doesn't match observed realities. In the past, when CO2 levels have been substantially higher than they are today, and higher than the predictions for AGW too, life thrived on this planet. In fact, in volume and diversity, it did a lot better than it currently is.
Yes, there is no doubt that the predicted warming will cause many issues for human kind, and it will even be traumatic for a good number of species tied to current habitats (but they will adapt quickly), there is no reason to think that the warming will be generally negative to life as such. Quite the opposite. When the earth warms it is far more likely that the earth, as was the case before, becomes a better place for life as such.
Not for our species necessarily, though. Or for our economies even.
Also: The changes that are happening right now are happening incredibly quick. Quick changes ARE negative to life as such. Environments and ecosystems that change over thousands or tens of thousands of years are much easier to adapt to than changes that happen within decades.
Look at the Holocene Extinction -- we're right in the middle of a major extinction event and everything points at one species being the driver of it -- us. It's not looking very much as if many species are adapting at all to the changes we're causing. Most species are straight going extinct before they even get a chance to adapt. We're rapidly transforming the world into a farm to feed the pest that is called humanity and this farm is severely mismanaged.
Life will adapt, yes. The question is if we and our economies can adapt too.
The course you've set for the future of the planet is by no means set in stone. Loss of our magnetic field is one possible factor in the course, but is not a certainty and there is plenty of discord on the topic. Go ahead and cite recent sources if you're so certain of your position on this, and be sure to look for dissenting views while you're at it.
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The problem with "Global Warming" is the marketing the term itself carries. It sounds so nice and cuddly: "Won't it be great to sunbathe in Antarctica once those pesky penguins are gone?" Also science denying dolts point to every unseasonably cool breeze (or, blizzards in April) as proof "warming" doesn't exist. But speaking of marketing, perhaps the science deniers should start to call themselves "Carbon Freedom Fighters!"
The paper uses a global climate model, combines it with assumptions about how that global climate translates into local climates, and then combines that with assumptions and models of how species adapt, but using models that have never been tested under the conditions that they are being used to. Along the way, the authors made dozens of assumptions and arbitrary choices, many of which aren't documented in the paper. The paper presents interesting scientific speculation, not scientific fact or results. For something to be a scientific result, we need replication using new data and independent methods.
Furthermore, the headlines and discussion mixes up "decline in habitat range" with "decline in species". Species have already experienced a more dramatic "decline in habitat range" than predicted in that paper due to human settlements and agriculture. And I would expect that even if this paper were spot-on, habitat loss due to other human activity would still dominate, climate change or not.
Finally, the paper ignores the ability of humans to shape the environment and habitats. Animals and plants don't just randomly drift across the landscape, they are already managed by humans almost everywhere. Therefore, models that ask whether animals can adapt on their own really don't mean much in the real world.
You do realise that you sound like Lysenko? His only scintific paper was exactly about how when you keep the plants warm they grow faster. Unfortunately, warmth is not enough, you also need sunlight, and there is not enough sunlight in the north.
And frankly, I can remember from the last few years of the USSR (1990-1991) that even there global warming in fact started to be a concern.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The earth may be getting warmer, but is that so bad?
Yes.
the carbon that is now being released must have once been in the atmosphere for living things to use while they were alive, then died and were buried. Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air.
That's all true, but knowingly returning the atmospheric composition to Paleozoic levels will lead to economic collapse, mass migrations, wars, famine, increased natural disasters and the loss of pretty much everything that makes your basement comfortable. Think: No Cheetos, no Mountain Dew, angry people constantly breaking in and hassling you, maybe even kicking you out so you have to sleep in the woods.
No sig today...
Didnt they tell us 350PPM was when doom and gloom would start?
No.
No sig today...
The desert band along the equator may well become more habitable/arable with higher CO2 and temperatures, as it has in the past, due to increased evaporation. And the habitable/arable area further north will actually increase because there is a lot of land in Canada and the USSR that is currently too cold for agriculture.
Carbon dioxide is a green house gas, this is a scientific fact. We have more and its getting hotter, its not hard to deduce whats going on. The arguments always make it more complex then it is, bringing up this or that, but the fact remains, the more Carbon Dioxide we got in the air the hotter it gets, because Carbon dioxide traps more heat, like the laws of physics state that it will. If you don't believe that carbon dioxide is not a green house gas then that is one thing, but you would need science to back up that argument and well its kinda easy to prove.
Let me just say again, as carbon dioxide increases, so does are average temperature the two are not independent because they cannot be, physics dictates that the earth will get hotter the more carbon dioxide there is, just like if you throw a ball eventually its going to land.
However, there is other reasons to cut back on fossil fuels, for one its a limited supply, whether you think it will happen in 50 or 200 years, its going happen, the sooner we start transitions the better for everyone, stop talking like the oil company's sent you a check, they did not and they certainly have every reason to distort facts; clearly your falling for it
Also, these things have proven health problems with a whole host of people, its air we all breathe, maybe your lucky enough to live in a place where there is little smog so lets just hope they put up the next refinery in your back yard. Ya, deal with that shit.
Also, oil has been proven to be very hard to clean up and when its spilled its devastating to everyone in the area, its not clean so maybe your beach or land will get the next oil spill, how would you like your house to be ground zero for spilled oil...permanently? im sure you wouldn't
And if your anywhere in the world, you realize that we kiss the ass of oil rich country's for a reason, you like being a bitch? i certainly dont, i hope my country can tell those fucked up dictators who allow women to get stoned to death to go fuck themselves and not have a 10.00 a gallon price tag to show for it.
What that man above you was referring to is that there is a whole host of issues and reasons to get off fossil fuels, just because your not a scientific man who doesn't know basic physics and believe in global warming, and hey maybe you still think the earth is flat, thats fine, you can still find other reasons to want to get off fossil fuels, stop looking at one view of it and see the bigger picture...We need to move off that shit for a whole bunch of reasons, and you cannot deny most of them.
He's not getting anything you're trying to say, so you might as well give up on him now.
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I live in New Mexico. We're already in the worst drought that we've ever recorded. The water we pull from the ground is so contaminated by arsenic that we're probably poisoning ourselves just by drinking it. We had a really dry winter, with little to no snowpack. We're going to have the shortest watering season ever (40 days, its usually 120). This basically means that no farmer is going to be able to grow jack shit, which means a whole shitload of plants and animals are going to die. You thought that last years' summer was bad, you just wait.. Your premise on this argument is that more land will become arable. You might be right, but animals are really dumb and don't listen to logical arguments in a language they can't comprehend, so its not like they're just going to up and move to canada when the going gets tough. No, they're going to die off and become extinct. You seem to be thinking the only creatures that matter are humans.
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If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The article talks about a "dramatic decline of habitat range" for "half of plant species" and a "third of animal species". This does not mean a dramatic decline of species or anything like that.
You could describe the same result as "The study shows that almost all species will have more than enough habitat to survive even under the worst case scenarios of global warming and pessimistic assumptions on their ability to adapt".
We don't need evolution to fix this. With increasing global temperatures, more land will probably become suitable for cultivation of mainstream varieties of corn and other food staples. In addition, we have a wide range of other varieties that we could plant.
In fact, climate change does not mean that you can simply add the average increase to local temperatures to get the new climate. Higher temperatures have historically meant an extension of plant growth to more northern latitudes without an increase of temperature near the equator. Instead, regions near the equator just tend to see higher precipitation. Overall, AGW may well result in a significant increase of arable land both up north and near the equator.
That's not what the article says. The article says that a third of the animal species will see a substantial decline in their range. It says nothing about a decline of species or even their populations.
Not for our species necessarily, though. Or for our economies even
Irrelevant considering the topic.
Quick changes ARE negative to life as such
This is not given, and according to ice-core data, earlier changes have also been quite quick, without the negative impact predicted in this discussion.
we're right in the middle of a major extinction event and everything points at one species being the driver of it -- us
Yes, we make species extinct by killing them, destroying their habitat through agricultural expansion etc. What does that have to do with this discussion? Please note, the links between species going extinct and global warming are actually non-existent. There is some research that would imply that at a local level, some animals go extinct from that area, but there is nothing to indicate a general extinction event tied to global warming.
Again, look at previous warming periods, even periods where cold-blooded animals were in the majority (lizards, dinosaurs) and you will find that higher temperatures, more CO2 and more humidity means higher bio diversity. Also look at the current state of the earth. The places receiving the most sun - the equator - is the areas with the highest bio diversity (rain forests). These places are not the driest because the high amount of incoming heat generates high levels of moisture.
I dug up the National Geographic magazine that so many have quoted as de-facto evidence of the Global Cooling paranoia ... you know what.. the f'k'n graph has a big question mark with one line going down and the other one going up ( like um, warming.. doh ) and calling for real research. Go dig up the issue yourself.. you must know some educated person who had a subscription back then?
You like all who parrot the "It's always been like this argument" miss the fundamental issue. It's not whether it has or hasn't happened, we know it has, that's not news.
It's the rate of change that's the issue, for example:
"I'm not buying the whole coral reef thing since those reefs are over 3 million years old and have survived the descent into the cold and back again very many times. That means they evolved in a climate that wasn't as crisp as our current era and should thrive when their natural habitat is restored."
This shows a complete lack of understanding of the timescales to support survival in the face of such changes happens. The corals have survived because through natural temperature change events they've had tens of thousands, often hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to adapt to the slow rate of change. We're talking this time about something that's happening on the order of only decades or at best a few hundred years. That's simply not long enough for many species to adapt. You can't suddenly go from being a species that is sensitive to only a 0.3C change in your climate to being one that can cope with a 3C change in just a handful of generations - it takes hundreds of thousands of generations and the current rate of change doesn't allow for the time required for that amount of generations to occur before they've already been wiped out.
anyone want some? The show is entertaining as always.
Seems to me when there are major opinions (and egos) on both sides the answer is probably somewhere in between. Though not necessarily in the middle.
I'd ask for tickets to Mars but I suspect much like jobs, people will be much the same no matter what planet they are on.
I'm struggling to understand how evidence that some extreme bacteria can survive in extreme circumstances in any way helps your case unless your suggestion is that it doesn't matter if all complex life dies, at least there will still be bacteria?
You do realise that just because extremophobes have adapted to far reaching circumstances doesn't mean that anything more complex can right?
That's a great example of how you can make something look scary by exaggerating the Y axis. What it doesn't show or give ANY indication of, is the fact that CO2 at "OMFG 400 PPM WE'RE ALL DOOMED FUCK THE KOCH BROTHERS!" is 0.04% of the atmosphere.
The "greenhouse effect" of CO2 is dwarfed by the effect of water vapor, which in turn is still far smaller than the heat retention of the oxygen and nitrogen that make up 20% and 78% of the air, respectively.
if your gona say traps more heat, specify what it trumps. Yeah it traps more heat than pluto.
Why isnt mars hot.
You know whats the real bad thing? Cutting trees, Brazil making high ways everywhere, indonesia, burma cutting down forests.
As long as we keep buring 90 million barrels of oil a day, (its not going to drop) then you are not going to reduce any co2, especially with india,china using more coal each year on year.
The ONLY option is 5x increase in Nuke Plants. Nothing else has that density.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-13/u-dot-s-dot-revises-down-co2-reading-that-showed-key-threshold-passed The figure for May 9 has now been revised down to 399.89 ppm....
No good deed goes unpunished.
that whole continent could become the only habitable place on the planet, cause the rest of it closer to the equator became arid desert, no longer able to support life.
global warming: you're right. its not necessarily bad. but its not necessarily good either. plants and animals, particularly plants, have limits when it comes to where they can grow. plants, upon which we are dependant for the majority of our food. imagine the lower half of the US no longer able to farm. the current weather patterns that our crops are dependent on, ie rain, exist in our current climate. but make everything warmer, and theres no garuntee the rain will move north with the usable growing area. in fact, weather scientists think that's unlikely given the general nature of the jet stream (the engine that drives the atmophere).
nature adapted before through evolution. but a million years worth of climate change has occurred in the last 300.
how confident are you in evolution that the plants and animals on which we rely can keep up on such a short timescale?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A more recent poll showed that 2/3rd of statistics are made up.
The very latest statistics suggest that you are 100% full of shit. Read it and weep:
http://slashdot.org/poll/2272/what-is-your-position-on-climate-change
Believe it (not a researcher) + know it and can prove it = 64%
Skeptic + believe it is a hoax + know it is a hoax and can prove it + real but not man-made = 33%
(I know it doesn't add up to a hundred, but the Slashdot poll rounds down to the nearest %)
"With us, or Against us" has been used many times in history; but it's not always true.
This isn't with us or against us, it's scientific knowledge vs. backward science denial. Same as evolution, heliocentrism, and the long-running problem of bullshit medicine.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
also, you're just plain ignorant of the past.
many millions of years ago simple duckweed caused a massive planetary cooling. called the Azolla event. all that oil under the arctic ocean they want to free up for fuel use? came from that. so if duckweed locking all that CO2 away caused a massive planetary freeze.. ..just what in the hell do you think is going to happen when its released back into the system ?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Did I say otherwise?
caritj.org
life adapted over a period of several million years.
we compressed several million years worth of warming into 300.
how confident are you in evolutions ability to adapt on such a short time scale? given enough time, sure...life will recover. the question is will we still be around by then, or will we have starved to death or exterminated our species in a massive global resource war?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Yeah, just like Iraq.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The most important thing to do is actually spot-check references. This is so poorly and rarely done that you will very quickly sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to arguments about climate change. (And pretty much anything else.) Sure it takes time, but you learn a *lot* by following how people argue.
It is not too difficult to separate the signal from the noise, but you have to eschew black and white thinking. There are plenty of "earth-is-holy" nutcases out there who desperately believe in AGW, and have no friggin' clue about anything other than their spirit guide. But those people do not work in universities.
If you are interested in seeing some detailed analysis on "skeptic" arguments, then I recommend Peter Hadfield's excellent 5 video series on Monckton: Monckton Bumkin. Sure he makes fun of Monckton, but you'll see why if you actually watch some Monckton videos and then try and trace the arguments. Monckton walked away from a direct conversation with Peter Hadfield on Monckton responds to Potholer54 on the "skeptic" website WUWT.
If you are interested in how information flows through society, then Naomi Oreskes has an excellent book on the disinformation campaign: Merchants of Doubt. It is a little too detailed for a light read, but the details are stomach churning in their audacity.
Getting to the core of the scientific issues is more work. I'm working on a phd, and have a long background in math, modeling, and also some understanding of scientific culture. That type of experience doesn't just fall in your lap. skepticalscience does a good job.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You mention cherry-picking, but seem to be doing the exact same thing yourself. Well, except you're not even providing citations so we know WHICH models you're talking about and can provide the dozens of responses refuting the claims you are making. So it's more like "talking about a cherry on a tree in a vast orchard without specifying which one."
That's SCIENCE! It doesn't matter WHICH observations refute your theory, if they exist then the theory is wrong. Seeing people that claim to be "scientists" going around claiming their theory has to be protected so ignoring actual data is very disheartening. When real scientists come across observations that don't match their theory, they go back and work on a different hypothesis, they don't go around trying to discredit the people that found the data.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The point here is that we have hordes of immediate problems in society that no reasonable person would say he doesn't care about, but that statement of caring rings hollow when it isn't backed by money and action. Instead, we as a society seem to like to adopt elitist, knee-jerk, "favorite sports team" style positions on matters that may be fairly described as extraordinarily difficult to even get agreed quantification on. Meanwhile, kids are living under bridges in our nation's cities, and folks are dropping dead from chronic disease at relatively young ages left and right.
I've dedicated my life to understanding these issues and contributing to the discourse of science. The problem with the "what are you doing about the child under the bridge?" argument is that it ignores that mitigating climate change really isn't going to be a big deal if we actually do something sooner rather than later. The "sky will fall in on the economy" meme is part of the disinformation campaign, and there are plenty of "earth-is-holy-capitalism-is-evil" spirit people out there to poison the conversation.
Do you want to carry on with your knee-jerk reactions and stay in your comfortable little bubble, where you can safely think about things on a time scale that ranges from 50 to perhaps hundreds of years or more, or do you want to take a moment to consider that maybe your energy might be better placed somewhere else, some place that might make a different on matters that are killing millions of people right now? Should you choose the former, don't worry, you'll be the company of most of the rest of society. I suppose that's some consolation at least.
A judicious understanding of economic theory will lead you to understand that there is no reason why we cannot do both at the same time. Unfortunately, the politics in the USA (in particular) is so pre-school level that conservatives adopt a position merely because it goes against what democrats want. For example, Paul Ryan supported Obamacare as late as 2007. It is a conservative idea, generated in conservative think-tanks in the 90s, and experimented with my conservative governors.
GOP obstructionism is rather hair-raising considering that dems use universities as think-tanks. Most of the economics profession is against trickle-down economics, for example, although I am aware of good conservative economic arguments. Still, most of academia thinks it is bullshit, but the GOP is all for it, and it conveniently fits into the narrative of the plutocracy class that funds most of the GOP. Basically we have a party of crony capitalism hell bent on obstructing anything unless it is a tax break for rich people, or a ban on abortion. Of course they're against climate science. Of course they're against main-stream economics. It hurts the donar class.
There's a great book "Idiot America" which details some of the utter lunacy that has become the GOP. You want to help the child under the bridge, then vote dem until the GOP is reformed.
I am a conservative.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm not sure bacteria living near fresh water vents in the floor of the Dead Sea exactly counts as "thriving". Where do you draw the line between barely existing and thriving?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Your question is begging. The idea that people "deny climate change" is ridiculous. What they deny is the hype surrounding the trace gas CO2 and Earth's temperature sensitivity to it at a few hundred parts per million.
Well, you can get your information from conservative media which echoes big-carbon talking points for a price. (Nice business model, eh?) Or you could swing over the government agency that actually tracks the money, as see for yourself.
What did you do?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Actually, he didn't. He said that there was no evidence of life yet on Mars, which is convincing evidence that it is not thriving. If it exists as a few scattered microbes, 2km deep under a frozen polar cap, then it certainly wouldn't meet my definition of "flourishing".
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There is no place on Earth that we know of: not the fiercest desert, not the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, not in the deepest borehole ever made, nor even in the insanely radioactive core of active boiling water reactors - where life does not thrive.
Bullshit. The Dead Sea.
Nope. New Life-Forms Found at Bottom of Dead Sea.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Your argument has been well and truly debunked.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
Idiot
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Rubbish. Newer data suggests the sensitivity is much lower, for example here , here and here.
You climate botherers can't have it both ways. Many of you refuse to even accept there's a debate (the science is settled, right?) and accuse sceptics of ignoring the peer reviewed literature. Yet you ignore the peer reviewed literature when it contradicts your opinions.
People don't want to change so they deny the credibility of the evidence staring them in the face. Are you really that dense that you cannot see the effects of global climate change around you now? Bleaching of Coral reefs[0], Hurricane frequency[1], Shrinking of one of the largest glaciers on earth[2] not to mention the rate of change in global temps[3] for the past century. Yes it's been warm in the past, but the RATE at which warming occurred has never been seen before. These are the facts and they are happening now. I guess for a lot of people it's more comforting to glue their noses to the manufactured reality of Fox News and the like rather than accept what is happening and that change is needed.
[0] - http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html
[1] - http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2007/hurricanefrequency.shtml
[2] - http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2013/04/21/tracking-greenlands-fast-melting-ice-sheets.html
[3] - http://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173739884/since-end-of-last-ice-age-rates-of-global-warming-amazing-and-atypical
[3] -
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On the contrary, the intellectual laziness is on those who uncritically accept the hypothesis. It takes effort and energy to object to it. Far easier to support the paradigm. You're more likely to get tenure (and grant funding).
The world had much higher levels of carbon dioxide millions of years ago and the effect was that there were more species alive and thriving than at any other time since. The planet was also several degrees warmer but that didn't harm plant and animal life, they exploded in diversity and numbers. When are we going to realize that the planet is still in recovery from the last ice age? The global thermostat changes of it's own accord whether human beings live in caves and hunt in packs, or fly to a space station.
There are bigger problems in the world. Disease, war, hunger, human rights violations, and our ever decreasing personal freedoms. How about we spend our time, effort, and money, on fixing things that will actually benefit society and spend a little less time worrying about carbon dioxide.
If I give enough of my money the Government or the UN, as they ask, they're going to do something about this? They're going to control the weather?
I may not be a climatologist and I can't argue the science either way, but I do know BULLSHIT when I hear it.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
whats wrong with a carbon tax? simple. all it says is you can pollute more if you pay for it, it does nothing to actually end the pollution. Pollution continues, and a handfull of people get rich on pollution.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I would add that this is only one of the ways we are screwing up various critical equilibriums of the planet. A year back, New Scientist published an article indicating 7 different ways we are destroying the planet. But if you can't get the population on board with the simplest of them, we are far more screwed than previously thought.
And you better believe the scientists will be the first against the wall when it is all inevitably and irretrievably obvious.
The difference is when that 4 billion is "given" to big carbon, its not taken out of our pockets and handed over to them. it is simply letting them keep more of their own money. Solynra since you used that as an example was given money that was taken from us. that is the difference between the 2.
Explain to me how allowing "big carbon" to keep their money that they made, is the same as taking my money through taxes that I paid and giving it to another company??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What is this evidence they have for humans not being around since these CO2 levels began?
Idiots like Al Gore and his climate carbon tax credit pushing morons, constantly point out man made climate change.
Yet, they are shown to constantly make up and falsify the scientific evidence.
Furthermore intelligent people don't deny climate change, the problem is:
1) Is it man made, and how much?
2) Paying _any_ sort of taxes to the globalists isn't going to stop _any_climate change.
3) The SUN is _the_ primary (99.9%) of climate change.
People who are called climate nay sayers usually answer 1) Yes, but the scientific process is corrupted by 2) Al Gore and his crony globalist friends who put together the carbon credits exchange is a scam, 3) Gigantic, TONS of evidence for the SUN being the primary driving force for all climate and nothing really matters that much besides. And when the sun has minimums, we have ice ages, or the earths orbit is changed.
Contrary to popular belief, the whole climate research field is incredibly corrupt. Globalists are funding any research as long as it concludes the planet is doomed because YOU, mind you....YOU not THEM (i.e. Al Gore, Queeny England....etc.) have to endure enormous sacrifices, as they jet around in their lavish lifestyles.
It is all crap.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
But I'm sure that's a *spectacular* fiscal abuse, and just forking $4 billion a year over to big carbon, because otherwise the the most profitable industry in history wouldn't have enough money to line the pockets of conservative think-tanks and politicians. Do you see the double-standard there?
I see people making this claim all the time because they don't understand the law. The double-standard would be if "big carbon" did NOT get this tax break, because it is simply a deduction for development within the US borders that EVERY company gets. So, you know, if you're developing any kind of US resources, employing US workers, operating plants and facilities inside the US and all the attendant economic development that goes around it, the tax code is designed to encourage that over doing the same development in some other country. So you want to single out a specific industry to NOT get that break? Wouldn't that discourage "energy independence" that most think it is a good goal?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The ozone issue had actually been faced before
Wrong. It was the first time.
. The main industries using CFCs were for propellants and refrigeration. We already had other propellants, and for applications that they weren't suitable pump-bottles were substituted.
Wrong. I used to know someone working for a fridge company trying to figure out new safe coolents. Back then nothing came close to CFCs. They figured it out.
What's happening with global warming is that we're being asked to change our entire lifestyles, and give up our human rights.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It will cost almost nothing to do something about climate change. Renewables as of 2013 are about price parity with carbon for electricity generation. The prices are /plummeting/. Google/walmart will be running their data-centres/stores on renewables in less than a decade -- TO SAVE MONEY -- and that is without factoring the real cost of carbon pollution.
The economic scare-mongering on AGW was done by exactly the same people as the econommic scare-mongering on the ozone whole, and acid rain. The same people also fought tooth-and-nail over protecting the tobacco industry. The same people also fought tooth-and-nail to defend the GOP's hair-brained star-wars program.
The term "alarmist" is just good marketing. It is projection. There is nothing to be alarmed about.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If the Arctic Circle rises in temperatures by 8C again - or even 16C - then Mankind gets more arable land and living space, not less, because polar temps increase disproportionately to equatorial temps. Plants and animals move north quite rapidly. The vast Alaskan, Canadian and Russian permafrost becomes cropland.
I was under this impression too until recently, but it doesn't actually work that way. If you increase the temperature without increasing the amount of sunlight, plants won't move north. Ex: Even if you increase the temperature, Palm trees will not grow in Canada because it doesn't receive enough winter sunlight. Similarly, you can't grow significant crops in the Arctic circle for the same reason.
Insurance companies attempt to predict future events based on past events. They don't perform analysis of the environment, and they certainly don't presume to describe the cause. They work with the expectation that is something is happening more often, it will continue to do so in the future until evidence is found pointing in the other direction. Regardless, even if insurance companies expect more disasters in the future, that doesn't mean that AGW is causing them. Insurance companies don't care why something is happening unless they can affect it, like how they give discounts for air bags and passive security systems in cars. So until you see insurance companies seriously begin to lobby for government intervention in AGW, we'll know they are just executing business as usual. BTW, you really don't want to see these guys lobbying our government any more than they do. We'll be living in cells in megacity skyscrapers like the Chinese.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The difference is when that 4 billion is "given" to big carbon, its not taken out of our pockets and handed over to them. it is simply letting them keep more of their own money.
From an accounting point of view, this is incoherent. A tax break costs as much as an expenditure. Why does big carbon pay less taxes than everyone else?
Explain to me how allowing "big carbon" to keep their money that they made, is the same as taking my money through taxes that I paid and giving it to another company??
All those tanks and fighter-jets that the GOP wants to spend money on... they cost money. All the social security and medicare that the tea-party collects. That costs money.
Who is going to pay? Do you think that poor people should subsidize big oil, and pay the medical bills of the GOP base? Talk about a redistribution program.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010
The commentary in conservative media is actually paid for by big carbon. Propaganda works.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This was already tried once. As I recall it didn't end well for the US.
In any event, it would never be a military invasion. It would be slow capitulation by politicians (Conservatives) to the US over everything, until for all intents and purposes we might as well have been annexed.
Canadian politicians need to grow some balls to stand up to the economic bully in the south.
Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010
This backs up exactly what I said. Quoting from the document in your link:
[emphasis mine]
The commentary in conservative media is actually paid for by big carbon. Propaganda works.
And the commentary in liberal media (that is, 100% of the mainstream media) is subsidized by public funding, both directly and as an indirect beneficiary. So, yes, it does.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It's always interesting when logic and science gets pitted against libertarianism on Slashdot.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Don't forget the North American Union.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
A serious problem with nuclear aside from the expense of accidents, potential terrorism, and construction is that a nuclear plant takes about 10-20 years to build. They also take up a huge amount of water and building on the coastline or major rivers is going to be just about impossible considering the cost and the opposition via NIMBY. We no longer have 10-20 years. Nuclear had its shot and it turned out to be a bust. The industry just can't survive on a scale without massive subsidies that the US al least no longer has.
23 hours of summer sunlight isn't enough to grow crops? Annuals that are planet every year will do just fine.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
perhaps the poster is assuming we can evolve into extremophile bacteria in a few decades. you know, until this blows over...
though we would be quite incapable of drinking the coffee...
adapt or perish. adapt is roundoff error.
what do you mean? lets look at tesla for example. they will be getting millions of dollars from the goverment, in the form of credits, which they will sell to mercedes and GM and ford.
so tesla gets paid while the other car companies continue to pollute, but to top it off now they have to pay to pollute, and in turn drive up the cost of our cars.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'm sure Monsanto is in the process of patenting all the food capable of growing in such an environment.
I dont know why you keep pointing out the GOP as if I care about them. frankly i want to cut federal spending by 1/2 and then some
if I make 100 bucks, and I get a credit to keep 90 instead of 50, the government didnt just give me 40 bucks, they just took 40 less then they might have (might not have)
How about we stop assuming that the government owns us, and start making them spend within their means just like they expect us to do.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I guess you got an F on your equilibrium test in high school chemistry. they do still teach chemistry, right? or has it been replaced with Diversity Ethics?
volume and idiocy are correlated positively
ok, I hate to say it, but maybe we do need more H1-B's
The tax breaks were not quantified.
The oil industry has been subsidized since its inception.
You just read as far as the one statement that you could construe to mean what your bias wants it to mean, and then stopped. That's kind of pathetic.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't know anyone who assumes that the government owns us. That's just absurd. Those tax receipts buy civilization. You don't want to pay any taxes? Move to Somalia. Problem solved.
But really, this is about getting civilization and not paying for it. How about paying for the things you use?
The GOP couldn't care less about reducing the deficit, or working out how to responsibly spend money. All the brohaha about cutting government in half is just bullshit. The tea party base do want to reduce the size of government, but not the things that they use, which is almost all of government, so they'll be the first to whine if their social security or medicare is cut. But by their own lights, they never used a dime of government either.
Where is the responsibility?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It's the same tax break as the film, record, and other industries get, and if you want to make a fair comparison these industries have also been "subsidized since inception", if that's your viewpoint of what the tax code is doing.
I already know what the issue is, and you're still buying the propaganda that oil somehow get some special subsidy beyond what is available to every industry. What's pathetic is you calling me out for quoting from the document, which you gave no indication that you even read. So, tell me, what point from the document were you trying to make?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Just because big carbon makes use of one tax break that other industries use does not mean that that is the only tax break it gets. Your argument is incoherent.. big carbon has been getting different tax breaks for over 100 years.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I've tested gravity and know it exists. I strongly encourage you to do so also.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just because big carbon makes use of one tax break that other industries use does not mean that that is the only tax break it gets. Your argument is incoherent.. big carbon has been getting different tax breaks for over 100 years.
Wow and you had the nerve to call ME biased!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Some argue that the consumer can purchase warmth or work or mobility at less cost by means of coal or oil or nuclear energy than by means of sunshine or wind or biomass. The argument concludes that this fact, in and of itself, relegates renewable energy resources to a small place in the national energy budget. The argument would be valid if energy prices were set in perfectly competitive markets. They are not. The costs of energy production have been underwritten unevenly among energy resources by the Federal Government.
This is where I stand. We also have to factor in the cost of pollution. Can you agree to that?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Science is a consensus. If nobody agrees on some facet of theory, then it is not proven.
Yes, for example, that's how we knew the sun rotated around the earth.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I agree that there is no free market for energy, yes.
The cost of pollution is already factored in by regulations limiting particular matter, sulfides, and other harmful chemicals. Nuclear energy costs are driven more by irrational fear than thoughtful policy, based on facts.
Of course, you will next argue that CO2, and even carbon itself (which is 18% of your physical make-up, BTW), is also a "pollutant" and calculate some outrageous sum to "pay" for it.
It's funny, isn't it, how people talk about air pollution and water pollution as bad because they want PURE air and water uncontaminated by pollutants, but when they talk about "carbon pollution", this 3rd stool of the essential elements for life is not expected to be PURE, but eliminated. They want to "sequester" it in the ground. I call that a graveyard. I mean, once the water is gone from your dead body, most of the rest is carbon.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'll throw my two cents out into the "noise". I've noticed a depressing trend in recent years. People tossing trash out of their cars. Invariably it is the leftovers of some fast food meal, choked down in the car, and tossed out the window for someone else to pick up -- or not. The streets in my neighborhood are festooned with such litter. Originally, I blamed the problem on one particular ethnic group below a certain age. But in time I've noticed people of all colors doing the same thing, and of an age when they really should know better.
What does this have to do with CO2 levels? My point is, how can we expect people to care about the larger problems, if they won't even deposit their trash in a proper receptacle? I would like to start improving the planet in ways that pretty much everyone can agree upon. Let us begin taking care of the trash. Then maybe we can start working on the bigger problems.
Proverbs 21:19
Tax breaks? Fully 50% of the profits from gasoline production goes to the government. How much is enough?
love is just extroverted narcissism
So once again, "CO2 at 400 ppm! The End is Near!" prophets have come out with yet another insane prediction. And people on the chat boards believe it, again! In my 45 some years on this planet I have seen no less than 20 doomsday predictions (it's about every 18 months, it's like Moore's Law for crazy people). Some of the best nuclear war, nuclear power, DDT, ozone hole, over population, Y2K, and of course Planetary Alignment, just to name a few. So here is my question for the skeptics out there. Why do people keep believing this BS? Is it new suckers being born every generation who just don't know any better? Or is it the same fools who are just so gullible that they firmly believe the world is going to end every couple years despite the fact it never has? When Professor Paul R. Ehrlich wrote "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...", are these the same guys who believed it then or an entirely new batch of suckers?
You're acting like the observations refuting climate change, and the sources promoting them, are accurate rather than lies paid for by fossil fuel interests to keep the gravy train going. You can't possibly be that stupid. So I'll just ask what you get out of trolling?
23 hours of summer sunlight isn't enough to grow crops?
No.
Good point though: it isn't the # of hours, it is the angle. The arctic may get 24 hours of sun on some days, but the actual amount of sunlight that reaches the ground is minimal because the sun is so low in the sky.
The "greenhouse effect" of CO2 is dwarfed by the effect of water vapor
Yes, yes it is. It's what's called a Feedback Loop. Take a balanced seesaw with 1 lb on one side and 10 lbs on the other at distances that make the forces equal.
Now move the 1lb weight outward a bit or add a some weight. Once the 10lb ball starts rolling it's going to be 10x harder to stop.
Now multiply by the scale of an atmosphere and it's *really* a bad idea to play chicken with that type of situation.
If we nudge water vapor to increase more heat, it keeps getting stronger as more water evaporates due to the higher temps...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This is why I love debating you guys. Whenever your opponents ask a direct question that will derail your arguments, the response is to change the entire conversation to avoid it.
Your comment is just gibberish to avoid my question about whether temperature proxies show the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age to be regional or global.
But, I'll wait for interkin3tic to respond, since he was the one who implied they were local.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
You're acting like the observations disproving many of the AGW models still being promoted are lies, because some arrogant academic can't acknowledge facts in opposition to his theories. You can't possibly be that stupid. So I'll just ask what you get out of flame baiting?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I looked at your link that shows businesses get to deduct business expenses from their income, and determine their taxable income from that reduced amount.
You definition of "giving" must be different than mine.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Good point. The demand curve is inelastic. Gas taxes pay for roads and bridges. But that's a sales tax, not therefore a tax on consumption. (Not production.) So we are talking apples and oranges. If you want to have an informed opinion on tax, then it is worth knowing the difference.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You did notice I'm not the same poster as the one you were answering before?
And you did notice that three-letter sequence at the end of my post, generally known as "emoticon" or "smiley"?
And you are aware that on a sterilized scalpel life does not thrive because that's the point of sterilizing a scalpel?
BTW, I don't think there are homoeopathic scalpels, so I don't know where you get a link from my post to a homoeopathic theme.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The cost of pollution is already factored in by regulations limiting particular matter, sulfides, and other harmful chemicals. Nuclear energy costs are driven more by irrational fear than thoughtful policy, based on facts.
Yes and no. The cost of sulfide pollution is *partially* factored in -- enough to ameliorate acid rain. The cost of carbon pollution is *not* factored in, and big carbon does not want it factored in, for obvious reasons. It's free money to them, since they shift the burden of their activity onto others. Like if your neighbours dumped their garbage in your bins, and you end up paying for it.
This stuff about people wanting PURE this and that is a distraction. There are earth-is-holy-capitalism-bad nutcases who know more about their tree spirit, but that's not what scientists are talking about. So lets restrict the focus of attention to what serious scientists and economists have to say on the issue.
Carbon pollution refers to soot and/or CO2. Sure CO2 is essential to life (soot isn't), but that is another distraction. What is essential to life, but that doesn't mean you can't kill yourself with it.
The science says that if you dump lots of CO2 in the atmosphere, you'll change the biosphere of the earth, and that may not be pretty. The economists say that that is going to cost a lot of money.
Action on the issue is practically free in an aggregate sense, as evidenced in the USA (regional greenhouse gas initiative), Germany, Australia, UK, China, etc. Action does reduce the amount of carbon pollution, and also creates economic activity, and *lowers* peoples electricity bills fairly quickly. (Factor, business and consumer.) This experiment has been run for many years of a large part of the US economy. No eco-fascism emerged.
If we tax carbon, and put those funds directly towards offsetting the costs on consumers, then that drives innovation, and the market will work out the rest. It's been done. It works. If the US doesn't get serious, then they will fall behind the rest of the world in the emerging technology, just as M$ failed with the internet in the 90s.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Maybe you've deleted some root certificate? Or a root certificate expired and you didn't get an update?
Anyway, since you don't send any personal or confidential information to that site, I don't see any problem with just temporarily accepting the certificate.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Carbon dioxide is a green house gas, this is a scientific fact
WTF is a "greenhouse gas"? A greenhouse is warm because the glass blocks convection. The fact that glass blocks IR makes the greenhouse cooler, not warmer (because there's usually more incoming IR). If we were to reason from greenhouses, we'd conclude that atmospheric CO2 cools the earth. For someone sure of "scientific fact", you seem to lack even the most basic grasp of how things work.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've been reading Slashdot every day for at least 6 years straight. And prior to that at least every week for a number of years. I've never logged on before. But, had to create an account and log on just because of this comment. You sir, or mam (as the case may be), have written (IMHO) the best comment I've ever seen ANYWHERE concerning this issue and definitely the best I've ever seen on Slashdot. And, as you expected, it was not taken kindly. Not a big deal. Don't let it get you down. Also, IMHO, this comment should be placed at the head of any future "climate" related threads. However, I doubt that will be the case. In any event, I will pass this forward to my children and friends. Pretty sure I'm going to print in out and post it on the wall also (let me know if that is NOT okay, I'll put your name at the bottom as the originator). Please feel free to make more comments in the future. I had almost given up hope on human intelligence. My hope has been somewhat renewed : ) Thanks, Torrn
"Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats," explains James Russell of Hampton University, SABER's principal investigator. "When the upper atmosphere (or 'thermosphere') heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space."
Face it. The current state of science is pretty pathetic. Yes, we should be concerned. And yes, we should study the issues in an attempt to make better policy. But right now, we don't know enough upon which to base potentially damaging economic policy. So if someone says, "Lets find a way to discourage CO2 production", I'm fine with that. So long as the plan can be reversed should it prove to have been based on bad science.
When I hear "Panic! Do something now!" and that something involves irreversible legislation or treaties, I call bullshit. Someone is trying to pull another spotted owl scam and shove something through the courts to serve their own agenda.
Have gnu, will travel.
I suppose to understand that id need to go back in time, or study up on mediveal warming period and a 'little ice age'...id like my facts and understand the whole context to debating it...in the end, it doesnt matter because its a moot argument, who gives a shit if that happened or not, it doesnt change the fact that as carbon dioxide increases so does are temperature and the reasons is the inarguable physics.
I am the one thats keeping the subject here, your the one thats bouncing around changing subjects. I am pointing out facts, your bringing up shit i dont even care about and for meaningless for the current situation. Who the fuck cares if there was a mini ice age prior to industrial age, it means nothing and certainly doesnt change the problems we face. Nor does it change physics.
my comment is gibberish to you because you didnt read it or attempt to understand what i was saying, its akin to you sticking your finger in your ear and going "lalalala i cant understand you", just fucking read it.
Well i want talking about glass, i was talking about carbon dioxide, but ya glass and carbon dioxide work about the same way.
So here is a scientific fact, if you leave your windows up in the summer time the inside of your car will be hotter then the outside, why? Well that is because of the green house effect that the glass on your windows make happen. If you where correct, then your car would be cooler. Green house gasses as well as glass let the IR come in, it just has a hard time bouncing out. Please take a small physics course, its realy simple and you dont need a degree...infact, google green house effect and you will understand it better...see, information for free, what a bargain.
Also, look at venus for example, a planet that is just slightly closer to the sun heated it up to where there was alot more volcanic activity then earth; spewing loads of CO2 into the atmosphere the end result? a planet we cant even explorer because of heat and pressure because of CO2, so if you where correct, Venus would be a paradise.
Give this a try... hard evidence on reversing desertification.
http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
I don't know where you're getting this stuff. I know you posted some interesting theoreticals from some academics that are funded by green initiatives and alternative energy subsidies. But that's obviously biased and still theoretical.
Actual experiments and initiatives, which you seem to be citing, actually have had the opposite results. The European initiative was plagued by corruption, cronyism, and even without that caused increases in electricity costs. That's to be expected. Experience has shown that new taxes, even when the attempt is made, are never used to offset costs for consumers. Instead the beneficiaries are bloated government bureaucracies and those they favor, and the top-tier private interests. That's what happened in Europe.
If you're referring specifically to the RGGI states in the Northeast, that a Cap & Trade scam. It's an Agenda 21 scheme that benefits wealthy investment firms and supported by politicians because they get revenue out of it. The claims they make read like they are creating free money out of thin air, but of course it's coming from consumers, and they suffer because of it. It's not a market, it's a market intervention, and a destructive one. New Hampshire has been one of the big losers, with rates going up more than the other states, primarily because they already had more energy efficiencies in place and don't benefit as much by investing in more. As with all top-down interventionist schemes, this one will be a long-term failure even with the appearance of short-term benefits.
You can tell what's happening with this if you look at the recent auctions. They've only managed to sell about half of the emission credits available. That means traders aren't making their money, so of course now they want to lower the cap, hoping for even higher prices.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I didn't make an argument. I pointed out the word "fact" was used incorrectly.
I was explaining how the word "fact" was incorrectly used.
I don't know where you got the conspiracy from.
Mars is not hot because mars doesnt have a atmosphere to trap heat, it lacks CO2...infact, if we where to do what what we are doing to our current planet to mars, then we could teraform it to a habitial planet, it needs greenhouse gasses because the suns radiation leaves mars to easy...thats why mars is cold.
Yes mars air is mainly CO2, but its very thin, so it has little effect, unlike Venus who also has the same composition but has a much thicker atmosphere, more CO2 crammed together. Here, i cared enough to go to wikipidea to explain why mars is not hot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
It is a very bad thing to be cutting down trees, we need them to take the CO2 and convert it to oxygen, and your right burning 90 million barrels a day is not going to stop, but it needs to, if we want a livable planet it then we need to change that, and how do we do that? well we use alternative energy and stop letting the oil company's rule the day.
Also, if you think that we cant use solar power to power our shit, then just understand this. The entire life on our planet is ran by the sun, all the energy that you consume in a day, that everything in the whole planet consumes in a day is ran by the sun, just because we are not as efficient as plants doesnt mean we cant be, it requires us to study and try things out and experiment, it requires money and effort but i promise you that it can be done because well, look around, you wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for the energy that the plants can convert.
We need the shift, your answer is to just not do anything, but lets just suppose that global warming is not real and we dont need to change. Imagine in 30 years paying 20.00 a gallon because oil is runing out, at that point you would be wishing that 30 years ago someone got working on other energy ways, but since they didn't now the world is going to collapse, if we lost oil without having a replacement energy source, say goodbye to everything you know and like about this world. No longer will you be able to get on the internet, go to the store and get food, get to work, etc...if this happens are entire civilization will collapse on itself, its a avoidable situation if we work on it now, not when the crisis is to the point where we cant do anything about it.
The arguments get so twisted by people who just want to make money, but its realy simple, we need alternate forms of energy eventually, the ealier we get this introduced into the economy the less impact it will have on the economy when oil is gone. Also, we dont want to use all our oil, we also need it for plastics and other shit, not just driving around.
Green house gasses as well as glass let the IR come in, it just has a hard time bouncing out.
This is simply false, for an actual greenhouse. Glass blocks IR in both directions. A greenhouse (and your car) because convection is blocked - any IR-related effects are small in comparison. Opening your sunroof a small crack will make a big difference in the temp of your car on a hot day, because it defeats this effect.
Using the phrase "greenhouse gas" or "greenhouse effect" related to Earth's atmosphere is misleading at best, and has been discouraged in formal papers for many years now.
BTW, Venus isn't very useful for comparison - CO2 at combustion chamber temperatures behaves quite differently (it reflects IR rather than absorbing it, IIRC).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface and the lower atmosphere, it results in an elevation of the average surface temperature above what it would be in the absence of the gases"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
"The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone"
"In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, and Titan also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
So that wasnt very hard, i didnt spend much time and if wikipedia is wrong, and thats always a possibility, you should easily be able to prove me wrong by providing some source better then wikipedia...that to shouldnt be hard.
In the end your right that the windows block radiation in Both directions, both in and out of the car, but stuff still goes in but doesnt come out...unless you crack a window, while maybe you didnt intend to prove my point...you did just that.
Corporate taxes are greater than the sales taxes at the local level
http://taxfoundation.org/article/oil-company-profits-and-tax-collections-does-us-need-new-windfall-profits-tax
love is just extroverted narcissism
That's a silly question though, if you take one tree ring from one location then it's local. If you take a hundred from a hundred different locations on the earth then it becomes global.
Savory's talk is great. He has a gut belief that this may be a large factor in warming. There is no statistical or scientific analysis that challenges the IPCC findings. The bit about reversing climate change has effectively nothing to do with his speech, but is great advertising to get people like you to spread it around. I hope he succeeds in his goals of fighting desertification. I hope he is right about warming. Both are speculative, the later pie in the sky.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Germany is now about 25% renewable, and their economy grew relative to the rest of the world. OBVIOUSLY their policies have no impact, and just benefit a few corrupt individuals.
Like the IPCC, the RGGI make up all of their data, for Agenda 21 purposes. OBVIOUSLY we cannot believe that this has any impact on reducing peoples energy bills whilst reducing carbon usage.
You're really that guy, aren't you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Actuaries don't use IPCC climate models to calculate near-term risk for insurance premiums. The "conspiracy" is all the different converging data sets.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Exxon registered what effective tax rate in recent years? The linked article doesn't say. I wonder why.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't know anyone who thinks that the federal government should take care of everyone.
/still/ mainly old people who receive government money for social security and medicare, who want to cut the size of government, without touching their windfalls. And the military. According to some yet-unknown math.
The constitution does agree with federal law, because the actions of the supreme court are part of the constitution. Like all fundies, there is always a danger of mistaking your interpretation of a document as the literal meaning of the document.
And the tea-partiers are
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Here is a better overview of big-carbon tax loopholes, and what they cost. Some of these subsidies go back 100 years.
Big Oil’s Misbegotten Tax Gusher
Conservative media consistently cover-up for the oil industry. And people like you believe that someone the oil industry is a poor-begotten pillar of US society, and not just a seminal example of crony capitalism.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Our intelligence tells us that if we were to annex Canada, most Canadians would welcome us with open arms.
And the vast majority of us would vote Democrat.
http://www.harrisdecima.com/news/releases/201207/1446-obama-remains-extremely-popular-canada
OTOH, others of us could build IEDs as well as any Iraqi........
Yes, well, you are certainly well-indoctrinated. No breaking through all that conditioning, uh... OBVIOUSLY.
I've spent quite a bit of time in Germany, and know many people there. The proletariat (that's the only way to describe them, really) really have no power at all - it's all at the top. And at the top, they are quite focused on bringing all of the United States of Europe under their control. It's working quite well. And while climate change is real, fear of climate change, and the illusion that policy-makers can "fix" it, is just a tool to keep the populace in line.
They've made go in-roads with the same techniques here, as you illustrate very clearly. You don't even seem to have the critical thinking skills needed to dig into the science and question the talking points. The IPCC - "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" is NOT an organization of scientists - it's an organization of politicians. They say so right on their website how they are organized, and that they cherry-pick from scientific reports, procedures that have been criticized and have had issues in the past. If you don't know who Maurice Strong, the founder of the IPCC is, you should do a little research into him and the kinds of people you are putting your trust (and the future of your decedents) into.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Oh, and I certainly have no illusions about the cronyism in Washington - it accompanies all big money, including the one created by taxing everything any lawyer can think of a way to tax. The only difference between the parties (and among the part members) is the cronies they partner with. The worst ideas they come up with are "bi-partisan", because it means they've all agreed on another way to screw the rest of us.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Try reading your own links.
The "greenhouse effect" of the atmosphere is named by analogy to greenhouses which get warmer in sunlight, but the mechanism by which the atmosphere retains heat is different.[33] A greenhouse works primarily by preventing absorbed heat from leaving the structure through convection, i.e. sensible heat transport. The greenhouse effect heats the earth because greenhouse gases absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards earth.
There's a reason using the terms "greenhouse effect" or "greenhouse gas" has been discouraged in formal papers for many years now.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
WTF is an "eco-Marxist" other than someone you don't like? Calling people names isn't really an argument.
If the change occurs in a few hundred years time span, humanity can adapt easily. The earth cannot get only warmer without also getting more humid, because warm air can hold considerably more water. More moisture in the air and warmer oceans distributes the heat more evenly, reducing extremes of dryness and coldness. There were obviously more species alive in the days when the fossil fuels were formed and they became extinct not because it the climate became too warm, but it became too cold. It is an incontrovertible FACT, and that is that life thrives better in warmth than in freezing temperatures.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
What makes you think the Penguins will be gone? There are penguins in zoos all around the world and they don't mind living in temperate places at all. Polar bears also do rather well almost anywhere. Life is remarkably adaptable. Of course it's always easier to attack the messenger if you don't like the message.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
I agree with you that this could come true if this change happened in the space of a generation or two. Most global warming scare mongers are thinking in terms of at least centuries for this to happen. Are you telling me that a population such as is in Florida could not be moved in three or 400 years? Besides that, the rise of the ocean levels that is predicted may be wrong. When the earth was warmer, the areas called the continental shelves were not underwater, even though there was little ice on the earth at that time. When the fossil fuels were made there was no ice anywhere on the whole planet.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Life is amazingly adaptable. Penguins do just fine in zoos located in different places away from the cold of Antarctica. Polar bears will also thrive almost anywhere if they can find enough to eat. You also ignore the fact that when the entire Earth warms up, there is MUCH more moisture in the atmosphere, so that it will rain even in places that now get very little precipitation. With more moisture in the atmosphere worldwide, there will be less water in the oceans, so the ocean rise will be minimal if it happens at all. Even people and their civilization can adapt easily, if the change happens over a few centuries. After all, the population of the US went from about 3 million to over 300 million in a little over 200 years.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
There was way more life on earth in the time when fossil fuels were formed, including the duckweed. It is a FACT that all forms of life do better when it is warm, rather than freezing cold. When the fossil fuels were formed, there was no ice anywhere on this planet, but as the carbon was removed from the atmosphere by living things, it got colder and life had a harder time. There were other events, such as meteor strikes and volcanic activity that also caused cold and subsequent extinctions. The dinosaurs went extinct because it got too cold for them and their food sources. Do you think that it is an accident that the internal temperature of mammals is in the temperature range at which life processes operate the best?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Why is it then that evolutionary science tell us that life originated in the warm primordial seas at the time when the CO2 content of the atmosphere was much higher than today? Why is it then that dinosaurs and countless other species became extinct? Was it because it became too warm or was it because of cold? If life got started in warm "acidic" oceans, why won't it continue to thrive there, especially if the water is warmer?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
You may be right but the 10,000 years or so it takes the biological systems to adjust to that new reality may be kind of rough.
SalemDave
That is patently false, because arctic animals such as penguins and polar bears and others, do just fine in warmer climates when they are captured and put in zoos. Most of them even reproduce in captivity.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
A few yeas ago a poll found that about 1/3 of Slashdotters are climate denialists.
I'm not a climate denialist, in fact quite the opposite, I truly believe that the climate does exist.
Oh wait you mean a climate change denialist? Nope, I'm not one of those either, in fact I'd be pretty bloody concerned if the climate suddenly stopped changing.
Oh wait, you mean a man-made climate change denialist? Um, not quite, I do believe that we're changing the climate around us. What I take issue is that we're continuously told about the disastrous effects that the rise in CO2 will have, only to find that the predictions were nowhere near the target, but that really big storm last week, that was the result of MMCC. Some of these climate change groups appear to be better at retconing their stories than at science.
Whenever I've run CFD calculation and got massive positive feedback I've gone back to work out how to correct it. With climate modellers, the opposite appears to be the case - if it's a shocking result, publish.
You implied that increase in temperature == arid and dry, which is not the case.
more life? based on what scientific research that you are privy to and no one else is?
everything does better when its warmer? really? so i guess over the past few million years while the earth was colder evolution jsut stopped, and no one adapted to the colder planet, everyone will be just hunky dory if we jack up the temp 10 or 20 degrees?
and the internal temp range of mammals ranges from 50F to over 120F. and just because our internal temperature is X doesnt mean we will function well when the outside temp is also X. in fact thats not true at all. we function best when the external temp is somewhat less than X because it's precisely what allows for heat dissipation to prevent our bodies from overheating.
nothing you said is factual, and has no basis in any science whatsoever.
you are ignorant and know not of what you speak.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
And I don't consider whatever barely lives in the Dead Sea as thriving. Living, sure. Thriving? Well, I suppose if you have sufficiently broad definitions of thriving so large that it encompasses "not thriving" too, hey knock yourself out! No really.
If your definition of thriving is broad enough to include "not thriving", you really do need to clobber yourself over the head. ;-)
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
And life in the Dead Sea or Antarctica is "thriving" in what way? Maybe we will discover some weird stuff living on Titan or Europa, with minimal metabolism. You are free to label that as thriving, or perhaps you would describe the flora and fauna of the deep Sahara as a thriving ecosystem too. Perhaps you would describe whatever happens in live in a meat cooler as thriving. I mean, hey if words have no meaning there are no limits! Thrive = not thrive, up = down, rare = common, whatever I want to believe is true even if it is not.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
With your communication abilities, you should run for office. You could tell everyone the economy is BOOMING because you know this friend of this one guy that he says he knows that has tripled his income. And we wouldn't be much worse off compared to the politicians we have now. In fact, they could use the competition from a real bullshit-meister. And then if you knock one out of office, you could describe the dethroned ex-politician as THRIVING!!!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Ok ... I'm done beating the dead horse. THRIVING. Ok that's the last one. THRIVING. No really that was it. TH ... haha fooled you. Ok then.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I don't know where you get your information, but the lowest mammal temperatures is the three toed sloth at 82 F and some birds get up to 104 F. What mammal gets down to 50 F? Are you telling me that the number of species on earth are more now than in the past? The reason the dinosaurs died out, is not because it got warmer, but because it got too cold for them. What about all the extinctions?
Polar bears that live in zoos where it is warm have the same internal body temperature as those out in the wild the Arctic. Mammals can adapt to a great range of external temperatures while maintaining their internal body temperature with remarkable accuracy. Humans are less able to do this physiologically, but have learned how to manipulate their environment through clothes and heated houses. Biological processes operate at their optimum rate at the internal body temperatures of most mammals. If you dispute that FACT, cite some data contrary to this. Life processes, ALL OF THEM slow down or stop at temperatures below which liquid water can exist. Warmth is better for life in general than freezing cold. Why are you disputing this?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
True, but plants (and even most small animal) do not move fast enough to follow such a change of geographic conditions.
The same holds for the media.
Where does it say anywhere that the press owes you an accurate, well-researched story? The media exists not to inform but to sell advertising.
Media and Politics are two sides of the same see-saw. Both sides want our attention and our money, but ultimately benefit us nothing.
If you are passionate about global warming, stop consuming electricity, stop driving your car, stop eating processed foods, stop using air conditioning, stop heating your house with fossil fuels, stop wearing synthetic fibres, stop buying over-packaged products, make individual choices that get the attention of others.
Just don't be a jerk about it. Be a positive role model. Don't be a pious martyr. Don't drive a Prius and think you are changing the world.
The attention that you create causes questions to get asked, and you win hearts and minds one at a time. Nobody wants to do this because it takes work and time. They would rather see who can scream the loudest on the weekend news shows, and settle for a knee-jerk steaming pile of legislation that is a result of mis-informed horse trading.
Totally expecting to lose karma points on this one.
Boy oh boy they must not want to scare anyone.. 2080 sound so.. "safe".. try 2020, if you want a more realistic date....
So which creatures at the bottom of the food chain would NOT thrive if the temperature of Earth on average increased 10 C over the next 400 to 500 years? NO creatures up higher on the food chain would starve because they could eat other creatures that survive better and multiply faster in warmer temperatures. No matter how you global warming scare mongers twist and turn, you can't get past the FACT that life is more prolific in warm places than in cold.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Hmmm..I think the procreation problem is a personal one. I have kids and grand kids on two continents.
But I have to wonder if climate science is too. I wonder what effect pure heat has on temperature :D. Anthropogenic heat generation has probably increased along similar, or perhaps even greater lines to that of carbon dioxide.
Using figures pulled from wikipedia, average global temperature is 14C, current is 14.4, so from what I've found today, temperature is 5.6% above normal, and has increased 11.2% since 1880. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has gone from 280ppm to 400, so 0.012% increase...
The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is far from linear too. The more there is, the less you get.
Please only reply if you can shed some light on my observations. I've already tried to work it out for myself, and no, I don't want to trust the "scientific consensus".
The Milankovitch cycles are well known as the major reason for the climate cycles along with the precession of the equinoxes, The others are all bit players for the regular cycles. Normally the earth warms and the oceans give off CO2. It's been that way with all natural cycles as far as we can tell. Currently the oceans are serving as a giant sink for excess CO2 rather than giving off CO2. The accelerated melting of the ice packs, glaciers and polar ice caps has a tremendous stabilizing effect as each CC/gram of ice melting takes 100 calories. Nature's air conditioner is trying to hold the temperature down. That should stabilize at a higher temp once the North polar ice is gone and will go up more and faster as we lose each additional ice mass. Also as fresh water from the melting ice enters the oceans the "conveyor belts" will stop running. Who knows what that will do to the oceans ecological systems. Once the South polar ice cap shows even the beginnings of substantial melting we will be well past the point of no return. Just hope sea water temperature does not go high enough to release the Methane Hydrate deposits. Shallow deposits in the Arctic are already vaporizing in some areas just North and West of the US RUSSIAN border.
Canada has the Napoleonic advantage. We saw what happens when people march on the frozen North in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. It weren't pretty.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The Canadian electorate has a sense of humor. Americans do too, but for Canadians it isn't dark humor.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sorry. On a sterilized scalpel as it enters the patient there is a quantifiable average number of bacteria on that instrument. The number is not zero.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let me help you out. Some three million years ago when CO2 levels were the same as now, and average temps were 8C higher than now, this place had a nice habitat for fir trees that has since moved South. Fir trees don't grow there now because it is too cold. If because the level of CO2 has again reached these prior levels the temperature increases in this place again, then fir trees will grow again. Implicit in that is that the region might support human habitation and agriculture without external logistical support. Because the latitude includes about one third of the Earth's terrestrial surface area, it's a pretty big deal.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
People who think this way only really show a remarkable lack of knowledge about biology and biological systems.
It's my experience that people who say things like this are completely fucking clueless idiots poorly parroting what they think they heard.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A scientist does not find lack of evidence convincing proof of anything.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let's go with habitable for humans then. How many degrees C increase do you think it would take before the vast expanses of the Russian and Canadian Arctic, more surface area than man lives in now, were rendered uninhabitable to humans because it was too hot for men to live? 20C? 30? 40? If summer temps increased by 40C in some of these places, the locals would take to wearing shorts in summer in the sunny spots but would still need polar down in winter and on the North side of the mountain. In the wildest possible extrapolation of your runaway global warming scenario, could 40C possibly happen? No. You're freaking out about 0.6C of warming as if it wasn't a good thing. If it swung the other way, billions would die.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Which has what to do with the question I posed? You were going down the route of implying that extreme circumstances don't matter because bacteria can survive in them. You still haven't explained what relevance this has to humanity surviving extreme circumstances.
You understand that life adapts and that's great, but you're completely failing to understand that there are still constraints on that adaptation and that just because some extremophiles can adapt doesn't mean more complex beings like humans can. Birth rate matters and part of what allows bacteria to thrive is because they reproduce so rapidly so evolution can easily occur through natural selection due to changing circumstances. That's not the same with humans we can only multiply over much longer time spans.
The problem isn't whether "something" will survive and it's not even whether life can adapt, we know it will and we know it does, but the problem is whether we can survive and adapt and you seem to completely fail to grasp the amount of generations required for evolution to adapt to change relative to the pace of change we've actually got forecast.
The Earth: It is a large sphere. As equatorial insolation becomes extreme it falls off as a sine of the latitude. It cannot go unsurvivable for humans without the Earth shifts its orbit or the sun goes nova. Climate changes happen gradually enough that you could walk to your new best climate. To suffer the ills projected by the warmists you would have to stand your ground on your beachfront property for three generations and refuse to move.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sure he does, but you seem to be confused. You are confusing the standards for non-existence with the standards for other, less rigourous standards. So while a lack of evidence isn't convincing proof of non-existence, it is a convincing proof of lack of abundance.
Let's take a classic example:
If you want to prove that unicorns don't exist, you need to check everywhere before you can definitively rule out their existance.
However, if you want to prove that unicorns aren't everwhere, you only need to check one place to definitely rule out that possibility.
If you want to measure how unicorns are doing in an area, you need to check a representative sample of the area and count the number of unicorns you find.
Different statements have different burdens of proof.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You're still assuming that liveable temperatures are the only measure of human survivability with your response, that's not the case, human existence depends on other species and ecosystems that are much more at risk from much smaller fluctuations.
Your view of the world and evolution is grossly over-simplistic, we do not live in complete independence and isolation from the environment around us.
As soon as it comes into contact with the patient, it's no longer sterile, and can no longer be used for another patient without a new sterilization.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sorry, I was just being a big jerk. I misread the emotion in the comment as sarcasm and spouted off. My apologies.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
"The study concentrated on decreased suitability of current ranges and ignores increased suitability of currently unsuitable ranges."
That may be true (I didn't read the study), but I thought one of the problems with this warming trend is the speed at which it is warming. The species will not have time to adapt or move to their new habitat before their numbers are diminished or driven to extinction.
"Do you see the double-standard there?"
I doubt he does. I've pretty much given up trying to convince anyone living in the Fox News/Drudge report/Limbaugh bubble about anything concerning reality.