Slashdot Mirror
Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening On the Sun
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Robert Lee Hotz reports in the WSJ that current solar activity is stranger than it has been in a century or more. The sun is producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected, and its magnetic poles are oddly out of sync. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is 'a total punk,' says Jonathan Cirtain. 'I would say it is the weakest in 200 years,' adds David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record, with the sun's magnetic poles out of sync for the past year so the sun technically has two South Poles. Several solar scientists speculate that the sun may be returning to a more relaxed state after an era of unusually high activity that started in the 1940s (PDF). 'More than half of solar physicists would say we are returning to a norm,' says Mark Miesch. 'We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.' If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn't be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. 'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'"
Just sayin.. you're warned..
Climate change is messing up our sun!
Scientists don't know everything about everything, but they want to know. That's how science works: it's a process.
...hey, if it buys us a hundred years to figure this pollution shit out, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.
Are you?
I would say that if you have no idea of what happens on the sun (and scrapping the models for the last centuries of activity means having no idea), you have no idea of its impact on climate, but that is just me...
The Sun God is angry! Sacrifice the corporate capitalists to appease the Sun God!!
I'll take the cash value of that Nobel Prize in lottery tickets, thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auspice
Sun’s Hemispheres Out Of Sync During Magnetic Field
Written by: Tara Dodrill Trending August 8, 2013 3 Comments
OMG! More proof of climate change! Quick, give more money to climate 'scientists'!
I bet all you climate-change-deniers are feeling foolish now.
It is interesting how successful the Koch brothers were with their anti-AGW Think Tank funding. They couldn't discredit the science, so they discredited scientists instead. And have created this fantastic meme that it is the scientist side of this discussion that has a big economic interest in it.
so more like an extra year or two, at best, and probably more like a few months.
it's later than you think, and possibly too late already, only we hope not.
Please come back my crappy antenna needs all the help it can get.
'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'
That's a glass half empty point of view. If we hadn't added a protective layer of CO2 to our atmosphere we could be in an ice age right now.
Winter?
The next ice age is approaching!
Screw Global Warming, nature is messing with us.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
In other news, archaeologists discover we were one year off in our estimates of the end of the next Long Count cycle on the Mayan Calendar.
Because an ice age can occur between the observations made and this story being reported.
Look, I know the sun hasnt been meeting its performance goals as of late, but its just going through some stuff, OK? The sun is working on getting its shit together and will be back better than ever, but you just gotta cool off man.
The end of the world! Run! Run to me! I can save you! Run to me and be sure to bring your checkbook because absolution from all the sins of the world doesn't come cheap!!
why are you modded up? people are morons...
After witnessing the Aurora, I say this is sad news. Quiet sun means fewer displays like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEHRoyvh_Ec
And maybe no more of those wild sun moments when satellite engineers go berserk in fear.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Only Doctor Hans Zarkhov, formerly at NASA, has provided any explanation.
It is interesting how successful the Koch brothers were with their anti-AGW Think Tank funding. They couldn't discredit the science, so they discredited scientists instead. And have created this fantastic meme that it is the scientist side of this discussion that has a big economic interest in it.
Oceania always had a need for an Emmanuel Goldstein. Here, the Koch brothers are attributed with a near mythical level of persuasion even though on the propaganda front they're greatly outspent, for example, by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the EU.
My view is that over the decades, the environmentalism movement has fucked over a lot of people. I know I became disenchanted when Greenpeace (US branch, I believe) libeled Du Pont (incidentally with global warming FUD) while I was working there around 1990. The society-wide distrust of the AGW theory is one of those consequences.
People might still be willing to make small but meaningless sacrifices (such as recycling programs) for the environment, but when it affects your life and those you care about for little, if any, gain, people get more discerning.
You think you do, but if you knew more about how the planet operates, you'd know that a warmer planet won't be as pleasant to live in. But screw science, right? Whatever feels good or seems good must be good. You're an island, and everything else will figure out a way to work, and there won't be any periods of instability while hundred-year-old industries and economies adjust to large changes in climate. Right?
I'm guessing the solution will involve Bruce Willis and a spaceship full of nukes flying to the sun to save us all
Korma: Good
for causes and effects of global warming. It's a nearly
stable factor.
Do something about the shit under your nose.
that RF is funny stuff!
seriously though, ham radio is a tough hobby when you have to wait 11 years for each peak in a cycle... this one definitely sucks though...
It's all the fault of Edward Snowden !
Edward Snowden would be a good name for some evil antagonist who creates heavy global cooling.
The next ice age is approaching!
There was actually recently a report which claims that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.
Yes. I believe the time tested manner of calming down the sun is via human sacrifice. Quick, build more pyramids!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well one look at the sheep's bladder today, and I knew I was having mutton for dinner.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Wouldn't postmodernist scientists operate under the assumption that their model was an incomplete description, largely driven by their cultural and social norms as opposed to an underlying reality?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I see I'm the only one who RTFA (saw this yesterday). The most this will do is to slow global warming somewhat.
However, in 10,000 years when the seasons have flipped and the northern hemisphere has winter in June and summer in December they'll probably have another ice age. Ice ages are cyclical.
Free Martian Whores!
Wikioedia won't tell me how much money Greenpeace has, but the indication I got is that compared to the Koches, Greenpeace is a pauper. Koch could BUY the entire environmental movement if it were for sale. And you act like it's just them, when every oil company and other polluter wants to spread the disinformation.
My view is that over the decades, the environmentalism movement has fucked over a lot of people.
Yeah, DuPont, Monsanto, the oil companies, and all the other dirty bastards that foul my air and water.
The society-wide distrust of the AGW
Doesn't exist. It's only the right wing minority who have been brainwashed by the Koches. Everyone else listens to the scientists.
You know what? Fuck DuPont. Do a little research on those filthy bastards, it's sickening.
Free Martian Whores!
I note that global climate seems to be going through a startlingly fast, almost uniquely fast change. (Well, ok, there are similar almost-vertical pulses of warming about every 120-140kY.)
The sun seems to be going through a startling, unobserved mixture of activity.
Generally, when one startling random happenstance occurs in close proximity to another, it's not unreasonable to wonder if they're connected.
One might point out that our understanding of solar cycles comes from direct observation of approximately only 250-some years.
Observation of a system can only observe periodicity of 0.5N, and suggest confirmation 0.33N; that is you only get a HINT that something is periodic after you see it twice, and really only a strong suggestion of periodicity after the third observation. Turning that around, then, the longest periodic cycles within our 4.5-billion-old Sun that we could have directly observed is not much more than 80 years. (Granted, one can make some inferred solar observations on a longer scale based on tree ring data, etc.)
That's an amazingly short time, given the scale of our sun's span. We don't really know all that much about it.
-Styopa
Discrediting scientists (and by extension science) is going to be paying dividends for a long time. I wonder how quickly it'll accelerate the USA's loss of leadership in the sciences.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It's just the photino birds.
And a shrimp on the barbie?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I don't think that the aesthetics of the environmentalism movement should be the main driver of people's decisions with regard to the environment, any more than the aesthetics of libertarianism should decide what people do about their civil liberties.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
... that if anyone presents you a model of anything, it is likely wrong to a degree they can only guess at.
Economic, social, biological, climate (to mention just a few) are to be taken with a huge grain of salt. It is nice people study these things and increase our knowledge. That sort of pursuit is to be encouraged and applauded. But the minute anyone says they have it all understood ... stop listening. They don't.
Think: when was the last time you heard about a model and were told its accuracy _and_ assumptions (and the accuracy of those). And, importantly, what were you told about the robustness of the model ie. how sensitive it was to changes in variables (black swans, incorrect assumptions, etc)? That's right. Never.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
You think you do, but if you knew more about how the planet operates, you'd know that a warmer planet won't be as pleasant to live in.
Social evolution can happen at a very rapid pace when needed, so I am not worried about that. Humans can and will adapt as needed.
What I do know, is that Geologically speaking, we are still in an ice-age(inter-glacial period, but still an ice age as we currently have ice-caps), so I know for a fact that earthly life as a whole will be quite happy once we have moved away from the unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead.
Sure there will be disruptions, but change is both disruptive and unavoidable, so we will deal with it.
I am struck by the irony of a group of people whose primary tactic for persuasion has been to call people Deniers and shills, etc in a blatant attempt to discredit them, is complaining that they themselves have fallen victim to the same game.
Karma?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How do you respond to this: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/secret-environmental-cost-us-ethanol-220037254.html
I think this is just the beginning. The environmental movement has a lot to answer for, including out of control forest fires, millions of deaths from malaria, and so on. I'm not saying that a clean environment is a noble goal, just that proper evaluations are needed.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Periods of instability and hundred-year-old industries and economies adjusting to some large change is pretty much par for the course. History is full of things changing and pulling the rug out from under the established order. For example, when Venice lost its dominant position in the trade routes into Europe from the east. Quite a shock when a lot of their riches started evaporating, but they survived.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I don't think you can blame the environmental movement for rampant and anti-environmental profiteering by agribusinesses realising that biofuel crops can be a huge money-spinner. I mean literally that very article has environmentalist groups arguing against it.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well, no. The Sun God laid back and chilling out, thus the low level of activity.
I didn't realise that the bare survival of the human race was what passed for an acceptable vision of the future these days.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
millions of deaths from malaria
Yeah, that's the point where you really proved that you don't know what you're talking about.
DDT was not banned from the world, only the US. The US does not have millions of deaths from malaria.
In point of fact, DDT is still in use around the world. Unfortunately, mosquitoes have developed resistance to it and humans haven't. The decline is DDT usage is not due to the US banning it, but rather due to the fact that it's not working very well anymore and the health problems it causes for humans are beginning to outweigh the benefits.
"...or it could be fixing to go nova early, and kill us all."
In the meantime, here's a cute video we found of a cat playing piano...
Here, the Koch brothers are attributed with a near mythical level of persuasion even though on the propaganda front they're greatly outspent, for example, by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the EU.
I hope you realize that's not a very fair comparison. There are at least three fundamental errors that make the comparison misleading:
1) You are comparing two oil tycoons to Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union
The Koch brothers run a privately owned company with an estimated income of around $100 billion per year
Greenpeace has an income of around 0.35% of Koch industries, around 350 million.
The World Wildlife fund has an income of around 0.25% of Koch industries, around 250 million.
The European Union has a budget of around 160% of Koch industries, around $160 billion per year
You needed to throw the European Union into the comparison to make the comparison look even remotely reasonable. Otherwise the groups you're looking at would be at a more than 100 to 1 funding disadvantage. However, other than to make the comparison look less ridiculous, it doesn't really seem reasonable to include the EU in your comparison.
2) You seem to categorizing all money spent by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union (which includes 28 different countries) as propaganda.
This is a ridiculous assumption to make, however, it may surprise you to know that Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union have other things to spend their money on than climate change. Greenpeace maintains a small fleet of ships, and runs a variety of different environmental campaigns, the World Wildlife Fund is more concerned with Wilflife preservationt than Global Warming and the European Union is a government that runs many programs that have nothing to do with climate change.
3) No one know how much money the Koch brothers spend on climate change propaganda.
Koch industries is a privately owned company and thus doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends on anti-climate change propaganda. It seems likely, however, if they spend as little as 1% on opposing climate change they'd outspend the Greenpeace and the WWF entirely. Once you account for the actual breakdown of spending on climate change for those groups, the Koch brothers could easily outspend them with 0.1% of annual revenue.
While I agree that some people do have Koch brother myopia, they are in fact, one of the largest funders of anti-regulatory and right-wing propaganda groups in the world. Most of that funding is done in secret because they are not compelled to reveal any of it. They are in fact, running a shadowy propaganda war against environmental groups because they directly profit from lax environmental laws (because of lower costs, and increased ability to shift clean up burdens to tax payers).
I know I became disenchanted when Greenpeace (US branch, I believe) libeled Du Pont (incidentally with global warming FUD) while I was working there around 1990.
Ah, yes. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Incidentally, I've never really been a big fan of Greenpeace either, but I try not to let the messenger colour the message.
People might still be willing to make small but meaningless sacrifices (such as recycling programs) for the environment, but when it affects your life and those you care about for little, if any, gain, people get more discerning.
That is probably true. However, the problem may be the perception of the gain versus the perception of the cost. I know many people (on Slashdot even) have claimed that switching to a low carbon energy infrastructure would result in global poverty. But to stop global warming completely in it's tracks would cost us close to 2% of world GDP, fairly close to what the world spends on sewers and sewage treatment. If you figure the cost is everyth
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'm curious as to why people heap abuse on environmentalists. It seems like if you dare to admit you're trying to make a positive change and don't succeed, you are labeled an asshole. Meanwhile, industries that willfully externalize their costs in the form of carbon or whatever, they get a free pass because "they're not a charity."
Greenpeace is and was full of crazy people who are obnoxious, and quite possibly hypocrites, but they're about as relevant as the Jersey Shore cast. They didn't kill off nuclear, they didn't keep us on coal, and they didn't cause climate change. I don't know who to blame for it, I don't think there's much point in finding exactly who to point fingers at now that it's already upon us. But if you're going to, at least blame people who had actual power rather than PETA types. If you just want to hate on them, go ahead, but don't mix it up with them actually causing climate change.
Here, the Koch brothers are attributed with a near mythical level of persuasion even though on the propaganda front they're greatly outspent, for example, by Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the EU.
Do you really think that? Greenpeace spent $27,000 lobbying congress last year. Yeah, that's $27,000. Koch industries spent over $10 million lobbying and $6.8 million in campaign contributions.. See the Koch brothers even spend money to convince you that they don't spend money and it works.
... all of this is based on our billions of years of precise records. Oh, wait ...
The meme I've seen is "if we do something like the tree-huggers demand of us, we'll all be shivering in the dark". It would be interesting to map its origin and spread.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
If you knew about science, you'd know that a warmer planet would be a lot more pleasant to live on. But of course, you don't.
IPCC-predicted temperature increases will cause less disruption than the kind of carbon emission reductions that would be necessary to "stabilize" the climate.
What I do know, is that Geologically speaking, we are still in an ice-age(inter-glacial period, but still an ice age as we currently have ice-caps), so I know for a fact that earthly life as a whole will be quite happy once we have moved away from the unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead.
Sure there will be disruptions, but change is both disruptive and unavoidable, so we will deal with it.
See, this is where denialism turns into woo-woo religion. You "know for a fact" that the planet's going to do better once it warms up, do you? You know for a fact that we can indeed deal with this disruption, do you?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Send people to Mars. While the level of solar activity is low and the risk of CMEs is less.
Have gnu, will travel.
Winter is coming.
Proverbs 21:19
even saying 'somewhat' is giving it to much impact.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, yes it does have ill effects on humans. I'm not sure what pundits teat you suck on to come up with your conclusion.
In the early to mid 1950s, DDT became one of the most widely used pesticides. This was when we thought it was completely harmless to human beings. When we originally used it to control lice, people were unaffected even though they were in direct contact with the pesticides.
One of the reasons why the DDT did not affect people is because it is difficult for DDT to be absorbed through human skin.
Eventually, we realized that some DDT was staying in our bodies. DDT was being used in the environment, on agricultural products, and on livestock. In the 1960's, concern arose about the widespread use of DDT and it's effects on humans.
A study in 1968 showed that Americans were consuming an average of 0.025 milligrams of DDT per day!
When DDT gets into our bodies, it is stored primarily in such fatty organs as the adrenals, testes, and thyroid. DDT is also stored in smaller concentrations in the liver and kidneys.
DDT concentrations are especially high in human milk. Milk production depends heavily on the use of stored body fat, and this is where DDT tends to stay in our bodies.
So exactly how much DDT can my body tolerate before I should really start worrying? That depends on how much you weigh. At concentration above 236 mg DDT per kg of body weight, you'll die. Concentration of 6-10 mg/kg leads to such symptons as headache, nausea, vomiting, confusion, and tremors.
For fun, try and calculate how much DDT would be lethal for you.
Currently, there is much debate as to whether DDT can increase a woman's chance of breast cancer. Apparently, some researchers are saying that DDT (and some of its related forms) is an estrogen mimic. (For an in depth discussion of estrogen mimics, click here.)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Except one side has science and the others actually are denying the science.
"The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. " - H. L. Mencken
H.L. Mencken was a horrible person who was wrong i almost every thing he said, and took pleasure in telling other people how the should feel.
""I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is inconceivable that the negro stock, however carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even remotely approach it. The educated negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to the manner born, and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him."" - H. L. Mencken
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't think you can really call the long steady states of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment "bare survival", or claim that hotspots of social change like the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are "thriving". Progress is restrained in resource-constrained societies, which is what you get during periods of major social upheaval.
If we're going to have social upheaval, I think it should be on our terms, for our reasons, and not the atmosphere's.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
but here is the point you, and people like you, don't seem to grasp:
The warming won't end unless we stop emitting, or find a good way to remove excess CO2.
" unusually cold climate and can return to a warmer and more fruitful climate instead."
and then what, as it continues to warm? hmm?
Why do people think oh., the caps will melt, and the it will be over and we will be fine?
The caps are currently acting as a break, along with the oceans, when the caps are gone the temperature increase will be faster. And it's happen to fast to adapt to 200 degree summers.
If an iron asteroid the size of Texas was heading towards the earth would you want to take ction od just shrug and say well change happens!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Gather 'round, kids. Parent post is a classic example of the Gish Gallop.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You "know for a fact" that the planet's going to do better once it warms up, do you? You know for a fact that we can indeed deal with this disruption, do you?
You sound like you know for a fact that it won't/can't. Woo-woo indeed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The meme I've seen is "if we do something like the tree-huggers demand of us, we'll all be shivering in the dark".
And they call us "alarmists".
World War I and World War II were "periods of instability" caused to some extent by the economic changes of the Industrial Revolution. I'm not sure we want to see the period of instability called WW III by the survivors.
dunno why would anyone care.
but that is the wackiest shit i've seen on youtube all week. but they refer to real world events(which even debunk it) and have an old dude narrating so I suppose it must be true.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Only one thing is for sure, change is constant, until the heat death of the universe...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So you are saying we will evolve to not needing to grow food in the next 500 years?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"If you knew about science, you'd know that a warmer planet would be a lot more pleasant to live on. But of course, you don't."
based on what? how is 150 degree summer and no land to grow crops 'better'?
You think it's going to rise a few degrees and then stop? Without us taking action?
Explain how the acid level in the ocean ring and killing off the number 1 Oxygen maker is a a good thing.
"IPCC-predicted temperature increases will cause less disruption than the kind of carbon emission reductions that would be necessary to "stabilize" the climate.
it's predicted no such thing.
Read it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Judith Lean, a climate and solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, said if we’re headed towards a Maunder Minimum-type event, its arrival is hardly imminent."
She knows that how? Oh, yeah, we find out in the next paragraph: "...if solar activity is indeed in decline it will, I suppose, take a few centuries to reach a Maunder Minimum type event.”
This scientist confidently expresses her supposition in the Washingto Post to support the 'consensus' that there will be no mini ice age. If these people wanted to have even a smidgeon of credibility regarding climate prediction (itself a questionable proposition), they would be running their computer climate models with a decreasing solar output and reporting the results for different scenarios rather than stating their suppositions about the future of the sun's output (for which they obviously, like the rest of us, have no idea what will happen.) The truth is that IF solar output is indeed declining, the earth's climate is going to dramatically cool...and there is nothing that we can do about it other than prepare. That has happened in the past and it will happen in the future and it may be happening now. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 will have a negligible effect on such a cooling trend...and that's what the global cooling deniers don't want to say.
The Koch brothers run a privately owned company with an estimated income of around $100 billion per year
Nobody runs a company, private or otherwise, with an income of $100 billion per year. Saudi Aramco probably comes close, but they aren't run by the Koch brothers.
3) No one know how much money the Koch brothers spend on climate change propaganda. Koch industries is a privately owned company and thus doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends on anti-climate change propaganda. It seems likely, however, if they spend as little as 1% on opposing climate change they'd outspend the Greenpeace and the WWF entirely. Once you account for the actual breakdown of spending on climate change for those groups, the Koch brothers could easily outspend them with 0.1% of annual revenue.
The problem with such breezy assumptions is that if the Koch brothers really are spending that kind of money, then why aren't we seeing the results? They should be able to get a lot of reporters to downplay climate change for example. Instead, we see reporters who strain to get climate change into a story.
This is a ridiculous assumption to make, however, it may surprise you to know that Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the European Union have other things to spend their money on than climate change.
The EU plans to spend roughly 30 billion Euro per year on climate change for 2014-2020. That's apparently 20% of its budget. And while Greenpeace and the WWF have other things to spend money on, they're primarily propaganda organizations. Even those other things are used to further the messages that these organizations wish to send.
Ah, yes. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." Incidentally, I've never really been a big fan of Greenpeace either, but I try not to let the messenger colour the message.
No, that's not my job anymore. I just happen to remember the past.
But to stop global warming completely in it's tracks would cost us close to 2% of world GDP, fairly close to what the world spends on sewers and sewage treatment.
Which is a large amount and probably underestimated by the people who made the study in question. Public sanitation is an obvious public good. Stopping global warming "in its tracks" is not.
Actually, even if humans disappeared tomorrow and stopped emitting all CO2 entirely the planet will still continue warming for most of a century, as that is how long it would take Earth to process out the current excess of the gas. The best that we can hope to do is to slow the rate at which it warms, and considering that the ocean may be near its saturation point I think it's doubtful that we can even do that.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
you can lead a horse to water...
since the end of the ice age. I don't see where another couple of centimeters is going to cause TEOTWAWKI. The tides vary more than that based on the Moon's Apogee and Perigee.
The AGW fundamentalists are as attached to global warming as the Creationists are to their 'unique' views. Both of them have the same scientific basis in fact and the same wild eyed commitment to "THE TRUTH"!
And of course, you attempt to discredit the message by discrediting the author.
Let's here what the hero of the modern left had to say about African Americas:
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population...
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Where are my fellow ham radio nerds chiming in on this subject? This peak of the solar cycle definatly was not the best for DX as I heard from elmers of the past.... 73s, KB9JZK
So you are saying we will evolve to not needing to grow food in the next 500 years?
Food production in 500 years will almost certainly look very different from what it looks like today, just as food production today looks very different than it did 500 years ago.
We are very inquisitive and resourceful monkeys...so in the year 2513 yes, our bananas may primarily be reconstituted yeast byproduct or some such equivalent.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
My skepticism is based on the fact that I see that none of the "big picture" climate change has happened.
And you're probably never going to with that attitude. Saying you can't see the big picture of climate change is a bit like going to the himalayas and saying "I don't see them moving". In reality, they are geologically active and are getting bigger all the time, albeit millimeters in a year. Geology and climate are measured over time, sometimes vast amounts of time.
" A number of papers were written, people thought about it, but it never gained the acceptance that the current climate change scenarios have."
Translation: Al Gore and a Trillion Dollars Carbon Credit exchange hadn't been invented yet to buy research for the desired result of creating a world wide tax to fund a global government.
I have been around for quite awhile, and the idea that man is destroying the planet rhough CO2 emmissions, is all crap. Look they even changed the name like several times because people know its crap. First they called in Human Centric Warming, when they couldn't find anything human about it, they needed a name nobody could argue with, so they renamed this crap to Global Climate Change.
Which, nobody argues there is climate change. They mislead people by using the term when they are making their argument to enslave millions with carbon taxes, in the context of the lie: Man made Climate Change.
Science is going down the toilet led by a handful of people at the World Bank buying all of this "research". Meanwhile to fund lavish lifestyles where they pay no taxes and are accountable to nobody.
Follow the money on this stuff and you will find a banker very close nearby on all of this CO2 man made nonsense.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Discrediting scientists (and by extension science) is going to be paying dividends for a long time. I wonder how quickly it'll accelerate the USA's loss of leadership in the sciences.
Here is one of the "dividends". Exxon and their shills have been casting scientists as venal, incompetent fools for about two decades now, then suddenly they are alarmed that they can't hire any competent scientists...
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Risk management principles say that the less you know about a risk the more it is worth to try and avoid it.
We naturally have to stop burning fossil fuel when we run out of it. Economics will put a stop to it long before then. We probably could burn only about 1/4 of fossil fuels even if we tried.
Ocean acidification has happened many times before.
Read carefully: I said "IPCC-predicted temperature increases", not "IPCC predicted temperature increases".
Stop with such unscientific, stupid fabrications and fear mongering. Long term, warmer temperatures will clearly increase global food production.
Short term, farmers will have to adapt, but far less than they have already had to due to other anthropogenic environmental changes.
IPCC-predicted temperature increases will cause less disruption than the kind of carbon emission reductions that would be necessary to "stabilize" the climate.
I think people who say that lack imagination for the possibilities of technological advances.
Well, given that our star is unlikely to be significantly different than the (at least) thousands of other stars in its class that we also have observed that are in different stages of their life cycles I think we have a reasonable idea of what to expect in general.
What are you talking about?
Since the early 2000's the United States isn't the place for science anymore.
Most of the revolutions in Energy production and industry will come from the far east.
We haven't led the world in research since 2000.
There is of course one exception, we are very good at making weapons.
However, the science and technology of making aircraft, along with advanced atmospheric ad space propulsion systems is NOT TAUGHT at ANY University, and I think it is for obvious reasons which I won't get into here.
So even the research we do lead in, you can't go anywhere and learn about it.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Oh, an AC vaguely remembers and article refuting what we already knew about the Koch brothers. My mind has been completely changed. I tried to humour you and read the article to see what wonderful thing they were doing. I used the search terms you provided and found this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/20/1225274/-The-Koch-Club-Charts-to-Support-American-University-s-Blockbuster-Expos# which says basically the opposite of what you said. Then I thought I'd look at Salon specifically and found this: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/koch_brothers_donated_big_to_alec_heartland_institute/ which also directly contradicts you.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
You're confusing social upheaval with environmental change. Environmental and external change causes human societies to progress and evolve.
Long steady state??? Just the 30 years war alone, right smack in the middle of that, was a massive upheaval within Europe, depopulating large parts of the continent. It formed the basis for the Enlightenment and radically changed the economy and population of Europe. No realistic climate change scenario comes even close to that kind of devastation in Europe.
The only thing even approaching a period of stability in Europe was the Dark Ages, aptly named; even ending in a period of modest, if stagnant, prosperity. It was brought to an end by the Age of Discovery, famine, war, and the plague. Those radical changes and disruptions then formed the basis for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
That analogy is just wrong on so many levels. First of all, when there is overall change for the better, not everybody wins. The fall of the Ottoman empire had winners and losers, just like the fall of the British empire. Furthermore, changes in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa right now are the response to radical changes in the worldwide environment in which these societies operate. And those societies are gradually developing and improving, precisely because the old scourges of colonialism and totalitarian rule are being made irrelevant and destroyed by external changes. You're watching the progress in action. It will take decades, if not centuries, for those societies to catch up with the West, but what is happening there is a good thing in the long term.
Attempts to curb global warming clearly reduce resource availability, and in a predictable and serious way. That is why we should not attempt it. It is far more important for societies to progress than to worry about whether the global climate is going to be a few degrees warmer a century from now.
Resources are also constrained in stagnant and dysfunctional societies.
Nowhere did I say that we should cause global warming for the purpose of causing social upheaval. I'm just saying that environmental change isn't an intrinsic evil. Functioning societies can adapt to environmental change without social upheaval. Environmental change may cause upheaval in dysfunctional societies, but when it does, the real cause is societal dysfunction, not environmental change.
Funny, that's just what I would say too.
But if you actually believe that, the correct strategy is to let technology and the economy develop unhindered, because it will soon develop cost-effective low-carbon technologies all by itself; and if such technologies really can't be developed and temperatures rise anyway, then technology will help us adapt to them.
It's AGW activists who "lack imagination for the possibilities of technological advances", because they believe that low-carbon technologies will not be able to become cost effective or competitive on their own and therefore require massive government intervention to create, and that technology cannot cope with rising temperatures.
You know, when I boil a pot of water without the lid on, it takes longer to boil than with the lid on, despite putting the stove on a lower setting.
There are many other factors at play. The sun's input might be declining, but if the earth becomes more efficient at trapping heat, or reflects less heat (polar ice caps melting) then you may need to reduce the sun's input a lot more to stay at the current equilibrium. Just looking at one of these factors is a good way to deceive yourself.
But jerbs and taxes and statist power grabs.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
What "the consensus" has said is that the observed variations of the Sun's activity are not enough to account fully for the climate changes observed and that at best it is only a second order effect. They do recognize that if the Sun were to have say a 10% change in activity that it would have a major effect.
I'm curious as to why people heap abuse on environmentalists. It seems like if you dare to admit you're trying to make a positive change and don't succeed, you are labeled an asshole. Meanwhile, industries that willfully externalize their costs in the form of carbon or whatever, they get a free pass because "they're not a charity."
Hmm because they rely on legislation instead of competition to force us to accept inferior goods and services.
The point about externalized costs doesn't make sense. If Exxon is externalizing its costs, then I am already paying my share because I'm external to Exxon. Turns out it's a reeeeeally reeeeeally small cost to me. Like too small to measure. Environmentalists tell me that one day it'll be a huge cost even though it's too small to measure right now. They want to sell me an anti-tiger stick to keep the future huge cost away. As long as we do what they say, even if it costs much more, it's way better than the imaginary super high costs that they saved us from!
Incidentally, I've never really been a big fan of Greenpeace either, but I try not to let the messenger colour the message.
Intended? :D
I have no problem with helping the process along. If the external costs of using fossil fuels were internalized and incorporated in the price they would already be too expensive to use.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/health/south-africa-winning/842652.html
Can't say for sure, but historically warmer has certainly been better for human civilization than colder.
It's is the deniers that use the same tactics as creationists, any suggestion otherwise is ludicrous.
Well, you've demonstrated what I said; DDT is still in use globally.
As for the rest of what you're trying to imply, here's an article which points out all of the factors that combined to cause both the increase and decrease in malaria in South Africa that your article leaves out:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/09/28/ddt-use-in-south-africa/
By that reasoning, deploying solar and other technologies would be even less competitive, because they create enormous "external costs" during their production.
We should stop subsidizing any and all energy technologies and let the market pick the best choice. Externalities can be accounted for by legal action when necessary.
Another Ice Age? We are still in the late-middle to tail end of the current Ice Age.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
The problem with such breezy assumptions is that if the Koch brothers really are spending that kind of money, then why aren't we seeing the results? They should be able to get a lot of reporters to downplay climate change for example. Instead, we see reporters who strain to get climate change into a story.
How would you know if you were seeing the results of that funding or not? It takes a lot of money to conceal the truth. Have you ever considered that maybe your own opposition is one of the end results of that funding? The Koch brothers don't need to generate certainty that climate change isn't a problem, they only need to create enough doubt to enable themselves to continue operating the way they always have.
Incidentally, you are the one who claimed that the Koch brothers "are greatly outspent". What I've provided is a simple analysis that says the Koch brothers could relatively easily outspend what each of those organizations spends on climate change. We don't know whether they spend more or less because they are not obligated to reveal that. Do you have any evidence to support the assertion that you made?
The EU plans to spend roughly 30 billion Euro per year on climate change for 2014-2020. That's apparently 20% of its budget.
You seem to imply that's 30 billion a year on climate change propaganda, but that spending includes greenhouse gas emission reductions, energy efficiency improvements, and adaptation programs. I'm not sure any of it will be spent on advocacy, other than incidentally in the promotion of some specific programs such as a trade-in program for old appliances. Much of the reason for that spending is focused on mitigating risk and saving the EU money through reductions in energy import costs, pollution clean up and reduced medical costs.
And while Greenpeace and the WWF have other things to spend money on, they're primarily propaganda organizations.
While true of Greenpeace, both organizations combined are much, much, smaller than Koch Industries (less than 1% of the size). Additionally, they only spend a part of their budget on climate change issues. From their financial statements, greenpeace spends about $35 million a year on climate change programs. The WWF spends about 80 percent of their budget on programs, and about two thirds of that is spent directly on conservation programs, leaving about 25% (33% of 80%) or roughly $66 million of their total budget that is spent on education and advocacy campaigns, most of which have little to do with climate change.
Which is a large amount and probably underestimated by the people who made the study in question. Public sanitation is an obvious public good. Stopping global warming "in its tracks" is not.
That evaluation is dependent on what you believe. You believe that public sanitation is an obvious public good, but it wasn't perceived as such when it was first introduced. It was highly controversial, there were people who said sewers would begger the United Kingdom for no benefit. Does that sound familiar at all?
If the predictions are accurate, at a minimum spending 2% of GDP on prevention could save us 6% of GDP on adaptation. The EU believes it will also result in less pollution, lower medical costs, and reduced vulnerability to oil price shocks, which is why they're commiting to spend 20% of their budget on making those changes regardless of what the rest of the world is doing.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of the UEA:
Oh noes!?! Who am I going to believe? I think the sheik probably had better info than you.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
How would you know if you were seeing the results of that funding or not?
Propaganda is pretty damn obvious. That's why.
The Koch brothers don't need to generate certainty that climate change isn't a problem, they only need to create enough doubt to enable themselves to continue operating the way they always have.
So why is it that the Koch brothers only need to provide a little doubt and not the AGW theory advocates? Where's this magic asymmetry coming from?
From their financial statements, greenpeace spends about $35 million a year on climate change programs. The WWF spends about 80 percent of their budget on programs, and about two thirds of that is spent directly on conservation programs, leaving about 25% (33% of 80%) or roughly $66 million of their total budget that is spent on education and advocacy campaigns, most of which have little to do with climate change.
Those numbers ignore that most of the programs can easily be linked to climate change propaganda. As an example, if I want to donate online to the WWF to save some endangered species, I will be exposed to some climate change headlines. Last I checked, those made up most of the news stories that WWF puts on its main website.
I consider that situation analogous to some Christian soup kitchens. They feed the poor ass their primary mission, but those they help get some Christian propaganda with their food.
That makes DDT less toxic than caffeine.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
How would you know if you were seeing the results of that funding or not?
Propaganda is pretty damn obvious. That's why.
Not if you believe it. If propaganda weren't effective, no one would bother using it.
So why is it that the Koch brothers only need to provide a little doubt and not the AGW theory advocates? Where's this magic asymmetry coming from?
That's a good question, why do you think the AGW theory advocates need to provide more evidence that the do nothing advocates? If you want a real answer, you could try reading a little.
Those numbers ignore that most of the programs can easily be linked to climate change propaganda.
Is it really propaganda if climate change is actually threatening the species the WWF is trying to protect?
Last I checked, those made up most of the news stories that WWF puts on its main website.
I checked today and 1 out of the top 5 stories is potentially linked to climate change (solar panels for families in need).
I consider that situation analogous to some Christian soup kitchens. They feed the poor ass their primary mission, but those they help get some Christian propaganda with their food.
Whether or not that's an apt comparison, I don't see how it impacts your original argument that the Koch brothers are obviously out-spent by Greenpeace and the WWF. All of this is besides the point, which is that combined Greenpeace and the WWF spend roughly $100 million per year on advocacy, which is 0.1% of the estimated gross revenue of Koch industries. Koch industries, if they though it was important to do so, could easily outspend them. Please stop trying to move the goalposts.
Fanatically anti-fanatical