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Scientists Propose Plan To Re-Freeze the Arctic (inhabitat.com)
Kristine Lofgren writes: In case you've been under a rock for the past 20 years, the Arctic is melting super fast. Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet doing anything about it, which means the planet could be in for a spectacular meltdown within the next 20 years. But a clever bunch of scientists have hatched a plan to re-freeze the Arctic using wind-powered pumps that will bring water to the surface, allowing it to freeze. This new layer of ice could last well into the summer, which is vital, because scientists think summer Arctic ice could be gone by 2030 -- and that causes a whole chain of terrible events that will only make our climate change problem much, much worse. The plan has a $500 billion price tag, but that's pocket change compared to the cost of dealing with an ice-free Arctic. The study has been published in The American Geophysical Union's journal Earth's Future. You can read more about the study via The Guardian.
Follow the money.
When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Without even reading the $500 billion plan, I can tell that there is no way they have though of all the consequences of using 10 million wind powered pumps to bring water to the top for it to freeze.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
Here's how arctic sea ice has fared relative to IPCC projections: http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6...
Russia needs ice free Arctic. For shipping and future oil rigs.
Ask The Polar Ocean Challenge about polar ice. They were there to prove Arctic ice shrinkage.
Whoops, they got stuck by ice they swore wasn't there. They had to be rescued. BTW, this isn't the first "global warming ice melting" ship to be stuck in ice & needed rescue.
Re-freezing artic ice is like giving a cough drop to a sick person. It does not solve the underlying issue.
The underlying issue is that we have too many people polluting the environment we live in. I think we need to have a concerted effort to minimize our population. Hopefully nothing as drastic as war but something that will allow us to reduce our population so we can live on this planet in a way that allows it to heal itself.
We can't have a discussion about solving the problem without being inundated by denialists who pretend this isn't knowable stuff. How do we solve THAT problem?
I think that's a bigger issue than even the technological feasibility of re-freezing the arctic.
Global sea ice is at a record low right now - and not just by a bit: http://imgur.com/M3SBq4D
Here's the chronology:
1) You're being alarmist, there's no issue.
2) You're being alarmist, this isn't worth spending 500 billion on.
3) The environmental impact of attempting this could be worse than allowing things to progress naturally.
4) Too expensive, nobody goes there anyway, and we don't need polar bears to survive. Shame, though.
5) Well, now it's too late anyway.
I'm actually kind of on board with #3, but I think we really ought to be getting our asses in gear and looking at the impact of mitigation strategies at the 'global environmental engineering' scale, and maybe doing a few local-scale tests to help build better models to aid in the assessments.
They'd have to find how much GHG, etc, they'd emit manufacturing, shipping, and installing all of those wells and pumps. Then compare that with installing $500 billion of wind turbines, solar PV, etc.
Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet
I think you mean one party in one government. Unfortunately, the ruling party.
Imma start blowing soot out my diesel again! #maga
Well lets see, we don't know how to stop fucking with our climate in negative ways, so we think tinkering with it further is going to help? Sigh...
As well as anyone else who happens to want to buy something that can be shipped along those new routes. I don't see the big deal about a myriad of symptoms that people are making hay about. Sure the situation has problems but crying about each and every change as if it is one is only annoying and pathetic. Develop ways to manage the situation that addresses real problems. Meanwhile, I will enjoy my mild winters and the summers aren't all that hotter.
Climate Derangement Syndrome.
Grab a classic geology text (one without lots of color pictures and fonts trying to make the book like a "website") from your library. Over the eons the world gets hot, the world gets cold. In the '60s and '70s the chicken littles were screaming about the "coming ice age". Even in near human history, Greenland was ice free and home to a thriving colony. Duh, why do you think its called "Greenland"? Unfortunately global cooling led to the its collapse and glaciation. As far as human survival is concerned, warmer is better.
It matters not what people do, the Earth operates on its own timetable independent of mankind.
I'd offer popcorn, but this is more a pitchfork thing. Invest in PITCHFORKS!
And that water isn't frozen when it is below the surface, so it contains some heat. I guess that heat will just radiate into the atmosphere, with no ill effects. Just what the Arctic needs, a giant heat pump!
There are long-standing speculations about decrease of ice in the Arctic possibly causing more evaporation from this ocean, hence more precipitation around it. Before we go about refreezing the area, let's see if this effect occurs.
You know what creationism and climate change denial have in common? Nobody outside the US takes them serious.
Maybe it is time to simply cut the loss and leave them behind. Yeah, it's sad but you can't save 'em all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As I understand it, the problem is that X joules of energy enter the earth from sunlight. Y amount of energy leaves. Energy balance is X-Y. Thanks to greenhouse gasses, Y is now smaller. So net energy is being gained by the earth and it is warming up. This is why the ice is melting.
If the wind powered pumps don't affect Y, I don't see how this does anything.
Humans will migrate to new land, and will build better cities. The warmth will bring booms of life everywhere.
Or, the scientists will succeed in cooling the world and the resulting ice age will kill billions of people.
Endless appetite for climate hysteria.
Why bother trolling, just post the article.
So you want to use wind energy to freeze portions of the ocean where it would not be freezing otherwise?
This is the stupidest idea I have heard after 2016 elections.
Wind power efficiency is really low. In addition to that that much energy WILL slow down the winds and will cause a different type of climate cataclysmic fuck up.
Further, if so much wind power is harnessed, then it is so much better to use this wind power to replace fossil fuel manufactured electricity.
Also, the number of birds killed by the wind power and the number of sea lives perished due to the changed natural ocean flows will be much greater than the biodiversity lost due to the climate change.
For the record, warmer earth means more habitable land on earth.
Finally, Earth is still in the ice age, according to the scientists. Climate change, meaning warming, is supposed to happen anyway.
Google it.
The U.S. already lowered carbon emissions enough to meet the Kyoto targets, years ago.
So since there is no way you can mean the U.S., I wonder what nation you *did* have in mind?
*Innocent Gaze*
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
In 2007 "scientists" claimed the arctic "could" be ice free by 2016, it wasn't, wont be in 2030 either.
They are just recycling a doomsday scam for grant money. Nothing to see here.
With a b?
The plan has a $500 billion price tag, but that's pocket change compared to the cost of dealing with an ice-free Arctic.
Wouldn't billions be saved in shipping and transportation expenses if the Arctic was ice-free? That shortens the distance to Asia right?
Better known as 318230.
How far back do we want to rewind the clock to "normal"? New York, Boston and Chicago not too long ago used to be under sheets of ice a mile or more thick. Is that "normal"? Should we arbitrarily pick 1950 as the "normal" to rewind the ice clock? Maybe pre-industrial revolution? Who is say having glaciers is "normal" at all?
that 3.2 mm/year rise is terrifying. I'll play some music signaling impending doom and you can start running. Either that or stop watching ridiculous disaster movies on TV.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...that when New York City starts going under water they'll say we need a new tax to pay for the sea-walls.
Pumping >0C water onto the remaining ice will accelerate the melting
The Ice level in the arctic is a symptom, not the cause. Otherwise, is this story from the Onion or something?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Scientists have missed every prediction on global warming since then whole craze started.
nice, nice, very nice.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
The local effect might be cooling, but overall...
The plan appears to assume the problem is water transport to the poles. That is, the poles are cold enough but the problem is a lack of water to freeze on the surface.
Yet when there is global warming the first thing that happens is moisture transport increases. More water evaporates into clouds and some of it, more of it, goes to the poles than before.
Thus the long term problem is not a lack of water transport.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
All that tells you is that their models are wrong
But wrong on the side that vindicates the "alarmists" and shows the "sceptics" up as being very, very wrong.
scientists lying to get more grants
New EIA data shows USA inadvertently meets
America is so awesome it lowers CO2 without even trying, and you say not to gloat? Whoa man, that some seriously absurd spin you have there! Doesn't matter HOW you meet the goals, as long as they are met. The whole point is to lower CO2, not glory, right? If you agree with that you wouldn't care how the goal is met yet you are trying to qualify an unqualified success for the planet. May as well change your handle to Capitan Pollution.
thanks to a stagnant economy
I can see where there may be some danger since Trump is fixing the economy, but I wouldn't worry at the move to solar and other renewable sources is inevitable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Once the ice is gone the mother ship will be revealed, containing all the technology and knowledge needed to save the planet
Last I heard there were four volcanos in Iceland about to blow us into the next ash-cloud ice age. Can we re-purpose these ice fans as volcanic ash blowers?
And that water isn't frozen when it is below the surface, so it contains some heat. I guess that heat will just radiate into the atmosphere, with no ill effects. Just what the Arctic needs, a giant heat pump!
Unless they act fast people will start wising up to all the globalist lies about global warming.
How hot do you think it is at the bottom of the ocean? Might want to google that.
Haha. how dumb are these scientists?
Normally, the sea ice freezes over the water, capping it off and insulating it. Heat soaks only slowly through the ice, cooling the water under the ice and freezing it, slowly.
Instead, if we pump seawater up and drop it on the top of the ice, it will freeze quickly. So we can increase the thickness of the ice, so it will, hopefully, last longer.
If done on a large scale, however, it will warm the arctic winter, as heat is added to the system in the form of liquid water to be frozen, water surface that is 0 degrees C instead of solid ice at maybe -20 degrees C. The increased ice is probably a net positive for the artctic, but I dislike all these goengineering kludges.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Let's say this hair-brained idea works. At what point do we STOP freezing water?
When the land loss has slowed, stopped or recedes?
If we go for moarh land, maybe we can turn both poles into crystal arch Trump Towers!
The problem is that it releases more greenhouse gasses than it traps. All we can really do is stop using carbon based fuels and wait it out. Or find a new place to live.
...over the earth. Scientist blame the wind-powered generators in the arctic! The decrease in overall windspeed has caused the earth to spin faster reducing a day to 23:30 seconds. At this rate scientists estimate the year, currently reduced by over 3 minutes will cease to exist in about 17 years.
Those who question Climate Change are ridiculed as not supporting the children of the world when they dispute the 17 year figure.
Let nature correct the heat. All we should do is replant forests that were burned/stripped. Also we should eat less fish because the oceans have swallowed a lot of the CO2 and they need to offload that carbon to something. And isn't it time to get an electric car like tesla by now? We should invest in more "green" energies and less coal to power the electric cars and our homes.
I think the effect of heat exchange between (mostly) water and air is there but what they are after is to prevent the effect that the lack of ice would have on absorption of heat coming from the sun radiation during summer. Whether this can work or not is another matter but I suppose this is labor intensive activity that is difficult to automate completely so this means jobs. I am all for it.
I don't get it. If the water already on the surface isn't freezing, then how does bringing deeper water to the surface going to make that freeze?
When one is given reign over the kingdom of earth they are assumed to do whatever they want with it. In addition later is supposed to live through apocalyptic time and "move on" , one does not need to take into account things like pesky long term planning future. There are quite too many people in the US which expect the second return to be in their lifetime. As such concern like global warming, future, and other country can go take a hike. Both together lead to some sort of thinking pretty much only seen in the US to this degree. For all practical purpose global warming denial is only that big in the US, among other developed country. But that rapture/apocalyptic thinking alone is enough to explain it, the US is the only developed country where apocalyptic thinking had such resurgence (since the 19th century roughly).
I can live with the climate loonies using it as an excuse for taxation but if the seriously start threatening the future of the planet it's time to take up arms and water the tree of liberty with the blood of corrupt government funded climate "scientists".
Sounds like a plan from futurama.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
It will indeed heat the atmosphere, which will in turn radiate into space. A secondary effect will be a rise in the evaporation of water, which will condense in clouds - also heating the atmosphere.
Keep in mind that the whole problem of Global Warming is caused by a decreasing ability to radiate heat into space, so a hotter atmosphere in places that used to be cold is not a bad thing.
nope not even gonna start on this one.
Apparently these pseudo-scientists have forgotten on thing; all that "heat" in Antarctica has to go somewhere.
Is that a scientific term?
Or performing triage on a headless patient, or screwing for chastity.
We've taken centuries to get to this point with only the wealthiest among us the ones most likely to lose as they had exploited our natural treasures because they could do so without cost, or so they believed. Even when better alternatives presented themselves the wealthiest among us balked and protested anything that might impinge upon the flow of wealth to them. Now we suddenly think the wealthy will somehow change the paradigm? I say to you that it is only when death states us keenly in the eye no matter how we try to avert it's gaze that cold realities sink in. Even now the wealthy among us somehow pretend that by trying to curry favor with the least informed among us they might avert the tragedy if they just get enough people to believe it won't happen. Sadly this impotent political will saves no one, there is no god that will stop this, no hero that to rescue us, and no agency save our own to ameliorate the tort. We have done this to ourselves and only through meaningful collective action will resolution occur.
So if the United States took this up alone and paid for it; it is a better use of money than:
- the F35.
- paying other countries to buy military equipment from us to prop up jobs.
- Mass Surviellance: this is 1/3rd the cost of JUST the Utah Datacenter
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Wasn't it better in the good old days when God worked in mysterious ways and man did business as to make the most profit as disasters were pretty frequent and normal? Now these hippy scientists and their measurements are messing it all up. Getting in the way of business... *grumble*
Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet doing anything about it, which means the planet could be in for a spectacular meltdown within the next 20 years.
You mean China, India, South Africa, etc?
Sure, climate change is real. I'll believe the government is serious about it when places like Mexico, India and the PRC start requiring emissions on cars.
1) Thermodynamics wins - to freeze the arctic they will actually generate more heat increasing overall heating of the planet. Bad idea.
2) The arctic has thawed before. This is a cycle. We don't understand things enough to start messing with this stuff.
China, India, Russia? Japan and Germany are joining those 3 and adding lots of coal plants. Or were you speaking about the large number of 3rd world nations that are doing nothing?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Instead of combating the actual problem of man-made, CO2-produced climate change lets try some simple-sounding solution with no idea what the long-term consequences will be! 20 years down the road when the ice caps are artificially recreated we can learn of the extensive damage we did to the eco-system and come up with another hair-brained solution to avoid dealing with the real problem. We can keep that up until we destroy ourselves
...that the Arctic would be "ice-free by 2013" in his December 10, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. How has that worked out for you fear-mongers?. Go peddle your panic somewhere else.
How much of this is due to the sun vs man-made emissions?
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate
a land war in Asia in the winter.
See, mad scientists aren't all that bad!
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
America either isn't awesome because it's failing
If what you care about is CO2 then America is awesome precisely BECAUSE it is failing!
Obviously you don't care about CO2, and therefore the planet... as I said, you really need to change your handle to Capitan Pollution since all you care about is letting the MAN emit as much CO2 as he wants to met your twisted definition of "success".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Looking at 2016 graphed against the 2-standard-deviation range there is really depressing.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Snowpiercer... ...get ready to eat roach gelatines!
There is plenty of available real estate so your quip about my bedroom is really quite stupid.
Models aren't evidence for or against a theory. The evidence for AGW is essentially that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that it exists in the upper atmosphere, and that we are increasing the concentration of it in the atmosphere. Very basic physical laws dictate that this will cause warming. You can prove the greenhouse gas part in your basement, to measure the upper atmosphere I'd imagine you'd need a sounding rocket. Your basement will also allow you to demonstrate a substantial positive feedback effect with water vapor. So, easily verified properties of atmospheric gases tell us that AGW must be occurring.
"But wait," you say, "who says that the real world has to match what happens in the laboratory? What if there's some bigger negative feedback loop that we don't know about?" This is a cogent objection. As it happens, that is exactly what we've been looking for (at least, since Keeling). We haven't found one, and we've ruled out all known atmospheric phenomena. Some misunderstood part of the water cycle was probably all that could have saved us; the H2O feedback effect is quite strong. As you can see, the amount of water that can be dissolved in air has a really nasty exponential curve to it, as anyone from the South can doubtless attest.
The science of AGW really is settled. What exactly will happen is where the models come in, and a large part of the modeled uncertainty is because they're giving projections which take into account human responses to climate change. I'm not suggesting that you take any particular action about this, but you may rely on the science being correct, so if your personal view is that that would be a situation requiring action, I would imagine that you would want to be thinking about what to do.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
There have been multiple ice ages, and multiple times where the tropics reached up to Canada, and we are on schedule for another climate change, only a group of globalist are using it as an excuse to control all of us, to steal our money, and they are doing that by claiming Climate change is caused by man.
The rate is going to be unpleasant, but more certain than that is difficult to tell, because among other things it will depend on what we do about it.
"E-Wa" has fascinating geography, and I do recommend to the interested reader the book "Roadside Geology of Washington". The Cascades are of course very active volcanically, and the scars from the Missoula Floods are simply epic. You are correct that the absence of ice where there was ice previously indicates an upward trend over that time period. However, prior to the Industrial Era, we were actually on a slight cooling trend. The Holocene climatic optimum was 5000-9000 years ago. As I recall, we have yet to reach similar global temperature levels, but our timeframe for doing so assuming current emissions levels is on the order of 1-2 centuries.
I believe the largest volcanic outgassing in geologic history would be the creation of the Large Igneous Province called the Deccan Traps. As I recall (but I would be happy to find the relevant scientific papers and re-do the calculations for you) human CO2 output to date was about three orders of magnitude smaller than the total figure for the Deccan Traps. Humans are unlikely to be able to emit 1000x more CO2 than we already have on any timescale, however, the flip side of that is that if we continued at this rate we would exceed the largest volcanic outgassings in the history of the Earth in some few thousands of years, where the natural timeframe of those events was several million years. On another scale, we're emitting about two Pinatubo-sized eruptions' worth of CO2 per day, or about one Yellowstone-sized supereruption per year (Gerlach 2011). The IPCC reports give some good estimates about the exact rate of warming, but the rate of CO2 increase far exceeds that of any prior historical event. Since we know that there is a causal link between CO2 increases and global temperature increases, this implies (but does not in any sense prove) that the warming rate may also end up being historically unprecedented. However, if you think that there's some sort of uncertainty about the outcome of this, to where you don't have to be worried, you're probably going to want to rethink that.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The worst-case scenario if we burned all of the fossil fuels is that we end up back in the Eocene period. Sure it would be a huge impact, but there was plenty of biomass then, so it would be far from world ending.
Geo engineering, on the other hand, has plenty of opportunities to have far worse impacts.
If you grab a classic atmospheric physics text from 1950 it will actually tell you that climate doesn't change and CO2 plays little to no role in regulating the Earth's temperature. There's one on Google Scholar, I think by Addison Wesley. It's pretty funny from a certain perspective: the introduction alludes to the science being in an exciting state of flux. However, the CO2-mediated theory of climate change had been proposed in 1896, and although it was initially discredited, by the mid-1950s there were enough warning signs that it was becoming clear that climate did indeed change and that CO2 could not be ruled out as a causative factor, and it was equally obvious from the mid-19th century that many human activities resulted in increased atmospheric carbon. Keeling's observations in 1959 established a global baseline for the CO2 content of the atmosphere, and every subsequent year has seen an increase in that measurement. Although there had been a consensus against both climate change and the CO2-mediated theory of global warming, by the end of the 1960s both ideas had gained broad acceptance, and by the end of the 1970s this was pretty much universal. At no point during this shift of opinion was anyone persecuted or denied funding for picking either side of the debate.
Now, I recognize that someone who prefers "Herp derp! Greenland!" to actually knowing the slightest bit about scientific history is likely beyond help, but for everyone else, this site goes over in considerable depth the history of the discovery and acceptance of AGW.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This article has everything!
In case you've been under a rock for the past 20 years
Condescension.
the Arctic is melting super fast
Alarmist bullshit.
Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet doing anything about it
Anti-American political bias.
the planet could be in for a spectacular meltdown within the next 20 years
More alarmist bullshit.
But a clever bunch of scientists
The valiant, altruistic and truly honest heroes of the new religion of science.
(I'm all for scientific discovery, but not fellating people for it)
a plan to re-freeze the Arctic
Mad scientist bullshit.
wind-powered pumps that will bring water to the surface, allowing it to freeze. This new layer of ice could last well into the summer
What could possibly go wrong?
scientists think summer Arctic ice could be gone by 2030
My money is on that statement being added to this list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
plan has a $500 billion price tag
Golly gee, that's a lot. Who's getting it?
plan has a $500 billion price tag, but that's pocket change
Ah yes, of course, of course, so it's these people then?
http://theglobalelite.org/globalists/
You can read more about the study via The Guardian.
My most trusted source for totally not fake news!
Uh huh. And in 2007 Gore claimed the Arctic would be ice free in seven years (2014) and in 2009 Kerry made the same idiotic claim.
It was quite obvious in the 2009 & 2011 whistle blower release that the CRU scientists were fudging the results. NASA was just caught with its hand in the data jar, fudging the results. The climate "scientists" threw out well calibrated satellite covering the entire ocean in favor of spotty cargo ship temperature data, which is known to be chronically high, just like the temperature stations next to air conditioners, on parking lots, hot roofs, etc, simply because they could be used to support AGW.
Then, to top it off, these geniuses want to make massive changes in the Arctic ocean subsurface environment! Didn't they learned anything from Australia's invasive species problems, all caused by well meaning scientists: cane toads, rabbits, red foxes, etc...????
Too much rain, AGW. Too little rain. AGW, Too hot. AGW, Too cold. AGW. AGW is a repeat of Lysenkoism. it is not a science (because it can't be falsified) it is a religion.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
All histories are alternate histories. I'm not sure you are aware, but the Islamic world lost the race in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Christian world came in and flat-out erased the vast Islamic empires that had existed until then. Islam has been a fairly complex socio-political phenomenon, but the monster you are afraid of is dead. Another caliphate is as likely as another Ottoman Empire. Among other problems, many of the ethnic and political groups which have followed the teachings of Muhammad had real problems with internecine fighting, including his direct followers, and this had to be incorporated into their religious doctrine. I assume you know something about Christian mythology -- how do you imagine it would have been if, say, the apostles Mark and Matthew had decided to kill one another after the Crucifixion? It's a recipe for the opposite of a unified doctrine.
It's a shame that you didn't take that Islamic history course. I mean, I don't say that in the sense that it would dissuade you from any sort of negative view of any given Islamic group. If you can manage to make a moral judgement of some sort about the Ottoman Turks I am sure that's your business. However, to the degree that one can describe a conflict between Islam and the West, that conflict ended a minimum of 100 years ago. The problem with this idea is that Islam isn't supposed to lose: they're God's people, Islam is the religion of peace and other nice things, and what does it mean when the entirety of the Islamic world is divided, looted, and treated as a plaything by Westerners?
Islam as a religion will always be haunted by sectarian violence. As yet another example, one of the original leaders of the house of Saud happened to conquer Mecca and Medina around 1800, and considered the tombs of Mohammad's companions to be sacrilegious idolatry. So he destroyed them. To be blunt, Islam is fucked. The Mideast in general has been conquered often enough to make one wonder how they ever progressed, but the waves of invaders most often settled down and became good Islamists, even if it was at the expense of places like Baghdad. But now? Islam is completely fucked, and there's pretty much no possible world in which Islam is not completely fucked. Their own doctrine is hopelessly divided, and generally the integration of little things like "science" and "democracy" are not going all that well. And we haven't even touched the subject of military force, or economic power. Islam has been marginalized to the point where it is a mere footnote in Western histories, and it will never recover, and the extremists you fear are marginalized even within Islamic societies. Yes, there are a few jihadists around, and here we really need to single out Wahhabism as originated and nurtured by our "friends" the House of Saud. The same house of Saud that destroyed shrines in Mecca, and that supplied the western world with a guy name of Usama bin Laden and a couple dozen of his friends whom you may have heard of. And I am sure they have absolutely nothing to do with ISIL, nope, no siree. Sarcasm aside, the only thing sillier than worrying about a handful of Islamic terrorists is worrying about Islam itself. It's over: our side won, and the victory was so complete that we hardly bother to remember that it even happened.
The problem with being an Islamophobe is not that there isn't a real conflict between Islam and the West. It seems somewhat difficult to discuss Islam separately from shari'a law, and shari'a law is only remotely compatible with Western societies in the sense that few people would try to apply it to non-Muslims. And while I despise tribalism and misanthropy, I think that those impulses are mostly self-defeating. The part that makes you a complete moron is that Islam is not a threat, it will never be able to be a threat, and insofar as there is any part of Islam which represents even a minor threat, we're not focusing on them because we like their oil too much.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet doing anything about it
Let me guess, this is somehow Donald Trump's fault?
Is it because of the oil pipelines that aren't there yet? Which are going to transport oil that we'd otherwise buy from the middle east?
Other than joining the Paris accord (which we are still a part of), what exactly did the previous administration do to address this?
I am sick of issues that have been going on for a long time being blamed squarely on a President who has been in office for just a couple weeks.
How do we know these are Scientists? Did the Scientists do an experiment with a control planet?
Slashdot is succumbing to the same kind of poor Science journalism that plagues the likes of the tabloid magazines. A real "nerd" news site would have at least called the people Engineers, because Engineers don't do experiments with a control group. They don't have the luxury of a "control" Golden Gate Bridge or a "control" tunnel under the English Channel. Of course, they've had spectacular failures in the past too. Which would have conveyed exactly the kinds of risks we would be taking with an effort like this.
The environmental impact reports of a sceme like this which could impact the climate of the entire planet (by the advocate's own words) should mean that every government on Earth can insist on studying those impacts before approving - and the studies required to approve ONE nuclear power plant within one country that would only impact that one country can (thanks to the tree huggers) take 25+ years...
What will the effect be on the waters of the arctic?
What will the effects be on the weather of the arctic?
What will the effects be on orcas?
What will the effects be on polar bears?
What will the effects be on tundra plants in the north?
What will the effect be on the sea creatures at the bottom of those waters?
the unanswered questions are endless, and in the modern era of political warfare by regulatory proxy (see: Keystone XL pipeline) it's far past time that AGW opponents start bringing the fight to these clowns who have been using the regulatory state as a weapon for decades and turning the hyper-regulation against the very people who initially weaponized it.
All the non-tree huggers need to do is force the left to live by its own preferred rules, and every leftwing wet-dream project will shrivel-up and die on the vine.
It's not a perfect solution by any means, just a patch: Anchor lightweight floating objects in the polar circle to reflect the light back into space and cool the water. Find a material with tolerance of freezing. Maybe it won't be ice, but it will possibly sustain the old pathways of cold ocean water (and polar vortex air?) that used to exist before this calamity happened.
Maybe building billions of small reflective satellites and putting them into orbit, all opening their reflective umbrellas would make more sense than this.
You can't handle the truth.
We have SpaceX and other space companies now. So why don't we put a shit ton of water in a rocket and open it up in space? Fixes our future flooding problem
More places where humans can grow crops and increased crop production from incresed atmospheric CO2 is bad?
The long-dreamed of open-ocean passage through the Arctic enabling all sorts of more efficient trade routes is bad?
I'm actually not onboard with the idea that things will get that "bad"; they might or they might not, but the idea that all the effects of any warming or even that the net effect of that warming are bad is just plain silly.
"This place is getting warmer! We need to stop it now! it's gonna kill us all!" - said by NONE of the ancient people as "global warming" caused the mile-thick glaciers to recede from North America at the end of the last ice age, thus creating some of the planet's best agricultural lands and allowing modern north America to be populated and peppered with thriving bustling cities.
Warming is not to be feared - it's additional energy in the system. The thing to fear is the day the warming stops and the planet begins the descent into the next ice age, which history tells us WILL happen at some point. Most of the human race could be wiped-out by such a plunge into thousands of years of dark and cold without places for people to live, with not enough crop lands to feed the population and not enough energy to keep peple from freezing to death.
yeah, go right on thinking that way, chucklehead. the Nation you are talking about is the one that created aviation, the polio vaccine (leading to all other vaccines), semiconductors then microprocessors, the internet, most of the other modern tech you take for granted, and put men on the moon, sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system, and launched the Hubble telescope.... and all the while we were doing that stuff, most Americans (including many who did those things) believed in creationism and did not buy into all the global warming garbage and did not use the metric system.
What has YOUR supposedly superiour country done with its supposedly superior beliefs?????
Oh, and if your preferred country is Canada or in Europe and you are going to brag about your "enlightened" social welfare programs, just shut yer pie hole. Your country can only brag about such things because you have been underpaying for your own defense for decades and have relied on the US taxpayers you disdain to overpay on our defense so you can be sheltered under our defense umberella. Countries like Canada and Germany have been in violation of their NATO treaty obligations for decades and would need to more than double their defense budgets just to get to the bare minimum treaty obligations - and thet would not address the decdades of underspending they have skated by on.
Stop the spraying and the problem will solve itself. Any idiot with a camera an 15 minutes of spare time can spot this shit!