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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.
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
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.
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.
The critical two words you omitted matter.
One melts and one grows more slowly.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
What's your point? Because a ship got stuck in some ice are you inferring there is no Arctic ice melting issue?
Eeek, I hope you're not in a decision making position there.
Never happened. True story.
So because one ship got stuck in the ice IN THE FUCKING ARCTIC, there's no problem with loss of Arctic ice?
Did you mean this argument seriously, or are you just another Koch Brothers troll?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well, that settles it. Nothing to worry about, folks. Just keep consuming those finite resources and let your grandchildren worry about any problems.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
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!
You don't see the big deal about some countries ceasing to exist due to rising sea levels?
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.
Didn't you get the memo? The resources aren't finite, they're infinite. Oil grows back because it's not fossil fuel. Silly evolutionists, how could it be fossil fuel, the Earth is only 6000 years old!
Well DUH!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So, it's not "well understood", oh great, let's just ignore it then and say there's no problem hey?
I can think of a lot of "problems" that are not well understood. They are problems all the same.
Never happened. True story.
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.
Umm the climate scientists on board expected there to be no ice where they were going and well got stuck in a whole shit ton of ice. Same thing in Antartica happend to these so called climate scientists. There models are really not in line with real observations of there being shit tons of ice up there right now.
Actually it was the same shit made up story junk news sources who are climate change deniers who were crying about an ice age in the 70's. Nothing other than a couple of quickly disproved papers ever suggested that an ice age was coming. The problem with man made climate change is that it is happening in a very short time frame and human systems and ecological systems are not robust against the short term change. Geological climate change would not bother us so much because it happens over a long time scale.
The National Enquirer counts for critical thinking for morons like you. The fact that the same paid for lobby companies that denied tobacco caused cancer are now strident climate change skeptics gives the game away. Only fools who fall for propaganda are still denying the problem of climate change. The rest of the species have moved on to how to solve the problem.
Pumping water in the Arctic is not a solution, it addresses the symptoms and not the cause. The solution is to cut greenhouse gases and everything will balance out again without flooding Bangladesh and the other problems that climate change is bringing. Fortunately human technology has the solution in hand if only the cretins shut up who insist on making that extra bit of wealth for the super rich by burning more coal and drilled oil.
You really do look extremely stupid, consigning millions of poor brown people in the tropics to death due to flooding and crop failure for your rich overlords. What a pathetic excuse for a man you are when you spout lies and nonsense on behalf of the people who already make their excessive living off of your own back. Have you no shame? you are a disgrace to humanity. Stand up take some responsibility and learn the science instead of repeating evil propaganda from the alt right.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
I divided the situation up into symptoms and problems. The potential of a country ceasing to exist is a problem. The solution may in fact be to migrate the people elsewhere, but that doesn't make the things I identified as merely symptoms problems.
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.
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.
It is our manifest destiny to be fruitful and multiply, to reap the bounties of the earth which were provided for us.
Scientists have missed every prediction on global warming since then whole craze started.
Seems like one or two scientists can say something that doesn't happen, and your math skills are so bad you think that they all did.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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 U.S. already lowered carbon emissions enough to meet the Kyoto targets, years ago.
From the very beginning of the article you cited:
New EIA data shows USA inadvertently meets 1997 Kyoto protocol CO2 emission reductions without ever signing on thanks to a stagnant economy. Lowest level of CO2 emissions since 1994.
So, let's not gloat, m'kay?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
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?
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
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.
An interesting thing is that in 1931 due to so much ice the Wilkins expedition couldn't even get into the Arctic.
In a submarine.
That was an especially cold year and a submarine that couldn't go very deep, but still that shows a massive difference.
This may be unrelated but I seem to remember learning about railroads and the tundra and the problem of the pressure causing melting and thus causing the tracks to bend, so they came up with a solution of a machine (canister) that contained ammonia. The ammonia would condense and drop to the bottom of the tanks where it would boil and rise to the top where heat sinks would dissipate any collected heat. It worked really well because for all practical purposes it had no moving parts and lasted indefinitely, constantly working to take heat from the ground and keep it frozen. I just remember it being a very elegant solution for that particular problem.. not saying that's the solution here, but it always doesn't have to be some enormous feat of engineering.
Is extinction one of those things that didn't happen until humans came along also?
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.
Wind power efficiency is really low.
When used mechanically, wind power efficiency is very high. You can build a wind turbine over 80% efficient out of trash in your back yard.
In addition to that that much energy WILL slow down the winds and will cause a different type of climate cataclysmic fuck up.
[citation needed]
(I happen to know that this is false, so I'd really, really love to see you look for that citation and shake your tiny fist at google.)
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.
The number of birds flying around the Arctic is very low. The point of maintaining the ice is maintaining the usual ocean currents.
For the record, warmer earth means more habitable land on earth.
[citation needed]
In fact, we don't know how much habitable land we'll end up with, we only know that we'll have less land and that much of what is now habitable won't be.
Are you just trolling, or spectacularly wrong? Professional curiosity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
America either isn't awesome because it's failing, or this is a temporary detente and we'll be right back up the curve in a moment.
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.
Yeah, but it can be put off for some time yet, and it may have already been put off too long.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sounds like a plan from futurama.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
I'm sure we can rely on you to offer up your bedroom to an immigrant family when the time comes.
Cherry picking. Intellectual cowardice at its finest. You are no different to creationists.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
As a species we should be attempting to salvage as much of the biosphere as possible. Sadly, most of us are useless, dumb, myopic dickheads with our heads in the fucking sand. I'm not one, but I guess you are.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I bet you think snow disproves climate change. That's really no less dumb than what you just came out with.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Just plan to pay for it later when the next generation asks why you did it.
lol. I think you best be careful before you punch a hole in reality with sheer irony. You're talking about future generations? You're the cunt that claims there's no problem. You'll still be saying that when the water's lapping around your dumbass ankles.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Arable land is down. GMO increases yields. I expect you're opposed to those, seeing as that's the idiotic position to take on the matter?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
And probably about all you're capable of.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
So that means "no problem"?
Oh, please!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
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"
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.
It's impossible that it works without external power source. You have all sorts of losses in process like that, for it to work indefinitely there would have to be lossless process. Only instance I know of where permafrost has to be kept frozen artificially is railway to Lhasa and that's massively costly from both money and energy point of view.
...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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course, you can always just yell those facts are 'fake'.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Well certainly insightful, but I'd suggest that a large portion of the modern left really does care, but is severely misguided in their attempts at caring. Like trusting the politicians that only care about the appearance of caring.
"Salvage as much of the biosphere as possible"
Why? Nothing ever did this before. There have been innumerable extinction events drastically worse for the biosphere than any of the most dire predictions of global warming. The Earth will be fine in a couple of million years, one way or another.
Consider: if it weren't for repeated global disasters that wiped out most of the species on the planet humans would not exist.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
You can build a wind turbine over 80% efficient out of trash in your back yard.
Does this apply to everyone's backyard? I have a few leaves, half a styrofoam cup, and a large toy inflatable ball that blew in from the neighbor's yard. Please send me the plans at your earliest convenience.
CO2 targets arent important
I don't think the Kyoto goals were guaranteed to fix everything - just a starting goal. As it stands, the US has outsourced a lot of its CO2 production to China, a country that definitely is not meeting any standard of C02 reduction whatsoever.
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.
There is plenty of available real estate so your quip about my bedroom is really quite stupid.
i do like the idea of maintaining ocean currents.
on the other hand, what would you pay to see a green sahara? or a green california, or fully yellow one? i'd like to see california drown or become a desert essentially... i'm from the east coast, now in the south.
and i'm OK with the liberal ny jew, he's kinda a dick, but he's pretty aware of that fact. the west coast liberal though... man oh man, i don't want to see california fail, because that'd be bad for america... but man oh man, the california liberals bring me pretty damn close.
sanctimonious, shrill, pretentious and judgemental.
make me think downright unpatriotic thoughts. and that will not do.
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.
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.
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.
I think there used to be more "shit tons" of ice up there...at ~548 lbs each.
Think "judgement". How does one reconcile being given reign over the kingdom of earth, ignoring it's treatment because time is running short, and a probable judgement on how you treated it while you were here?
Kudos to you! If we can get more people like you that think it's a joke to think the same way about kids and then not have kids....
Problem solved! (eventually)
"America is so awesome it lowers CO2 without even trying"
There was plenty more than just "without even trying"; there was a frackton of fracking going on, which led to deliberate, accidental & inadvertent releases of METHANE, which is a much bigger deal than CO2 in the short term. And let's not leave out the contamination of the water table nor the staggering increase in tremors in some areas.
But don't bother laying your "*Innocent Gaze*" on any of that. The vast majority of people who care about curtailing CO2 emissions also care a whole lot about pollution, too - in the USA and elsewhere. So don't expect them to cut any country any slack for "meeting their Kyoto goals" by exporting their GHG emissions and environmental damage overseas.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
What about Antarctic land ice? If land ice melts, that makes the seas around the Antarctic less salty and easier to freeze.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
Let me translate the several posts of bullshit you have given us:
First, you're going to have to learn English, because you just completely fucking failed. I've been ranting here on Slashdot about how we need to severely curtail CO2 emissions for over a decade.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can build a wind turbine over 80% efficient out of trash in your back yard.
Does this apply to everyone's backyard? I have a few leaves, half a styrofoam cup, and a large toy inflatable ball that blew in from the neighbor's yard. Please send me the plans at your earliest convenience.
How about I send you a link to dictionary.com? I said "out of trash in your back yard", not "out of the trash in your back yard". The implication of "in your back yard" is "without fancy tools". I could have said "in your garage" to make it clearer, I suppose.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
what would you pay to see a green sahara? or a green california, or fully yellow one? i'd like to see california drown or become a desert essentially... i'm from the east coast, now in the south.
If you want to reclaim desert, there's a much better way for waiting for flooding which will impede your quality of life. You pump seawater into the desert and use it to grow algae, which can be processed into biofuel. We have enough flat, sunny, unused land in the USA to replace 100% of our transportation fuel needs with biofuel from algae. Biodiesel (actually, "green diesel") is used to replace #2, and Butanol is used to replace gasoline. The waste from the process is benign and can be used as compost.
and i'm OK with the liberal ny jew, he's kinda a dick, but he's pretty aware of that fact. the west coast liberal though... man oh man, i don't want to see california fail, because that'd be bad for america... but man oh man, the california liberals bring me pretty damn close.
We in California are tired of funding fuckery in the rest of the country, and paying for other states to have things which we could afford if we just kept the money. We're tired of assholes who shit all over other people crying about being called on it, too.
sanctimonious, shrill, pretentious and judgemental.
What? Let us look at the left v. right on each of these issues. Righties claim a moral imperative from cheezus, so they are clearly more sanctimonious. Righties shout and thump bibles, so they are clearly more shrill. There is no higher pretention than that your one out of thousands of religions is the one which is correct, but let's also not forget that there are literally more cases of republican senators being cited for misconduct in public bathrooms than the trans women they rail against as a means of developing support from inbred hicks in sticks. And that ties nicely into judgemental, where their allegedly highest figure told them not to judge other people and to turn the other cheek, which they really show they've taken on board by BOMBING EVERYONE.
So uh, yeah, you can stick your bullshit up your ridiculous arse there.
make me think downright unpatriotic thoughts. and that will not do.
I'd be happy if you'd just think.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A dictionary does not resolve ambiguity. It really wasn't clear.
sahara was green at some point in the recent past. it only got all sandy again sometime after we came about. all we need is some good ole' fashion climate change.
yeah, half of us are tired with paying for the other half of us. red states are rural, urban states are blue. there's a discrepancy in tax allocation that comes with that and will probably always be the case as long as there are differences in population density.
hey, i'm all for liberalism, i would have considered myself solidly in the left a decade ago, that appears to be no longer the case, but i haven't moved. now i'm a centrist, and i wonder where the like-minded people went. a few years back, an associate told me i was the most polite and pleasant liberal he'd ever spoken to, didn't know what he meant, hadn't seen the turn as he had from his perspective.
when dan savage gets called out for using tranny in a college talk and ostensibly the talk was about the fight of the gay community to re-appropriate terms like queer... we've lost the trail somewhere.
followed to its logical conclusion, why does the religious right object to things? why do they care what you do with your life? is it about hate? probably a small part, but most of it's about love and i can't bring myself to hate them for that, or even criticize. I'm made so that I cannot believe, sometimes i wonder what it'd be like to not require evidence for belief. regardless, they're feeling 'it's my own damnation if i sit by quietly as you walk by to your own. I've got the guidebook to heaven, and I know the secret, follow me if you want salvation.' that stuff, which is a bit more benign than, 'the infidel must pay taxes or die or you all sin against me' yadda yadda. how can you hate someone for trying to save your soul?
brendan eich, little old bakers, apparently old civil rights activists and forerunners... these are not the right targets for your ire.
You're wrong...as tons of scientific data prove.
https://skepticalscience.com/
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
My point is meteorologists are frequently wrong about predicting weather for the next day, yet we're supposed to change the behavior of the entire population of earth for predictions that are centuries in the future. Some of those same scientists took a boat to a place they have under observation to prove their predictions RIGHT NOW and they were wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.
So if they were so wrong about the current condition of a place they've been monitoring for decades, why should anyone trust what they have to say about that same place a hundred years in the future?
I'd say it shows a huge problem with their predictions. They went up there to prove their point of climate change with a staged set and they were proven wrong.
And it's not one ship. It has happened more than once.
Oh, so if you don't believe in climate change then you're an evolutionist? That same climate change predictions by the scientists that were stuck in ice that they predicted wouldn't be there?
Snow is climate. As you know.
Ice is climate. Predicting that there would be significantly less ice and getting stuck in the ice that wasn't supposed to be there, and you said wouldn't be, is dumb.
And in turn the US didn't pay its UN duties for years, taxes the world and rips it off by having the maybe cheapest oil outside the middle east, simply by virtue of stealing it. So please...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.