You stated that there has never been a change as fast as what is happening now - "the glacier meltdown rate in the last decade is parabolic. there is NO way to compare it to anything in the history of the earth."
But there were changes more dramatic, just around 12,000 years age, a gnat's life-span in the context of the planet. Not just more dramatic, far more dramatic. So, explain to me how.3 degrees is more than 5 or 15 degrees, I'm still waiting.
If we don't want to talk about pure numbers, explain how Glacial Lake Missoula alone isn't more dramatic than the tiny changes this century's GCC is going to cause. No one is predicting that GCC now is going to make half the volume of Lake Michigan dam up and flood western North America over and over again. Thats pretty dramatic.
Ah, but we don't know the entire history of the Earth. Let me say that again. We Do Not Know the Entire History of the Earth. We can model things, be honestly we don't know exactly how it works. And for saying its unprecedented, that is bogus, the glacial cycles in just the Younger Dryas exceeds anything going on right now.
"The Younger Dryas saw a rapid return to glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere between 12,900–11,500 years before present (BP) in sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding interstadial deglaciation. It has been believed that the transitions each occurred over a period of a decade or so, but the onset may have been faster.
Thermally fractionated nitrogen and argon isotope data from Greenland ice core GISP2 indicate that the summit of Greenland was ~15C colder during the Younger Dryas than today." The UK was 5 degrees colder
"An ice sheet on Antarctica began to grow some 20 million years ago. The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago. during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacials (glacial advance) and interglacials (glacial retreat). The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island.""
"An interglacial is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature that separates glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene interglacial has persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago."
So...we are in an period called the Holocene, which is part of a, wait for it, Ice Age, called Quaternary glaciation.
Well...again, trying to wrap my head around this...
The geological record in North America and Europe shows recurring ice ages over the last 2.58 million years. Period, there are ice ages, right now, in 2009 we are in an ice age and yea, the climate changes in the middle of a cycle.
"An ice sheet on Antarctica began to grow some 20 million years ago. The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago. during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacials (glacial advance) and interglacials (glacial retreat). The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island."
I'm trying to wrap my head around this, are you saying that there were no ice ages? No Dryas? No Glacial Lake Missoula?
The planet has had ice ages in the past and the overall average temperature of the planet is *lower* than it was for long long periods in the past (Carboniferous, Jurassic, etc), and since there is alot of ice south and north of where it usually is (in glaciers), that's an excuse right?
I bet you think the world is about 6,000 years old.
Except for WWII wasn't just a European war. In Asia and the Pacific there was a world war going on at the same time that had nothing to do with European politics. WW II was a global war pitting imperial powers against imperial powers, socialists against communists, imperialists against socialists and industrial powers against industrial powers.
"A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War I and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario in which two opposing nations in the subtropics each used 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (ca. 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated fatalities from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country."
If there was an all out global nuclear war, coastal US, Rust Belt US, population centers of Europe would be gone. Middle Eastern capital cities, eastern China and South Asian capitals and population centers would be gone. So maybe a 700-850 million dead from the exchange, maybe another 500-1,000 dead over a year. But global nuclear wars won't happen, the US/Russia/France/UK/China don't have the deployed warheads anymore to do that.
Figure slightly higher ratios for western Europe, eastern China due to population density.
Remember that a good chunk of warheads are aimed at the other side's missiles, airfields and C3 complexes, for Russian/PRC missiles coming our way, that means a good percentage of warheads are going for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and boomer ports like Seattle/Everett, Jacksonville/Kings Bay.
Takes 2-3 Russian warheads to account for a silo like the Minuteman III silos in North Dakota and Montana, so for the 450 missiles out there, 900-1250 Russian warheads are coming, thats a nice chunk of what they have to throw.
The Chinese and DPRK don't have enough warheads to destroy the US/Russian first and second strike capability, so in an exchange with them, they'd be aiming at cities in the US/Russia while the US/Russia would be looking to first strike missiles and C3 nodes.
She's going into mortuary work. She damned well better be a calm and level headed professional in everything she does publicly that touches on her job.
"I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. Hmmm... perhaps I will spend the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy. I do know the code..."
Yea, after Virginia Tech talk like that when it concerns a University get a second look. Its her own damned fault for posting it on Facebook.
Did Nietzche or Sartre, Burroughs or Kerouac talk about killing someone and then cremating bodies in a public forum? Not that I know of so don't compare Apples and Pomegranates.
If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.
If I can reformat a drive to DoD 5225-22 M and find someone to destructively dispose of a disk, you don't think the USAF folks in charge of White House communications can if they were ordered too? Same goes for civilians working at the White House. If the Bush administration really wanted emails to "get lost", they would have.
China, the EU and Russia are all still net importers of food, so I think Brazil, Argentina, Australia would be in good shape. US Navy and air units in places like Guam, Japan would move to bolster Australia, as would UK forces at sea.
Once the ash stopped, there would be a move by surviving US forces to secure NYC and Fort Knox, thats for sure. Price of oil would collapse, so the OPEC state economies would crash.
GLCM is gone, Persing II is gone, the Army has no nuclear capable tactical aircraft, so I thought Army and USMC were without nukes.
I thought I left in the 400 odd devices the US has in mainland Europe, Holland I think they are bunkered in. Of course USAFE still has some nukes in the UK. France and the UK have their own, UKs are all SLBM and France has SLBM and air launched.
The US nuclear weapons can not be released without authorization from the civilian government. All the "big" systems like ICBMs, SLBMs are locked to that. OK, if Yellowstone cooks off, the ICBMs and half the strategic bombers are lost in the first day or so unless USAF moves them south. The majority of the surviving warheads will be on the Boomers. Some are forward deployed in Europe (like 400) and likely there are some based at Okinawa, Guam, Diego Garcia and of course on the carriers.
The US Army has no nukes, so the only generals from your scenario with them are Air Force and most of the USAF's arsenal are gone (lost in the silos and tied to B-2, B-52 and B-1s).
The only military commands I can see being in secure shape are the commands in the Middle East, the US Navy which is forward deployed or underway, Alaska, Hawaii, Korea and Japan.
I doubt very much there would be a conflict due to power vacuum, there would be civilian chains that survived, even if its the Secretary of Education and the military would be loyal. NORAD would survive for a while, as would command and control centers like Raven Rock.
The whole planet would be in bad shape, thats for sure. Not sure how much this would spur wars though, regionally, like in the Middle East, I'm sure Israel would be ready to nuke whomever looked like they'd attack and with the exception of Iran, Middle Eastern leadership wants to be nuked.
If this went off and killed, say 65% of the North American population (I won't go 90% because not even an all out nuclear exchange with the USSR would have killed 90%). Yes, there would be enough resources to keep things in check.
Chemical plants aren't the issue, its the nuclear cooling ponds from what I've read and seen on TV. There isn't much around Yellowstone to be consumed by lava, its going to be the ash fall out that is the real killer here. I have faith, the big chemical, nuclear and power companies have alot of plans written up and I believe they'll secure things to their best ability.
Once the ash falls there will be record agricultural output for years without need of fertilizer, the collapse of the fishing industry will lead to resurgent ocean stocks.
No, its not useless. The US and Russia are the big boys on the block militarily and Russia still has a load of technology. A treaty between the US and Russia on this establishes a "level playing field" for this arena, just like the US and Soviets had treaties about how close SSBMs could get to the coastlines and things like ABM.
There are hundreds of robots out there right now, space isn't just about exploration and colonization, but when a robot in space breaks, how is it going to be fixed? With a human.
Those "fragile human meat sacks" have kept the HST going for decades longer than it should have been working.
I didn't make it into the Balkans, my uncle did in 1999 for a medical conference and he said getting into Serbia was "the closest I ever came to being shot in the head and thrown in a ditch." and he was a guest of the Serbian government.
Getting in and out of Israel was easier and more pleasant than getting in and out of Paris CDG during a plane change.
Slashdot Mirror
However, for the last 2.58 million years there have been ice age cycles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
You stated that there has never been a change as fast as what is happening now - "the glacier meltdown rate in the last decade is parabolic. there is NO way to compare it to anything in the history of the earth."
But there were changes more dramatic, just around 12,000 years age, a gnat's life-span in the context of the planet. Not just more dramatic, far more dramatic. So, explain to me how .3 degrees is more than 5 or 15 degrees, I'm still waiting.
If we don't want to talk about pure numbers, explain how Glacial Lake Missoula alone isn't more dramatic than the tiny changes this century's GCC is going to cause. No one is predicting that GCC now is going to make half the volume of Lake Michigan dam up and flood western North America over and over again. Thats pretty dramatic.
Ah, but we don't know the entire history of the Earth. Let me say that again. We Do Not Know the Entire History of the Earth. We can model things, be honestly we don't know exactly how it works. And for saying its unprecedented, that is bogus, the glacial cycles in just the Younger Dryas exceeds anything going on right now.
"The Younger Dryas saw a rapid return to glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere between 12,900–11,500 years before present (BP) in sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding interstadial deglaciation. It has been believed that the transitions each occurred over a period of a decade or so, but the onset may have been faster.
Thermally fractionated nitrogen and argon isotope data from Greenland ice core GISP2 indicate that the summit of Greenland was ~15C colder during the Younger Dryas than today." The UK was 5 degrees colder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
10 years, or less to shift 15 C - 59 F.
What has been the change in the last decade?
0.29F.
So...during the Younger Dryas, Greenland changed up to 59 degrees a decade. This decade, .3 degrees.
Explain to me how .3 is more than 59. I'm waiting.
You should try reading, Here it is again.
"An ice sheet on Antarctica began to grow some 20 million years ago. The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago. during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacials (glacial advance) and interglacials (glacial retreat). The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island.""
The Earth is in an "interglacial",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
"An interglacial is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature that separates glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene interglacial has persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago."
So...we are in an period called the Holocene, which is part of a, wait for it, Ice Age, called Quaternary glaciation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
The current state of the glaciers and ice cap are a retreat, it started before man ever burned a gallon of gasoline or killed a blue whale.
Well...again, trying to wrap my head around this...
The geological record in North America and Europe shows recurring ice ages over the last 2.58 million years. Period, there are ice ages, right now, in 2009 we are in an ice age and yea, the climate changes in the middle of a cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
"An ice sheet on Antarctica began to grow some 20 million years ago. The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago. during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacials (glacial advance) and interglacials (glacial retreat). The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island."
"Ice age excuse"?
I'm trying to wrap my head around this, are you saying that there were no ice ages? No Dryas? No Glacial Lake Missoula?
The planet has had ice ages in the past and the overall average temperature of the planet is *lower* than it was for long long periods in the past (Carboniferous, Jurassic, etc), and since there is alot of ice south and north of where it usually is (in glaciers), that's an excuse right?
I bet you think the world is about 6,000 years old.
Except for WWII wasn't just a European war. In Asia and the Pacific there was a world war going on at the same time that had nothing to do with European politics. WW II was a global war pitting imperial powers against imperial powers, socialists against communists, imperialists against socialists and industrial powers against industrial powers.
Billions? Naw, if I remember correctly the US estimates were 120-150 million dead here and 110-130 million dead in the USSR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_warfare#Potential_consequences_of_a_regional_nuclear_war
"A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War I and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario in which two opposing nations in the subtropics each used 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (ca. 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated fatalities from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country."
If there was an all out global nuclear war, coastal US, Rust Belt US, population centers of Europe would be gone. Middle Eastern capital cities, eastern China and South Asian capitals and population centers would be gone. So maybe a 700-850 million dead from the exchange, maybe another 500-1,000 dead over a year. But global nuclear wars won't happen, the US/Russia/France/UK/China don't have the deployed warheads anymore to do that.
Figure slightly higher ratios for western Europe, eastern China due to population density.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=207
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=940&page=219
Remember that a good chunk of warheads are aimed at the other side's missiles, airfields and C3 complexes, for Russian/PRC missiles coming our way, that means a good percentage of warheads are going for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and boomer ports like Seattle/Everett, Jacksonville/Kings Bay.
Takes 2-3 Russian warheads to account for a silo like the Minuteman III silos in North Dakota and Montana, so for the 450 missiles out there, 900-1250 Russian warheads are coming, thats a nice chunk of what they have to throw.
The Chinese and DPRK don't have enough warheads to destroy the US/Russian first and second strike capability, so in an exchange with them, they'd be aiming at cities in the US/Russia while the US/Russia would be looking to first strike missiles and C3 nodes.
He isn't a "Congressman". He is a former member of the South Dakota House of Representatives, which would make him a former state legislator.
She's going into mortuary work. She damned well better be a calm and level headed professional in everything she does publicly that touches on her job.
Go catch an episode of Family Plots - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Plots - for how folks are supposed to act.
Free Speech has limits and this sort of speech has been limited since at least 1919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
"I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. Hmmm ... perhaps I will spend the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy. I do know the code ..."
Yea, after Virginia Tech talk like that when it concerns a University get a second look. Its her own damned fault for posting it on Facebook.
Did Nietzche or Sartre, Burroughs or Kerouac talk about killing someone and then cremating bodies in a public forum? Not that I know of so don't compare Apples and Pomegranates.
If it really was a coverup, then they would have been deleted completely.
If I can reformat a drive to DoD 5225-22 M and find someone to destructively dispose of a disk, you don't think the USAF folks in charge of White House communications can if they were ordered too? Same goes for civilians working at the White House. If the Bush administration really wanted emails to "get lost", they would have.
My comment about ash fall and crops was based on what happened downwind of St Helens to Idaho grain.
http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/91
Looking around, apparently it didn't hurt or help.
Yea, I was thinking that too, a Civ scenario where in the 2nd or 3rd turn pollution spreads across NA, then Europe, then the tundra spreads.
China, the EU and Russia are all still net importers of food, so I think Brazil, Argentina, Australia would be in good shape. US Navy and air units in places like Guam, Japan would move to bolster Australia, as would UK forces at sea.
Once the ash stopped, there would be a move by surviving US forces to secure NYC and Fort Knox, thats for sure. Price of oil would collapse, so the OPEC state economies would crash.
What tactical nukes does the US Army still have?
GLCM is gone, Persing II is gone, the Army has no nuclear capable tactical aircraft, so I thought Army and USMC were without nukes.
I thought I left in the 400 odd devices the US has in mainland Europe, Holland I think they are bunkered in. Of course USAFE still has some nukes in the UK. France and the UK have their own, UKs are all SLBM and France has SLBM and air launched.
I was thinking longer term. After 60-80% of the northern hemisphere civilization is destroyed.
I'm not up on what happened to the fish in the Pacific Northwest after Mt St Helens.
The US nuclear weapons can not be released without authorization from the civilian government. All the "big" systems like ICBMs, SLBMs are locked to that. OK, if Yellowstone cooks off, the ICBMs and half the strategic bombers are lost in the first day or so unless USAF moves them south. The majority of the surviving warheads will be on the Boomers. Some are forward deployed in Europe (like 400) and likely there are some based at Okinawa, Guam, Diego Garcia and of course on the carriers.
The US Army has no nukes, so the only generals from your scenario with them are Air Force and most of the USAF's arsenal are gone (lost in the silos and tied to B-2, B-52 and B-1s).
The only military commands I can see being in secure shape are the commands in the Middle East, the US Navy which is forward deployed or underway, Alaska, Hawaii, Korea and Japan.
I doubt very much there would be a conflict due to power vacuum, there would be civilian chains that survived, even if its the Secretary of Education and the military would be loyal. NORAD would survive for a while, as would command and control centers like Raven Rock.
The whole planet would be in bad shape, thats for sure. Not sure how much this would spur wars though, regionally, like in the Middle East, I'm sure Israel would be ready to nuke whomever looked like they'd attack and with the exception of Iran, Middle Eastern leadership wants to be nuked.
The US has 9,000 and Russia about 13,000 and about 23,000 total warheads.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
Nearly all the US warheads are "hydrogen" bombs, fission-fusion. The most common yield for American bombs is 330-350kt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_bomb#Hydrogen_bombs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W78
Cruise missile warheads are lower, 10-150kt.
The US no longer has a 1mt warhead
Russian warheads are higher yield do to inaccurate missiles, most seem to be 500-600kt.
If this went off and killed, say 65% of the North American population (I won't go 90% because not even an all out nuclear exchange with the USSR would have killed 90%). Yes, there would be enough resources to keep things in check.
Chemical plants aren't the issue, its the nuclear cooling ponds from what I've read and seen on TV. There isn't much around Yellowstone to be consumed by lava, its going to be the ash fall out that is the real killer here. I have faith, the big chemical, nuclear and power companies have alot of plans written up and I believe they'll secure things to their best ability.
Once the ash falls there will be record agricultural output for years without need of fertilizer, the collapse of the fishing industry will lead to resurgent ocean stocks.
The job of a Congressperson and Senator is to get as much from the Federal Government for their state and/or district as possible.
That is what they are elected for, to represent the people and the state.
No, its not useless. The US and Russia are the big boys on the block militarily and Russia still has a load of technology. A treaty between the US and Russia on this establishes a "level playing field" for this arena, just like the US and Soviets had treaties about how close SSBMs could get to the coastlines and things like ABM.
From the Eastern Europeans I've meet, I'd say thats a safe assumptions.
Folks wonder why modern Israel gets so feisty with neighbors, theres alot of Eastern European Jews there and alot of 'em don't play well with others.
There are hundreds of robots out there right now, space isn't just about exploration and colonization, but when a robot in space breaks, how is it going to be fixed? With a human.
Those "fragile human meat sacks" have kept the HST going for decades longer than it should have been working.
I didn't make it into the Balkans, my uncle did in 1999 for a medical conference and he said getting into Serbia was "the closest I ever came to being shot in the head and thrown in a ditch." and he was a guest of the Serbian government.
Getting in and out of Israel was easier and more pleasant than getting in and out of Paris CDG during a plane change.