A long time ago I swore never to get involved in discussing science on/., but what I can I say, we are all of us weak at times.
I suspect that we don't actually understand magnetism
Um, yes we do, to the level that we understand the electric field.
And, while it's clearly affected by magnetism and electrostatic forces, it also seems to be unaffected by gravity.
And where did you get this bit of "information"? Since gravity is a property of matter (and not state of matter), how do you reconcile this statement with your faith that the fundamental forces of nature occur on a subatomic level?
You're not supposed to ask these things here. You're supposed to hyperventilate at the thought of a $400K reusable rocket good for 25 m.
Me, I'm all for the idea. If they get it work, good on them! If not, well, they won't be the first. Right now, though, it's way too early in the game to say.
Basically, the FDA or some other goverment agency will find a way to make using any wonderfull and great new
processies illigal, while keeping wastefull, dangerous and enviornmentally hostile processies standard and perfectly legal.
Yes, 100-year volcanos like Pinatubo and Krakatau have major impacts on climate. Radiative forcing effects from Pinatubo actually suppressed global increases in T for about 5 years. But global T's are increasing again, and the ozone hole isn't shrinking yet, although it should within the next 5-10 years. The midcentury timeline for recovery is on schedule with the expectations from the Montreal protocol which banned CFCs.
Speaking of which, just what do you mean by
You can argue all you want that "natural" CFCs are water soluable, but look at what happened!
The story of Dune is really the story of Shi'i Islam, more specifically its hopes and dreams (and fears). Paul wasn't so much Jesus as the hidden Imam returned from Occultation: Caladan, inevitably, was a paradise in the heavens to the Arrakeens. The Fremen are the Shi'i faithful, right down to details like the doctrine of dissimulation and being fringe desert scum who smell bad and who (they believe) will prevail for their hearts are pure. The Imperium, OTOH, could be the reigning Sunni powers (the Ummayads and the Abbasids) responsible for (as the Shi'i see it) forcing the necessity of the Occultation; but it really resembles the Ottoman Empire: fabulously wealthy, unstoppably powerful, rotten and decadent to the core. Even the recruitment, training, and reputation of the Sardaukar have historical precedent, namely that of the Ottoman Janissary Corps. Herbert 1st and foremost did an incredible job of storytelling, but also accomplished no mean feat in making so compelling the story of a culture which has mostly bad connotations here in the US.
Caveat: thought Dune was excellent, couldn't make it through the sequels, so I'm really only talking about the first (and IMO only) book.
That's not what he said. Question: what is the water vapor trend over the last century? What is the trend for CO2? While you're at it, check out methane and certain PFCs (such as SF5CF3)
Steel was first designed for mass production in the late 19th century by a man named Henry Bessemer
In the industrial revolution sense. People have been working steel since at least medieval times, just not on mass-produced scale. Check out a medieval armory, preferably a Middle Eastern or Asian one.
People take way too long to turn over generations. They also resist change mightily, altering their environment to suit their tastes. Hot out? Use air-conditioning. Don't like living near work? Spend 2hrs/day of your life stuck in traffic. Want farms and golf courses and swimming pools in the desert? Suck aquifers faster than they can be replenished, concoct hokey ideas about transporting millions of gallons uphill for a thousand miles. Energy becoming expensive? Choices in life becoming increasingly exclusive of one another? Moan, whine, bury head in sand, borrow heavily on the future.
Now things which turn over quickly--insects, mites, bacteria, etc--they'll have no trouble adapting.
As for your last point, who knows? No doubt we'll go the way of the trilobite and the dinosaur by and by, but 1000 years is on the short side, barring sudden catastrophe. Personally, I am not nearly so alarmist as the distinguished Dr. Hawking. Long before we've screwed things up so mightily that we exterminate ourselves as a species, I think we we will take a giant step back in civilization and technology. Not as far back as Walter Miller describes in Canticle for Leibowitz, but back to something more locally sustainable. I don't think that this is even inevitable, just all too likely given human nature.
There are plenty of Cassandras around, but her doom is never to be believed.
Actually, the problem isn't the free market economy; it's government manipulation
Government regulations of business do not arise in vacuo. They arise when a group of people object to what they see as bad behavior, such as child labor, dumping in Love canal, knowingly putting out dangerous products for years (the Ford Pinto, Firestone 500, etc.) They also arise when the gov't thinks it is in the public good to do so, such as regulating aircraft design and maintenance or manufacturing/mining/agricultural operations. Sometimes they go too far, and certainly there are any number of bad laws on the books; and sometimes they don't go far enough: they are bending over backwards letting the industry deal with net privacy, eg, and they allow big (but only big) business to call the shots in corporate welfare. Sometimes (not always) the bad laws are written at the behest of corporations (DMCA, UCITA); sometimes good laws are not enforced. There is an inevitably (though not purely) confrontational dynamic between those institutions committed to self-interest and those committed to the public weal, and even good examples of each can't be expected never to make mistakes. A corporation in its self-interest may do something bad for the public good; in response gov't may regulate (or fail to), but may overreact or underreact. But lapses and abuses are better dealt with constructively, not by pointing fingers. Statements like "it's government manipulation" are just too simple minded to be useful.
If you are transparent, light passes through you with no effect
Wrong. It means that light is not absorbed as it passes through you. If you need a demonstration, look at a glass of water. If you can't see it, you need to turn the lights on. Transparent != invisible. To be invisible, you need 1) not to absorb any light, and 2) to match the refractive index of your immediate environment.
This whole "invisible man" thread came up on sci.optics recently. The best response to "is an invisible man possible" was "Yes: cremation" (I'm paraphrasing.)
Now you've got me curious: where does the carbon go? After all, what's important here is total carbon; anything not completely burned will (besides being inefficient) end up as CO2 anyway, making ozone in the process. Unless it's a solid (really inefficient) or scrubbed (is there an economical way to scrub CO2?)
Re: EPA. I hear you. Of all the gov't agencies I've had to work with, NASA is far and away the best, and EPA is, um, not.
My gut tells me that for the numbers of which you speak to represent TOTAL industrial production on average, then they must be estimates
To be precise, these are taken from field measurements from all over the region (city scale to planet scale), but not specific stack emissions. Trying to back out emission rates from specific plants from these numbers--that would be indeed be an estimate. But that's way too difficult and uncertain, and ultimately what we really need to know is how much of the stuff there is in a regional or global sense. Getting regionally/globally averaged CO2 levels from specific stack measurements would be similarly uncertain.
Re: SO2. The effects of SO2 are pretty well known and characterized by now. Regs have been watered down by Congress from what the science community recommends, and even then there are "easements" (loopholes) written in by Congressfolk of coal producing states. Still and all, we're in a lot better shape than E. Europe or developing Asia...
Mercury: this one is also regularly monitored (at monitoring stations, like everything else I've mentioned; not sure about stacks). But there is definitely less effort in Hg than in the real biggies in regional studies: ozone, NOx, and SO2.
the people taking the reins... The problem is that looking squarely at all the evidence generally leads to making hard decisions, and politicians are allergic to that. So is the public.
A certain amount of cynicism is generally a healthy thing, but to allow cynicism to blind you to a larger, more complex picture is foolish. Yes, everyone has an agenda, no it doesn't follow that no one makes an attempt not to recognize it, allow for it, evaluate it on an ongoing basis.
So for researchers claiming we have GW want money, no doubt there's truth to that. But if getting money were the primary motivation, they'd be working for industry. Pays a lot better than in academia or the government.
I'd like to see just 1 non-sensationalist, well-researched, balanced study
What's odd in this "debate" is that so many people choose sides without knowing anything about the field
Human nature, I guess. I don't think that someone needs to be an accredited professional in the field to make useful criticisms, but it sure would be nice if folks would look at the evidence first hand with an open mind before coming to some sort of conclusion.
You are correct about power plant efficiencies. However, your units are a little strange, if I may say so. The total amount of CO2 generated by a fossil-fuel burning plant is a direct function of the amount of fuel consumed. In an ideal burner, every carbon atom in the fuel goes to CO2 (as opposed to CO and partially burned hydrocarbons.) There are only two ways to reduce the CO2 from burning fuel: either reduce the combustion efficiency or use less fuel. The carbon has got to go somewhere. Therefore something like tons/year would be more appropriate, since any concentration can be achieved by dilution with ambient air. Concentration units (like the mixing ratio you use) are more appropriate for compounds with health or local chemistry effects, like CO, NOx, SO2. Are you sure your number is not for CO? And what is the actual emission rate (mass/time)?
Where is all the CO2 coming from? Well, lots of possibilities (especially if you listen to the oil industry), but the candidates which jump and down screaming "pick me!" are fossil fuel combustion and to a lesser extent biomass burning.
BTW, about 100 years ago, the few measurements in existence showed that CO2 was about 290 ppmv, now it's more like 360-375 in the NH, 340-350 in the SH.
Where do Universities get data? Partly from the EPA and other government agencies, partly from direct field studies (which are of course funded by gov't agencies, like NASA, NSF, NOAA, EPA.) Two field studies which come to mind immediately and which are taking place now are the Southern Oxidant Study in Houston (was Nashville and environs last year) and the Fall-line Air Quality Study in Georgia (Macon, Columbus, and one other which I forget.) On a global scale, there were PEM Tropics B (NASA) in the tropical Pacific and INDOEX (NOAA/NSF/European) in the Indian Ocean last year; next year will be TRACE P and ACE-Asia (both for Asian outflow), at least. There are a large number of monitoring stations all over the world (more in the Northern Hemisphere than in the SH) which are gov't funded. Data from these are available to any taxpayer (that's the story anyway), although it's generally only the gov't labs and Universities who ask.
2) Absolutely. The increase is increasing, and it's more marked in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern. What you say about volcanic injection is not true, however. You can see volcanic signatures in the CO2 record, but they do not dominate the signal.
3) Possibly SO2. This gets converted to sulfuric acid, which can act as cloud condensation nuclei. There is some evidence that the Northern Hemisphere is getting cloudier than the SH. This was why climatologists back then thought that anthropogenic emissions might cool the planet. Perhaps it is mitigating the effects of the greenhouse gases--it's impossible to "prove". But putting more SO2 in the air is not the answer--it comes down as acid rain.
Thanks. I'd like to say that it's good to hear a dissenting voice which is not based on wistful thinking.
"Not likely" vs. "most likely". These are from temporal and spatial profiles of methane, CO2, sulfate, temperature on a global scale. Just looking at them makes me think that it's extremely unlikely that anthropogenic emissions have insignificant effects. OTOH, I cannot discount the possibility that the natural system is changing so fast by its own accord. It is too much of a stretch for me to dissociate natural and anthropogenic effects, and given the marked nature of anthropogenic change, which includes not just the chemical effects but the radiation budget effects from changes in land use, I cannot discount the effects of people either. Satellite photographs show considerable environmental change in just 5 years; old photographs show huge changes over the decades; fishery returns painfully show how people have affected what was once considered an illimitable resource. People can affect the environment, and that, judging from atmospheric measurements taken globally over decades, includes the atmosphere. I don't agree that we can't make a dent in the earth's ecosystems. I do agree that nature will accommodate anything we do, whether or not we'll be affected by it or if we're even around to see it.
I could be wrong, of course. Perhaps the natural signal swamps the anthropogenic one. Certainly people have been through the Medieval warm period, the "little Ice Age." The climate could change like this every 2000 or 20000 years. Like I said elsewhere, I'm working with incomplete information, and have no way even in principle of obtaining complete information. But I have to work (literally--it's my job) with what I have.
OK. First, volcanic emissions. Actually, some volcanic emissions do make it up to the stratosphere. But it has to be a real big volcano, like Pinatubo. Most volcanos aren't powerful enough. And the ones that are are in long-term steady state with the stratosphere. The ozone destroying compounds from volcanic emissions are primarily nitrogen compounds. The end oxidation product is nitric acid, which is water soluble and can rain out. There are also some halogens like chlorine and bromine--some filter up to the stratosphere (again long-term steady state with stratospheric ozone), but most rain out as acids.
Chlorofluorocarbons are different. Unlike the natural halogen (and nitrogen) compounds, they are inert to attack by OH (the species which does most of the oxidation in the atmosphere), and they are photolytically inactive in the troposphere. They can't be broken down in the troposphere to smaller bits which can eventually rain out. In the stratosphere, however, there is enough UV light to dissociate the CFCs--the free chlorine then catalytically destroys ozone. Since the stratosphere is the only "sink" of CFCs, there is a net upwards diffusion to the stratosphere. You don't need to throw it up there with a volcano.
The whole idea behind replacing CFCs with HCFCs (CFC with at least one hydrogen) is that that hydrogen makes the compound vulnerable to OH attack. Once that initial attack takes place, the rest of the compound can be broken down to smaller bits. The idea is to have the "sink" in the troposphere, so it can't get to the stratosphere.
Let's posit that the Earth is getting warmer and warmer faster and faster (and the brunt of the evidence says that it is.) Let's also say that if it gets warm enough, it will have major economic, agricultural, and epidemiological impacts (just a hypothesis, mind--though not totally unreasonable.) And let's also say that anthropogenic emissions may contribute to the warming (looking at temporal and latitudinal trends of such emissions, and correlating them to temperature, this isn't totally unreasonable either, although it isn't "proof" in the laboratory science sense.) Finally, let's say that there are uncertainties in everything, that we have no infallible crystal ball. What do you propose is the most reasonable long term course of action, given that sometimes in life you have to make big decisions with incomplete information?
We can argue with details concerning the validity of each of those hypotheses: going through Science, Nature, or interviewing the earth science departments of local universities/gov't labs will tell you where most of the scientific community stands. It may also give you enough background to challenge or agree with the assumptions above (to within a healthy uncertainty, of course.)
You are perfectly correct: there is no control group to compare to. As I said in another post, to do a proper job, we'd need a large number of Earths identical in all respects except for a few chosen variables to examine. We will never get "scientific proof", in the laboratory science sense--the complexity of the natural system precludes that (The complexity and messiness of the natural system are actually some of the fun things about the field.) With such a complex system, all we have to go by is the weight of the evidence.
Me, I've done my homework, come to my own conclusions. Let's just say that neither a hand-wringing "but we don't absolutely know!" nor wistful thinking appeal to me.
.. and coincidentally without without a measurable temperature increase...
Where do you get this from?
And, BTW, the carbon emissions may be unprecedented (maybe not: vast forest fires in the past?), but higher carbon percentages existed
in the atmosphere before biological infestation of the planet took the carbon out of the atmosphere. Why is it OK with you that plants take
carbon out of the atmosphere but not OK that we put it in?
Que?? Maybe because there were no people back then? Maybe because the whole issue here is of long-term self interest, not on whether it's philosophically better to have anaerobic bacteria/plants/people/silicon-based lifeforms as significant lifeforms on the planet? Are you always so full of non-sequiturs?
Look at the volume of air in the atmosphere. Humans are an inconsequential deposit on the surface of this rock.
How does it follow that For us to think that something as insignificant in size as ourselves can affect something as large as this planet on a macro level, is the product of a superiority complex?
Have you looked at latitudinal gradients of temperature and anthropogenic trace gas concentrations? Have you looked at the time record, with an open mind both to the limitations of that record as well as the possible implications? Id do agree that we need to act locally, but I really don't follow the rest of your reasoning.
You ask how can we be scientific if we don't make any effort to determine the problem first. Not sure where you got this up, but we've been making an effort for decades. The "problem" is that earth science is not the replicable science that laboratory science is--the whole idea of laboratory science is to be able to hold constant all but a few variables. The timescales, spatial scales, and complexity of the natural system preclude this approach from Earth science. If the laboratory criterion is your measure of scientific validity, then what we'd have to do is make a dozen (thousands, billions would be better) planet Earths, with identical solar systems (at least the moon and Sun, you can probably get away with not including the other planets), and change a different variable on each Earth, with the requisite duplication for repeatability, of course.
The fact is that this must be a judgment call. We do not have the security of "scientific proof" in the laboratory science sense. What is a fact is that the Earth is getting warmer faster. Whether this is all natural (not likely), all man made (not likely), or both (most likely) is irrelevant. So is the "we're hurting Nature" argument--Nature doesn't care if the dominant life forms are people or jellyfish and cockroaches. But a warmer planet is relevant to people--depending on the actual warming, it can have considerable economic, agricultural, and epidemiological costs. It seems to me reasonable that it would behoove us to change our behavior somewhat not to keep adding to the problem, not until we can actually say (with justification more rigorous than wistful thinking) that our actions are not making things worse.
The statement we have no idea how the earth is changing is not correct. We have some idea--the hard part is not the "how" (actually, that's hard too) but the "why".
Intel's (HP's, really) VLIW will only be superior when it proves itself to be superior. ISTR back in 1994 or so when Intel and HP got together to make the next generation chip, with Intel providing money, compatibility, and fab and HP providing technology, particularly VLIW. They were aiming at a 1997 release. Three years on and it has yet to ship, yet the first version is being effectively disavowed by a co-creator and downplayed for the next generation by the other co-creator. These are not good signs.
Maybe IA64 will come good in time not to get run over by other advances. Maybe it will go down as the Itanic, as the Register calls it. But a superior approach may not result in a superior product--execution is key, as is timing; and to dismiss one in favor of the other before either actually ships is just plain ridiculous.
I'll second that. If someone can provide an interface that's easy to learn and easy to use, I'm all for it. Given a choice between ease-of-learning and ease-of-use, however, I'll take ease-of-use every time. And I've only ever seen a choice between ease-of-learning and ease-of-use...well, maybe VM/CMS is both hard to learn and hard to use. And I've a hard time giving credence to "UI research", as that has given us things like Windows and the Mac.
I used one for a while, and initially thought it the coolest thing since sliced bread. But the more I used it, the more I was using it to open up a bunch of xterms (or whatever they called it, I forget). Plain old twm was quicker for that, so I gradually drifted over to the Suns and RS6000s. And if I were actually thinking of buying the thing (as opposed to using it on campus), it would have been way too expensive.
I do like the NeXT-inspired AfterStep WM, though, at least the early ones which were still small and lithe (and I cut my teeth on a Mac!).
But you're right,of course, "cool tech" and a good UI (whatever that is) isn't enough. Good marketing sense is necessary, even at the expense of "technical purity." Look at DEC, brilliant tech company, lame marketing company, now owned by a PC maker. On the other extreme there are MS and Intel. Either that or change the rules, like Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that we don't actually understand magnetism
Um, yes we do, to the level that we understand the electric field.
And, while it's clearly affected by magnetism and electrostatic forces, it also seems to be unaffected by gravity.
And where did you get this bit of "information"? Since gravity is a property of matter (and not state of matter), how do you reconcile this statement with your faith that the fundamental forces of nature occur on a subatomic level?
You're not supposed to ask these things here. You're supposed to hyperventilate at the thought of a $400K reusable rocket good for 25 m.
Me, I'm all for the idea. If they get it work, good on them! If not, well, they won't be the first. Right now, though, it's way too early in the game to say.
Nice recap of Science According to Slashdot.
Money talks.
You can argue all you want that "natural" CFCs are water soluable, but look at what happened!
What "natural" CFCs are you talking about??
Caveat: thought Dune was excellent, couldn't make it through the sequels, so I'm really only talking about the first (and IMO only) book.
Fair enough. See infinite jester's post.
Being one of hundreds of politicians that voted on one of hundreds of spending initiatives gives Gore no special claim on the internet.
Sorry, your turn. It's easy to say this without backing it up. Cite some references.
That's not what he said. Question: what is the water vapor trend over the last century? What is the trend for CO2? While you're at it, check out methane and certain PFCs (such as SF5CF3)
In the industrial revolution sense. People have been working steel since at least medieval times, just not on mass-produced scale. Check out a medieval armory, preferably a Middle Eastern or Asian one.
Now things which turn over quickly--insects, mites, bacteria, etc--they'll have no trouble adapting.
As for your last point, who knows? No doubt we'll go the way of the trilobite and the dinosaur by and by, but 1000 years is on the short side, barring sudden catastrophe. Personally, I am not nearly so alarmist as the distinguished Dr. Hawking. Long before we've screwed things up so mightily that we exterminate ourselves as a species, I think we we will take a giant step back in civilization and technology. Not as far back as Walter Miller describes in Canticle for Leibowitz, but back to something more locally sustainable. I don't think that this is even inevitable, just all too likely given human nature.
There are plenty of Cassandras around, but her doom is never to be believed.
Government regulations of business do not arise in vacuo. They arise when a group of people object to what they see as bad behavior, such as child labor, dumping in Love canal, knowingly putting out dangerous products for years (the Ford Pinto, Firestone 500, etc.) They also arise when the gov't thinks it is in the public good to do so, such as regulating aircraft design and maintenance or manufacturing/mining/agricultural operations. Sometimes they go too far, and certainly there are any number of bad laws on the books; and sometimes they don't go far enough: they are bending over backwards letting the industry deal with net privacy, eg, and they allow big (but only big) business to call the shots in corporate welfare. Sometimes (not always) the bad laws are written at the behest of corporations (DMCA, UCITA); sometimes good laws are not enforced. There is an inevitably (though not purely) confrontational dynamic between those institutions committed to self-interest and those committed to the public weal, and even good examples of each can't be expected never to make mistakes. A corporation in its self-interest may do something bad for the public good; in response gov't may regulate (or fail to), but may overreact or underreact. But lapses and abuses are better dealt with constructively, not by pointing fingers. Statements like "it's government manipulation" are just too simple minded to be useful.
Wrong. It means that light is not absorbed as it passes through you. If you need a demonstration, look at a glass of water. If you can't see it, you need to turn the lights on. Transparent != invisible. To be invisible, you need 1) not to absorb any light, and 2) to match the refractive index of your immediate environment.
This whole "invisible man" thread came up on sci.optics recently. The best response to "is an invisible man possible" was "Yes: cremation" (I'm paraphrasing.)
Now you've got me curious: where does the carbon go? After all, what's important here is total carbon; anything not completely burned will (besides being inefficient) end up as CO2 anyway, making ozone in the process. Unless it's a solid (really inefficient) or scrubbed (is there an economical way to scrub CO2?)
Re: EPA. I hear you. Of all the gov't agencies I've had to work with, NASA is far and away the best, and EPA is, um, not.
My gut tells me that for the numbers of which you speak to represent TOTAL industrial production on average, then they must be estimates
To be precise, these are taken from field measurements from all over the region (city scale to planet scale), but not specific stack emissions. Trying to back out emission rates from specific plants from these numbers--that would be indeed be an estimate. But that's way too difficult and uncertain, and ultimately what we really need to know is how much of the stuff there is in a regional or global sense. Getting regionally/globally averaged CO2 levels from specific stack measurements would be similarly uncertain.
Re: SO2. The effects of SO2 are pretty well known and characterized by now. Regs have been watered down by Congress from what the science community recommends, and even then there are "easements" (loopholes) written in by Congressfolk of coal producing states. Still and all, we're in a lot better shape than E. Europe or developing Asia...
Mercury: this one is also regularly monitored (at monitoring stations, like everything else I've mentioned; not sure about stacks). But there is definitely less effort in Hg than in the real biggies in regional studies: ozone, NOx, and SO2.
the people taking the reins ... The problem is that looking squarely at all the evidence generally leads to making hard decisions, and politicians are allergic to that. So is the public.
I'd like to see just 1 non-sensationalist, well-researched, balanced study
Where have you looked?
Human nature, I guess. I don't think that someone needs to be an accredited professional in the field to make useful criticisms, but it sure would be nice if folks would look at the evidence first hand with an open mind before coming to some sort of conclusion.
You are correct about power plant efficiencies. However, your units are a little strange, if I may say so. The total amount of CO2 generated by a fossil-fuel burning plant is a direct function of the amount of fuel consumed. In an ideal burner, every carbon atom in the fuel goes to CO2 (as opposed to CO and partially burned hydrocarbons.) There are only two ways to reduce the CO2 from burning fuel: either reduce the combustion efficiency or use less fuel. The carbon has got to go somewhere. Therefore something like tons/year would be more appropriate, since any concentration can be achieved by dilution with ambient air. Concentration units (like the mixing ratio you use) are more appropriate for compounds with health or local chemistry effects, like CO, NOx, SO2. Are you sure your number is not for CO? And what is the actual emission rate (mass/time)?
Where is all the CO2 coming from? Well, lots of possibilities (especially if you listen to the oil industry), but the candidates which jump and down screaming "pick me!" are fossil fuel combustion and to a lesser extent biomass burning. BTW, about 100 years ago, the few measurements in existence showed that CO2 was about 290 ppmv, now it's more like 360-375 in the NH, 340-350 in the SH.
Where do Universities get data? Partly from the EPA and other government agencies, partly from direct field studies (which are of course funded by gov't agencies, like NASA, NSF, NOAA, EPA.) Two field studies which come to mind immediately and which are taking place now are the Southern Oxidant Study in Houston (was Nashville and environs last year) and the Fall-line Air Quality Study in Georgia (Macon, Columbus, and one other which I forget.) On a global scale, there were PEM Tropics B (NASA) in the tropical Pacific and INDOEX (NOAA/NSF/European) in the Indian Ocean last year; next year will be TRACE P and ACE-Asia (both for Asian outflow), at least. There are a large number of monitoring stations all over the world (more in the Northern Hemisphere than in the SH) which are gov't funded. Data from these are available to any taxpayer (that's the story anyway), although it's generally only the gov't labs and Universities who ask.
2) Absolutely. The increase is increasing, and it's more marked in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern. What you say about volcanic injection is not true, however. You can see volcanic signatures in the CO2 record, but they do not dominate the signal.
3) Possibly SO2. This gets converted to sulfuric acid, which can act as cloud condensation nuclei. There is some evidence that the Northern Hemisphere is getting cloudier than the SH. This was why climatologists back then thought that anthropogenic emissions might cool the planet. Perhaps it is mitigating the effects of the greenhouse gases--it's impossible to "prove". But putting more SO2 in the air is not the answer--it comes down as acid rain.
"Not likely" vs. "most likely". These are from temporal and spatial profiles of methane, CO2, sulfate, temperature on a global scale. Just looking at them makes me think that it's extremely unlikely that anthropogenic emissions have insignificant effects. OTOH, I cannot discount the possibility that the natural system is changing so fast by its own accord. It is too much of a stretch for me to dissociate natural and anthropogenic effects, and given the marked nature of anthropogenic change, which includes not just the chemical effects but the radiation budget effects from changes in land use, I cannot discount the effects of people either. Satellite photographs show considerable environmental change in just 5 years; old photographs show huge changes over the decades; fishery returns painfully show how people have affected what was once considered an illimitable resource. People can affect the environment, and that, judging from atmospheric measurements taken globally over decades, includes the atmosphere. I don't agree that we can't make a dent in the earth's ecosystems. I do agree that nature will accommodate anything we do, whether or not we'll be affected by it or if we're even around to see it.
I could be wrong, of course. Perhaps the natural signal swamps the anthropogenic one. Certainly people have been through the Medieval warm period, the "little Ice Age." The climate could change like this every 2000 or 20000 years. Like I said elsewhere, I'm working with incomplete information, and have no way even in principle of obtaining complete information. But I have to work (literally--it's my job) with what I have.
Chlorofluorocarbons are different. Unlike the natural halogen (and nitrogen) compounds, they are inert to attack by OH (the species which does most of the oxidation in the atmosphere), and they are photolytically inactive in the troposphere. They can't be broken down in the troposphere to smaller bits which can eventually rain out. In the stratosphere, however, there is enough UV light to dissociate the CFCs--the free chlorine then catalytically destroys ozone. Since the stratosphere is the only "sink" of CFCs, there is a net upwards diffusion to the stratosphere. You don't need to throw it up there with a volcano.
The whole idea behind replacing CFCs with HCFCs (CFC with at least one hydrogen) is that that hydrogen makes the compound vulnerable to OH attack. Once that initial attack takes place, the rest of the compound can be broken down to smaller bits. The idea is to have the "sink" in the troposphere, so it can't get to the stratosphere.
Let's posit that the Earth is getting warmer and warmer faster and faster (and the brunt of the evidence says that it is.) Let's also say that if it gets warm enough, it will have major economic, agricultural, and epidemiological impacts (just a hypothesis, mind--though not totally unreasonable.) And let's also say that anthropogenic emissions may contribute to the warming (looking at temporal and latitudinal trends of such emissions, and correlating them to temperature, this isn't totally unreasonable either, although it isn't "proof" in the laboratory science sense.) Finally, let's say that there are uncertainties in everything, that we have no infallible crystal ball. What do you propose is the most reasonable long term course of action, given that sometimes in life you have to make big decisions with incomplete information?
We can argue with details concerning the validity of each of those hypotheses: going through Science, Nature, or interviewing the earth science departments of local universities/gov't labs will tell you where most of the scientific community stands. It may also give you enough background to challenge or agree with the assumptions above (to within a healthy uncertainty, of course.)
You are perfectly correct: there is no control group to compare to. As I said in another post, to do a proper job, we'd need a large number of Earths identical in all respects except for a few chosen variables to examine. We will never get "scientific proof", in the laboratory science sense--the complexity of the natural system precludes that (The complexity and messiness of the natural system are actually some of the fun things about the field.) With such a complex system, all we have to go by is the weight of the evidence.
Me, I've done my homework, come to my own conclusions. Let's just say that neither a hand-wringing "but we don't absolutely know!" nor wistful thinking appeal to me.
Where do you get this from?
And, BTW, the carbon emissions may be unprecedented (maybe not: vast forest fires in the past?), but higher carbon percentages existed in the atmosphere before biological infestation of the planet took the carbon out of the atmosphere. Why is it OK with you that plants take carbon out of the atmosphere but not OK that we put it in?
Que?? Maybe because there were no people back then? Maybe because the whole issue here is of long-term self interest, not on whether it's philosophically better to have anaerobic bacteria/plants/people/silicon-based lifeforms as significant lifeforms on the planet? Are you always so full of non-sequiturs?
How does it follow that For us to think that something as insignificant in size as ourselves can affect something as large as this planet on a macro level, is the product of a superiority complex?
Have you looked at latitudinal gradients of temperature and anthropogenic trace gas concentrations? Have you looked at the time record, with an open mind both to the limitations of that record as well as the possible implications? Id do agree that we need to act locally, but I really don't follow the rest of your reasoning.
Actually, it is, if a little sarcastic.
You ask how can we be scientific if we don't make any effort to determine the problem first. Not sure where you got this up, but we've been making an effort for decades. The "problem" is that earth science is not the replicable science that laboratory science is--the whole idea of laboratory science is to be able to hold constant all but a few variables. The timescales, spatial scales, and complexity of the natural system preclude this approach from Earth science. If the laboratory criterion is your measure of scientific validity, then what we'd have to do is make a dozen (thousands, billions would be better) planet Earths, with identical solar systems (at least the moon and Sun, you can probably get away with not including the other planets), and change a different variable on each Earth, with the requisite duplication for repeatability, of course.
The fact is that this must be a judgment call. We do not have the security of "scientific proof" in the laboratory science sense. What is a fact is that the Earth is getting warmer faster. Whether this is all natural (not likely), all man made (not likely), or both (most likely) is irrelevant. So is the "we're hurting Nature" argument--Nature doesn't care if the dominant life forms are people or jellyfish and cockroaches. But a warmer planet is relevant to people--depending on the actual warming, it can have considerable economic, agricultural, and epidemiological costs. It seems to me reasonable that it would behoove us to change our behavior somewhat not to keep adding to the problem, not until we can actually say (with justification more rigorous than wistful thinking) that our actions are not making things worse.
The statement we have no idea how the earth is changing is not correct. We have some idea--the hard part is not the "how" (actually, that's hard too) but the "why".
Maybe IA64 will come good in time not to get run over by other advances. Maybe it will go down as the Itanic, as the Register calls it. But a superior approach may not result in a superior product--execution is key, as is timing; and to dismiss one in favor of the other before either actually ships is just plain ridiculous.
I'll second that. If someone can provide an interface that's easy to learn and easy to use, I'm all for it. Given a choice between ease-of-learning and ease-of-use, however, I'll take ease-of-use every time. And I've only ever seen a choice between ease-of-learning and ease-of-use...well, maybe VM/CMS is both hard to learn and hard to use. And I've a hard time giving credence to "UI research", as that has given us things like Windows and the Mac.
But you're right,of course, "cool tech" and a good UI (whatever that is) isn't enough. Good marketing sense is necessary, even at the expense of "technical purity." Look at DEC, brilliant tech company, lame marketing company, now owned by a PC maker. On the other extreme there are MS and Intel. Either that or change the rules, like Linux.