That's about the same as saying 'the jury is still out on evolution'. The earth is warming and will continue to warm as a result of the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere placed there by human activity; this is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Of course, that dosen't stop people making a lot of money out of making unscientific attacks on the theories and models involved (just as with evolution); but the attacks have long since degenerated into political point scoring and deliberate ignorance. Slashdot stories involving AGW act as an excellent illustration of this.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to reduce emissions by over 90% over the next couple of decades without anyone having to make any significant sacrifices (indeed, the solutions would probably be cheaper in the medium to long term than business as usual). However, that would require a debate based in reality, and apparently no-one wants that.
That article was written in 1998... funny how things come true.
Such as..? The corect predictions of temperature changes? What?
Global warming is a topic hyped by the liberal media... (would you like some more kool-aid?)
WHAT 'Liberal media'? Considering the amount of media exposure given to 'skeptics' - despite the overwhelming amount of evidence in favour of AGW, the only visable media bias is against global warming.
There is no scientific evidence of Global warming being caused by 100 years of petro usage...
Errm, yes, there is. Everything from direct radiative measurement to paloclimatological evidence to models to Radiation balance tests such as those given by volcanic eruptions confirm AGW.
How much pollutants did Mt. St. Helens put out in 1980?
About a million tonnes of CO2 (Since it's GHGs we are talking about). Sound a lot? Humans put 17.6 BILLION tonnes of CO2 (net) into the atmosphere each year. Total worldwide volcanic inputs average 3% of this.
As far as being dependant... I burn veggie oil in my car
Being aware, I assume, that any attempt to put a significant portion of the US car fleet onto vegtable oil would simply make you run out of it, net energy issues aside.
but I still don't believe in this whole "Green house" thing and "Global Warming" being caused by humans... that is a very arrogant assumption
Why is following the science 'arrogant'? Are we also 'arrogant' to claim to know how stars form? Are we 'arrogant' to think that gravity applies to distant galaxies? Are we 'arrogant' to claim to know the properties of subatomic particles we have never seen? Why the big exception for this scientific theory?
And, of course, you are the one who wants more expensive and insecure energy. And are prepared to ignore a great deal of science to argue for it. Just exactly WHY is this your position, out of interest?
The global-warming scenario provides advocates of big government with an excuse for tapping into the lifeline of the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future
That is even more garbage than global warming deniers usually spout.
The US has a HUGE strategic vunerability and economic vunerability in the shape of 10 million barrels a day of oil imports. The large scale deployment of nuclear power, with the off-peak excess used to drive coal, biomass and waste-to-fuel projects could remove this dependancy whilst lowering energy prices, lowering the trade deficit, opening up internal markets in electricity and fuel production and (as a by-product) drastically reduce CO2 emissions far below that requested by Kyoto.
However, the above program would require that 'conservative' politicians in the US actually adapt their ideas to reality, so it won't happen any time soon.
That's strange, all I can see are '-1 Completely Ignorant' posts. Or would if I had several hundred mod points, and ignorance was a legitimate reason for getting voted down.
But the moment I mention I am Republican (although even I am questioning this label) I somehow must be a Bush fanboy, neo-Christian, book-banning, eco-pludering idiot. Extremism leads to a juvenile, red-herring, ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps you could label yourself 'Conservative' (i.e. Fiscal prudence, strong law+order, generally pro-business) as opposed to 'Republican' (Spend like drunken sailor, invade people 'cause you feel like it, ignore separation of church and state, etc..).
Any actual examples of these 'assumptions that we keep having to redefine'? After all, if we are being scientific then we can hardly take your word for it.
And as for your deranged ravings about how scientists waste all of their research funding, there is someone here who dosen't know jack, and I'd be looking in the mirror if I were you.
Even by Zubrin's rosiest estimates, it would be in the tens of billions and probably hundreds if too much government pork roots it way in. That's a pretty big "step two". Lots of tours perhaps? Lots of venture capital?
It is vary hard to work out exactly what a mars base can do that you can't do on earth. Indeed, Earth has a highly reprocessed and differentiated crust (more so than any other rocky body in the solar system), meaning that virtually any mineral you can think of is going to have a more concentrated deposit somewhere on earth than anywhere else in the solar system. The big advantage of having an off-earth self sufficient base (shallower gravity well) as a staging post for more exploration actually makes Mars a bad choice, since getting off of mars is still hard. Now, if someone wants to look at putting a base on 933 Eros....
It's a it like the reason why almost no-one lives in Antartica; there is nothing commercial you could do there that would be worth the expense of living there.
If I were going to raise multiple-billons of dollars for Space in general, I would not do it for tourism (Exactly how many multi millionaires willing to take a 2% chance of death just for LEO are there?). I would not do it to go to the moon or mars - how is the money ever going to come back? The elephant in the room of the whole thing is a cheap and reliable way of getting stuff off of this planet.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love more than anything to see it happen but, you know, the multibillion dollar trip..
So what do they have? As far as I can tell, some pictures of what they want the habitat to look like, and a hope that the SpaceX people will get them there. I think I could have managed to write that site in a week.
This is not quite the same as colombus setting out for America. Then, people had significant experience of long sea voyages, and were heading for a destination that was already habitable, with a fair few people involved. And the entire mission would not fail if a sail got torn.
No, going to mars with current technology (Chemical rockets with tiny payloads) is like going from Europe to America in a rowing boat and finding it to be a parched desert when you get there. You could do it - with a heroic effort - but you wouldn't be able to set up a useful colony.
The bottom line is that a chemical rocket on Earth can only just get out of the gravity well. Even the Saturn 5, lifting a payload of over 100 tonnes to low earth orbit could only get a small lander to the moon and back. It is NOT a matter of bueracuracy, it is a consequence of the physics of the process. Designs that look simple on paper suddenly get complex and expensive because of the desparate need to keep mass down. It's like trying to build the internet on copper alone; no matter how cleverly you use it, no matter how sleek and innovative your company, you'll keep hitting fundamental limits.
If we are serious about human space exploration and colonisation (and I very much think we should be), then the problem of getting large masses out of the Earth's gravity well in a cheap and reliable manner MUST be solved. If you can build a 50,000 tonne space ship in high earth orbit and then propel THAT to mars orbit, building your colony suddenly gets a lot easier; the problems of food, water, radiation, energy, society, etc are all, fundamentally, problems of mass.
Everytime something about evolution gets posted someone mentions intelligent design, obviously people insist or imply that evolution with implied natural abiogensis is unfalsifiable or 'infallible' in that sense or they wouldn't make fun of intelligent design.
No, the reason that people 'make fun' of intellegent design is the same reason people 'make fun' of flat-earthers, astrologers, homeopaths, crystal healers, etc, etc - they cling to their pet theory despite being proven wrong repeatedly.
Design is a legitimate mode of scientific explanation, hence crick and his ideas about panspermia.
Not really, that just shuffles the question backwards. Indeed, panspermia does not conflict with science in general, but it would require a first-abiogenesis hypothesis that would happen in non-earthlike conditions, and I am not aware of a realistic hypothesis of that sort.
If scientists were really serious about science they wouldn't be so hostile against ID, especially with things like the flagella popping up, no natural / evolutionary explanation posited we'd find technology in life, but ID did, and the hypothesis that life is technological machines is clearly anti-thetical to the theory of naturally arising without pre-existing intelligence.
You see, this kind of vague, confused gibberish is a major reason WHY ID gets made fun of. Actually, I see it as a deliberate tactic; you haven't actually made any solid points so as to make your position hard to attack. That's rhetoric, not science.
They do and this not just the problem of creationists and ID'ists, dogmatism is equally as rampant in science as well.
I keep getting told this by people who don't like scientific conclusions, it's just a pity I never see any evidence for it. Sour grapes, if you ask me.
There are a couple of issues:
(a) Go calculate the amount of crops needed to replace transpostation fuel worldwide.
(b) And work out how much of this would be needed to power the process.
Now, we could switch to biofuels if we completely deforested the entire planet in order to grow them, but this seems problamatical from an environmental point of view.
So, to summarise, all scientists are completely biased all of the time? This is garbage.
Objectivity is one of the greatest challenges of science
Actually, the attempt to achieve objectivity is the whole point of science, since without it you could never make progress. You will note that progress has been made.
To achieve it, a scientist must move against the current of the fashionable thinking of his peers, as well as his own personal bias.
This is a somewhat bizzare statement. Firstly, in many frontier areas there will be no 'current' anyway, or several competing 'currents'; so the statment about this is clearly wrong. Secondly, the idea that there are unchangable fashions is also clearly wrong, since it would prevent progress from ever being made. You are, as far as I can see, simply trying to assume your conclusion.
This is true for merely scientific fashion and truth, but if the issue is also an emotional, global, political issue, any such tendancies away from the truth will be magnified a thousand times
Prove it. Unless, of course, you don't wish to believe the results of scientific research and are hence trying to find excuses to disregard it, such as claiming that scientists are all biased.
Thus if you are attempting to find the truth about global warming via the consensus of the scientific community, you are seriously misguided;
Really? What would be a better method.. listen to a minority viewpoint? Although you should only agree with expert consensus on subjects which are not your speciality on a contingent basis, there is no rational alternative. For a non-expert to assert that a minority scientific viewpoint is correct is simpe political posturing.
and if you believe that you can discern the truth yourself by reviewing the results of scientific studies, there is a very good chance that you are delusional in respect to your own objectivity.
So basically, you are trying to 'poison the well' here; anyone with different opinions to yourself is already biased and therefore you can pretend they your opinions are just as valid as anyone else's. This kind of postmodern calptrap may sound clever, but it's just an excuse for ignorance.
Hmm. We must be reading different science journals. I'll go look it up again if you will.
Somehow, I don't think you are very familiar with scientific research...
In [what's left of] Louisiana, this is the second year in a row where the summer highs haven't gone over 100F. Human caused global warming is a joke.
Now, I know this may be a difficult concept - one that, for instance, you couldn't fit on a car bumper sticker - but climate is a very stastical thing. A couple of years of low temperatures in a given region therefore mean absolutely nothing (as you would know, if you were a scientist); indeed given the complexity of the system some areas will cool.
I guess it was human activity that caused Global Warming and ended the last ice age 10,000 years ago.
No, that's just stupid.
Climate Change is cyclical.
That's just meaningless (unless you want to tell me what these cycles are, of course).
This is probably just another symptom of an overdue, rapidly approaching ice age.
IF you kept up with climate science, THEN you would know that the next ice age is not due for 8-15,000 years. Surprising you dont, seen as you know all about climate cycles. Ironically, the only thing you don't seem to know is the Carribean/Hurricane cycle with a 40-50 year peridocity, which is a natural cycle and has a lot more to do with Katrina than global warming. GW will make hurricanes more intense, but only over the next 50-100 years, not right now.
The earth is cooler than it has been for much of it's life. The earth was a much hotter and more humid place during the time of the dinosaurs.
This is strange, since you think:
It is a very complex system but like all things in nature it has checks and balances. If one variable (like CO2) increases the temperature, other variables balance it out.
Would you like to tell me, o great climatologist, WHICH factors are going to cancel CO2 out? After all, you apparently know more than all of the scientists studying the subject, so I really hope you can tell me. Otherwise I'd have to come to the conclusion that you are an ignorant, moronic blowhard. This may sound harsh, but I am fed up to the back teeth with slashdotters coming out with rubbish on climatology.
Here are three questions to ponder regarding Global Warming:
1) How come slashdot posters know more about climatology than climatologists?
2) How many times does the same argument on slashdot have to be refuted before it gets through assorted skulls?
3) Why do I bother?
In answer to (1), the current warming dates from circa 1850, before which the earth was in a long term cooling trend (as would be expected from long term ice core records). The warming since circa 1980 cannot be accounted for by any natural mechanism (prior to this time, it is possible although unlikely that natural factors could be responsable.
In answer to (2), the highest average temperature the Earth has been at was in the mid-late cretaceous period. Most of North America was under water. This shows that the Earth does not have a definitvely stable climate. The problem is the cost of adjustment (i.e. rate of change) rather than absolute temperature per. se.
As far as (3) goes, it's hard to see what your point is. The earth should be in a trend of gradually cooling over the next 8-15,000 years until it enters another ice age. This is not really relevant in the context of the next 100 years.
As for 'Are humans causing global warming', then yes, they are and there is a huge preponderance of evidence for it. Ignorance of this evidence does not make it go away.
How to mitigate this (or even 'do we try and mitigate it'?) is a legitimate, political question in this. Simply denying the science is not an answer.
Considering the number of coal plants compared to nuclear plants, I'd say that nuclear plants are far more dangerous.
They result in less deaths per kilowatt hour produced. This means they are less dangerous. You may as well argue that 20 is less than 10.
And what exactly do you do with the waste You can't keep dumping it in the sea forever.
Recycle it and burn it up. It is not currently dumped in the sea anyway, but we are barred from using the fixes we know about to get rid of it because of anti-nuclear paranoia.
And what do you say to all those people who get cancer from living next to nuclear plants?
No, my point is more along the lines of "correlation does not equal causation".
Correlation is a reason for investigation. A lack of correlation is evidence against a factor (such as solar forcing being dominant in climate change).
I'm not saying that the people shouting about the science of global warming are idiots I'm saying that the issue is far more complex than most people appreciate.
AGW science IS very complex, yes. Which is why some of us get annoyed when it seems that people cast arounbd for any reason to try and discredit it without doing even a bit of research first. It is very similar to creationist tactics.
That is, of course, a completely different point to the one you were originally making, and highly controversial - for instance, it seems that activity his been constant over the last 50 years, yet the temperature record shows a strong warming over the last 25.
Your second sentance seems to imply that climate scientists are a bunch of idiots who have completely disregarded solar influences; do you believe this to be true?
Pardon me, but I was replying to a person who was seeking to blame the temperature trend over the past 150 years on the main sequence progression of the sun, which as I correctly pointed out, implies an approxamate 20% increase on insolation over the lifetime of the planet thus far.
Or, around 3% since 630 million years ago, which is enough to make a snowball earth very unlikely, but clearly has nothing to do with short term temperature trends.
Well, Coal mining and burning kills more people every year through accidents and pollution than the entire nuclear energy and weapons industry (i.e. Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki) has in its entire history.
So how, exactly, do you define 'safe'? I would say 'the power generation method that kills fewest people' is the safest, and of the major baseload sources, that happens to be nuclear. And our current plants are less safe than new designs..
Speaking as a geologist, I'd go and research the data behind that graph if I were you. It's just a *bit* simplified. Finding out what happens over the lifetime of a main sequence star may help you as well.
Slashdot Mirror
That's about the same as saying 'the jury is still out on evolution'. The earth is warming and will continue to warm as a result of the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere placed there by human activity; this is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Of course, that dosen't stop people making a lot of money out of making unscientific attacks on the theories and models involved (just as with evolution); but the attacks have long since degenerated into political point scoring and deliberate ignorance. Slashdot stories involving AGW act as an excellent illustration of this.
It is, of course, perfectly possible to reduce emissions by over 90% over the next couple of decades without anyone having to make any significant sacrifices (indeed, the solutions would probably be cheaper in the medium to long term than business as usual). However, that would require a debate based in reality, and apparently no-one wants that.
That article was written in 1998... funny how things come true.
Such as..? The corect predictions of temperature changes? What?
Global warming is a topic hyped by the liberal media... (would you like some more kool-aid?)
WHAT 'Liberal media'? Considering the amount of media exposure given to 'skeptics' - despite the overwhelming amount of evidence in favour of AGW, the only visable media bias is against global warming.
There is no scientific evidence of Global warming being caused by 100 years of petro usage...
Errm, yes, there is. Everything from direct radiative measurement to paloclimatological evidence to models to Radiation balance tests such as those given by volcanic eruptions confirm AGW.
How much pollutants did Mt. St. Helens put out in 1980?
About a million tonnes of CO2 (Since it's GHGs we are talking about). Sound a lot? Humans put 17.6 BILLION tonnes of CO2 (net) into the atmosphere each year. Total worldwide volcanic inputs average 3% of this.
As far as being dependant... I burn veggie oil in my car
Being aware, I assume, that any attempt to put a significant portion of the US car fleet onto vegtable oil would simply make you run out of it, net energy issues aside.
but I still don't believe in this whole "Green house" thing and "Global Warming" being caused by humans... that is a very arrogant assumption
Why is following the science 'arrogant'? Are we also 'arrogant' to claim to know how stars form? Are we 'arrogant' to think that gravity applies to distant galaxies? Are we 'arrogant' to claim to know the properties of subatomic particles we have never seen? Why the big exception for this scientific theory?
And, of course, you are the one who wants more expensive and insecure energy. And are prepared to ignore a great deal of science to argue for it. Just exactly WHY is this your position, out of interest?
The global-warming scenario provides advocates of big government with an excuse for tapping into the lifeline of the U.S. economy for the foreseeable future
That is even more garbage than global warming deniers usually spout.
The US has a HUGE strategic vunerability and economic vunerability in the shape of 10 million barrels a day of oil imports. The large scale deployment of nuclear power, with the off-peak excess used to drive coal, biomass and waste-to-fuel projects could remove this dependancy whilst lowering energy prices, lowering the trade deficit, opening up internal markets in electricity and fuel production and (as a by-product) drastically reduce CO2 emissions far below that requested by Kyoto.
However, the above program would require that 'conservative' politicians in the US actually adapt their ideas to reality, so it won't happen any time soon.
That's strange, all I can see are '-1 Completely Ignorant' posts. Or would if I had several hundred mod points, and ignorance was a legitimate reason for getting voted down.
But the moment I mention I am Republican (although even I am questioning this label) I somehow must be a Bush fanboy, neo-Christian, book-banning, eco-pludering idiot. Extremism leads to a juvenile, red-herring, ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps you could label yourself 'Conservative' (i.e. Fiscal prudence, strong law+order, generally pro-business) as opposed to 'Republican' (Spend like drunken sailor, invade people 'cause you feel like it, ignore separation of church and state, etc..).
Any actual examples of these 'assumptions that we keep having to redefine'? After all, if we are being scientific then we can hardly take your word for it.
And as for your deranged ravings about how scientists waste all of their research funding, there is someone here who dosen't know jack, and I'd be looking in the mirror if I were you.
Even by Zubrin's rosiest estimates, it would be in the tens of billions and probably hundreds if too much government pork roots it way in. That's a pretty big "step two". Lots of tours perhaps? Lots of venture capital?
It is vary hard to work out exactly what a mars base can do that you can't do on earth. Indeed, Earth has a highly reprocessed and differentiated crust (more so than any other rocky body in the solar system), meaning that virtually any mineral you can think of is going to have a more concentrated deposit somewhere on earth than anywhere else in the solar system. The big advantage of having an off-earth self sufficient base (shallower gravity well) as a staging post for more exploration actually makes Mars a bad choice, since getting off of mars is still hard. Now, if someone wants to look at putting a base on 933 Eros....
It's a it like the reason why almost no-one lives in Antartica; there is nothing commercial you could do there that would be worth the expense of living there.
If I were going to raise multiple-billons of dollars for Space in general, I would not do it for tourism (Exactly how many multi millionaires willing to take a 2% chance of death just for LEO are there?). I would not do it to go to the moon or mars - how is the money ever going to come back? The elephant in the room of the whole thing is a cheap and reliable way of getting stuff off of this planet.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love more than anything to see it happen but, you know, the multibillion dollar trip..
Absolutely.
So what do they have? As far as I can tell, some pictures of what they want the habitat to look like, and a hope that the SpaceX people will get them there. I think I could have managed to write that site in a week.
This is not quite the same as colombus setting out for America. Then, people had significant experience of long sea voyages, and were heading for a destination that was already habitable, with a fair few people involved. And the entire mission would not fail if a sail got torn.
No, going to mars with current technology (Chemical rockets with tiny payloads) is like going from Europe to America in a rowing boat and finding it to be a parched desert when you get there. You could do it - with a heroic effort - but you wouldn't be able to set up a useful colony.
The bottom line is that a chemical rocket on Earth can only just get out of the gravity well. Even the Saturn 5, lifting a payload of over 100 tonnes to low earth orbit could only get a small lander to the moon and back. It is NOT a matter of bueracuracy, it is a consequence of the physics of the process. Designs that look simple on paper suddenly get complex and expensive because of the desparate need to keep mass down. It's like trying to build the internet on copper alone; no matter how cleverly you use it, no matter how sleek and innovative your company, you'll keep hitting fundamental limits.
If we are serious about human space exploration and colonisation (and I very much think we should be), then the problem of getting large masses out of the Earth's gravity well in a cheap and reliable manner MUST be solved. If you can build a 50,000 tonne space ship in high earth orbit and then propel THAT to mars orbit, building your colony suddenly gets a lot easier; the problems of food, water, radiation, energy, society, etc are all, fundamentally, problems of mass.
Single point to make:
Anecdotes are meaningless.
Everytime something about evolution gets posted someone mentions intelligent design, obviously people insist or imply that evolution with implied natural abiogensis is unfalsifiable or 'infallible' in that sense or they wouldn't make fun of intelligent design.
No, the reason that people 'make fun' of intellegent design is the same reason people 'make fun' of flat-earthers, astrologers, homeopaths, crystal healers, etc, etc - they cling to their pet theory despite being proven wrong repeatedly.
Design is a legitimate mode of scientific explanation, hence crick and his ideas about panspermia.
Not really, that just shuffles the question backwards. Indeed, panspermia does not conflict with science in general, but it would require a first-abiogenesis hypothesis that would happen in non-earthlike conditions, and I am not aware of a realistic hypothesis of that sort.
If scientists were really serious about science they wouldn't be so hostile against ID, especially with things like the flagella popping up, no natural / evolutionary explanation posited we'd find technology in life, but ID did, and the hypothesis that life is technological machines is clearly anti-thetical to the theory of naturally arising without pre-existing intelligence.
You see, this kind of vague, confused gibberish is a major reason WHY ID gets made fun of. Actually, I see it as a deliberate tactic; you haven't actually made any solid points so as to make your position hard to attack. That's rhetoric, not science.
They do and this not just the problem of creationists and ID'ists, dogmatism is equally as rampant in science as well.
I keep getting told this by people who don't like scientific conclusions, it's just a pity I never see any evidence for it. Sour grapes, if you ask me.
There are a couple of issues: (a) Go calculate the amount of crops needed to replace transpostation fuel worldwide. (b) And work out how much of this would be needed to power the process. Now, we could switch to biofuels if we completely deforested the entire planet in order to grow them, but this seems problamatical from an environmental point of view.
So, to summarise, all scientists are completely biased all of the time? This is garbage.
Objectivity is one of the greatest challenges of science
Actually, the attempt to achieve objectivity is the whole point of science, since without it you could never make progress. You will note that progress has been made.
To achieve it, a scientist must move against the current of the fashionable thinking of his peers, as well as his own personal bias.
This is a somewhat bizzare statement. Firstly, in many frontier areas there will be no 'current' anyway, or several competing 'currents'; so the statment about this is clearly wrong. Secondly, the idea that there are unchangable fashions is also clearly wrong, since it would prevent progress from ever being made. You are, as far as I can see, simply trying to assume your conclusion.
This is true for merely scientific fashion and truth, but if the issue is also an emotional, global, political issue, any such tendancies away from the truth will be magnified a thousand times
Prove it. Unless, of course, you don't wish to believe the results of scientific research and are hence trying to find excuses to disregard it, such as claiming that scientists are all biased.
Thus if you are attempting to find the truth about global warming via the consensus of the scientific community, you are seriously misguided;
Really? What would be a better method.. listen to a minority viewpoint? Although you should only agree with expert consensus on subjects which are not your speciality on a contingent basis, there is no rational alternative. For a non-expert to assert that a minority scientific viewpoint is correct is simpe political posturing.
and if you believe that you can discern the truth yourself by reviewing the results of scientific studies, there is a very good chance that you are delusional in respect to your own objectivity.
So basically, you are trying to 'poison the well' here; anyone with different opinions to yourself is already biased and therefore you can pretend they your opinions are just as valid as anyone else's. This kind of postmodern calptrap may sound clever, but it's just an excuse for ignorance.
Hmm. We must be reading different science journals. I'll go look it up again if you will.
Somehow, I don't think you are very familiar with scientific research...
In [what's left of] Louisiana, this is the second year in a row where the summer highs haven't gone over 100F. Human caused global warming is a joke.
Now, I know this may be a difficult concept - one that, for instance, you couldn't fit on a car bumper sticker - but climate is a very stastical thing. A couple of years of low temperatures in a given region therefore mean absolutely nothing (as you would know, if you were a scientist); indeed given the complexity of the system some areas will cool.
I guess it was human activity that caused Global Warming and ended the last ice age 10,000 years ago.
No, that's just stupid.
Climate Change is cyclical.
That's just meaningless (unless you want to tell me what these cycles are, of course).
This is probably just another symptom of an overdue, rapidly approaching ice age.
IF you kept up with climate science, THEN you would know that the next ice age is not due for 8-15,000 years. Surprising you dont, seen as you know all about climate cycles. Ironically, the only thing you don't seem to know is the Carribean/Hurricane cycle with a 40-50 year peridocity, which is a natural cycle and has a lot more to do with Katrina than global warming. GW will make hurricanes more intense, but only over the next 50-100 years, not right now.
The earth is cooler than it has been for much of it's life. The earth was a much hotter and more humid place during the time of the dinosaurs.
This is strange, since you think:
It is a very complex system but like all things in nature it has checks and balances. If one variable (like CO2) increases the temperature, other variables balance it out.
Would you like to tell me, o great climatologist, WHICH factors are going to cancel CO2 out? After all, you apparently know more than all of the scientists studying the subject, so I really hope you can tell me. Otherwise I'd have to come to the conclusion that you are an ignorant, moronic blowhard. This may sound harsh, but I am fed up to the back teeth with slashdotters coming out with rubbish on climatology.
Recycle it and burn it up? Not quite that simple I'm afraid, otherwise they wouldn't dump it in the sea.
First, it's not dumped in the sea, and second, the deliberate opposition to all things nuclear means that we can't build the reactors to burn it up.
Would you live in a house built on such a place?
Yes.
And have a look at cancer rates around nuclear plants
Same as everywhere else.
Remember that the more nuclear power stations there are, the higher the chances of them going wrong.
And on averag the less deaths per kWh than burniung coal. Why is OK for particulate pollution to kill people?
Here are three questions to ponder regarding Global Warming:
1) How come slashdot posters know more about climatology than climatologists?
2) How many times does the same argument on slashdot have to be refuted before it gets through assorted skulls?
3) Why do I bother?
In answer to (1), the current warming dates from circa 1850, before which the earth was in a long term cooling trend (as would be expected from long term ice core records). The warming since circa 1980 cannot be accounted for by any natural mechanism (prior to this time, it is possible although unlikely that natural factors could be responsable.
In answer to (2), the highest average temperature the Earth has been at was in the mid-late cretaceous period. Most of North America was under water. This shows that the Earth does not have a definitvely stable climate. The problem is the cost of adjustment (i.e. rate of change) rather than absolute temperature per. se.
As far as (3) goes, it's hard to see what your point is. The earth should be in a trend of gradually cooling over the next 8-15,000 years until it enters another ice age. This is not really relevant in the context of the next 100 years.
As for 'Are humans causing global warming', then yes, they are and there is a huge preponderance of evidence for it. Ignorance of this evidence does not make it go away.
How to mitigate this (or even 'do we try and mitigate it'?) is a legitimate, political question in this. Simply denying the science is not an answer.
Considering the number of coal plants compared to nuclear plants, I'd say that nuclear plants are far more dangerous.
They result in less deaths per kilowatt hour produced. This means they are less dangerous. You may as well argue that 20 is less than 10.
And what exactly do you do with the waste You can't keep dumping it in the sea forever.
Recycle it and burn it up. It is not currently dumped in the sea anyway, but we are barred from using the fixes we know about to get rid of it because of anti-nuclear paranoia.
And what do you say to all those people who get cancer from living next to nuclear plants?
Which people?
No, my point is more along the lines of "correlation does not equal causation".
Correlation is a reason for investigation. A lack of correlation is evidence against a factor (such as solar forcing being dominant in climate change).
I'm not saying that the people shouting about the science of global warming are idiots I'm saying that the issue is far more complex than most people appreciate.
AGW science IS very complex, yes. Which is why some of us get annoyed when it seems that people cast arounbd for any reason to try and discredit it without doing even a bit of research first. It is very similar to creationist tactics.
That is, of course, a completely different point to the one you were originally making, and highly controversial - for instance, it seems that activity his been constant over the last 50 years, yet the temperature record shows a strong warming over the last 25.
Your second sentance seems to imply that climate scientists are a bunch of idiots who have completely disregarded solar influences; do you believe this to be true?
Reading comprehension???
Pardon me, but I was replying to a person who was seeking to blame the temperature trend over the past 150 years on the main sequence progression of the sun, which as I correctly pointed out, implies an approxamate 20% increase on insolation over the lifetime of the planet thus far.
Or, around 3% since 630 million years ago, which is enough to make a snowball earth very unlikely, but clearly has nothing to do with short term temperature trends.
Well, Coal mining and burning kills more people every year through accidents and pollution than the entire nuclear energy and weapons industry (i.e. Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki) has in its entire history.
So how, exactly, do you define 'safe'? I would say 'the power generation method that kills fewest people' is the safest, and of the major baseload sources, that happens to be nuclear. And our current plants are less safe than new designs..
I thought all this warming thing was solely the fault of us people spewing green house gasses.
The sun has gotten 20% warmer OVER THE PAST 4.5 Billion Years. That is a slightly longer timescale than global warming.
Speaking as a geologist, I'd go and research the data behind that graph if I were you. It's just a *bit* simplified. Finding out what happens over the lifetime of a main sequence star may help you as well.
Scientific consensus held that the earth was flat, washing hands before surgery had no benefit, and theories about penicillin were false.
Prove it.