>Could you please name even a single user who has done as you suggested?
The grandparent.
Hence my comment in reply to him/her.
PS -- Re the posts, four or five people had posted more or less the exact same comment -- probably at around the same time, so they hadn't had time to note that others had posted the same thing. I could have merely posted a link to my first post in the subsequent posts, but that would have required extra work on the part of any readers for no particularly good reason. Alternatively, I could have adopted the position that discussions are always better when there are no messy facts around to interrupt the mindless Microsoft-bashing / Linux-bashing, and gone off to have a cup of tea. Since that appears to be the preferred course of action, I assure you that I will not interrupt the partisan food fights with anything no mundane as verifiable reality in future.
I don't think it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you'll have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis only with confirmation, like a normal user in Ubuntu who can use 'sudo'.
By default, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com [computerworld.com] mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis. It pops up a dialogue box like http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/winvis ta_ff_uac_13.jpg, letting you press a big button that says 'allow' if you know it's something you initiated (e.g. you're trying to install something). You don't need to logout and relogin.
It's coming true exactly as I predicted in http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193364&cid= 15862544! All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model are now spending all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model...
Course, you know what this means now. All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model will now spend all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model:-/
Correct, it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is all about.
Yes, it will. In Vista, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.
Yes. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.
Burning fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere. This increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What's there to dispute?
>What caused the C02 emission that warmed the globe enough to melt that glacier?
A combination of natural and manmade causes. Ice age CO2 fluctuations are historically between 180 and 270 ppmv, in a 100,000 year cycle. We are now at the top of that cycle. On top of that, in the last 150 years CO2 concentrations have jumped from the expected 270 (which it would be normally if man did not exist) to 385 ppmv -- a 42% increase -- due to carbon flux from the burning of fossil fuels.
So if your glacier alterately formed and melted in 100,000 year cycles in the past, it's current state of melting would have happened anyway, since we are at the top of the natural cycle. If, however, it has remained a glacier throughout the cycles and has only melted in the last 150 or so years, then its melting is caused by the higher CO2 (and CFC, etc.) emissions from manmade sources.
We have full instrumental records dating back 150 years; more than enough to show the change since the industrial revolution (the sudden change in gradient, unsurprisingly, starts shortly after atmospheric CO2 concentrations started increasing). We also have reconstructed records dating back around 5 million years in places like the Antarctic, where we can deduce the temperature from the way the ice was formed. Also thanks to the ice, we have reliable recordings of the CO2 conentrations in the atmosphere dating back nearly 500,000 years, enough to encompass at least four ice age cycles and demonstrate how much current concentrations are deviating from the historical cycles. What more do you want?
Yes, but the water which you are peeing originates either from water which you drunk or the liquid content of food. In either case, the original source of the water can be traced back to reservoirs which are filled by rainwater or freshwater rivers, which, in turn, can be traced back to evaporation from the oceans. So by peeing into the oceans, you are only replacing water which was removed a relatively short time ago. It's similar to burning wood - you're releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, but the CO2 you're releasing is the same CO2 that the tree absorbed from the atmosphere whilst growing, so the entire process is carbon neutral.
. ..
No, I don't have a sense of humour; why do you ask?
Perhaps you would care to read the next paragraph of the post, starting with Don't believe me that all scientists are united on the side that it's climate change exists? You don't have to."?
Why the hell would reducing burning of fossil fuels lead to fuel shortages in Africa? In the poorest parts of Africa, where lack of food is a severe problem, industrialisation is usually little to non-existant. You get food from growing crops, cutting them down, and eating them. Did you think that no-one on Earth eat anything before people started burning fossil fuels in the industrial revolutions? Don't be ridiculous.
And obviously we don't have the option to "simply stop burning fossil fuels" -- the point is to slowly start phasing them out with better alternatives. Which we'll have to do anyway eventually - they are a finite resource, you know. In fact, the chance of "economic disaster" is probably greater if we rely on them until they aren't there anymore than if we start slowly replacing them with renewable alternatives.
To answer your list -- yes, ethanol produces CO2 when burned. Yes, humans produce CO2 when we breath. However, the obvious point which you seem to have missed is that overall, humans breathing, burning ethanol, biofuels, wood etc. does NOT increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, because the CO2 released when wood etc. are burnt is the same CO2 that is abosrbed by the trees when they were growing. Same applies to humans - crops absorb CO2, we eat crops, we breath, CO2 released back into the atmosphere. It's called the Carbon cycle. There is no net increase in CO2.
So the CO2 released by a human riding on a bike is the same CO2 that was absorbed from the atmosphere when the crops that the human eats were growing. Not so with the SUV.
And there are many more alternative resources that you neglected to mention - coincidentally, the ones that have actually been successfully been put into practice. Wind. Wave. Tidal. Nuclear (which, whilst not a sustainable resources, has the advantage that its waste producets are not released directly into the atmosphere, and can be kept secure until they have decomposed).
And obviously we should do something about it. You're the one who mentioned impact on third world countries. A surprisingly large amount of Bangladesh is less than 1m above sea level, to pick one example. If global warming continues at the current rate, about (I think) 15% of the Earth's land surface would be under water by 2100. Please explain how this is a good thing?
You're confusing 'weather' with 'climate'. The weather in individual areas of the Earth is chaotic, and will fluctuate, not just from year to year, but from day to day. On Average, however, trends can be obsereved in global average temperature over decades -- energy is conserved; more Sun's energy, higher average temperatures. It is this that will lead to a rise in sea levels, etc.
There is certainly a point about the CO2 produced through natural means -- but the argument against that is that, historically, the CO2 levels have followed cycles that mirror the ice age cycles; and since the industrial revolutions, levels have gone way, way off the usual cycles (levels usually fluctuate between 180 and 270 ppmv; they're now 385 (source: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png)).
Then there was the thing that convinced David Attenborough - the Reading experiment where they made as accurate a simulation of global average temperature as possible, considering all the influences on it, both with and without manmade influences. After letting it run for however many months, the one with manmade influences taken into account matched surprisingly well the recent measured rises in temperatures. The one with only natural influences split off at around the industrial revolution. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD1dnP_k8Yc&mode=re lated&search= for the video.
Sorry if it seems like I'm arguing against you -- I'm not, but none of the real 'skeptics' have actually responded with a sensible point against climate change yet, only you. Oh well.
>It is not a fact that water expands when heated. Liquid water is in fact very strange, and expands upon freezing, which is why if you put a beer can in the freezer it will explode. It is also why icebergs, thankfully, float. It also decreases in volume up to 4 deg C, and then increases in volume after that. (Properties of Water)
I'm sorry, you're contradicting yourself -- specifically, you contradict your first sentence with your last 7 words. Since the majority of the worlds oceans are above 4 degrees C, an increase in temperature will indeed lead to an average increase in volume.
You are, however, completely correct when you say it expands on freezing. Specifically, it expands around 10%. Non-coincidentally, that same percentage is the percentage of an iceberg that is above water -- it's Arcimedes principle. The upshot of this is that the North pole melting would not siginifantly affect sea levels (Try it yourself - get a glass of water with ice in it, put some cling film on it to prevent evaporation, measure the water level, then let the ice melt - the waterlevel will not change). The damage caused by the North pole melting will be mainly due to the flow of water southwards completely mucking up the Gulf stream.
Of course, for the South pole it's different; since most of it is above water, melting will affect sea levels. However, the amount of water trapped in the South pole as ice is tiny compared to the amount of liquid water in the oceans, and the lower density of water at higher temperatures will definitely have a significant effect.
Doing a very rough calculation...
Take the volume of water in the oceans as 1,338,000,000 km^3 (*10^9 for m^3). The expansion of water over about 4 degrees difference at around 20 degrees is around 0.1 percent. This gives an increase in volume of about 1.338*10^15 m^3. Divide by the surface area of the oceans (335,258,000 km^2 = 3.35258 * 10^14 m^2) and you get a sea level rise of somewhere around 4m.
In other words, somewhere around one meter per degree rise. And that's not counting your point about the South pole.
>I for one find the whining about fossil fuel burning and climate change to be the same sort of sad, illogical drone as that emanating from Kansas on the topic of evolution.
In this, I entirely agree with you. However, you seem to be a bit confused as to which way round the analogy works. In Kansas, all the scientists are united on one side (evolution) against those who have an external reason for disbelieving it (the Bible doesn't support it). With the climate change debate, all the scientists are united on one side (climate change exists) against those who have an external reason for disbelieving it (the oil companies will make less profit if people start to try and combat it).
Don't believe me that all scientists are united on the side that it's climate change exists? You don't have to. Pick up ANY scientific journal -- Nature or Science are rather dense for non-scientists, so try New Scientist or Scientific American or any one of countless others. Attend scientific conferences. Go to lectures. Look at the graphs. Read the reports produced by any of the major scientific bodies, either US-based or international. Or the G8. Or the UN. They all say the same thing.
>The inability for the reader to understand the science means that magical forces must be at play.
The ability of someone to igonore all debate, evidence, and logic in favour of mechanically asserting that they are right certainly exists, but is more psycological than magical.
The simple fact is the sun is a variable star. The earth has been both hotter and colder than it is currently, all without the intervention of man.
True, it's called the ice ages (incidentally, it's not yet considered settled that the cause of them is the variability of the sun). However, the problem is that the current changes are far above the usual cyclic fluctations due to ice age cycles (see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png). Ice age CO2 fluctuations are historically between 180 and 270 ppmv; it is now 385. As you'd have known if you'd read my original post and at least attempted to answer it, which you clearly haven't.
Lets remember that you get what you pay for. Pay for a bunch of yes men academics to produce papers saying what you want isn't the same as real science.
Who on Earth is paying scientists to produce evidence showing that climate change exists? No-one stands to benefit in the least. Are these strange people paying the entire, vast scientific community around the world? Is this some sort of global consipracy?
Don't be ridiculous. The academic papers are being produced by scientists trying to bring the issue into the wider understanding. If you want an example of people paying to produce material on a side of the issue, I suggest you consult TFA.
I dislike arguing against a position unless I completely understand that point of view (Hell, if I don't completely understand a point of view, how do I know it's not correct?).
So can one of the climate change skeptics around here tell me exactly which stage of the following logical chain it is you disagree with? Who knows, you might even convert me if your argument is convincing.
One. It is fact that burning fossil fuels gives out carbon dioxide. The amount can be calculated from the amount of fossil fuels burned. This goes into the atmosphere, and since the rate at which the World's fauna is converting this back into Oxygen is reasonably static (or even decreasing, since we're cutting down vast amounts of the rainforest every year), the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will rise.
Two. It is fact that greater levels of carbon dioxide lead to greater trapping of the Sun's energy. This is settled science, and can be independantly confirmed by anyone with a cylinder of carbon dioxide, a temperature probe, and an inquiring mind.
Three. Greater trapping of the Sun's energy will lead to a reasonably predictable rise in global average temperature. The calculation is not hard once you know the relevant specific heat capacities. Again, should the logical chain not be enough, there is independant confirmation of this from temperature stations around the globe, which fairly closely matches predictions made using the previous links in the chain (e.g. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/f/f4/Instru mental_Temperature_Record.png).
Four. It is fact that water expands when heated. The calculation is, again, easily performed, and will lead to a rise in sea level, which will cover predictable parts of the world, especially affecting places like Bangladesh (where large areas of the country are less than one meter above sea level). The rise in temperature will also lead to the glaciers receding, and higher sea temperatures will also increase the number and severity of hurricanes. Ocean currents will also be affected, severely changing the climate in parts of the world which depend on them.
Climate change sceptics are happy to look at the predictions of that last point and say that it's rubbish. But when I look at the points, I see a reasonably watertight chain of logic. So which point are you disputing?
I just have to make sure no-one's mislead by the fact that the parent has been modded 'Funny' (probably by one of Slashdot's many optimists who can't bring themselves to believe that it really is true) -- it is confirmed fact that Exxon is a client of DCI. It was confirmed by Dave Gardner, an Exxon spokesman, a short while back.
Think: Google = search. If the product does not fit, there is no way to make money from it for Google and they won't do it...
That was definitely once true, but I'm not sure it is any more. Google has branched out a considerable amount in recent times, way beyond its core product (searching).
e.g.:
Picasa
Google Alerts
Google Checkout
Google Desktop [Google Desktop is a lot more than just Desktop search]
>I wonder why these numbers are so greatly exaggerated. Why can't scientists
>leave the theoretical figures behind and talk about realistic numbers?
Did you RTFA? This is a discovery. There are no realistic numbers because the product doesn't actually exist yet, and probably won't in a useable form for quite some time. The only thing they've actually done so far is the genetic modification of the protein. The numbers are theoretical because the disc is theoretical.
>But since Linux is free, I don't really understand why would anybody insist
>Windows is any good when there's an alternative that actually works
I installed Ubuntu a week ago. I'm not going to uninstall it, but I've gone back to Windows as my day-to-day OS.
Why? I could use your car analogy: Ubuntu is like a powerful supercar engine, controlled by a few small, elegent pairs of switches. A great underneath, a pretty surface, but the latter simply not well matched up to the former.
Let me explain. Ubuntu works excellently if:
1) Everything works perfectly immediately, and
2) You have a perfectly normal setup and are unlikely to want anything else.
Otherwise you have to abandon the pretty bank of switches and reach underneath to control the engine directly.
Now, I have a certain interest in computers; obviously, or I wouldn't be on Slashdot. But there's a certain point when I want everything to Just Work. Linux doen't let you do that. Just getting it to read my other two hard drives required a couple of hours of forum searches, arcane terminal commands, editing configuration files, etc, etc. Ditto for getting sound to work. Ditto for almost everything that I'd gotten used to Just Working. Even deleting a simple redundant empty folder that I'd just created took nearly an hour, since despite me just creating it it seemingly required root permissions to edit. Using sudo in terminal didn't work since the folder name had a space in it (I hadn't learn't at that point that it's safer with Linux to stick with one word, lower case) and it kept interpreting what followed the space as a command. Using Nautilus didn't work since, despite being a file manager for a permissions based operating system, there is NO WAY to invoke administrator permissions for an operation from within it. The kind souls of the support forums seemed astonished that I'd not thought of using gksudo. Come on, I'd already been using Linux for nearly four hours, surely I'd learnt most of the command line functions by now?
And the thing is, they're right. By the end of my first day, I already had a tenuous grasp of command line syntax, a working knowledge of chmod parameters, and the work "sudo" permanently etched into my brain.
Another example. For configuring your monitor, Ubuntu provides a little dialogue box that allows you to select screen resolution and refresh rate. Fine. But I have a two screens, and the little dialogue box couldn't cope; it wouldn't allow me to select anything other than 1280*1024 at 60Hz. As for actually getting a proper dual-screen setup, certainly it's possible, but not with the little bank of switches. And I just couldn't bring myself to face another day of the Ubuntu support forums, editing configuration files in a way that may or may not break the fragile equilibrium that had established itself and render the system unbootable, and The Bash Prompt.
Yes, I want an operating system that's configurable. But I also want one that could pass the Grandma test, that is capable of Just Working when I get tired of configuration files. And Linux, at the moment, doesn't qualify.
It's actually not that hard to keep Windows clean; don't use IE, keep it updated, don't disable the inbuilt firewall -- that's pretty much it. You don't even really need an antivirus unless you commonly open.exe email attatchments, though it's not a bad idea to have one anyway - of which there are many completely free ones (admittedly beer rather than speech). I've certainly never got either a virus or spyware, and only one BSOD with XP (which was my own fault anyway, and hardware related). Your "90% of machines running Windows I've seen" are as they are because the users do not even know enough (do not even want to need to know enough) to follow those basic steps. So how on Earth would they cope with Linux?
I had really wanted to like Linux. I love the Ubuntu philosophy, and Windows, I admit, is
Slashdot Mirror
>Could you please name even a single user who has done as you suggested?
The grandparent.
Hence my comment in reply to him/her.
PS -- Re the posts, four or five people had posted more or less the exact same comment -- probably at around the same time, so they hadn't had time to note that others had posted the same thing. I could have merely posted a link to my first post in the subsequent posts, but that would have required extra work on the part of any readers for no particularly good reason. Alternatively, I could have adopted the position that discussions are always better when there are no messy facts around to interrupt the mindless Microsoft-bashing / Linux-bashing, and gone off to have a cup of tea. Since that appears to be the preferred course of action, I assure you that I will not interrupt the partisan food fights with anything no mundane as verifiable reality in future.
Is this in some alternative universe where 12:32 am is after 12:35 am?
My surprise was that is was coming true so quickly...
I don't think it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you'll have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis only with confirmation, like a normal user in Ubuntu who can use 'sudo'.
By default, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com [computerworld.com] mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis. It pops up a dialogue box like http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcase/winvis ta_ff_uac_13.jpg, letting you press a big button that says 'allow' if you know it's something you initiated (e.g. you're trying to install something). You don't need to logout and relogin.
It's coming true exactly as I predicted in http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193364&cid= 15862544! All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model are now spending all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model...
> Did Microsoft put a GUI on http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ ;-)
:-/
Pretty much...
Course, you know what this means now. All the people who'd previously spent all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft should adopt the Linux security model will now spend all their time on Slashdot opinionating that Microsoft stole the Linux security model
See http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193364&cid= 15862463
>Vista might be running in user mode by default.
m mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is all about.
Correct, it will. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co
Yes, it will. In Vista, the true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.
Yes. The true administrator account is hidden and disabled by default. Most people won't even know it's there, and you have to go through a rigmarole to enable it if you really want it (these a how-to guide at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001970). The "administrator" account that Vista creates by default is actually a standard user that can temporarily elevate to admin privelages on a task-by-task basis -- that's what UAC is about.
Burning fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere. This increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What's there to dispute?
_ Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png _ History_and_Flux_Rev.png. They both rise gently since 1850 and steeply since 1950.
If you want to see the graphs, here's one showing CO2 variations from the last 4 or so ice ages including the recent jump: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon
And here's one showing the carbon flux compared to independently measured CO2 concentrations for the last 250 years: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon
>Do those 500,000 years of C02 levels match with those temperature trends?
_ Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png (CO2 concentrations) to http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Ice_Age _Temperature_Rev.png (Ice age temperature changes).
Yes. E.g. compare http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon
>What caused the C02 emission that warmed the globe enough to melt that glacier?
A combination of natural and manmade causes. Ice age CO2 fluctuations are historically between 180 and 270 ppmv, in a 100,000 year cycle. We are now at the top of that cycle. On top of that, in the last 150 years CO2 concentrations have jumped from the expected 270 (which it would be normally if man did not exist) to 385 ppmv -- a 42% increase -- due to carbon flux from the burning of fossil fuels.
So if your glacier alterately formed and melted in 100,000 year cycles in the past, it's current state of melting would have happened anyway, since we are at the top of the natural cycle. If, however, it has remained a glacier throughout the cycles and has only melted in the last 150 or so years, then its melting is caused by the higher CO2 (and CFC, etc.) emissions from manmade sources.
We have full instrumental records dating back 150 years; more than enough to show the change since the industrial revolution (the sudden change in gradient, unsurprisingly, starts shortly after atmospheric CO2 concentrations started increasing). We also have reconstructed records dating back around 5 million years in places like the Antarctic, where we can deduce the temperature from the way the ice was formed. Also thanks to the ice, we have reliable recordings of the CO2 conentrations in the atmosphere dating back nearly 500,000 years, enough to encompass at least four ice age cycles and demonstrate how much current concentrations are deviating from the historical cycles. What more do you want?
Yes, but the water which you are peeing originates either from water which you drunk or the liquid content of food. In either case, the original source of the water can be traced back to reservoirs which are filled by rainwater or freshwater rivers, which, in turn, can be traced back to evaporation from the oceans. So by peeing into the oceans, you are only replacing water which was removed a relatively short time ago. It's similar to burning wood - you're releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, but the CO2 you're releasing is the same CO2 that the tree absorbed from the atmosphere whilst growing, so the entire process is carbon neutral.
.
. .
No, I don't have a sense of humour; why do you ask?
Perhaps you would care to read the next paragraph of the post, starting with Don't believe me that all scientists are united on the side that it's climate change exists? You don't have to."?
Why the hell would reducing burning of fossil fuels lead to fuel shortages in Africa? In the poorest parts of Africa, where lack of food is a severe problem, industrialisation is usually little to non-existant. You get food from growing crops, cutting them down, and eating them. Did you think that no-one on Earth eat anything before people started burning fossil fuels in the industrial revolutions? Don't be ridiculous.
And obviously we don't have the option to "simply stop burning fossil fuels" -- the point is to slowly start phasing them out with better alternatives. Which we'll have to do anyway eventually - they are a finite resource, you know. In fact, the chance of "economic disaster" is probably greater if we rely on them until they aren't there anymore than if we start slowly replacing them with renewable alternatives.
To answer your list -- yes, ethanol produces CO2 when burned. Yes, humans produce CO2 when we breath. However, the obvious point which you seem to have missed is that overall, humans breathing, burning ethanol, biofuels, wood etc. does NOT increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, because the CO2 released when wood etc. are burnt is the same CO2 that is abosrbed by the trees when they were growing. Same applies to humans - crops absorb CO2, we eat crops, we breath, CO2 released back into the atmosphere. It's called the Carbon cycle. There is no net increase in CO2.
So the CO2 released by a human riding on a bike is the same CO2 that was absorbed from the atmosphere when the crops that the human eats were growing. Not so with the SUV.
And there are many more alternative resources that you neglected to mention - coincidentally, the ones that have actually been successfully been put into practice. Wind. Wave. Tidal. Nuclear (which, whilst not a sustainable resources, has the advantage that its waste producets are not released directly into the atmosphere, and can be kept secure until they have decomposed).
And obviously we should do something about it. You're the one who mentioned impact on third world countries. A surprisingly large amount of Bangladesh is less than 1m above sea level, to pick one example. If global warming continues at the current rate, about (I think) 15% of the Earth's land surface would be under water by 2100. Please explain how this is a good thing?
You're confusing 'weather' with 'climate'. The weather in individual areas of the Earth is chaotic, and will fluctuate, not just from year to year, but from day to day. On Average, however, trends can be obsereved in global average temperature over decades -- energy is conserved; more Sun's energy, higher average temperatures. It is this that will lead to a rise in sea levels, etc.
There is certainly a point about the CO2 produced through natural means -- but the argument against that is that, historically, the CO2 levels have followed cycles that mirror the ice age cycles; and since the industrial revolutions, levels have gone way, way off the usual cycles (levels usually fluctuate between 180 and 270 ppmv; they're now 385 (source: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png)).
e lated&search= for the video.
Then there was the thing that convinced David Attenborough - the Reading experiment where they made as accurate a simulation of global average temperature as possible, considering all the influences on it, both with and without manmade influences. After letting it run for however many months, the one with manmade influences taken into account matched surprisingly well the recent measured rises in temperatures. The one with only natural influences split off at around the industrial revolution. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD1dnP_k8Yc&mode=r
Sorry if it seems like I'm arguing against you -- I'm not, but none of the real 'skeptics' have actually responded with a sensible point against climate change yet, only you. Oh well.
>It is not a fact that water expands when heated. Liquid water is in fact very strange, and expands upon freezing, which is why if you put a beer can in the freezer it will explode. It is also why icebergs, thankfully, float. It also decreases in volume up to 4 deg C, and then increases in volume after that. (Properties of Water)
I'm sorry, you're contradicting yourself -- specifically, you contradict your first sentence with your last 7 words. Since the majority of the worlds oceans are above 4 degrees C, an increase in temperature will indeed lead to an average increase in volume.
You are, however, completely correct when you say it expands on freezing. Specifically, it expands around 10%. Non-coincidentally, that same percentage is the percentage of an iceberg that is above water -- it's Arcimedes principle. The upshot of this is that the North pole melting would not siginifantly affect sea levels (Try it yourself - get a glass of water with ice in it, put some cling film on it to prevent evaporation, measure the water level, then let the ice melt - the waterlevel will not change). The damage caused by the North pole melting will be mainly due to the flow of water southwards completely mucking up the Gulf stream.
Of course, for the South pole it's different; since most of it is above water, melting will affect sea levels. However, the amount of water trapped in the South pole as ice is tiny compared to the amount of liquid water in the oceans, and the lower density of water at higher temperatures will definitely have a significant effect.
Doing a very rough calculation...
Take the volume of water in the oceans as 1,338,000,000 km^3 (*10^9 for m^3). The expansion of water over about 4 degrees difference at around 20 degrees is around 0.1 percent. This gives an increase in volume of about 1.338*10^15 m^3. Divide by the surface area of the oceans (335,258,000 km^2 = 3.35258 * 10^14 m^2) and you get a sea level rise of somewhere around 4m.
In other words, somewhere around one meter per degree rise. And that's not counting your point about the South pole.
>I for one find the whining about fossil fuel burning and climate change to be the same sort of sad, illogical drone as that emanating from Kansas on the topic of evolution.
n _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png). Ice age CO2 fluctuations are historically between 180 and 270 ppmv; it is now 385. As you'd have known if you'd read my original post and at least attempted to answer it, which you clearly haven't.
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In this, I entirely agree with you. However, you seem to be a bit confused as to which way round the analogy works. In Kansas, all the scientists are united on one side (evolution) against those who have an external reason for disbelieving it (the Bible doesn't support it). With the climate change debate, all the scientists are united on one side (climate change exists) against those who have an external reason for disbelieving it (the oil companies will make less profit if people start to try and combat it).
Don't believe me that all scientists are united on the side that it's climate change exists? You don't have to. Pick up ANY scientific journal -- Nature or Science are rather dense for non-scientists, so try New Scientist or Scientific American or any one of countless others. Attend scientific conferences. Go to lectures. Look at the graphs. Read the reports produced by any of the major scientific bodies, either US-based or international. Or the G8. Or the UN. They all say the same thing.
>The inability for the reader to understand the science means that magical forces must be at play.
The ability of someone to igonore all debate, evidence, and logic in favour of mechanically asserting that they are right certainly exists, but is more psycological than magical.
The simple fact is the sun is a variable star. The earth has been both hotter and colder than it is currently, all without the intervention of man.
True, it's called the ice ages (incidentally, it's not yet considered settled that the cause of them is the variability of the sun). However, the problem is that the current changes are far above the usual cyclic fluctations due to ice age cycles (see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbo
Lets remember that you get what you pay for. Pay for a bunch of yes men academics to produce papers saying what you want isn't the same as real science.
Who on Earth is paying scientists to produce evidence showing that climate change exists? No-one stands to benefit in the least. Are these strange people paying the entire, vast scientific community around the world? Is this some sort of global consipracy?
Don't be ridiculous. The academic papers are being produced by scientists trying to bring the issue into the wider understanding. If you want an example of people paying to produce material on a side of the issue, I suggest you consult TFA.
The one thing you still seemingly refuse to do is answer my original post. In case you can't find it, it's still at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193278&cid=15
I dislike arguing against a position unless I completely understand that point of view (Hell, if I don't completely understand a point of view, how do I know it's not correct?).
_ Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png for one example). This rising is far above the usual cyclic fluctations due to ice age cycles (see http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/d/d3/Carbon _Dioxide_400kyr_Rev.png).
u mental_Temperature_Record.png).
So can one of the climate change skeptics around here tell me exactly which stage of the following logical chain it is you disagree with? Who knows, you might even convert me if your argument is convincing.
One. It is fact that burning fossil fuels gives out carbon dioxide. The amount can be calculated from the amount of fossil fuels burned. This goes into the atmosphere, and since the rate at which the World's fauna is converting this back into Oxygen is reasonably static (or even decreasing, since we're cutting down vast amounts of the rainforest every year), the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will rise.
Independant confirmation of this is given by...
Alternative One. The fact that carbon dioxide levels are rising has been measured many times by laboratories around the globe (e.g. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/8/88/Mauna
Two. It is fact that greater levels of carbon dioxide lead to greater trapping of the Sun's energy. This is settled science, and can be independantly confirmed by anyone with a cylinder of carbon dioxide, a temperature probe, and an inquiring mind.
Three. Greater trapping of the Sun's energy will lead to a reasonably predictable rise in global average temperature. The calculation is not hard once you know the relevant specific heat capacities. Again, should the logical chain not be enough, there is independant confirmation of this from temperature stations around the globe, which fairly closely matches predictions made using the previous links in the chain (e.g. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/f/f4/Instr
Four. It is fact that water expands when heated. The calculation is, again, easily performed, and will lead to a rise in sea level, which will cover predictable parts of the world, especially affecting places like Bangladesh (where large areas of the country are less than one meter above sea level). The rise in temperature will also lead to the glaciers receding, and higher sea temperatures will also increase the number and severity of hurricanes. Ocean currents will also be affected, severely changing the climate in parts of the world which depend on them.
Climate change sceptics are happy to look at the predictions of that last point and say that it's rubbish. But when I look at the points, I see a reasonably watertight chain of logic. So which point are you disputing?
I just have to make sure no-one's mislead by the fact that the parent has been modded 'Funny' (probably by one of Slashdot's many optimists who can't bring themselves to believe that it really is true) -- it is confirmed fact that Exxon is a client of DCI. It was confirmed by Dave Gardner, an Exxon spokesman, a short while back.
That was definitely once true, but I'm not sure it is any more. Google has branched out a considerable amount in recent times, way beyond its core product (searching).
e.g.:
Etc, etc.
>I wonder why these numbers are so greatly exaggerated. Why can't scientists
>leave the theoretical figures behind and talk about realistic numbers?
Did you RTFA? This is a discovery. There are no realistic numbers because the product doesn't actually exist yet, and probably won't in a useable form for quite some time. The only thing they've actually done so far is the genetic modification of the protein. The numbers are theoretical because the disc is theoretical.
>But since Linux is free, I don't really understand why would anybody insist
.exe email attatchments, though it's not a bad idea to have one anyway - of which there are many completely free ones (admittedly beer rather than speech). I've certainly never got either a virus or spyware, and only one BSOD with XP (which was my own fault anyway, and hardware related). Your "90% of machines running Windows I've seen" are as they are because the users do not even know enough (do not even want to need to know enough) to follow those basic steps. So how on Earth would they cope with Linux?
>Windows is any good when there's an alternative that actually works
I installed Ubuntu a week ago. I'm not going to uninstall it, but I've gone back to Windows as my day-to-day OS.
Why? I could use your car analogy: Ubuntu is like a powerful supercar engine, controlled by a few small, elegent pairs of switches. A great underneath, a pretty surface, but the latter simply not well matched up to the former.
Let me explain. Ubuntu works excellently if:
1) Everything works perfectly immediately, and
2) You have a perfectly normal setup and are unlikely to want anything else.
Otherwise you have to abandon the pretty bank of switches and reach underneath to control the engine directly.
Now, I have a certain interest in computers; obviously, or I wouldn't be on Slashdot. But there's a certain point when I want everything to Just Work. Linux doen't let you do that. Just getting it to read my other two hard drives required a couple of hours of forum searches, arcane terminal commands, editing configuration files, etc, etc. Ditto for getting sound to work. Ditto for almost everything that I'd gotten used to Just Working. Even deleting a simple redundant empty folder that I'd just created took nearly an hour, since despite me just creating it it seemingly required root permissions to edit. Using sudo in terminal didn't work since the folder name had a space in it (I hadn't learn't at that point that it's safer with Linux to stick with one word, lower case) and it kept interpreting what followed the space as a command. Using Nautilus didn't work since, despite being a file manager for a permissions based operating system, there is NO WAY to invoke administrator permissions for an operation from within it. The kind souls of the support forums seemed astonished that I'd not thought of using gksudo. Come on, I'd already been using Linux for nearly four hours, surely I'd learnt most of the command line functions by now?
And the thing is, they're right. By the end of my first day, I already had a tenuous grasp of command line syntax, a working knowledge of chmod parameters, and the work "sudo" permanently etched into my brain.
Another example. For configuring your monitor, Ubuntu provides a little dialogue box that allows you to select screen resolution and refresh rate. Fine. But I have a two screens, and the little dialogue box couldn't cope; it wouldn't allow me to select anything other than 1280*1024 at 60Hz. As for actually getting a proper dual-screen setup, certainly it's possible, but not with the little bank of switches. And I just couldn't bring myself to face another day of the Ubuntu support forums, editing configuration files in a way that may or may not break the fragile equilibrium that had established itself and render the system unbootable, and The Bash Prompt.
Yes, I want an operating system that's configurable. But I also want one that could pass the Grandma test, that is capable of Just Working when I get tired of configuration files. And Linux, at the moment, doesn't qualify.
It's actually not that hard to keep Windows clean; don't use IE, keep it updated, don't disable the inbuilt firewall -- that's pretty much it. You don't even really need an antivirus unless you commonly open
I had really wanted to like Linux. I love the Ubuntu philosophy, and Windows, I admit, is