Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds

Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."

First post

[by Anonymous Coward]

We all gona die, but at least I got my first post...

Re:First post

[psychicninja (1150351)]

Weather is not even close to the same thing as climate. Remember when we learned that in High School freshman science class? I can say the average temperature will go up over the next number of years, but that doesn't mean I know if it will be cloudy on March 5th, 2010.

Re:First post

[theodicey (662941)]

If anything understanding climate is more difficult than the weather

You're making an invalid assumption. Many systems are easier to predict and understand on a large scale.

For example, if I boil a pot of water, I can easily predict how its overall temperature will increase. It's much harder -- impossible in fact -- to predict exactly where bubbles will nucleate.

Overall temperature = climate. Location of the bubbles = weather.

Re:First post

[shilly (142940)]

Interesting to hear about your neighbour. I have a neighbour who also is convinced about the stars and the future, too, with one subtle difference: she believes that she can tell where the stars will be in the future. And guess what? Thanks to the wonders of modern astronomical models, she's mostly right. The whole value of models of the physical world is that they can provide some level of predictive accuracy. Pompous announcements that Dr Solomons hasn't convinced you of the validity of her model until you've seen "some evidence that [it] is actually useful" just make you come across as an ass. Have you reviewed the various articles she's published on the details of her model and do you have the necessary learning (note, not qualification, but hours of intensive study) that enable you to make an informed judgement? I heartily doubt it but stand willing to be corrected. If you have, perhaps you'd care to list the detail of where her papers are wrong, plus links to the letters you've written to the various learned journals she's been published in, where you explained how she was wrong. That, after all, is how science is done.

Re:First post

[I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I (447961)]

So, if I get you right, you say that you will not act or even stop trying to convince other people that everything is just fine until the poles are molten, the gulf stream redirected, the climate drastically changed and with it the world economy ruined, mass extinctions going on, the oxygen in the air becoming scarce etc.?

I mean, WTF?

I do notw know which scientist got the best model for the climate but here are some facts:

• Due to an improved understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report states with very high confidence that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] Watts per square metre (W/m^2).
  • Note 1: Radiative forcing is the change in the balance between radiation coming into the atmosphere and radiation going out. A positive radiative forcing tends on average to warm the surface of the Earth, and negative forcing tends on average to cool the surface.
  • Note 2: At the Equator, the Sun provides approximately 1,000 W/m^2 on the Earth's surface.

• Annual average Arctic sea ice extent shrunk by 2.7 per cent per decade. Sea-ice decreases overall in summer by 7.4 per cent.

• Temperatures at the top of permafrost layer have generally increased since the 1980s by up to 3C.

• The maximum area covered by seasonally frozen ground has decreased by about 7% in the Northern Hemisphere since 1900 - in spring by up to 15 per cent.

• Paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years. The last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than present for an extended period (about 125,000 years ago), reductions in polar ice volume led to 4 to 6 metres of sea level rise.

• Annual fossil CO2 emissions increased from an average of 6.4 gigatons of carbon (GtC) per year in the 1990s, to 7.2 GtC per year in 2000-2005.

• CO2 radiative forcing increased by 20 per cent from 1995 to 2005, the largest in any decade in at least the last 200 years.

• For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is projected for a range of emission scenarios.

• Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1C per decade would be expected.

• Temperatures in excess of 1.9 to 4.6C warmer than pre-industrial sustained for millennia will lead to eventual melt of the Greenland ice sheet. This would raise sea level by 7 metres - comparable to 125,000 years ago.

Source [un.org].

WTF?

I mean, does this not sound plausible? I mean, to me it seems to be highly likely that our process of changing the composition of our atmosphere by releasing gigatons of previously absorbed CO2 would yield some big disturbing change.

So, here you are, not wanting to "believe" this "myth". Okey, so what? What if it turns out to be a real myth? And what if it turns out not to be a myth?

By the time that you will find yourself convinced of this immanent threat to humanity, it will be to late. To late for you, your children, your grandchildren, humanity. As the article tells, in a way it is already to late. Which by no means should be read as: "It is to late to act.". No, like, if you are a smoker, you might already have done some irreversible damage to your body. Which does not mean there would be no purpose in giving up smoking, right?

And what the hell do you think is convenient about your lacy ignorant "I-am-such-a-great-doubter" attitude? You get to drive your SUV without a bad conscience while ruining the planet you have borrowed from your children with it. Oh, how inconvenient that is.

You know

Re:First post

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

Global warming brought to you by the same people who can't tell you what the temperature will be next week, yet they can tell you what it will be a thousand years from now.

I can't tell you what temperature it will be tomorrow. We've had days as cold as -15 or so (with wind chill) and as warm as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, all in the same winter.

But I can tell you that it is winter, and without looking at the forecast, I can tell you that it will probably be cold. And I can also tell you, without much difficulty, that summer will be mostly warm, and winter will be mostly cold.

Like the REST of the planet has NOTHING to do with the climate.

Before humans, were forests ever clear-cut? There were forest fires, as a healthy part of the lifecycle of a forest, but were they ever completely cut down to roots?

Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?

Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?

So why is it so hard to believe that humans could be raising the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees every year?

There may actually be good arguments against global warming, but you're just embarrassing yourself, here. Ice shelves are melting. They are melting farther than before, and faster than before. There is more carbon dioxide, and the average temperature is rising.

Yes, we've had ice ages in the past. Yes, it's possible the planet will survive us -- in fact, it's more than likely that "the planet", the dirty ball of rock hurtling through space, will still be here. But I don't particularly want to live through an ice age, if I can help it -- or the opposite.

Let me ask you something. Since most scientists who actually have more than a passing familiarity with the subject overwhelmingly agree that climate change is happening -- since Ford himself has outright admitted that global warming is real, and that the internal combustion engine is contributing to the problem -- where's the motive for such a vast conspiracy? Or if it's vast stupidity, don't you think an intelligent scientist would have shown it to be so, and provided evidence to that effect -- rather than yet more evidence to support that the climate is changing, and that we are doing it?

Re:First post

[TubeSteak (669689)]

Yes, it's possible the planet will survive us -- in fact, it's more than likely that "the planet", the dirty ball of rock hurtling through space, will still be here.

I move that if the human race is going to die off, the last survivors use nukes to crack the planet in half.
If we can't have the planet, no one can.

Does the motion have a second?

Re:First post

[Khyber (864651)]

I'm so sick of this.

WE HAVE ICE CORE DATA. WE ARE NOT IN A COOLING PERIOD. We are nearing the peak of our warming period. Then for another 5K years it'll slowly decline, we hit an ice age, and slowly it works back up.

Ice core samples from all over the globe confirm this. Humans have practically NIL impact upon the cycle itself. One of my friends just did a trip to Antarctica for this very study.

OOOK

[afidel (530433)]

So they are saying we will have the opposite of the Younger Dryas no matter what we do. That may be true, and it might not be true, but I think it's a bit premature to say that our computer models are so good that they can definitively say what global conditions will be like in 1,000 years. Considering how few variables we model let alone the level of detail we have on those data points I think it's a bit foolish to say we can say much of anything definitive from our models at those type of timescales.

Re:OOOK

[QuantumG (50515)]

It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.

Nothing New

[DesScorp (410532)]

It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.

And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.

Re:Nothing New

[QuantumG (50515)]

In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world's first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[...]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan's third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.

And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city -- for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.

All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.

So when I say Limits To Growth is "bullshit" I'm clearly being inaccurate, I should have said "horse shit" :)

Re:Nothing New

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

And just how did they get out of this horseshit disaster?

By recognizing the problem and finding a solution. Street cars, subways and eventually motor vehicles.

You can recognize the foresight of the New York administration of the late 19th century for recognizing that their current path was not a sustainable one and began planning and investing in solutions to the problem.

But no. I'm sure you're right. If we just completely avoid the problem then the inevitability of progress will happen without any research. Without any change and without any effort.

Meanwhile billions go hungry. Tens of thousands die every day from malnutrition. But no I'm sure you're right there was no food crisis. That's why the UN didn't just have a FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT this summer.

Don't get me wrong. When it comes to technology I'm the most hopeless idealistic optimist there is but I also recognize there is a cost. That right now we are wrecklessly spending resources at an astronomically disproportionate rate to our rate of innovation and that we're like kids in a candy store unsupervised.

We're really living in a bubble of inexpensive and practically free energy. Energy is dirt cheap right now. Commodity materials are dirt cheap. If we don't critically reevaluate our energy sources and our resource recycling very soon the bubble will pop.

We have a limited window of nearly free energy and inexpensive commodity materials to build the infrastructure to ensure we don't see an end to cheap energy and inexpensive materials. If we can build renewable power sources *now* then we can continue to use our fossil fuels for fertilizer and plastic. If we wait until energy prices double, triple, quadruple and on and on then your plastic electronics are going to see the plastic quadruple in cost. If we wait until the energy prices double, triple and quadruple the cost of processing the aluminum in the windmill is going to quadruple.

Avert the energy bubble crashing by saving the 'free food' for when they're needed.

We are already starting to see population constriction. LA is importing almost all of its water. Where do you get more fresh water? Desalination? That's great when energy is practically free, but if fresh water starts costing energy and energy is from limited poorly scaleable sources such as coal then you're going to see the cost of water rise with energy.

Everything is getting tied into our energy supply. Our food. Our water. This is all fine as long as energy stays cheap. Fossil fuels are a limited supply and are requiring more and more energy to extract. We can only expect their prices to rise and rise and rise.

You can say that "technology found a way to solve the environmental problems of the 19th century." and you would be right. They were to STOP POLLUTING. We could be saving a lot of money if we just dumped and polluted like the 19th century. But instead of just throwing up our hands and saying "Oh! Hey! Technology will save us." They actually bought the technology that would save us and accepted the price tag. It's not free.

We can keep continue tapping our free energy credit line but we need to realize it is a bubble. It will increase in price. Our lives are becoming intimately tied to its cost and the best time to start planning for the future is yesterday. These technological advances don't happen when we aren't researching them. We can't just invest trillions of dollars in oil drilling and expect efficient solar panels to spontaneously emerge. It takes interst and investment.

Will we look back on this time and laugh? I hope so. But we'll laugh because we reacted to a threat and fixed it. Our costly and difficult choice will be seen as trivial and obvious. Just as was digging a giant tunnel into manhattan to feed it with water. Just as was building a subway system.

Let's look at the story of Horse shit and highlight the key point. The solution to the horse shit problem... wasn't more horses. We've got a horse shit problem and buying more horses isn't the technological whiz kid solution you're proclaiming will save us.

Re:Nothing New

[Dun Malg (230075)]

But no I'm sure you're right there was no food crisis. That's why the UN didn't just have a FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT this summer.

There may be a food crisis, but it's not about not enough food being produced, but rather that the hungry do not have access to the surplus. Further, the UN summit was about the predicted food crisis due to global warming, so I'm not sure how that proves any point beyond "experts 100 years ago thought we'd be starving in the near future, and experts still think that today".

Re:Nothing New

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Renewables are good but right now we need to move to more nuclear. People love to ignore the fact that the winds farms in Texas this year didn't produce near the power they expected. There wasn't enough wind. Same with solar. You can throttle it to meet needs. They make good supplements. Nuclear is clean, it works, and with fuel recycling we have enough for centuries.

The US bought the load of FUD in the 70s and we are now paying for it. Instead of building more nuclear plants we built coal. They did a great job cleaning coal in the new plants but CO2 was never considered a pollutant.

The latest reactors are even safer than the ones we are currently using. We need to start building them now instead of living in a fantasy world that some unknown break through will make Solar cheap, batteries 1000% better, and the wind never stop blowing.

Re:Nothing New

[Lars T. (470328)]

"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train.

Well, the train was already quite mature by then, and there were several elevated lines in New York. And of course the opening of the first NY subway line falls clearly out of that time range (1904).

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html [enviroliteracy.org]
It's not like horse manure was the only problem BTW: "In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses. Special trucks were devised to remove dead horses; since the average weight of dead horses was 1,300 pounds, one text on municipal refuse advised that "trucks for the removal of dead horses should be hung low, to avoid an excessive lift."

The coming of the automobile dealt another large blow to the horse. Experimental motor cars had been around for a long time, but cities had always banned them. The crisis of the 1890s and early twentieth century, involving public health fears about pollution, traffic jams, and rising prices for both hay, oats, and urban land, made municipal governments and urban residents much more ready to switch to autos.

Re:Nothing New

[mysticgoat (582871)]

"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did popularize the issues and did a lot of direct work on solutions, which helped speed these innovations (implementation starting before the automobile was conceived, and a long time before the automobile became a significant factor):

1. Horse drawn trolleys, with routes that encouraged formation of residential commuting neighborhoods
2. Zoning ordinances in general
3. Taxi industry (remains highly dependent on local ordinances)
4. Short haul delivery and freight industries (remains highly dependent on local ordinances)
5. Bicycles (see below)

These and similar endeavors received support from city governments through ordinances, city brokered bond issues, changes in laws. Between 1897 and 1910, they significantly altered city transportation systems, and through that, all aspects of city life. So the changes were in place before the number of automobile drivers had reached significance.

The annals of the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) [bikeleague.org] documents this with respect to bicycles. Known as the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) until updating its name in 1994, it was founded in 1880 and had become a major lobbying group for paved streets and sensible and consistent traffic laws by 1895. It is one of the very few organizations that had a political impact on urban affairs before 1900 that is still effective and relevant today. The LAW acronym was very deliberate: this group has had more impact on traffic law development than any one else, including the automotive industry, which mostly tweaked traffic laws that had been developed for safer bicycling. Wikipedia article on LAB [wikipedia.org] gives a quick, highly glossed 3rd party description of the organization.

Parent post asserts that

The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally. Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.

This is false.

The changes were in fact brought about through local political processes like committees using mostly well established technologies like horse drawn trolleys and livery services in controlled ways. Wide area organizations like LAW provided input and attempted to shape the local processes. Arguably the most important innovation during this period was a change in pavement from cobblestones to brick, asphalt, and oiled surfaces-- to improve bicycling conditions.

This is kind of important stuff to know today, because in the city nearest you, there are definitely efforts to reshape the transportation system to something greener, and these efforts involve the same processes that were in extensive use 110 years ago, before the automobile.

Re:Nothing New

[Znork (31774)]

put us all in an economical crisis

The economic crisis derives directly from the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking, neither of which is free market. Centrally controlled interest rates are not in any way 'free market', and fractional reserve banking is simply fraud (which should be replaced with 100% reserve deposits and the option to invest at the customers discretion and the customers risk).

Blaming the market for doing what the Fed told them to is pointless; when the Fed policy threatens to inflate away any money people have that they don't invest, people are going to invest it. Regulation to prevent it would be ineffective, as you'll currently note, when the Fed doesn't get what it wants it'll go on lowering rates and then simply printing money until people do what it wants. This is the fundamental nature of the Fed, and until it's abolished it's going to continue to mismanage rates and cause bubbles and collapses like this.

With free market rates and without FRB the housing bubble would never have come to pass; as demand for capital increased, so would the interest that depositors demanded, borrowers would have to compete for money to borrow. Only with infinite credit and artificially low rates is it possible to build unsustainable bubbles of the kinds we've seen.

I haven't seen any of the prophecies

You probably haven't looked too carefully. Austrian school economists predicted exactly what happened. Unless, of course, by 'free-market' you mean the self-serving monetarist clowns running a lot of US finance, most of whose approval of 'free markets' is strictly limited to the features that serve them and their friends.

Re:Nothing New

[Wonko the Sane (25252)]

With free market rates and without FRB the housing bubble would never have come to pass; as demand for capital increased, so would the interest that depositors demanded, borrowers would have to compete for money to borrow. Only with infinite credit and artificially low rates is it possible to build unsustainable bubbles of the kinds we've seen.

Why do so many people think that fractional reserve banking is all or nothing? The 12:1 leverage limits were working just fine until the SEC was persuaded to raise those limits to 40:1. Then we had the housing bubble.

So clearly the only solution is to throw out fractional reserve banking altogether?

Why not look at all the historical data and determine at what leverage ratio bank failures increase dramatically then set a limit comfortably below that level?

Re:Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"?

[Dun Malg (230075)]

If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".

If you actually knew your history rather than assuming that things then were as things now, you'd know that the public transit system in New York was not built by the government, but by private enterprise looking to make a buck. The move to put it underground was funded by city bonds, but it the elevated train system was already there. Furthermore, "auto-centric" laws came as result of the mass adoption of automobiles by the public at large, not the other way around.

Re:Nothing New

[Anonymous Psychopath (18031)]

I call FUD.

CFLs do contain more mercury than incandescent bulbs. However, they don't have a high enough level to warrant special disposal procedures.

Below are the EPA recommendations on dealing with a broken CFL. I call shenanigans on your calling FUD.

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf [energystar.gov]

How should I clean up a broken fluorescent bulb?
Because CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, EPA recommends the following clean-up and disposal
guidelines:

1. Before Clean-up: Air Out the Room
Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.

Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.

Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.

2. Clean-Up Steps for Hard Surfaces

Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.

Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass pieces and powder.

Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.

Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.

3. Clean-up Steps for Carpeting or Rug:

Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.

Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.

If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.

Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.

4. Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding, etc.:

If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.

You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct contact with the materials from the broken bulb.

If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.

5. Disposal of Clean-up Materials

Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.

Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.

Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.

6. Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming

The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.

Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

Re:Nothing New

[N1AK (864906)]

People bought cheap T-models not only because of the hype and the novelty of it all, but because they proved very reliable and easy to use. And they didn't shit on the street or in your paddock.

People bought cars because they were better for themselves, any benefit for others was a lucky benefit. The automobile and late 19th century New York do not provide a good example of an environmental issue being solved by planning.

The best thing government can do is give incentives for research and development that it believes is for the good of the nation. One of the biggest issues with global warming, is that if true, any solution needs to be global to work. Currently a country is at an economic disadvantage for going 'green' as any nation that chooses not to will have lower costs. If this fundamental issue is not addressed then any countries efforts to become more environmentally friendly will simply lead to the transfer of production and pollution to areas that are not effected.

This displacement phenomena is the same as is often seen when laws vary between bordering states.

Re:Nothing New

[junkgoof (607894)]

Population growth is dropping in industrialized countries. It is not dropping in the countries that are not able to feed themselves. Governments, unions, laws, regulations, taxes... Everyone complains about essentials. Is it coincidence that the richest countries all have similar (far from identical) structures (about the only exception is Singapore, and Singapore is tiny with a very particular dictatorship)? Or that the country that spends the most effort destroying all these things is in collapse (look at Canadian banks that whined about how regulation cost them money now that they are among the strongest in the world and can watch less regulated US banks fail). Tearing down the government also involves ignoring successes. Is acid rain still a problem? Lead in the atmosphere? The ozone hole? All of these problems are going away. Why? Regulation. The oil industry said they would go under without lead in gasoline, but it was just laziness and they profited repeatedly by taking it out. Other industries survived the necessary changes as well. No big deal. Dealing with global warming may be more difficult due to crazy politics (demonization of regulation), and the rise of China and India, but, with a will it can be done. The key is to realize that it is nowhere near as hard as the vested interests make it out (there is nothing to be done so we won't innovate, poor capitalists, we have to sit back and watch our profits increase, it would be impossible to do otherwise, we would all die).

Re:Nothing New

[wall0159 (881759)]

I guess it's that old anthropic principle at work again - our society has survived, and we're still around to talk about it, hence we solved the problem. That doesn't mean we'll necessarily solve all problems that might be thrown our way, and it's no guarantee that our society will survive current challenges. But hey, if it doesn't, there'll be no one around to say "I told you so".

A lot of people think "oh man, Y2K - what a hullabaloo over nothing" not realising that massive effort went into making it a non-issue. Do you really subscribe to the theory that we should just kick back and relax, and that everything will work itself out? That sort of thinking seems incredibly insular to me.

Horse Shit

[TapeCutter (624760)]

I get the joke but I'm not sure how we ended up on limits of growth and horse shit, that is not what TFPaper is about.

What it says is that IFF we stopped pumping out GHG tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the ocean to regain it's pre-industrial PH level. The ocean (and the shelled critters in it) is the largest C02 sink, too much CO2 makes the ocean slightly more acidic and this is already having a negative affect on said shelled critters ability to make shells, loss of coral reefs is the most publicised of these effects. Personally I hardly think it's surprising that it would take a long time for makind's CO2 spike to be aborsbed into the system if we all dropped dead tomorrow but science is about measurement and evidence, the question of "how long would it take" is as valid as any other.

limits of growth and horse shit

I like the horse story but the Dodo bird meat industry didn't fare quite as well. Tecnology may one day overcome that "temporary" glitch but until it does the Dodo meat industry went past it's own limit to growth in the 1700's(?). While we are LIMITED by our lack of terra-forming technology I think the most obvious limit to growth comes from from human shit, not horse shit.

As far as I am concerned we have no choice but to turn to technology to fix technology. However it's nice to have a "bug report" that clearly lays out what the problem is. Science is that bug report, without these kind of studies we wouldn't even recoginse the problem [google.com.au], and in fact many people still don't (just look at this thread for examples).

Re:Horse Shit

[theodicey (662941)]

What I don't understand is why is everyone so obsessed with CO2.

Because the net atmospheric concentration of CO2 has gone up 40% over the last century or so. That's a very significant change, and it's basically all due to human activity. In the laboratory, it is more than enough to cause significant greenhouse warming.

As for the rest of your argument: "Although natural sources represent most CO2 emissions, they do not contribute to the recent observed increase in concentrations because natural sources are balanced by natural sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The increase in carbon dioxide concentration arises because the increase from human activity is not completely balanced by a corresponding sink." -- USG via Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Re:Nothing New

[H0p313ss (811249)]

Something better will come along, just like something better than horses came along.

Out with the old, in with the new. It's what we humans do.

Contrary to what the arts majors of the world seem to think technology doesn't just "come along". Ssomebody has to recognize that there's a problem and invent a solution. Sitting back and waiting for the future to happen might work for the majority but if everyone did it we'd still be shoveling horse shit.

Re:Nothing New

[BrainInAJar (584756)]

Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan

Woah there... as a philosophy geek that's done entire courses on Leviathan alone, I can say definitively that you are way out of left field with that one. Hobbes predicted nothing of the sort no matter how you interpret it. The "nasty, brutish, and short" comment was about man devoid of any form of governance such as the literary scenario he laid out for the condition of man in the past.

A horrible misrepresentation of a text like that'll garner you a C- at best by anyone who has actually read the book

Re:Nothing New

[syousef (465911)]

A horrible misrepresentation of a text like that'll garner you a C- at best by anyone who has actually read the book

You new here? We don't even have the patience to read an article, let alone a book. As for that C- we're use to getting them after spending too much time on /.

Re:Nothing New

[localman (111171)]

According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7.

Though the experts were certainly wrong, let's not imply we're doing anywhere near a decent job of providing food for all mankind. Some 50,000 people die each day from starvation. Countless more live in a chronically malnourished state. True, this is not because of an inability to grow the food (probably what the experts predicted) but because of myriad other reasons from politics to economics to logistics.

Cheers.

Re:Nothing New

[SD-Arcadia (1146999)]

As a social scientist I can't live with myself if I let this slip. Actually Hobbes's depiction of life as "nasty, brutish and short" is the exact opposite of a "prediction". It describes life not in the future but in the hypothetical and long past "state of nature", before the development of civilized society and the State (The Leviathan) which puts an end to "the war of each against all" that causes life to be "nasty, brutish and short" in the "state of nature". The transformation is purely social, based on a contract between individuals who agree to submit to a strong authority in exchange for personal security. The development of technology etc. does not come into the discussion in any significant manner in Hobbes, although you could argue for that as a factor independently.

Re:Nothing New

[Tynam (1284066)]

A short while back I came across an old guy on my way through town who'd tripped and smashed his head open on a phone box.

So I skipped the game I was heading to and spent the next hour helping a drunk concussed guy into an ambulance.

Why should I help him? What made him special? What makes it my responsibility? I was standing right frikkin' there watching, that's why.

The 'people' who 'lived off the land' for thousands of years? Mostly illiterate, innumerate, and died at ages 35-40. If they were lucky.

You don't own a computer just because you're hard-working and smart. It's because you're smart and hard-working and had the insane good luck to be born as one of the small fraction of the world's population who get a starting point good enough that that makes a difference.

I don't need to know you to know that; the fact that you can post here makes it a near-as-dammit certainty.

As you said, some people live in disaster zones or wars and genuinely need help. This 'some people' is not a few stragglers; it's tens of millions. Where the hell do you think that UN aid goes? Look it up sometime. And until you do, you've been too lazy to comment on the issue, so don't.

The ignorance in this post is depressing, even for /.

Re:Nothing New

[elp (45629)]

Speaking as an African... You don't know what you are talking about. Most of the starvation is caused by dumb ass politicians. Zimbabwe on its own could probably feed most of Africa, unfortunately all the farms got stolen by Mugabe and "redistributed" which means given to the party faithful and families of politicians none of whom have a clue how to run a commercial farm.

All the rest of the starving countries have similar dumb political problems.

In central Africa the ground is so fertile you can literally toss an apple core on the ground and come back 3 weeks later to see an apple tree starting to grow.

Run properly Africa could probably feed most of the world.

Re:Nothing New

[cshotton (46965)]

but we are NOT producing food for 7 billion

No, we are wasting much of our production capacity on stupid, tree-hugging, already-shown-to-be-a-wrong-solution "technology" like ethanol production from corn. And a lot of people starve, not because there isn't enough food for them. But because there are corrupt, nasty people between them and a stable food supply.

Interestingly, there are roughly 2 acres of arable land per person on the planet right now. And guess what? Global warming would actually increase that acreage by almost 25% if average global temperatures rose 3F. It's entirely possible that a warming planet (despite the realities of sunspot cycles and impending cooling cycle) is actually required to support humanity, rather than being a harbinger of its demise.

Truth is, we are too stupid to know and too enamored with our culture of "fear" to admit it.

You are missing why it happens

[tacokill (531275)]

There is plenty of food.

Where we struggle, as human beings, is getting it to the people who need it. Politics, not capability, determine who gets fed and who doesn't.
We have PLENTY of resources to feed 7bil, 8bil, or even 10bil people. That has never been the problem. It's our own selves that is the problem.

Some facts from a farm guy

[chris-chittleborough (771209)]

In actual fact we currently produce enough food for over 7 billion people. (Some is turned into ethanol, some grain is used to fatten up meat animals, some food goes to overweight people like me ... all because food prices are historically low.) The reason millions of people are starving today has nothing to do with global production shortages -- it's because of political failures.

Re:OOOK

[wrook (134116)]

Absolutely! I hear you brother. I've totally lost confidence in *them*. Let's face it. Every time *they* have predicted the end of the world, *they* have been wrong. EVERY SINGLE TIME!

I mean, if once -- only one time -- *they* got it right, I'd be willing to listen. But let's face it. *They* must be absolutely insane, because in my long life (and my father's and his father's before him) I have *never* EVEN ONCE died a horrible death from a world wide disaster of our own making.

And like you say, technology *always* saves us (a fact that *they* are always too eager to sweep under the rug). Every time technology has saved us from imminent disaster, every single time mind you, it has been *technology* that has saved us. *They* would have us think that there are limits to what technology can do for us. But who are *they* anyway to say such nonsense. Let's just look at history.

I'm just so tired of all this crap. I say, let's forget these stupid scare mongers and get back to something *important* like getting terrorists out of our beautiful country!
]

Re:OOOK

[Evil Pete (73279)]

Limits to Growth wasn't bullshit. Its predictions are pretty much coming to pass, and pretty much on time. There is a myth that they predicted all apocalyptic shit in the 20th century. I remember when Limits came out .... its predictions were aimed squarely at the early to mid 21st century.

Re:Barbra Streisand

[GileadGreene (539584)]

That was not what they were teaching in schools 20 years ago. Oil was supposed to have run out about 1997 or 1998 and tin 1990ish.

Regardless of what you were taught in school 20 years ago, that's not what the actual Limits to Growth report said. There was a lot of bogus information propagated about the Limits to Growth report at the time it came out, largely by people who didn't like what it actually had to say. The reality is that the Limits to Growth report explored a number of different possible scenarios (varying assumptions such as the impact of technological change and of social policies), and found that most (but not all) scenarios seem to lead to some kind of "overshoot and collapse" in the mid to late 21st century. These were never meant to be precise predictions, but rather to provide some idea of the global system's behavioral tendencies. Interestingly, a recent study [csiro.au] has found that the Limits to Growth "standard run" scenario tracks quite well with the actual observed behavior of the world over the last 30 years. As the abstract of that report says:

Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th Century. This paper focuses on a comparison of recently collated historical data for 1970-2000 with scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth. The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st Century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies.

Re:not correct

[Toonol (1057698)]

So even though it's ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE it would be INSANE TO THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN?

Perhaps you mean we shouldn't just sit on our haunches and hope new technology comes along. I'd agree with that. But if you mean that new technology shouldn't be sought out as the solution to our problem... well, I'd like for you to get off the internet and go find a cave.

Re:OOOK

[theheadlessrabbit (1022587)]

Its only 35 years ago every "Expert" and "Scientist" (sorry to kill your God here Atheists) was telling us we were heading for a new Ice Age.
Don't take my word for it, look it up.

ok, i did look it up. here are the results: /quote>...They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html [skepticalscience.com]

i don't know how you define the word "every, but "7 out of 42" is not certainly not how I would define it.

Re:OOOK

[Arker (91948)]

Yes, but the fact is, they arent starving due to a global food shortage as predicted.

They're starving due to politics. There is more than enough food being produced on earth to feed everyone on it. And the predictions we're referencing were clearly based on the idea that enough food could simply not be produced on this planet for the number of people now living on it. Advances in agricultural efficiency have dramatically increased the effective carrying capacity of the planet. The problem we're actually facing is not a lack of food - food is going to waste in some areas while people starve in other areas.

Re:OOOK

[Neuticle (255200)]

They're starving due to politics.

Case in point: Zimbabwe

10 years ago, it was a breadbasket that fed itself and had food left over for export.
Today it's a basket-case where people are starving to death.

The land is still there, the people are still there, and no plague, blight* or drought destroyed production. It was pure, 100% politics that sent Zimbabwe down the crapper.

(*however, Mugabe may count as a blight, plague or both)

And they were probably correct

[SL Baur (19540)]

I think they were right (about the coming ice age).

During the "mini ice age" 300 years ago, the notable feature was the lack of sunspots. Guess what the latest photos of the Sun show - NO sunspots.

Temperatures have also been going down, not up recently.

Analogy time. If you're trying to optimize code for speed you want to work on the region of code where you're spending the most time in already. It's the same as with temperature on the earth. The biggest input is the Sun. If the Sun cools down, as it apparently does periodically (periodic ice ages are fairly well documented and proven), then things get colder.

If one was *really* concerned about Global Warming, one would want a thermostat applied to the Sun. No one has suggested that. I find it remarkable the Sun stays as consistent as it does.

Anyway, the Sun is a first order effect, and anything man-made is at best several orders beneath that. We have more to worry about if the Sun suddenly becomes unstable and goes nova than this so-called Global Warming.

I'll leave it to someone else to provide a car analogy.

Resource exhaustion is undeniable.

[tjstork (137384)]

Well its funny because every manner of fossil fuel is in a state where we are getting "not as good" raw material out of the ground. I'm hardly a big environmentalist but I can't see how anyone can deny any peak fossil fuel or even nearly planetary resource.

The oil we are getting is not as good and harder to extract. In old oil fields you drilled a few hundred feet and you could just pipe it onto a rail car and you were good to go. Now you have to go thousands of feet, blow compressed air into the ground to smash up rocks, heat the oil so you can pump it, and then you have to refine the crap out of it to use it. Even good old coal is certainly not as good - Germany is practically onto burning lignite and that's pretty crappy coal and even in America the good hard stuff is getting used up and we're onto lower grades of coal.

Even for metals you have to wonder where all the good stuff is. In the 19th century, people were getting gold out of the ground and you could SEE chunks of it. Now, when they talk about gold mining, they don't even bother screening the miners because the gold content of the earth is so low that a miner would have to take out an F-150 sized truck of the stuff to get a few bucks.

Meanwhile, up in space, we have an asteroid that is quite literally made out of 20 trillion dollars worth of practically pure iron and precious metals, a planet made out of methane, and we're sitting here with our thumbs up our rears, barring ourselves from using nuclear power to make spaceships with, when unimaginable wealth is in the skies above us.

You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to see where the future is. All you need is to read an assay of a asteroid, and compare that to an assay of what's considered to be a good project today. Right now, if we took a tenth of the capital we spend on developing technologies to get every last scrap of goodness out of our used up planet, we could have enough materials of any kind to essentially end all of poverty on this planet.

There is no long term environmentalism without the conquest of space.

Re:OOOK

[Toonol (1057698)]

"Premature" is a kind way to put it. Moronic is more accurate. And I'm not a global warming denier; I think it's likely happening. But I'm MORE of a believer in mathematics, statistics, and logic, and those fields tell me that making any statement with that much confidence based on a low resolution, incompletely understood highly iterative model with many missing variables is not far removed from casting bones.

How long do we have, really?

[ShooterNeo (555040)]

The key element about global warming that seems relevant is this : how LONG will it take? If we have 200 years before the ice caps finish melting, then it's not really the crisis that it's made out to be.

Why won't it matter if it takes 200 years? Because realistically at even a fraction of the current rate of technological progress, mankind will have the technology to do something definitive about it in 200 years. The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface.

I can even see how this would be done using a juiced version of current technology. Automated factories would produce the thousands of square kilometers of shade material (kind of like the automated factories in Japan right now...). The factories might be on the earth or the moon. We'd blast the shades into orbit using lasers (see Lockheed Martin's new LED pumped laser weapon for technology that could do the job TODAY) and they would automatically position themselves in the right location using tiny ion engines (also already been done).

The solar panels would produce electrical energy, which would be beamed down to earth via microwave. The panels would only be maybe 40-50% efficient, so the waste heat would radiate out to space, reducing the total thermal load on the planet.

Presto! Problem solved, and probably would be a profitable endeavor for some future megacorp.

Not a failure of logic.

[Xest (935314)]

I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.

The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.

The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.

If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.

Re:""If you can invent an easy process..."

[im_thatoneguy (819432)]

No good. We need those for paper towels and houses.

Re:Don't forget!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.

Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.

Anyway. From Realclimate [realclimate.org]:

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here [reuters.com]). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here [instapundit.com] and here [powerlineblog.com]). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter [nasa.gov] in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity [nasa.gov] is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly [realclimate.org] over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.