Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds 1061
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."
OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:OOOK (Score:1, Insightful)
Good idea. First, get rid of your computer, that will save on the coal used to power it, but why stop there, get rid of your car, house and food-intake too.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
You don't know the power of the lecture circuit :)
Seriously, these guys make money by saying these things. Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
What all these people seem to miss is that our planet, and life in general will make out just fine, its *us* who are in trouble, us and the rest of the specialised mammals. Ok, some fish may get their shit fucked up as well, but its unlikely to the point of impossible that everything will die.
No, much more likely we'd be gone, and in a few tens of millions of years, its humans who'se bones are being displayed in museum, and made the subject of animated documentaries.
How long do we have, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously, these guys make money by saying these things. Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
Umm.. politicians?
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Read up on how the climate is modelled please.
Must have forgotten a few negative ones there, no? (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering the evidence that climate has been cyclic with a cycle of approximately 100k years [wikimedia.org] for the last million-odd years, leads me to think that there must also be negative feedback loops involved here. You seem to have missed that. Badly.
Yes, I realize this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a magic global temperature or CO2 concentration at which suddenly this behavior breaks down. But somehow, I don't think we know all that much about all the processes involved.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again.
Did you actually read it? I guess not. [google.com] There are no predictions in the book whatsoever, the book has a 100 year timeline and a bunch of possible scenarios. Scenario #2 is unfolding, with exponential rise in food consumption, energy consumption, pollution _AS DECADES PASS_. China, if growing at 7% per annum in, say, coal mining, will grow 2^5 its current consumption in 5 decades. THAT IS OF FUCKING GIGANTIC BIBLICAL SHIT PROPORTIONS.
The planet is not infinite. Exponential growth will hit a ceiling, whether you want to believe it or not. Any nerd should know that.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
At the risk of sounding out of place. I listened to this on the drive to Bar Review Class today and the point was that the damage we have done is relatively irreversible, but we can stop the magnitude of the result by limiting green house gas emissions in the present. That is not particularly outlandish, but it is also slightly disheartening to see that we have passed a threshold of no immediate return. That is the reaction is moving in a reaction to restore equilibrium.
I think we need to not discount technological possibilities of the future, however, curbing carbon emissions is a laudable goal for the present.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long do we have, really? (Score:1, Insightful)
haha, we can't even build a replacement to the shuttle in time
the reality is that contemporary societies will never invest in anything for which the return isn't immediate.
the project you imagine require much more foresight and discipline than the imbeciles running even the developed countries and the devolved who voted them into office posses... not to mentioned the 2 billion savages or so who busy themselves in slaughtering their brethern or escaping being slaughtered
Re:not correct (Score:5, Insightful)
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:How long do we have, really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
So what does technology have to do with this? You mean we'll develop something that removes the CO2 in the future? It's not going to be very energy efficient though, getting the stuff back down will cost a lot more than we gained by releasing it in first place.
Starvation could be avoided with more efficient food growing but merely increasing efficiency won't undo the CO2 we emitted, merely prevent us from releasing more. What is being predicted here is the behaviour of the atmosphere and this researcher claims that we've reached the point where human interaction no longer matters and the planet has gone into a self-reinforcing cycle. You can't extrapolate human action but the planet itself behaves a lot more predictably than humans.
Re:Nothing New (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Damage is Already Done. Why Worry? Be Happy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Earth has not been 'far warmer'. See the hockey stick.
Cold in DC and in Europe for that matter is due to slowing of the Golfstream and masses on polar region air coming down, both of those phenomenons are activated by global warming.
It could be that the natural negative feedback loop for the global warming is the formation of an Ice age cowering Europe and most of the USA under miles of ice. That might balance things out. In a couple thousand years.
So ... 10 billion people, frozen Europe, Canada, USA, Russia, scorched deserts in most of Afrika ... where will we all go to live? Will everyone migrate peacefully? How many billion people will be killed in wars to control few strips of land that are still fertile? And how many billions will die of starvation because they did not have the military power to get those lands?
Not so fun.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not a failure of logic. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
it's just that 1st world countries don't care enough to.
Bullshit.
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T bullshit, because it sure wasn't George W preventing the food trucks from rolling into Darfur.
""If you can invent an easy process..." (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you can invent an easy process to turn CO2 in low concentrations back into carbon and oxygen, you have a winner."
Trees?
-- Terry
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying I know they're research is perfect or anything, but I think it's entirely possible they are right.
Re:Don't forget! (Score:5, Insightful)
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]:
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Read climate reports skeptically! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I probably just biased you into thinking I'm a climate change denier with the title, but guess what... I buy into science.
However, there is such a ridiculous, self-reinforcing feedback loop of grandiose speech and groupthink within the climate research community that its no wonder quacks out there are encouraged towards disbelief. If you attend lectures by some of these researchers (personally, its been mostly atmospheric chemists for me), you'll see that nearly every one of them thinks they're some sort of Messiah trying to spread the holy message. This article (the original, not the fluff news summary) is no exception.
In order to secure a newspaper headline title (once again, in order to get THE MESSAGE out), Solomon completely ignores a range of facts and potential solutions.
First fact, she admits in the article that people have previously predicted the consequences to last centuries. Apparently, when you increase the timescale from 200 years to 1000 years, you pass her arbitrary distinction between 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. How about we agree to refer to this as possibly reversible on a really long time scale, huh? And instead of Solomon saying that she was the one to discover global warming was 'irreversible', instead say that it will take longer than expected to return to normal?
Second, Solomon DELIBERATELY turns a blind eye to research already in the literature that contradicts her model. This surpasses vanity and enters into the realm of negligence on the level of an ethical violation. I'm talking about the emerging field of carbon sequestration here. Anyone in the field of climate research WILL know about the branch of research focused on removing and confining CO2 from the atmosphere. While any implementation is still a long way from large scale deployment or commercial viability, if you're going to make predictions on a 1000 year time scale, you might want to take into account technology advances in this field! However, that would destroy Solomon's pretty newspaper headline and reduce it to the following:
Global warming might last five times as long as previously expected assuming we don't find a way to fix the problem first
.
Does that sound front-page newsworthy to you? Ok, I support the theory of man-made global warming. However, if we want to persuade the skeptics and nuts out there, climate researchers should start approaching the issue honestly and responsibly. Half truths will only undermine further discussion!
Don't buckle your seat belt (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't buy car insurance, either.
After all, you've never had an accident! Who are those doomsayers who say you HAVE to?
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:not correct (Score:3, Insightful)
So even though it's ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE it would be INSANE TO THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN?
I know I'm getting off topic, but there's a fair few philosophers that have something to say on that point. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
In the short term, yes. At great expense. You really think we'll be able to continue to produce food for 7 billion in 20 years?
... algae looks pretty good.
Consider that we'll probably have no useful quantities of fish anywhere on the planet, and if things continue as they are, stem rot & similar diseases are going to continue to spread, decimating even more of our staple crops. Add to that horrendously depleted aquifers across the globe, and suddenly
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them - and the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in 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.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
Pop down to your local church of choice next Sunday...
Re:"Global warming" is political not scientific (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point is that the site (antithetically americanthinker) is politically/economically motivated bs.
Re:Nothing New (Score:1, Insightful)
but we are NOT producing food for 7 billion. Read the news and see how many are starving, or just even suffering from malnutrition.
Read up on the statistics, and you will find more of the population has less, rather than more.
The problem is, its a "out of sight, out of mind" problem.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I think that MANY do know the true potential of Nuclear. The arguments against it are just hiding the true reason why many dont want Nuclear.
First is "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard) problems. People dont like seeing a nuclear reactor near to where their precious Johnny lives and grows up (whilst allowing other things that are more likely to harm Johnny's health)
Second, fear of Terrorism.
Both fears CAN be resolved... But Then comes c) The Media, who are really in charge of policy.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, all sort of apocalyptic things did happen in the 20th century. I remember two world wars in addition to many more localized ones, and I think we got pretty damn near a nuclear holocaust at least once in 1961. Mass starvation? check. Tyranny, oppression, mass murders and genocides ? check. On a scale never seen before.
I would be foolish to think things are fine and dandy right now and will keep on improving forever.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
And tell me which of these countries where PEOPLE are needing aid consist of lazy people?
Darfur
Zimbabwe (were people are eating old leather rugs to survive)
and many others.
The fact is, you say that some people are in a far worse position, and these are the people asking for UN aid.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Barbra Streisand (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Oopsy!
Oh wait! We *did* already run out of oil out of the ground and all of today's oil production comes from extraction from teenager's faces![1] How could I be so dumb?
[1] Who would have thunk that Mel Brooks could save the world?
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
Good question! Why the hell would someone want to bring a child into that? I certainly wouldn't...
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Predicting climate is somewhat similar to trying to estimate what time a train will arrive at the station, predicting the weather is somewhat similar to trying to estimate at what millimeter of the train track the train will be in the future.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nothing New (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice! I grow weary of this "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" nonsense. Clearly we're not. It's bullshit speculation like this (and that is all this is) that leads to kneejerk legislation like ban incandescent bulbs despite the MULTIPLE hazards and health issues with the only viable replacement. (Which really isn't viable at all, due to those exact issues of disposal, health etc... For example I'm one of the "lucky" ones who gets headaches from the damn things.)
The big problem is on EITHER side of the global warming argument you've got bloody great piles of cash and interested parties trying to push their agenda. For every scientist that says "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" another one says "Erm... No we're not." Just like "video games causes violent behaviour" and "video games don't cause violent behaviour".
It's also very hard to take to any talk of global warming that seriously when a large chunk of the northern hemisphere is freezing its ass off.
Purely for my own edification I pulled together weather records for where I live. I realise there's nothing scientific to it, but I was curious, since you'd assume if things are as bad as some claim, there's be some sign. Some indication that there was an increase in temperatures, even if only a degree or two. I looked at average temperatures by month for as long as they have records for. (Goes back to the late 1800's.) What did I find?
The average temperature was actually quite a bit hotter and peaked in the 1930's. The average cold temperature is about the same. In short, the cold weather now is largely the same. The hot weather is actually slightly cooler on average than it was 70+ years ago.
Then there's the United Kingdom. The Roman's used to grow grapes there. Now if people grew grapes there today folk would say "Look, global warming! There's your proof." Only this occurred hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution...
And Manhattan is full of shit. Just not the kind they predicted.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time of this reply, you are only at +4, Insightful.
I wish I had mod points. (But then I couldn't post this.) That boils this all down perfectly to the core of the issue. Legislation saying what we can and can't buy to light our homes (regardless of health and safety issues caused by said "allowed" lighting) and other stupid government interference... New York had the right damn idea. "Over to you, boffins. We're stumped!"
Instead now we get endless meeting and think tanks and committees and bureaucracy burning tax payers money just to say "We can't let you have these bulbs anymore because of the power they use. Instead you can have these which contain toxic levels of lots of fun chemicals which mean you can't just toss them in the garbage, but of course you will, meaning these toxins will seep into the water table, but HEY! We appear to be doing something worthwhile and that might get us voted in next election, so fuck it, eh?!"
Science now has its own Jesus to wait for (Score:1, Insightful)
The reality is this article is an escape clause for scientists. Now, we're going to spend trillions of dollars and impoverish millions of people fighting the global warming man, and then, after that, when we go to check to see if this is shit worked, we'll hear from the environmentalists that, "it will work in a thousand years". WTF!
That's not science. That's religion. And just like every 1000 labelled year, we'll find a new reason that Jesus didn't come back, in the form of some new thing that says we should worship mother earth more, so that she will come back to us.
People that believe this stuff are idiots. Maybe we should have US troops in Iraq for a thousand years, because they will be a democracy by then. Maybe we should let the free market handle this current economic crisis, because it will be ok in a thousand years. A thousand years! If the plan that we are to embark on -might- show progress in a thousand years, then our plan is stupid, how about that!
Stupid climate scientist. I wonder if they will come up with something intelligent, before Jesus comes back!
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
"By recognizing the problem and finding a solution. Street cars, subways and eventually motor vehicles."
First of all, if you think about it, horse crap could not have gotten that bad. There were far more people than horses when this article was written and they weren't worried about people crap. Somehow they could deal with that, but horses? If they had a problem it was a problem with perception. Dealing with horse manure was actually a trivial problem. And they did it. There was never instances of horse manure piling up; they had, at worst, an economic problem of how to pay for removal.
More importantly, the automobile, subways and street cars were not invented as a reaction to a horse problem. They were invented because it's in the nature of mankind to invent things and they become popular if they solve a want or need. Horses aren't a preferred means of transportation; they were used because they were the best we had. People wanted to go faster, in better comfort, without regard to weather, not worry about feeding or caring for animals, and sure, didn't want to deal with crap.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
But then i remebered that the London Subway was created just because of THAT. Crowded hundred-of-years-old streets that just couldn;t take any more pedestrian and 'automated' traffic. And guess just what the automated traffic solution was back then. Horse carriages. For people, merchandise, post, everything.
Ok, the people that attended the horse manure conference did't just go back to their homes and invented the automobile and just because it's silly that they envisioned 1950's New York covered in horse shit doesn't mean their calculations were wrong.
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.
And gasoline was the most cheapest and available propulsion. I've always wondered where would we have been without oil (i don't know, different biological processed, different geologica structure, no huge-animals-evolution-step), people would have taken the steps we are taking now towards electrical cars, but 100 years earlier.
The first london underground trains had steam engines. The second batch were already electric, very revolutionary at the moment.
So yes, as silly as those men were, the fact that other people produced solutions for the same problem they gathered there for means it was a time for solutions, and not for hidding their heads in the sand.
Ironically enough, their solution is our problem now. We're now covered in car-shit.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
They have their value (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
These people have their value though.
Without their strong caveats who knows whether enough of us would feel compelled to actually solve those problems before they blindsided us like a stealth missile.
All optimists, progressives, and risk-takers express this kind of dismissiveness about such dire predictions, but without them, and those who act on them, our decisions would become reckless very quickly.
For instance, if nobody started raising severe alarms about energy use, we probably would have all died in a third world war caused by people fighting over oil for their 10 gallon per mile cars.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't know the power of the lecture circuit :)
Seriously, these guys make money by saying these things. Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
You mean the shills paid for by big oil and other industrial entities? Some of them seem to be the same people who got paid to tell people that the jury was still out on tobacco causing cancer and lung disease -- until a lawsuit resulted in the release of thousands of pages that indicated that the tobacco companies were fully aware that tobacco and cancer were pretty clearly linked..
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying that it wasn't bullshit doesn't make it so. The fundamental claim of "Limits to Growth" was that society needed to both halt expansion of population via population control and halt expansion of capital. The thing they never got was that expansion of capital is necessary to halt population growth. All of the economically well-off societies, the "Developed World" have low or even negative population growth rates once you take away immigration. Further, the entire world has improved substantially over the past 35 years economically and in the average human's standard of living. This isn't an effect predicted by the Limits to Growth.
What does this mean? It means that the idea that one needs to limit both population growth and capital/economic growth is in error. If we had attempted to control society as per the recommendations of the Club of Rome, we would have been deliberately and foolishly restraining activities that increase capital. That in turn would have reduced the overall prosperity of the entire world and increased the global population growth rate. In other words, the very actions meant to prevent human die-offs would have hastened their appearance.
Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"? (Score:1, Insightful)
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them
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".
the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in that.
If by "better" you mean stuck in the middle ages without electricity (rural electrificaiton initiative), railroads (transcontinental railroad project, and similar projects by european counterparts), sewers, municipal water, rampant disease, and the list goes on and on.
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 in conjunction with guidance and aid of committees of busybodies trying to save the world.
There, fixed that piece of libertarian propaganda to reflect reality. Do you really think there were not think-tanks, policy analysts, and government activists since the first city-state arose?
A 1000 year prognosis? Pull the other one. (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that was just a speculative suggestion. The core of grandparent's message was that we have here on Slashdot a paper which purports to predict what will happen 1000 years in future, and then happily claiming inevitability. 1000 years is a mighty long time. A natural disaster could happen, giving the climate a jolt in either direction. Or maybe we invent a way of filtering CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it somehow. Or maybe some new plant emerges (or is engineered) that somehow has an exceptional CO2 demand, who knows?
Yes, the news is worrisome, and we'd do well not to make the situation still worse than what we already have coming for us, but to pretend that you can predict what will happen in 3009 is silly. Hundred years ago folks didn't even have personal computers yet, don't forget that.
Re:OOOK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Global warming" is political not scientific (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.
What if it is a committee of busybodies trying to make a million?
Do you think the pollutant industries we have just now will let anyone do ANYTHING to solve the energy crisis if public powers don't step in? Hell, they're sitting on a resource that's ESSENTIAL to all human activities, and it's growing thinner everyday, which means they can sell it for any price they want in the near future.
Alternative sources of energy available to everyone is their worse nightmare. They will do anything to avoid them, like buying-out all technological breakthrough patents, buying governments, causing wars (they did all this, and will do more) to keep the status quo.
Your laissez-faire utopias put us all in an economical crisis with consequences not yet predictable. I haven't seen any of the prophecies that you free-market fundamentalists are announcing for decades come true. You had your chance. You screwed up badly. Reevaluate your ideals.
Re: Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
br> Politician's Logic: Something must be done! This is something, therefore it must be done.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
They managed to put a dude on the moon in 8 years.
Yes I do, and yes we will. (Score:2, Insightful)
We can produce food for many times what is on this planet. The only difference is that diets will adjust to which food products can be readily produced. Do you understand how much land that is suitable for farming isn't even used?
Susan Solomon is a CO2 freak. Her contention has been that we produce too much CO2 but every time I have read her interviews she spouts the changes in how much we produce without going into how much is naturally occurring. In other words, it looks bad if you just see how much more we produce but mankind has nothing on the mother nature's numbers.
Hyperbole for the win by the way, we have lots of fish, the key is who is farming it and where. Certain vocal industries are decrying loss of fishing but what good does putting a restriction on where our people can fish if our neighbors don't.
The whole problem with the GW is caused by man is that it really is "GW is profitable to certain men". Cap and Trade is the outcome these people want because it will make them money. In the mean time poor chinese and africans will lose their lands to damns and energy projects that benefit the rich world and a few rich people.
Lovely.
Man isn't the cause of global warming but men will certainly find a way to profit off of it
Re:Nothing New (Score:1, Insightful)
You write that like it's easy. Righ-wing people tend to think in individual terms and fail to see the society as a whole.
YOU may not resort to crime easily, but take 100 people, subject them to poverty and you will find that a percentage of them turned to crime. It's not that their "evil", or some bullshit like that. If you don't want crime, you can't just expect everyone to be "good" or "smart" like you. Just avoid the conditions that generate it.
It's the same with unwanted children. It's a pretty well known fact that poor people have a tendency to have more children. You don't even need to go to Africa. It happens right here in my 1st World country.
People with less wealth (therefore education) tend to have less control over their own life and accept everything as a fatality. That includes not preventing pregnancy, not doing abortions and not taking care of their children properly. If you compare them to yourself you may say they're dumb. But don't expect people to be like you. In social terms, a percentage of people will react to the circumstances like this. Period.
Also, do you think that in Africa people can buy condoms or pills like you do in your comfortable little town? Or do you think they have sex education at school? Or even attend school at all? Do you think women can just say "no", like in our shining, comfortable countries?
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
There is probably enough food within the borders of the USA at this moment in time to feed every single person on the planet for a day or so.
The problem is distribution, not production. Idiot.
We must accept our fate. (Score:2, Insightful)
Are any of us truly surprised.
How many of us just want to believe otherwise, as the idea of it is so difficult to accept. I imagine that one could almost put a name to the mental behavior that so many of us have as we consider this.
It really _has_ always been about adapting, rather than avoiding. The bomb has already gone off, the walk of the meek is at hand.
You are missing why it happens (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
When it goes to help the people it is OK in my opinion; but, when it goes to help keep the corrupt leaders in power who created the problem through mismanagement or on purpose, I considered a waste of money. Tim S
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Billons. Hmm. World population is estimated to be in the high 6 billion range. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population [wikipedia.org]
I question your unsubstantiated "billions" figure.
The primary cause for famine and starvation is tribal feudal warfare and government corruption. Not the lack of food and not the lack of trying.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Some facts from a farm guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you think the pollutant industries
You do realize that this "Pollutant Industry" is a giant straw-man, right? Industries exist to make products people want/need. They don't exist to pollute the environment for the sake of polluting the environment.
All industry produces waste. Some of that waste is more detrimental than other, or in larger quantities. A failure of the government to propperly regulate the handling and management of that waste doesn't make those that work in any given industryt he kind of willful polluters you are making them out to be.
The same industry that puts food on the plates of all Americans and a lot of other 1st and 3rd world countries is linked with N and P overapplication to the soil. At first they didn't even know that they were polluting. Then they realized and started limiting soil aplication of manure based on the N content of the manure and the N requirements of the crops being grown on that soil. Then they realized that P was building up even faster than N, and now they limit based on which ever is more likely to cause pollution.
Did those industries contribute to eutrification of lakes and streams? Yes.
Did they do it on purpose? No.
Are they trying to fix it? Yes.
Are there those within the industry that ignore the well know best practices in favor of profits and ease of management? Unfortunately Yes, but when they get caught it usually costs them their operation.
The same goes for most other industries. Are there bad actors that know the dangers of their products and pollute with them anyway? Yes! However, they are most likely the minority and give the rest of their respective industry a bad name. I say punish those that are actually guilty to the extent of the law and refrain from giving everyone else a permanent black eye because of the actions of another entity over which they had no control.
There's something wrong with you. Really. (Score:1, Insightful)
That includes not preventing pregnancy, not doing abortions and not taking care of their children properly.
The fact that you can use the phrase "not doing abortions" beside the phrase "not taking care of their children" makes me sick. So, KILLING a child that hasn't been born yet and has had NO INPUT into it's circumstances is a way to TAKE CARE of the children? That is the kind of "care" that ends with a baby in a dumpster, or a mother drowning her kids in a bathtub. Your mentality is so wrong it's almost painful.
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, instead we should have BigCorp,Inc decide what's best for us to light our kitchen with. That is, in reality, what's best for BigCorp's profit margin in terms of what illumination method they can push out to us at the most inflated possible price point.
I don't understand why people think that "The Market", or some invisible gloveslap, is going to solve a non-economic issue. It may be in BigCorp Inc's best interests to save the planet (only in that their investors live to see tomorrow) but until it's in their economic interest .. until they can get rich doing so .. they won't. Period.
Sad to say, but as it stands, the BigCorps of the world lose significant amounts of money when they try and be all eco-responsible. So where's the incentive? None.
At least with Gub'Mint, as inefficient as it may be, the -intent- and -end goal- is a good one. Public health&welfare is a social goal, and a gub'mint goal. It's essentially never a corporate goal.
Get out of the 1800s.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
The birth rate all over the world is going down. Over 60 countries have a birth rate that won't sustain current populations.
So the population problem is taking care of itself too.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
They managed to put a dude on the moon in 8 years.
It was actually 24 years in the making. Kennedy's "we choose to go to the moon" stuff was more a recognition of the advancement of rocket science than a case of "hey, I've got an idea..."
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Essentially, if governments would stay out of it and let the scientists and inventors figure out what is going on there's a good chance it could be fixed. Possibly multiple solutions could be found. It's like open sourcing the problem. The government involvement involves a proprietary approach deadlocked on one belief. A government can't afford an open mind. It has to have one thing for it to get behind, and there may be multiple and contradicting issues that are contributing to global warming.
Even the UN just tries to go for the "one cause" and ignores other contributing factors. I doubt it'd be any better if all of humanity were one nation either. The government would still be thinking too small.
Re:Horse Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Resource exhaustion is undeniable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Which doesn't mean things this time will be the same.
Are you willing to bet the life sustaining characteristics of the earth on that?
Life has been found over 60 km beneath the Earth's surfaces. I think that 1.6 degrees or whatever change is not going to end life on Earth. The Earth has been much warmer in the past than the most alarmist GW predictions. It has been much colder than the the most alarmist GW predictions. After both, the Earth came out of it just fine with life intact. Life is flexible and mostly mobile. If it gets cold, we are capable of moving toward the equator. If it gets warm, we are capable of moving away from the equator. Creatures that can't move or adapt die and make room for those that can. It's Darwinism at its finest.
So stop with the "Sky is Falling!" rhetoric and get a life already. People like you are only hurting whatever cause you are trying to foster.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a food crisis. It's a population crisis. In fact, most of the worlds problems today are population related. I wish people could see beyond all these other things and get down to the real problem.
It's not a food crisis. And the food problem is not a population crisis. It's an economic problem. There's no shortage of food, but people in the starving regions don't have any money. It's a type of poverty most of us can't really understand.
However, you're right. There is a population crisis. The energy crisis is a population problem. The environmentalists tells us that we need to individually do really stupid shit like unplug our TV's when not watching to prevent it from using any power in its sleep state. It's true that if we all did that it would add up to make a difference in the short term, but in the long term increasing population and the industrialization of third world nations are going to increase energy usage to such extremes that it simply won't matter.
The solution to the energy crisis is two-fold: better education and economic conditions for everyone will help with the population problem (first world nations usually have a negative population growth if you exclude immigration), and more energy, not less, of the type that is pretty low in emissions. Like nuclear. We need a bunch of breeder nuclear power plants that can reuse its own fuel. This means the amount of radioactive waste we need to deal would actually be pretty manageable.
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
I will make a wager on this.
I wager we ARE producing enough food for 7 billion people.
In 90 days if there are 70 billion surviving people I win.
I am not tying to trivialise suffering here. Simply pointing out that people starving COULD mean we don't have enough for more people, not that we don't have enough food.
You may as well argue that we don't have enough people being born, since every day people day of old age.
There have always been people starving to death, but if the amount of people getting fed is ever increasing, than we can pretty much by definition feed more people than we currently have. Food is not the limiter on human population, it is fucking.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Poulation-since-1000AD.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Arguable when the population growth was flatter, there were other limits, but it is pretty clear that for a while our growth has been at least exponential, leading me to believe that there is very little checking it currently.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:not correct (Score:4, Insightful)
So how has it always worked before? (Hint: It actually hasn't, not even close, but let's pretend it has.)
Never -- not once has it worked the way we expect.
Once we got rockets, and we got into space, we expected this to be the "space age", where we would develop spaceships fast enough to travel between stars, and we would colonize the moon, maybe mars, so any problem of overpopulation or pollution might be mitigated by no longer being bound to Earth.
And what happened, instead? We got the information age. We got computers which can calculate insanely fast, and communicate enormous amounts of information over vast distances. We got technology which can tell us, in detail, how utterly screwed we are for waiting for the other technology (faster-than-light travel, better telescopes to find viable planets) that never came.
You can see this kind of thing happening all the time, and much faster, in software. In the 90's, it might have made a lot of sense to speculate that Java would take the world by storm, and that developers would be writing new, cross-platform applications, and that new users wouldn't have to care what OS their computer came with, because they'd just use Java.
Well, there's still too much of a legacy codebase to drop Windows entirely, but Java applets, at least, have been pretty much entirely replaced by Flash, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, by Javascript and HTML. Raise your hand if you actually expected to be using an AJAX (or DHTML, if you like) spreadsheet by now.
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
what i'd personally like to see is a culture that cuts out most of the excess crap we waste our time and resources producing, and have a much smaller population with everyone working to produce what we need plus a few luxuries, with a massive focus on advancing technology. Imagine cheap real estate everywhere in the world? plenty of space for everyone?
stop having babies!
Re:First post (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, weather is not the same thing as climate, but that doesn't mean that these people have a better grasp on climate than they do with weather. If anything understanding climate is more difficult than the weather. We have a pretty good grasp of weather patterns. Good enough, anyway, that I can make a pretty good daily forecast with nothing more than a barometer and a thermometer (and maybe a quick peek out the window).
We know far less about the climate other than it has always been in constant flux.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First post (Score:3, Insightful)
"Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?"
Volcano's and Asteroids have put *way* more heat out than the atomic explosions we humans have set off.
"Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?"
thats like saying Before flying animals could creatures go higher in the atmosphere to breath out their CO2?
"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?"
A few degrees every year? we would all be dead. The fact is the 'rapid' temperature curve we were on is petering off and reversing
" During 2006, the doomsters were predicting that 2007 would be the hottest year on record, so why have we seen no reports about this?
The answer is simple - 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.
Even more dramatic is the fact that the most recent computer model predictions indicate that there will be no more global warming for the next ten years. But the doomsters say that, after this ten-year period, global warming will come back with a vengeance. Why?
Certainly, mankind's production of carbon dioxide (CO2) has continued to increase since 1998 and will continue to increase, particularly since countries such as China and India say that their economic growth comes first, so they do not intend worrying too much about CO2 production."
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/there-is-no-evidence-man-made-co2-causes-climate-change-2008-07-04 [engineeringnews.co.za]
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
That's an extremely linear way of looking at global warming. I've got some friends who are running major climate simulations for a group of interested companies and governmental bodies over at the NCSA. As far as I can tell, we're looking at the effects of global warming changing the direction of undersea currents, moving climates instead of just "warming" them, drying certain areas and wetting others, and changing weather patterns. So really, it's not just a case of the world getting warmer-- the problems is that we don't wholly understand how this will affect the weather.
Currently, most of our food supply is dependent on an extremely stable growing season. Part of what we have to model is how these minor temperature changes will affect the nitrogen cycle and crop growth- and the current results aren't very promising. What that doesn't take into account is the geopolitical and logistic cost of the fertile region moving to another part of the country.
Beyond this, every time they model ahead x-thousand years, actual results keep beating the "worst case scenario" curve. We didn't know quite how much methane and CO2 were frozen in the sea and ice caps, so we may have started an unstoppable snowball effect.
We just had an unusally bad growing season here in Illinois. That's okay because we usually run at a surplus. We can only have so many of these bad growing seasons, though, before the problem goes from a nagging concern to a worldwide crisis. Chances are people will pass these things off as stupidity or superstition as long as they can. Most just can't cope with the idea of the most stable thing we can imagine, the Earth, is now in a state of very rapid flux that we can't fully grasp-- and it's because we burned every piece of carbon we could find on and under the ground. Let's pretend that this crisis is really happening. How do people act? Do they accept it or is there mass denial from those who can't come to terms with the danger? Can mankind as a huddled mass really handle long term crisis?
Re:Nothing New (Score:2, Insightful)
Where will all the electricity come from for all the stuff that is going electric (read "GREEN") now?
Nuclear.
Re:Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)
Free markets != no regulation. Unregulated markets generate monopolies. These are clearly bad.
For a market to function as free, it must be uncontrolled by any coercive forces. Monopolies control markets. Most big corporations try to do so today. It's appropriately called "Marketing", which doesn't just mean "advertising" as most people think.
Governments are pretty much the only response to that, short of riots. Democracy, being a civilized mob, is effectively that. Of course, the government can fail at keeping the market free, but it's hardly worse than the alternative.
At some point, you've got to draw a line that says "This is the limit of a player's coercive effect on a market". The government is the only place to do that. Unless you think the buyers should. Oh wait, we're (in theory) a democracy, same thing.
Do you live in a magical world where markets are free without government intervention? If you "criminalize" market manipulation and then get the government to "enforce the law", you just regulated the market.
Similarly, free market != 100% employment. Especially when the market trades in a currency. Monetary policy is a big deal. You can't avoid this without participating in civics. I'm sorry that you're civically lazy. Time to get back to work.
If you want our democracy to function, I'm fully willing to support you fixing that. If you want our market to function freely, I'll gladly support whatever regulations will achieve that. The problem is, in general, a lack of civic spirit. People don't want to work together to make the government functional. A lot of it is due to people with highly unrealistic ideologies. People that are not unlike you.
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
No. If one denies global warming is happening (independent of whether global warming is actually happening) then one is a global warming denier. Trying to frame the argument in such a way to promote the idea that people who deny global warming exists are somehow rebellious free thinkers (as opposed to short-sighted morons motivated by profit or politics) doesn't make use of the term 'global warming denier' somehow evidence of political correctness run amok.
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
A huge part of the problem is that the folks going on about "global warming" have ridiculously simple models that they are using to try and predict a very complex system. We are just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the systems that regulate global temperatures.
Dr. Solomon has a computer model that she believes tells the future. Well, I have a neighbor that is convinced that the position of the stars in the skies predicts the future as well.
I am not saying that Dr. Solomon isn't right, but I will say that I am skeptical until there is some evidence that her computer model is actually useful. The earth is definitely not a pot of water.
Re:you mean: solve one problem and get another one (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm, well, good luck with that. The only problem with your argument it the complete fantasy that your altruistic busybody is both going to show up and his/her replacement is going to continue in their do goodery. As flawed as free market and capitalism is, it feeds of the basic human instincts of greed and desire to harness them and use them to further the economy. What you suggest is a one track path to fascism.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
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:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
So disagreeing is now trolling? I see the only reasonable folks are the ones who agree with you..
"since 1998, there has been steady cooling." is a troll? The fact is we are getting cooler over the past half decade (or more)..
Re:First post (Score:3, Insightful)
"That sure as hell proves that man can not be responsible for Global Warming"
I never said that proved any such thing but posts that follow the logic that because we set off a few bombs maybe that has something to do with it. *if* global warming is caused by man its not because of the nuclear weapons that have been set off.
"but you also claim there is no Global Warming, even that"
I don't claim anything over the past ten years temperature have been *dropping* to the point now where we are now at 1980 temps. Also the readjustment of 'top world temps' that took place last year moved the hottest years on record back to the 30's. This could be a blip, we could be warming, and I can be convinced of that.
I'm just not a climatological chicken little and I am skeptical of folks who are especially when 'climate change' is used by everyone and their mother to push pet causes like birth control, vegan diets,
Re:First post (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen this argument before and I also have been asked if I believe the earth is flat since I question the validity of climatology findings. Climate is more like economics and we know how easy it is to predict economic fluctuations :) If you read some books on complexity and chaos theory you will find that chaotic systems have a high degree of unpredictability. One of the best books on the subject is The Essence of Chaos by Edward Lorenz (a meteorologist) Comparing climatology science to Newton's discovery of orbital mechanics is a bit of a stretch. The planets orbits can be observed and checked in a few days. Climate predictions would need how long to prove? 10 years, 100? Climate is probably more like weather. We have lots of weather models and a big incentive to predict the weather but we can not reliably predict the weather more than 10 days into the future. How can we then say that we can predict the future climate? I also think that politics has muddied the water my insisting that man made CO2 is the main factor driving climate change. Of course I would like us to get off of foreign oil so I would be content with "Global Warming" being a "Convenient Myth" instead of an "Inconvenient Truth"
Not a scientist, just a contrarian (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So now quit your whining about the invitable (Score:1, Insightful)
Moderation is not one of them. Y'know how troll, flamebait, and offtopic explicitly do not mean "I disagree with you and wish to censor your comments"? In the same way, insightful does not mean "I agree with the inane drivel that you have spewed forth onto the intertubes" nor does it mean "I up-mod mindless flamebait for the lulz".
Now, while you're certainly free to have the opinion that his opinion of the moderator's opinion is not a worthy contribution, I feel compelled to point out that you're a worthless hypocrite, because you posted your equally worthless opinion on his opinion of the moderator's opinion. And before someone falsely claims that I'm also being hypocritical - I never claimed that any of the posts in this thread should not have been posted. Indeed, the entire point of the moderation system means that dross such as this can be posted, and will inevitably settle at the bottom of the metaphorical dung heap that is the interweb, where those that have far too much time on their hands will revel in the discussion.
Re:First post (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, the Earth really is at least in part a pot of water, with a constant heat source. There's a gaseous lens which permits some heat to enter and some to escape, and various chemicals can enter the pot of water, both from the bowl, and the gaseous lens. If you can measure the overall content of the lens, what chemicals will seep into the lens and the water, and the heat source, it seems pretty reasonable to make the sort of claims she's making. Obviously there are bubbles in both the water and the lens, but I'm prepared to accept that they're transient and not particularly significant. Even if 50% had consistently different behavior, I would expect that it would be sufficiently random that over the course of a decade only the predictable elements would be particularly significant.
But then I'm not a climatologist.
Re:Global cooling, now global warming... (Score:2, Insightful)