Maldives Government Holds Undersea Cabinet Meeting 271
Hugh Pickens writes "The president of the Maldives and 11 ministers, decked out in scuba gear, held a cabinet meeting 4m underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation. While officials said the event itself was light-hearted, the idea is to focus on the plight of the Maldives, where rising sea levels threaten to make the nation uninhabitable by the end of the century. President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet spent half an hour on the sea bed, communicating with white boards and hand signals and signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions. The Maldives has already begun to divert a portion of the country's billion-dollar annual tourist revenue to buy a new homeland as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees. Emerging out of the water, a dripping President Nasheed removed his mask to answer questions from reporters and photographers crowded around on the shore. 'We are trying to send a message to the world about what is happening and what would happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked,' he said, bobbing around in the water with his team of ministers. 'If the Maldives is not saved, today we do not feel there is much chance for the rest of the world.'"
Cue the puns... (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently they were under a lot of pressure.
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Don't worry (Score:4, Funny)
Darling it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me.
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More so than you even intended. If Maldives goes under water, 1 billion dollars a YEAR will be lost. Literally, all the tourism "goods" that Maldives can generate will disappear.
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While one can feel sorry for the citizens of the Maldives, the simple fact is that it isn't very good long term planning to build permanent domiciles in a place which is 1.5 meters above what the water surface is at the moment. In many places that might leave you with your house submerged after a heavy rainfall. It's not an uncommon mistake, places from London through New Orleans and the Netherlands have been flooded and put partially under water from time to time.
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate
Re:Cue the puns... (Score:4, Insightful)
While one can feel sorry for the citizens of the Maldives, the simple fact is that it isn't very good long term planning to build permanent domiciles in a place which is 1.5 meters above what the water surface is at the moment. In many places that might leave you with your house submerged after a heavy rainfall.
They've been living there quite happily for roughly 2000 years; I'd call that doing okay in the long term. Rainfall isn't really a problem, because, see, these are islands, and rain sort of goes down into the ocean. There's no hurricane season, so that's not much of an issue to my knowledge. The occasional tsunami is devastating, but the trade-off is easy access to shipping, a forgiving climate, and lots of seafood, which to many is worth the risk.
In that light I'm not sure it's appropriate to regard it as lost revenue, but rather a limited time opportunity which can and has been exploited.
Can't disagree with you there, except inasmuch as saying it "has been" exploited. Oceans are rising at about 3 mm/year, so while there's cause for concern and planning, I don't think they need to evacuate just yet. As noted in the summary, they're quite wisely diversifying their investment by trying to buy an emergency backup homeland.
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There has been some sea level rise, but in the last 2,000 years the rise has been almost flat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png [wikipedia.org]
It is funny to think that man made lakes may have reduced sea level rise, albeit a very small amount.
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Also this chart shows the sea level rise is about the same pace as it was
prior to WW2 before the post war economic boom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png [wikipedia.org]
All in all, the sea level rise is the same pace for over 150 years.
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Nonsense.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_few_hundred.html [csiro.au] (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.)
Quote: "We have used a combination of historical tide-gauge data and satellite-altimeter data to estimate global averaged sea level change from 1870 to 2004. During this period, global-averag
Yeah, Um, Maldives... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm listening, many of the readers on /. are listening, many people around the world are listening. It was clever stunt that got a lot of international attention and it's a good step in the right direction. We can only hope that's it's not a loosing battle. For my part, I support any legislation aimed at CO2 reduction; hopefully after hearing about the Maldives more people will do the same.
People need to be less cynical, even at the expense of a "funny" mod.
Re:Yeah, Um, Maldives... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have they even scoped out a new homeland yet? If not, may I suggest Utah? No one's using it at the moment, if my last drive through there is any indication...
cash cow (Score:3, Insightful)
underwater cabinet? Sounds familiar... (Score:5, Funny)
Davey Jones' Locker?
CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:4, Insightful)
No amount of CO2 cutbacks is going to stop climate change and the sea levels rising, even if CO2 emissions dropped to zero tomorrow. The relevant time constants are from hundreds to thousands of years.
This pretty much highlights how it's all primarily a media circus and political game. The science is lost entirely in the noise.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you suggesting that it's an entirely non-man-made catastrophe, which was in the works long before industrialism? If so, got any citations to back that up? If not, will you clarify?
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Its the same with coral atolls everywhere.
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All atolls are islands of coral !!! ;-))
So "coral atolls" is kind of redundant. Yet, a search for "coral atoll" on Google reveals several links using the term. Go figure ! ;-)
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CO2 + H2O = H2CO3 (carbonic acid).
As the CO2 is absorbed into the sea, the acid content goes up = dead coral!
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:4, Informative)
also temperature shocks (like 1998 el nino) make the coral symbiosis into a parasitic situation and now-harmful zoanthids are expelled from the structure leading to "bleached coral sydrome". This dead coral has nothing to repair the small cracks & so breaks up after the next year or two of storms.
Basically the coral can't adapt fast enough and it may be 1000 years before it's back on track. By which time it has sunk far enough below the exponential decay of underwater sunlight not to regenerate back up to the surface with any great pace. Wave energy probably doesn't get below 100m depth, while the smallest amount of sunlight may make it down that far, so there is some hope for eventual regeneration.
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Well shit, maybe you should tell the leaders of the Maldives about that! I mean, they've spent, like, millions of dollars trying to find a solution. I guess if they only thought to ask you the
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
The catastrophe is not for nature, it's for man.
P.S. Corals worldwide are dying. The two culprits fingered so far are rising oceanic acidity (caused by excessive atmospheric CO2 being gas-exchang'd right into the ocean) and human herpes simplex viruses, which apparently kill off some of the important organisms responsible for helping to build and maintain coral.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:4, Interesting)
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And no-one has considered that fishing with explosives or cyanide on coral reefs could be causing a problem? Interesting.
No, I said the top culprits are. I didn't say the only culprits are. Counter-intuitive? Perhaps, but that's true all over. The oceanic acidification from CO2 ought to be obvious to anyone with a degree in chemistry, though; that doesn't include me but it's enough people to make the point. Additionally, we've known about global warming since the fifties, and many proposals were made to limit greenhouse gases way back then. Of course, we know how that turned out; they're a problem for us today.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
The Ocean is not becomming "more acidic". It's still very alkaline.
The car is not going slower, it's going 200 mph! Or in other words, you're an ass. Is this the kind of thing you bring up in ordinary conversation? You must be a hit at parties. I'd hit you twice.
You should say "over the very brief period of time we've been testing the PH of the ocean with any degree of accuracy, it's alkalinity has decreased by a very small amount. We have no way of knowing whether or not this is a natural cycle, or whether or not the measurements we take today, with different instruments from yester-year, account for the difference;
This is extremely disingenuous. It's the same retarded argument as "even though we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we put out ten times more CO2 than volcanism every year, and we know volcanism to be a major driver of global CO2, we don't believe that there is a greenhouse effect, and by the way global temperatures have only risen a little over one degree, that's a tiny shift!" But it's a fucking stupid statement because 99% of everything interesting on the planet occurs in a narrow temperature range, and by the same token, the ocean functions in a very small Ph range.
in any case, we're pretty sure life in the Ocean will adapt to such a small change with relative ease,
You are either ignorant or outright lying, since we know that small shifts in Ph have severe ramifications for much ocean life, including all marine mammals, and especially including coral reefs (where most of the ocean's diversity is) and algae (where most of the world's oxygen comes from.) Why don't you stop spreading the lies of the deniers? We're not even in Egypt... although, come to mention it, have you seen the Nile?
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For changes in the ocean ecosystem, the same issue is here. About half the world's pop
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The fact that you spout off a bunch of conspiracy theory drivel (it's all scientists driven by grants and "publish by press release") and then make up a bunch of totally unsupported theories about "we don't know what the ideal pH of the ocean is" and "hey, it'll all just adapt" tells me you've bought into the Big Conservative Lie.
If you want to argue with the science, you need to use science. Ad hominem attacks and pet theories you just made up that I'll bet you haven't researched at all don't impress me.
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Troll.
Absolute nonsense. Scientist have pretty good ideas of what the PH levels have been based on oceanic deposits over time. It may not give the finest granularity but it provides insights into how the ocean chemistry has changed over the planet's history. Tie that into the fossil record and it's not hard to make some decent approximations to how life forms evolved with the oceans over long time scales.
And more to the point, there is no "ideal" anything. There are ideal conditions for humans to survive. T
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Remember, a troll is not someone who disagrees with you. The fact of the matter is that although pH
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With respect to credible evidence, here's the problem: there is no credible evidence on the side of those linking man, co2 and temperature.
This is provably false. We have evidence linking CO2 and man, and we have evidence linking CO2 and temperature. We know about how fast suboceanic limestone can remove CO2 from the water (the primary fixer of oceanic CO2) and we know that limit has been exceeded. We can even make a pretty good estimate of how much CO2 is produced by human activities. We also know beyond the shadow of a doubt that human activity has had a negative effect on CO2 fixing; for instance, there's more wooded acres in the USA, but p
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
There is no link that says that we put out 10 times as much CO2 as volcanoes, because that statement is wrong, but not in the way that you think. The difference is much, much higher.
A 1991 study[1] put the annual volcanic contribution of atmospheric CO2 at 4E12 mol/year, or 176 million tons. Annual worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are around 27 billion metric tons; the US power industry alone produces more than 2.4 billion tons.[2] The factor between worldwide volcanic and human emissions of CO2 is actually around 150.
[1] Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS))
[2] http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html [doe.gov]
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There were reports at the time, that the recent Station Fire (the one that threatened Mount Wilson Observatory) put our more CO2 every two to three days as all the cars in the US do in a year. Of course, the AGW people either ignore or deny this because it doesn't fit their dogma.
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Oh yeah?
Ocean is now as acidic as it was 20 _million_ years ago. And it became that acidic in less than 150 years!
But surely, that's just a natural cycle. WTF is wrong with you?
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If that's supposed to be a dig at the old hockey stick [wikipedia.org], I hope you are aware that the hockey stick has been analysed by several groups, and was found to be a reasonably valid reconstruction of the temperature record? Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong [newscientist.com], quote:
The conclusion that we are making the world warmer certainly does not depend on reconstructions of temperature prior to direct records.
Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been impr
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The parent made a bunch of strong claims, without any data reference or argument to back them up. He contradicts the findings of EPOCA, BIOACID and the Royal Society in the UK, the NERC and various other organisations directly tasked with evaluating the situation. Moreover he claims these organisations essentially lie in order to get research money, without as much as a shred of evidence to back up his claims, and this is moderated insightful?
Come on moderators hand in your nerd cards! When somebody rejects
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Sure, the appeal to authority is one route you can take; indee
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Wow. You managed to hit quite a few Global Warming Myths [newscientist.com] in a single post. Your basic arguments have already been replied to many times:
"Does that make you feel uneasy at all?"
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in any case, we're pretty sure life in the Ocean will adapt to such a small change with relative ease
If by "adapt", you mean that some species will become extinct, some won't, and possibly some will evolve over many years to adapt to the new environment, then yes, that is all possible. But, as already pointed out, the issue is not life itself adapting (bacteria are life, and they probably will adapt) - the issue is the cost of human adaptation. 500 million people depend on coral reefs for food, coastal protection, building materials and income from tourism. Of those, 30 million are totally dependent. Figur
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Corals grow within very narrow limits of temperature, irradiance, salinity, pH and turbidity; all variables which are influenced by climate and weather. More CO2 means more acidic ocean water, which would retard coral growth. Warmer oceans would also reduce carbonate ion saturation, having the same effect.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
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That's not even close to what he's suggesting.
He's saying that the way things are now, there's no way the momentum will change for tens or hundreds of years. He said absolutely nothing about whether it is man-made or not, you pulled that part out of your ass.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:4, Informative)
Your source sucks. [scienceblogs.com]
Here's a better one. [climateprogress.org]
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I applaud McIntyre and McKitrick for making pretty much the only skeptic argument within the scientific discourse. You see, skeptics don't actually practice science, but rather, they write articles like the one above. They sound impressive, but if you dig beneath the surface, you'll find nothing but echoes of already discredited arguments. I highly r
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Of course its a political game. People of the Maldives are going to ask for land and money.
And I don't blame them.
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> I have two graphs here.
> In the first graph you can see the global warming measured per year.
> In the second paragraph you can see the carbondioxide emissions meassured per year.
> Now let's fold these two together, shall we?" And they totally did not match.
> Man that guy made my fucking day!
I'm sure he did. He's probably a member of a liar-club called "Groene rekenkamer" or associated with it. Or something. Those are all people who have no clue what reasoning is (even if some have a univers
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Funny)
You're right! lets cut down all the rain forests to prevent that disaster from happening.
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Under what mathematical law does the fact that two graphs don't look the same mean that they are not related? This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "But those graphs look different!" and decides those experts are all wrong. And worse, other people who share this guy's lack of clue believe his argument because it's the only one simple enough for them to understand.
Roughly speaking, more CO2 in the atmosphere causes the temperature to rise faster, and yearly CO2 emissions are adding to what is already there. So the CO2 emissions graph is something like the second derivative of the temperature graph. That means that if we keep emitting CO2 at a constant rate (flat graph) then temperatures will rise faster and faster over time (quadratic curve). Yeah, the graphs don't look the same, but they are related. (And in reality it's much more complicated than this.)
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Under what mathematical law does the fact that two graphs don't look the same mean that they are not related? This is really sad: Experts spend years analyzing the data, come to an extremely complicated conclusion based on mountains of evidence, and then someone who has not the slightest fucking clue about science or mathematics walks in and says "But those graphs look different!" and decides those experts are all wrong. And worse, other people who share this guy's lack of clue believe his argument because it's the only one simple enough for them to understand.
Roughly speaking, more CO2 in the atmosphere causes the temperature to rise faster, and yearly CO2 emissions are adding to what is already there. So the CO2 emissions graph is something like the second derivative of the temperature graph. That means that if we keep emitting CO2 at a constant rate (flat graph) then temperatures will rise faster and faster over time (quadratic curve). Yeah, the graphs don't look the same, but they are related. (And in reality it's much more complicated than this.)
Any fool knows it is more complicated than that. Look into the matter of whether more CO2 always means higher temp. Look into the matter of how many more degrees of warming can be attributed to CO2 alone. Look into how they know how much feedback there will be from water vapour. Look into how they know how to correct for biases. Look into all of it, please, do look. But please don't just sit there and say there's "mountains of evidence"--that is just hearsay. Actually go and look and whenever you read somet
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What's more sad, is the state of mathematics and science education in the US today. It's no wonder Joe Sixpack comes to this kind of conclusion.
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Roughly speaking, more CO2 in the atmosphere causes the temperature to rise faster, and yearly CO2 emissions are adding to what is already there. So the CO2 emissions graph is something like the second derivative of the temperature graph.
Well the first derivative would be the rate of acceleration so, based on your sentence that is the one I would expect to correspond with CO2 levels, not the second which would be the rate temperature change is accelerat(ing), those are very different.
Also I have never seen such a graph and still can't after some googleing. I suspect you can't produce one with, unless you use data from one of the MANY discredited reports where data points that were never measured were added as padding or where the recording
really because venice is fucking underwater (Score:3, Funny)
i guess its gods punishment for being them being gay? or european? or something.
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This is the argument of the Stern review [wikipedia.org] conducted by the UK government.
The problem is that the cost of reducing CO2 is largely unknown, as is the damage caused to the global economy. So this trade off between now and later is largely based on which made-up numbers you put into the balance.
One thing is pretty clear; if we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to put a price on CO2, and it needs to rise fast. And it will be painful. Will it be more painful than the consequences of global warming? Who know
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Sure, it will be painful. Cancer treatment is also painful. At this juncture, gambling that "adaption" would cost less than mitigation is like gambling that you will recover from cancer without the expense of treatment. What do you really think happens if we continue to warm the earth? Do you really think, like the cancer, that after "a little while" it will "just get better by itself"?
That was, in fact, my point. I favour a carbon tax in some form or other and realistically it will have to be much higher than the current price of a European permit (c. €13/t and falling).
And there are plenty of criticisms of Stern's projections if you bothered to read the wikipedia page I linked to. The discount rate, for example, was 1.4%, which is likely to be less than inflation over that time period. By using such a low value he has inflated future costs over their real value. This favours more d
Re:CO2 cutbacks cannot stop climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, it's better if we do nothing but get really drunk and mock the folks who are trying to do something to save your sorry ass.
It's the can-do attitude which made America what it is today!
We may not be able to alter the momentum for 50 years from now at this point, but we can do a lot to affect it 500 years from now, probably no less than saving civilization in the process. One thing is for sure, if you never try you'll never achieve anything.
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yeah, it's better if we do nothing but get really drunk and mock the folks who are trying to do something to save your sorry ass.
Who's really "trying"? I see a bunch of shifty folks trying to reshape society in the guise of doing something about "climate change"?
We may not be able to alter the momentum for 50 years from now at this point, but we can do a lot to affect it 500 years from now, probably no less than saving civilization in the process. One thing is for sure, if you never try you'll never achieve anything.
It's really hard for any action positive or negative to matter 500 years from now. Even if we had a full blown nuclear war that wipes out 99% of the population, there's a good chance we'd be recovered from it by then. Global warming doesn't fit the profile of something that will matter. Sure the CO2 levels will be a little bit higher or lower, dependent on what we do now and
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In dead it is what made America a success. People were free to invest in what they knew would pay dividends. I know I can get drunk and laugh at YOU, and I will have a great time doing it. Its worth the money!
I don't know that going along with your pseudo science ( and that all it is, given 80% of the temperature monitoring stations have been found to be to close to man made radiators to produce ANY useful information ) and cutting carbon emissions will do anything other than pose unnessaray costs and bu
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Quite so. But if you listen/look carefully, you can still find some truth from scientists willing to speak out. See for example this interview on the sea-level fraud: http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf [climatechangefacts.info]. Turns out that sea levels have not been rising.
In other news...Krakatoa (Score:2)
Yes Bob. Today, the mayor of the island of Krakatoa held a city council meeting in the caldera of the volcano to draw attention to the fact that the island will, eventually, blow up again and to urge the world to find some way to stop plate tectonics and cool the core down until such a thing isn't possible anymore.
Unfortunately, they forgot one thing Bob.
THEY WERE IN THE CALDERA OF A VOLCANO!
Needless to day, the loss of life was total, save for three councilmen who boycotted the meeting in protest.
As of th
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Many standard cars have electric versions available, the high carbon cost of a coal/gas/oil powered plants has made nuclear power viable once more (UK is replacing older plants with nuclear ones) and hydrogen using planes are
New homeland? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New homeland? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
No sympathy here... (Score:3, Informative)
I have no sympathy for a country that forces its people to convert to islam and subjects almost 1/3 of the population to a form of serfdom. In addition if you are not a muslim and a native then you are either executed, imprisoned or expelled. Finally the country is extremely racist when it comes to non-muslims. I've had the unfortunate pleasure of being sent to the main island a few times for work. While the country is very pretty the people are not with the exception of the lowly peasants.
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That's some awesome selective reading right there.
Perspective on Maldives (Score:2)
To get a perspective on the Maldives, start here [wikimapia.org] and then click to zoom in 14 times. I suggest opening the link in a new tab or window (Slashdot code won't let me make the link tag do that for you).
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(Slashdot code won't let me make the link tag do that for you).
You mean to me. I am an adult, and I can choose when I would like to open a link in a new window. I think I've earned that right by now.
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You can always override it. The settings allow a default. Most people I have talked to prefer a new tab or new window for links to pages they are going to navigate on and come back. Many people know how to do it as apparently you do. Most don't, surprisingly. And many probably won't know this page needs it at first without the suggestion. I have made such a suggestion before only to be told by several how to make the tag do it (I already know how but they expected me to do it for them). Alas, in Slas
Sea level has NOT been rising (Score:4, Informative)
The following interview Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, a Swedisch expert on sea-level geophysics, explains how the data has been misrepresented to feed the global warming scare http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf [climatechangefacts.info]. The reality is that little has happened to the sea level over the past decades.
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The reality is that little has happened to the sea level over the past decades.
Just as a quick math problem, why don't you figure out how many gallons of water are represented by a one inch rise in sea level. Now calculate how many gallons of water will be added to the ocean when the ice on top of Alaska and Greenland finishes melting. A small delta can be extremely relevant.
P.S. It doesn't matter if the floating ice masses grow during this time, for the same reason that ocean level rise can't be driven by floating ice melting. Don't forget to forget to take that into account.
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You can do it in liters and meters if you're not an American.
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It is only going to be relevant if the ice on top of Alaska and Greenland is actually going to melt substantially. Please do show us some credible data to that effect.
In the mean time, let me show you some data on Antarctica, which holds 90% of the world's land ice and as such is the most interesting place to look at when it comes to anticip
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A rather discredited expert. Anyone want to take his course on dowsing?
The site (ClimateChangeFacts) reads like any other number of "skeptic" sites. Lots of speculation backed by bogus claims and zero peer reviewed research to back up their claims.
I want a model, skeptics. I want a scientifically valid atmospheric dynamics model that shows that increasing the amount of CO2 does not impact global climate and yet still explains our observational data. Go ahead. I'll wait.
~X~
Photo Gallery (Score:3, Informative)
Can we do it in Aus. Perhaps cut down swearing? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have an idea. Let's do the same in Australia. The way our politicians carry on booing, jeering, calling each other names and such is disgraceful. (Actually I'm resisting the urge to suggest a 1 hour meeting under water WITHOUT the scuba gear). I guess it's similar the world over. No wonder we're in the economic, social and environmental crapper.
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At least your politicians have the balls to say what they think of each other instead of saccharine-coating everything with fake political correctness.
As an avid Scuba Diver... (Score:2)
I welcome our new warming climate overlords (and cheaper scuba gear prices).
The west can help by killing Kyoto (Score:3, Interesting)
it would work if all else remains static. Sadly, that is not the case. China is adding 1-2 NEW COAL PLANTS EACH WEEK. These are
Even with the growth in hydro and wind and Solar and Nukes that China is planning, if they continue this course, they will exceed ALL OF AMERICA's emission by 2015. By 2018, they will exceed ALL OF America's AND Western EU. By 2020 (11 very short years), they will account for slightly more than 1/2 of all of the CO2 that man has emitted through history. IOW, all of the cuts that we do, will be worthless.
But it still get worse. In particular, once we push Cap/trade, other nations will have a strong incentive to grab our manufacturing. And who will be pushing "cheap" coal plants? GE coal and other companies. Many companies will work to take advantage of the difference in prices (labor and energy).
So, with knowing the above, how do drop the emissions and solve the climate change issues? Here is my idea.
OTH, China has moderate amount of emissions based on size, HOWEVER, is one of the lowest efficiency in emissions/GDP. In addition, it has extremely high transportation costs (rail in China, then boat to here, and then rail around). As such, they would have 90-100% of the tax.
American goods made here have a moderate emissions per land and moderate efficient emissions. OTH, our transportation emissions are minor. As such, we might see 30-40% of the tax.
Several points on this:
Ideally, this same approach is used for a number of pollutants. For example, Mercury is one that is screaming to be controlled. China is the largest polluter of it and it will continue to increase with the coal. Likewise, the same is true of their SO* emissions. By applying a slowly increasing tax on nations based on their emissions, we can encourage ALL NATIONS to change.
One last point. Many nations will scream that they should be exempt because they are Developing nations. If that is done, it will simply encourage them to have lower costs goods by cheating. In addition, nearly all of the smaller developing nations HAVE low emissions. They would be at the low end of the tax.
Expect to see more stunts (Score:3, Insightful)
As evidence mounts that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming isn't the disaster the chicken littles have been preaching for the last 2 decades, the more dramatic, outlandish, and shrill the commentary will become. Expect to see more of these stunts from both countries and entities expecting to receive a big pay day from the industrialized nations, while the evidence points to a theory that needs serious revising and models that aren't very accurate at the most basic of predictions.
To date a lot of the proxy data [climateaudit.org] used to bolster the claim that the observed warming trend was "unprecedented" turns out to be extremely poorly put together. The recent Briffa revelations are so bad and Briffa so resistant to releasing his data (which is contrary to scientific methodology) that one has to wonder if there was deliberate fraud. In climate research this has happened before. The original, discredited Mann hockey stick was another example where a researcher refused to release both data and methodology, and when forced to told the world that data was lost (until it was found by accident on his FTP server [climateaudit.org]). Both examples are indications that peer review in some fields is nothing more than a cliquish acceptance of a forgone conclusion.
Perhaps this stunt will bring attention to the matter that current understanding of AGW is poor at best and that current climate models are woafully inadequate (and perhaps a tad overly dramatic). More research is needed and more importantly the people conducting that research need to strictly adhere to scientific method if we are to have a clear view of the mechanisms that shape our climate and what the human population effect on it.
Final Thought : Having researchers act like a group of 14 year old girls that decide who is "in" and who is "out" isn't science - it's dogma. It does little to advance the course of science - but it makes great reading. Better drama than day time TV.
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The problem is the debate is phrased wrong. Much like religious people who are anti-evolution are actually anti-natural selection (something entirely different.) In this case, people knee-jerk the debate as "does it exist" vs. "does it not exist."
But that's not the point. The real debate is, "what should we *do* about it?" (And yes, "nothing" is a completely valid answer.)
There are lots of claiming flying around about the effects of global warming, sea-level changes (so far these seem to be bunk), climate c
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>The one over a year ago where the Bush Administration confirmed that man-mad global warming was a real threat?
I'm not sure why you would think that I would care about what a US administration thinks. Perhaps you think former President Bush is a good diviner of scientific truth? Personally I think such an attitude is a bit crazy, but if you love the ex President that much, good for you.
You're much more likely to get my attention by backing up your opinion with specifics, like scientists, studies, an
Well done! (Score:2)
That was a nice public stunt. I don't think any news show on the planet is willing to miss on that one.
And of course I can't imagining anyone seeing a beautiful tropic island go forever.
I only hope that as many people as possible will from now on always have to think about them just destroying a beautiful place that they at least wanted to see once, when doing something that raises sea levels.
Unfortunately, with the biggest polluters being companies, that can afford making 13 senators openly defend gang rap
unnecessary (Score:2)
How long have these islands be over the sea?
Did they ever take a real look at that?
Was that 500 years? 1500? 5000 years?
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Really? Intensive construction projects seem more "sane" than purchasing real estate?
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Traditional methods to mitigate this problem (genocide for instance) are frowned upon.
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Because we know that the Dutch live in a region with extensive mudlands, which the Maledives miss. And we know that the Dutch don't live on about 1200 atolls (hey, the word atoll even origins from the maledivian atolhu), but on the deltas of two large european rivers, Meuse and Rhine.
Re:Well, good for them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Around 1970 the sea level dropped by 20-30 cms and since then there has been no sea-level rise: http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogram/abstract_54486.htm [confex.com]
But don't let scientific and historical facts get in the way of a good piece of hysteria.
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That's right. But a lot of the Netherlands is below sea level whereas the Maldives are above sea-level. So who has most to fear?
The Maledives, because their ratio of land area to coast line (yes, I know, a natural coast line is infinitely long, but we are talking dikes here, which have a minimum size) is much worse than that of the Netherlands.
And you forget that all dutch land that is below sealevel is artificial anyway and won by closing off vast areas from the Northern Sea with large embankments, which in turn are built to be as short as possible for a maximum of land gain.
Whoever suggests that this is a feasible way for the Male
Re:Well, good for them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to give you a better picture: Less than 5% of all Dutch people live within walking distance to the coast, but all of the Maledivians do. The largest island is Malé, with just about a square mile (2.7 sq km). So while 95% of all Netherlands can hide behind several layers of dikes, none of the Maledivians can. Or for some other numbers: The whole of the Maledives covers 298 sq km of land, stretched over 823 km x 150 km of ocean, completely different than the Netherlands with more than 41000 sq km of land stretched over 360 km x 280 km.
The whole length of the Dutch dikes is about 3000 km, so if we estimate that an average dike is 30 m wide, a similar construction would amount to 30% of the whole maledives used for the dikes, while less than 0,25% of the Netherlands are actual dikes.
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What makes things even more problematic is that the dutch North Sea coast is relatively shallow, while the Maldives are 350km out in the ocean where it is much deeper. So even if you did throw some dikes between a few atolls (which doesn't seem impossible from the looks of it [cia.gov]) you would end up with a lot of vulnerable land m
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