Coral Reefs In Grave Danger, Say Climate Simulations 313
sciencehabit writes "Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines."
RT (WHOLE) FA (Score:4, Informative)
"There is a very wide coral response to omega—some are able to internally control the [relevant] chemistry," says Rau, who has collaborated with Caldeira in the past but did not participate in this research. Those tougher coral species could replace more vulnerable ones "rather than a wholesale loss" of coral. "
I guess his views were not in line with the study, so his results were not included.
Re:RT (WHOLE) FA (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to RT (WHOLE) FA then why did you stop quoting him before the end of the paragraph where he said:
"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"
QT (WHOLE) FQ! Did the last note of warning and agreement with the study not fit with your message of excluding the dissenting scientist? What is more likely: that the part about them working together previously was some hidden way of saying that Rau was censored or that he was giving full disclosure of a prior relationship? Conspiracy theory or standard (and best) practice?
Re:RT (WHOLE) FA (Score:5, Insightful)
Lack of necessity.
Sardines had hundreds of millions of years to extent their range into freshwater, yet they didn't. It was only when a swarm of sardines got trapped in what is today Lake Taal, which used to be just another part of the Pacific Ocean. It became a lake only in the 1750ies, when a volcanic eruption cut it off from the ocean and rain turned saltwater into freshwater in a matter of decades.
Those decades were sufficient to do what hundreds of millions of years had not managed to do, because it had never been necessary. In 100,000 years, all evidence of happened in lake taal will have been erazed by the same geologic processes that gave rise to all of that in the first place.
The assumed stagnation and lethargy of the evolution of species is an artifact of processes that conserve their traces now accessible to us. Unless a species is pervasive and somehow amenable to be conserved over geologic time spans within the environment they live in, it will irrecoverably be lost to history.
Our biosphere survived several ICE AGES. Looking out of the window I see landscape that was covered with hundreds of meters of ice a (geologically) very short time ago and has undergone numerous radical climate changes, yet, failed completely to become a dead wasteland for any appreciable time once the ice retreated.
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Species die all the time.
It's not necessity- its lack of any open spot to expand into.
Those ecological niches are full.
Re:RT (WHOLE) FA (Score:4, Insightful)
The last iceage covered all of Northern Europe, Britain, parts of Germany, parts of Poland in massive, greenland-like glaciers and changed the climate massively all the way down to Africa. The alps too, were covered glaciers running all the way down into the surrounding areas, which were what you would call a tundra.
That was 20.000 years ago not millions of years.
Nature adapts - quickly. Much more quickly than anybody is giving her credit for.
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FTFY < /pedantry >
We are currently in an ice age, which global warming threatens to end for the first time in a couple of million years.
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By the definition cryologists use an ice age is any time there are significant ice caps on Earth, like say Antarctica and Greenland. When the ice advances on the continents it's called a glacial and when it retreats an interglacial. /pedant
But then in the popular usage a glaciation is often called an ice age so it's hard to fault you for putting it that way.
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The problem is it took millions of years to recover from all of these disasters
In the case of the Permian-Triassic extinction event, there were apparently wildly various climate conditions for six million years. So one would expect a recovery to take a while just because you can't really recover in the middle of a long sequence of crises.
If there is anything I can do to stop a bunch of ignorant conservative morons from triggering yet another mass extinction event in the name of free market economics and their preference for driving to work in a 3000kg SUV I will do it.
Well, how massive a mass extinction are we talking here? As I see it, human society is probably the single most notable thing that Earth and its life has ever done, unless humanity is not the only industrial society that Earth has created.
I think w
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First, "rare exceptions" is all you need; these corals could take over the niches left by other corals.
Second, earth's oceans have become more acidic before. It's a different ocean, but not necessarily a worse one. And we know that corals come back eventually.
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"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"
Wait ... I've been to a few islands where they say that the basic limestone structure of the island is built from ancient coral reefs that formed the limestone over millions of years.
We also know that atmospheric CO2 has been up at least a
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The problem with the whole climate change thing is not that it will get hotter than ever before or that the oceans will become more acidic than it has ever been. The problem is that it is happening too quickly for the fauna and flora to adapt. Changes that have previously taken thousands of years are happening in hundreds.
History has shown that when there is a sudden change due to things like massive volcano explosions or meteor strikes that the effect on the species around it can be devestating. If you pre
A wake up call (Score:5, Funny)
This should make the so-called skeptics pay attention as it represents a very real danger to people. Those broken up bits of dead coral can really cut your face when you bury your head in the sand.
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
95% of "sceptics" are not sceptics at all, they are deniers. It doesn't matter what evidence is presented, they will not accept it even if they can't refute it.
Let's turn the question around. Why do you categorise everyone who accepts the evidence as accurate as "unquestioning believers"?
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
At absolute worst, the global warming "true believers" are putting their faith in scientific consensus; why is this some great intellectual crime? Am I a "true believer" for believing in the theory of gravity without extensive experimentation to prove it to myself? Am I a "true believer" in relativity because I haven't built my own atomic clocks and launched them into orbit to verify it? Why is it that in every other aspect of life I can accept prevailing (almost universal) scientific consensus and no one will bat an eye, and yet to accept same in regard to global warming is some sort of heinous act?
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Global warming is not simply accepted because it affect
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No one wants to create a gravity tax
At least not until the next Irish budget.
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It's a conspiracy!
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Because a couple of decades ago, the climate change faithful were telling us that by 2020 the world would be frozen solid, with glaciers as far south as the Mediterranean Sea.
If dire prophecies of the magic carbon pixie believers that I learned in primary school had come true, up here at 56ÂN I'd be under 100m of ice - but that hasn't happened. However, the absolutely rock solid certain scientific evidence was that the Earth was cooling faster than it had ever cooled before. Now we skip forwards thre
Re:A wake up call (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, can you cite a peer reviewed publication which makes that prediction (a new ice age) with the certainty you claim? Time magazine is not a peer reviewed publication and if you get your science from the media then you will just get bad science. Back in the 70s, even though global temperatures had been reasonably stable (or possibly declining) most scientists were predicting global warming would dominate global dimming. As the evidence of the last 40 years came in most scientists (who were defying the current trend of global temperatures) because almost all scientists, at least the ones who do climate research.
Your bad science teacher and the fact that science journalists aren't worth a piss in the ocean doesn't mean the scientists had it wrong. Go read the peer reviewed literature, I promise you for ever paper you have implying we may be approaching another ice age I can find 3 going the other way.
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Why do alcoholics deny they have a problem? Because admitting it would imply that they'd need to give up the sweet, sweet booze. That doesn't mean that they still can't agree that drugs are bad, just not alcohol.
And of course they are completely correct in that giving up fossil fuels will be ho
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So, just to clarify: you put an equal amount of skepticism (which is to say, happily rejecting 99+% of peer-reviewed literature) on modern theories in physics, including relativities both special and general, all of quantum physics, etc... right? Or otherwise, you haven't addressed my point in the slightest.
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It's not the same thing by a wide margin.
On one hand, we have a scientist who points out some issues with current theory on a higher level, which is that it may not be possible to prove anything so you can theorize until you're blue in the face, but we have no way to compare predictions with reality.
With AGW, the discussion was started around 1980 (I have a few books in my cupboard from that time), criticism was levelled and theories reworked to account for them, to get them in line with the experimental an
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Why?
The trouble with string theory is the lack of ability to falsify (at this stage). A beautiful theory is worth exploring, and you cut the theorists some slack for a while to develop it and come up with experiments that could test it. By now, we're getting impatient.
Climate change is wholly different. There are hundreds of thousands of datasets empirically backing up the predictions made from hundred-year old science (the physics of greenhouse cases from Tyndall dates back to the 19th century).
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Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, historically, those who have placed their faith in the "scientific consensus" of the day have almost always turned out to be spectacularly wrong?
No. ...
Evidence, please?
Can you show that people have been "almost always" wrong on every issue? On gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, on quantum mechanics, on the atom theory of nature, on evolution, on
You can point to individual anecodatal points, but "almost always" and "spectacularly wrong" on every issue is a very strong statement.
Also, "faith" has no place in science. I provisionally accept lots of things, based on the scientific consensus of my colleagues. Especially with the overwhelming amount of evidence to investigate. Contrary evidence trumps consensus, but in the case of climate change, it isn't there.
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I prefer the term "Anthropogenic Climate Change", because I think Global Warming gives a too-soft impression of whats happening.
Yes, the world is warming, on average, but what kills is not the average temperature rising by one or two degrees, its drought,
extreme events such as storms, ocean acidification, etc. The danger is that people think we're heading for a Mediterranean climate here in N Europe, etc. and that global warming might not be a bad thing for chilly Ireland, for example, when massive drought
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, come on, how many atomic models have we already been through since the mid-1800s?
Many, but only one atom theory.
The atom theory is that matter is made up of atoms, finite quanta that cannot be infinitely subdivided.
Hence, you cannot have less than one atom of sodium, etc. The antithesis was that you could, that you could
infinitely divide the amount of a substance and still maintain that substance.
That atoms have subdivisions in themselves (protons, electrons, neutrons), does not negate the theory as originally stated.
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Can you show that people have been "almost always" wrong on every issue?
Yeah, you can. It's not difficult. (see below) Of course, it doesn't matter as this is clearly a trap.
Yes. You failed to enumerate and list every issue
You can point to individual anecodatal points
This is why it's a trap. If the parent can't give a complete run-down from 500 BCE onward, you'll shout some nonsense about anecdotes. Let's see if I'm right.,,
Correct. I don't think it is possible to enumerate every issue, but your claim presumes otherwise.
On gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, on quantum mechanics, on the atom theory of nature, on evolution,
Quantum mechanics is a bit new -- including it in your absurd list is dishonest as it hasn't had time to fail spectacularly like history suggests it will. Gravity: obvious examples are obvious. If you're particularly thick, just google "history of gravity". Atomic theory: dramatically changed several times pre and post Einstein. The atom today is so dramatically different from the atom in, say, 1850 that I'd say the science of the time was "spectacularly wrong". Thermodynamics: phlogiston, caloric theory, need I go on?
Shoot, I took the bait! Did I spring the trap?
Science proceeds by falsification. In the example of gravity - the work of Copernicus / Kepler / Newton disproved the existing Heliocentric view.
Newtons theory was/is an extraordinarily effective theory: it matched observations and produced predictions that came true for the next
three hundred years. Yes, it was superceded by Einsteins work, but in practice Engin
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
My claimed "so-called skeptics" are those who are actually denialists but who insist on being labelled skeptics because it sounds more reasonable, considered and open-minded.
They are the people who distrust scientists completely and put all their faith in right wing pundits who say that it is actually getting cooler (who do this by comparing the temperature to the El Nino year of 1998 - which was completely unrepresentative of the average of the time).
Despite wanting to appear open-minded, they will never ever concede that there is a chance that scientists are correct. That is not merely being skeptical. If they argue a point and are shown to be wrong (when it becomes obvious that they haven't read the studies that they are skeptical about), they will never use that experience to change their thinking, but will instead seamlessly move on to the next bit of "evidence" that they found on some conservative blog as if nothing happened.
They will not subject the anti-AGW claims to the same skepticism to which they hold the claims of science. They will question the financial motives of scientists without a shred of evidence that they are "on the take", and yet will dismiss with contempt any suggestion that big business funds the think tanks that churn out the FUD against the science. This is despite those same think tanks of having a documented history of being paid by business to discredit scientists (think back to the smoking-cancer link debate).
I am not claiming that all people who call themselves skeptics are like this, but the real ones are quite rare to find.
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I think what probably rubs people the wrong way is when those who spearhead the AGW movement either don't practice what they preach, or outright fabricate their "facts." Al Gore tells us that we all need to reduce our carbon footprint, yet he has a larger carbon footprint than dare I say 99% of the world's population. Further, he deliberately fabricated data in order to sell his "inconvenient truth" movie. As if that isn't enough, he sells carbon credits, aka "indulgences" to himself.
When you ask his suppor
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This is why I fucking hate Al Gore. He practically gave birth to the denialist movement through his dishonesty and hypocrisy.
I don't apologize for that shitstain. He's an energy-wasting greedhead who doesn't give a rat's ass about the environment.
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every time I point this out about Gore I am then called a bigot (because Obama agrees with Gore and he is black).
Hahaha no fucking way, either you made this up, or Fox News did and you believed it.
BTW the whole "climategate" incident is in no way relevant to actual climate science. It's about academic transparency.
Re:A wake up call (Score:4, Insightful)
You are making assumptions. Yes, fossil fuels are necessary right now. But we can improve the wastage levels a lot. Cars do not have to guzzle gallons of fuel to transport people if you have better public transportation and enforce green standards on cars. The Japanese car factories proved that it was possible to build much better cars than were the norm (and Chrysler, GM and Ford nearly or actually died on that one). The same goes for many areas of the way we live. The US especially seems to glorify in insane airconditioning, huge wastage of food and resources, very bad insulation on housing, and on and on.
Even without draconic measures in place, many standard building practices in the US would be utterly unacceptable in most EU countries. That could improve tomorrow, leading to a better quality of buildings and reduced CO2 consumption.
The whole dichotomy between "reducing CO2" and "better living conditions" is fake. You can have both, in a lot of cases. We should save the fossil fuels for those cases where we cannot and not spend it willy-nilly.
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's stick with that example. You are implying that because smoking causes cancer, everybody must come to the conclusion that they don't want to smoke. But that is obviously not the case: lots of people smoke despite knowing about the substantial (and it is substantial) increase in risk. It's the same for many other risky activities: investing, emigrating, motorcycle riding, etc. Many people engage in those activities because they think the potential rewards justify the risk. You are free to disagree with them, but there is no objectively right choice about the level of risk people are willing to accept. (A second point is that a link at the population level does not imply that a link exists for any individual; I may have information that makes it rational for me to smoke even if it wouldn't be rational for you.)
So, continuing to emit CO2 without any kinds of imposed limits has some risks, and they are well documented. Many people have looked at those risks and said they can live with them, because they consider the alternatives of not taking those risks are far worse.
Your risk preferences may be different, but your preferences don't imply that there is a single, objectively correct policy vis-a-vis AGW.
Personally, I'd like to see government investment in research in renewable energies, increased taxation of oil and coal, and investment in nuclear power plants. But I strongly object to multi-national carbon trading schemes or global emission limits, because I think they would be ineffective and subject to massive abuse.
-1, Lung cancer? Why your analogy fails totally (Score:3)
People in Country A don't get an increased risk for lung cancer because Country B has a lot of smokers.
You mean like the Montreal Protocol? That 'ineffective' and abusive regime?
Cooperation
Re:A wake up call (Score:4, Interesting)
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So what's a "so-called skeptic"? Somebody who *says* they don't believe in AGW but who secretly does, just doesn't want to pay for the alleged "fixes"?
That you didn't include this category with your list implies that you don't believe it exists. I on the other hand reckon it accounts for most of the people expressing doubts. They're more commonly called "deniers".
Re:A wake up call (Score:5, Insightful)
You might like to look at my definition of a "so called skeptic" below, because refusing to look at the science just because you guess that it is wrong is denialism, not skepticism. Feel free to continue with your uninformed belief, but don't try to pretend to the rest of the world that you know more than the scientists who dedicate their life to actually studying what is going on.
Let's stop watching the tea leaves of the models.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And look at what's actually happening [wattsupwiththat.com]:
Remember when scientists would discard theories when their predictions were wrong? Good times....
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And from the abstract of the actual paper [nature.com] referred to by the wuwt page :
"...Our empirical data from this unique field setting confirm model predictions that ocean acidification, together with temperature stress, will probably lead to severely reduced diversity, structural complexity and resilience of Indo-Pacific coral reefs within this century."
Remember when non-experts would actually listen to scientists rather than cherry pick what they wanted to hear? Good times...
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You link to the site of an outed Heartland Institute shill, not to mention a clearly non-scientific denialist? Haha what a fucking sheep you are, an intellectual slave.
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I like my morning madness undiluted :)
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Wow. Seems I have a stalker on my hands with mod points. A single mod-down in some of the gun/AGC threads that I posted in over the last few days. Nice.
Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it very upsetting that there is an abundance of people that are concerned about the CO2 output but very few that take the time to investigate and lobby for solutions that won't drive us back into the stone age. The only solution that we have now, with no need for new technological advancements, is nuclear power. We have not built a new nuclear power plant here in the USA for something like four decades. Those that are still running are undoubtedly reaching the end of their safe and profitable lifespan.
Alternatives like wind, solar, and bio-mass take considerable amounts of land. This land is expensive and competes with other vital needs like food. I recall a solar power plant that could not produce enough electricity to pay it's property taxes. They were allowed a discounted rate on the tax but they still went out of business since they couldn't pay their other bills. Bio-mass is a direct competitor to food as any land that can grow a plant suitable for energy is also land that is suitable to grow food. There just is not enough land, water, and sun to both feed us and provide our power needs. There might be enough to both fill our tummies and our fuel tanks on our vehicles but the biggest producer of CO2 is not our vehicles, it's our coal fired power plants.
Wind might some day be competitive with coal and be profitable. The problem with wind, as well as geothermal and hydro, is that it is highly sensitive to location. Wind power can share land with things like food crops but it shares a weakness with solar power, it is highly sensitive to weather.
There's a part of me that thinks this scare over CO2 output is largely a hoax. There is a part of me that just doesn't care. What I do want to see is all this arguing to stop and people put some real solutions to work. I want them to STFU and build some nuclear power plants already. I can see a perfect spot for one from my front door. It has a rail nearby, a small river flowing by for cooling water, and a ready market in the city that I can see from my back door. My only concern is that a power plant so close might shade my house.
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Because the powers that push the movement are less concerned with CO2 as much as they want to push humanity down the technological hole. Closing off all power sources. They are the modern day Luddites.
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No, it's merely that we don't wish to hand over perpetual control over our power supply to GE any more than we want to hand the entire future of agriculture over to Monsanto.
But you guys never stop to think about that angle, do you?
Or perhaps you'd prefer that it not occur to us...
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Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard (Score:4, Insightful)
My push to the movement is very very small, but I can assure you that I am not a Luddite. Except when it comes to coal fired power plants and electronic voting.
Feel free to build as many nuclear or solar or wind power plants as you want. Solar will hopefully make electricity so cheap that we won't have to worry about wasting it. If rain forest has to be destroyed to make room for people, then so be it, the Earth is not a museum.
Just don't ruin it all so that the next generation has an impossible clean up task to do. We have enough trouble today with dealing with the land fills of the last generation; just a little more forethought then would have saved a lot of effort now. Forcing the next generation to extract coal from the air so they can stick it back into mines is really stupid.
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However the teaching does pay well, all these people, excluding the followers, live in huge or expensive houses and mansions.
Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard (Score:5, Interesting)
I like your open-minded approach - no, that's not sarcasm, I mean it. Yes, electricity from nuclear fission is cleaner overall than most other so-called baseload sources. It's still scary when something goes wrong - it doesn't matter about new designs, assurances, technological advances (which ARE impressive) - human fears are a factor, and must be dealt with, whether based on solid evidence, or FUD from greenpeace.
I live off-grid using subsidised solar PV, and a petrol generator for backup when it's rainy. If I was really strict about appliance usage when the weather is less than ideal (e.g. turn off the kids' computers), we wouldn't need the generator very much at all. Let's put aside the environmental impact of manufacturing solar PV for the moment, and focus on whether it's possible to live off-grid with solar PV. Is it possible to continue a high-energy-consumption lifestyle with old-style incandescent light bulbs, air-conditioning, electric clothes dryers, electric dishwashers, electric coffee-makers, electric ovens and stovetops? No, it's not. Is it possible to minimise your consumption of fossil fuels and still enjoy life? Hells yeah. No aircon, occasional use of the clothes dryer run directly off the generator, wood-fired stove (also supplies hot water and heating), hand-wash dishes while listening to internet radio, 2-3 major appliances at any one time, e.g. 2 computers and a washing machine, or vacuum cleaner and washing machine, etc. It can work, if you want it to. Right now, I'm typing this on a laptop, on a sunday evening, listening to internet radio (B.B. King, if you're interested) via another laptop amplified through an old boombox, my daughter is watching some silly movie on Nickleodeon on a 55" LCD TV, sourced via a HD decoder from a satellite dish, my wife is playing minecraft on her laptop with an external 24" LCD screen, and my son is doing the facebook thing on his iPad - it's about 5:45pm, so house lights will be coming on soon - they're a mix of 24VDC halogen, and 240VAC CFL. All it takes is willpower, and (gratefully acknowledged) Govt subsidised PV - yes, I DO pay my taxes, BTW. Mind you, even if it the gear wasn't subsidised, it still would have been cheaper than getting the mains extended to my place.
Not the right solution for everyone, obviously, but saying it can't be done is simply not true.
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Personally I live less than 50 miles from the largest nuclear power facility in the US, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't know why it would bother anybody else either.
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- with all the mining, processing and delivering of fuel plus the ridiculous amounts of concrete required for safe reactor building the CO2e/W of nuclear is approaching that of coal. - nuclear power is generated by huge units, 100's MW, so when they go offline (and they do, eventually) you need a lot of backup power, and it can't be nuclear since it has to be available at moments notice. - there are
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They're pretty much the same people who oppose wind turbines because they kill birds, and oppose solar panels because they use plastic. It's simultaneously these people who make the environmentalist movement less attractive to outsiders. Also, and this is some good irony for you, is that the people who tend to be anti-environmentalism also tend to favor nuclear power, which includes a lot of prominent republicans. They get shunned for that though, because it favors corporations who would profit from nuclear
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The only solution that we have now, with no need for new technological advancements, is nuclear power.
You are too ignorant to be permitted to leave comments on this topic unchallenged.
Alternatives like wind, solar, and bio-mass take considerable amounts of land.
In the case of wind and solar, this is an outright lie, and you are an outright liar. Wind has a tiny footprint. The land used for wind generation can be used for agriculture or running cattle. You are lying about wind, so you are a liar. Solar can be installed on rooftops, where it has zero footprint. It can even be done fairly easily and cheaply on most commercial roofs. Oddly Wal-Mart is one of the few corporations which ha
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Bull fucking shit. For one reason or another you have a dog in this fight, and that dog is nuclear power, and you are willing to tell lies to support it. You are a liar, and you should STFU and tell the truth already.
My "dog in this fight" is my utility bills. My costs for food, fuel, clothing, and shelter (you know, those things we need to survive) are going up all the time. Much of this cost is based on regulations. These regulations are, IMHO, based on some really shaky science. This shaky science includes global warming from human activity and the hazards of nuclear power.
I did a lot of reading on the advancements in energy technology. I found out a lot of interesting things about them. One thing that sticks o
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Alternatives like wind, solar, and bio-mass take considerable amounts of land.
Solar requires zero land. Distributed PV would meet all our power needs and take no undeveloped or agricultural land.
Wind might some day be competitive with coal and be profitable. The problem with wind, as well as geothermal and hydro, is that it is highly sensitive to location. Wind power can share land with things like food crops but it shares a weakness with solar power, it is highly sensitive to weather.
The biggest problem is that people don't consider combinations. Use the location-based source that makes sense. Don't argue against tidal generation because it won't work in Kansas. Then argue against geothermal in Florida, where there isn't a good location. Wind will work in Kansas, and tidal in Florida. Use what you can where you can, and we can fix the problem today.
Instead, lots of
Quick. Switch to hemp, save the planet. (Score:3)
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acid free art paper
That would take all the fun out of growing weed.
Hemp grown with grain fungus . . . what an intriguing idea for a new product.
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Don't believe the ignorant hype. Hemp is a heavy feeder. It depletes the soil of Nitrogen in particular. Switch to hemp? We need to switch away from cotton, but not to hemp. We should be researching fabrics made from plastics made from the oils in algae, which can be grown on seawater or dirty water and which don't even need to be GMO'd because nature has already evolved so many different algaes to fill so many different niches. You just put out a pond about a foot deep (algae depend in insolation) and stir
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BTW, hemp, i.e, cannabis for fiber, is NOT a heavy feeder, you don't even have to feed it! No food, no watering, no pesticides, no herbicides, dirt-poor soil, no chemicals to pollute the water supply to make paper, etc...
meh (Score:3, Informative)
They overlooked the part in their model where more acidic seas dissolve existing carbonate faster. Nature recycles. How do you think coral survived 7000ppm CO2?
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/.images/Evo_large.gif [vrx.net]
They've overlooked simple biomechanics before: "8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/ [theregister.co.uk]
See also: There are winners and losers among corals under the accumulating impacts of climate change, according to a new scientific study. In the world’s first large-scale investigation of how climate affects the composition of coral reefs, an international team of marine scientists concludes that the picture is far more complicated than previously thought - but that total reef losses due to climate change are unlikely. Ref: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)00255-2 [cell.com]"
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The first corals were soft bodied, which probably helped.
If instead of relying on The Register you went to the NASA source for that [nasa.gov], you'd find this quote:
Wake me when there's a problem besides the model (Score:2)
The article starts by making the statement that the "CO2 emissions" are responsible for the climate change. The nuance in this study is the inclusion of a new feature: "... include simulations of how ocean chemistry would interact with an atmosphere with higher carbon dioxide levels in the future". So the sources of error are the corelation of 'emissions' to climate changes AND the modeling of the interaction of CO2 with the ocean (and coral's hardiness in the face of change). The latter two in particula
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Absolutely. In the meantime, I highly recommend driving without a seatbelt. You can put it on once the collision is underway.
The writing on the wall (Score:2)
Could someone clarify? (Score:2)
I am in no way a climate scientist, so if someone could please explain this article to me, I would appreciate it.
1) It says "Coral Reefs Could Be Decimated by 2100" but then the first sentence is that "Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue" - decimation is 1/10, significantly different from "nearly every". Is this just sloppy language or which is correct?
2) The article says "No precise rule of thumb exists to link that figure and the health of ree
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"Decimation" is commonly taken to mean "complete or near-complete destruction". Yes, it's etymologically wrong. Get over it.
trivial solution to dropping ocean pH (Score:2)
already known that seeding ocean with iron will cause huge increase in plankton, which cuases huge increase in fish population. the plankton take carbon to the bottom of the sea in their shells when they die (as they always have). Carbon is thus removed from the atmosphere, and the ocean. problem solved. already tested on small scale and entirely natural
If simulation said so, then... (Score:2)
It is really very grave!!! OK... MAYBE!
Simulation is a software fed with some input data, then said software performs calculations, iterations, and so on.
If political agenda is part of input data, then whole simulation becomes a lot trickier. It is tricky from start - as we assume software writer had good model, programmed without errors... When input data is biased towards particular political goal, then all bets are off. And anybody following whole climate "discussion" knows how objectivity is long dead.
N
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
So what if all the Coral Reefs die,
Most of the sea life in the ocean will die. The reefs are a critical component of the food chain for fish of all sizes, including plenty that don't directly live on the reef itself.
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Citation? Or did you just pull that out of your ass? Coral reefs, in fact, only exist in very specialized locations [unep-wcmc.org]. Losing them would be a shame, but it wouldn't kill "most" sea life. (Incidentally, ocean acidification has happened multiple times before in earth's history, so it's not a completely mystery what would happen.)
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So with the entire planet having too much for the environment to absorb and yet CO2 is trending higher, where exactly are these locations supposed to be? There's nowhere left.
This isn't a "the next generation can deal with it".
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Alarmist much? The *current* coral reefs will die, but new ones will appear at locations where the CO2 level is currently too low for them.
They are dying much faster than they are growing. It takes decades to centuries to grow a new coral reef from scratch. In the meantime the oceans bioversity would be decimated past the point of no return for many species.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
So....reduced by 10% then?
That's an anachronistic definition. Modern definition, as defined by the OED:
kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of [oxforddictionaries.com]
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
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I wouldn't exactly call it 'encourage[ment]'. It was used by the Romans to punish military units deemed cowardly or disobedient.
(Or maybe my sarcasm detector's not properly connected.)
Re:Who cares? (Score:4)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
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Saying that its ok if the shallow water corals die because we still have the deep water coral shows you have no understanding of the role of coral reefs. Its like saying its ok if all the evergreens die because I still have an aluminum christmas tree in the garage.
Re:Good Grief. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good Grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you leave your brains at work when you left on friday? If you could just, for a second or two, try to get it in your skull that potentially species-destroying events are not safely ignored and do not go away by wishful thinking, then *maybe* you could accept that there are a lot of people concerned about it. Maybe a tad more than the 100 lunatics you seem to think make up the entire society of "people who think it's a bad thing".
Doesn't it bother you that the news is starting to look like the introduction to Sunshine or similarly apocalyptic movies? That there are very serious issues with our entire food chain? That there are very serious issues with the ability to sustain our current standards of living if we go on like this?
The whole problem is *not* that most people think we need to give away boatloads of money to appease our conscience. That is just your personal straw man. You can keep setting it up and burning it down again, but no one in their right mind will accept your verbal hysteria as an argument. Most people just want to hold on to the standards of living we have. And not see it getting much worse, and see what their children potentially have to live through. If we do not act *now* we will never act until it is too late. And then, draconian measures will have to be implemented.
The geo-engineering measures are opposed by a lot of people because outside of a very small group of techno-fetishists, it does not *solve* the underlying issues (at best it just mitigates them - but even that is questionable), has side-effects that are unknown and potentially as lethal as the current issues we have. Since we have a very well-understood way of dealing with the CO2 issues, which is to stop spewing CO2 in the air, there is no reason to go to unproven options. Reducing CO2 output has no known harmful side-effects, except that old and established industries that cannot change their operations, will go the way of the dinosaurs. Boohoo. That's not a communist plot, that's a consequence of the bed those industries made and now have to lie in.
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I appreciate your attempt to reason with them, but it just doesn't work very well.
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No, it doesn't bother me in the least. People have predicted mass starvation and the collapse of civilization for a long time (cf Malthus), and technological progress has always prevented that. In fact, it was
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"I do not want to live in a sustainable society"
Please momentarily remove your political polaroid eyeglasses, and ponder the *literal* meaning of that phrase..
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Yes, societies need to change, renew, and transform themselves. Look at the kinds of crooks that promised a thousand years of stability, appealing to a fear of change and progress in their people.
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The broadcasters are required to keep track of political airtime sold or donated. The FCC enforces public access to this file. Broadcaster mind control is all covered in the 1983 documentary "Videodrome" (James Woods, Debbie Harry).
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(1) Why do you assume that the person you are replying to favours genocide as the method of reducing carbon emissions? You must have some reason or else you wouldn't have listed it as your first assumption.
(2) Genocide is a very serious accusation and I see no support for it in the comment that you are
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I can only say for sure that I'm a supporter of the action plan put forward by the brilliant Dr. Sagan:
"For our own world the peril is more subtle. Since this series [Cosmos] was first broadcast the dangers of the increasing greenhouse eff
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No gas reserves? You are totally wrong, wrong, wrong. We have OCEANS of gas.
The USA have natural gas reserves about the size of two years consumption. Thats why you are fracking.
The rest of your post is utter nonsense.
You are poor? Define poor? Since when? Since yesterday? So before we talked about AGW you where rich? Wow, what are you doing against AGW? Nothing! So how can it be that any energy politics whatsoever made you poor?
You just talk nonsense ... and have certainly no idea about the stuff you are t
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Their adamant stance against anything geo-engineering is evidence of what they're up to since such geo-engineering would short-circuit their plans to redistribute wealth
Libertarians aren't against geo-engineering. They're against government geo-engineering. There is a significant difference. They're not against people going forth and deliberately changing the climate, they are simply completely ignorant of history and for some reason expect corporations to take up the challenge of their own free will because if they don't they will eventually cease to exist. The problem again is that they ignore history, which is replete with examples of corporations and businessmen acting
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Re:CO2 to kill reef? Not the coral disease? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess that's why your link says " disease is not considered a major threat to the Reef ."
Although apparently simply reading their own links is too hard for some people...
Re:CO2 to kill reef? Not the coral disease? (Score:5, Informative)
And yet your linked article says that the increase of disease is thought to be due to the water being warmer. Yes, this is going to really put a dampener on the Global Warming campaign. And where did you get the idea that scientists will stop studying the reef just because it is thought to involve climate change?
Science doesn't work that way. The different disciplines don't go take a holiday when another group makes a discovery.
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And yet you've never learnt to stop projecting, have you?
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One question: is it stupid to unite against a common enemy, if the enemy is real? Because you seem to imply that whatever the reality of AGW, as long as we have to do something together with "them darn fur'ners" it's bad.
So: if the temperatures do *not* plunge back, what new excuse will you make then? And suppose you do turn around then, how much worse will the measures have to be, thanks to people like you? Right now, the measures are actually not bad. They will kill off a few companies that are inefficien
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Yes. Those with crazy predictions should stop. Those with rational, probable ones please keep predicting.
Focussing on what is happening now will make us miss those events we are actively and preventably causing
whose timeframes are measured in the 100s of years. And those will tend to be the important, game-changing
events.
Umm. Unfortunately, nature, and physics, chemistry etc, are not simple enough for most people to (bother to) comprehend.
Unfortunately our collective activity is profoundly f***ing up nature
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Interested in some clownfish? ;-)
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Negligible compared to human CO2 output, yes, but it helps. Lots and lots of trees can help.