Why Our Brains Can't Process the Gravest Threats To Humanity 637
merbs writes: Our brains are unfathomably complex, powerful organs that grant us motor skills, logic, and abstract thought. Brains have bequeathed unto we humans just about every cognitive advantage, it seems, except for one little omission: the ability to adequately process the need for the whole species' long-term survival. They're miracle workers for the short-term survival of individuals, but the scientific evidence suggests that the human brain flails when it comes to navigating wide-lens, slowly-unfurling crises like climate change.
I can't say I fully agree (Score:4, Insightful)
Highly evolved animals such as humans have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to seeing into the future. The problem does exist that some if not all of us have evolved enough to plan adequately into the long term. Like playing a game of chess, generally the player who can see his opponent's moves and strategies the furthest into the future is the victor. Yet, not everyone is a chess master and thinks that far ahead.
Re:I can't say I fully agree (Score:4, Funny)
That's why so many people win the lottery.
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Highly evolved animals can also smell bull**** (Score:5, Insightful)
Highly evolved animals such as humans have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to seeing into the future. The problem does exist that some if not all of us have evolved enough to plan adequately into the long term.
Highly evolved animals such as humans ALSO have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to constructing money- and power-grabbing scams, and detecting such scams when they're being perpetrated upon them.
Unfortunately, the Global Warming Solution Advocates, regardless of the merits of their concerns, used something that has the form of a gigantic scam when promoting their proposals, and promoted proposals that involve massive transfers of wealth, increases in government intervention in private lives and businesses, and reductions in standards of living. This has created substantial skepticism (which moneyed interests that would be harmed by the proposed actions have, of course, gleefully promoted). The failure of the climate to follow their predictions and discoveries of their fudging of the data doesn't help their cause, either.
There are a number of steps between "I think the weather is getting warmer, and people are causing it." to "We must drive the developed world's population down to third world standards RIGHT NOW, to prevent a couple degrees increase in world average temperature, or we're ALL going to DIE!"
Because it looks like a scam, about all they've gotten any substantial traction on is that the temperature is changing a bit (as it has for all of geological time - we ARE coming out of an ice age, after all - and whether the change is actually human-caused is immaterial beyond indicating that we could change it the other way if we tried). But they haven't convinced the population that they have a correct model.
And they haven't even STARTED on the NEXT of several steps: Is global warming, bad, indifferent, or even good? (The geological and historical record seems to indicate that substantially warmer than what we have now - by more than the amount they're concerned about - is actually better for both civilization and life in general.)
With the population unconvinced that there IS a "Grave Threat To Humanity", it's premature to assume that "Our Brains Can't Process" it.
But speaking as if the thing to be proven is already proven IS another technique of scammers. And making such a claim is an obvious prelude to a move by governmental people, who believe "their brains ARE capable of processing it", to go ahead and impose wealth-transferring, power-grabbing, population-impoverishing solutions, "for their own good", whether the populations want to be reduced to serfdom (rather than be killed by what they perceive as the allegedly falling sky) or not.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Highly evolved animals can also smell bull**** (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Highly evolved animals can also smell bull**** (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, I've come to much the same conclusion. The most vocal of the environmentalists are demanding that we all conserve water here in California, claiming that we have a water shortage, when there's approximately a trillion gallons of water within a quarter mile of our coastline, just waiting to be used.
So instead of spending a few more pennies per gallon to set up the mass-desalinization that we simply must have to properly sustain the population over the long term, these folks keep insisting that we should try to conserve our way out by doing stupid things like saving the wasted water while you wait for your shower to get hot and using it to water your plants, and other token gestures that significantly reduce quality of life while not making a significant dent in the state's water consumption (the overwhelming majority of which is used not by showers and toilets, not even by lawns, but by mass agriculture).
The problem is, when these folks say that they want to save 25% of California's water use through cuts to residential and municipal water use, they're really saying that they want every man, woman, and child to magically import about twice as much water as they currently use from some magical river in the sky so that they can be net producers of water instead of consumers, at about their current rate of consumption. Yeah, that's going to work.
And then they propose dubious ideas like reprocessing of waste water as a means of saving water... except that reusing water doesn't save water. Waste water typically gets processed and dumped into rivers and streams. If instead of doing that, you reuse the water, you're taking out less water, but you're also failing to put back exactly the same amount of water as you reuse. Yes, that might mean less processing for the cities downstream, but in the end, you still have the same amount of water in the river that you did before, so there's the same quantity of water for folks downstream as before.
The only way that reusing water could actually save water would be if the total human consumption and release of water exceeded the amount of water needed to keep the rivers and streams at a safe minimum level for wildlife, allowing less water to be released from the reservoirs upstream. Unfortunately, that is not the case, so waste reprocessing cannot (safely) save water.
These are presumably the same people who, when we had a power shortage, didn't demand more generator capacity, didn't demand investigations into the illegal practices that resulted in the shortage, but instead tried to get everybody to save power by banning incandescent light bulbs. This, of course, had no noticeable effect on our state's power consumption because the total consumption from incandescent bulbs averaged a fraction of a percent of the state's power use (because nearly 100% of businesses switched to primarily fluorescent lighting at least twenty years ago). So they took away a form of lighting product that a lot of us preferred under the guise of saving power, but didn't actually save a meaningful amount of power.
You get the idea. Sane environmentalism means pushing for renewable energy sources. Trying to get people to reduce consumption is like screaming at the wind, demanding that it not mess up your hair; anybody going down that path is pretty much guaranteed to look absolutely insane.
In contrast, Scott Adams says np... (Score:2, Informative)
Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) thinks that these slow moving threats are ones that society will handle, because they do have visibility.
Initial:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1... [dilbert.com]
Update:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1... [dilbert.com]
I tend to agree with this: there's only so much buck-passing that can happen. I'll also point out that several messes today have literally everyone agreeing that they should be cleaned up, but they are just maneuvering such that the "other" guy (whether that distinction is factual or not) pays the
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I read all of those "slow moving disasters" and have a different rule to take from them. "People who exaggerate gloom and doom are usually wrong". Many of those disasters were averted because the people claiming gloom and doom were flat out wrong. We were never in danger of running out of oil, we just improved out extraction techniques and our discovery techniques. etc.
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Don't look now, but SS is not 50 years down the road. It's hard to say exactly when, because it's about confidence in fresh printed money. The balance sheet is already fucked beyond repair.
slowly unfurling crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow, I have a hard time putting "slowly unfurling" and "crisis" together in a meaningful way.
Crisis sort of suggests something that needs to be dealt with Right The Fuck Now, not in twenty or thirty or forty or fifty or one hundred years.
Re:slowly unfurling crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:slowly unfurling crisis? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, it's rather challenging to discern an ACTUAL "point of no return" from "nothing promulgated vociferously", particularly when the people INSISTING that THIS TIME the sky REALLY IS FALLING are basically the same crew that has told us the same thing about running out of water, running out of food, running out of oil, running out of land, etc, etc, ad infinitum, the same people that would lay in front of bull dozers to stop that horrible nuclear power because it was certainly going to kill everyone (when their choices in fact condemned us to more pollution, acid rain, and accelerated CO2 production), or who screamed 'SILENT SPRING!' until we stopped using DDT...which was a death sentence for tens of millions of malaria victims that may never have died.
It's that old "boy who cries wolf" thing. Now, of course it IS absolutely possible that this time he is telling the truth. But his track record sucks pretty hard, so no, I'm not listening this time.
Re:slowly unfurling crisis? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we all agree that thermodynamics exists and eventually we will reach equilibrium.
But being "stable at an equilibrium" does not necessarily mean that the equilibrium point is compatible with society or humans, and it's not hard to construct a scenario where the eventual outcome is catastrophic and inevitable once a certain threshold is passed, even if that threshold is itself not damaging.
For example, if you jump out of a plane with parachute you'll be moving at dangerous speeds relative to the ground but it's not a problem because you'll able to decelerate before it becomes catastrophic. However, there's some minimum altitude below which your parachute will not have time to decelerate you before you hit the ground. Nothing physically happens at this threshold -- you're likely not even accelerating anymore by the time you get there -- and shortly thereafter your speed will reach equilibrium velocity with the ground regardless of your actions. But if you didn't pull the cord before the point of no return you won't live to see it.
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Consider this. You have a group of people say at work. Say, the management begins to take decisions that damage morale for whatever reason. In the beginning only a few people grumble, over time you begin to see some talents going away but you still take new recruits and although the project naturally slows down you are still not worried. Until one day, morale collapses catastrophically, 50% leave on the spot and you go bust.
Thus the slow change eventually led to catastrophic failure. Many processes in Natur
Re:slowly unfurling crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Support nuclear power. That'll fix carbon emissions by a lot.
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I have nothing against nuclear power per se' but the economics of them don't appear to be very good. They'll have a hard time competing against solar PV and wind in the future.
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ive already done and shown the analysis, as well linked to analysis by other engineers and scientists even more adept than myself, to how we can do solar and wind now, today, with current technology, and replace the entire energy needs of the planet. the idea that we can only do it for a minority of the planet only shows your own ignorance on the subject.
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population control... there its all fixed now.
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You make an assertion without a shred of proof.
I've always said... (Score:2)
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The human species' most dangerous trait is its ability to rationalize nearly any belief or behavior.
Not a specifically human trait. It's just that we're unable to hear and understand other species' own rationalizations, hence why we think we're the most intelligent.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.
Duh.. Evolution. (Score:2)
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I would amend that to "survival of the genes". There's benefit to surviving long enough after having kids for them to be able to survive individually, and there's benefit to helping your kids for as long as you last, so we're tuned to want to do so. However, there hasn't been a lot of opportunity for natural selection for "properly handles extinction events", and since you only have to get it wrong once to be done with... I would have to say that we're substantially outside the range of behavior that natura
been there don't that (Score:3)
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Natural selection, evolution.
As long as humans figure out how to manufacture food straight from raw materials before the edible species die out - I don't care...
Re:been there don't that (Score:5, Insightful)
Homo sapiens survived them, sure. Human civilization has yet to pass that test.
I think we'll do all right, personally - we've got the technology to deal with most of it. It's the change in the weather patterns and the economic effects from that (think farmland becoming unusable due to drought, industries having to relocate, sea levels rising above the level of coastal cities, etc.) that we'll have the hardest time with. I highly doubt we'll have a dark age, but a prolonged economic depression in parts of the developed world will change things quite a bit.
Overpopulating (Score:2)
A first year biology student can explain how deer and wolf populations naturally balance each other. Nobody dares to discuss how humans' destruction of other species habitats threaten the existence of them and us together.
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Either we do it, or we let nature do it. And we do it right now. All this "world hunger" problem isn't just more than population control. Or think about the program China's been pulling off.
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A first year biology student can arm wave about ecology. But they won't have the math to explain it.
Granting the graduating biology student is also unlikely to have the math.
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This is just a thought experiment, please don't crucify me:
People tend to think of humans as different from the rest of life on earth. All plants and animals except humans form a natural balance and live in harmony; only humans screw everything up by overpopulating themselves and their livestock while making everything else go extinct.
But what if that's wrong, and humans are no different? After all we have pretty much the same DNA and cellular structure as anything else on the planet. Those wonderful wolves
Re:Overpopulating (Score:5, Insightful)
All plants and animals except humans form a natural balance and live in harmony
They all try to kill or outbreed each other and steal each others food or habitat as much as possible. We're just better at it. The only thing that limits the population of an apex predator is food supply.
We have marketing to do this... (Score:2)
The whole point of marketing is to get people to reprioritize their perceived needs and act accordingly. Why else do you think we keep getting stories about how global warming is the cause of this or that event in the news?
Again? (Score:2, Insightful)
Another reason why those who disagree with the climate change proponents are defective.
Mind you, the enlightened few do not suffer from these limitations. They are just better than the rest of us.
Margaret Sanger, their patron saint, certainly explained this.
Put up a street light... (Score:2)
Governments tend to ignore problems until somebody get killed, like when they put up a red-light or stop sign, only after some little old lady gets killed.
Similarly, we will do something about climate change only AFTER New York City is under 3 feet of water in the streets. Remember Sandy? When it looks like that 24/7 in New York, then, and only then, will action be taken.
Wonder why "climate change" ain't taken seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Temperatures rising a few degrees are not a threat to "long term survival".
Being alarmist about that isn't helping.
Re: Wonder why "climate change" ain't taken seriou (Score:3)
Unless massive population migrations and world-wide famines spark a nuclear war...
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Quotes Jared Diamond a lot (Score:3, Interesting)
Jared Diamond openly wept seeing malaria patients struggling to survive in an African hospital. He has illustrated the intelligence of the so called primitive tribes people in so many anecdotes in his book. And the climate change denialists managed to mire him into a law suit. They have instigated some Papua New Guineans mentioned in his last book to sue him for slander and other stuff. That is the extent they are willing to go, and that is their favorite weapon, law suits and puppet legislators.
Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you don't than you are evil.
Cthulhu? (Score:2)
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from th
Can't Process? (Score:2)
I call Balogna (Score:2)
Suppose there was prediction a large asteroid was going to hit earth in 100 days with 95% certainty. I guarantee you would see a lot of this 'processing' going on....
blergh. (Score:3)
maybe because there are some problems that are not clearly defined, intractable, and require a more genetic, trial and error type approach to solving? A million people seeking their own best interest will probably have a better outcome than a hive mind.
Not to mention the potential for premature optimization on a species wide basis?
Wanderlust (Score:3)
I was living on Cape Cod near the beach with a good view of Martha's Vineyard which was three or four miles away. Sometimes (very rarely) we would see a deer either swimming towards the island or getting out of the ocean from the direction of the island.
Whatever urge the deer had to swim across miles of ocean was probably not beneficial for survival of the individual so why would they do that? I concluded that although it was bad for survival of the individual, it was terrific for survival of the species since they would tend to not be locked into a specific geographical location and could migrate across significant barriers.
I think many humans have this same built-in wanderlust. In this sense many animals, including humans, have adapted to deal with climate change. I have even wondered if our inclination to warfare was beneficial because it caused the creative peace-loving types to spread out away from the crowds. I think the real problem is that we are not genetically prepared for a finite Earth. If the Earth were infinite then I think many of the grave challenges we face which threaten our species would not exist.
It seems like we need grave threats to humanity (Score:2)
1. Various Nuclear disaster scenarios
2. Global Economic collapse
3. Climate Change
4. Various religion based end-times
5. Y2K
6. etc
Honestly, it is like we can't function without having some sort of doomsday scenario in the picture
Re:It seems like we need grave threats to humanity (Score:5, Insightful)
There is such a thing as nuance, and understanding. Just because some people like beating the drums of doom doesn't mean that there is no problem that needs to be fixed.
Joseph Heller (Score:3)
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
“Insanity is contagious.”
“[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.”
“mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.”
“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
you can't handle the truth (Score:2)
Pack of Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Human brains are GREAT at finding answers to complex, long term problems. Very few people are "flailing about", confused by climate change - they have very clear and certain opinions, usually held for totally stupid reasons having more to do with whether the belief resonates with their other beliefs. The "flailing" over climate change is taking place at a societal level, not individual human brains that can't see long term threats.
The article in question is really just a sly way of arguing that climate change deniers' brains are deficient, compared to readers whose superior brains have recognized the evidence for climate change.
Oh, and if you just decided I'm a climate change denier based on that last sentence, you have just proven my point for me - poor evidence, jumped to a conclusion. Recognizing an invalid method of argument does not automatically mean one is opposed to the beliefs of the arguer, though admittedly that is exactly the sort of human behavior I am pointing to.
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The article in question is really just a sly way of arguing that climate change deniers' brains are deficient, compared to readers whose superior brains have recognized the evidence for climate change.
The first rule of crankery is to generate thoughts to defend said crankery.
If you think something is all one way or the other, then that should raise a red flag that you are deluding yourself.
Nothing to do with wide lens (Score:4)
Humans are a bad judge of risk period. We underestimate all risks, whether it be the wide far reaching kind like climate change, or the short term ones with associated with dollar signs like a train derailment, stock market crash, or the millions of people who load themselves up with unmanageable debt.
No Agenda (Score:4, Informative)
Article's author covers politics for treehugger.com. Yeah, no agenda there.
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Why don't you read the original research, examine the
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the problem is that the premise of this article is that the author somehow is superhuman and sees threats to humanity that the common plebs can't observe because of their inferior mental capabilities.
The idea that brains might be better at detecting direct threats to the individual rather than the herd isn't that controversial and further studies on the subject could be interesting.
Claiming that one is exempt from the effect and that everyone else is wrong starts to sound a lot like claiming that the governments mind control ray doesn't affect me since I only drink recycled urine to avoid the chemicals added to the tap water.
Feel free to research how the brain works. Don't skew the results to push your agenda.
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Well, the problem is that the premise of this article is that the author somehow is superhuman and sees threats to humanity that the common plebs can't observe because of their inferior mental capabilities. The idea that brains might be better at detecting direct threats to the individual rather than the herd isn't that controversial and further studies on the subject could be interesting.
Not only that but there are actually a lot of people who are very perceptive of long term threats. These people typically suffer from various forms of anxiety disorders and/or various chondrias. The worst ones typically hang out at 911truth.org, infowars.com, or prisonplanet.com, constantly pester the bilderberg group, and believe that there's an active global conspiracy by completely imagined groups like NWO or Illuminati.
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?
People that can see where the world is headed and can see what the threats are are bad because?
Or are you just attempting to bunch together people who have their eyes open with the gullible fools who believe everything that prison-planet comes out with?
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you suggesting that the only threats we should see as real are those that can be perceived by common plebs with inferior mental capabilities?
Anyone who has ever had to remove a virus from someone's computer after they clicked a link in an email from "support@microshaft.com" knows first-hand what it means to see threats to humanity that the common plebs can't observe because of their inferior mental capabilities.
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Ah, what a beautiful statement of totalitarian ideology: people should be governed by their superiors for their own good.
To answer your question: you can "see" whatever threats you like. However, centuries have shown that it is better to let those with "inferior mental capabilities" make their own mistakes than to give too much power to a ruling elite.
And you shoul
Also, grammar.... (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently the human mind is also lacking in the grammar department. " bequeathed unto we humans" contains a prepositional phrase, the object of which should be in the ... wait for it.... objective case. Thus the correct version is "bequeathed unto us humans". Get the simple stuff right and the more complex will follow.
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No one who has ever read the Bible believes that God is going to personally intervene to prevent you from screwing up in your current life
That's too much bullshit to cope with. I had to sacrifice my mod-points to tell you that you are terribly, terribly wrong. I have family in the midwest and the east coast.
My Uncle literally believes that humans can't possibly alter the climate, as God says that the Earth is unchanging. He's not a... stupid man. He retired recently from a life-long career as a network engineer at the Census Bureau; he just really believes his cultural interpretation of the vague
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
On the case of the article most humans have difficulty planning to the next pay cheque let alone their retirement and they don't give a crap what happens to the future after they die they are only self interested. So its not that they don't see threats they are either desensitised or simply don't care due to self interest and trying to survive to the next day
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right about one thing. Humans are ill equipped to care about the welfare of those beyond their small tribe. But that's why we form governments and appoint leaders. They are supposed to look out for the greater whole.
As for your Climate Change alarmists, I take great exception to that and consider it a great fallacy. It is easier to sow doubt than to convince someone of a fact and that is what deniers have preyed upon. If you don't think we are all going to be fucked as a species in the next 100 years then you sir or madam are part of the problem.
And there is no overstating. The facts are the facts regardless if those facts take 25 years, 100 years, or 200 years to catch up to us. It's going to happen. We are putting BILLIONS of metric tons of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere every year for damn near a century now. The ONLY way you don't draw the same conclusions that 99% of scientists do is because a) Your basic knowledge of how greenhouse gases work is deficient or b) you clearly have an agenda and purposely adopt an ignorant position.
The reason alarms are raised is because there is a huge lag when it comes to the effects on the atmosphere and the climate. So if we wait until shit is so obviously wrong that even the Koch's admit it then nothing we do will ever reverse the damage.
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The facts are the facts regardless if those facts take 25 years, 100 years, or 200 years to catch up to us. It's going to happen.
Timeframe matters more than anything in the climate change debate. 50% of the world's current population centers being underwater matters if its going to happen in 25 years, but it doesn't mean shit if its going to happen in 200 years. Our society can handle change quite easily, unless it is abrupt and drastic, then we can still handle it but with a bit more pain. How fast current climate change is in relation to previous geologic events means absolutely nothing, all that matters is are the species on t
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The land "given" to us by climate change will not be suitable for the crops we used to grow on the land taken from us by climate change, as crops need the correct soil, the correct amount of sunlight, the correct seasonal changes, and so on. Also, the sea level rise doesn't sound too drastic, but that extra foot would cause all kinds of hell during a storm surge. That affects all cities near the coast, which includes some of the most important cities in the world, and billions of people. Those can't just
Your analysis lacks historical context (Score:3)
I also submit that Global warming / Climate Change has been ruined by the alarmists overstating there case rather than presenting clear and accurate statistics and claims.
There is enough blame to go around all sides of the political debate. But the science was always clear. The NAS showed that there was scientific consensus in 1979 [google.com], and the public was on board [ontheissues.org], until Luntz, and some ex-tobacco propagandists got at it in the mid 1990s. Their actions are a matter of public record, but for some reason most people aren't interested in the actual history, except for some historians [merchantsofdoubt.org]. And the political manipulation continues. Part of that is to always accuse the other guy of exact
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Yes, but those transitions usually take place within thousands or tens of thousands of years. A timespan that makes it possible for plant and animal life to adapt.
We are provoking that kind of change within a century.
Re:Icehouse Earth (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but those transitions usually take place within thousands or tens of thousands of years.
Not so. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports... [www.ipcc.ch]
The central Greenland ice core record (GRIP and GISP2) has a near annual resolution across the entire glacial to Holocene transition, and reveals episodes of very rapid change. The return to the cold conditions of the Younger Dryas from the incipient inter-glacial warming 13,000 years ago took place within a few decades or less (Alley et al., 1993). The warming phase, that took place about 11,500 years ago, at the end of the Younger Dryas was also very abrupt and central Greenland temperatures increased by 7C or more in a few decades (Johnsen et al., 1992; Grootes et al., 1993; Severinghaus et al., 1998). Most of the changes in wind-blown materials and some other climate indicators were accomplished in a few years (Alley et al., 1993; Taylor et al., 1993; Hammer et al., 1997). Broad regions of the Earth experienced almost synchronous changes over periods of 0 to 30 years (Severinghaus et al., 1998), and changes were very abrupt in at least some regions (Bard et al., 1987), e.g. requiring as little as 10 years off Venezuela (Hughen et al., 1996). Fluctuations in ice conductivity indicate that atmospheric circulation was reorganised extremely rapidly (Taylor et al., 1993). A similar, correlated sequence of abrupt deglacial events also occurred in the tropical and temperate North Atlantic (Bard et al., 1987; Hughen et al., 1996) and in Western Europe (von Grafenstein et al., 1999).
The inception of deglacial warming about 14.5 ky BP was also very rapid, leading to the Bölling-Alleröd warm period in less than twenty years (Severinghaus and Brook, 1999). Almost synchronously, major vegetation changes occurred in Europe and North America with a rise in African lake levels (Gasse and van Campo, 1994). There was also a pronounced warming of the North Atlantic and North Pacific (Koç and Janssen, 1994; Sarnthein et al., 1994; Kotilainen and Shackleton, 1995; Thunnell and Mortyn, 1995; Wansaard, 1996; Watts et al., 1996; Webb et al., 1998).
Re:Icehouse Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because this big rock we're on can survive doesn't mean we will. Climate Change will happen. We'll adapt or die. The rock will keep spinning. So... the "its happened before" argument is irrelevant... we know we've caused the recent one by increasing CO2 by 40% and measured its affects.
What's hard to predict - and trust - are other people's future projections. We don't trust politicians. Too many scientists have too many private grants (indirect bribes). TV doesn't have anything factual on it any more. The only thing we can really trust - and affect - is what's right in front of us.
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Your citations are even good.
But certainly you don't think these were non-causally linked random events caused by God sneezing or some shit, right?
All kinds of horrible shit has happened to this planet over time to wipe out massive portions of its population, toss its climate way out of its regular cycle, and generally really make the place a shitty place to be for anyone expecting stability.
The problem is that the only current traumatic event the plan
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such as volcanic activity under Greenland or large asteroid impact.
Except volcanoes don't warm the climate up [wikipedia.org] and there was no large asteroid impact in that period either.
Basically your argument is like saying: "Yeah, fracking can cause earthquakes, but we have determined that earthquakes have happened naturally in the past, so it's perfectly normal and acceptable"
Speaking of which, when you find yourself in a hole, my advice is stop digging. We have records of climate events far more savage than anything predicted by science, in the very recent geological past. Yes the climate is warming up, the question is how much of that are we responsible for.
Either way I expect fossil fuels to be entirely phased out by 2100 (a process which started long before the recent reso
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1. Wake up
2. Turn off brain
3. Eat
4. Work
5. Eat
6. Work
7. Eat
8. Sleep
Re:Icehouse Earth (Score:5, Informative)
we are profoundly foolish to think that our impact has been significant - it has not.
Worldwide fossil fuel usage, which is has grown approximately 44% in the last decade, is more than 41 million tons per day. Human dry biomass is only about 100 billion tons. In other words, if all humans were dried out to be burned as fuel, we would supply our own energy needs for about 2.5 days (if we paradoxically had energy needs after being dried out to use as fuel). Total annual production of plant and animal biomass is estimated at about 275 million tons per day. At the rate fossil fuel use is increasing we could be at that point of burning more fossil fuel than that in just over 50 years. That seems like naive curve fitting, except that it seems to work perfectly well historically and we have no reason to believe that increasing population and industrialization won't lead us to that point. Any events that would prevent that from happening other than a wholesale switch to alternative sources would pretty much have to be horrible tragedies.
The amount of oxygen required for burning fossil fuels varies from as little as twice the mass in oxygen required for methane to as much as 14 times the mass. Let's just settle on 4 times the mass. So, we can say that the fossil fuel burned in a day at present uses about 164 Million tons of oxygen per day. There are about 1 quadrillion tons of oxygen in the atmosphere. So at just the present rate, that's 0.0000164% of the oxygen in the atmosphere a day, or .00596% a year, or .0596 a decade or .1197% over twenty years, or .2993% over fifty years. Except that, if usage does continue to grow at current rates, in fifty years, the usage rate will be high enough that it would be 2% of the atmosphere over the next fifty years after that if usage levels remain steady.
Of course, the oxygen in the atmosphere isn't static. It's constantly being replenished. About 1.37 billion tons of it is made every day on Earth. So, using 164 million tons of it a day for combusting fossil fuels, we're only using 11.9% of daily production. Not a problem! And if we actually reach that 50 year projection, we'll only be using 80% of the oxygen produced in a day (at least at current levels, the vastly increased C02 would increase oxygen production from plants a little, but wouldn't affect the total that much). Surely Not a problem. It's not over 100% after all. Even then, we wouldn't actually start dying en masse of asphyxiation for a good 1000 years or more, so who really cares, right?!
Ok. After that little exercise, I feel a lot better and I have to concede to you that someone would have to be a truly profound fool... in fact, a total moron, to think that we couldn't, uh, I mean could, have any impact on the atmosphere.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the word the GP was looking for is "geologically." On a geologic time scale, humans are insignificant. That being said, rather than believe the guy who wrote this article I'm in more of the Scott Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1... [dilbert.com]
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Oh hey! I present the dude this whole case study was based on!
Re: (Score:3)
It's nice to see someone with such a closed mind and a sense of superiority on Slashdot. Good luck with that. Let me know how it turns out for you.
Re: (Score:3)
Probably, but not definitely. We do not know how life on this planet will end, or what man-made or natural extinction events are to come. For all we know Venus might have had life once.
The worst case scenario for too much CO2 release is ocean acidification kills most ocean life, which then rots - it's then eaten by organisms which emit hydrogen sulfide, which then kills us humans because it screws up the air we breath and breathing is kind of essential to living.
It's
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Make sure you really do. It's got electrolytes!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not shared by everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Hate to tell you, but you're stereotyping. There are plenty of skeptics who simply think the scientists involved have no good idea how to model the climate and that their attempts are crude at best, dismal at worst. The climate does seem to be getting warmer, but it doesn't take much to prove that. Everything else is half-baked, IMHO. Do we need to take drastic measures that will destroy the Western world's economy? Probably not.
Most people in support of drastic intervention fail to grasp that we have no real alternative to fossil fuels in the pipe. Furthermore, renewables research isn't moving fast enough for their sensibilities, and they tend to overestimate the possibility of an imminent solution. A very common aversion to nuclear power alongside global warming extremism just puts in the last nail. We should go nuclear. That would fix carbon emissions. Most warming interventionists don't want that either.
Still, I'm glad the renewables research is happening. Fossil fuels are decidedly finite. So is nuclear. We need a means to survive, I'm just doubtful that we need to flail about with solutions that may cause more harm than good.
Sincerely,
Not anti-science, not a creationist, never owned a gun, am very good with math, and independent as far as political leanings go. Don't stuff me into your box. Thanks.
Re:Not shared by everyone (Score:5, Funny)
You really should buy a gun. Other than that you sound like a sense-able sort.
Re: (Score:3)
They also don't want any new hydropower, which is the largest renewable energy source on the planet. It's also been used far longer than other sources of power and is extremely cheap and reliable.
But think of the FISH!
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Also to your point about nuclear being finite... Yes, but not in any meaningful time period. If you go out to when we would run out of accessible nuclear material on earth, you might as well point out that there is no such thing as a renewable energy source as the sun itself is finite.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not anti-science, am a creationist, never owned a gun, am very good with math and independent politically.
The earth's temperature has NOT been going up the last 15 years. But otherwise I agree with your post. We are getting there as far as stopping the burning of fossil fuels which aren't unlimited and are dirty to burn. But a recent study showed that those who are railing about all this stuff typically have the highest electric bills and tend to drive large SUVs. Al Gore has been accused of this as
Re: (Score:3)
Let's try and think: if a data set shows as noise, it means one of two things. One, it could be that the data is noise. Two, it could mean that the trend requires a much larger amount of data to determine. Bingo! If your uncertainty is significantly higher than any possible trend, it's pointless to use the data. Instead, you look for more data, and lo and behold, you find that when you include the full range of data all t
Re:Not shared by everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make sense, except that subsidies aren't there to benefit the oil companies, they're there to keep production up so that prices stay nice and low.
Providing money for renewables is good and all, but bear in mind, no one is paying oil companies as a solution, they're paying oil companies to keep the population happy.
It is nice to state that all of that money could help make renewables work better, but that's not the point. The point is crowd control, not energy advances. That's why no one is seriously considering changing the subsidies for oil to another energy source. The population won't tolerate the high gas prices while you figure out how to get them all electric cars running on solar power.
The solution is to get the electric cars rolled out and the panels and alternatives up so that solar and renewables can handle the load that oil is carrying right now. When that happens, then you can shut off the subsidies.
Re:the world was supposed to end years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly the way it works is that Bill Nye goes on TV to explain why a snowstorm in Boston isn't evidence against global warming, but then tweets a mountain in the Rockies that doesn't have snow on it as evidence FOR global warming. You can't have it both ways. Science doesn't accept anecdotes as data regardless of it supports or refutes your hypothesis. If you want to say "weather is not climate" than you shouldn't be using weather as a rallying point for your climate cause.
Re: (Score:3)
No, I'm comparing relatively small amounts on snowfall on a skiing hill.
https://twitter.com/BillNye/st... [twitter.com]
That is not slowly melting snow pack. That is directly comparable to an abundance of snowfall in a given year in Boston.
Also Bill Nye tweeting about weather and complaining it's not assigned to climate change is not a rare occurrence:
https://twitter.com/BillNye/st... [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/BillNye/st... [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/BillNye/st... [twitter.com]
Re: (Score:3)
It seems very unlikely we could possible reduce population growth enough in a couple generations to stop the inevitable wars for resources.
Actually population growth is coming down and total population is projected to top out at around 10.1 Billion or so. There will still be conflicts over resources, but that will be because of the rising standards of living world wide rather than total population issues.
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Katrina was recent? Or are you living on an alternate Earth?
I'm living on an alternate Earth from yours. It has cities outside the USA.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the cities that have no possible way of feeding themselves?
One thing that is sure, simple minded analysis will be wrong. That's you BTW.
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You think cities can grow enough food to feed themselves?
Seriously? You are nuts.
Name one? Name one that comes close?
Re: (Score:3)
solar is cheaper than coal now
Bzzt. Wrong. Not if you include the cost of inverters, backup storage, and other little things like that.
Bzzt. Wrong. That's only true if you ignore the external costs of using coal.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Climate change "deniers" is a misnomer. Everyone with a lick of sense knows we're in a rising temperature period. We're coming out of an ice age. We all know the climate changes, and may change for the warmer. Remember this next time you use a politically calculated term that doesn't describe most of the people involved.
Re: (Score:2)
To bankrupt Putin and the Arabs.