Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds 1061
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."
First post (Score:4, Funny)
We all gona die, but at least I got my first post...
Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)
Re:First post (Score:4, Funny)
if it will be cloudy on March 5th, 2010
It will be, I guarantee it. You didn't specify where.
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
You're making an invalid assumption. Many systems are easier to predict and understand on a large scale.
For example, if I boil a pot of water, I can easily predict how its overall temperature will increase. It's much harder -- impossible in fact -- to predict exactly where bubbles will nucleate.
Overall temperature = climate. Location of the bubbles = weather.
Re:First post (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting to hear about your neighbour. I have a neighbour who also is convinced about the stars and the future, too, with one subtle difference: she believes that she can tell where the stars will be in the future. And guess what? Thanks to the wonders of modern astronomical models, she's mostly right. The whole value of models of the physical world is that they can provide some level of predictive accuracy. Pompous announcements that Dr Solomons hasn't convinced you of the validity of her model until you've seen "some evidence that [it] is actually useful" just make you come across as an ass. Have you reviewed the various articles she's published on the details of her model and do you have the necessary learning (note, not qualification, but hours of intensive study) that enable you to make an informed judgement? I heartily doubt it but stand willing to be corrected. If you have, perhaps you'd care to list the detail of where her papers are wrong, plus links to the letters you've written to the various learned journals she's been published in, where you explained how she was wrong. That, after all, is how science is done.
Re:First post (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if I get you right, you say that you will not act or even stop trying to convince other people that everything is just fine until the poles are molten, the gulf stream redirected, the climate drastically changed and with it the world economy ruined, mass extinctions going on, the oxygen in the air becoming scarce etc.?
I mean, WTF?
I do notw know which scientist got the best model for the climate but here are some facts:
Source [un.org].
WTF?
I mean, does this not sound plausible? I mean, to me it seems to be highly likely that our process of changing the composition of our atmosphere by releasing gigatons of previously absorbed CO2 would yield some big disturbing change.
So, here you are, not wanting to "believe" this "myth". Okey, so what? What if it turns out to be a real myth? And what if it turns out not to be a myth?
By the time that you will find yourself convinced of this immanent threat to humanity, it will be to late. To late for you, your children, your grandchildren, humanity. As the article tells, in a way it is already to late. Which by no means should be read as: "It is to late to act.". No, like, if you are a smoker, you might already have done some irreversible damage to your body. Which does not mean there would be no purpose in giving up smoking, right?
And what the hell do you think is convenient about your lacy ignorant "I-am-such-a-great-doubter" attitude? You get to drive your SUV without a bad conscience while ruining the planet you have borrowed from your children with it. Oh, how inconvenient that is.
You know
Re:First post (Score:5, Informative)
Global warming brought to you by the same people who can't tell you what the temperature will be next week, yet they can tell you what it will be a thousand years from now.
I can't tell you what temperature it will be tomorrow. We've had days as cold as -15 or so (with wind chill) and as warm as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, all in the same winter.
But I can tell you that it is winter, and without looking at the forecast, I can tell you that it will probably be cold. And I can also tell you, without much difficulty, that summer will be mostly warm, and winter will be mostly cold.
Like the REST of the planet has NOTHING to do with the climate.
Before humans, were forests ever clear-cut? There were forest fires, as a healthy part of the lifecycle of a forest, but were they ever completely cut down to roots?
Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?
Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?
So why is it so hard to believe that humans could be raising the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees every year?
There may actually be good arguments against global warming, but you're just embarrassing yourself, here. Ice shelves are melting. They are melting farther than before, and faster than before. There is more carbon dioxide, and the average temperature is rising.
Yes, we've had ice ages in the past. Yes, it's possible the planet will survive us -- in fact, it's more than likely that "the planet", the dirty ball of rock hurtling through space, will still be here. But I don't particularly want to live through an ice age, if I can help it -- or the opposite.
Let me ask you something. Since most scientists who actually have more than a passing familiarity with the subject overwhelmingly agree that climate change is happening -- since Ford himself has outright admitted that global warming is real, and that the internal combustion engine is contributing to the problem -- where's the motive for such a vast conspiracy? Or if it's vast stupidity, don't you think an intelligent scientist would have shown it to be so, and provided evidence to that effect -- rather than yet more evidence to support that the climate is changing, and that we are doing it?
Re:First post (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it's possible the planet will survive us -- in fact, it's more than likely that "the planet", the dirty ball of rock hurtling through space, will still be here.
I move that if the human race is going to die off, the last survivors use nukes to crack the planet in half.
If we can't have the planet, no one can.
Does the motion have a second?
Re:First post (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm so sick of this.
WE HAVE ICE CORE DATA. WE ARE NOT IN A COOLING PERIOD. We are nearing the peak of our warming period. Then for another 5K years it'll slowly decline, we hit an ice age, and slowly it works back up.
Ice core samples from all over the globe confirm this. Humans have practically NIL impact upon the cycle itself. One of my friends just did a trip to Antarctica for this very study.
Re:First post (Score:4, Informative)
For about the billionth time on this site: It was only one or two articles in news magazines and a collection of scientifically ignorant journalists who were saying there was going to be another ice age. Global warming was well accepted even then. Which brings me to a more important question. Why do you constantly repeat such easily debunked falsehoods? You are like a creationist who still rants about the Piltdown Man or irreducible complexity.
OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1898, delegates from across the globe gathered in New York City for the world's first international urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
[...]
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan's third-story windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable dimensions loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years. Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenth-century city -- for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
All efforts to mitigate the problem were proving woefully inadequate. Stumped by the crisis, the urban planning conference declared its work fruitless and broke up in three days instead of the scheduled ten.
So when I say Limits To Growth is "bullshit" I'm clearly being inaccurate, I should have said "horse shit" :)
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
Something better will come along, just like something better than horses came along.
Out with the old, in with the new. It's what we humans do.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Something better will come along, just like something better than horses came along.
Out with the old, in with the new. It's what we humans do.
Contrary to what the arts majors of the world seem to think technology doesn't just "come along". Ssomebody has to recognize that there's a problem and invent a solution. Sitting back and waiting for the future to happen might work for the majority but if everyone did it we'd still be shoveling horse shit.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Funny)
This is /. you dont need to worry too much about people making babies..
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
And just how did they get out of this horseshit disaster?
By recognizing the problem and finding a solution. Street cars, subways and eventually motor vehicles.
You can recognize the foresight of the New York administration of the late 19th century for recognizing that their current path was not a sustainable one and began planning and investing in solutions to the problem.
But no. I'm sure you're right. If we just completely avoid the problem then the inevitability of progress will happen without any research. Without any change and without any effort.
Meanwhile billions go hungry. Tens of thousands die every day from malnutrition. But no I'm sure you're right there was no food crisis. That's why the UN didn't just have a FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT this summer.
Don't get me wrong. When it comes to technology I'm the most hopeless idealistic optimist there is but I also recognize there is a cost. That right now we are wrecklessly spending resources at an astronomically disproportionate rate to our rate of innovation and that we're like kids in a candy store unsupervised.
We're really living in a bubble of inexpensive and practically free energy. Energy is dirt cheap right now. Commodity materials are dirt cheap. If we don't critically reevaluate our energy sources and our resource recycling very soon the bubble will pop.
We have a limited window of nearly free energy and inexpensive commodity materials to build the infrastructure to ensure we don't see an end to cheap energy and inexpensive materials. If we can build renewable power sources *now* then we can continue to use our fossil fuels for fertilizer and plastic. If we wait until energy prices double, triple, quadruple and on and on then your plastic electronics are going to see the plastic quadruple in cost. If we wait until the energy prices double, triple and quadruple the cost of processing the aluminum in the windmill is going to quadruple.
Avert the energy bubble crashing by saving the 'free food' for when they're needed.
We are already starting to see population constriction. LA is importing almost all of its water. Where do you get more fresh water? Desalination? That's great when energy is practically free, but if fresh water starts costing energy and energy is from limited poorly scaleable sources such as coal then you're going to see the cost of water rise with energy.
Everything is getting tied into our energy supply. Our food. Our water. This is all fine as long as energy stays cheap. Fossil fuels are a limited supply and are requiring more and more energy to extract. We can only expect their prices to rise and rise and rise.
You can say that "technology found a way to solve the environmental problems of the 19th century." and you would be right. They were to STOP POLLUTING. We could be saving a lot of money if we just dumped and polluted like the 19th century. But instead of just throwing up our hands and saying "Oh! Hey! Technology will save us." They actually bought the technology that would save us and accepted the price tag. It's not free.
We can keep continue tapping our free energy credit line but we need to realize it is a bubble. It will increase in price. Our lives are becoming intimately tied to its cost and the best time to start planning for the future is yesterday. These technological advances don't happen when we aren't researching them. We can't just invest trillions of dollars in oil drilling and expect efficient solar panels to spontaneously emerge. It takes interst and investment.
Will we look back on this time and laugh? I hope so. But we'll laugh because we reacted to a threat and fixed it. Our costly and difficult choice will be seen as trivial and obvious. Just as was digging a giant tunnel into manhattan to feed it with water. Just as was building a subway system.
Let's look at the story of Horse shit and highlight the key point. The solution to the horse shit problem... wasn't more horses. We've got a horse shit problem and buying more horses isn't the technological whiz kid solution you're proclaiming will save us.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them - and the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in that.
The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally. Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time of this reply, you are only at +4, Insightful.
I wish I had mod points. (But then I couldn't post this.) That boils this all down perfectly to the core of the issue. Legislation saying what we can and can't buy to light our homes (regardless of health and safety issues caused by said "allowed" lighting) and other stupid government interference... New York had the right damn idea. "Over to you, boffins. We're stumped!"
Instead now we get endless meeting and think tanks and committees and bureaucracy burning tax payers money just to say "We can't let you have these bulbs anymore because of the power they use. Instead you can have these which contain toxic levels of lots of fun chemicals which mean you can't just toss them in the garbage, but of course you will, meaning these toxins will seep into the water table, but HEY! We appear to be doing something worthwhile and that might get us voted in next election, so fuck it, eh?!"
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
I call FUD.
CFLs do contain more mercury than incandescent bulbs. However, they don't have a high enough level to warrant special disposal procedures.
Below are the EPA recommendations on dealing with a broken CFL. I call shenanigans on your calling FUD.
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf [energystar.gov]
How should I clean up a broken fluorescent bulb?
Because CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, EPA recommends the following clean-up and disposal
guidelines:
1. Before Clean-up: Air Out the Room
Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.
Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.
2. Clean-Up Steps for Hard Surfaces
Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass pieces and powder.
Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.
3. Clean-up Steps for Carpeting or Rug:
Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.
If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.
Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.
4. Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding, etc.:
If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.
You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct contact with the materials from the broken bulb.
If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.
5. Disposal of Clean-up Materials
Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.
Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.
Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.
6. Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.
What if it is a committee of busybodies trying to make a million?
Do you think the pollutant industries we have just now will let anyone do ANYTHING to solve the energy crisis if public powers don't step in? Hell, they're sitting on a resource that's ESSENTIAL to all human activities, and it's growing thinner everyday, which means they can sell it for any price they want in the near future.
Alternative sources of energy available to everyone is their worse nightmare. They will do anything to avoid them, like buying-out all technological breakthrough patents, buying governments, causing wars (they did all this, and will do more) to keep the status quo.
Your laissez-faire utopias put us all in an economical crisis with consequences not yet predictable. I haven't seen any of the prophecies that you free-market fundamentalists are announcing for decades come true. You had your chance. You screwed up badly. Reevaluate your ideals.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
put us all in an economical crisis
The economic crisis derives directly from the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking, neither of which is free market. Centrally controlled interest rates are not in any way 'free market', and fractional reserve banking is simply fraud (which should be replaced with 100% reserve deposits and the option to invest at the customers discretion and the customers risk).
Blaming the market for doing what the Fed told them to is pointless; when the Fed policy threatens to inflate away any money people have that they don't invest, people are going to invest it. Regulation to prevent it would be ineffective, as you'll currently note, when the Fed doesn't get what it wants it'll go on lowering rates and then simply printing money until people do what it wants. This is the fundamental nature of the Fed, and until it's abolished it's going to continue to mismanage rates and cause bubbles and collapses like this.
With free market rates and without FRB the housing bubble would never have come to pass; as demand for capital increased, so would the interest that depositors demanded, borrowers would have to compete for money to borrow. Only with infinite credit and artificially low rates is it possible to build unsustainable bubbles of the kinds we've seen.
I haven't seen any of the prophecies
You probably haven't looked too carefully. Austrian school economists predicted exactly what happened. Unless, of course, by 'free-market' you mean the self-serving monetarist clowns running a lot of US finance, most of whose approval of 'free markets' is strictly limited to the features that serve them and their friends.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do so many people think that fractional reserve banking is all or nothing? The 12:1 leverage limits were working just fine until the SEC was persuaded to raise those limits to 40:1. Then we had the housing bubble.
So clearly the only solution is to throw out fractional reserve banking altogether?
Why not look at all the historical data and determine at what leverage ratio bank failures increase dramatically then set a limit comfortably below that level?
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train.
Well, the train was already quite mature by then, and there were several elevated lines in New York. And of course the opening of the first NY subway line falls clearly out of that time range (1904).
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html [enviroliteracy.org]
It's not like horse manure was the only problem BTW: "In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses. Special trucks were devised to remove dead horses; since the average weight of dead horses was 1,300 pounds, one text on municipal refuse advised that "trucks for the removal of dead horses should be hung low, to avoid an excessive lift."
The coming of the automobile dealt another large blow to the horse. Experimental motor cars had been around for a long time, but cities had always banned them. The crisis of the 1890s and early twentieth century, involving public health fears about pollution, traffic jams, and rising prices for both hay, oats, and urban land, made municipal governments and urban residents much more ready to switch to autos.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did popularize the issues and did a lot of direct work on solutions, which helped speed these innovations (implementation starting before the automobile was conceived, and a long time before the automobile became a significant factor):
These and similar endeavors received support from city governments through ordinances, city brokered bond issues, changes in laws. Between 1897 and 1910, they significantly altered city transportation systems, and through that, all aspects of city life. So the changes were in place before the number of automobile drivers had reached significance.
The annals of the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) [bikeleague.org] documents this with respect to bicycles. Known as the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) until updating its name in 1994, it was founded in 1880 and had become a major lobbying group for paved streets and sensible and consistent traffic laws by 1895. It is one of the very few organizations that had a political impact on urban affairs before 1900 that is still effective and relevant today. The LAW acronym was very deliberate: this group has had more impact on traffic law development than any one else, including the automotive industry, which mostly tweaked traffic laws that had been developed for safer bicycling. Wikipedia article on LAB [wikipedia.org] gives a quick, highly glossed 3rd party description of the organization.
Parent post asserts that
The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally. Not by any committee of busybodies trying to save the world.
This is false.
The changes were in fact brought about through local political processes like committees using mostly well established technologies like horse drawn trolleys and livery services in controlled ways. Wide area organizations like LAW provided input and attempted to shape the local processes. Arguably the most important innovation during this period was a change in pavement from cobblestones to brick, asphalt, and oiled surfaces-- to improve bicycling conditions.
This is kind of important stuff to know today, because in the city nearest you, there are definitely efforts to reshape the transportation system to something greener, and these efforts involve the same processes that were in extensive use 110 years ago, before the automobile.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
They managed to put a dude on the moon in 8 years.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
They managed to put a dude on the moon in 8 years.
It was actually 24 years in the making. Kennedy's "we choose to go to the moon" stuff was more a recognition of the advancement of rocket science than a case of "hey, I've got an idea..."
Re:Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"? (Score:5, Informative)
If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".
If you actually knew your history rather than assuming that things then were as things now, you'd know that the public transit system in New York was not built by the government, but by private enterprise looking to make a buck. The move to put it underground was funded by city bonds, but it the elevated train system was already there. Furthermore, "auto-centric" laws came as result of the mass adoption of automobiles by the public at large, not the other way around.
Re:Excuse me?! "Threw up their hands"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
But then i remebered that the London Subway was created just because of THAT. Crowded hundred-of-years-old streets that just couldn;t take any more pedestrian and 'automated' traffic. And guess just what the automated traffic solution was back then. Horse carriages. For people, merchandise, post, everything.
Ok, the people that attended the horse manure conference did't just go back to their homes and invented the automobile and just because it's silly that they envisioned 1950's New York covered in horse shit doesn't mean their calculations were wrong.
People bought cheap T-models not only because of the hype and the novelty of it all, but because they proved very reliable and easy to use. And they didn't shit on the street or in your paddock.
And gasoline was the most cheapest and available propulsion. I've always wondered where would we have been without oil (i don't know, different biological processed, different geologica structure, no huge-animals-evolution-step), people would have taken the steps we are taking now towards electrical cars, but 100 years earlier.
The first london underground trains had steam engines. The second batch were already electric, very revolutionary at the moment.
So yes, as silly as those men were, the fact that other people produced solutions for the same problem they gathered there for means it was a time for solutions, and not for hidding their heads in the sand.
Ironically enough, their solution is our problem now. We're now covered in car-shit.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
People bought cars because they were better for themselves, any benefit for others was a lucky benefit. The automobile and late 19th century New York do not provide a good example of an environmental issue being solved by planning.
The best thing government can do is give incentives for research and development that it believes is for the good of the nation. One of the biggest issues with global warming, is that if true, any solution needs to be global to work. Currently a country is at an economic disadvantage for going 'green' as any nation that chooses not to will have lower costs. If this fundamental issue is not addressed then any countries efforts to become more environmentally friendly will simply lead to the transfer of production and pollution to areas that are not effected.
This displacement phenomena is the same as is often seen when laws vary between bordering states.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
But no I'm sure you're right there was no food crisis. That's why the UN didn't just have a FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT this summer.
There may be a food crisis, but it's not about not enough food being produced, but rather that the hungry do not have access to the surplus. Further, the UN summit was about the predicted food crisis due to global warming, so I'm not sure how that proves any point beyond "experts 100 years ago thought we'd be starving in the near future, and experts still think that today".
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Renewables are good but right now we need to move to more nuclear. People love to ignore the fact that the winds farms in Texas this year didn't produce near the power they expected. There wasn't enough wind. Same with solar. You can throttle it to meet needs. They make good supplements. Nuclear is clean, it works, and with fuel recycling we have enough for centuries.
The US bought the load of FUD in the 70s and we are now paying for it. Instead of building more nuclear plants we built coal. They did a great job cleaning coal in the new plants but CO2 was never considered a pollutant.
The latest reactors are even safer than the ones we are currently using. We need to start building them now instead of living in a fantasy world that some unknown break through will make Solar cheap, batteries 1000% better, and the wind never stop blowing.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, if you think about it, horse crap could not have gotten that bad. There were far more people than horses when this article was written and they weren't worried about people crap. Somehow they could deal with that, but horses? If they had a problem it was a problem with perception. Dealing with horse manure was actually a trivial problem. And they did it. There was never instances of horse manure piling up; they had, at worst, an economic problem of how to pay for removal.
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html [enviroliteracy.org]:
While the nineteenth century American city faced many forms of environmental pollution, none was as all encompassing as that produced by the horse. The most severe problem was that caused by horses defecating and urinating in the streets, but dead animals and noise pollution also produced serious annoyances and even health problems. The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. While cities made sporadic attempts to keep the streets clean, the manure was everywhere, along the roadway, heaped in piles or next to stables, or ground up by the traffic and blown about by the wind.
Inventors and city officials devised improved methods of street cleaning and street sweeping became a major urban expense. Increasingly, however, it became obvious that the most effective way to eliminate the "typhoid fly" (so named by L.O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agriculture and a leader in the campaign against flies), was to eliminate the horse.
As late as the 1890s, a Scientific American writer noted that the sounds of traffic on busy New York streets made conversation nearly impossible, while the author William Dean Howells complained that "the sharp clatter of the horses' iron shoes" on the pavement tormented his ear.
In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses.
Yeah, right, the "Horse made problems" were just made up by the liberals and it simply wasn't that bad.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a food crisis. It's a population crisis. In fact, most of the worlds problems today are population related. I wish people could see beyond all these other things and get down to the real problem.
It's not a food crisis. And the food problem is not a population crisis. It's an economic problem. There's no shortage of food, but people in the starving regions don't have any money. It's a type of poverty most of us can't really understand.
However, you're right. There is a population crisis. The energy crisis is a population problem. The environmentalists tells us that we need to individually do really stupid shit like unplug our TV's when not watching to prevent it from using any power in its sleep state. It's true that if we all did that it would add up to make a difference in the short term, but in the long term increasing population and the industrialization of third world nations are going to increase energy usage to such extremes that it simply won't matter.
The solution to the energy crisis is two-fold: better education and economic conditions for everyone will help with the population problem (first world nations usually have a negative population growth if you exclude immigration), and more energy, not less, of the type that is pretty low in emissions. Like nuclear. We need a bunch of breeder nuclear power plants that can reuse its own fuel. This means the amount of radioactive waste we need to deal would actually be pretty manageable.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it's that old anthropic principle at work again - our society has survived, and we're still around to talk about it, hence we solved the problem. That doesn't mean we'll necessarily solve all problems that might be thrown our way, and it's no guarantee that our society will survive current challenges. But hey, if it doesn't, there'll be no one around to say "I told you so".
A lot of people think "oh man, Y2K - what a hullabaloo over nothing" not realising that massive effort went into making it a non-issue. Do you really subscribe to the theory that we should just kick back and relax, and that everything will work itself out? That sort of thinking seems incredibly insular to me.
Horse Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
What it says is that IFF we stopped pumping out GHG tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the ocean to regain it's pre-industrial PH level. The ocean (and the shelled critters in it) is the largest C02 sink, too much CO2 makes the ocean slightly more acidic and this is already having a negative affect on said shelled critters ability to make shells, loss of coral reefs is the most publicised of these effects. Personally I hardly think it's surprising that it would take a long time for makind's CO2 spike to be aborsbed into the system if we all dropped dead tomorrow but science is about measurement and evidence, the question of "how long would it take" is as valid as any other.
limits of growth and horse shit
I like the horse story but the Dodo bird meat industry didn't fare quite as well. Tecnology may one day overcome that "temporary" glitch but until it does the Dodo meat industry went past it's own limit to growth in the 1700's(?). While we are LIMITED by our lack of terra-forming technology I think the most obvious limit to growth comes from from human shit, not horse shit.
As far as I am concerned we have no choice but to turn to technology to fix technology. However it's nice to have a "bug report" that clearly lays out what the problem is. Science is that bug report, without these kind of studies we wouldn't even recoginse the problem [google.com.au], and in fact many people still don't (just look at this thread for examples).
Re:Horse Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Horse Shit (Score:5, Informative)
Because the net atmospheric concentration of CO2 has gone up 40% over the last century or so. That's a very significant change, and it's basically all due to human activity. In the laboratory, it is more than enough to cause significant greenhouse warming.
As for the rest of your argument: "Although natural sources represent most CO2 emissions, they do not contribute to the recent observed increase in concentrations because natural sources are balanced by natural sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The increase in carbon dioxide concentration arises because the increase from human activity is not completely balanced by a corresponding sink." -- USG via Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Informative)
For every scientist that says "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" another one says "Erm... No we're not." Just like "video games causes violent behaviour" and "video games don't cause violent behaviour".
Scientists generally don't say "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!", though the media sometimes spin it that way. Also, if you think scientists are equally split on the issue of climate change, you are sadly deluded.
It's also very hard to take to any talk of global warming that seriously when a large chunk of the northern hemisphere is freezing its ass off.
Please look up the difference between "climate" and "weather".
Then there's the United Kingdom. The Roman's used to grow grapes there. Now if people grew grapes there today folk would say "Look, global warming! There's your proof." Only this occurred hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution...
Grapes have been grown in the UK for hundreds of years, and they are grown there now. Except historically they were grown in the south of England, and now they are being grown in Wales. Global warming is making wine making more viable in the UK.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan
Woah there... as a philosophy geek that's done entire courses on Leviathan alone, I can say definitively that you are way out of left field with that one. Hobbes predicted nothing of the sort no matter how you interpret it. The "nasty, brutish, and short" comment was about man devoid of any form of governance such as the literary scenario he laid out for the condition of man in the past.
A horrible misrepresentation of a text like that'll garner you a C- at best by anyone who has actually read the book
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Funny)
A horrible misrepresentation of a text like that'll garner you a C- at best by anyone who has actually read the book
You new here? We don't even have the patience to read an article, let alone a book. As for that C- we're use to getting them after spending too much time on /.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>>The "nasty, brutish, and short" comment was about man devoid of any form of governance such as the literary scenario he laid out for the condition of man in the past.
Or a man in the future, if government totally breaks down, and man enters a "state of war", in which man turns against brother, and reason itself is overthrown. Or something along those lines.
It's relevant to the discussion, since if we're doomed to Malthusian overpopulation (which we're not, but stipulating the point...) then at a cert
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7.
Though the experts were certainly wrong, let's not imply we're doing anywhere near a decent job of providing food for all mankind. Some 50,000 people die each day from starvation. Countless more live in a chronically malnourished state. True, this is not because of an inability to grow the food (probably what the experts predicted) but because of myriad other reasons from politics to economics to logistics.
Cheers.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it's just that 1st world countries don't care enough to.
Bullshit.
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T bullshit, because it sure wasn't George W preventing the food trucks from rolling into Darfur.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Insightful)
And tell me which of these countries where PEOPLE are needing aid consist of lazy people?
Darfur
Zimbabwe (were people are eating old leather rugs to survive)
and many others.
The fact is, you say that some people are in a far worse position, and these are the people asking for UN aid.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
So I skipped the game I was heading to and spent the next hour helping a drunk concussed guy into an ambulance.
Why should I help him? What made him special? What makes it my responsibility? I was standing right frikkin' there watching, that's why.
The 'people' who 'lived off the land' for thousands of years? Mostly illiterate, innumerate, and died at ages 35-40. If they were lucky.
You don't own a computer just because you're hard-working and smart. It's because you're smart and hard-working and had the insane good luck to be born as one of the small fraction of the world's population who get a starting point good enough that that makes a difference.
I don't need to know you to know that; the fact that you can post here makes it a near-as-dammit certainty.
As you said, some people live in disaster zones or wars and genuinely need help. This 'some people' is not a few stragglers; it's tens of millions. Where the hell do you think that UN aid goes? Look it up sometime. And until you do, you've been too lazy to comment on the issue, so don't.
The ignorance in this post is depressing, even for /.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as an African... You don't know what you are talking about. Most of the starvation is caused by dumb ass politicians. Zimbabwe on its own could probably feed most of Africa, unfortunately all the farms got stolen by Mugabe and "redistributed" which means given to the party faithful and families of politicians none of whom have a clue how to run a commercial farm.
All the rest of the starving countries have similar dumb political problems.
In central Africa the ground is so fertile you can literally toss an apple core on the ground and come back 3 weeks later to see an apple tree starting to grow.
Run properly Africa could probably feed most of the world.
Re:Nothing New (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we are wasting much of our production capacity on stupid, tree-hugging, already-shown-to-be-a-wrong-solution "technology" like ethanol production from corn. And a lot of people starve, not because there isn't enough food for them. But because there are corrupt, nasty people between them and a stable food supply.
Interestingly, there are roughly 2 acres of arable land per person on the planet right now. And guess what? Global warming would actually increase that acreage by almost 25% if average global temperatures rose 3F. It's entirely possible that a warming planet (despite the realities of sunspot cycles and impending cooling cycle) is actually required to support humanity, rather than being a harbinger of its demise.
Truth is, we are too stupid to know and too enamored with our culture of "fear" to admit it.
You are missing why it happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Where we struggle, as human beings, is getting it to the people who need it. Politics, not capability, determine who gets fed and who doesn't.
We have PLENTY of resources to feed 7bil, 8bil, or even 10bil people. That has never been the problem. It's our own selves that is the problem.
Some facts from a farm guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
You don't know the power of the lecture circuit :)
Seriously, these guys make money by saying these things. Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
What all these people seem to miss is that our planet, and life in general will make out just fine, its *us* who are in trouble, us and the rest of the specialised mammals. Ok, some fish may get their shit fucked up as well, but its unlikely to the point of impossible that everything will die.
No, much more likely we'd be gon
Let's just hope... (Score:3, Funny)
No, much more likely we'd be gone, and in a few tens of millions of years
Let's just hope that whoever will be putting our bones in a museum will get a little sophisticated and won't think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That guy from Rome, the one who wears those funny hats.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever heard of anyone making money by saying everything will be fine and lovely?
Pop down to your local church of choice next Sunday...
not correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you mean we shouldn't just sit on our haunches and hope new technology comes along. I'd agree with that. But if you mean that new technology shouldn't be sought out as the solution to our problem... well, I'd like for you to get off the internet and go find a cave.
Don't buckle your seat belt (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't buy car insurance, either.
After all, you've never had an accident! Who are those doomsayers who say you HAVE to?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So even though it's ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE it would be INSANE TO THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN?
I know I'm getting off topic, but there's a fair few philosophers that have something to say on that point. [wikipedia.org]
Re:not correct (Score:4, Insightful)
So how has it always worked before? (Hint: It actually hasn't, not even close, but let's pretend it has.)
Never -- not once has it worked the way we expect.
Once we got rockets, and we got into space, we expected this to be the "space age", where we would develop spaceships fast enough to travel between stars, and we would colonize the moon, maybe mars, so any problem of overpopulation or pollution might be mitigated by no longer being bound to Earth.
And what happened, instead? We got the information age. We got computers which can calculate insanely fast, and communicate enormous amounts of information over vast distances. We got technology which can tell us, in detail, how utterly screwed we are for waiting for the other technology (faster-than-light travel, better telescopes to find viable planets) that never came.
You can see this kind of thing happening all the time, and much faster, in software. In the 90's, it might have made a lot of sense to speculate that Java would take the world by storm, and that developers would be writing new, cross-platform applications, and that new users wouldn't have to care what OS their computer came with, because they'd just use Java.
Well, there's still too much of a legacy codebase to drop Windows entirely, but Java applets, at least, have been pretty much entirely replaced by Flash, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, by Javascript and HTML. Raise your hand if you actually expected to be using an AJAX (or DHTML, if you like) spreadsheet by now.
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely! I hear you brother. I've totally lost confidence in *them*. Let's face it. Every time *they* have predicted the end of the world, *they* have been wrong. EVERY SINGLE TIME!
I mean, if once -- only one time -- *they* got it right, I'd be willing to listen. But let's face it. *They* must be absolutely insane, because in my long life (and my father's and his father's before him) I have *never* EVEN ONCE died a horrible death from a world wide disaster of our own making.
And like you say, technology *always* saves us (a fact that *they* are always too eager to sweep under the rug). Every time technology has saved us from imminent disaster, every single time mind you, it has been *technology* that has saved us. *They* would have us think that there are limits to what technology can do for us. But who are *they* anyway to say such nonsense. Let's just look at history.
I'm just so tired of all this crap. I say, let's forget these stupid scare mongers and get back to something *important* like getting terrorists out of our beautiful country!
]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again.
Did you actually read it? I guess not. [google.com] There are no predictions in the book whatsoever, the book has a 100 year timeline and a bunch of possible scenarios. Scenario #2 is unfolding, with exponential rise in food consumption, energy consumption, pollution _AS DECADES PASS_. China, if growing at 7% per annum in, say, coal mining, will grow 2^5 its current consumption in 5 decades. THAT IS OF FUCKING GIGANTIC BIBLICAL SHIT PROPORTIONS.
The planet is not infinite. Exponential growth will hit a ceiling
Resource exhaustion is undeniable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well its funny because every manner of fossil fuel is in a state where we are getting "not as good" raw material out of the ground. I'm hardly a big environmentalist but I can't see how anyone can deny any peak fossil fuel or even nearly planetary resource.
The oil we are getting is not as good and harder to extract. In old oil fields you drilled a few hundred feet and you could just pipe it onto a rail car and you were good to go. Now you have to go thousands of feet, blow compressed air into the ground to smash up rocks, heat the oil so you can pump it, and then you have to refine the crap out of it to use it. Even good old coal is certainly not as good - Germany is practically onto burning lignite and that's pretty crappy coal and even in America the good hard stuff is getting used up and we're onto lower grades of coal.
Even for metals you have to wonder where all the good stuff is. In the 19th century, people were getting gold out of the ground and you could SEE chunks of it. Now, when they talk about gold mining, they don't even bother screening the miners because the gold content of the earth is so low that a miner would have to take out an F-150 sized truck of the stuff to get a few bucks.
Meanwhile, up in space, we have an asteroid that is quite literally made out of 20 trillion dollars worth of practically pure iron and precious metals, a planet made out of methane, and we're sitting here with our thumbs up our rears, barring ourselves from using nuclear power to make spaceships with, when unimaginable wealth is in the skies above us.
You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to see where the future is. All you need is to read an assay of a asteroid, and compare that to an assay of what's considered to be a good project today. Right now, if we took a tenth of the capital we spend on developing technologies to get every last scrap of goodness out of our used up planet, we could have enough materials of any kind to essentially end all of poverty on this planet.
There is no long term environmentalism without the conquest of space.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Informative)
Limits to Growth wasn't bullshit. Its predictions are pretty much coming to pass, and pretty much on time. There is a myth that they predicted all apocalyptic shit in the 20th century. I remember when Limits came out .... its predictions were aimed squarely at the early to mid 21st century.
Re:Barbra Streisand (Score:5, Informative)
Regardless of what you were taught in school 20 years ago, that's not what the actual Limits to Growth report said. There was a lot of bogus information propagated about the Limits to Growth report at the time it came out, largely by people who didn't like what it actually had to say. The reality is that the Limits to Growth report explored a number of different possible scenarios (varying assumptions such as the impact of technological change and of social policies), and found that most (but not all) scenarios seem to lead to some kind of "overshoot and collapse" in the mid to late 21st century. These were never meant to be precise predictions, but rather to provide some idea of the global system's behavioral tendencies. Interestingly, a recent study [csiro.au] has found that the Limits to Growth "standard run" scenario tracks quite well with the actual observed behavior of the world over the last 30 years. As the abstract of that report says:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what does technology have to do with this? You mean we'll develop something that removes the CO2 in the future? It's not going to be very energy efficient though, getting the stuff back down will cost a lot more than we gained by releasing it in first place.
Starvation could be avoided with more efficient food growing but merely increasing efficiency won't undo the CO2 we emitted, merely prevent us from releasing more. What is being predicted here is the behaviour of the atmosphere and this researcher cla
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mod parent redundant (Score:3, Informative)
In the 70s they were also predicting a coming ice age.
That has been refuted even here on Slashdot IIRC. Global Cooling article in Wikipedia says:
"Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming."
Which doesn't mean your statement is necessary false, but you should provide some data supporting it.
And they were probably correct (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they were right (about the coming ice age).
During the "mini ice age" 300 years ago, the notable feature was the lack of sunspots. Guess what the latest photos of the Sun show - NO sunspots.
Temperatures have also been going down, not up recently.
Analogy time. If you're trying to optimize code for speed you want to work on the region of code where you're spending the most time in already. It's the same as with temperature on the earth. The biggest input is the Sun. If the Sun cools down, as it apparently does periodically (periodic ice ages are fairly well documented and proven), then things get colder.
If one was *really* concerned about Global Warming, one would want a thermostat applied to the Sun. No one has suggested that. I find it remarkable the Sun stays as consistent as it does.
Anyway, the Sun is a first order effect, and anything man-made is at best several orders beneath that. We have more to worry about if the Sun suddenly becomes unstable and goes nova than this so-called Global Warming.
I'll leave it to someone else to provide a car analogy.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
Its only 35 years ago every "Expert" and "Scientist" (sorry to kill your God here Atheists) was telling us we were heading for a new Ice Age.
Don't take my word for it, look it up.
ok, i did look it up. here are the results: /quote>...They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970s, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html [skepticalscience.com]
i don't know how you define the word "every, but "7 out of 42" is not certainly not how I would define it.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the fact is, they arent starving due to a global food shortage as predicted.
They're starving due to politics. There is more than enough food being produced on earth to feed everyone on it. And the predictions we're referencing were clearly based on the idea that enough food could simply not be produced on this planet for the number of people now living on it. Advances in agricultural efficiency have dramatically increased the effective carrying capacity of the planet. The problem we're actually facing is not a lack of food - food is going to waste in some areas while people starve in other areas.
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Informative)
They're starving due to politics.
Case in point: Zimbabwe
10 years ago, it was a breadbasket that fed itself and had food left over for export.
Today it's a basket-case where people are starving to death.
The land is still there, the people are still there, and no plague, blight* or drought destroyed production. It was pure, 100% politics that sent Zimbabwe down the crapper.
(*however, Mugabe may count as a blight, plague or both)
Re:OOOK (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
No. If one denies global warming is happening (independent of whether global warming is actually happening) then one is a global warming denier. Trying to frame the argument in such a way to promote the idea that people who deny global warming exists are somehow rebellious free thinkers (as opposed to short-sighted morons motivated by profit or politics) doesn't make use of the term 'global warming denier' somehow evidence of political correctness run amok.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying I know they're research is perfect or anything, but I think it's entirely possible they are right.
Re:OOOK (Score:4, Insightful)
Read up on how the climate is modelled please.
Failure of logic (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. I hope the paper is not as inane as her quotes. There's a difference between passive conservation and active geo-engineering. What Solomon is trying to say is that even if we all hold hands and try to conserve that it'll make no difference because the damage is already done. Of course, to acknowledge this is difficult if you buy into environmental conservationism, as Solomon obviously does, so you end up with quotes like "I guess if it's irreversible, to me it seems all the more reason you might want to do something about it".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
""If you can invent an easy process..." (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you can invent an easy process to turn CO2 in low concentrations back into carbon and oxygen, you have a winner."
Trees?
-- Terry
Re:""If you can invent an easy process..." (Score:5, Funny)
No good. We need those for paper towels and houses.
Not a failure of logic. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.
The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.
The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.
If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.
I know what to blame... (Score:3, Funny)
Positive feedback loops. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not surprised. I have been pondering the various, strong positive feedback loops involved with climatic phenomena, like the release of gigantic amounts of methane from the Siberian permafrost due to warming, the decrease of vitality and eventual death of plankton in the oceans (main source of oxygen for the planet, as well as main source of food for fish) due to increased sea temperatures, decrease of albedo due to melting of icecaps and glaciers, decrease of rainfall and consequent decrease of forests (that the Indonesian and Amazonian forests have been mercilessly burnt, doesn't help), to mention just a few. I am sure the better informed reader can add a few more of these positive feedback loops, but in my humble opinion, these are the stronger ones, and make the process of global warming unstoppable.
How long do we have, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The key element about global warming that seems relevant is this : how LONG will it take? If we have 200 years before the ice caps finish melting, then it's not really the crisis that it's made out to be.
Why won't it matter if it takes 200 years? Because realistically at even a fraction of the current rate of technological progress, mankind will have the technology to do something definitive about it in 200 years. The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface.
I can even see how this would be done using a juiced version of current technology. Automated factories would produce the thousands of square kilometers of shade material (kind of like the automated factories in Japan right now...). The factories might be on the earth or the moon. We'd blast the shades into orbit using lasers (see Lockheed Martin's new LED pumped laser weapon for technology that could do the job TODAY) and they would automatically position themselves in the right location using tiny ion engines (also already been done).
The solar panels would produce electrical energy, which would be beamed down to earth via microwave. The panels would only be maybe 40-50% efficient, so the waste heat would radiate out to space, reducing the total thermal load on the planet.
Presto! Problem solved, and probably would be a profitable endeavor for some future megacorp.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface."
Why not skip that and just set off a couple of dozen nukes? A mild nuclear winter could offset the global warming trend quite nicely.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds Reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
The headline is a little alarmist, but the article is more reasobable:
One of the things people don't understand about science sometimes is that it doesn't set policy because it requires objectivity. Goals, which are the basis of judgement and therefore decision making, are subjective.
The final solution (Score:4, Funny)
It seems all our problems would be solved if we were fewer...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Earth has not been 'far warmer'. See the hockey stick.
Cold in DC and in Europe for that matter is due to slowing of the Golfstream and masses on polar region air coming down, both of those phenomenons are activated by global warming.
It could be that the natural negative feedback loop for the global warming is the formation of an Ice age cowering Europe and most of the USA under miles of ice. That might balance things out. In a couple thousand years.
So ... 10 billion people, frozen Europe, Canada, USA, Russi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't forget! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.
Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.
Anyway. From Realclimate [realclimate.org]:
Re:"Global warming" is political not scientific (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point is that the site (antithetically americanthinker) is politically/economically motivated bs.