Noctilucent Clouds Spread and Mystify 227
Wired has a feature on noctilucent clouds, once seen only at high latitudes but increasingly visible now lower down the globe. The clouds result from ice crystals at altitudes of 50 miles, higher than five 9s of the atmosphere. What water ice is doing up there, in a region 100 million times drier than the Sahara desert, is only one of the mysteries associated with the clouds. They are a recent phenomenon: the first scientific description of noctilucent clouds was penned in 1885. For a time it was believed that the clouds were an effect resulting from the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano two years before. Since 2002, the clouds have been sighted — and photographed — as far south as Oregon, Colorado, and Utah. Some scientists believe that human-caused climate change is playing a role, but others doubt this. Two satellites are in orbit to study the clouds; NASA's AIM generated this day-by-day movie of clouds in the vicinity of the North Pole during 2008.
In case of a slashdotting... (Score:3, Informative)
Something else to handle the load of serving the movie:
http://drop.io/noctilucent [drop.io]
Why The Stripes (Score:5, Informative)
The stripes are the paths from the several vehicles in orbit assembled over time when they passed near the poles.
Your tax dollars at work!
RIP (Score:2)
I am often somewhat stupefied at the fiercely stubborn refusal to at least look at factual evidence, such as glaciers melting (and yes, they truly are, worldwide, where I live here in Switzerland, but also in Alaska for example). I understand that there should be healthy scepticism at any scientific claim, but the climate is almost certainly changing, enough so that I can personally see it. When I came to Switzerland 20 years ago, the summers were not as hot or humid as they now are and winters were longer
Re:RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
..., such as glaciers melting (and yes, they truly are, worldwide, where I live here in Switzerland, but also in Alaska for example). I understand that there should be healthy scepticism at any scientific claim, but the climate is almost certainly changing, enough so that I can personally see it.
The climate is definitly changing.
As it always has been. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster. But in no way that should be an excuse to keep on polluting the planet.
Dry? (Score:2, Insightful)
"What water ice is doing up there, in a region 100 million times drier than the Sahara desert"
Bloody well isn't dryer than Mars and Mars has clouds and precipitation.
Re:Dry? (Score:4, Interesting)
This displeases me mightily:
I've read lots of spiffy evidence to support climate change but it really itches my gizzard when 'scientists' attribute every tiny aberration in the weather to it.
However, it might just turn out that these clouds are caused by cow farts and thrown away McDonalds wrappers so I should probably just wait for these opposing scientists to finish pansy-slapping each other before I start verbally abusing them from my arm-chair.
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Yeah, it's like all those hurricanes and droughts, there's always been as many as now, it's just that people back then just didn't notice or die from them.
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--Deltora Shadowlands, Book 1 (great book series, btw)
Mankind will always find something to complain about; all these technologies that are supposed to make life better (and usually do, I'll admit) just give us more time to look.
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Looking up at night and recording what you see isn't exactly a new phenomenon, or limited to our technology.
People around the world have been doing both for a few millennia at least.
And, while I lack any peer-reviewed data source here, I would posit that those in an agricultural environment will actually be paying *more* attention to what clouds are doing than those in an industrial area.
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there's always been as many as now,
Hurricanes are not known to be affected in number or severity due to climate change, so it isn't clear why you bring them up, but with regard to droughts you are correct: there current frequency is quite different from the past. It's a lot lower.
The Earth in the 19th - 20th century enjoyed an unusual period of climatic stability, and we are now reverting to more typical conditions. The probability of going 150 years without a major drought in central North America is p
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Hurricanes are not known to be affected in number or severity due to climate change, so it isn't clear why you bring them up
Because I know what I'm talking about. Well you could argue that you're right in that the number of hurricanes doesn't change, but the difference between a weak ass hurricane that dies on a beach and something like Katrina makes the whole difference between no one cares and the whole world cares.
Here, have a clue [time.com] : "All these hurricanes in such a short period of time begs the quest
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There are climate _models_ that claim we should see an increase, but so far it hasn't happened and it's likely the models does not contain enough data to be able to model reality just quite yet.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090517/article/905171028?Title=Scientist-says-climate-change-isn-t-fueling-hurricanes [heraldtribune.com]
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Or, they died and didn't leave sufficient records for the 3 lethal hurricanes after they died to be interpreted.
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The number, or severity, of hurricanes which have made landfall in the united states absolutely has not been increasing over the past 150 years. On the other hand we now detect 100% of all hurricanes even when they do not make landfall, know at all times their severity, and so forth. The # of hurrican plots in the publicly available data sets has increased due to this observational bias.
As far as clouds.. more eyes and better equipme
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No you damn blasphemer it did not!
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Yeah, nobody bothered looking at the night sky before electric light was invented.
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Nobody bothered writing much of anything about it down for a hundred thousand years, and it was another two thousand years after that before anyone was thorough and systematic about it (aside from navigation purposes).
Impossible (Score:2)
I've watched these clouds last week on the island of Juist, Germany. It was quite amazing and mysterious, something like Aurora Borealis. You do not overlook a phenomen like this. If they had been around all through history, many cultures would have believed them to be spirits or gods and worshipped them.
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Right. We don't know where they come from, exactly how high they are, or exactly what they are made of, but we know god damed well they are caused by man made global warming.
Never mind they may be the very thing cooling the earth by reflecting more sunlight/heat into space than their thinness could possibly trap below.
If you ask me, since its seen so rarely, its probably the Big Splash.
http://geology.about.com/od/wildgeotheories/a/aa_smallcomets.htm [about.com]
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Now THAT is a theory I can get behind. I have been running scenarios through my mind to guess how and why the ice would get up that high and exclusively at the polar areas. It seems to me that the polar areas are the only places that are moving slowly enough to maintain the group of particles that had collected. As the particles approach the equator, the decision to escape of be captured by gravity become much more definite given the great slinging effect at those speeds. And if in fact the particles en
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None of these "same" scientists will be alive in the amount of time it would take for the next major ice age to set in (even if it were starting right now).
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It's called "speculation" but journalists universally fail to use that word when it's performed by a scientist.
Personally I don't think it's very good speculation in TFA. It's true that above 5km the temprature DROPS because of AGW. However that seems irrelevant since ignoring any AGW change it is still cold enough to freeze any water vapo
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Remember also that as the temperature drops the solubility of water in air drops--this is why it is so dry up there normally. The air physically cannot hold much water at that temperature. So as the temperature up there decreases over time there should be LESS cloud formation, because there will be less moisture from which to form clouds.
Re:Dry? (Score:4, Funny)
AGW will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. If you are at work, it will download porn to your hard drive and the hard drives of all your co-workers.
It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CDs you try to play.
It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave dirty socks on the coffee table when company comes over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
AGW will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of AGW, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.
AGW will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methamphetamines in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
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I've read lots of spiffy evidence to support climate change but it really itches my gizzard when 'scientists' attribute every tiny aberration in the weather to it.
But it is logical to consider climate change as a possible contributor to weather change, and all that is being said it that this might be caused by a climate change.
Personally, I think it would be very strange if a climate change didn't cause a weather change.
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I'm in... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I remember in some science-fiction I read many years ago, some clouds were camouflaged UFOs. Actually the clouds were living beings!
Muahahaha!
Get out the tinfoil!
Or maybe the umbrellas, I don't know...
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So when it rains, we're actually getting pissed on by Aliens.
That explains so much about the UK.
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don't you mean tinfoil umbrellas?
Like this one [youtube.com]?
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Best text from that website:
If you think or know you are already implanted with a chip from a vaccination, flu shot, dentist, surgeon (knowingly or unknowingly through their pharmaceutical supplies) then you can cause them to malfunction within 2 days with a rare earth magnet you can buy that are cheap! I bought 10 of these magnets..the Lord showed me where to put them and I used a band aide to hold them in place. I put them as He led me to. I started on a Friday night, on Sunday I put the last 2 on because they didn't need as many hours to fry the chips as the other ones did, by Monday morning I was cleared and had neutralized all of the chips! New chips, several years old, only need about 12-24 hours to neutralize. The ones you probably got as a kid via vaccines can take 24-36 hours. So I started on a Friday night and took them off on Monday.
I haven't laughed that hard all day.
:)
Thanks
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Dude, no no no! This is all due to the HAARP [youtube.com] project, part of the conspiracy to control the weather so that the earth will heat up enough to provide a "factual" basis for all those "scientific" research projects about global "warming!"
For those of you wealthy enough to ride Virgin Galactic, through the ice cloud vortex at 50 miles, I strongly suggest bringing snow gear, and tinfoil hats to ward off the Teslan radio waves!
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Hey. You can get away with a lot on Slashdot, but don't you go dissing Tesla.
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Wireless electricity isn't complicated--you can make a hilariously inefficient system easily. A system worth using on the other hand....
As a point of how easy it is, Domino's Pizza uses wireless chargers to charge the batteries in the electric heated pizza bags. It's seriously not complicated technology. It's just too inefficient to be useful outside a few isolated applications.
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We still don't know enough (Score:2)
So stop messing around [slashdot.org]!
Just a wee bit sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda disappointing that the first thing nowadays when people see something new it's that "Wow, humans really stuffed up the planet" instead of "Wow, that's an interesting natural phenomenon"
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I'm just glad you weren't among the 100,105,780 people who have died from Malaria since since Carson's book was published and DDT was virtually banned and declaired a âoepotential human carcinogenâ without evidence by William Ruckelshaus [wikipedia.org]
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Where the hell do you get this number? Time machine? DDT has not been banned for vector control. Thousands of tons a year is still used to kill mosquito's and the fact that that is all it is used for is much more effective. Mosquito's and other insects get resistant to DDT pretty quick when it is used every where and the death toll from malaria would be much higher if DDT was not an effective control.
The plan is to ban it once something else that is as good is developed.
Re:Just a wee bit sad. (Score:5, Informative)
Not to sidetrack this topic, but let's just get this out of the way...
Rachel Carson never wanted to ban DDT. DDT has never been banned for use in fighting malaria.
From the wikipedia page on DDT [wikipedia.org]:
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Mod parent up. I'm getting mighty tired of people on /. whining about the lack of DDT in our diets.
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I wasn't there when she was discussing her motives, but it is commonly assumed that Ms. Carson wanted DDT banned, absolutely. The wholesale lack of good science in her book made it clear that she was advancing a program, her own, without scientific support, to advance her own agenda. This agenda has demonstrably killed thousands of people.
Sa
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Nope, she was against large scale agricultural use, and specifically not against disease vector control.
Here's [reason.com] an interesting article that does a good job summing up the controversy.
APOD link (Score:3, Interesting)
shiny clouds in the night? (Score:2, Funny)
I blame gays.
Space Shuttle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Aren't they caused by the space shuttle? I could swear there was an article a couple weeks ago on slashdot about it. Basically they found that they tend to form hours after the shuttle launch, particularly around Antarctica. The shuttle's boosters release X tons of water into the high atmosphere, at altitudes water can't regularly attain, which gets caught by high moving winds that drive it south, where they crystallize.
Interestingly enough we just had a shuttle launch just a couple days ago.
Re:Space Shuttle? (Score:5, Funny)
Further proving there were secret shuttle launches in 1885
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Well, duh. How else were they supposed to get Marty back to the future?
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Obviously I mean the fact that shuttles have had a hand in making them "become increasingly visible." I'm sure there's some natural processes that can create them, but are more rare than shuttle launches - i.e. large volcanic eruptions (such as the one in the late 1800s) or something else we haven't identified.
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Noctilucent clouds, Space Shuttle, and Tunguska (Score:3, Interesting)
Perfect example of fooled by randomness (Score:2)
climate change and solar wind (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the theories behind the correlation between the sunspot cycle and climate change is that the solar wind tends to deflect cosmic rays from the inner system, and that when sunspots are rare, the solar wind isn't as strong, which allows more cosmic rays to strike the upper atmosphere, generating clouds which deflect sunlight from the Earth. Since up until very recently there's been a sunspot drought, this might indicate a cause.
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Since up until very recently there's been a sunspot drought, this might indicate a cause.
Uh, no, there hasn't. Unless, by recently, you mean the last 4-5 years or so, since the peak of the previous sunspot cycle. Heck, there've been numerous sunspot cycles over the past 100 or so years, while the frequency of noctilucent cloud formation has steadily increased. Furthermore, this particular minimum isn't that much longer than previous ones (longer than average, yes, but not excessively so when compared to
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Sunspots themselves don't generate the solar wind, but a reduction in sunspot activity correlates with a decreased solar wind. And yes, the solar wind is at a record low [voanews.com].
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Sunspots themselves don't generate the solar wind, but a reduction in sunspot activity correlates with a decreased solar wind.
So you understand this, yet you don't understand the concept of sunspot *cycles*? Odd...
And yes, the solar wind is at a record low.
No, it *was* at a record low. Last September, during the depths of the solar minimum. It was not at a record low 5 years ago, during the height of the sunspot cycle. And it's on it's way back up as the current sunspot cycle begins to ramp back up.
Mea
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Do we have data on the solar wind for prior to 25 years ago, which is what the article cites as the beginning of the increased cloud cover?
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No, his facts are correct. It seems you're the one that needs to study before posting. We're in the deepest minimum for (at least) a century.
!news (Score:2)
Ozone layer + Solar Winds? (Score:2)
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/astronomy/magnetic-field/earth.jpg [aerospaceweb.org]
A portion of the charged particles in the solar winds are protons - aka hydrogen ions. I think it's possible, but maybe not all that likely, that the water present at the
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Or maybe its just natures way of countering global warming..... you know like how evaporation helps cool....
If the hot water vapor left the planet, then the planet would be cooler and we'd have a water shortage to deal with. Otherwise, it's a closed system and there's no net change in temperature.
Re:Well there can be only one answer.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Otherwise, it's a closed system and there's no net change in temperature.
You know, except for that whole sun thing.
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Otherwise, it's a closed system and there's no net change in temperature.
You know, except for that whole sun thing.
What I'm sure you know I meant was that it's a closed system with respect to the evaporation.
Re:Well there can be only one answer.... (Score:4, Informative)
If the hot water vapor left the planet, then the planet would be cooler and we'd have a water shortage to deal with. Otherwise, it's a closed system and there's no net change in temperature.
Water vapor sheds itself of heat through infrared radiation like everything else. It's radiated in all directions and the rays/photons/however you want to model them have a chance to strike something else and be absorbed on their way out of the atmosphere. Hot air rises and takes with it water vapor, which when it radiates its IR at high altitudes is less likely to heat other air.
Convection... it's not just for cooking on the cheap
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Actually tracer clouds [wikia.com] are the more rational explanation. Rahl's hand is in everything lately.
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Lets face it, if its getting hotter and dryer down here
Uh... it's not. Hotter, on average, yes (and, again, that's only on average, globally). But dryer or wetter depends a great deal on weather patterns and how they change. For example, Africa has seen a decades-long drought due to the rain belt moving. Meanwhile, the poles are predicted to see more precipitation due to higher levels of H2O present in the atmosphere.
Re:Or maybe, since temps have flatlined since '99, (Score:5, Funny)
Well, not all mankind anyway. We know because of an incontrovertible nice looking graph that pirates keep global temperatures down. As pirates have declined, temperatures have gone up.
Meanwhile, most people don't have ships, so they do the best they can pirating music. Without the ships, parrots, and peg legs, they can't be as effective as sea pirates, so they have to pirate a lot of music (latest RIAA figure: 240% of all music is pirated). The number one hindrance to their diligent efforts to cool the planet before it's too late is the RIAA. So, the RIAA is responsible for global warming, QED.
Re:Or maybe, since temps have flatlined since '99, (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe, since temps have flatlined since '99
Temperatures have not flatlined since '99. That's simply a selective interpretation of the trend. The average temperature anomaly for '95-'99 was 0.468 degrees. For '00-'04 it was 0.572 degrees. For '05-'08 it was 0.665 degrees. How is that flatlined?
It's pretty clear on this graph [wikipedia.org].
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When you can't respond to data - attack the messenger.
Sorry, but that says something about you, not my link :)
PS: The sun being the largest influenser of earth's climate isn't "well-debunked" at all. On the contrary actually.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=115207&org=OLPA&from=news [nsf.gov]
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Let me know when you've got that code up and running ;)
I never claimed the regular solar driven cycles of warming and cold disappears when we look at satellite measurements (we've only got such data from the latest positive PDO+AMO phase) - I said it's different to the tainted GISS temperature series.
Please read my original reply again if you've forgotten the contents. 2009 is not a warm year according to UAH.
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Wetter, yes. More evaporation at higher temperatures.
But wetter where?
And since more evaporation everywhere. Where dryer?
Global warming is a big freaking question mark, except for the warming, and even that isn't writ in stone. Which is warming planet until what? Tropic like temps in Michigan? Or some global tipping point pushing us into an ice age.
Stay tuned kiddies.
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Hot and Wet. That's good when you're with a women, it sucks when you are in the jungle.
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Isn't global warming what got us out of the ice age?
I honestly don't worry about slow temperature increases. Sudden temperature drops are another matter. Here's the essay that I'm pretty certain "The Day After Tomorrow" is based on; it certainly predates it.
http://thebear.org/essays2.html#anchor506010 [thebear.org]
It's been pronounced as whack by everybody I know. And consider the source.
Still...
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It's probably better to say that global warming was the getting out of the ice age. The climate got warmer, wetter, and less icy. The problem is we really have no idea what drove that global warming -- other than it was not the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
I complete agree with that. Even the most ridiculous global warming scenario can't begin to
Re:The clouds are ALIVE!!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Of course! There's only little fluffy clouds out there.
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They went on forever - They - When I w- We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in 'em, and, uh... they were long... and clear and... there were lots of stars at night. And, uh, when it would rain, it would all turn - it- They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere. That's uh, neat cause I used to look at them all the time, when I was little. You don'
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Synchronicity (Score:2, Offtopic)
Just this afternoon I was driving my family to see the Harry Potter movie, and talk turned toward which Harry Potter characters we'd choose to be friends with. Everybody in my family agreed they'd like to be friends with Luna Lovegood. Then I dropped my bombshell: When I was a teenager, I was friends with somebody who was just like Luna.
"He believed anything he heard, as long as it was weird," I said.
"Like what?" they wanted to know.
"Oh, pyramid power, alien abductions, elves, ghosts and fairies, anythin
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Get a clue.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/ [realclimate.org]
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However, as long as there's a way to extract money from people by preaching AGW, there will be people doing it, and the moment it stops bringing in cash is when they'll stop.
I'm just curious as to how this money making scheme works. I mean is it just money for speeches? Is it money for research into better energy efficiency? If the latter is the case, higher energy prices regardless of global warming will accomplish that. Is raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes? As bad as politicians are they don't really get to keep the money from taxes. I'm just curious about who these rich greedy global warming activist are?
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That's a good question. From where I sit, there are several ways. There's the people who get money for making speeches promoting it, there's people writing books proclaiming Doom And Gloom if we don't Do Something and there are people sponging off of grants by running "studies" designed not to find out what's happening but to "prove" that AGW is TRUE.
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How much has it cost you personally?
"A warmer climate brings bigger harvests, providing more food to feed the legions"
Here in Australia the warmer climate has forced us into water rationing and cut our harvest in half compared to pre-1995 harvests.
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OOC, is it confirmed that Australia's issues are actually due to GW? Because, as I'm sure you already know, AU is supposed to have regular drought cycles as a consequence of the ENSO, as well... 'course, the one may very well be exacerbating the other.
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Personally? Well, that's hard to say, because I don't know how much (if any) of my tax money has been poured down that particular rat hole, but I'll bet it's affected the price of gasolene, and not to lower it.
As far as the warmer climate giving you water problems, I live near Los Angeles, and we've got similar problems, although probably not as bad as yours. Of course, LA usually does have a limited water supply, being that the area is naturally a semi-desert.
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So far, just lots of research dollars thrown at anyone who telegraphs a desire to produce results that blame human activity. And various minor amounts squandered by corporations looking to appear green-friendly. These are net social losses that I am not sensitive enough to feel, so far.
Going forward, carbon cap-and-trade is going to make everything expensive. People who love to control others, will be given authority to control all consumption of energy... and every a
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I think us humans generally have an inability to perceive natural cycles in the climate. The current drought is the worst since the decade-long one in the 1890's. We only have weather data going back a couple of hundred years in Australia, so I think it's pretty arrogant to think that we understand the climate here fully.
Between settlement in 1836 and 1865 when Goyder's Line was surveyed, cropping in South Australia reached hundreds of kilometres into the north - far beyond the line - because the belief at
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city lights bouncing off these high altitude clouds.
ROFL, thus proving you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Try learning about what noctilucent clouds actually are before shooting your mouth off and making yourself look like an idiot (hint, city lights probably aren't going to reflect off clouds that are 75km up and hundreds of km north).