2013: an Ominous Year For Warnings and Predictions 94
dcblogs writes "This year may be remembered for its striking number of reports and warning of calamitous events. The National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report that included a number of dire possibilities ahead, including the prospect of a catastrophic solar storm, on par with the 1859 Carrington Event. Historical records suggest a return period of 50 years for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989, and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event, according to Lloyd's, in a report this year. Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory recently demonstrated in tests that 'geomagnetic disturbances have the power to disrupt and possibly destroy electrical transformers, the backbone of our nation's utility grid.' This was also the year the average daily level of CO2 reached a concentration above 400 parts per million. In a recent National Academies report this year, 'Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises,' scientists recommend creation of a global early warning system to alert mankind to abrupt climate changes. A recent paper in Nature, Abrupt rise of new machine ecology beyond human response time, said financial trading systems are driving transaction times down to the speed of light, and 'the quickest that someone can notice potential danger and physically react, is approximately 1 second.'"
How are we going to harness tech and knowledge (Score:3, Informative)
How are we going to harness tech and knowledge to create a better world for our children and grand-children?
Is it really an improvement to have machines such as the ShapeOko: http://www.shapeoko.com/ [shapeoko.com] rather than teaching children how to use a set of carving gouges, chisels, saws, &c.?
Is it inevitable that we will see the banning of commercial fishing as commercial hunting was out-lawed during our grand-parents' day?
What technologies or organizations are there which offer options for making the world a better place?
- http://opensourceecology.org/ [opensourceecology.org] --- and their ``global village construction kit are one bright light --- arguably the ShapeOko has a place in that though.
- http://www.heifer.org/ [heifer.org] --- teach a man to fish and all that
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Meant to include a link on the commercial fishing --- it's sobering that there's greater tonnage of ships in the water than there are fish:
http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/7 [xkcd.com]
Re:How are we going to harness tech and knowledge (Score:4, Insightful)
Will you teach your children to flake flint hand axes?
Thought not.
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Will you teach your children to flake flint hand axes?
Thought not.
Around here, if you dig deep enough, you'll hit limestone. Other than that, all we got is sand. No granite, no quartz, no flint. #$@$#@!!
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DO NOT use any electrical appliance, not even battery operated, it will be burned out!
And so we have another dire prediction.
Current induced is proportional to area, Length of transmission lines, etc. Small transistor radios, cell phones, etc would not have the are
to induce enough current to harm them.
While there would be no point in using a battery operated phones and radios (the towers would all be shut down), it would be quite safe to do so.
Older ICE engines will continue to operate properly, (The computerized modern ones may be a different thing).
It would be a perfect day for a holiday,
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Is it inevitable that we will see the banning of commercial fishing as commercial hunting was out-lawed during our grand-parents' day?
I was able to find information on commercial hunting in the US with google just now. Illinois was the first state that came up. I bet there are plenty of others. No, you probably can't commercially hunt on public land; but that's a resource issue. Too many people wanted to do it (passenger pigeon extinction, etc.). If you control the land and it's not an endangered spe
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We are not going to. You may choose to create a better world for your children and grand children, but I am certainly not going to expend any effort to create a better world for your children or grandchildren. But don't expect me to support you.
There are too many people on thiis planet - by somewhere between 4 and 5 billion. I'm not contributing to the problem, but it sounds as if you intend to, or
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Ted Danson's prediction that all U.S. cities will be completely uninhabitable by 1980 because Reagan was president throughout the 1970's
Wait, what?
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:5, Insightful)
More fun: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/22/failed-mirth-earth-day-predictions/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
http://reason.com/archives/2000/05/01/earth-day-then-and-now [reason.com]
Here's a joke:
Q: What's the difference between a Bible-Thumper who predicts the Rapture and an Environmentalist who predicts a religious Eco-Apocalypse?
A: There are actually two differences: The Bible-Thumper actually has the decency to predict a firm date, and then admits that he was wrong when the rapture didn't occur.
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:4, Insightful)
Get with the program: Everything bad that has ever occurred in the 20th century is due to Reagan and Reagan alone. Don't let the corporatist media fool you into thinking that anyone other than Reagan was running the show in the 20th century. DON'T BE A SHEEPLE.
Oh, BTW, Reagan was also so stupid that he couldn't tie his own shoes.
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:5, Funny)
Everything bad that has ever occurred in the 20th century is due to Reagan and Reagan alone.
Oh, it wasn't so bad. Back when Reagan was President, "sleeping with the President" meant taking a nap during cabinet meetings. Clinton gave it spanking new meaning . . .
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sigh, Slashdot used to have enough intelligent readers who would moderate such stupidity down where it belongs.
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean +5 funny satire? The sad truth is that there are plenty of "enlightened" people who post all the "correct" beliefs spoonfed to them over at HuffPo who basically believe that post at face value.
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"Oh, BTW, Reagan was also so stupid that he couldn't tie his own shoes." I think we'd need a citation for that... however, given his early onset Alzheimer during his presidency, it's plausible.
"Everything bad that has ever occurred in the 20th century is due to Reagan and Reagan alone." I think you're not really giving credit to many other Republicans who came after and expanded his policies. Both Bushes are prime examples... also, the enablers, Rove, McCain, Gingrich and the whacko Koch Tea Party. There's
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"Oh, BTW, Reagan was also so stupid that he couldn't tie his own shoes." I think we'd need a citation for that... however, given his early onset Alzheimer during his presidency, it's plausible.
"Everything bad that has ever occurred in the 20th century is due to Reagan and Reagan alone." I think you're not really giving credit to many other Republicans who came after and expanded his policies. Both Bushes are prime examples... also, the enablers, Rove, McCain, Gingrich and the whacko Koch Tea Party. There's lots of people who can take credit for destroying our democracy.
I think I'd allow that Reagan could tie his own shoes. But as a definite 1-percenter, I'd wager that he had a flunky doing it for him. Being senile didn't help, but his greatest sin was in enabling Gingrich, who I personally blame for the all-or-nothing approach to politics that ultimately cultivated in the recent shutdown.
McCain was a fairly positive force before the millennium - excepting the Keating affair. After the century rolled over, however, he went downhill fast.
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Sub-prime lending was low (and even declining) until 2003 then increased dramatically and peaked in 2006 ending with the crash starting in July 2007 when Bear Stearns funds folded... I believe that this is Junior Bush's reign.
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Get with the program: Everything bad that has ever occurred in the 20th century is due to Reagan and Reagan alone. Don't let the corporatist media fool you into thinking that anyone other than Reagan was running the show in the 20th century. DON'T BE A SHEEPLE.
Oh, BTW, Reagan was also so stupid that he couldn't tie his own shoes.
They fooled you. Reagan was a puppet, an actor hired to play a part.
Bill Clinton was the real evil behind America for the last 100 years!
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Citation please?
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That's pretty funny since the warmest years in the instrument record are 2005 and 2010 and the oceans are continuing to absorb energy right on schedule. Also, November 2013 was the warmest ever recorded globally. You can keep living with your delusions for a while yet but reality will catch up to them eventually.
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Here is a question: what is the difference between someone fucking a whore in the ass while eating shit from a toilet, and parent poster?
Answer: nothing.
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Well, look at Chicago, for example.
Most large cities are nice for rich folks and a kind of living hell for the poor.
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I went to view your reply and handily posted at the bottom of the page was this quote:
"Facts are stupid things." -- President Ronald Reagan (a blooper from his speeach (sic) at the '88 GOP convention)
Thank you, Slashdot.
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It's always cute when denialists think they're somehow different from antivaxers and creationists.
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The beliefs are different; the thought processes are exactly the same. But then, I don't expect someone who can't tell the difference between an ad hominem argument and a simple description to understand that.
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Bingo!
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even MORE accurate than ALGORE's 100% accurate prediction that the entire polar ice cap has permanently melted and all polar bears are dead.
Polar bears are quite intelligent animals, and don't listen to Al Gore, and don't do what he tells them to do.
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Maybe even more intelligent than the guy you're quoting.
Re:Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:4, Insightful)
These predictions are all 100% accurate, just like Ted Danson's prediction that all U.S. cities will be completely uninhabitable by 1980 because Reagan was president throughout the 1970's and are even MORE accurate than ALGORE's 100% accurate prediction that the entire polar ice cap has permanently melted and all polar bears are dead.
Which specific predictions are you talking about? Nobody brought up Ted Danson, so I fail to see his relevance unless you are making this argument: if Ted Danson's predictions aren't accurate, then nobody's can be.
In any case it seems to me that the summary and linked article is kind of sloppy, almost as if it were designed to provoke this kind of silly strawman response.
For example, the notion that the power grid might be vulnerable to a geomagnetic storm the size of the 1859 event [wikipedia.org] isn't a prediction. It's merely an assessment of vulnerability to a rare but possible event (e.g., a 14+m tsunami hitting Japan). A large geomagnetic storm is a possibility that should be taken into account, not an event to put on the calendar.
Likewise, nobody is suggesting that there's anything special about the 400ppm CO2 figure, other than that it is a round figure. It's common sense to look for climate impact, not because we've hit some "magic" number, but that CO2 levels are higher than they've been at any time in the past three million years. This is especially so because the slope of the CO2 concentration graph shows no sign of topping out.
Keep in mind there's no such thing as a "natural disaster". There are only natural events that catch us unprepared. There's nothing inherently disastrous about flooding in Bengladesh, except that economics and politics forces people to live in the flood plain. Likewise there's nothing about a world that's two or three degrees warmer that makes it uninhabitable by humans, but the changes involved along the way will be *perceived* as catastrophic. For example models predict a drier western US. That doesn't mean that one day it will stop raining, it only means that rainy years will be less common and drought years more common. For all we know we'll have a rainy year in 2014, but it still makes sense to plan for the day when the Colorado River won't be able to supply all the water cities in the west require from it (Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Salt Lake City, and others). The disaster won't be lack of water, it will be lack of preparedness.
Re: Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:1)
The point behind the Ted Danson and Al Gore references is that right wingers these days have selected themselves down to only those who have no ability to interpret data for themselves, and make decisions by defining themselves as good true Americans, identifying the political and media figures who are also good true Americans and therefore trustworthy, and repeating the opinions they here from these trustworthy sources; any disagreeing ideas are obviously from bad people who hate America. This is so ingra
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Re: Yeah and there's no more North Pole (Score:1)
You're arguing facts with a right winger?
Sky is falling (Score:4, Funny)
Time to put on the sack-cloth and roll around in the dirt.
Let us not forget... (Score:2)
The sky ius falling! H. Penny
Sometimes those warnings are muted (Score:4, Interesting)
Billons were spent between 2003 and 2010 to deny climate change [wired.co.uk] (pdf [drexel.edu]) and probably even more has been used for that goal in the last 3 years. In any case, is more money that was ever used to measure climate change, to detect dangerous asteroids, and prevent the spreading of pandemic diseases.
Maybe science should stop doing warnings and studies and let things happens with no preparations from our side. We deserve it.
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Maybe science should stop doing warnings and studies and let things happens with no preparations from our side. We deserve it.
The problem with this from the scientists' point of view is that we have to live with the consequences too. Now, in my field I'm not likely to be issuing any dire warnings any time soon--but in the unlikely event that I did come across something in my work that could kill millions of people or crash the economy, I'd damn sure want to do something about it, if for no other reason than that my family and friends and I would be just as likely to be affected as anyone else.
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Actually, I find the opposite to be true. If people stop believing in (e.g. forget about) the evil others can do when unchecked, then it all comes crashing down.
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People (and the companies they run) make choices in the interest of self preservation and self-interest.
Self-interest, yes. Self preservation? Only if disaster is staring them right straight in the face. A short-term quick buck will win out every time.
When you're dealing with massive objects, you don't try and stop them by waiting until they're 3 feet away and coming at full speed. Or by hoping that they're imaginary because admitting you were wrong would be too embarrassing. An avalanche doesn't care who's right or wrong or what political party they vote for.
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"That'd be nice - 'science' could just stick to doing sciencey things, then, instead of creating contrived and falsifiable histrionic reports about things which, almost invariably, will not prove out to be true."
All of this started when NASA was asked to do "sciencey" things with a clear non-political goal, namely to start tracking/modeling/predicting global weather patterns to help the US prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, etc. However, those things are v
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Now you named beer advertising, why not focus a little in something pretty similar, like tobacco advertising? Yes, it pays dividends. It causes addiction, and very cruel death to more people each single year than terrorists, sharks, AIDS, extreme weather, even nazis, ever. But it pays a lot, enough to have something left to push propaganda in movies all along past century, common commercials, and to fund studies that "prove" that they are harmless or tried to hide or deny reports that caused cancer.
Culture
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It wouldn't matter if 'climate change' were true or not. They'd do 'deny' it, because it's good business to protect your interests, particularly against the ever changing political winds.
More money was also probably spent on beer advertising. Why? It pays dividends. I don't see what your point is. People (and the companies they run) make choices in the interest of self preservation and self-interest.
Maybe science should stop doing warnings and studies and let things happens with no preparations from our side.
That'd be nice - 'science' could just stick to doing sciencey things, then, instead of creating contrived and falsifiable histrionic reports about things which, almost invariably, will not prove out to be true.
You mean non-falsifiable, I think...
The problem is that scientists are mostly trying to figure out what is happening, and present it in a logical way, and the deniers are mostly generating propaganda to further their personal financial interests. I find it hard to put these two groups into the same category.
The true stroke of genius by the 'Koch' guys was to somehow graft the denial of global warming onto political affiliation (using Al Gore's selfless position as a starting point). That way, blind belie
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I don't usually take a side in the arena of climate change....
The reason is that I have not been able to study all the data myself and if I did it's not my field of expertise. I do not however need to fund and complete my own study to know that climate change will happen regardless of our contributions and that when government gets involved someone is going to profit from their policies. If I want that person to be the average guy including me then the needle needs to fall on cleaner, cheaper, more efficien
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Billons were spent between 2003 and 2010 to deny climate change [wired.co.uk] (pdf [drexel.edu]) and probably even more has been used for that goal in the last 3 years. In any case, is more money that was ever used to measure climate change, to detect dangerous asteroids, and prevent the spreading of pandemic diseases.
Maybe science should stop doing warnings and studies and let things happens with no preparations from our side. We deserve it.
Your characterization of the paper is misleading. They're looking at all the groups that have a denialist position and taking a sum of their income, but those groups aren't exclusively doing climate change. The billions help characterize the influence of the advocates but not the amount of advocating they're doing.
Besides, the biggest denialist advocate in the US is Fox News and the Republican party, I'd say they're worth far more than these advocacy groups to cast doubt on AGW.
Unraveling of NPT (Score:2)
I was there! (Score:5, Informative)
for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989
I was there. And it was really, really creepy. From my apartment building I could see the electrical arcing from the power station way on the other side of town. The lights went out everywhere, and then the Aurora Borealis started lighting up the sky - something that rarely happens at that lattitude (Montreal). It was - surreal.
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I could see the electrical arcing from the power station way on the other side of town. The lights went out everywhere, and then the Aurora Borealis started lighting up the sky.
Hmmm . . . sounds like an X-Men or Spiderman film. My first thought would be that someone is filming yet another comic book movie in my neighborhood, and these were just the special effects.
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End of Times or Sad Times (Score:2)
2013: an Ominous Year For Warnings and Predictions (Score:4, Insightful)
Like every other year before it.
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2014 will be different though.
Nope, I predict that 2014 will get even more ominous predictions then this one.
Indeed. record levels of fear porn (Score:1)