Sea Levels May Rise More Rapidly Due To Greenland Ice Melt 282
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Rising sea levels could become overwhelming sooner than previously believed, according to the authors of the most comprehensive study yet of the accelerating ice melt in Greenland. Run-off from this vast northern ice sheet -- currently the biggest single source of meltwater adding to the volume of the world's oceans -- is 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and increasing exponentially as a result of manmade global warming, says the paper, published in Nature on Wednesday. Almost all of the increase has occurred in the past two decades -- a jolt upwards after several centuries of relative stability. This suggests the ice sheet becomes more sensitive as temperatures go up.
The researchers used ice core data from three locations to build the first multi-century record of temperature, surface melt and run-off in Greenland. Going back 339 years, they found the first sign of meltwater increase began along with the industrial revolution in the mid-1800s. The trend remained within the natural variation until the 1990s, since when it has spiked far outside of the usual nine- to 13-year cycles.
The researchers used ice core data from three locations to build the first multi-century record of temperature, surface melt and run-off in Greenland. Going back 339 years, they found the first sign of meltwater increase began along with the industrial revolution in the mid-1800s. The trend remained within the natural variation until the 1990s, since when it has spiked far outside of the usual nine- to 13-year cycles.
Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Washington D.C. is very near sea-level, isn't it?
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Washington D.C. is very near sea-level, isn't it?
DC is low enough to be affected by tides in the Potomac estuary. The lowest area is in the southeast near the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. If you have ever been to the 'hood in that area, and survived without being shot, you would know that if it was flooded, nothing of value would be lost.
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...for the fish, enjoy more water!
That is incompatible with them due to temperature or chemical composition being off from what they evolved to survive in. Eventually they'll evolve again but fish levels will probably fall (or at least diversity will fall- there will likely be some species for whom the change is beneficial).
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At the tidal basin, yes; Washington DC was built on a swamp. However it does have some topography, and the 2m sea level rise predicted under the (relatively pessimistic) RCP8.5 scenario would leave nearly all the city well above sea level. The tidal basin would stretch north onto the Mall, returning the reclaimed land around the Washington Monument back its natural state as a peninsula.
You'd need ten meters of rise for the Capitol Building to be flooded; 20m to drown the White House and Executive Office Bu
Re: Good (Score:2)
Will people please stop fantasizing about cities like NY, DC, and SF flooding? It won't be allowed to happen, regardless of what might happen elsewhere. All of those cities have relatively narrow paths to the open ocean that can, and certainly will, be blocked with dams to hold back rising sea levels.
And most of Florida's urban coastline will be fortified & raised with new crushed limestone and/or concrete as hurricanes progressively destroy it storm by storm, until Miami (and much of the rest of Florid
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Fucking hell, slashdot, must every other article be about global warming or trump or full communism now???
FUCK OFF
Um, sorry. As a person of a younger generation that will need to deal with the accumulation from this shit storm, NO. So sorry that you need to be bothered with news stories about the mess that you have helped create. Yup, it was far easier when we pretended we could talk about effects to far off future generations. It was incredibly wrong AND some of these "far off future generations" are now old enough to be able to understand that we are getting screwed over.
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http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... [pewresearch.org]
Eat Shit yourself fucktard. The level of how much you "like" something, has zero impact on its validity.
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It's like religion (and they are also religious), "don't interfere in my beliefs with
Let me stop you right there (Score:3)
Oh wait, maybe there's a tiny intersection in the venn diagram, where they overlap with the "selfish machiavellian lying assholes" category. They say they deny it, but only to further their selfish ends of not having to make any lifestyle or policy changes. If they are intelligent, they know their denial stance is just posturing for effect.
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Re: Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop with this shit (Score:3)
Ok, so you think there's no difference between a delta of x and a double diffetential of e^x.
Your maths teacher should be fired if you're that grotesquely incompetent when it comes to rates of change.
But you're not that stupid. Nobody is. So stop acting as if you were.
Re: Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop with this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
I have also been on the Earth a long time. Making measurements.
Ice is there, yes. A few hundred miles less ice on the glaciers. I assume that you can tell the difference between an ice cube and an ice sheet. Or is it all filed under ice?
Bloody hell.
Storms have always been there. In different places, with different moisure content.
Maybe the Khmer Empire thought the same as you, just before they died horribly. They'd moved the atmospheric rivers by several hundred miles. Sure, there was rain. Just not near them, because they were idiots.
Don't copy them.
The temperature has risen to levels that are higher than what they should be given prevailing conditions. But that's not as important as the gradient. The gradient has never occurred in historic times, or indeed any time since the last asteroid strike.
But you ignore that and assume all gradients are equal, all numbers are equal.
They are not.
The Khmer discovered this too late. This time, you're plsying not with millions of lives but billions. Ignorance isn't going to save even one of them. There is no plea bargain with physics.
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And the facts are that nothing has changed much.
Your facts are out of date.
Re:Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop with this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
New flash - the entire history of the modern human species has occurred in a single ice age - the current Quaternary Ice Age started about 2.6 million years ago, about a half-million years before homo erectus evolved.
You may be thinking of the latest glacial period within that ice age, and yes, we were possibly coming out of that before our carbon-based economy gathered anything like its current momentum. However, we've accelerated the process considerably by adding major new forcing factors in the form of deforestation, desertification, and significantly boosting the heat retention of the atmosphere - and that's changing things considerably faster than normal, and there is a very real risk that on our current course we'll cause the ice age to end, and the Earth to transition to it's opposing quasi-stable hothouse state.
And while the Earth is always changing, it's the speed of that transition which can be a problem - most trees and other plants can't migrate very quickly, and if the climate lines move faster than they can, they likely go extinct, and take much of their associated ecosystems with them. And we're already in the midst of one of the larger extinction events the planet has seen thanks to pollution, over-hunting and ecosystem destruction. A second, independent extinction event on a similar scale may well reduce biodiversity to the point of ecosystem collapse. It's happened several times before, and it can take the planet many thousands of years to recover. Bad news for anyone who wants to eat regularly in the interim.
Perhaps even worse, at least for us, is that it's looking like such transitions don't happen smoothly. As the thermal engines driving weather destabilize, weather patterns become less predictable from year to year, and the rate of crop failure increases considerably as a result. And when people get hungry, wars break out.
Let's test that (Score:3)
...Perhaps even worse, at least for us, is that it's looking like such transitions don't happen smoothly. As the thermal engines driving weather destabilize, weather patterns become less predictable from year to year, and the rate of crop failure increases considerably as a result. And when people get hungry, wars break out.
Sounds like a testable hypothesis. In the last century global temp has risen around 1C after having remained comparatively stable prior to that. One could take global crop yields, and compare the annual trends against the change in global temperature.
The trouble is, that your hypothesis of increased crop failure, and presumably decreased global yields(else if yields don't drop who cares), presupposes that all other things remain equal...
Of course, global crop production has been trending persistently upwar
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If weather patterns changes smoothly that would work - however it doesn't appear that will be the case. The problem is that when weather becomes unstable you can no longer use last year's weather to predict the coming year.
Think of it this way - if for the last decade there were 5 years where corn would have survived, 3 years for wheat, and 2 for soy - and they were all jumbled up, then what should you plant this year? Corn maybe? You've got a 50% chance of getting a crop, if the last decade is represent
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No, actually most of it was built by the generation before them. If not earlier. Infrastructure construction, and even maintenance, has been largely neglected for the better part of a century.
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Top of the line car was a Studebaker Special Six, with a whopping 29.4 HP engine. Yep, that looks and performs like every car we drive today (actually I kind of like the design, wouldn't mind owning one myself).
Miles of paved road. I can't find any data back to 1918, but starting in 1960 the USA had about 1.2 million miles of roads, 2016 puts that about 2.7 million miles now.
Bridges, I can't find exact numbers per year, but I do see that at
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It couldn't be "full communism" because almost nobody knows what that means now. We live in the Golden Age of Bullshit, where words are used for how they make you feel, not what they mean.
Re:Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop with this shit (Score:4, Insightful)
What "full communism" means is a society without any government at all -- or classes or money for that matter. If you look at "communist states", they actually have all of these things: social classes, currency, and some degree of private ownership.
In fact, in a certain sense "communist state" is a contradiction in terms. Communist regimes knew this, and justified their existence as a vanguard revolution that would bring about communism in the long term. This really wasn't any better, since communist ideology see communism as a natural and historically inevitable outcome of capitalism.
If you look at how "communist states" actually arose, they didn't arise out of a popular adoption of communist ideology. That comes later. Indigenous communist revolutions never happened in functioning democracies; they came in societies dominated by wealthy oligarchs, dictators or warlords. I see a lot of parallels with the anti-elitism of Trumpists. They're not ideologues; they're just fed up with the elite and want the swamp drained.
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Jesus tapdancing Christ, ...
I'd still like to know what the "H" stands for.
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Average comments on a story has stayed pretty consistent at about 120 posts per interesting story, ~20-30 for less interesting stories. To get 1000 comments a new chapter in the IBM/SCO lawsuit needed to happen or something. This has been true from ~2000 all the way through present era.
I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:2, Insightful)
Lo
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is an extremely confused response. This essentially says that the more scientists are concerned about a problem the less you are concerned. If you keep seeing a lot of different articles and ways something might be a problem, and one isn't personally a subject matter expert, deciding to then dismiss all of it is the opposite of good logic. That said, it is true that by nature of media coverage the less concerning predictions about climate change get less attention in the general media, so you might not see them as much, but that doesn't change the fact that the broad consensus is pretty severe. Studies like this are trying to figure out just how severe that is, and even the mild predictions are pretty serious. Honestly, your response comes across a little as someone who has decided that you aren't going to bother making any even small changes in your lifestyle and then found a justification for it.
I largely share the parent's conclusions, and am pretty convinced it's the most rational response too.
If we walk back to Gore's noble prize for an inconvenient truth and the IPCC's work, at that time those calling for action and change all cited the scientific consensus, that the science was settled. Anyone with a dissenting opinion on the impacts or the best course of action was called a denier.
The thing is, the crowd trying to push an agenda of carbon taxes, industry cutbacks, etc has repeatedly dragged o
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There is no one credible with a dissenting opinion for all practical purposes. The number of dissenting scientists with any relevant expertise is on par with the number of creationist paleontologists. We have the documentary evidence that the entire AGW denier movement was started by and funded by oil companies which knew about AGW in the 1970's. You are a fool.
Poor effort, you clearly didn't read a word I wrote.
You realize that when a group like the IPCC says they have High Confidence that changes due to climate change will be in range x,y,z that dissenting opinions are not only those with less severe predictions, but equally those like that linked here citing more severe changes?
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't care about Europe and what they are doing.
That's a strange claim to make given that you just said in your previous comment that "If everyone in the US became Luddites and lived to pre-industrial standards, it still woudln't matter because other countries will not be as determined." My point about Europe was in response to you claiming that you apparently care precisely about what other countries are doing.
I care about my standard of living and what I can do. Per capita doesn't mean shit to my life and I don't want my standard of living lowered. I probably have a lower average carbon consumption so why should I concern myself about per capita when, again, it doesn't matter what the US does if other countries don't care.
You appear to engaging in some degree of inconsistency, where you in one sentence say that you don't care about what other countries are doing
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If the US and EU did everything that would not solve the problem.
That's true, but that's not a reason that you should make no effort or that the US and EU should make zero effort. Moreover, other countries are changing what they are doing. For example, solar power is being installed in India at a rapid rate, by many metrics more rapidly than it is in the US https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/energy/power/government-working-to-double-generation-target-from-solar-parks/articleshow/53268569.cms [indiatimes.com].
There is an entire world and many billions wanting a better life. I do not want to deny them a better standard of living and will not expect them to forfeit it because of climate guilt.
This isn't about "climate guilt"- in fact,many of the developing coun
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when pointed out that meat consumption is expensive and also damaging refuse to even consider reducing meat consumption. ... I do know that by your own description you are utterly unwilling to do any of the most basic steps to help out, even ones which will save you money, right now, literally today with no investment on your part.
I didn't refuse to consider anything. You assumed and continue to assume what I have done or willing to do. Why don't you ask me directly if you are not sure. Yes, I already knew about it and do it! I go months without eating meat sometimes. I do enjoy eating meat and will do so when I want. Sometimes, I want a bloody red steak or chew on rib bones. Sue me. You are parroting talking points under false assumptions because I do not share the same piety. You are acting like a religious zealot proselytizing to
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for that well-reasoned screed on how we don't need to do anything about the problem we've created for ourselves and future generations. We should have a monument erected to chisel your words in granite: To future generations: piss off, we don't care about you.
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Thank you for that well-reasoned screed on how we don't need to do anything about the problem we've created for ourselves and future generations. We should have a monument erected to chisel your words in granite: To future generations: piss off, we don't care about you.
That's not what they said. They said, that rampant fear mongering simply makes them not give a fuck because the same thing has been pushed over and over and over and over again to the point for the last 40-60 years that if it had happened like they said, the world would be: On fire, drowned, and everything would be both dead and alive, while starving from a lack of oxygen and burning alive because there's no ozone layer, while there would be no more snowfalls, and massive snowfalls all at the same time and
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TBH, I am over it. Future generations will be fine. Just like generations that came after the Black Death, the Fall of Rome, and the Late Bronze Age collapse. If future generations do hold a grudge it will be because they have inherited the bad habit of judging the past with modern morals, ethics and understanding.
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Interesting)
So how would you recommend that new knowledge is shared with the public so that you would actually believe it ?
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So how would you recommend that new knowledge is shared with the public so that you would actually believe it ?
I think folks like the parent are asking to be engaged honestly, rather than trying to be tricked and frightened into doing what they are 'supposed' to do.
He's just pointing out a very real problem that the alarmist crowd is creating.
Go back to the first IPCC report and Al Gore's movie and shared Nobel prize. Assume the parent poster paid attention, looked at the evidence and agreed it looks sound and made a decision to make certain changes and support some actions to improve things. Now, during all the bac
Re:Tell the truth (Score:5, Insightful)
It will never snow in DC again, then DC is crippled by snow that year.
It will never snow in UK again, then the UK is crippled by snow.
Whoever told you either of those two things is an idiot and no one in the mainstream scientific community believes that it will never snow again in those locations. What they probably said (or what the scientists said before twisted by someone somewhere) was, snow will be more rare- but also more extreme when it does occur in those locations.
Its the warmest year in the US by FAR, until you include Alaska that year then it was one of the coldest ever.
Yeah, and this coincides with the earlier point. As the global temperature rises, the cold polar air isn't staying put over the poles anymore- it drifts down one spot- that makes one part of the globe to get unseasonably cold and another part unseasonably warm. So yes- winter now is seeing both an increase in extreme heat AND extreme cold. It's also possible to have a highest global temperature on record whilst the US has a particularly cold season. Global climate change refers to the globe- not local weather conditions. Don't confuse local weather with global change.
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That came out of the mainstream scientific community, and was promoted by the various government meteorological offices and so forth. In the case of the UK, the MET openly stated that kids wouldn't know what snowfall was by I think it was 2015 or something.
It's much more likely that a journalist twisted the words of a scientific study to be more "newsworthy" than for any scientist to say that. Most of the sensationalist science stories are exaggerated from less sensational science studies to make them more shock-value.
Polar air hasn't ever stayed at the poles.
No, it hasn't, but hasn't historically moved so far from the poles with regularity as it does now. It's almost a guarantee that somewhere far from the poles will have an astoundingly cold winter and somewhere else will have an astoundingly war
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For what it's worth, the evidence is that EVERY generation looks back on the ones that have gone before with some degree of disgust....
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For what it's worth, the evidence is that EVERY generation looks back on the ones that have gone before with some degree of disgust....
It's true in both directions. The older generation always thinks the younger generation is destroying society. There are lots of writers from classical Greece and Rome who have made comments about how the next generation will ruin civilization. One generation complaining about another has been a static theme in human history.
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the next generation will ruin civilization ... One generation complaining about another has been a static theme in human history.
Considering nearly all civilizations have collapsed into ruin, a few generations were correct about the younger ones ruining everything!
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Informative)
Look, I don't want to hand our offspring a big shitburger after we're gone. I don't want them to hate us and look back on us with disgust. But there's no way things are as bad as they say.
[citation needed]
I would have given money, changed my lifestyle, my purchasing habits, whatever was required - and I did, for a time.
That's not how it works. What's needed is for you to vote for people who will do something about it, and convince others to do so as well. Nothing you can do on a personal level means jack diddly shit.
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
And there it is in a nutshell. "Climate change" is only cared about as a tool for obtaining more political power.
You only use Slashdot as a means of demonstrating your lack of reading comprehension, and basic logic skills.
Climate change is a reason to obtain more political power, because that's necessary to prevent those who claim not to believe in it (like Trump, who's building a seawall specifically to protect his golf course from climate change-related sea level rise) from continuing to obliterate the biosphere upon which we all depend for survival.
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Climate change is a serious problem that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix without giving political power to people who are concerned about it. Nice try casting a rational response into something sinister though.
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... is a serious problem that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix without giving political power to people who are concerned about it. Nice try casting a rational response into something sinister though.
Where have I heard that one before. We can only fix the problem by giving them more power...
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I would have given money, changed my lifestyle, my purchasing habits, whatever was required - and I did, for a time.
That's not how it works. What's needed is for you to vote for people who will do something about it, and convince others to do so as well. Nothing you can do on a personal level means jack diddly shit.
And there it is in a nutshell. "Climate change" is only cared about as a tool for obtaining more political power.
j/k(because some kind of sarcasm tag is mandatory.)
Exactly what you'd expect a shill for Big Oil to say. There's no money to be made in saving the planet, only the Big Oil agenda has a financial incentive to deceive and manipulate people. Control of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade markets surely don't provide an incentive of control. You'd have to be some political big dog already to profit that way, but you don't see any big wig folks like former presidential candidates with skin in the game like that.
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Exactly what you'd expect a shill for Big Oil to say.
Shouldn't I be getting a check if I'm a shill?
Where's my check?? Dang, we evil minions need a union or something.
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon I time, I thought it was a legitimate concern. But they've Chicken Littled it way beyond anything I have patience for at this point.
You should improve your critical thinking skills. Whether it is a "legitimate concern" or not, is completely unrelated to whether "they" are Chicken Littling it.
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I agree that Chicken Littlism is a bad strategy if you want to convince stupid people who are unable to distinguish between shrill alarmism and serious research. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that YOU should be stupid.
A hypothesis should be judged on its merits and the evidence, not on the behavior or character of its advocates.
argumentum ad hominem [wikipedia.org]
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I agree that Chicken Littlism is a bad strategy if you want to convince stupid people who are unable to distinguish between shrill alarmism and serious research. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that YOU should be stupid.
Yeah, calling people stupid doesn't seem to be working all that well either. Lost you a presidential election recently, I noticed.
But it gives you a little thrill, so I guess that's some sort of payoff.
Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientists have been making warnings, and of course the news reports the most extreme scenarios, distorting the picture.
But oceans are 30% more acidic than pre-Industrial levels, the area covered by arctic sea ice is trending downwards, and sea levels have a measurable rise.
It won't be the end of humanity, but it is already developing into an expensive problem to fix, as well a politically destabilizing problem as global climate change creates new winners and losers.
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Indeed. One of the biggest impacts we can see is damage from precipitation changes. Areas once fertile are now not getting enough rain- areas that once got less rain are now getting more- which is bad for cities which don't have proper storm drainage and leads to more flooding events. It's quite possible that climate change already costs the world many billions of dollars a year and we just can't measure the full scale of it accurately yet.
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This is just a longwinded form of "It snowed in Atlanta, global warming LOL"..
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Re:I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: I've stopped paying any attention to this shit (Score:2)
It will be worse than they say, you are indeed handing such a world to your children, and if you cared you'd have researched whst scientists said rather than listen to talking heads.
But you didn't.
And that's all I need to know.
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CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up and down over the years with a natural cycle; we should be at a peak now. Looking at the climate on the scales of 10,000's of years, you would predict that it would be getting colder and this is, indeed, what was predicted back in the 70's. However, instead of peaking, CO2 has gone up and up. Hence the predictions have changed. The change caused by human production of CO2 has massively outweighed any natural cycle.
Predictions change as either knowledge or the world changes.
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CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up and down over the years with a natural cycle; we should be at a peak now. Looking at the climate on the scales of 10,000's of years, you would predict that it would be getting colder and this is, indeed, what was predicted back in the 70's. However, instead of peaking, CO2 has gone up and up. Hence the predictions have changed. The change caused by human production of CO2 has massively outweighed any natural cycle.
Predictions change as either knowledge or the world changes. Since the 70s, both of these have happened.
CO2 levels over the last 10.000 years according to ice core data: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qtL... [blogspot.com]
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even if you do not care about polar bears or coral reefs.
Personally, I think we should genetically modify Polar Bears so that they can survive on coral reefs.
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While we are at it, we should make them nicer too. Murdering baby seals... Such jerks!
Worse impacts? (Score:2)
rabbit hole time (Score:2)
This might actually good. (Score:2)
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A slowdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor would result in reduced frequency hurricanes for the Southeast US. That's the good news. The bad news is that the ones that made it here will carry a lot more rain.
Denialists lost the severity gamble, HARD. (Score:5, Interesting)
Denialists would often ask, "what if these imperfect estimates are too high?" and scientifically-minded people would counter with "what if these imperfect estimates are too low?" In the last few years it's been obvious that they were mostly too low (as in conservative) across the board. Oddly enough the constant unfounded accusations of bias toward climate science has created a real bias toward conservative estimates, [sciencealert.com] as scientists all fear overestimating and becoming the deniosphere's celebrated Chicken Little.
Re:Denialists lost the severity gamble, HARD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Three conservative rags and a conservative think-tank flying in the face of science with cherry-picking and strawmen, I think that says it all.
One BIG assumption here (Score:2)
The whole notion of sea level rise assumes that the Earth's crust is static and unchanging. Definitely not the case.
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Floridian climate refugees coming your town soon! (Score:2)
Re:Crime against humanity (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'd like is to -- someday -- see all these deniers, excuse seekers, carbon lobbyists, oil burners before a court, accused of crimes against humanity.
And then, the likes of Trump, the Kochs, most of the political class, Bannon, all that ugly bunch doing services in those places in the world where damage is highest (I'm not for jails, mind you).
Instead of a miniscule bad effect, why don't you work against serious degradations to the human condition, like dictatorships all over, who leave their citizens magnitudes worse off than the worst effects of global warming?
For that matter, lets see politicians who send out political favors for kickbacks, grinding industry to a halt worldwide in favor of their connected friends, be tried, if you're worried about bad effects on humanity.
It's fun to disasterbate because it makes us feel special and open to secret knowledge! What's that word? Tuned in? No, that's the 1960s. His eyes open; his sails unfurl? No, that's the 24th century.
Woke! That's the current term. You're woke!
Re: Crime against humanity (Score:2, Funny)
If the temperature rises above 2.5'C, it will switch to a new strange attractor. In simple terms, the temperature will skyrocket and the atmosphere will become toxic to humans.
Yes, kickbacks (such as the $22 trillion to fossil fuel) are unacceptable. The rich have failed to psy an estimated $20 trillion in taxes. All of that is money owed to the poor, to community services and to society.
Religion in America is a major cause ofvwar, which is why the state was required to be secular. This should be enforced.
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Instead of a miniscule bad effect, why don't you work against [human bad things] ...
*How* can I vote you up when:
a) I have no mod points,
b) you're already maxed out, and
c) I've posted to this forum?
Life's just not fair. (Nor should it be.)
makes us feel special and open to secret knowledge
THIS. Omg, this.
The religious nuts selling everything for the end of the world (at least they're consistent),
the conspiracy nuts (someone else is in complete control of everything),
the SJWs (everything is relative except relatives),
the Gender Confused (I've got detachable and interchangeable sexual body parts!),
the ?Communists? (equal r
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But we have a zero carbon alternative. Build nukes.
What I'd like to see is all the hippies and foot draggers who run around with their hair on fire about global warming, but then stall technical solutions, to be hauled before a court and accused of crimes against humanity.
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How about the people/industries that finance them? Hippies on their own are poor and have little affect.
Exxon for example, upon realizing that global warming was real back in the '70's, made the decision to finance the anti-nuke camp to maintain their industry.
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Build nukes.
I hate to break it to you but Ghandi died some time ago.
Re: Crime against humanity (Score:2)
They have, since 1895. I don't see you paying the blindest bit of attention anyway. Stop making excuses and admit there's nothing that will stop you poisoning the environment, you enjoy the screams of the dying too much.
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Off the top of my head: Al Gore & Leo DiCaprio
Other "Lear Jet Liberals": Madonna, Brad & Angelina, John Travolta (owns five jets), Barbra Streisand.
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Despite what the internet offers for communication, people still need to travel. For some, it's part of their job: performers, subject-matter experts, buisnesspeople -- and yes, politicians too.
Let's all work on and support ways to travel more efficiently, and offset its effects. But we can't just stop traveling.
Re: (Score:3)
So, you have your own rationalization for doing nothing. [wikipedia.org]
Re: Crime against humanity (Score:3)
Sorry, neither are scientists. None of the others listed are, either.
Nor have you shown you'd give a damn if they'd sailed to the major conventions, or used the Internet to dial in.
All you'd do is whinge they were taking bandwidth from your online games.
Give me real names and a real reason to think you'd actually care about their choice.
Re: Crime against humanity (Score:2)
$300G? That's basically one NY to LA round trip on NetJets. Or 3-6 regional one-way flights.
Re: Any day now we are all going to drown! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Any day now we are all going to drown! (Score:2)
Europe has freedom you could only dream of. And, no, no 75% taxes.
If you have to wait until you're drowned, you can do nothing and there will be no government. Or, indeed, any society either. If, and someone that stupid is unlikely to be capable, you survive the next 40-50 years, you'll enter a world closer to Year of the Burn Up.
Re: (Score:3)
OK, here you go: between 1993 and 2014, global sea level rose 2.4 inches according to NOAA [noaa.gov].
This amounts to a background increase of 1/8 inch per year and is mostly due to the ocean's thermal expansion.
Re: Dooms day is coming! Repent sinners! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Sloppy models? (Score:3)
And yet you offer no proof of this omission and no proof of substantial deviation. The models have been highly accurate sibce the 1990s and far more accurate than the skrptics since the 1890s.
And yet that part doesn't bother you.
The fact that the science has been fundamentally sound for 114 years doesn't enter your equation.
What concerns you is a vague, meaningless statemwnt about something that probably never happened.
Honestly, that's pathetic.
Of course the models accounted for Greenland. (Score:2)
The question is, how much ice should those models assume will melt in response to a given degree of global warming?
When you read a popular press account that says "Sea level may rise 2m by 2100", what the scientific papers actually say is more like "sea level may rise between 1m and 3m under the RCP8.5 scenario." Nearly all of that uncertainty is driven by uncertainty in how rapidly Greenland and Antarctic ice will respond to rising temperatures. So you have to go have a look to see what's already been hap
Re: Oh no (Score:2)
Uh, no. Even John Wyndham figured that out.
Re: (Score:2)
Anything about mankind ruining the environment has to be fake news, right?
Yes, if environmental change is too inconvenient to fit your political agenda, then yes, it is fake news.
Re: all fake news (Score:3)
Nobody claimed that for 2013. Fictional claims make you look stupider than you already are.
The sea levels have indeed been rising, in line with actual prediction.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they just going to wade into water and drown themselves?
Millions of people in places like Bangladesh live within a meter or two of the current sea level. During storms they already experience serious flooding. Now you might think that they could just migrate inland. But there are already people living there. Who will kill them.
Re: (Score:2)
They're going to die because of drought, crop failures, flooding, and economic collapse in the more vulnerable places. The US being rich and relatively stable will do better than most places, although it will hurt us in the pocketbook. Places with a weak economy and an unpopular government will break down (e.g., Syria).
By the way, the Milankovitch cycles physically work by varying the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface. If the increases in temperature since 1980 were due to insol
Re: (Score:2)
Any vineyards in Scotland today?
Yes, there are vinyards in Scotland.
Re: (Score:3)
Just asking...
Greenland has not been green during human habitation of the island. It was called "Greenland" not because it was green but because it was easier to convince people to move there with that name rather than if it was called "Freezingcoldbarrenpieceofshitland".
Seriously, that's why it was called Greenland, because it sounded pleasant and made getting colonists to go there easier.