US Heat Waves To Skyrocket As Globe Warms, Study Suggests (usatoday.com) 395
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: As the globe warms in the years ahead, days with extreme heat are forecasted to skyrocket across hundreds of U.S. cities, a new study suggests, perhaps even breaking the "heat index." By 2050, hundreds of U.S. cities could see an entire month each year with heat index temperatures above 100 degrees if nothing is done to rein in global warming. The heat index, also known as the apparent temperature, is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature. This is the first study to take the heat index -- instead of just temperature -- into account when determining the impacts of global warming. The number of days per year when the heat index exceeds 100 degrees will more than double nationally, according to the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Communications. On some days, conditions would be so extreme that they'd exceed the upper limit of the heat index, rendering it "incalculable," the study predicts. What is there to be done about this? "Rapidly reduce global warming emissions and help communities prepare for the extreme heat that is already inevitable," report co-author Astrid Caldas said. "Extreme heat is one of the climate change impacts most responsive to emissions reductions, making it possible to limit how extreme our hotter future becomes for today's children."
More trees (Score:5, Insightful)
Carbon sinks, air-purifying, more shade, climbable ... what's not to like?
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More trees? Only if they multiply and we plant them faster than we cut them down.
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That isn't enough. Sure it will help.
But trees only take in a certain amount of carbon, then the tree dies, and releases it. So eventually we will run out of places to plant enough trees.
Then there is the whole "they need water" thing. Because, yes, sure, it looks like a lot of rain in Louisiana these days, but I'm certain that's not the only place we need to put those pesky trees, and most of the places that need them the most, does not have enough fresh water as it is...
Lets not forget about the whole "ho
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When the tree dies, it rots slowly. This can take quite a few years. As it breaks down it combines with the surface layer and forms soil. The soil layer thickens over time.
This is actually a pretty important process. If the Sahara were re-greened, eventually, you would end up with many metres of soil above the bedrock. The reverse process, of soil degradation, is actually only of the main ways that modern agriculture contributes to the release of carbon into the atomosphere (every time you turn over the so
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If we killed off a few million sheep and cows, for example, and let the land grow, it would make a substantial impact. With the adding advantage of less methane.
Wrong. So wrong. Although perhaps understandable since even the best ecologists thought the same for a long time.
A healthy grassland needs megafauna to eat the grass, shit on it, lay on it, and move on. As they move on they spread the seeds in their hair and manure. Here's a video explaining this.
https://www.ted.com/talks/alla... [ted.com]
If you kill the sheep and cattle then you will kill the plant life that depend on them. Allan Savory proved this by doing precisely what was prescribed by the dominate theory o
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Trees uptake carbon until they die. Interesting part about the forest cycle, is that there's an entire microbiological ecosystem that exists on also using the CO2. Trees "don't release it." It's why you see those massive areas of limestone that can be a couple of KM thick I mean, the area I grew up in the limestone is around 400m thick. Depending on the type of tree determines the amount of carbon uptake, fast growing pines for example take more in 20 years then say a hardwood does in 40 years.
Funny thi
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Three factual comments in a row modded down because some nuclear shill with mod points doesn't like being talked down to, like they deserve.
How do I know you aren't just a solar power shill? Who's paying you to tear nuclear power down and prop solar power up?
That works both ways, and you should know that. It's not just the nuclear power industry with paid lobbyists. It's not just the solar power industry with it's unpaid fanatics. How about bringing up some actual fact? Like this...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
I like hydro, nuclear, and wind, because they have a sufficient energy return on investment to support a modern economy. I'd i
Trees won't help (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Trees won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
You want a way to convince "right wingers" to favour electric cars? Here's a simple one - get the price of the vehicle down to $15K or so, rather than $30K or so. The average person in America can't really afford a car (or two or three, if we're talking a family) that costs $30k (or $60k or $90k, if we're talking a family), so they're not buying them much. And there's not much of used EV market yet, since they haven't been around long enough for that (never mind that a used EV probably has a battery in bad enough shape as to seriously impact range)....
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get the price of the vehicle down to $15K or so, rather than $30K or so
Yes, that's absolutely the sort of thing I'm in favor of. I've ranted about it so often in the past I didn't give the full spiel this time. Governments need to step in to make this revolution happen sooner rather than later. For most people, EVs have the potential to be sturdier, cheaper, cheaper to drive and all-around nicer than ICE vehicles... fewer moving parts, much less heat and stress and weight required, no need for a complex transmission. This isn't a case of the government needing to subsidize th
Re:Trees won't help (Score:5, Informative)
Dr Moore has a long history [wikipedia.org] of climate change denial. He believes his Forest Biology degree entitles him to contradict thousands of experienced climatologists and decades of evidence, and apparently so do you.
Maybe you can tell me why some people keep repeating "CO2 is necessary for life", as if that means it can't be a pollutant as well. Too much water will kill you. Even oxygen is toxic [wikipedia.org] if you breathe too much of it. While CO2 at these levels will have some benefits, the IPCC reports have entire working groups [www.ipcc.ch] citing studies that comprehensively show how the many negative impacts of too much CO2 easily outweigh the few positives.
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Maybe you can tell me why some people keep repeating "CO2 is necessary for life", as if that means it can't be a pollutant as well. Too much water will kill you. Even oxygen is toxic if you breathe too much of it. While CO2 at these levels will have some benefits, the IPCC reports have entire working groups citing studies that comprehensively show how the many negative impacts of too much CO2 easily outweigh the few positives.
If the IPCC were to say everything is fine then there would no longer be an IPCC. The existence of the IPCC is dependent on the belief that global warming is happening, that humans have caused it, that the effects are detrimental to humanity, and... this is very important...
That no solution has yet been found.
We have a solution. We know how to implement it. And this solution does not require any international intervention. The solution is wind, hydro, nuclear, and a some natural gas to bridge the gap un
Re:Trees won't help (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution is wind, hydro, nuclear, and a some natural gas to bridge the gap
I'm largely in agreement with you there. Though I have reservations about the cost of nuclear, there are certainly some cases where it's the most viable choice. For most other cases, a good mix of renewables plus storage, and a widely-distributed, well-connected grid, are quite sufficient.
I will not disagree on human caused CO2 emissions being a problem if there is agreement on the solution.
You lost me there I'm afraid. I don't see how the existence of the problem depends at all on any solutions - even if there's a solution, let alone people agreeing on the best one. Refusal to concede a problem exists because you don't like proposed solutions seems very much like sticking your head in the sand. You have to face up to the issue before you can contribute to solving it.
Until the IPCC starts to support nuclear power then I say they are full of shit.
The IPCC is a panel of scientists, not politicians. It's not their job to dictate policy, only advise policymakers of the causes and likely effects of the problem. They can advise about some aspects of possible solutions, but that's not really their field. Accordingly, you'll find very little in the IPCC reports on energy systems - for or against. AR5 WG3 Chapter 7 mentions [www.ipcc.ch] it alongside renewables and fossil fuels, in a brief discussion on energy systems, but that's pretty much it.
But if all you read was that Forbes opinion piece, I can see why you might think the IPCC was heavily against it. The author looked at the Special Report [www.ipcc.ch] then just mined it for quotes from the negatives column, while ignoring any positive mentions of it - like how the report says elsewhere that "Increased use of nuclear power can provide stable baseload power supply and reduce price." Nor do they bring up the various negatives discussed for the other energy systems. But in either case, specifics like suggestions on which energy system to use don't even make the Summary for Policymakers, so it's not "support" either way. I suggest you have a read through it yourself in more detail.
I'll point out also that the IPCC merely exists to summarise the data from working climatologists, who will all still have jobs studying the climate whether or not we keep pumping out CO2 at such rates. Imputing a profit motive does not change the evidence, even if the IPCC were disbanded tomorrow. The fossil fuel industry, OTOH, stands to lose vastly more, so for profit motives or survival imperatives I'd look there first.
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Dr Moore has a long history of climate change denial. He believes his Forest Biology degree entitles him to contradict thousands of experienced climatologists and decades of evidence, and apparently so do you.
So, what kind of degree "entitles" a person to speak with authority on the climate? Someone with a BS in mechanical engineering? Someone like Bill Nye? I would think knowing about how trees work has a closer approximation to how the environment works than someone that learned to design jet engines. Seems to me the defining factor of an "expert" on climate is someone that thinks humans are the cause of environmentally disastrous global warming. If someone disagrees, even someone that wrote his doctoral
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Not as dumb as it sounds if you plant new trees to replace them, and burn them efficiently. But of course, there is no money in it.
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Sounds like one of those, strategically located in various forests, could help with the deforestation problems.
Environmentalists and "just right"-itis (Score:5, Interesting)
Likewise, they feel it can't be so bad that we have to adopt more radical methods of carbon sequestration. To them, global warming is occurring quickly enough that drastic action is needed, but not so quickly that recycling is still "good enough". Recycling paper and wood products (composting) is carbon neutral - it's like having perfect defense in a basketball game. It does you no good if you're already losing the game. It can stop you from falling further behind, but it won't let you win the game. We're probably well past the point where stopping CO2 emissions will be enough. We're going to have to come up with ways to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it underground. Mainly, chopping down trees and burying them (i.e. replacing the trees which died millions of years ago which we dug up and burned as coal and oil). Then planting new trees to replace the ones we cut down so the rate that global vegetation pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere isn't reduced. This means no more recycling paper - it's better to throw used paper away in landfills to sequester it underground. Likewise, composting needs to be reduced to only whats necessary to recycle nutrients. Excess landscaping debris (like grass clippings) should also be sent to landfills to sequester the carbon underground.
But they won't accept these radical solutions because their primary goal isn't to stop global warming. Their primary goal is the adoption of renewables and recycling - you can tell because they stick to that goal even if it results in more global warming (renewables unable to provide the necessary power so more coal and gas plants get built, recycling paper reduces the amount of carbon being sequestered underground). To them, global warming is merely a convenient reason to justify adoption of their preferred solutions.
If you're chanting the mantra of renewables and recycling, you seriously need to ask yourself: "What's your real goal?" Is it the adoption of renewables and recycling? Or is it to save the world from global warming? If the latter, then you need to be receptive of options which accomplish it which may not rely on (or may even contradict) renewables or recycling. Renewables and recycling can be part of the solution. But if you automatically dismiss out of hand any other solutions simply because they don't involve renewables or recycling, then you are part of the problem which is driving our climate to disaster.
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This is a criticism I've had of environmentalists for a long time. For their position to be justified, there has to be just the right amount of global warming occurring. It has to be bad enough that we have to abandon fossil fuels, but not so bad that we should switch ASAP to the one power source which is carbon-neutral and we can already scale up to supply all our needs - nuclear. To them, the amount of global warming occurring falls into the narrow band that's just the right amount for our best course of action to be to pour money into developing renewable energy source.
Same here. I cannot take them seriously until nuclear power is considered part of the solution to get us out of this CO2 hole. First step is to stop digging. Second step is to start filling in the hole.
We're going to have to come up with ways to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it underground. Mainly, chopping down trees and burying them (i.e. replacing the trees which died millions of years ago which we dug up and burned as coal and oil). Then planting new trees to replace the ones we cut down so the rate that global vegetation pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere isn't reduced.
Burying trees is a bad idea. At least not until we use the wood for building material first. We can sequester a lot of carbon in wooden structures, as well as furniture, fencing, or whatever durable goods we can think of. When they reach end of their useful life then we can bury the wood.
Here's another
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If we are serious about the threat of Global Warming we should be building nukes on a massive scale. We should get Cart
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>> To expensive, too many waste issues, massive closedown costs,
Yeah just more of the same standard economics mantra.
Please tell me how allowing radical environmental change won't impact your precious Wall Street even more.
When the whole planet is dying, I'm sure you will feel justified knowing that some Wall Street trader's account has a few billion more in it because your priorities were to make them richer instead of caring about the only planet we have. You know, the one that supports us all.
Re:Environmentalists and "just right"-itis (Score:4, Informative)
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And if you keep listening, other people point out that nuclear has a lot of problems and it is a waste of precious time to keep spinning that square wheel.
This complete idiocy of nuclear advocates where they insist that their opinion is not only their opinion, but the only valid opinion, has a negative effect on the position that they purport to want to support. As long as you pretend everybody (read: all scientists with relevant degrees) agree with you, when in fact huge numbers do not, just destroys any c
Re: Environmentalists and "just right"-itis (Score:2)
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Plant 100 ha of over-farmed land with trees, etc.. In 5 years you will have changed the local weather system (yes this has been proven). Multiply that by 100,000 times and you will make an incredible difference.
Much faster than building nuclear power stations, way cheaper and the last time I checked it was pretty hard to contaminate 100 km2 of land making it unusable for 10,000 years with a forest.
You can slow the increase of co2 even more; chop the forest down after 10 years and burn it efficiently in a po
100 degree ? what an angle ! very obtuse. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, you looked up the US population, found out the US is a little over 4% of the world population, and just presumed some percentages.
But both systems are used in Canada. And older people in the UK and most former British colonies.
You also presume that 100% of the world population uses one of these two numerical temperature systems, but it hardly seems likely. 16% of the world population doesn't even have electricity, they're probably not using weather forecasts on a day to day basis, probably can't read,
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Oh, by that logic you are also at fault by presuming that everyone in the US uses Fahrenheit. Especially with that huge Latin American minority you have.
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Omfgstfutroll
This is a study about the USA, being presented by Americans who did the work in America, with American money, being reported by an American news outlet, posted on an American website, then being discussed on a board located in America, operated by Americans, most of whose users are American.
It could not possibly be any more appropriate to use degrees Fahrenheit, even if you invented the situation.
Furthermore, Fahrenheit is simply a superior scale for daily use, since you can feel changes in tem
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Thanks you for this post. People really need to let the Celsius thing go. Its ONLY virtue is that conversion to and from Kelvin (the scale science/engineering should generally be using) is that it can be done with simple addition/subtraction which does mean its mental math for most folks; admittedly multiplication or division by 5/9 to convert in and out of Fahrenheit is somewhat difficult without some kind of tool be it pen and paper or a machine.
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Let me get you straight. You think that one scale is superior to another scale because
1) you are unable to do decimal fractions
and
2) one point of the scale is "really cold" and another "really hot"
Seriously?
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"you are unable to do decimal fractions"
You selfish little prick. This is not all about me, like for you this is all about how fucking great you think you are. This is about EVERYONE. Some of them are confused by decimals. Why confuse them? What benefit does it confer?
"one point of the scale is "really cold" and another "really hot"
That's not quite what I said, though I can see how someone of your mental stature could come to such a conclusion. What I said was specifically that zero was really cold, and one
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Exactly. Celsius is how European kids learn decimal fractions. It works.
Except this is not true. Zero Fahrenheit is less than the temperature in the freezer and 100 Fahrenheit is lukewarm, not hot. Actual hot will burn your skin, 37 degrees C won't.
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Except this is not true. Zero Fahrenheit is less than the temperature in the freezer and 100 Fahrenheit is lukewarm, not hot. Actual hot will burn your skin, 37 degrees C won't.
This is not about the freezer, or about getting burned. You don't know what temperature things are which will burn you, unless it's boiling liquid. And then, again, the temperature is irrelevant — you know it's boiling, you don't need to know precisely how cold it is. Most people use temperature mostly to discuss air, whether it's air inside, or air outside. Most people have no idea what the temperature of their fridge or freezer is. Only commercial coolers normally come with a thermostat which reads
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Who exactly named you the speaker for "most people"?
It seems to me that you are talking about yourself only.
Because people who cook usually do care about temperature of other things than the air outside.
And now you have admitted that your favourite scale is really a one trick pony, only somewhat useful when talking about the weather, and shitty for anything else. And even the weather part is questionable because when the outside temperature is 0 degrees C, then it is literally freezing and black ice can be
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Who exactly named you the speaker for "most people"?
It seems to me that you are talking about yourself only.
If you have some evidence that I'm wrong, present it. It seems to be that you are whining only.
Because people who cook usually do care about temperature of other things than the air outside.
Sure, so? Most people follow recipes. They're not figuring out what the temperature should be, they're just using the existing temperature.
And now you have admitted that your favourite scale is really a one trick pony, only somewhat useful when talking about the weather, and shitty for anything else.
It's not shitty for anything else, it works fine. And it's ideally suited to talking about what people talk about most when they talk about temperature. Thanks for admitting that it's good for that, now we can move on to agreeing that virtually all use of temperature is for dis
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You are the one supposed to present evidence that you speak for "most people".
Really now? So if you cook a steak or bake a pie you just let it sit there and hope that the existing air temperature will do the job?
Yes it is. See, t
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Fahrenheit is superior for humans on Earth, and you seem to be arguing from some other viewpoint than that. Why?
Because it is wrong.
One who grew up with F, will like F.
One who grew up with C, will prefer C.
For human daily use, none of them is better than the other, albeit I find it convenient that 0 is the freezing point of water ... because I don't have to remember that odd number in F.
Every other argument about any scale, and don't let me get into length measurement: are simply completely arbitrary, or pl
is it STILL an american audience ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're too lazy to learn a simple temperature scale which is superior for daily use, and then you want to call other people lazy? Hypocrite.
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So I truly question "this is an American web site"
Truly, huh. We've had a lot of motherfuckers crash this party over the past twenty years but who's complaining?
People living in Houston... (Score:2)
Very Big Lie From China. (Score:2)
China, Am-I-Right???
"weather isn't climate" (Score:2)
...at least, that's what I hear after extended cold snaps or years of low hurricane activity.
Right?
A report from the CDC (Score:2)
analyzing deaths from U.S. weather events between 2006 and 2010 finds cold weather was responsible for the majority of weather related fatalities. The conclusion challenges a widely-held view that heat is the top weather-related killer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Getting hotter means it will be hotter? (Score:2)
Holy shit, news flash, huh?
The really interesting thing is that it will also lead to more flooding, unexpected cold snaps, etc.
Re:Earth warms... (Score:5, Informative)
Earth cools
repeat
You fail at analysis of time-series. They have four components:
(1) Seasonal
(2) Trend
(3) Cyclical
(4) Random
You're only talking about (3).
Re:Earth warms... (Score:5, Informative)
The one thing that remains the same: the puppeteers manipulating these folks accumulate billons of dollars of wealth and live indulgent lives of luxury
Yep they [reuters.com] sure [reuters.com] are [worldoil.com].
These guys [oilprice.com] could buy Al Gore and everything he owns with nothing more than a couple years of their personal income. And there's a long list [wikipedia.org] of them getting caught spending those billions [influencemap.org] manipulating your opinions so they can keep accumulating more.
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Where SJWs quash disagreeable posts
Where people have to post an Anonymous lest their Karma be destroyed.
Seriously, it's like Huffington post for Geeks now.
What ever happened to standing behind your words no matter what the consequences?
So afraid of getting down-modded that you post anonymously? That's for cowards. If you can't put your authorship to your opinions why should we give them any value, since you don't.
Wimps who are too afraid to even use a pseudonym, never mind their real name - no wonder the world has gone into the shitter. Bunch of cowardly baby boomers blaming millennials for the fuckups the boomers caused and continue to make worse. Anony
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What ever happened to standing behind your words no matter what the consequences?
Even if the consequences are a short drop and a sudden stop? Lose job or career? Lose access to your bank, money, or credit? Unpersoned into homelessness? Many of those things have happened and done by either wealthy corporations (CNN as example) or mobs of the internet that are willing to scorch the earth for their utopian safespace.
Anonymous speech has been around much longer than the internet. There is a very good reason for it. It is something that is more important than ever.
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My Karma just dropped from Excellent to Good. I've been at Excellent for years.
One post with a simple link to a video, Apollo 11's "1202 Alarm" Explained [youtube.com] was modded Troll and last I saw sat at 0.
Slashdot is now like Reddit.
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Re:heard this over a decade ago (Score:5, Informative)
heard this alarmist stuff over a decade ago, that it would be happening now... but it didn't
meanwhile we have "near record" heat waves....that were surpassed decades ago.
Meanwhile, the seas are rising, the polar ice is shrinking, and the temperature trend is upwards.
Precise predictions may have been off. Likely they always will be. But the predictions on trend are borne out.
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The weatherman is usually slightly off. Doesn't mean to stop listening to him.
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i heard this alarmist "extinction asteroid" stuff decades ago, but it never happened
Space Nuttery is a mental disorder
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i heard this alarmist "extinction asteroid" stuff decades ago, but it never happened
Tell that to the dinosaurs. It happened once. It could happen again.
If scientists discover a big rock coming towards us, will there be denialists who rise up with the same fervor as those who deny climate change? Sadly, I fear the answer is yes.
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If scientists discover a big rock coming towards us, will there be denialists who rise up with the same fervor as those who deny climate change?
If a big rock is coming toward us, someone will post on Facebook that it is crocked full of gold and diamonds. And instruct Facebook believers to naruto run to the impact location to become mega-giga-rich.
And a lot of folks will die on the impact, but soften the blow for the rest of the planet.
Humans make a squishy landing pad for a big rock.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:5, Insightful)
... with no evidence outside of simulation models ...
Oh, you don’t like simulations? In that case why don’t you go build a planet 12,000 or so km across, set up a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and a biosphere and then introduce large amounts of carbon dioxide and see what happens over a couple of hundred years? Silly me, you’ll have to build two, one to act as a control. Because you don’t like models. In the meantime we’ll be here on planet earth, convinced you’re a complete idiot.
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Data does exist, you just have to analyze it straight-up, without the influence of models (meaning, trying to justify your model). In doing so [judithcurry.com], you find things like the sensitivity of climate to CO2 is at no more than half of what it is assumed in the models. The typical correction is to "edit the data" so that it shows values more in line with the models [realclimatescience.com]. Literally editing history to adjust the present so the models are not changed.
As Richard Feynman so eloquently stated [youtube.com], if your model disagrees with ex
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Some day, they will talk about you guys fiddling around while Greenland melted.
Greenland is gaining ice [realclimatescience.com]. Data says you're wrong.
All over the world glaciers have retreated as huge amounts of ice and have already melted.
Yes, and? Is that good or bad? We've been experiencing glacial retreat for tens of thousands of years (14,000 years ago, most of the Northern US was under ice). So is this a good or bad thing? And Antarctica is still gaining ice mass overall [dailycaller.com]; portions (small areas) are shrinking, but overall it's adding ice. Do individual areas matter more than the overall globe?
As the ice melts, it's turning black as sediment accumulates on the surface.
It mainly turned black from dust/dirt/pollution in the air - which is dropping in some plac
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Greenland is not gaining ice ... why are you so stupidly trolling?
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Besides, you're going to be hard pressed to hijack an asteroid for use as a Socialism Trojan Horse
I'm sure it's easy to do, just as much as it's easy to hijack global warming for use as a Mccratyhism Trojan Horse.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:5, Insightful)
With all this evidence of global warming to support public policy to avert it, what has the US governments, federal and state, actually done about it?
The best I can see is that they tripped and fell into hydraulic fracturing to make natural gas cheaper than coal. Their "policy" was to make exploration of federal lands for natural gas so expensive that the industry put a lot of money into making the most of what they could get from private land. This was so successful that natural gas got so cheap that coal was driven from the market.
With natural gas emitting half the CO2 for the same energy compared to coal the USA exceeded all expectations of CO2 emission reductions, beating even what was proposed by the 2015 Paris Accords.
Should we expect the federal government to get lucky like that again? I wouldn't.
We need to either get a government that is serious about the problem or, come to an understanding that this is too important to leave in the hands of any government. By understanding this is too much for the government to do requires a government that gets out of our way when people build the privately held structures and infrastructure to lower our CO2 output. If the government goes one way and private industry goes another then nothing will get done, which is precisely what has happened since we had a Department of Energy created to supposedly solve this energy problem.
We need a government to lead, follow, or get out of our way.
The government has been very good in measuring and describing the problem but worthless so far in solving it.
Australia has the same policy (Score:2, Troll)
Recent election. 60% of Australian's very concerned about climate change (more than the USA?) Labor in opposition. Too scared to talk much about Climate change having been bullied in the past about a Carbon Tax. Instead Labor goes in with some really dumb tax policies and loses.
Our PM is currently very excited about having been invited into the inner sanctum of the White House where Trump will tell him what to do.
But not to worry. If it gets too bad we will happily follow the USA when they invade Iran.
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Because Australians are on the whole are a bunch of smug, racist bastards, both sides of Australian politics can give Trump very good lessons on how to deal with asylum seekers, which judging by the news he has taken to heart.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:4, Interesting)
With all this evidence of global warming to support public policy to avert it, what has the US governments, federal and state, actually done about it?
They are playing wack-a-mole with regulations. This is the least efficient and most intrusive way to address climate change. Economists overwhelmingly agree that the most efficient solution is to implement a revenue neutral carbon tax. This would allow us to lower taxes on things we ought to be encouraging (income and sales) and will allow free enterprise to find the most efficient solution to the problem.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with a carbon tax is that the burden would overwhelmingly fall on sparsely-populated rural states. Those states have a majority of senators, so such a bill has no chance of passing in the US.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:2)
And the democrats all lined up after Clinton lied to them to their face, and they knew it, and they said effectively - We find no problem here.
Facts donâ(TM)t matter, just votes.
And it has ever been so.
Re: heard this over a decade ago (Score:5, Insightful)
When they "correct" aggregate past data by assuming their current model is true, that is nothing other than fraud.
Citation please. And assuming you bother to provide it, I think it will easily be explained by the methodolgy of the scientists who analyzed the data.
Sometimes (in fact, often in some cases) scientists need to analyze historical data that was gathered inconsistently. Temperature, wind, and pressure measurements that were gathered at different altitudes or different times of the day, as one example. In order to compare apples to apples, you need to fit this kind of data into a model that accounts for diurnal, geographical, altitudinal, or other variations. That's not religion. That's good science.
But no, the denialists say the scientists are "fudging" the data.
Doing science is hard. Criticizing it is easy. Scientists who do both are participating in the scientific process in good faith. Keyboard-jockeys who foment conspiracy theories are not worthy of attention.
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"La la la" says the AC with his fingers in his ears. Careful you don't click on the peer-reviewed study in TFS, or you might accidentally get exposed to real data!
The day a denialist actually cites real data, rather than just spouting "no there isn't" and "if there is, it's all invalid because of motives I just made up", then people might actually pay a little attention to your stream of nonsense. And you even brought up the tired old money riff! I guess you're still blissfully oblivious to the trillions of
Re:heard this over a decade ago (Score:5, Informative)
The study linked in TFA is just the latest in decades of rigorous statistical analyses of observed heatwave frequency in various geographical regions, including Karl & Knight 1997 [ametsoc.org], Meehl & Tebaldi 2004 [sciencemag.org], and Smith et al 2013 [nih.gov].
Not every heatwave will break records (though we've had plenty [wikipedia.org] of those). And of course new records are supposed to become less frequent over time - at least in a stable system. But as heatwaves are a combination of many factors, known and random, what's important is how likely a bad event is. If enough factors combine then you get a once-in-a-century heatwave, and since the underlying average temperature for the region is obviously a factor then increasing this will clearly make these random events more likely - less factors need to add to the increased base temperature to reach a given threshold. And the once-in-a-century events will be that much worse.
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Add to that that the frequency and strength of extreme weather conditions will increase over time. We can see that already now. Basically a system which gets destabilized goes more frequently and more often against extremes than a stable one.
Have also in mind that the people going doing anti climate propapaganda almost to 100% lie in bed with the oil industry.
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The trendlines for hurricanes globally [policlimate.com] is falling.
The trendlines for tornadoes [noaa.gov] is falling.
The min temperature is rising faster than the max temperature [ametsoc.org], and even Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, confirms that Tmin is increasing faster than Tmax [twitter.com].
All this points to a more stable system. The daily temperature difference is reduced. Which would go hand-in-hand with reduced cyclonic action (hurricanes and tornadoes) - there is less temperature differential to drive energy in the system.
We are a
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While your argument has merit, it is not well supported by your data. I note that the trend line for severe hurricanes is slightly positive, while the trend for hurricanes of all strengths is negative.
That actually makes sense because the most extreme storms "make their own weather". When, say, a cloud system generates enough uplift it will find cool air at some lofty altitude regardless of what the min temp is, and warm moist air cooled down generate yields heat energy that generates yet more uplift. At
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Tmin and Tmax is not the daily change. ...
It is the _avarage_ over a year
We are actually trending to LESS extreme weather events ...
No we are not
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"...new records are supposed to become less frequent over time - at least in a stable system."
Climate. Stable system. These two terms do not belong in the same thought sequence.
Climate is very clearly a chaotic system, with numerous trends. If we can, for the moment, completely ignore AGW, we still have a planet that is in a short-term but substantial warming trend, which began back in the Little Ice Age. And our planet is still not as warm as it was in the Medieval Optimum or in the Roman Warm Period. Long
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If we can, for the moment, completely ignore AGW, we still have a planet that is in a short-term but substantial warming trend, which began back in the Little Ice Age. And our planet is still not as warm as it was in the Medieval Optimum or in the Roman Warm Period. Longer term, we are emerging from a genuine ice age, also a warming trend.
Show your data.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, climate change deniers on
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They preach nuke safety based on the statements of paid industry scientists, whilst simultaneously accusing climate scientists of lying for grants, whilst never noticing there is no credible climatologist able to disprove climate change.
You had me until this part. The nuke folks (including me) all believe in Climate Change. That's why we support nuclear. The folks you are talking about are different, very different. The nuclear folks are often highly educated and usually hard engineers. The folks you are talking about are more skeptic cranks. The nuclear folks span the political spectrum. The skeptic cranks often skew hard right. The skeptic cranks don't see a problem with oil. The nuclear folks do. Basically the complete opposit
Re:Obligatory XKCD (Score:4, Interesting)
You are correct in assuming that most of the peolpe who are pro-nuclear seems to be those who accept technology/change better, which tends to be (from a purely psycological standpoint) those who have better educations, or less strict upbringings. that is still far from "all"
However, one topic you may want to be made aware of, that will sometimes silence the sceptics, is that here in Europe, we are conducting trials on low-radiation materials (like Thorium), with most byproducts having a halflife of as little as 27 days !). Making the problems of the past, excatly that. Past issues. So it's actually possible to be a nuclear propponent, AND still worry about pollution and waste. (The US scientific community has also wanted to restart US reasarch into the matter - eg: http://www.ralphmoir.com/wp-co... [ralphmoir.com]).
The reactors in use in the US today (and generally in most of the world), were originally chosen from the perspective of being able to provide enriched materials to eg. nuclear bombs, as well as some practical concerns, such as amount of shielding required (Thorium emits more heat and radiation during the process). If you take that requirement out of the equation, You can run nuclear energy, cleanly, safely and without a waste mangement issue. The original US trials were with molten salt, but other options are becoming much more economically viable today. India has functioning reactors ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ), and expects to replace most of their coal based energy with Thorium in 2025. The only thing keeping us in Europe from going full on thorium, seems to be the fact the the fuel price is still higher than traditional uranium rods (and also higher than other, renewable sources).
I imagine, that growing concerns might push modern nuclear energy towards thorium or similar materials. While that wont save the world in itself, it will mean that nuclear energy can be put on the table again as a way to combat increasing global temperatures and CO2 levels.
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Umm, no.
It takes a special kind of reactor to produce Pu239. Reactors meant to produce electricity don't produce Pu239 in quantities worth bothering with.
If you want to find reactors designed to produce Pu239, don't bother looking at the ones producing electricity, look for the ones on military reservations that aren't connec
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You CANT just claim ownership of nuclear support for Climate Change believers.
I will admit I do not have a statistic handy, but I'm willing to bet more than 75% and probably 85% of climate skeptics support nuclear energy.
Saying the nuke folks ALL believe in Climate Change is wrong. And perpetuates the talking point that climate skeptics are anti-science, which is also wrong.
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I'd more readily support nuclear if it was cheaper, although perhaps if carbon was priced to take into account externalities it would seem cheaper.
The biggest thing making nuclear expensive are the lawsuits.
Re:heard this over a decade ago (Score:4, Informative)
That's the point: it IS happening now. And we were warned over a decade ago.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
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My public schools in the 1980s did warn me. Confirmed.
They were right over a decade ago (Score:2)
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of wasting modpoints, why don't you just answer the question. Has Slashdot really become this crass?
If the OP had bothered to phrase the question in a civil manner, instead of using it as a vehicle for homophobic slurs, then the question might deserve an answer. Instead it deserves the mod that it got.
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I used to mock you. Now I just pity you. You are sad.
This line right here sums up post Trump USA perfectly.
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First part of the username checks out nicely.
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So we shouldn't build things? Things like windmills and solar collectors? That's all I ask of the federal government, if you are serious about global warming as a threat then let's see zero carbon energy build rate exceed growth in demand.
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Now we have a lot of predictions of underwater cities being proven false.
Can you cite even one?
Re:Go swimming (Score:4, Interesting)
The percentage was higher then - but MW hours have only increased, especially if you include nuclear.
So you do not dispute that we've been relying more and more on fossil fuels since 1950?
Here's an idea, instead of keeping the percentage of zero carbon energy the same... let's make it LARGER.
It's a crazy idea, I know. Maybe we could actually make it happen. It will take congresscritters to do more than talk about impeaching the Tweeter-in-Chief. Maybe they could open up a nuclear waste disposal site like they promised they would 40 years ago. Maybe they could do something about the drought along the west coast with some wind powered desalination plants, and more water reservoirs. The water storage would also make a good pumped hydro energy storage system without much additional cost if done with that in mind from the start.
Oh, and you include nuclear in this? That's a good idea, let's build more nuclear power plants along with more wind and hydro.
Re:Believe it when I see it... (Score:5, Informative)
Thermometers were not distributed enough or accurate enough to speculate the trends ~50-100 years ago
Sure they were [webs.ucm.es], for centuries - and here is the data [kaggle.com], dating all the way back to 1750.
The solar minimum will barely make a dent [wiley.com] in global temperatures - and being cyclical, even that effect won't last long.
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Go grab 5 thermometers from around your house and put them in the same place.. What's the variability of the temperature between them?
Not a relevant comparison because the climate scientist only look at the temperature anomaly. The temperature anomaly is the difference between historic and current temperatures. First they determine the anomaly for each individual thermometer, then they average the anomalies over a larger area, while at the same time identifying thermometers that move in different ways than their neighbours, and either disregard or correct them.
Since we're only talking about a few degrees warming at most, the anomalies ar
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This will require gobs of money like that dumped into wind and solar research
More money has been spent on nuclear research than wind and solar combined.
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I think it is bordering on narcissism to think humans could have any significant effect on the climate.
Or we could look at the science and know rather than think or believe something.
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facepalm
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