Another 150,000 Years of CO2 Data 809
An anonymous reader writes, "We've known since 2004 that the past 440,000 years have shown atmospheric carbon dioxide levels varying between about 200 and 300 ppmv, the difference in extremes being the difference between advancing ice sheets and our current clime. In 2005 the data were analyzed back to 650,000 years and were found to be much the same — Al Gore was proud to be able to show that then-new analysis in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed, and the data show much the same pattern, according to the researcher: 'When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range' — to 380 ppmv."
That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
Mars ho!
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
Soylent Red?
Are you kidding?! Soylent Red is pebbles!
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as how Mars' atmosphere has a lot of CO2 in it, and photosynthetic organisms do pretty well in such an environment, I'll probably eat a lot of green leafy things.
And since Mars doesn't appear to have a history of complex life, it's exceedingly unlikely that there's any coal or oil there.
And since there's not much oxygen there (on account of there being not much in the way of plant life at present), a gasoline powered engine is gonna be pretty useless.
Rest easy, secure in the knowledge that future Martians will never despoil their environment by using fossil fuels!
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you can certainly grow things there, but you'd need everything from electrical power to a large number of skilled colonists in order to do it on a large scale. Better start preparing now if you want to start living there in the next hundred years
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, [plants] also require loads of sunlight, water and soil
Mean distances from Sun:
Mars:Earth ratio of sunlight per square metre: 1:1.542^2 = 1:2.378
The sunlight issue alone is not all that difficult - a sealed environment with sufficient biomass and prudent management could be brought into range by an arrangement of lenses and mirrors. Now you might say that if you're talking about a sealed environment, you can do that on Earth too, but let's see how long your environment remains sealed when you have crowds of starving, desperate people on the outside of your bubble.
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Please try reading next time. kthx.
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If we can exist on Mars with high CO2 levels, then why are we moving away from earth because it has high CO2 levels?
Mars has been proven to be a harsh enviornment.
I would rather stay in our harsh environment here while others may choose to travel to a harsher one because ours is harsh
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Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
Many scientists believe that oil is produced as mineral and doesnt have anything to do with decayed plant matter.
Ah, "many".
Like, approximately, two or three.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, if it's not buried deepish, it'll also make a fairly decent crater, and irradiate the sirface for miles.
But the principle remains the same: you aren't doing yourself any favours by trying to melt ice, or frozen gasses with Nu
Re:Step By Step Instructions (Score:5, Funny)
4. Watch the atmospheric CO2 and water vapor escape into space
5. Get baked to a crisp during the next solar flare
That's it! (Score:5, Funny)
I'll turn this rocket right around!
Re:That's it! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's funny that you were marked insightful when, in fact, you were anything but.
Going to Mars and working on terraforming there will help us learn many skills that we will need to unfuck Terra, not least because the effort itself will drive technology.
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & Al (Score:5, Interesting)
O'Reilly points out that if igorants in a 3rd-world country like Brazil can wean it off oil and onto ethanol, there is no reason why people in the supposedly most technologically advanced country (i.e., the USA) cannot do the same. O'Reilly claims that the reason for America's still being dependent on foreign oil is that Washington is in the pockets of Big Oil: ExxonMobile, Chevron, and Shell.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, what's good for the environment/consumer/voter takes a back seat to politicians' special interests.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Informative)
Uhhh, yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
The "Brazillian model" is absolutely irrelevant to the US, unless you expect three quarters of people to give up their cars and for us to rip up most of the national forests and parklands to plant fuel crops.
Go right ahead... (Score:3, Insightful)
Studies have shown that biofuel
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Insightful)
Occasionally O'Reilly says something reasonable or admits a progressive cause(conservation, actually is historically a conservative cause, hence the name), and we should applaud him for doing so.
Likewise, we should applaud a thousand monkeys with typewriters when they write occasionally write something reasonable.
Evolution needs positive reinforcement.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to watch the O'Reilly factor with one of my conservative friends. He lost me within the first five minutes. I'm not sure if it has changed since then. I can't stand how the text on the right side of the screen mirrors what he says. I can't stand how he sucks out a lot of the nuances and complexities of issues to make them match his (in my view) simplistic moral world-view. In short, I think he's full of crap most of the time.
He's a bully. He doesn't let people speak if he disagrees with them - even if he says that he's going to give them the last word. He lies, often blatantly("I've been in combat!").
His show is definitely not the no-spin zone it is billed to be and he is definitely not an independent.
You disagree, obviously. You have your O'Reilly world and I have my world, where just telling someone to shut up does not win you an argument, and does not promote a reasoned, bipartisan discussion of the issues. We'll just have to agree not to cross each other.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Moreover, conservationism is an element of traditional Christian morality and social values - preserving God's creation. You are correct that it is not an element of the messianic, Rapture-anticipating values of contemporary Christian evangelism and fundamentalism.
I wasn't clear about the
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem: they've weaned themselves off dead dinosaurs, and on to TOPSOIL. Before irrigation, Egypt was green. GREEN! Now it's a fucking desert. The same is in Brazil's future if they elect to continue to overproduce sugar cane in order to make ethanol out of it so that they can use it to make fuel.
The simple fact is that agriculture should be kept at a bare minimum, to preserve topsoil which takes up to hundreds of years to build, so that we can use it for food production - if we must. Ideally, ALL agriculture would go hydroponic at some point. Brazil is only growing economically and if they continue to expand, then they will end up with a soil crisis, where we have an oil crisis, and peak soil is a fuck of a lot more serious than peak oil.
Don't point to Brazil as a positive example. They're currently in the process of destroying their country. The only way they're superior to all us oil-guzzlers is that for now, they're only hurting themselves, as opposed to our "stomp around the globe in heavy boots" tactics of securing oil.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:5, Informative)
Care to cite a source on this? The whole region (the Sahara) was much greener in the past, this is true, but desertification started long before the advent of agriculture, and has been creeping along for the last 30,000 years or so. Egypt, at least as long as it has held civilization, always been mostly desert, which is why the largest population centers there (now, and thoughout history) have been next to the Nile. Also do a brief refresher of Egyption mythology to see the importance of annual Nile flooding for their agriculture thoughout the ages. 60,000 years ago Egypt indeed might have been more grassy than today, or even 30,000 years ago, but it changed previous to the advent of heavy agriculture.
I think Brazil is doing much better ecologically than we are, even if this "risk" to topsoil is real. Top soil can be managed through intelligent farming techniques, it can even be retained and replenished thanks to modern farming technology. Even fertilizers can be used to replenish mineral and nitrogen content of the soil, and while if used unintelligently this can lead to enviromental impacts, this is not a necissary consiquence.
In the end, the enviromental consiquences of ethenol is much much less than using fossil fuel (which, BTW, has nothing to do with dinosaurs, or even prehistoric fauna, it is the result of ancient, but much after dinosaurs, swamps and boglands decaying).
I really don't see how Brazil is destroying their economy. All indicators say that their succesfully applying a socialist model to it, with great results. Granted, their not quite up to "first world" standards, but in light of the region, and history, they're doing great for an progressive emerging economy.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Egypt may be a bad example, because the climate change in the Sahara was naturally occuring, but if I'm not mistaken Mesopotamia -- the famed "Fertile Crescent" -- is a good example of what irrigation and deforestation can do to a region if that region is not capable of supportin
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Cattle just eat the top part of the grass.
Sheep eat the grass down to the ground, which damages the grass, but doesn't usually kill it off entirely, at least not if pasture rotation is practiced.
But goats pull up the roots, and that kills grass outright. (D'oh!)
And without ground cover (not necessarily trees -- grass is better for retaining topsoil
Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Agriculture does not consume "topsoil which takes up to hundreds of years to build". Sure, you can bulldoze it out of the way or arrange for it to blow away, but that's stupidity rather than agriculture that's doing that. As an example, the part of England that I was born in was originally natural deciduous forest, and over the last 2000 years was farmed first for trees, then for a mixture of everything (with cows doing their bit to maintain
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:5, Informative)
Before irrigation, Egypt was green. GREEN! Now it's a fucking desert.
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the kind of falsely alarmist crap that's causing so many people to be skeptical of the environmental movement.
Egypt and the surrounding desert was green about 6,000 BP because of an period of unusually heavy precipitation in the region called the Neolithic Subpluvial. It supported agriculture in what is now desert, yes, and also a pastoral economy. Desertification resumed about 5,000 BP not because of these activities -- there were, for example, no forests to cut down -- but because the rain stopped. (And this was also not due to human activity, which was at a relatively low level at the time.) Agriculture in the Nile Valley has ever since, and until the construction of the dams at Aswan, been reliant on the annual Nile flood. This flood irrigates fields all by itself, without human intervention. There was a degree of artificial irrigation, true, but it had little effect on the progress of desertification.
Stick to the truth; you'll be more convincing.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
I think you're right. If, after all these years, humans still can't grasp the difference between "its" and "it's," then we should probably all just die, and spare the universe from more embarassment.
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Funny)
That's exactly what I'm saying! I'm going to go have a beer, and then throw myself in front of a solar powered car.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The human race may be ultimately insignificant to the universe as a whole, but it is pretty important to human beings, and since we just happen to be human beings (most of us, anyway), we should probably be a little concerned about this.
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Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:5, Insightful)
Want an example? Lets look at one single raw material: steel. We need mining equipment (possibly including blasting, but I won't go into that). Lets be nice and say that they're electrically powered, so we'll need power. We need a crusher and a ball mill to powder it. Well, look at all those moving parts! We need lubricants and probably hydraulic fluids as well. Lets skip them for now.
So, we take our crushed iron ore. And we're going to reduce it.. how? Certainly not with coal/coke; that's not present on Mars. No, the best process seems to be to recover the sulphur as sulfuric acid (we can't get sulfuric acid as readily as we do here on Earth -- from the petrochemical industry -- and it's such a vital industrial chemical) through superheating it in the presense of oxygen, then in a separate chamber mixing it with steam. The temperatures involved here and in the next step are hot enough that you can't rely on a nuclear power plant's heat directly, so it's going to be wasteful. Anyways, the gaseous sulfuric acid is going to need to be regeneratively cooled, channelled, and stored. Of course, you'll need proper equipment for all of this.
Now we've stripped out part of the sulfur. We need higher temperatures now in the next step (which we'll have moved our ore into, hopefully without wasting its heat) to melt the iron oxide. We'll then need to inject syngas (CO + H2) to rob the iron oxide of its oxygen. Naturally, we need to produce both of those elsewhere. We'll also need fluxing agents to isolate the other impurities, such as silicon -- we're looking at needing calcium carbonate, fluorspar, possibly others. Better hope that we can mine them!
Now we've got our steel and slag, and we need to get the carbon to the right level, or it will be horribly brittle. So, we bubble more oxygen through it until it's reached the right point. Now we have to skim off the slag, which we'll work into other useful products like rock wool for insulation (we already have a hot, workable substance; why waste it?). Of course, we'll need to regeneratively use the heat (notice that I keep mentioning this. 1) heat is hard to get on Mars, and 2) it's hard to radiate as well. Thus, reuse is critical). Then, we need to get our molten steel into moulds and recover the heat from it as well as we can, then cool the rest radiatively (probably with some convection as assistance). Now that we've got raw pieces of steel, we'll need to shape them, cut them, move them, and weld them. Each of these processes presents huge problems on Mars.
Just a few things that I skimmed: Electric power. H2 and O2. CO (made from CO2, which you have to refrigerate out of the sparse atmosphere) (nitrogen is even harder to get, but thankfully we don't need it for *this* material). Fluorspar. Calcium carbonate. Any other fluxing agents. Hydraulics and lubricants (yes, you need an entire petrochemical industry -- I was nice and didn't make that the example "product". Your entire petrochemical industry needs to be based on the Fischer-Tropsh process using the CO2 that you refrigerated from the atmosphere, reduced to CO. Horribly wasteful). Raw heat. Water. And, of course, hundreds to thousands of tonnes of high-maintenence industrial equipment.
Don't even dream, at this point, of chip fabrication or things like that on Mars (i.e., true independence).
Think "steel" is even a fraction of what you'll need? Think again. Most basic industrial chemicals require at least one of the major industrial acids to manufacture -- sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric, and hydrofluoric. Each of these requires specific ores and dozens of steps to make and refine. The nitric (from ammonia, also a critical chemical) is especially hard to make, as nitrogen is so rare on Mars -- yet if you want many chemicals (most notably, explosives and fertilizers), you need your nitrates. Your petrochemical industry is a nightmare because, s
800,000 years of data insufficient (Score:5, Funny)
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while i recognize and respect your sarcasm, i think it's important to point out the biggest myth about 'global warming' of all: that it always means a warmer climate.
witness northern newfoundland. the area around norhtern newfoundland has gotten significantly colder in the last thirty years. why? global warming. increasing average temperatures at the poles have caused accelerated ice
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But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Such an assertion implies that the following person d
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to see how many of them pointed to the last two years of above normal Atlantic hurricanes as "proof" of global warming? Most experts stated that the Atlantic was in a natural peak hurricane cycle.
So far this year is running below normal. I guess global warming is over.
In this case both sides seem equally willing to abuse science to prove their point.
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The rate at which the warming is occuring.
2) What proportion of it is due to human activity.
3) Whether spending several trillion dollars trying to prevent it is a worthwhile activity.
My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted. Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right, and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions - when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?
Sorry, that's no way to spend a few tens of trillions dollars.
Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:4, Insightful)
ALL (without exception) predictions in the past have been 100% wrong: over population, over pollution, lack of food and even Global Cooling (!! Remember all the predictions in the 70s and 80s that we were heading into an ice age??) -- all have proven to be completely false.
These aren't really fair comparisons. Overpopulation was a concern, if population growth had continued along trends current at the time. It's still a concern, as someone else pointed out, in areas like India and China where the population is still growing. What came as something of a surprise here was that economic prosperity is the chief indicator of zero population growth.
Over-pollution was indeed a problem. You're probably too young to remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire [blogspot.com], and how hazardous it once was to come into contact with the waters of the lower Hudson River. (The river itself was a Superfund site!) It stopped being a problem because we put significant pollution controls in place. Again, had current trends continued the problem would have been serious. It became less so because we did something about it.
There is a food problem in much of the world. Count yourself fortunate that you don't live in a place where this is so. But for unanticipated technological advances in farming, even the US would be a tad hungry right now.
Global cooling theories were creations of the media. They never represented the consensus opinion of climatologists.
The lesson here is not that problems go away on their own, but that we have it in our power to do something about them when they arise. We did it for the ozone layer, which is now recovering thanks to the banning of the substances that were damaging it. If a significant proportion of global warming is in fact anthropogenic, then what you have really shown us here is that not only should we do something about it, but that we probably can.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
*sigh* ... You didn't really pay much attention to the story, did you? What we've got here is evidence that the levels of CO2 have remained somewhere between 200 and 300ppm over the last 800,000 years, changing at a very, very slow rate. Suddenly, the level of CO2 has started rising well
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that's still a defensible position - most climate scientists agree about the approximate magnitude (several 2.5-4 degrees C) and timescale (a century or two), but not about the intermediate path to that, and certain not about localized phenomena.
Yes, by definition. When a scientific community comes to consesus, whatever it presently concludes is accepted as correct until it's proven wrong. That's how science works. If you don't believe the climate science community, you don't believe science.
A signification proportion? Let's be realistic here - we're talking about taxing emissions at the level of a sales tax. That's what we've always been talking about. While we've been sitting on our thumbs, gas has increased in price far more than any proposed carbon taxation would have done. And shockingly, the sky hasn't fallen.
Why should you wear a seat belt? After all, there's no evidence you're going to get in a crash today, and you're a safe driver. The reason is that the risk is non-negligible and the consequences are extremely severe. And nobody forbids you to drive on account of the risk, just to take some mitigating steps by buckling up. That's what the climate science community is saying - take mitigating steps: reduce emissions as quickly as is feasible, without draconian economic measures (e.g. bans on oil) or other measures that might shock the world's economy.
As it happens, most human infrastructure on the planet has been developed in an extraordinarily short period of time, and hence we have felt approximately zero climate change on our timescale. So maybe, just perhaps a good place to start protecting ourselves from global warming is to stop causing it in the first place. Like, ya know, if you're slipping on the ice out front, maybe turn the hose off or something.
50 years from now, Gore will be considered a hero (Score:5, Insightful)
I really think that unless we do something immediately, the habitability of at least half the landmass on Earth will be be jeapordy.
Re:50 years from now, Gore will be considered a he (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, I live in Canada... Up here global warming sounds like kind of a nice idea, unless you like shoveling snow...
Re:50 years from now, Gore will be considered a he (Score:5, Funny)
Re:50 years from now, Gore will be considered a he (Score:4, Funny)
Oh great, tax people for working out, breathing out CO2, and not the fatties, storing carbon in their blubber.
That won't backfire, will it?
I really think that unless we do something immediately, the habitability of at least half the landmass on Earth will be be jeapordy.
And as I demonstrated above, your plan will hit their hitability. By gods man! What's a few floods compared to that?!
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well, that's certainly a lot of fallacies in one post!
Re:50 years from now, Gore will be considered a he (Score:5, Informative)
Which "developing countries? As far as I can tell, the only developing countries that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol are the US and Australia.
Look at the map and list of List of Kyoto Protocol signatories [wikipedia.org]. China, Russia, the EU, all of South America, Canada, Asia (inc both N. & S. Korea) have all signed and ratified the treaty. That means that those countries will be reducing their emissions to 55% of their 1990 levels.
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What the fuck was Al Gore doing to combat this when he was in power?
Urging the world to adopt the Kyoto Accords, maybe? [nara.gov]
It must get worse before it gets better (Score:3, Insightful)
Official GOP Response (Score:5, Funny)
My grip with "An Inconvenient Truth" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My grip with "An Inconvenient Truth" (Score:5, Informative)
Using public transit is a good thing, but it's not a realistic option for everyone (particularly celebrities, given how the rest of us react to them).
By going Carbon Neutral in his personal life and business ventures, Gore is personally doing as much to fight global warming as anyone can reasonably do. I'm not going to judge him based on whether he uses compact fluorescent bulbs in his laundry room.
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Well, if all of the rich -- including, especially, those who own and run large corporations -- made a commitment to being carbon neutral, then there wouldn't be much left for the common man to do but buy fuel effic
If you can afford to drive..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out their faq [terrapass.com] for more info.
The changes we ought to make aren't that extreme or terribly expensive -- $15 extra for a flight is about what the TSA tacks onto your ticket for passen
Oooh! Oooh! I got one! (Score:4, Funny)
I got one for you: he doesn't sequester the carbon dioxide that comes out of his nose. He complains about carbon dioxide and in the same breath he contributes to the problem with carbon emissions from his multiple nostrils. What a hypocrite. Clearly nothing needs to be done about this. Do I win a cookie?
Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Score:3, Insightful)
Once again, this article confuses correlation with causation. If you are going to state that CO2 changes cause climate change, then you must also demonstrate a mechanism for the changing CO2. If, on the other hand, climate change causes changes in CO2 levels, then you need only explain climate change, something which has been adequately explained by solar cycles. http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/var
In fact, it's more correctly stated that CO2 levels tend to lag behind climate changes by up to 900 years. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/29
Again, be very careful about assigning cause and effect in a system as complex as the atmosphere.
In other words, this extra datum is nice to have, but it changes nothing in any ongoing debate.
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But but but... the article isn't intent on proving global climate change. Existing data already establishes that - heck you can establish causation by creating a closed environment changing the percent CO2 in it and exposing it to sunlight periodically - it's called a greenhouse.
The article's intent seems to be to confirm that the other 150k of data doesn't deviate from the previously assessed dataset.
THERE IS NO "ONGOING DEBATE" (Score:3, Informative)
For those actually paying attention, there is no "ongoing debate" in scientific circles over human influence in climate change. The only people "debating" it are the conservative politicians and anti-environmentalist special interest groups, in order to seed doubt and to prevent any action to be taken.
Re:Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Score:5, Informative)
This seems very reasonable - one would hardly expect atmospheric carbon dioxide to necessarily be the initial driver for warming given that, historically anyway, there wasn't anything (other than warming) that could cause a significant enough change in atmospheric carbon dioxide to induce warming. Just because the intergalicials required orbital variation to kick off the warming and start the process of carbon dioxide induced warming hardly invalidates carbon dioxide potentially being a factor in warming. Rather, the burden of proof lies more with those who claim it doesn't: we know that atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to its absorption spectra, will trap heat by allowing incoming energy from the sun to pass (due to wavelength) while trapping and radiating back the reflected heat energy from the earth (due to its different waverlength to that of incoming energy from the sun); what is need is an explanation of why that effect is either of no significance, or why it in fact does not occur for some reason. No one has provided such an explanation.
In summary, instead of, as you claim, "...to them, apparently, man made CO2 causes instant warming, but natural CO2 takes up to 800 years to have an effect", it is the opposite: to them man made carbon dioxide can cause carbon dioxide levels to change and precede warming effects, but natural changes in carbon dioxide levels require warming to occur and thus lag behind warming events from other causes (such as Milankovitch cycles).
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Wait -- are you saying that their measurements are in error,
Re:Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
you are being silly.
are you also unwilling to invest in technology that could replace oil
(Wind/Hydro/Solar/Tidal/Insolation/zero emmision vehicles)?
nobody needs to move to 17th century technology. what we need it 21st century technology.
Re:Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Score:4, Insightful)
It's only the word "only" that makes that an "insane reactionist" viewpoint. It is equally insane to think that if you "only" allow things to progress as they will without influence that they will have a desireable outcome.
Consider LA. Ever been there? It's a stinky shit-hole, and when you fly into LAX on a hot summer day you can see the huge brown cloud floating over downtown, obscuring the buildings.
Ask someone who has lived there since the early 80s, and they'll tell you that it's much better. While that is in some ways a scary thought (seriously, it must have fucking reeked), it also shows there is some hope for government mandates. California's vehicle emissions regulations, the toughest in the nation and the driving force behind many emissions technologies used today, are what is responsible for the improvement in LA's air "quality". Without the regulations, and the commensurate testing and certifications of new vehicle models, and annual inspections of vehicles on the road, LA would still look like its extra-stinky 1980s self.
I've worked for the EPA's vehicle emissions testing facility. I've seen representatives of the auto industries argue vehemenently against more stringent regulations, how they don't have the technology, they couldn't develop the technology, and if they could the extra cost per car would bankrupt them. They compromised with a lesser reduction in emmission levels and an effective date several years later than originally planned. Only six months later -- exactly as my senior coworker predicted -- they were using compliance with those future regulations as an advertising slogan for their next model year. Basically they were sitting on the technology, unwilling to use it until they were forced to by government regulation. How would the consumer, ignorant that such a thing was even possible and with no way to verify that their vehicles indeed emitted less polutants, force the manufacturer to implement these things?
Consider the rate of adoption of hybrid vehicles. Certainly this is fueled by normal market forces and the public's desire for more fuel-efficient (and environmentally friendly) vehicles. Yet these vehicles are more expensive than similar non-hybrid cars, and would not be adopted as quickly as they are were it not for government tax deductions that make them more economically attractive.
Consider also the negative effect of tax rebates for anyone who can claim some kind of business use from their SUV.
The point being that government regulation is neither inherently good nor bad, and the absence of regulation is neither inherently good nor bad. Each must be considered in the particular circumstance. Environmental controls are one of those cases where regulation makes the most sense because 1) there is often a little to no market pressure to improve environmental controls while there is a great deal of pressure to save costs by ignoring them and 2) to the extent that the public would demand improved environmental controls they have very little way of evaluating any corporation's alleged compliance with those demands. While an environmentally-conscious person can go to the store and purchase recycled paper products over new ones if they choose, they have little ability to tell which prescription medication manufacturer is most environmentally sound and more importantly can't realistically refrain from purchasing the product if they aren't happy with the company's policies.
By the way, neither of your links supported the idea that the U.S. has reduced their emissions as the Kyoto protocol would have them do. That signatory countries have not complied is saddening, but not surprising. Neither would I be s
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
more complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
Climate Change on your Laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Re:Climate Change on your Laptop (Score:4, Funny)
Here comes the flood... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's okay: Now that the Siberian permafrost is melting [newscientist.com], along with Antarctica [bbc.co.uk], it looks like the Earth's processes have been pushed into a region within which global warming will continue, even if humans reduce their carbon emissions, which itself isn't likely. So congratulations, guys: you won. You kept us from doing something about the problem until it was too late, and now we're going to be stuck with it.
You "skeptics": in twenty years, when the problems caused by global warming make Katrina and heat waves that kill 35,000 people [newscientist.com] look pretty trivial, are you going to look back on your postings on slashdot -- and whatever else you're doing to spread the idea that global warming can be ignored -- and feel ashamed? Are you going to feel partly responsible?
Probably not.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, I see we've progressed from "global warming is all a lie, so shut up" to "there's legitimate disagreement among scientists, the climate is very complex, you can't possibly understand it all, maybe it's not even humans anyway, so shut up" to "of course there's a problem, but the solution is
CONTACT YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS! (Score:5, Insightful)
With respect to the first knock yourselves out. With respect to the second pull your heads from the magical oil sands.
But for the third here is what you can do: Contact your reps.
Those of you in the U.S. will find that election day is fast approaching. The Mid-term congressional elections as well as many state elections are next week!. Now is the time to call, write, and fax your elected reps. Quote this data to them and demand to know what they will do telling them, in plain form, that they will forefit your vote and your money if they do not make you happy.
Don't just focus on the federal politicians California [google.com] recently showed how a state can aggressively (start) limiting greenhouse gasses. States also control the vast majority of funding for public transit and are in charge of monitoring many polluters. Local Govenrments can do more as well by tackling transit issues as well as local pollution control efforts.
Right now many of them are desperate and worried. Now, more than ever, they can in should be bombarded with calls and moved very clearly in the right direction.
I know that it's fun to sit on
Those of you in other countries do the same thing neither whining nor lunatic dreams of carbonless oil will get us there.
Karma is not action.
More Personal actions. (Score:3, Informative)
If you aren't in the room you don't need them on. And just do it with a switch. Many of those motion
Skeptical (Score:4, Interesting)
Graph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide [wikipedia.org] levels were 10x what they are now
"Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day."
Plus, mars is warming with receding ice caps. Maybe solar effects are what is driving our change? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/336237
I am always a bit skeptical, since I was the generation that had both Igloo effect and global warming in the same textbook in middle school...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Let me be the one this time to point out that it's completely irrelevant, as explained here [realclimate.org].
Ever open a warm beer? (Score:3, Informative)
We have warmer temperatures. Higher CO2 could be an effect more than a cause. Anthropogenic CO2 is averages about 80 g/m3/yr. Rain is 800 kg/m2/yr. 1e4 times more is likely to have a much bigger effect. CO2 might even have a cooling effect if it increases cloud nucleation and increases albeido.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, but it sure doesn't refute it. Now suppose there were lots of other reasons to expect causality, say, classical physics for example.`
The same beer that only makes a small "psst" when cold will foam all over the place when opened warm.
This is a real phenomenon, but it doesn't prevent the greenhouse effect from taking place. It's a positive feedback that could make the situation worse. Fortunately, not much worse. It's a long story, but in short, the ocean is
terraforming venus vs venuforming terra (Score:3, Insightful)
Which process do you think is easier?
Lech Walesa once said something to the effect that it's easier to make a fish soup out of an aquarium than the other way around. He was referring to Poland, but he could have been referring to the whole world as well.
Re:Soo.... (Score:5, Informative)
The climate scientists do appear to be making predictions [nationalacademies.org]. Those predictions aren't pleasant. Further, they are making these predictions based -- now -- on 800,000 years worth of ice core data (rather than ~600K years of data as before). There are other indicators, from tree ring data to a range of species from warmer regions migrating up north and down south as temperatures change. And then there's all that glacial freshwater being dumped into the sea due to arctic warming, as well as unprecedented permafrost melts.
There's plenty of data to back the assertion that human activity is the cause for increasing CO2 density in the atmosphere. --M
dumbass! (Score:5, Insightful)
Increased CO2 levels trap more heat in the atmosphere making it *warmer*, not colder. And what do you know! consistent with this prediction, the the global temperatures are on the rise and the glaciers are melting. Why don't you learn a little about the issue before opening your mouth?
Re:Which human activity? (Score:4, Informative)
Carbon dioxide that's generated from metabolic proccesses come from carbon present in what we eat. Since all our food get's its carbon in turn from the air (plants via photosynthesis, animals via eating plants), the total carbon in the system remains in balance.
This is the same reason why biofuels aren't considered a greenhouse gas contributor - it takes as much carbon from the air to produce them as they release when burned.
There is nothing you can do... (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the rich are gasping for air alongside the poor, nothing will be done.
Steve
Re:So.. Are we doomed? (Score:4, Funny)
might be... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too true.
I've heard a lot of people talking about colonising Mars and mentioning the 'because earth will be ruined soon' argument.
The BIG problem with this is that if we as a species are so stupid that we wreck this planet, moving to another one won't help in the slightest, we'll be just as dead, it'll just take a little longer.
Also, though many seem to forget this, we are the evolved product of a comple
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bah, don't they teach evolution in schools these days? Please tell me that either you're joking, or that your teacher was a creationist.
Evolution doesn't work that way. First off, human evolution became stalled the moment we started making our environment adapt to us, instead of adapting
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well first of all, you could try reading the article again... It doesn't say we are bringing about dangerous climate changes (which is what the media and politicians will say it says), it says we "could be bringing about dangerous climate changes". Yes, it also doesn't say we won't bring about dangerous climate changes, and virutally no one is arguing So claiming we are 'doomed' is a bit premature (except in the sense that eventually, human interference or not, the Earth's environment will naturally chan
Re:Slow Reactions (Score:4, Funny)
For one, there are no leftovers in the antartic/antartica to transfer the flavor...
Secondly this ice is burried under meters upon meters of packed ice.
And lastly... You should really consider leaving a box of Arm and Hammer in your freezer.
Seriously man... The last thing I want to taste with my cold lemonade is left over fish or mother's ham "suprise".
Re:Slow Reactions (Score:4, Funny)
Not true. Scientists have noted a distinct Mammoth-y flavor to many of the ice core samples. Areas with high sodium bicarbonate deposits do not exhibit this phenomenon, however.
Your inconvenient truth (Score:3, Informative)
Well, for one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're on the wrong page. Global warming skeptics don't deny that the CO2 rise is due to people, they deny that the *temperature increase* is due to the human-caused CO2 rise.
No one doubts that the increase in CO2 levels is due to human activity. People have been cutting down trees for centuries, and burning coal, oil and natural gas for over 100 years. All this rele
Re:Bad science (Score:5, Informative)
I would have to disagree. Aside from the simple correlction of timing of changes, and accounting of carbon dioxide emissions, there is the analysis of carbon isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide [realclimate.org]. In summary, by measuring the ratios of different carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, and knowing that carbon from fossil fuels will have different isotope ratios than carbon from natural sources, it is possible to establish how much of the recent change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are due to human activities through burning of fossil fuels. The results are that the rise in carbon dioxide levels of the past 200 years are almost entirely anthropogenic.
I have never seen any credible evidence to support the counter claim that the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is not due to human activity. It is true that in terms of the total carbon dioxide produced in the carbon cycle, human produced carbon dioxide is just a fraction, but if I have a tank that is draining water at 10 liters per minute and having water added at 10 liters per minute then adding more water, even at a small fraction of that rate, will cause the otherwise stable tank to overflow. In terms of change human factors are very relevant, and quoting other figures about total carbon produced is, while accurate, disingenuous and misleading with regard to the actual issue at hand.
Well this isn't something that can be "proved", but in terms of history (last 800,000 years) we are in the middle of an interglacial which peaked some time ago, so we shouldn't be expecting further increases in temperature from the galcial/interglacial cycles. From a more recent historical perspective (last 200 years or so) the recent warming is quite unprecedented according to almost all historical temperature reconstructions (and there are many). In terms of our current understanding of climate and all the things that could effect it, without including atmospheric carbon dioxide changes, we cannot properly account for the present warming. That is, to the best of our current knowledge the warming is not natural. That could change, but we would have to learn some significant new informnation to change our understanding of the climate for that to occur.
As noted above, recent increases in carbon dioxide levels are the only way to account for the recent warming given our curent understanding of climate. Also noted above is the fact that human activity has been a major factor in increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. If you want more details on how attribution of recent warming has been determined so far the IPCC TAR attribution chapter [grida.no] is a good place to start - it summarises a number of different studies using a variety of techniques to attempt to determine the most likely factors driving the current warming.
That is certainly being worked on. I'll again refer to the IPCC TAR [grida.no] for a figure showing various radiative forcings, which is to say factors affecting global warming (both positive anmd negative effects). There are several besides atmospheric carbon dioxide. One of the most s
Re:Bad science (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, studies of just this have indicated that changes in the sun's output account for about 30% of the changes in global temperature. That's significant to be sure, but still leaves 60% to be accounted for from other sources.
And even at the most basic, think-about-it-for-five-seconds common sense level, there are clearly at least two major contributors to global temperature: 1) the amount of energy received by the sun and 2) the amount of energy retained. Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars? Do you not believe in greenhouses?
The problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)