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Science

Warming and Slowing the World 389

Posted by Hemos from the slowing-things-down dept.
chrisleonard writes "We all know that global warming is supposed to heat the planet up, but did you know that it might also slow it down? According to a report from Belgium's Royal Observatory (as reported here by astronomy.com), if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you. Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"
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Warming and Slowing the World

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  • HISTORY OF THE WORLD (Score:3, Funny)

    by Commienst ( 102745 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @12:41AM (#3024696) Homepage
    2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

    100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

    10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

    3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

    2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

    1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

    490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

    399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

    336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

    4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

    A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

    A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

    A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

    A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

    A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

    A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

    A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

    A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

    A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

    A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

    A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

    A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

    A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

    A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

    A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

    A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

    A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that many of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

    A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.

    A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.

    A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.

    A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.

    A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.

    A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".

    A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.

    A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.

    A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.

    A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.

    A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.

    A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.

    A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."

    A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"

    A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".

    A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.

    A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".

    A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".

    A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net

    A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie "Takedown"
  • is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects.

    Anybody who knew better please comment on this?


    • ...talked about this. The name of the essay was IIRC "The Inconstant Moon" and I first read it in The Sun Shines Bright, a collection of his science essays.

      All I vaguely remember from the essay is that, once everything slows down enough, the moon should start spiralling inward. Friction with the atmosphere will destroy it, giving us a nice little ring system like Saturn's. However, that's supposed to take 7 billion years, while Sol will go red-giant in 5 billion years, so it's one of those "this would be really cool, but we'll all be dead by other means before we get to see it" events.

      I hope I'm remembering the essay correctly. If you disagree, okay -- go read the essay and tell me what I forgot.

      • The only problem I have with this is the moon is currently getting further from the earth as it slows down the earth's rotation (due to tidal forces) and gets sped up in the process.

        That said, I suspect that we're both right in that eventually the earth will have a day of 1 month, slow down some more due to the sun, then start pulling the moon back in.

        No matter what, that's going to take a bloocy long time.

    • "More profoundly"? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The Monster ( 227884 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @01:57AM (#3024977) Homepage
      efuseekay writes:
      is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects
      While the story itself says [emphasis mine]:
      expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century
      Since the people who tend the atomic clocks have been adding at least one "leap second" each year for as long as I can remember (inserted as 23:59:60 GMT on 31 Dec, with the occasional extra at the same time on 30 Jun), it would seem that it would take tens of millenia before this factor is even a blip, much less 'profound'. The article closes with this Burning Question:
      How will the diurnal rhythms of animals and plants be affected in coming millennia? Only time will tell.
      Is there any animal or plant with a rhythm that can be measured in nanoseconds? If so, why are we not using them instead of those atomic clocks?
      • According to the USNO:
        "Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century."

        So the slowing caused by the tides is approx. 1,000 times stronger than this "global warming" effect.

        Also, leap seconds are not inserted every year, but "as needed".
        • monkeydo wrote:
          leap seconds are not inserted every year, but "as needed"
          Well, I don't recall saying that it was exactly every year, but that it seemed like it. Consulting with The Definitive Source On Such Things [navy.mil], I see that since 1972 there have been 23 Leap Seconds. That comes to an average of .766... ls/y - not exactly 1, but way closer than this effect is supposed to account for.

  • Of course... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 )
    when the poles shift in 15,000 -20,000 years, killing most life, shifting the Earth's plates, and plunging the planet into an ice age, it won't matter much to us.

    • 1010011010 wrote: when the poles shift in 15,000 -20,000 years, killing most life, shifting the Earth's plates, and plunging the planet into an ice age, it won't matter much to us.

      ...and somebody (I suppose you know who you are) modded it "Offtopic". Given that the topic was the interaction between the earth's temp. and rotation, and that the effect 1010011010 pointed out is

      much more pronounced than the one mentioned in the article (though of course not as dramatic as 1010011010 makes it sound)

      much more likely than the one mentioned in the article

      much more interesting than the one mentioned in the article

      much more established [anl.gov] than the one mentioned in the article

      ...it is hard to see how you could consider it "Offtopic". For that matter, the strength of the data for pole reversals causing major climate shifts is about as strong (or I should say, as weak) as the data for global warming (whether caused by humans or an unrelated trend in the global climate).

      -- MarkusQ

      P.S. There was a very interesting comparison floating around a few years back (it was cited against me in an argument about my shorting idiodic dot com stocks) between the global warming data and the exponential growth of the internet economy. I replied that I agreed, and that I thought both "trends" were drawing conclussions far in excess of the data.

      Boy, did I get flamed.

      If anybody has the article I'd love to have a link/copy.

    • All life did not die.
  • Does this mean my work day just got longer?!?!

    :)

  • Someone must do something! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyjack ( 24290 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @12:50AM (#3024741) Homepage
    De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

    Oh... my... GOD! The ramifications of this are... uh, on second thought, never mind.

    Pshaw, I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

    • Pshaw, I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

      Until we all hit the brake, anyway. :)
    • I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

      Or just have everyone in China face west, and kick a wall.

    • ... can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade

      And then this:

      if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you.

      Yeah! they DO seem 11 / 10 / 365 millionth of a second longer. Thanks for finding an explantion for that one, I had been wondering.
    • The initial velocity would speed up the core (short-term), but the sheer amount of exhaust would contribute to the greenhouse effect, thereby slowing down the core (long-term).

      One caveaut: My diesel-powered Yugo would only help slow down the initial velocity, and it alone could contribute to the greenhouse effect in a major way....
    • De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

      See, here's the thing.

      Long ago, in the age of dinosaurs, the earth was spinning much faster, so everything on the surface (especially near the equator) had less apparent weight. That's how come the dinosaurs got so big. But as the earth spun slower, they all got too heavy to support themselves, so they all died and went extinct. Now, with the earth's rotation slowing further, we are all getting heavier and heavier, as evidenced by the alarming rise in obesity around the world, until eventually we die out too. See, global warming really causes obesity! It's all so obvious.

  • 11 microseconds per decade? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by glitch! ( 57276 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @12:51AM (#3024751)
    Wow, this hypothesis suggests that global warming may result in the Earth slowing down its rotation by 11 microseconds per decade. I had better make sure my earthquake insurance is paid up.

    What they don't mention is how much NORMAL slowdown we can expect from other causes, such as the transfer of angular momentum from the Earth to the moon. I don't recall the numbers, but I am sure the moon will be a much larger factor than the variation in air currents.

    • Re:11 microseconds per decade? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18, 2002 @01:04AM (#3024799)
      That's right. The length of the day increasing by 11us per decade is insignificant compared to the 2 milliseconds per century [seds.org] = 200us per decade increase due to the interaction with the Moon.

      Also, cnn [cnn.com] had the story 4 days ago.
    • EXACTLY! It blows my mind how quack science get's publicized today. Everything that they have been gloom-and-dooming about are just hazy theories with no solid proof (do we have 1000 years of data? noooo? well then you cant figure out what changes are happening with a 98 Gagillion year old planet All of these events have a greater chance being either a cycle of normal planetary operation or another reason.

      This slowing is so slow it cannot be measured (your refrence points in space are probably changing at a different and possibly faster rate) and even those have to be assumed. It amazes me how scientists forget relativity so easily and quickly. this supposed slowing of the planetary rotation is in relation to what? when was the last time we actually measured the earth's roatation to within a microsecond? How about the last time we measured the earth's diameter or circumfrence to within a centemeter? I'd say that both are impossible without calibrated refrence points.

      Someone please tell these quack scientists to shut up until they have plausable evidence or even when they move from the hypothesis stage to theory..

  • Ok, some quick math. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @12:51AM (#3024752) Homepage
    1/10000 of a second every century we shall slow down.

    This means, that to gain ONE SECOND of our preciously short day, we will have to wait 1 MILLION years. This means, that by the time the
    sun explodes, our day will be approximately 83 minutes longer. I'm sorry if I choose not to get excited about this.

    In retrospect, the earth's rotation is slowing due to other factors, primarily tidal forces from the moon at a rate of 22 seconds every million years. It will eventually slow to the point where it takes one month to make a complete revolution, in perfect tidal lock with the moon. Or at least it would, although its still unlikely to make it before the sun goes.

    Either way, I don't plan to lose any sleep over it. Of all the scares from global warming, this is one of the least disconcerting.

    -Restil
  • Ok this is a complete joke, the time loss being so slow. But I have to wonder where did they get their figures of global-warming increase. As sence the 80's the amount of toxins in the atmosphere has decreased. So it ultimatly makes absolutly no sence to me, I guess they went on we are pumping out X amounts of toxins a day figure, not accounting for the natural ability of the earth to fix itself.

    • CO2 is not a toxin (Score:3, Insightful)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 )
      You have no idea what you're talking about. The amount of CO2 going into the air is known... the affect on the weather is what's in question.
  • I thought that time was supposed to go (or seem to, rather) a lot quicker as you get older? Something about the heart-rate slowing down...

    (yeah, yeah - "off topic" - blow me!)

    • I think it's largely perception of time that gets distorted with age.

      You see - at 10 years old, 1 year is a tenth of the total time you have experienced. Pretty significant, no?

      At 30 years old, 1 year is still 1 year, but it is now a much less significant fraction of the total time you have experienced.

  • The study (Score:5, Interesting)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @01:02AM (#3024792) Homepage Journal
    I heard about a study that was talked about on Discovery about two common myths, global warming and deforestation. I haven't seen it on Discovery though. What it boiled down to was some time back a bunch of scientists and other *ologists (thousands) signed a paper saying that both were real and major problems. Supposedly it got press coverage out the ass. This Discovery special was about about another paper that came out right after the first (because of the first) from many many more thousands of scientists and other *ologists that said that both were a crock of shit, media and political propoganda. Oddly enough the media didn't give the 2nd paper much billing (I wonder why...). The 2nd paper and the people that signed it proved that deforestation was not a problem and that their research showed that our planet's tree population was far greater than it was in the 1920's and increasing rapidly. They of course did say that chopping down unexplored rain forests could very likely wipe out plant and animal life that had never been recorded. Of course that's no deforestation. They also proved that the Earth is not getting warmer. They proved that in fact the Earth is really getting colder. In the short term were are reaching the peak of some loop that I can't recall the name of. It's supposed to be some variation in the distance from the Sun we typically follow. It's not a round path we follow. It's more oval. Elyptical (sp?). And it varies over time and repeats itself. We're reaching the hotter part of that peak. We are however in the long run starting another Ice Age. Yes, it's true. All these record highs recorded this winter do not mean that the Earth is really warming. They don't support global warming in the least. We are actually cooling in the long run. We will have another ice age before the Sun starts growing to the point that it will cause Earth to heat up. The short time period has us getting warmer. The medium time period has us starting and ice age. The long term time period has the Sun frying our asses.

    All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the 1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people. Of course the media didn't cover that. The media never wants to cover something like that. Blood and guts sells. Death and destruction sells. Conspiracy sells. Telling the public that violence in schools is actually decreasing and is lower now than it was in the troubled 70s doesn't sell. Plastering a blood-splattered babbling kid on the evening news that "saw it all" sells.

    Enough of my rambling. You've heard it all before. My question is, has anyone seen this Discovery episode? Does anyone know where more information can be had? I'd love to see the episode. It sounds like a good one. I still like the one that proved that something like 600 million years ago we had a Snow Ball Earth and the one that proved all human life as we know it today originated from deep within Africa. Both of those were good shows.

    • You might have missed where last week, the leader of a violent terrorist organization, which has taken credit for many bombings and destructive acts in the United States, was questioned before congress under oath.

      The leader "plead the fifth" on everything.

      The violent terrorist group? Earth Liberation Front (or something like that), a bunch of ecological extremists that the media happens to approve of.

      It isn't that the media is deliberately biased, just that they tend to report what they support, and ignore as "not news" those things they disagree with.

      Another example is defensive uses of firearms. 300 different stories published about the latest "school shooting", 2 of them accurately reported that the shooter was stopped by two other students (it was a college) who had their own firearms. The rest just said the perp was "tackled".

      Bob-

    • While I don't rate "Discovery" very high as a source for information about science, this raises my estimation of their credibility.

      I also applaud you for posting this. The pettition you refer to [heartland.org] has not received enough attention (see also [nationalcenter.org]). But even more important is to look [junkscience.com] at [junkscience.com] the [agu.org] data [co2science.org].

      -- MarkusQ

      • Dude you got hoaxed. That petition was a total hoax. Geri Halliwell of the spice girls is one of the signators as a (biologist). LOL.

        Also the two links from junkscience.com are bogus too. One is from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which is republican front and the other from a gas company "scientist".

        Please do some research before posting bogus links as science.

        • Dude you got hoaxed. That petition was a total hoax. Geri Halliwell of the spice girls is one of the signators as a (biologist).

          I'm not disputing that I may have been hoaxed (see my reply to the post above yours) but I don't see her name [oism.org] or any breakdown by field (no one is labled "biologist" etc. that I can see.). How did you determine that she was listed as a signator?

          Please do some research before posting bogus links as science.

          I never claimed it was science; I claimed that it was the pettition that the poster I was replying to had mentioned.

          -- MarkusQ

          P.S. And here's an interesting thing to try: go to the list of names, choose one at random (pref. an odd one, e.g. "Ismail B Haggag") and do a web search on them. Most of them seem to be real people at least. When the ones I tested should up in lists (e.g. faculty rosters) I tried picking a random name off the roster and searching for it on the pettition (to see if they had "harvested" the names off of university web sites. None of them were there.

    • After seeing loads of pseudo-science (on both sides), I took the time several months ago to look at the scientific literature and try to learn about the validity of claims that many laypeople made about global warming. The parent touched on a few of these, and I couldn't resist digging in...

      1) Global temperature is decreasing.

      No. Even the most cursory look into the subject should show this to be false. For an example, check out the graph on this [epa.gov] page. Almost all of the literature I have read agrees on this. The debate comes in when you start talking about how much/why/is this natural?

      2) The atmosphere already contains carbon dioxide and needs it in order to keep the Earth warm. Thus, more carbon dioxide is not bad.

      While the atmosphere does contain significant amounts of CO2, the thing to remember is that it needs to maintain a balance. As an analogy, think of your body. If you don't have enough iron, you get sick (e.g. anemia). If you have too much iron, you also get sick.
      One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions. You can check this up at the CDIAC [ornl.gov] site.

      3) Global temperature increases can be explained by volcanic emissions.

      Also not the case. In fact, one of the landmark papers (Mass, Portman 1989) actually showed that the net effect of each of the several largest 20th century volcanic eruptions was a decrease in global temperature. The reason for this is that, while volcanos do put significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, they also release substantial quantities of particulate matter (e.g. ash). The effect of the latter is to decrease the net amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.

      4) Global warming can be explained via sun spots, orbit variations (Earth and/or lunar), etc.

      I was unable to find very much evidence of this in the literature. I was, however, able to find a significant amount of "pop sci" articles supporting these theories.

      The general consensus is that scientists do not know enough to fully evaluate the problem, but that humans do have a measurable effect on the atmosphere. The scientific side of the debate centers around the size of this effect, and whether or not it is significant. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and we may never be able to fully describe it. To me, this appears to be as good an argument in favor of reducing emissions as any other.

      On a side note, I found the following to be generally true of articles/papers about global warming: The "seriousness" and scientific legitimacy of such an article are inversely proportional to the concreteness of the claims. Papers claiming that "global warming is just a myth", that "global warming can be explained by some never-before-heard theory", or that "global warming is already upon us and will put most of the Earth's land underwater in the next few years" almost never appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while papers claiming that "we really don't know enough yet to make firm conclusions" almost never appear in pop sci magazines.
    • Were you refering to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition? Dude you got hoaxed!. That was proven to be a hoax that's why it did not appear on discovery channel or any other respectible publication. It did however get a lot of press with the conservative press who could not tell science from fiction if it smacked them on the head.

      I saw the one about the snowbal earth. Only bacteria were alive for a long time. When the ice burst it unleased ungodly storms for a a very long time (I don't remember the exact time but it was way long like centuries). No place for humans.

    • Re:The study (Score:3, Informative)

      by guygee ( 453727 )


      All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the
      1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people


      Last time I looked, the scientific method did not include petition drives
      and petition signing contests. What you may not know about the "2nd
      petition" that you mention is that it was circulated, like a piece of junk
      mail, to many thousands of people having no expertise in climatology. I
      know this because *I* got a copy, requesting my signature, even though my
      work is in computer science and engineering. *Anyone* can sign that
      "2nd petition" online, right here [oism.org]
      . This petition drive is being lead by Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus,
      Rockefeller University. Anyone recall [rochester.edu]
      how the Rockefellers made their fortune?

      The "2nd petition" is debunked in a [ucar.edu]
      letter written by top scientists from the American Meteorological Society
      (AMS) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

      It is a fact that [ornl.gov]
      CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, it is a matter of simple physics
      that increased atmospheric CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. What,
      to me, still seems debatable, is what the effects of those higher temperatures
      will be on the Earth's ecosystems, and human civilization in particular.
      Change is certain, but the nature of the change, and the relative benefits
      and drawbacks, are unknown.

    • There is an enormous amount of informatino available on this. I recommend a recent book - "The Skeptical Environmentalist" which gives a lot of the history.

      As per the specifics of your post... There were both petitions. In both cases, most of the signers were not experts in the appropriate field (climatology).

      There is no dispute that global warming has occurred in the last century. There is significant dispute as to whether mankind is to blame for that dispute, although the "anti" side is frequently suppressed in the popular media. It is also true that the earth is coming out of a temporary cooling period, and that it is (by historical standards) in a short warming period between ice ages. It is also true that there was a big scare in the late 1970's where "scientists" were saying that the next ice age was about to strike.

      I suggest you read up on this subject. The information isn't hard to find, although you want to be sure to read both sides of the debate.

  • So... let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @01:15AM (#3024837) Homepage Journal

    We're on a planet that has a 3 billion year history in which the climate has changed dramatically enough to put dinosaur fossils on Antarctica, evidence of undersea life on top of Mt. Everest, strange enough to feature a 20 megaton blast in Siberia 50 years before atom bombs were invented, and random enough to prevent our ability to accuratly forecast tomorrow's weather, AND we conclude based on less than 100 years of weather data that global warming is happening?

    Forgive me, but I'm feeling a little like a mayfly seeing its first (and only) sunrise and worrying about global sunlighting.

    • No, no, there is quite a strong body of evidence that global temperatures fluctuate and that they have been slightly higher as of late.

      Most scientists at current seem to agree that there is some degree of global warming. The real questions are what are the causes and what are the effects. It's also quite clear that man has been increasing the CO2 levels on earth since the industrial revolution. Whether this or any other man-made process is responsible for the observed warming is a much harder thing to establish.

      Even if we are to blame (at least in part), then the question becomes, do we care? Dire predications get a lot of press, but there are still groups of scientists that believe the warming will have a neglible or even net positive effect on the Earth (from the point of view of an environment for sustaining man).
  • If, due to global warming, ocean levels rise five feet, then (assuming a constant density, spherical earth) the rotation rate would slow down by about 1 part in 2 million, about 18 seconds a year.

    Given that water is less dense than most of the rest of the earth, it would probably be only two or three seconds a year, but still a substantial amount.

    I had seen some speculation that the magnetic field of the earth is due to a different rotation rate between the core and the rest of the earth. Changing these relative rates may be significant.

    thad

  • ...did their model account for the reduced angular moment when ice caps in Greenland and Antartica melt off and slide into the ocean? Some of that ice is 2 miles thick, so it should make a difference. If this really becomes a problem, we can vaporize the Himalayas with hydrogen bombs. Problem solved.

  • Even if... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The Man ( 684 ) on Monday February 18, 2002 @01:49AM (#3024945) Homepage
    you buy into the assertion that Earth is warming, the historical record indicates that at times in the distant past (100s MY ago) the Earth was MUCH warmer. Yet, amazingly, the "fossil fuels" we're so bad to be burning weren't yet fossils, humans didn't exist, and Earth didn't become Venus. Shocker. As for slowing rotation, there are plenty of other factors controlling air currents, so even if we were to accurately measure an otherwise (moon, etc) unexplained slowdown in rotation, it doesn't prove that Earth is warming. All it proves is that Earth spins more slowly.

    Care for our planet, yes. Act as responsible stewards of our land and oceans, certainly. But spew bogus alarmist rhetoric to confuse and manipulate the mediagoing public, shame on you. This is junk science at its worst.

    • Illogical anti-environmentalist rhetoric. Name one person who has claimed that the ONLY way to heat the atmosphere was through CO2 released in industrial processes. Do you think declaring that during its 6 billion year history the earth has been warmer than it is now actually disproves a damn thing?
  • De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

    OH MY GOD!!!! A HUNDRED MILLIONTHS OF A SECOND!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

    This seems more like 'hey, look at this' then 'hey we have to do something!' I don't really think a few hundred thousanths of a second could screw anything up.

    And those that say the earth would get hotter... we would also have longer nights as well.
  • ... but you can bet the Slashdot crowd will ignore the facts on this one.

    Please, just for a moment, put aside all of your preconceptions and assumptions and go out there and learn the facts . What you will discover in this process is that Global Warming is, in fact, quite real. Frighteningly real. And human beings are the cause.

    You're always going to find scientists who will claim that Global Warming is a crock of shit. (A lot of those same scientists work for oil companies and other concerns.) But the truth of the matter is, the vast, VAST majority of the world's scientists overwhelmingly agree that Global Warming is very real and poses a significant threat to our ecosystem and our way of life.

    This bullshit about the "myth" of Global Warming is largely a U.S. phenomenon. Most 1st world countries trust their scientists and completely understand that Global Warming is a very real threat. So much so that even China jumped on the bandwagon. The sole detractor at Kyoto is the good ol' U. S. of A. As usual, we've got our head in the sand.

    A few of you have mentioned how the media has blown this out of proportion and is being alarmist, etc. The exact opposite is true. The media in the U.S. has ignored and sidelined the entire issue. People hate scary stuff. Doesn't sell. So they barely mention it. All the more reason that our government should continue to fund (and increase funding for) unbaised news sources like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

    But my point is, go learn the facts before you show up here pretending you know them.

    P.S. And keep an eye on the weather. It'll just get more and more obvious. Been quite a warm winter this year, wouldn't you say?
    • There a very few scientists who have the requiste knowledge and data to comment on global warming. Most scientists can only comment on certain areas.

      In the 70s we had a lot of scientists saying we were on the brink of an ice age, in fact a number of these changed their tune. Now we have a lot of scientists saying we are on the brink of a heat wave. Who is accurate?

      Goverment funding for an unbiased news source, what hell are you smoking, please re read and understand that there is no unbiased reporting, none. The best you can do is understand what the bias is of your news source.

      No the winter here in San Francisco has been fucking freezing, lowest temps etc etc In short it's been bloody miserable. However the summers seem to have been warmer as well.

      My belief is that as with most things humans do not have enough accurate historical evidence to say what the temperature is doing and they have even less understanding of how our actions influence that temperature.

      Science is not a new religion and the sooner people understand that because a scientist says something does not make it accurate.

      In short, the climate is changing as it always has and we do not have a fucking clue why. But a boat load of scientists can pretty much tell where their next round of funding is coming from.

      • Re:Global Warming is very real ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by canadian_right ( 410687 ) <alexander.russell@telus.net> on Monday February 18, 2002 @02:47AM (#3025122) Homepage
        One of the odd things about changing global weather paterns is some of the unexpected side affects. Global warming may decrease the temperature in Northern Europe by a few degrees by changing some rather major artic ocean currents. Warming would bring a major cold stream that is currently quite deep (and makes it farther south) to raise up and cool Europe.

        Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.

        But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.

        And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!

      • No the winter here in San Francisco has been fucking freezing, lowest temps etc etc

        Global warming is screwing with our weather patterns. Here (in Minnesota) it's been very warm almost all winter (but probably still pretty cold by your standards) whereas in San Fran it's been strangely cold. Abnormal weather patterns. The scientific community struggles still to prove the exact cause of the strange weather the world has been experiencing of late, but circumstantial evidence suggests it's due to global warming. Which is what I mean by "keep an eye on the weather". Let's see how bizzare our winters and summers are say ... 10 years from now. Even 5. By then we'll probably all have forgotten what a "normal" winter or summer was even like.
    • Um. No. I vehemently disagree with you. Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough! The world is around 3 billion years old ( I think that's it....) and we are trying to say that us humans who have only been here part of that time caused this? No, US folks are skeptical of scientists who talk out there butt. Weather patterns are CYCLICAL! Just because I ain't freezing my butt of now and walking thru 10-12 inches of snow does not mean that the globe, as a whole is any warmer. Do you realize that Texas has had more snow then Columbus, OH?? That's almost unheard of. Also, I believe Texas has also been colder then we are too. Some people will say that global warming caused this chaotic pattern. BS. We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming. Any scientist saying we do should tear up his PhD.....now and go start selling burgers at McDonald's.

      Also there's no such thing as an unbiased news source. We're humans. We have opinions and try as we might, we can't always suppress them.

      Also, an another note, for the freaks who say we don't have enough oil, well, if we'd drill in ANWR we'd stabilize the market. If we get off of our butts and tap the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could be self sustaining and not need oil from saudi. This is a fact (wish I could atrribute a source but it's late and I am going to bed after this). Here's an interesting link about ANWR [townhall.com]. The reasons these ecological wackos have come up make no sense and have no scientific backing except some crap some scientists who liked the idea has drawn up.

      I am not saying we should not explore alternatives that are cleaner then gasoline. Hydrogen and fuel cells hold great promise not just from an environmental sense, but from a business sense as well. Imagine if we all had a fuel cell on our house. We'd no longer be dependent on wires going underground and into our house and no longer would we have to worry about lightening striking the above ground wiring because there would be none. When ever Hydrogen is cheap (it's cheap now...), you'd just fill it up and be good to go. The waste water created by the reaction could be ran through a filter, and used to flush toilets or take showers or heck even drink. Who WOULDN'T want this? Even the big oil would want a piece of this. The good thing is if we actually tap the Gulf adequately, we could be assured we would have enough oil until this stuff is perfected. Right now, if we decided to bomb someone in the middle east, we may as well grab ahold of a bank loan to buy gas cuz it's going to go up. My biggest point here, is that it doesn't have to be this way. it's only this way becase a small MINORITY thinks the sky is falling when it's not.
      • I, for one, think the policy of dependance on foreign oil is a good thing. One day, oil will run low. Would you rather be asking for foreign oil now, or in 30~50 years? It may seem harsh, but at that time, we can tell OPEC to kiss our asses and leave the Middle East to the religous zealots.
      • We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA!

        We have thousands of years' worth of weather data. Dendochronology, ice cores, sediment patterns, historical records, etc.

        The opinions on global warming on Slashdot is about as scientific as creation scientists. 99% of the world's climatologists agree that global warming is occuring. Even president Bush.

        Please tell me you were trolling.
      • Now just what the hell do you think you know about this stuff? You jump right in with your reasoning about this and that ... but are you a climatologist? Are you ANY kind of scientist? I didn't think so. So don't give me your two-bit crap opinion and try to pass it off as scientific truth. Because the only truth you expose is your own ignorance.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I don't troll. Never have.

        You make a good point. Scary stuff does sell. I stand corrected.

        Now that I think about it more, I think news about global warming makes people ... uncomfortable. Probably because deep down they realize that they are partly to blame. It's sort of a guilt thing or something. Not sure.

        But I sure as hell know from my own experiences that people sure don't like hearing about it, regardless of the reason. So it's no wonder the major news networks avoid talking about it.

    • If you want to see an example of weather chaos in action, look at pictures of Mars from last October. A small dust storm grew into a planet-wide dust storm, causing real global warming due to the dust in the atmosphere.
    • Global Warming is very real ... but you can bet the Slashdot crowd will ignore the facts on this one.

      Hear hear. Whenever this issue is raised on Slashdot, someone posts something about the greenhouse effect being alarmist and poor science and it gets modded up to five pretty much instantly. They also (like one of the posts above) usually post Rush comments like the ones about sensors in warmer cities skewing the statistics even though this effect has been known and included in calculations for a long time.
    • But the truth of the matter is, the vast, VAST majority of the world's scientists overwhelmingly agree that Global Warming is very real and poses a significant threat to our ecosystem and our way of life.

      The "vast, VAST majority" of the world's scientists apparently were pretty upset that somebody was speaking for them, which is probably a reason that a rather large number of them signed this petition. [oism.org] I suppose the thousands of PhD's listed there all work for oil companies?

    • It actually doesn't matter whether global warming is real or not; and it doesn't matter whether we're causing it or not.

      If it is real, then the potential costs are so high (most major cities, for example, grew up around ports and are only a few metres above sea level), and the time it takes to turn the juggernaut around is so long, that we need to be taking urgent avoiding action now while we continue to urgently assess the reality of the risk.

      If it turns out that global warming is happening but that the major causes are natural, then we're still better off if we've done everything we can to stop making things worse.

      If it turns out that global warming isn't happening and it was all a panic about nithing, then we'll still have more efficient transportation, better insulated houses, and a cleaner planet with greater fossil fuel reserves to pass on to our children.

      But if the United States carries on the way it's going and it turns out that that global warming is real, then the voters of Florida, Mississippi, and Texas aren't going to cheer too loudly for the President and the generation which lost 20% of the land area of the continental United States, and turned another 20% into desert.

  • Stop the world I want to get of...oh. Well thanks then mate.

  • another thing to watch out for... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by supernova87a ( 532540 ) <kepler1@@@hotmail...com> on Monday February 18, 2002 @03:06AM (#3025164)
    The Reversal is coming!!! Well, in about 300,000 years, that is.

    For those who aren't familiar with this physical phenomenon, the Earth's magnetic field reverses itself (changes polarity) every 300,000 years or so. Rather quick on a planetary time scale, huh?

    There are lots of geophysicists interested in this field (paleomagnetism) because it requires some sophisticated modeling of how geodynamos work. Take a look: here for supercomputer modeling of the reversal [lanl.gov]

    I'm not sure which to place my bets on first -- a) the Moon flying away from the Earth, b) the magnetic field reversing, or c) the Earth stopping its spin... Well, ok. It's b). But between a) and c)? I'm not so sure.

  • Bring it on.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by joonasl ( 527630 )
    Slowing this world down a notch might not be a terribly bad idea..

    And from a nordic perspective global warming might not be that bad either :)

  • The world has stopped, people live in endless sunshine. But the endless sun causes infertility etc, so one person from the twilight area goes into the dark side to find this mad scientist and get him to turn the world.

    In the end the scientist does turn the world, by 180 degrees and stops.

    The moral is: when talking with scientists, be precise.
  • No, that would be cooling the Earth...
  • I watched a big report on the slowing of the earth and the moon...
    Sorry no links to back this up, but hear me out...

    The moon is what causes our rise and fall (wax and wain) of the tides. This same effect is acting as a big break on the earths spinning.
    In a sense, the earth is slowing down at a miniscule faction of a second a day.
    In recongnizable terms, it said that the earth will be 26 hours a day in 20 million years and 28 in 40 or 50 million years.

  • Noting the comments above, it's clear that you don't want to read the slashdot comments to find truth. So many things are asserted:
    'Scientists don't measure ocean temperatures', 'The world is getting warmer', 'The world is getting cooler'...

    This problem is vast. Its our whole fscking world we're talking about. We're a bunch of little bits o' stuff crawling around. We do stuff. We are creating an effect therewith. As Newton says, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction", and the amount and scope of actions we commit continue to escalate both individually, and in aggregate as our population increases.

    Honestly, I don't think we'll know what will happen until it does, at which point they'll be able to say to 5 decimal places what did happen.

    Interestingly, recent surveys indicate that zero population growth is on its way [go.com], due to hit us around 2075.

    As Janis Joplin once said; "It's all the same fucking thing, man"...

  • So greenhouse effect is slowing down the planet? Conversely then...if we hooked up HUGE engines to the planet and just sped it up a bit, could we all go skiing?

    Ooh, better yet--we build a race-track (or three) around the earth, and have everyone get in their cars and do a lap (so that they get back where they started without having to counter the spin). Sure, it'll use up a bit more fossil fuels, but I'm sure in the long run it'll all work out.

    Get on this project! :)
  • Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"


    No. It would be post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Funny but fallacious. I call it the Feyerabend effect.

  • Check out this [prodigy.com] page and NASA's page [nasa.gov] on the same topic.

    This is not about global warming - the earth is slowing because angular momentum is being slowly transferred to the moon due to tidal interactions.

    Again, for more details, see the link to NASA.

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