Larsen Ice Shelf Collapses 1250
Cally writes in: "The BBC reports that the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, a 200m thick ice floe covering 3,250 sq km, has disintegrated. This is terrible news. The widely respected British Antarctic Survey are quoted as saying "We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering[...] [It is hard] to believe that 500 billion tonnes of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month." As a Greenpeace member who's been following the debate for over a decade, it's hard not to feel aggrieved at those with their own agenda who have pushed the theory that global climate change isn't happening. Risk = probability x consequence..." The big iceberg is a separate event.
Oh my goodness no! (Score:0, Insightful)
For those that disagree, please tell me im a mo-ron, but lets see your URLs as well
The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would it happen as fast? Probably not, but the fact is that the earth will change if we do anything or not.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying I'm on any side. It's just if you're gonna play URL poker you gotta ante up.
The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's nice to think we've become so powerful we can disintigrate millions of billions of tons of ice just by driving to the quick-e-mart, but in reality it's probably nothing more than the sun outputting a little more energy than normal.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are correct. Geological changes take place on timescales in which a thousand years is insignificant. Don't forget that maybe 30 or 40 years ago, the thing that had environmentalists worried was global cooling - the risk of a new Ice Age. I remember reading somewhere that 2001 was the warmest year since 1653 (or thereabouts) which begs the question, exactly who or what was emitting CO2 at present day levels back then?
For more of this sort of common sense, see this book [amazon.co.uk] in which the author systematically demolishes most of the non-scientific arguments of the "green" lobby.
These days, Greenpeace aren't a charity or a lobby in any meaningful sense of the word. They are in the entertainment business for Western teenagers, and they have to keep their name in the news to keep the donations rolling in. Cynical? Perhaps. But their dodgy science has done a lot of harm to the idea that anyone with something to say on the environment doesn't have a radical left-wing axe to grind.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Would people die as fast if we helped them? Probably not, but the fact is that people will die if we do anything or not.
I wouldn't tak eGreenpeace's word for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago they created a huge amountof havoc over plans to decommision an oil platform. They cited the huge environmental damage caused by the radioactivity, without actually considering that this was natural radioactivity. The net result of the media misinformation was that the platform had to be dismantled at great cost, and actually caused considerably more pollution, and took up a great deal of landfill spcae when otherwise it would have served as a habitat for lots of rare marine life.
And I get a bit fed up of them giving me the hard sell for donations. I would have much more of an urge to do this if their salepeople weren't on commision.
Not that much water (Score:2, Insightful)
For comparison, how much water is in Lake Titicaca? About 9 trillion kg. Over a thousand times as much. And how much would global sea levels rise if Titicaca drained into the ocean? Negligible.
It seems as though Slashdot has expanded from making wild-eyed, tinfoil-hatted claims about technology and privacy to making wild-eyed, tinfoil-hatted and non-mathematical claims about the environment.
Duhh (Score:2, Insightful)
This is already happening, and has been for years. Although things may not be to your liking, there have been vast improvements in policy and technology.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well duh! (Score:2, Insightful)
People do realize that for 6 months (during the fall and winter in the northern hemisphere), it is continously daylight in Antartica, right? Of course the ice cap there is going to shrink.
Last summer, when it was dark there, it was reported that the ice cap expanded, so what is the big deal?
I'll bet you in 6 months, Greenpeace will be saying the northern polar ice cap is melting too.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell kind of logic is this? "I'm going to beat my kid and call him a psychopath every day, and when he grows up to become a psychopath; well, kid's change, there's nothing I could have done about it".
We are abusing the fuck out of this planet, and anyone who can't see that is either stupid or naive.
Greenhouse Gasses (Score:4, Insightful)
The alternative power that they keep on trying to push is a myth. When you look at actual output, it is trivial to any real source. You aren't going to run a 60 MWe silicon refining plant in the northwest with solar panels and windmills. It isn't going to happen. Not unless the price is increased 10-fold. Sure you can power your house as they always point out. But your house is 2 KW load. Industry takes up far more power than housing.
The only way to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses is to stop burning coal and gas. Thats it. And it has to be done now instead of 30 years from now when the alternative power myth becomes useful (probably more like 50).
Blame the sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't they realize that the sun is quite hotter than "normal" right now, at the peak of its sunspot cycle? Don't they know that the sun's output fluctuates considerably, and a cooler sun (with virtually no sunspots) was responsible for the "mini ice-age" that occurred from the 13th to 16th centuries?
Or maybe those are just the claims of radicals with an anti-sun agenda.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest that, if the future of the earth and human existance on it is at all important to you, you take this into consideration when you next start to slander environmentalists or others with strong views.
Apologies for the tangent, but I couldnt let this one go.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
As has been gone over in almost tedious [gristmagazine.com] detail, practically everyone with any experience, gathered in, amongst other places, a dedicated issue of Scientific American disagree with Lomborg. Contrary to Lomborg's assertions, very few of these attacks are ad hominem, and take issue only with his application of the scientific method, and selective, self-serving use of statistics.
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite. Even if we assume (because unless someone knows better there is still no proof either way) that humanity is responsible for the CO2 emissions, that led to the destruction of the ozone layer, that led to increased sunlight melting the Antarctic icecap, so what?
The earth has experienced periods that saw much of the northern hemisphere covered in ice, and unless I'm mistaken that isn't the case at present. Also, it has had periods where the Antarctic land mass (the rock currently under the icecap) has supported a temperate climate, which again, there doesn't seem to be a present. So, humanities collective ego aside, we don't seem to have pushed "Gaea" outside her normal tolerances just yet.
It might just be a really good idea not to try and do so though...
Your source? (Score:2, Insightful)
And this quote:
CDIAC responds to data and information requests from users from all over the world who are concerned with the greenhouse effect and global climate change.
The greenhouse effect and global climate change due to it are a theory. Read this center's About and Philosophy sections and you'll see they've already made the assumption that the theory is real.
That's not science. That's dogma.
Re:Well duh! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who caused the Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
"From what I understand, Man produces about 1% of all of the planets cloro-floro carbons (greenhouse gases). If we cut production completely, we would end up with a negligible effect."
Cloroflourocarbons (CFCs) are the stuff which used to be found in aerosol sprays and the like, which were found to be damaging the ozone layer. That is a separate issue to global warming.
"In addition to that, we produce carbon dioxide thru processes like, say, breathing. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe with. More C02 means more plants! Oh no!!!"
I can only presume you're joking, and that you don't really believe in this facile logic. As humans breathe oxygen, would more oxygen in the atmosphere result in more humans?
"Yup, it sucks, but we're pretty much at the mercy of our planet. Not the other way around."
I have to agree with that - we're probably a long way off the time where our normal activities present any real threat to the continuance of life on earth. However, this does not mean that these activities will not trigger environmental catastrophes which might otherwise have been avoided. These won't bother the earth much, but they will have a significant effect on human civilisation as we know it.
The earth probably won't mind if the eastern seaboard of the United States slips into the sea (for example), but it's no exaggeration to describe the consequences for humanity as catastrophic.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Insightful)
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
Global warming, whether caused by humans or not, is nothing to scoff at, either. Many people, particularly in third world nations, live on the coastline, in areas that would (and will) be innundated if and when a higher global temperature causes ocean levels to rise. This is a serious threat to the lives and livelihoods of many people. People in the third world can't simply move and buy another house, nor can they afford to maintain a system of dikes like those of the Netherlands. Whether or not humans caused global warming, it exists, as the collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf indicates, and it is a threat.
In addition, it's true that a certain amount of melting, calving of icebergs, and such occurs with the change of seasons in Antartica. Thank you, whoever noted that sun causes ice to melt, for stating the obvious. But the Larsen Shelf was not noted for being susceptible to such seasonal oscillations - indeed, it was incredibly stable, and old. Ice sheets that are 200 meters thick and more than 3000 square miles big don't form or melt overnight. The instability which caused the collapse was a relatively recent development. That such a stable chunk of the Antarctican ice should disintegrate is of great concern.
Finally, while man may not have created global warming, our industrial revolution has certainly contributed. A previous poster listed these [ornl.gov] graphs [noaa.gov]. A temperature spike and carbon dioxide spike, coinciding with the industrial revolution, are clearly visible. We have contributed to global warming. Sure, we can't stop industry, and sure, we don't have effective alternative energy sources. But we can adopt less wasteful methods of doing things, and cleaner manufacturing processes. And if we never start seriously investigating alternative energy sources, we will certainly never make any progress in that realm. So don't dismiss global warming as a liberal joke, or a tool for Greenpeace. Perhaps humans didn't create it, but the Larsen Shelf's collapse joins a growing bank of data suggesting that warming does exist, and that humans have contributed to some extent. We should be concerned, because this does affect us, and our future.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, let's take the most extreme form of environmental damage we could do today: we could blast every single nucler weapon in the entire global stockpile at once. What would happen to the Earth? In truth, it will survive. Think about it. It's survived asteroid collisions far, far more damaging than all our nuclear weapons combined.
Will life survive? Of course it will. There will probably be numerous species of bacteria and tiny cockroaches and the such that will survive such a nuclear holocaust and then bloom in the aftermath to fill the world now emptied of the once dominant lifeforms. That's how mammals expanded after a meteor collision killed off the dominant reptiles (dinosaurs) of the day.
Will we survive? Most assuredly not. And there's the point. To be an environmentalist advocating the banning of nuclear weapons is to advocate for the continuation of our species.
Similarly, when we talk about global warming, you're correct that the Earth will survive. There have been periods of time when the world has been much hotter, and much colder than it is now. And life in general will continue and evolution will over time create new ecosystems that have adapted to the new reality. But our society as we know it right now will be significantly affected. Entire coastal regions will be submerged under rising sea levels. Once fertile farms that support our population will become deserts, etc. etc. You bet that will make our life more miserable.
So that's the rub. People tend to think of environmentalists as putting the life of some endangered dung beetle above the life of a human being. Although there are perhaps extremists who do so, they're not the majority. The environmental movement acknowledges that by making it a priority to preserve our current environment and taking care of our planet as best we can, we can continue to enjoy its fruits for a long time yet to come.
not the only problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good quote from the article: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why it says mean (average) global warming. There's no reason to expect temperatures to rise evenly on a planet where temperatures are uneven to begin with. Dozens of factors could lead to the poles warming up faster than other regions, the ozone layer being thinner there, for instance.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Insightful)
"But notice even after the chunk of ice ordeal the planet is still around?"
Nobody is seriously arguing that global warming is a threat to the planet (although some of the discourse may be phrased in those terms - "Save the Planet" etc.). However it is argued that it represents a threat to human civilisation, i.e. The World As We Know It. This is what makes it a matter of pressing self-interest for all of us.
Re:Blame the sun (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an aggregate opinion from things I've seen and read in the press, articles I've read by environmentalists, etc. Unfortunately for you, I don't have a photographic memory to go back and recall exactly which articles these were and what precisely they said. However, I have yet to see an "environmentalist" saying "well, you know, that statistician guy raises some good points". (I'm referring to the guy who's written a book on why the statistics don't support this theory of global warming; not having read it myself yet I don't recall his name. Based on other posts, it's probably Lomberg).
Re:Blame the sun (Score:3, Insightful)
How else do things get fucked up, in the absence of us fucking them up?
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Insightful)
Pinatubo did release large amounts of sulfer dioxide, but sulfer dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. In fact, it's believed that Mount Pinatubo masked [llnl.gov] global warming in the years following the eruption.
-Bruce
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, the only people qualified to describe what's happening and where it's going over the next few decades have spent many, many years in the field. (I'm an interested lay observer, with a reasonable science educational background, & been following the debate, new findeings etc., for the last 10 - 15 years.) I'm sure the majority of the posts here (apart from the trolls and the jokes) are going to be arguing the case one way or the other. Well frankly I think none of us (those of us who aren't in the field) are qualified to say "this study's right, that model's wrong"; thus we can only make a judgement about the credibility of the people advanccing the various cases. And the the IPCC [www.ipcc.ch] have the most credible findings - if anything, they err on the conservative side so as not to freak out certain wobbly 'Western' nations with shakey commitment to doing anything. (The IPCC was set up to establish the global consensus amongst eveyone working in the field.)
Who are you going to believe - fat cats with strong financial interest in doing nothing to halt CO2 production, or imkpartial scientists whose career and reputation rests on the validity of their findings, models, and predictions?
Inherant bias (Score:2, Insightful)
A nice biased report, as usual. What Greenpeace don't want you to know is that there is no scientific proof that global warming is the result of the actions of mankind. The majority of scientists agree with this. I am sick of hearing about people that Greenpeace describe as 'having their own agenda', which generally means those people brave enough to question these fanatics. Or those who lose their jobs as a result of eco-terrorism.
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:4, Insightful)
And your evidence for disagreeing with almost every reputable scientist who's worked in the field?
You know it's amazing how, with our hacker hats on, we laugh our asses off when a PHB tries to tell us how to program, or what software to run. But when it comes to telling climate modellers what their work REALLY means, why! we can sort thsat stuff out over lunch!
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, the articles convinced me that Lomborg had some severe problems in his methodology, but the way they did it left such a bad taste in my mouth that it will lend credence to people who are far more of a crackpot than Lomborg (Duesberg's HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS theories, for example).
In particular, environmentalists need to shut up and let the climatologists speak, even if they don't put things as strongly as GreenPea$e would like. Using Paul Erlich is becoming a criteria for baloney detection, and not admitting that the reason more scientists agree about climate change in general, and, to a slightly lesser extent, anthropogenic causation in particular is because science has come a long, way baby since a bunch of former commies became Green for propoganda's sake and argued we should emulate the eco-hostile economies of the dying communist world in 1990. The hasty action they proposed in many early "but we've got to DO SOMETHING" proposals would have worsened the problem, and they were rightly rejected.
Environmentalists and environmental scientists should stop poo-pooing everyone who has had doubts, and start engaging them in civilized debate. I'm now on the side of doing something about climate change, but doing so purely on the basis of a few (no-longer-used) computer models was a silly idea. I wanted science to come up with something more. Now they have, and we can begin to reasonably discuss how to do something without condemning billions of humans to eternal poverty or destroying freedom.
In short, let's emulate the 1/3 of those articles that didn't indulge in snide comments and self-aggrandizement and further communicate exactly how the problem is occurring, what effects it is having, and how things can be done in the short and long term--while still realizing that you're not going to get the soccer moms who send checks to GreenPea$e to give up their SUVs overnight (much as I would like to).
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Forgive me if I am wrong, but I think we've only been really studying the environment to a significant degree for a few hundred years, if that, and have detailed ice cores going back, with some exceptions, only a few thousand years. That seems to me, in comparison to the 4.5 billion or so times the Earth has circled the sun to be a bit of a stretch in terms of extrapolation.
I wish I could find the link, but I read an article a few months ago that suggested that evidence has been found showing the Earth does periodically go through warming stages where the global temperature rose significantly (10C comes to mind) in the course of a mere thousand years.
I'm not on either side of the fence on this one. I don't think that we should be doing anything to push the issue, to be on the safe side, but I also don't think that we should rush into snap judgements on something that ten years from now may be chuckled at as just another silly fad. I'm in favor of increased mileage for all vehicles, decreased emissions for diesel engines, more reliance on wind, solar, tidal, and nuclear energy and decreased reliance on hydroelectrics (I don't care for the damage done by dams); at the same time, I also think that we need to be careful to balance the economic considerations. Further unbalancing the already unstable economies of a number of small countries could lead to wars, disease epidemics, and massive unrest. Lead them into the light by helping them with their prosperity, and show them the benefits of working with the environment instead of abusing it. Don't coddle them as the Kyoto Treaty did, and don't try to bully the larger nations. Piss people off, and you'll never get their cooperation. Work with them, help them along, allow them to be successful on their own, and they'll be far more likely to follow your lead.
a little more reasonable article (Score:2, Insightful)
article [newscientist.com] at new scientist. A little more balanced about what this might mean. Two things I noticed right away. a) The Larson A Ice Shelf, which is nearly as big as this one dropped off in 95. b) this ice shelf is only 1800 years old. Where I am sitting now was under a mile of ice 15,000 years ago. Perhaps the Ice shelf's existence is the abnormality, not the fact that it has dropped off! These are MODELS people. Models can be wrong. Until these guys can predict the weather accurately one month from now, I'll save my money betting either way. Watching these guys "predict" events is like watching Jack Ryan predict Crazy Ivans. Its a guess, but you might just get it right some time...
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:2, Insightful)
Interestingly, the climate models that are predicting massive warming over the next 100 years and which are the basis for making draconian cuts in emissions and destroying our economy aren't even capable of taking into account the effects of a) The sun and b) the clouds.
The greenies acknowledge that the sun and the clouds have "some affect" on the climate, but they haven't been able to determine exactly what it is. So they simply throw in "fudge factors" which supposedly take those factors into account. In reality, the fudge factor is the number they have to add to the climate models to generate the amount of global warming they want to scare an appropriate number of people.
Their climate models, had they been applied to climate data in the 1900s, would have also predicted TWICE as much global warming during this century as has actually ocurred.
In fact, every time the climate models become "more accurate" (i.e. taking into account more natural factors), the prediction of the amount of global warming always comes down.
I don't know about you, but to me the BIGGEST two factors for deciding whether it's going to be hot or cold is whether there's sun beating down on us and whether there are clouds to block it. If they can't even take those two most important factors into account then I think you know where they can stick their climate models.
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:5, Insightful)
This change in temperature could have had several causes, but the simplest explanation is that the power output of the sun fluctuates over time. We are most likely seeing the same sort of effect now. Will it get so hot that human civilization suffers? Possibly. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not.
As the original poster said, it would be nice to think that we're so powerful that we can affect the climate more than the sun, but it's just not a very practical point of view.
I work in Energy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently you don't know the difference between destruction and fatalities. Besides... I'm sure if the people who lived in the path of Hurricane Camille had not known it was coming, or had stayed put rather than evacuated, the statistics you quoted would not have been quite the same.
Re:Your source? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what about being just a little... careful? (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, if we're wrong about these assumptions, I would like an anti-environmentalist to tell me where I can find the undo button. Is Bush going to re-plant the forests American companies burn down to give space for US Burger Cattle?
Re:Greenhouse Gasses (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that we'd be switching to reactors that use bomb-grade Plutonium. Security around the plants (both power and reprocessing) would need to be draconian. You can also forget trying to transfer the technology to less stable parts of the world for this reason.
We're going to need a combination of conservation and judicious use of all energy technologies if we intend to get out of this mess.
Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:3, Insightful)
We do not know the exact ammount of energy being released by the sun at any given time (our estimates get better and better, but we simply don't know for sure). We also do not know how that energy interacts with the earth's atmosphere. We also don't know how the climate will behave in response to that interaction. We also don't know the exact details surrounding the temperature change in pre-meteorological times (we know that the temperature fluctuated, and roughly by how much, and roughly when, that's it).
"there's always the possibility that his wild-assed guess is wrong"
"wild-assed guess" is a subjective term. You can brand all hypothesis as wild-ass guess if you wish, but the bottom line is that there is hard evidence that the earth heats up periodically. We have no evidence for the wild-assed guess that the current period of heating is human-related, and not part of the natural cylcle that is already in motion.
Look at it this way, if the earth were currently cooling, we would almost certainly have come up with a theory for how human beings could be responsible for that too. It's good that we come up with many competing hypothesies (this is how the scientific method operates), but to adhere to one such hypothesis with near-religious fervor cannot help the cause of understanding these phenomenon. Let us use all of the evidence and look at it with as critical and objective point of view as possible.
Who knows, maybe we're both very wrong. Perhaps there are forces at work here that we do not yet understand. That is certainly a scenario that climetologists should be used to by now
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The vast majority of biomass on Earth is in the form of single cell and simple multi cell organisms in the Oceans, which humans are not plowing or cutting down.
In the United States, more and more farm land is being put into conservation programs which let it go back to grasslands, which have huge amounts of biomass per acre.
Humans have a tendancy to think that everything we do has more effect that it actually does, while I know that "greenhouse gases" put out by humans are increasing, what still hasn't been explained fully is, how much effect do those gases have on the environment.
In the 80s we heard over and over about the "Nuclear Winter" our nuclear weapons would cause, and it was nearly 20 years later that it came out that model was horribly flawed. As I result, I really don't trust any models or data that come from organizations that get thier funding based on how loudly they cry "Global Warming!"
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
We have created an unnatural-external force on the planets ecosystems. Nature doesn't build concrete barriers on waterways. Nature doesn't make pop-can rings that choke birds and fish. Nature doesn't dump PCPs in rivers. Nature has ebb and flow, variation. Humans act very specifically -- with distinct purpose. We do always take, we rarely give. Do lions prey on our babies? No, we cut back their habitat and kill any we contact. Do birds pick at our dead-bodies? No, we chop down their nesting areas and poison them to death.
Nature does things in balance - it does them slowly. We are waging chemical warfare on everything on the planet. We are changing the total environment for everything on the planet - without respect or care for other things..
If a single species goes extinct through natural selection thats one thing - it provides opportunity for something in its place - if we pollute and destroy the natural world so that ALL things cannot cling onto survival that is another.
Humans are very capable (and well on the way) to removing everything else that is alive from the planet. On our present course, only humans will be able to survive here (and the things we eat). Nothing else. All life will have us at the top of the food chain. All other life will live as a result of our waste - and thats it.
I mean, really, do you REALLY believe we can cover everything with pavement and dump toxins into the environment and still have life on this planet?
Eventually, we will not be able to live here. We will be responsible to completely control the environment we ourselves live in.
I am purposefully trying to sound severe, because it is. There is a limit to the amount we can pollute. When taken in total, our actions are slowly(?) (literally) killing the planet.
Im not your 'touchy feely, wook at the pretty puppy' type environmentalist, I am looking at our actions, and their real effects on other life, and Im seeing that we are destroying the bio-diversity of this planet. I don't really want to live in a concrete-covered, glass domed, climate-controlled planet. I believe that we are really on our way to killing off every-other thing (outside our food and our parasites) on the planet. Nature's capacity for "change and adaptation" cannot cope with the kind of scale, speed and specificity modern-humanity is capable of..
And no, I don't think im overreacting and making a bigger-deal than it is. Saying "hey it was gonna happen sooner-or-later." is completely untrue.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems pretty emblematic of the average Slashdot debunking of the work of a large number of scientists around the world who work on climate issues.
Peer-reviewed science is wrong, we just know it in our hearts, we don't know quite why, don't have hte exact information on hand, but I'm sure we can find it on the trustworthy internet if we just use google. Because, after all, if we can find a debunking on the internet, it must be true!
No but Yes also (Score:2, Insightful)
We just havn't found it yet.
I have NO idea if they grow grapes in Mane.
However it should be pointed out that form the 400 to the year 1500 (CE) there were masive world wide migrations from the North to the South. Angles, Saxsons, Jutes, Goths, VisiGoths, Vandals, Huns. in Europe. Inuit (Rather the people who were before the modern Inuit) abandoned The High Canadian Artic. China Was invaded from the north also at the same time.
If you want more evidence of Climate chage
There are Prehistoric Farms that are being uncovered in Northeren Europe that are well with in the current Perma-frost regions.
Britans main Export in the Roman era was Wine (From Grapes)So it had a warmer climate.
Cartharage Was a major exporter of Wheat... Indicating a wetter climate. Now it is just desert.
We can also ask How all those Coral Islands Rose above the surface of the seas also... Did Global cooling lower the water levels, and they are now returning.
Any body else have better examples?
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think all environmentalists are very worried about what Nature can do.
They don't want to fuck up nature through our own actions, so it does even worse stuff.
thenerd.
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. You are assuming no one has a view of the world other than yours. Some people are capable of altruism. That has nothing to do with whether or not you think they are.
They are in the entertainment business for Western teenagers, and they have to keep their name in the news to keep the donations rolling in
I have absolutely no comment for this - it's a result of your biased opinion, not an issue of substance.
Cynical? Perhaps.
I think it is a significantly more complex problem than 'cynicism'.
But their dodgy science has done a lot of harm
Take a car, close yourself in a garage and see let us know what effect this has on you. While your at it, whip up a nice pre-cocktail of the water down the river from %insert_big_chemical_company_factory_near_you%. Let us know the result of your experiment... how about a little "common sense" eh?
to the idea that anyone with something to say on the environment doesn't have a radical left-wing axe to grind.
What does the "Left" have to do with expressing concern for having a healthy environment? It sounds like your trying to rally the "useful idiots of the Right" by suggesting the Green Movement is employing the forces of the "left leaning usefull idiots"...really, lets give the rhetoric a break... (oh, btw, please see site [politicalcompass.org] saying "Left" and "Right" means nothing - except in places with unhealthy political duopolies - Republican and Democrat do not political philosophies make...)
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is, science is not nearly as arbitrary as you make it out to be. Your examples are drawn from scientific theories that have very little evidence to go on, as opposed to climate change, with a huge amount of evidence. You can see that these are clearly two different situations.
Re:Why 50 years? We should be so lucky! (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) Put troops in Afghanistan; (2) Don't know yet.
Orders of magnitude (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me lay it on the table (Score:2, Insightful)
They want to drive their cars.
They have a visceral dislike of long-haired hippy tree huggers.
Antarctica will continue to melt. The north pole has turned into a giant Slushie(tm) as of last summer.
If God writes in letters a thousand miles tall on the face of the moon: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL OF THIS, then the Almighty would be accused of liberal sympathies.
The warming is starting to pick up steam. It may take most of a hundred years, but it will happen, mostly because of our beloved cars.
But, the way it will happen, I think, is that the same businesslike people who now deny the reality of the change will be the same ones buying up new oceanside property to develop at amazing profits. Call me cynical...
Re:The earth changes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're argument is well spoken and you are obviously an intelligent person. I would like to point out a few things, however:
Environmentalists are no more or less elitist than any other political group. They have just as many zealots as the NRA, the ACLU, or most others. Just because some members of the organization are more energetic than others does not invalidate the underlying philosophy. (I can assure you -- as an active former member -- that most Young Republican organizations are shockingly and frustratingly elitist.)
Saying "we [humans] are failing" is, again, no different from any other political group. All politics is based upon the belief that certain things need changing through the force of law.
Freedom is an ideal to be striven towards, not an absolute. There are no absolutes. A democratically elected government has every right (and in fact it has the duty) to step in and say "You cannot put lead into the ground water", whether the target is a business or an individual. To be sure, this can be viewed as a curtailment of freedoms. But these curtailments are in the interest of the common good, and are preventing actions that are clearly damaging to the community as a whole.
You said:
With which I wholeheartedly concur. Strong property rights must be the basis for a republic such as ours to remain vibrant. But: "Your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." The evidence that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels pollute the environment and cause harm to the community is fairly cut and dry; the primary focus of debate revolves around whether CO2 emissions are harmful in the long term.
I find much of the language of the environmentalists itself to be inherently anti-freedom, anti-individual, and quite elitist.
That's may be true. But that doesn't make them wrong.
- Rev.Re:The Earth's temperature has ALWAYS fluctuated. (Score:2, Insightful)
If there were more forests today than in the past, which Bjorn Lomborg argued, there would be nothing but forest from my old hometown of Tecumseh, ON, straight to Ottawa. At least in North America, we've forcibly converted much of the plant life from boreal forest to farmland, field, or concrete jungle.
First person to call me a Luddite or a primitivist, or a tree-hugging hippie, gets slapped. Just because we rely on technology does not give us license to ignore the effects our activities have on the world around us. To deny that our activities have an effect worth worrying about is to ignore the fact that we live as part of a fairly intricate, yet robust web of life. We don't exist separate from nature, we're a part of it, no matter how vehemently we try to deny it. Our cities and homes don't exist in special, non-nature bubbles. They're a part of the landscape, a part of the environment. What takes place in our dwellings will affect the land, water, and air around them. No escape.
Re:Blah, blah, blah... Get a new schtick guys. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but an excursion of CO2 concentrations outside the range of the past million years over the space of a single century is indeed a geological event.
nor can you make the assertion that burning fossil fuels is causing global warming without having to prove it.
Waiting for "proof" is like waiting until after the fire to purchase property insurance.
Of course, you certainly need to amass a lot of coherent evidence before you make the increasing claims of plausibility, statistical significance, and generally accepted. Within the field of physical climatology, that's all happenned over the last twenty years. Of course, to read the libertarian press, which would find this piece of physics hard to reconcile with their politics, you wouldn't know it.
Unfortunately in the real world physics trumps philosophy every time.
"Environmentalists." (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like there is a gamut of Christians, Open Source and operating system advocates, Jews, Muslims, and business, there's a gamut of people who could be described as environmentalist that includes such embarassments as Julia Butterfly, some excellent scientists, the Nature Conservancy, conservation-oriented hunters and sportsmen, and the like. Most do not advocate a return to primitive past, and are not antitechnology - most *do* advocate taking environmental factors into account in places that they haven't been.
I agree with a non-teleological attitude towards the environment - that nature doesn't exist just to make a nice place for humans, and that change occurs naturally. However, this can be applied to the health of a human body, too. The human body isn't "meant" to live much past 40, and a lot of the natural stuff that happens to it is unpleasant, and many of the artificial interventions we perform on it help (surgery, orthodontry, vaccination.) However, translating that into "oh, nothing I really do to my body matters, anyway - I can eat whatever, breath whatever, no problem" would be the height of stupidity.
I'm willing to bet your own description of an environmentalist is largely informed by your experiences with hippie sophomores in college.
Assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wouldn't tak eGreenpeace's word for it. (Score:2, Insightful)
The BBC article you linked to talked about it after getting all apoplectic about a mere 3250 square kilometer ice shelf. Why is this one ice shelf more important that another which is far larger?
Plus the article does correctly say that the temperature in the interior of Antarctice is actually dropping. So how is this the result of global warming?
By the way, I love your last line above:
"THEY are not sandal-wearing hippie museli munchers: they'r PhDs, grad students, professors etc who spend 6 months a year living on the ice."
Yes, I am sure the long-haired hippies who spend 6 months living on the ice don't wear sandals. But that doesn't mean they don't munch on museli, whatever that is.
Re:Oh my goodness no! (Score:4, Insightful)
If global warming is false, but work towards making more envronmentally friendly technologies, we will benefit.
If global warming is false, and we just continue on as we have been, then we will see about the same level of benefit (for the sake of argument).
If global warming is real, and we work towards being more environmentally friendly, then we will benefit.
If global warming is real, and we continue on as we are now, we will likely destroy ourselves.
It's in our best interests to act if man-made global warming is a threat, whether it is or not, and to pursue the development of more environmentally-friendly technology. While the alternative isn't certain destruction (from a global-warming standpoint), it still presents the 50-50 possibility of certain destruction. Not the kind of odds any serious gambler likes.
Furthermore, we have additional problems that can be solved by a more pro-environmental policy; I'm not talking about trying to turn the world into a Greenie hippie commune. But we do need to work towards not polluting our air, our oceans, and our drinking water with the plethora of toxic chemicals that we use so freely. It's true that we're going to have to generate some toxic waste; but there's no need to have tens of millions of toxic waste factories zooming along on roadways when better options can be had.
I think it's Dennis Miller who once said: "Buy electric cars. Sure, they're shitty, but so are the cars we have today -- so go out and buy yourself the shitty car of the future!"
Re:Two graphs to consider. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a line of reasoning that has always baffled me. I'll quickly agree that we'll never be able to get rid of the cockroaches or the bacteria, no matter how many pesticides we spray or how many asteroids we smack into the planet. So what? Not every species is as tenacious as the cockroach.
Take mammals, for example. There is no species of mammal, humanity included, that could survive the sorts of climate changes that cockroaches could handle.
The trick isn't keeping some form of life around to repopulate the planet once we're through destroying it. The trick is to keep ourselves alive and do so in a way that leaves us all healthy and happy for generations to come. That doesn't mean squandering our natural resources in a two-century economic orgy. Nor does it mean everyone should slash the tires on their SUVs, switch to veganism, and start worshipping the Earth Mother. Just be interested in understanding the consequences of our current lifestyles, and willing to make adjustments when necessary.
Re:Not that significant (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a blatant attempt at distracting the debate from the real issues. The question of whether humanity's actions should be described as "natural" or as something apart from nature is more of a semantic debate, and it sheds no light on the real issues. Whether our behaviors are "natural" because we are a product of natural evolution is irrelevant. The question is whether we are doing damage to the environment that will degrade both the health of the ecosystem as a whole and to our own prospects for long-term survival.
There are plenty of examples of species' performing actions that undermined their own future. Locusts can overbreed, then feed and feed until everything edible is gone. The Ebola virus kills its hosts off so quickly that it doesn't have enough time to spread to others, inhibiting its long-term survivability. These actions are natural, but stupid and self-destructive.
Again, the real question is whether our actions are beneficial, not whether they can be defined as "natural."
Oh, and it's a self-serving and disingenuous argument if only because it's primarily put forth by right-wing Republicans who almost invariably believe that mankind is a special creation of God, not just another part of nature. To put it bluntly, the people who put forth the argument almost never really believe it. That's pretty much the definition of sophistry.
Greenpeace's founder (Score:3, Insightful)
Greenpeace's other founder left to start Sea Shepherd, because he thought Greenpeace was too willing to compromise. All things are relative.
I confess, I don't understand why people use "follow the money" as an attack against Greenpeace yet don't admit that the same logic makes most of the "global warming is good for you" counterhype just as suspect. Greenpeace has donations to win by scaring you, but those donations are chump change compared to profits from oil companies and related industries.
Can you honestly tell me that you think Exxon-Mobil and Ford don't have a tremendous vested interest in convincing us that scientists warning us about global warming are all wrong? In fact, when you look back at the bulk of corporate history, there's a long tradition of being against anything that might cause a loss in profitability, from safety regulations to fuel economy requirements. They've done a really good job at convincing libertarians that CAFE is an an assault on personal freedom. Bullpucky.
And, again using the "follow the money" logic, your poster boy Patrick Moore works for an "astroturf" group called the British Columbia Forest Alliance. It's funded by logging industries and was set up by the PR firm Burston-Marstellar, a group notorious for this kind of work. It sounds to me like the real issue for Moore is that those "environmental extremists" can't scare up enough donations to pay nearly as well as the people they're campaigning against can.
Which kind of says something about which side has more of a vested interest to protect, really. Hint: it's not Greenpeace.