Countries Plan Land Rush in Warming Arctic 657
Noel Bourke sent in a pointer to this story about northern nations maneuvering to claim land in the Arctic. Fossil fuels, shipping lanes, and fishing are among the economic interests at stake, in an opportunity opened up by the melting Arctic ice.
Real reason this was posted? (Score:-1, Insightful)
Of course, then you realize Slashdot's editors have to know that these subjects cause political debates. Then you understand--it's all about page hits for OSTG. Why do you think we got a Mozilla vulnerability and Linux root exploit article today? Each article is full of people arguing.
I believe the editors post flamebait articles intended to incite arguments because it generates page hits. Hence the endless cycle SCO, RIAA, Microsoft, Linus-did-this-today, SCO, RIAA, Microsoft, Mozilla, etc.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:5, Insightful)
-WS
Land rush in the Arctic (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just disgusting (Score:3, Insightful)
Talk about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes I wonder if I really am the only one that gives a shit.
Am I the only one that mourns for all the lost (and soon to be lost) species?
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:5, Insightful)
A question though- why the heck is global warming still contraversial? After all, it doesn't matter if it's man or nature caused- dealing with it is going to be everybody's concern very soon, and there's very little doubt left that it is happening.
Re:Allocation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter- either way it looks like it's here to stay, at least until the natural end of the potential warming cycle a century from now.
For all we know, the warming trend might drastically end within a few years.
So shouldn't we get busy and have a few plans in either direction? Like large ammounts of commonly owned land in Northern Russia and Northern Canada and Antarctica by the UN in case of global warming, and similar reservations in the tropics in case of global cooling? This ain't rocket science people. The key here is to plan for ALL possibilities- and then make sure you have disaster plans for the worst. It matters none at all whether it is man or nature caused- time to move past the blame game and into the action phase.
Re:This is just disgusting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Has it occured to you that it might be both? I remember hearing someone saying how we're only responsible for 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions. Well boy howdy, we only doubled them then, yeah, so let's all hop in the SUV...
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion - NOT WRONG (Score:3, Insightful)
Greenland looks pretty damn big on my globe. And it's only a mile or so deep in ice.
Melting that would cause a sea-level rise.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion - WRONG. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right though, most of the ice in the arctic is already floating. The antarctic glaciers are the ones we should worry about as far as sea level is concerned.
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Science is not a democracy. A theory's predictions check out or not...it does not matter at all what the majority of scientists think about it. When was the last time you heard about a 'consensus' around E=mc^2 or the like?
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, is quite thought provoking on this stuff. As he says, "scientific consensus" is not science, it is marketing.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were to say to an American nationalist example of one of these people that "America is a great nation!" their positive side lights up. If you were to say "America" has issues with their large prison population. Their negative side lights up and a tick goes into the negative column for you.
Depending on how strongly they feel, going above a threshold ratio of negative ticks to positive ticks will make them hate you. And depending on how energetic they are, they will lash out with just whatever negative comments come to mind. Doesn't matter what, because, hey, who cares what people are actually saying, it just matters that you give negativity back to counter "negativity." All that matters are these general concepts of negative and positive. Love and hate. Good and evil if you will. Always easy symbolism, always the most banal ideas. Thought of anything in between these two concepts is just "self-defeating," "moral relativism," "nihilism," whatever word they latched onto that some "really smart and witty" Coulter-type character said. Criticism is always interpreted as hate, and so emotionally abusive attacks are always returned. Support is always interpreted as love, and so the most fellatio-like praises are always given back.
This almost definitely scores me a negative tick on their scorechart. And if this is all they know of me, they now hate me.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is not a democracy. A theory's predictions check out or not...it does not matter at all what the majority of scientists think about it. When was the last time you heard about a 'consensus' around E=mc^2 or the like?
Sorry, but consensus is extremely important in science, for a variety of reasons.
First, it's important to remember that experiments never prove anything, they only support or disprove. A theory can be supported by thousands of experiments, but if the thousand and first demonstrates an error in the theory (and if that experiment can be replicated and verified by others) then that theory is disproved (or at least needs to be modified). In one sense, all widely-accepted scientific thought is just a consensus on the current interpretation of the experimental evidence. It could (and very, very often does!) change in a few months, years or decades.
Second, some theories aren't very amenable to testing. The cause of global warning is one of these. Ideally, to test it you need to take a few identical planets and pump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmospheres of a subset of them, then measure the results for, say, 100 years. Since we can't do that, we have to take a more observational, statistical approach, measuring everything that may be relevant and using statistical methods to attempt to isolate correlations, and then logically determine causes and effects. That's a complicated, difficult process, and different researchers use different methods, consider different factors and get different results. If those results vary wildly, then you really don't know anything conclusive. If the majority of them indicate roughly the same thing, then you begin to obtain a consensus among the researchers in the area.
Science is done by humans, and frankly it's not uncommon that the primary mechanism for building consensus on major new theories is retirement and death. Specifically, the retirement and death of the scientists who hold to the old theory, allowing younger adherents of the new theory to begin dominating the discussion, literature and allocation of research grants.
Consensus-building is a very real part of science. "Consensus" is often abused by people who claim there is a consensus when there is too much diversity of scientific opinion for any side to rightfully claim a consensus, but that doesn't mean it's not a real, and important, phenomenon.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the fact that your "protection of marriage" laws do nothing to lower the existing divorce rate or prevent Britney-Spears-36-hour-Hollywood-marriages, means you aren't really protecting marriage, you're just hating homosexuals. That and the fact that if your gay neighbors get married, its as much your business as, and as relevant to your life, as if they get tatoos on their butts.
So yes, you are a hateful homophobe. Duh.
Re:Thin Ice (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevermind the fact that the US has one of the longest Arctic shorelines in the world (behind Russia, Canada and Denmark/Greenland).
Nevermind that the US has been one of the most active in the Arctic Ocean in recent decades (thanks to nuclear submarines and the various ice stations they support).
Nevermind that nobody else seems to have any interest in taking over the US' role in "policing the sealanes" in the other four oceans, even though I'm sure there are members of Congress that would like to cut funding from, say, far-off Diego Garcia and move it to their own pork barrel projects (neither India nor Australia seem all that keen on picking up any slack).
Oh no, this is a brand new evil Yankee imperialist power-grab..
"Watch for the Russian military to challenge that role, backed by nuclear weapons. "
How is that a change? That's what the Russian/Soviet Navy has been since they started building their own nuclear submarines. In order to try to save some of their resources, Soviet policy had been to abandon the surface fleet to throw that money at submarines and land and air forces.
"Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland to form a competing coalition"
Why would Canada and Norway want to invite Sweden and Finland? Other than the occasional small rock with a flag flying over it, neither of those two countries actually have any Arctic shoreline. Baltic Sea != Arctic Ocean.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion - WRONG. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion - WRONG. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:2, Insightful)
Ecoregions change, they've always changed. The Arctic will not "suffer" it will simply change, like climates and regions always have.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no dichotomy. An American nationalist that treats any criticism or discussion as hate is wrong, and a homosexual that treats any criticism or discussion as hate is wrong. The error of the nationalist must be treated more seriously because the stakes are much greater.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's face it - no matter where humanity goes, the environment will suffer.
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No, the environment will CHANGE. Suffer is simply you expressing your opinion, and a rather silly opinion at that, since it assumes the existing environment is automatically the best possible environment, and that all environments are, by default, static and unchanging.
Re:Real reason this was posted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all theories have predictions that are easy to check. In that case, the only sensible thing to do is to ask the opinions of as many scientists in that subject as you can, and see what the majority think. There is no realistic alternative.
By the way, E=mc^2 is just an equation. It is still under debate, but there is a
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, is quite thought provoking on this stuff. As he says, "scientific consensus" is not science, it is marketing.
Why believe what he says? He has never published anything that is accurate science.
Re:A unique and amazing ecoregion (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately that same level of debate seems to apply to issues in the Palestine region ... if you criticise one party, you're a holocaust-denier, if you criticise the other, you're condoning ethnic cleansing.
This unfortunately then dissuades the majority from intelligent discourse.