New Climate Change Warning 1023
sebFlyte writes "A new grid computing climate research project, climateprediction.net, has come up with its first major results, and they're really not good news for the planet according to the BBC. The simulations suggest that over the next hundred years we could see average rises of average temperatures of up to 11K, more than twice what was previously thought."
The cause (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost fell off my chair when I first saw this info...
Crichton novel- State of Fear (Score:2, Interesting)
He has an interesting take on the subject, backed with documentation to his sources.
Re:HOWTO: give science a bad name. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Lalalalalala I can't hear you lalalalalala (Score:3, Interesting)
This leads to an abundance of progressive thinkers in these fields which gives them the general left-leaning slant. It's nothing like a conspiracy, just the general direction that these things take. You'll find left-leaning lawyers making up the bulk of environmental law, you'll find right-leaning lawyers making up the bulk of DAs. It's just the way things work out. People are drawn to areas they have an interest in.
So we can see how the environmental sciences would be filled with people who were actually out looking for problems and thinking up solutions. So you end up where we are now where the prevailing scientific opinion (among environmental scientists) is that doom and gloom await us if we do not change our living patterns NOW.
Well, those scientists have their own political agenda from which they take pre-fabricated solutions and apply them to the scientific problems which they've 'discovered'.
A technologist would look at global warming and see an opportunity to create something to help mankind cross that bridge. The environmental scientist can only consider cutting back current levels of technology to prevent the inevitable from happening.
On a tech site, you'd think you'd find more of the technologist perspective, but instead you find the latter Chicken Little perspective. The solution to global warming is technology, not the repealing of technology.
Re:You have to prioritize (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and repeatedly saying that Iraq caused 9/11, doesn't make it true; it only makes stupid people think it is. (Darby Conley, Get Fuzzy comic) They didn't have WMD's, they didn't have facilities to manufacture large amounts of WMD's. They had oil, and GWB had a family grudge. Keep your military in your own damn country; no-one likes a nosy neighbour.
Yeah, yeah. (-1, Flamebait). Bring it.
We don't know so, everyone stop doing anything! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so its impossible to pin down a "safe level" of greenhouse gas, so we already might be over the "safe level" or it might not be "safe" if there are only 200ppm, so what we need to do is build this huge CO2 sink that will draw down CO2 to nearly 0ppm, that will be safe right? It has to be!
This is the same logic that causes Superfund in the US to clean up toxins to lower than naturally occuring levels wasting billions of dollars digging tons of dirt and replacing it with new dirt just because arsenic is found in higher than 3ppb naturally in some area.
We don't know what's safe, but we know that at some level it becomes bad, so that means at any level it's bad right?
Re:You have to prioritize (Score:2, Interesting)
Iraq was a HUGE mistake, worse than that, carefully planned mistake. Yeah yeah, think of the troops, we dont want to demoralize them! I doubt the troops want to live in a fairyland, they deserve the truth.
CO2 IS a greenhouse gas (Score:4, Interesting)
I honestly do not understand how anyone can doubt that humans cause climate change. First of all, it is a fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Nobody can dispute this: you can prove it with a very simple experiment [espere.net], and of course the planet Venus is a very vivid example. Therefore, all other things being equal, increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the planet to heat up. It seems obvious that it's better to err on the side of caution than to say the future is too difficult to predict, and therefore we shouldn't do anything.
Re:BS, FP (Score:4, Interesting)
Reducing our emissions can only help, and can indeed go a long way, but over the last 50 years its become painfully clear how impossibly difficult it is for such drastic measures to take place. It's unpopular among corporations, politicians and the general population. Not a good way to get things done. Now - if alternative power sources become more profitable and cheaper than fossil fuels, the world will jump on the bandwagon and reduce emissions in an instant.
But should we really hope that an unsure economic turnaround takes place in the next 100 years, before average global temperature rises 11K? And even then, can zero emissions stop anything? As per my previous comment in this story, a pot of boiling water will continue to boil even if its removed from the stove. There IS an alternative solution, though. It involves increasing the earth's albedo - the reflectiveness of the atmosphere and surface. Now, the earth already has a mechanism to do this: storms. Clouds have a high reflectiveness, and storms also kick up the ocean, producing whitecaps. If the temperature rises, storm activity might simply increase, in which case we might just be OK. But just as an additional safeguard (after all, we're talking about the whole planet/life/7 billion people) we might just want to come up with our own method of raising the albedo.
Re:Lalalalalala I can't hear you lalalalalala (Score:1, Interesting)
He was talking about Easter Island where the people destroyed their own environment and everyone died as a result.
The host was like "but didn't they realize chopping down all the trees on the island would result in everyone's death?"
And he was like "We're doing the same thing right now except with the entire planet and you don't see anyone complaining about it do you? If it can make some people rich now then it doesn't matter how many people it will kill later. That's basically human logic."
Basically humans are just really stupid and we'll eventually kill ourselves off. Consider how long some plants, fish and bugs have been here...this little human experiment is nothing in the grand scheme...well except the planet will be radioactive and toxic afterwards...but some kind of mold or insect will no doubt continue to live long after us.
Absolutely not. Key word "over". Stil important (Score:5, Interesting)
Had the article said "for the next hundred years", I'd have questioned its science rather than its grammar. Yes, it is confusing, but 11 Degress Celsius (as it is properly referred to) is still an outrageous increase, especially taking into account the fact that it is an average temperature. This means that the both the mean and extremes increase. Expect some very cold weather in parts due to "global warming". Also, expect scorchers. Of course, the significance is not so much the extremes as it is this mean temperature. Bird migration and plant budding schedules are already off-kilter. This isn't only an inconvenience for Dodo birds, its a serious hazard to the Earth's convenient biological balance. Watch for increased pollution in cities, species die-offs, catastrophic farming years, fisheries collapse, and increased natural disasters. It's in front of us right now. Those places least harmed by the full force of the tsunami had wave-breaking coral reefs and mangrove swamps in front of them. Without these, and many more, of nature's natural defenses, we're in major trouble.
It's not just "The Day After Tomorrow", people.
The problem with the simulations (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I am all for Global Warming (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's because.... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the more interesting sections. Those of you who've been through the big rains on the West Coast and the big snows on the East Coast should note that intense rainstorms and presumably snow storms are a potential indicator of global warming as the oceans evaporate off more water as they warm.
"Global mean surface temperatures have increased 0.5-1.0F since the late 19th century. The 20th century's 10 warmest years all occurred in the last 15 years of the century. Of these, 1998 was the warmest year on record. The snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and floating ice in the Arctic Ocean have decreased. Globally, sea level has risen 4-8 inches over the past century. Worldwide precipitation over land has increased by about one percent. The frequency of extreme rainfall events has increased throughout much of the United States."
"Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are likely to accelerate the rate of climate change. Scientists expect that the average global surface temperature could rise 1-4.5F (0.6-2.5C) in the next fifty years, and 2.2-10F (1.4-5.8C) in the next century, with significant regional variation. Evaporation will increase as the climate warms, which will increase average global precipitation. Soil moisture is likely to decline in many regions, and intense rainstorms are likely to become more frequent. Sea level is likely to rise two feet along most of the U.S. coast."
Re:Tried looking forward? (Score:3, Interesting)
Aum Shinrikyo was a japanese cult that had billions at their disposal, and were interested in making chemical and nuclear weapons. With all that money, and recruiting intelligent young grad students from major Japanese universities they managed a single sarin gas attack in 1995 killing 12 people.
al Qaeda has used coventional explosives in all their attacks, and have, aside from 9/11, failed to show anything resembling global reach. In fact there is much evidence that al Qaeda is more of a venture capital firm for anyone wanting to attack Americans, and don't have any extant network at all - and never did.
Which raises the point that really the issue is constraining capability, and capability mostly takes the form of money. In theory the US has a vast and powerful foreign intelligence agency (NSA) that is supposed to be good at tracing and shutting down money flowing into terrorist causes. That, it would seem to me, would be the most effective way to fight the war on terror: quietly and efficiently in the background, not drawing attention and inspiring other random terrorist groups to act in sympathy. I'm sure that's probably happening. All the rest - the tromping around of military, the random security measures applied piecemeal to random points of infrastructure in the US, the arrests of terrorist cells (usually innocent) - that's all for show. To be honest, it's probably more counterproductive than anything.
Jedidiah.
Re:It's because.... (Score:5, Interesting)
A complicating factor is that 1850 marked the end of a several century global cooling event. The years 800 to 1200 AD were considerably warmer than from AD 1400 to 1800.
Re:Peak Oil vs Global Warmining (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You have to prioritize (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:HOWTO: give science a bad name. (Score:2, Interesting)
"There is evidence that in ages past, the earth was MUCH warmer"
Correct, but the reason we find fossils in siberia, and antartica for that matter, is because they have moved farther from the equator since then. Not because the world was warmer then.
The reason that areas now under water were dry then have alot to do with rising and lowering tectonic plates, similar to how we can find marine fossils on the tops of mountains. This also has little to do with past ocean levels.
If 200 feet of ocean evaporated, the increase in the amount of gas in the atmosphere would cause 'air' pressure to quadruple. I put air in quotes because at that point the 'air' would bo 80% water vapor. And about 4% oxygen. The oxygen levels alone would kill most animal life.
Violent weather is not caused by simple temprature gradients. It is caused when moist air rises. This causes the air to lose pressure, and this causes a loss in temprature. As you said temprature greatly affects how much water the air can hold. So the the extra water in the moist air condenses out. This releases a lot of heat, and keeps the air rising a lot longer than it would if it were dry. The violence comes because more air gets sucked in to replace the rising air. A hurricane is caused when this happens over warm water. The fresh air picks up a lot of water vapor from the warm water and keeps the whole thing going.
Super Scary Climate Blog (SSCB) begun (Score:2, Interesting)
Virginia scientist shows long-term human infulence (Score:3, Interesting)
That accounts for half of the CO2 changes from the norm; the last 150 years accounts for the other half.
He also notes that from climate models it seems the rise in CO2 has served to shield us from a large scale glaciation phase that was scheduled to hit long before now, and kept the climate more stable!
The study is rather interesting (full link to study in article, check end) as he really ties together a wide variety of data from different sources.
Re:You have to prioritize (Score:2, Interesting)
Except the dead ones, natch.
Saddam should have been removed long before now
You just don't get it, do you. The gassings of the kurds and iranians was over 10 years ago, when Saddam was the US's "friend" vs Iran. Dissing him for being "stupid-ass" is a little comical in light of your own leader's academic ability; "power hungry" is laughable in the face of an America hell-bent on bombing anyone who is against the "american way". The question isn't about Iraq. All the reasons that have been given for the war with Iraq are just distractions. Dictator? Lots of those about. Human rights? Oooh. the US executes minors doesn't it? Tortures prisoners, holds people in no-mans-land without recourse to legal representation. Does Saudi Arabia have a wonderful record on Human rights or democracy?
Saddam was no worse than a whole list of other world leaders. He had fewer links to Al Quaida than almost any other middle eastern state (especially those "best buddy" Saudis). The country was fairly peaceful - a little repressive, some disappearances, but nothing over-the-top in comparison to other middle eastern states, or even your own (Hmmm, does the name Maher Arar ring any bells?).
We in Europe "turn our backs" on the US's use of capital punishment, indefinite internment of people without trial, electoral anomalies (Gerrymandering is pretty much a way of life in the US), free trade restrictions (Steel tariffs, for example), unilateral invasions of sovereign states and many other "misdemeanours". We share a world, and each have our own ways of running our countries. You can't just decide that someone made your daddy look silly and therefore you have to kill tens of thousands of people to remove him from power.
War in Iraq wasn't even close to being a last resort unless you decide that Saddam being in power was the underlying "problem".
Re:It's because.... (Score:3, Interesting)