Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon? 696
rRaAnNiI writes "Just read an extremely interesting article about the possibility of having a 'little ice age' quite soon - within a decade.
The frightening thing is that it makes a lot of sense to me. Does anyone know how to build an igloo?"
Does anyone know how to build an igloo? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Does anyone know how to build an igloo? (Score:5, Funny)
But this is slashdot. I suppose we could cuddle up with the stuffed penguins instead.
Re:Does anyone know how to build an igloo? (Score:2)
But everyone knows that Canada is in the Arcticcircle, not the Antarctic. So us Canadians will have to cuddle up to caribou instead as we paddle our ice floes around.
One Word: Nanotechnology (Score:3, Insightful)
There has been tons of research into technologically induced climate change. Keep in mind these climate changes are happening as a result of gas changes in the atmosphere. Changing the mixture of gases is not a big technological hurdle now. Simply adding iron to the oceans could decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Now, coming soon, nanotechnology will enable us to effect the mixture of atmospheric gases substantially. If we do start to get some dramatic cooling effects, procedures could be set into motion to change the gas mixtures to compensate for said cooling. And as the decades go on, our capability in this are will only accelerate. If not, its probably because the humans blew themselves up.
Re:One Word: Nanotechnology (Score:4, Interesting)
Sooo, basically the WWII Nazi wolfpack subs helped stop the greenhouse effect?
Re:Look before you leap (Score:4, Informative)
Cane Toad Experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Now there are millions of poisonous cane toads slowly spreading throughout northern Australia. The have become a pest and compete with native species.
The moral? Be wary of quick fixes, no matter how scientific (i.e. GM!). Mother Nature is complex and can react in unforseen ways and the possiblity of unintended negative impacts is very real!
Re:Look before you leap (Score:4, Informative)
Your first bit is an outstanding question. The second is jumping WAY too fast to a conclusion. For a more detailed analysis of what all is being talked about here, please refer to the Wired article Dumping Iron by Charles Graeber
More interestingly are the counter viewpoints to the approach be described in this article. First off, the folks who don't think this will do anything but burn dollars. The second group of those critical are concerned with the notion that we're not 100% certain that the globe is warming, or if it is, by how much.
What if we took corrective action to cool things off, only to find that it wasn't as bad as was thought. The cure would definitely be worse than the symptoms.
I do find myself in agreement with Dr. Gagosian's main point from the original article. We need a LOT more data, and a much more complete understanding of exactly what is going on before we seriouly consider corrective actions.
Re:Does anyone know how to build an igloo? (Score:5, Funny)
1. Make sure the snow is really hard on top, and at least 4' deep. Make sure you're wearing your snow-shoes or you'll fall through!
2. Use a long, thin, "snow-cutting" saw to cut the snow into curved-rectangular blocks.
3. Starting at the base, line the outside of the igloo with the blocks, being sure to leave room for a doorway. You'd be surprised how many hosers forget this!
4. After each layer, have a beer. This only works if you drink Canadian beer. That's MOLSON Canadian, not that "Canadian budweiser" crap. You can rest your beer on the ice blocks to keep it cold.
5. As you get to the top and can no longer reach high enough to put any more blocks up, just give up. Who needs an entire igloo anyway? That can be your "breathing hole".
6. It'll still be freezing, because this is Canada, after all. Build a fire inside your igloo.
7. If your hole isn't big enough, some of the ice on top will melt. This is normal. If your entire igloo melts, it's too warm for igloos right now. Wait until igloo season.
8. Since there's no power outlet, you won't be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada in your igloo. Go back to your house and watch it there.
This is what I can remember from grade 3, so don't quote me on anything.
Oh Come On... It Can't Have Taken THIS Long.... (Score:3, Funny)
2. Use a long, thin, "snow-cutting" saw to cut the snow into curved-rectangular blocks.
3. Starting at the base, line the outside of the igloo with the blocks, being sure to leave room for a doorway. You'd be surprised how many hosers forget this!
4. After each layer, have a beer. This only works if you drink Canadian beer. That's MOLSON Canadian, not that "Canadian budweiser" crap. You can rest your beer on the ice blocks to keep it cold.
5. As you get to the top and can no longer reach high enough to put any more blocks up, just give up. Who needs an entire igloo anyway? That can be your "breathing hole".
6. It'll still be freezing, because this is Canada, after all. Build a fire inside your igloo.
7. If your hole isn't big enough, some of the ice on top will melt. This is normal. If your entire igloo melts, it's too warm for igloos right now. Wait until igloo season.
8. Since there's no power outlet, you won't be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada in your igloo. Go back to your house and watch it there.
9. ???
10. Profit!
Re:Does anyone know how to build an igloo? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes.
News Flash - Mini Ice Age Coming to North America (Score:4, Funny)
Re:News Flash - Mini Ice Age Coming to North Ameri (Score:3, Funny)
FATBASTARD CAUSES GLOBAL CHILL.... (Score:2, Funny)
Penguins (Score:5, Funny)
Thousands upon thousands of penguins living in the southern polar cap. They constantly inhale and exhale the cold air there. Every time they exhale, the air move a little bit north (as everyone of them is always facing north). After some months the whole polar air mass is above the southern continents and it takes another three months for the tropical heath to disperse it. At the same time the penguins are hibernating. Then the penguins wake up and start moving the air again.
An international consortium formed by Autralian, Brazilian and South African tourist industry representatives have a project to kill all penguins (bringing an ethernal summer to the region), but they are being prevented from implementing it by the Greenpeace and a bunch of Linux zealots.
My Athlons won' t melt! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My Athlons won' t melt! (Score:2)
Actually, your OCed Athlon will reverse the ice age and induce horrendous global warming.
Year without a summer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Year without a summer (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Year without a summer (Score:2, Informative)
Wouldn't an entire year without crops have a seriously fucked up effect on our food supply?
Holy shit, Ben's even cooler than I initially thought [keenspace.com]!
Re:Year without a summer (Score:4, Informative)
Wouldn't an entire year without crops have a seriously fucked up effect on our food supply?
Define 'ours'. If you mean the US, and for only one year, then no. Prices would go up, but more because of a perceived threat than a real one (much like gas prices go up within hours of something happening in the middle east.) The US stockpiles, and let rots generally, a tremendous amount of food. Our exports and handouts would most certainly be affected.
On the other hand, having a year where every single growing season failed across this entire nation would be
Re:Year without a summer (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you qualify that with actual information?
Working in a previous life as a software development manager at a major produce distributor, I can tell you the pipeline from farm to stomach is measured in days. Some stocks have maybe a season's buffer; for instance frozen orange juice and wheat. Corn gets stored, but the amount and duration varies from producer to distributer to processor.
The U.S. is more grasshopper than ant. Stockpiles are due to overproduction and market strategy rather than actual preparedness -they are not intentional stockpiles against production interruption. I expect there'd be widespread pandemonium, not just from 'perceived threat', but actual disruption of the entire supply chain that is feeding over 300,000,000 people in the U.S. alone.
What stockpile we do have will probably move quickly. It's very unclear just what percent the U.S.'s "stockpiled" food store is -is it a fraction of the daily, weekly, monthly or annual need? Hard to tell. I imagine the military would get by for a time, but your typical city person, being at the far end of the longer chains, will have a hard time getting their hands on supplies.
Re:Year without a summer (Score:4, Interesting)
Demand for natural gas would go up. However, I wonder if power consumption would really rise, considering that our peak energy usage in the US is actually during the summer, due to air conditioning.
Re:Year without a summer (Score:3, Informative)
A little ice age would not destroy all farmable land. It would just destroy a large amount of it, leaving only the areas nearer to the equator as usable farmland. It would also reduce rainfall, as more of the earth's water is locked up in ice instead of circulating in the rain cycle (or whatever that cycle is called where it rains, runs off to the ocean, evaporates into clouds, rains again. etc)
An full (not "little) ice age would certainly mess up most of Canada, except for thin strips of land right near the oceans (Vancouver wouldn't be covered, Nova Scotia wouldn't be covered, but everything in-between would be.) Further south, the last ice-ages had glaciers reaching down into northern Michigan and Minnesota, and the southernmost point being an elongated lobe covering most of Wisconsin. Where I live (Madison, WI) was just barely inside the southernmost extent of that lobe, and the effect on the geography was drastic. What was under the glacier got sanded down into smooth gently rolling terrain. What was not under the glacier still looks like it did before - rocky outcroppings, hills with cliffs, rugged and pretty terrain. The difference is drastic. Those things must have been very thick.
deleware (Score:3, Interesting)
I would attribute that to the amount of chemicals being dumped into that system as well, I pity the idiots who put their bodies into that water.
How to build an igloo (Score:4, Informative)
But if you ask me, I think global warming is the trend.
Thanks for the link, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Hey Sherlock, how about you take your foot out of your mouth and read the article? The issue is that global warming *is* melting the polar ice caps, which in turn could cause a local cooling effect in northern Europe -- to the point of ice age.
That global warming doesn't make it hotter everywhere is old news, too. The BBC wrote about about this exact scenario (temps up --> ice melts --> atlantic currents change --> temps down...) years ago. It plays out with a rapid & general failure of agriculture across the British isles and western Scandanavia, due to massive increases in snowcover.
(There is some debate about how the Gulf Stream moving south from the British Isles to Iberia would affect the weather in Spain, and Portugal. One camp thinks it would bring traditionally British rains; another argues the local heating effect of the Gulf Stream would rapidly create more arid/desert conditions. Either change devastates local agricultures however, destroying traditional grape & olive industries of the region.)
Re:How to build an igloo (Score:3, Informative)
It is better to drive the sticks 12 inches and leave the holes open when you pull them out (or if you really want them plugged, because you don't like breathing, just leave them in).
And a garbage bag full of snow makes a great door to keep the wind out.
-Peter
Ice Age? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still living in my igloo, is Y2K over yet?
Re: "Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon?" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: "Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon?" (Score:2, Funny)
hmph! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hmph! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmph! (Score:2, Interesting)
If you had read the article, you would have learned that these climactic changes are common. They have happened many times in the past, and will most likely happen again in the future.
The only thing mentioned about global warming in the article (other than the hype^h^h^h^hheadline) was the assertion (un-supported) that "It is reasonable to assume that greenhouse warming can exacerbate the possibility of precipitating large, abrupt, and regional or global climatic changes."
Hardly a statement that the climate change is "BECAUSE OF" global warming.
So, perhaps you should consider reading the article before calling people "bonhead", eh?
Re:hmph! (Score:3, Insightful)
"It is reasonable to assume that drinking alcohol can exacerbate the possibility of being involved in a serious automobile accident."
Hardly a statement that I killed those two kids "BECAUSE OF" my drunk driving.
If you read the newspapers, you will learn that automobile accidents are common. They have happened many times in the past, and will most likely happen again in the future.
Guess I might as well get liquored up every time I get behind the wheel, since being drunk doesn't make it certain that I'll get into an accident, and not drinking does not make it certain that I won't get into an accident.
Why is it that people are capable of dealing with probabilities and common sense when dealing with everyday life, but they insist that everything be 100% certain when dealing with climate change?
Re:hmph! (Score:5, Informative)
Read the damned article. The ice age may be caused by global warming via changes in ocean salinity.
The climate is a chaotic nonlinear system. The results of twiddling its parameters may be counterintuitive or unpredictable. There never seems to be any shortage of armchair climatologists who can't comprehend this fact.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
And then there are people, who've heard from some butterfly and will bash the poor guy(girl?) to death by blaming it all on it and displaying their general lack of knowledge on chaos theory.
Chaos does not mean unpredictable.
It means non-deterministic or limited predictability and possibly unpredictability.
The river is chaotic and fairly unpredictable in its behaviour. Still, no one is amazed to see it streaming downwards.
The magnetic pendulum with two magnetic attractors, another classical example for chaotic behaviour in physics. Is it unpredictable? I think: "It will stop on either magnet" is a fairly accurate prediction. On the other hand it is nearly impossible to predict which.
The human body is pretty much a multitude of chaotic systems.
> I think its foolish to believe that we can predict the [...]
I think, it is foolish to think you know it better than people who are actually working at it.
You know, there are actually smart people out there. And imagine, some of those do work besides CS. Furthermore, the most knowing people in this field are actually climatologists and imagine, they know about chaos theory.
They do not claim to determine the future climate in all its eternity. What they predict is a increase of several degrees in the mean temperature in a fairly restricted amount of time (200y). Your exhilaration on the title may be reduced on the misconception that global warming is the opposite from ice age.
It is not. Global warming is the name for the rapid change of global climate (Rapid for a global climate change). In contrast, Ice Age is the name for a global climatic period.
The abrupt increase of temperature may well trigger a Ice Age. That is what the article is about.
The problem is, the short period of time is for us a lot of time.
> Global warming theory [...]
No, you are assuming that global warming theory assumes.
Actually, global climate models are much more complex. and incorporate several components. Additional to the reflective and absorptive properties of atmospheric water vapor,they include among others greenhouse gas emissions, ozone and sulphate aerosol levels, solar variations, and volcanic aerosols, ice boundaries, earth, and not to mention the ocean in heat absorption, reflection and transportation.
>a change of that magnitude can set off a chain reaction then we would have been gone a long time ago.
Well, we actually see the effects quite clearly. It's not the hot summer this year, or El Nino some years ago.
Have a look at the stats of Munich Re [munichre.com], one of the world largest reinsurace companies.
Have a look at the glaciers.
Do you have the same position towards M.D.s and medicin concerning the chaotic behaviour of the human body?
Re:hmph! (Score:2)
History Lesson (Score:4, Interesting)
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
The period from the end of the Ice Age till now is this long:
i
As you can tell, the non-Ice Age time is an aberration, not the norm.
I have to write a paragraph to break the Lameness Filter caps rules.
Please ignore following
Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) The last Ice Age to affect Britain ended
Re:History Lesson (Score:3, Troll)
If the night was this long:
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
The period from sunrise till now is this long
i
As you can tell, this "daylight" thing is an aberration, not the norm.
Re:History Lesson (Score:4, Funny)
Re:History Lesson (Score:3, Informative)
Incidently from 750k years ago to more than 2.5M years ago, the ice age cycle was ~41 thousand years long. The full fledged ice age cycle is generally explained as being forced by changes in the Earth's orbit (due to perturbations of other planets). Two of the most well known such perturbatins have 41 and 100 thousand year periods.
Of course he's not talking about an actual ice age, which would result in a global temperature dip ~15 F, but rather a locally important dip whose global impact would only be a degree or two. Such as the "Little Ice Age" that froze much of Europe circa 1700.
Bad sample size (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially when the second data point, has a beginning, but no fixed end yet. You really don't know anything about the length of the second time period.
So in reality you're taking a single observable fact, the length of the historic ice age, and extrapolating wildly from that single point of data.
Completely meaningless conclusions are all you can draw from a single point of data.
scary stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Showed how if the planet got just a wee bit warmer, it would frell with the ocean's thermal regulation system and frell it up for a while...
And yes, just a drop of a few degrees will really frell things up! Look at the florida citrus farmers - they are teetering on the edge now. they can't exactly move further south when they want - even a slight freeze, and their fruit is worthless...
if rivers freeze at the wrong time, it could interfere with salmon spanning and the like, causing small cascades in the food web. Oh nature as whole will handle it, though we will suffer during the adaptation...
After all, even one degree is the difference between freezing and melting point, no?
Re:scary stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Go back to elementary physics class, doodyhead. "Freezing point" and "melting point" are the same damn thing, therefore NO degrees of difference. It's a heat transfer thing, man.
the disturbing part of all this is the source (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the head of the Woods Hole Oceanagraphic Institute...and he's basing his model on what he sees taking place in the oceans...this is fairly reliable scientific analysis...it can't be duplicated thru experimentation, but it's an interesting hypothesis nevertheless.
If he's right, we are seriously fucking this planet up,
yes...that was sarcasm...you dig? not pretty...
What makes you think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost everyone knows that the Earth's climate shifts over time, sometimes dramatically. What is still unclear (despite best efforts of people to firmly convince you one way or the other) is how much impact human activity has on the climate. Volcanic emissions dwarf global emissions due to human activities, for some gases and chemicals. The past has seen dramatic climate changes without humans having anything to do with it
The question is not if we are bringing about an ice age or a warmer period (depending which scare of the day is going around). The question is if we are accelerating the change and by how much. If we bring an ice age about 100 years sooner than it would have occurred naturally, it hardly matters in the long run (but this generation might think otherwise). I believe in cutting back emissions and energy usage, cleaner factories and recycling and all that. But I am tired of the "we are killing the Earth" line.
Re:What makes you think... (Score:4, Insightful)
And that makes it ok for us to speed the process along? Short-term self-interest uber alles. "We can do whatever we want, let future generations fix it if there's a problem" sounds remarkably like "Fsck em all and let God sort them out."
Also, these kinds of things make me 'think it':
As Thousands of Salmon Die, Fight for River Erupts Again [nytimes.com]
Much of the time we have no freaking clue what the real impact of our actions will be on the environment. A little introspection and scientific investigation seems entirely justified.
Re:What makes you think... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes - and the green lobby keeps forgetting to apply Occams' Razor to that ignorance. No - I take that back, most are too dumb to know what it means in the first place. And it's a crying shame, because unlike most who ridicule the greenies, I recognize that there really ARE environmental issues that are important, and SOME of what they say is valid - but only SOME of it. A lot is pure speculation disguised as science. Why oh why do I live in a world where the only real political choices are: support the lying extremists who make the environmental situation look worse than it is, or support the lying extremists who won't even acknowlege the obvious environmental problems that have already been proven?
Re:What makes you think... (Score:3, Interesting)
We're human, we can live in space, on the Moon, in Antartica, in extreme desert wastelands, etc. We should adapt and not try to adapt nature to us. Might be a good time to start thinking of those futuristic domed cities from movies and indoor hydroponic gardens and so forth.
Re:the disturbing part of all this is the source (Score:2, Insightful)
You can throw more money each year at telling people to turn down the heating, but each year the human population increases closer to (or perhaps beyond) the carrying capacity of the planet. This is the real problem. I have perfect confidence in the ability of life on this planet to survive a 5-10 F drop in temperature (its been done before). The human race is no exception - we are a non-specialist species with an ability to live in many climates. The article seems more worried about a decline in economic prosperity in the developed world;
"it could soon trigger a dramatic and abrupt cooling throughout the North Atlantic region--where, not incidentally, some 60 percent of the world's economy is based."
Sounds like that would be something you are in favour of.
P.S. saying that it must be right because it was written by the head of the WHOI is arguing to the person an not a valid scientific argument. There is no mention of peer review of this article, and it has a single author
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now go take that bad mood and your dumb joke and shove it somewhere else.
Re:the disturbing part of all this is the source (Score:2, Insightful)
If he is right, and such an occurence happened and plunged the northa atlantic into another ica age, would the equatorial areas become even more desertified than they are now because there would no longer be a stream of cold water coming down from the north? If that were to happen, not only would is fsck up the entire equatorial climate as well as the north american one, those changes would cause even more drastic shifts in the southern hemisphere's climate.
Re:the disturbing part of all this is the source (Score:2)
Sure but (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a more important problem than temperature is what effect global warming will have on precipitation. Precipitation levels change dramatically with climatic shifts and do much more to determine what happens to your environment. For example, dry and hot == desert, while wet and hot == tropical rain forest. Next time someone tell s you your tempurature is going to rise, ask, yes, but is it going to rain?
BTW - the comment about glaciers also is a little misleading. The snow fall/snow melt cycle is more than just temperature -- it is also a function of precip. More snowfall with no temp change can cause glaciers to grow. The east coast (of the us) would need a significant increase in winter snowfall and a significan decrease of temp to cause glaciers anywhere.
Some problem with the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if it would have been less comprehensible for some, they would better have left on the scale concentration changes so that at least one can have a chance to jduge the changes.
So what is very salty to fresh water ? A change from 180g.l- to 170g.l-1 ? Lower ? Higher ? So to summarize : nice article but not enough data to jump on the bandwagon.
Woohoo! (Score:2, Funny)
This is actually good news, at least now we can hold another "Elfstedentocht" again here in the Netherlands. Then again, having -20 degrees celcius all year round might not be as fun as it seems, though it would rock for once to have said "Elfstedentocht" in July... ^_^
Then again, I was expecting global warming which would place my town right next to the sea. I already had a burger stall planned out to make money on the German tourists... :(
Why build and igloo? (Score:2)
Re:Why build and igloo? (Score:2, Funny)
Scaring pocketbooks open. (Score:4, Interesting)
These scientists always seem to oversimplify the complex system that is the earths weather pattern.
They talk as if its fact, but the best anyone can do is an educated guess. We don't understand the earth. If we could you wouldn't hear "60% chance of rain" on the nightly weather report.
I wonder why they do it.
From the about WHOI page:
Funding
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is supported by a mix of grants from federal agencies including the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, private contributions, and endowment income.
Oh, I guess people are less likely to contribute to the "Everything is A-OK" foundation.
Not that I'm against them, they're better than other eco-groups which do nothing but spout speculative doom-and-gloom prophecies. At least these guys are scientists, not activists. The article warned of possible climate changes, not an end to all life as we know it.
Re:Scaring pocketbooks open. (Score:2)
Well, no. They don't "oversimplify", at least not to each other. Climate is understood through computer modeling. The models are as complex as modern technology and programming technique will allow. Now, if they are attempting to distill their model results into a form that people unfamiliar with the years of research behind them can understand, then they do by necessity skip a lot of details. Is this "oversimplifying"?
The models show that the Earth may be on the verge of a rapid climatological shift to colder temperatures, as a result of greenhouse gases and their warming effect on the atmosphere. This may be counter-intuitive, but that doesn't make it false. Does it mean there's a guarantee that this is going to happen? No. Does that mean they're just guessing? Absolutely not. There is a danger. The consequences are too great to ignore it.
They talk as if its fact, but the best anyone can do is an educated guess. We don't understand the earth. If we could you wouldn't hear "60% chance of rain" on the nightly weather report.
You forgot to consider the fact that the spatial scales involved in rainfall are much smaller than the spatial coverage of a local news broadcast. So, if a weather system is moving through that is going to dump rain on 60% of your station's broadcast area, you say: "chance of rain 60%". Note, I have "oversimplified" things (darn scientists!!), but you get the idea.
Oh, I guess people are less likely to contribute to the "Everything is A-OK" foundation.
Do you seriously believe that they're just making up the results to acquire federal funding? Furthermore, do you seriously believe the government is more likely to fund research that indicates we cannot continue our current economic activity without grave consequences to the environment? Would we not expect the opposite, if we were to cynically (and ignorantly) guess that science funding was based on the answers, and not on the questions?
Re:Scaring pocketbooks open. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I can't agree with you here. The only way to achieve prefect accuracy would be a "full-scale" model (if I understand your use of that phrase correctly); however, you do not need perfect accuracy to make useful scientific predictions about the behavior of complex systems. The question is: are the models accurate enough? Now, we can have a long, drawn-out argument about that, but unless either of us is a climate modeler, there isn't much point. However, I really have to take exception to the claim that a complex system must be perfectly modeled before useful predictions can be made. That is an unreasonable expectation, and is not at all how science works. All of experimental science is about taking a natural phenomenon and simplifying it in the lab or in a computer simulation until a particular behavior can be isolated and understood. That's how it's been done since Galileo.
That said, I actually agree that the Earth's climate is an extremely complex system, and that it is not obvious which current model predictions (if any) can be trusted. However, even if we restrict ourselves to things that we are reasonably sure about, I submit there is still cause for concern.
These are the facts:
1. The Earth's climate is a poorl-understood, very complex system. We both agree on this, but I think this fact should make us worry more, not less. The climate has shown extremely volatile behavior in its past. It does not appear that its present state is any kind of stable equilibrium point; indeed the stability of the climate over the last few thousand years is quite an anomaly if you compare it to earlier epochs.
2. We are just becoming aware that ocean currents play a critical role in determining the climate, especially for the mid-latiudes. The ocean is basically a global thermal conveyor belt. If its route is shifted, extreme changes in climate are likely.
3. The polar caps are receding. This is well-correlated with the spike in global average temperatures since the industrial revolution. Set aside the argument about the cause of this increase in global temperature, and the subsequent receding of the polar ice; the existence of both is verified by repeatable, empirical evidence.
4. Computer models show that a little more melting of polar ice will likely result in significant shifts in global ocean currents. Because the system is complex, they cannot of course be certain how the currents will shift, or exactly what the consequences are; however, by exploring parameter space it is possible to get an idea how likely certain outcomes are. The outcome of a mini-ice age has a significant probability in the models. You can hope that there's some systematic error or missing piece in the models, and perhaps there is. But to dismiss the model predictions altogether based on this assumption of error seems, well, ill-advised.
The assumption that the earth's climate is unstable enough to be thrown out of whack by the activities of such tiny bugs as we humans is the ultimate ego trip. You talk about scale, but you clearly have no idea of how insignificant we are.
Nor do you. Anyway, everything I've said in this post stands, even if we hypothetically accept that current climatological changes have nothing to do with human activity.
Re:Scaring pocketbooks open. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a common misconception. Just because its hard to understand small parts of the system, does not mean that it is impossible to understand the whole system. For example, heisenbergs uncertainty principle states that you cannot know the exact position or velocity of a single subatomic particle. however, if that subatomic particle happens to be in my car, and im going down the freeway at 60 mph, and ive got my gps on, Ive got a pretty good idea not only of its position and velocity, but the position and velocity of its surrounding particles. Each particle is going to have lots of other velocities due to heat, collisions etc, but I know that at least one component is 60mph. My point is, its hard to predict what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, its relatively easy to predict what the weather trend is going to be, warming cooling, wetter, drier. Take el-nino for example. We know that when el-nino occurs, it will be a milder winter. We dont know that its going to snow on the 21st of december in buffalo, but we do know that when the winter is over, buffalo should have recieved less snow than normal.
Yawn.... (Score:2, Funny)
Why Frightened? (Score:4, Interesting)
All we're seeing here is our planet's self-correction mechanisms at work. There is likely nothing that we mere humans can do to permanently change the planet. It's design contains a complex system of checks and balances that we might actually be able to understand a fraction of in another 1000 years or so. We argue on the basis of the understanding of a few variables in a system with nearly infinite variables and it laughs at us.
But why fright? I would love a 10 degree drop in St. Louis. Enough to cut the oppressive humid heat out of the summers and get the snow cold enough to stay snow instead of becoming mucky slush in the winter. It would be a refreshing break. And the glaciers of North America need another boost. They've been disappearing in places.
The problem with us is that our cities are now too large and our roots too deep. We build expecting the rivers and coasts to stay where they are, not realizing that where they are is not where they were 50 years ago. Then we try to hold nature back. We confine rivers to courses that bottleneck their flood waters, we build dikes to keep the ocean at bay, we water to keep the deserts at bay... STOP!!! If nature wants to move a river or change a coast, let it! If people have the money to build there, let them! But don't get upset when their homes are swept away. They should know and accept the risk. We need to learn to build with the expectation of change... even welcoming it. Build so that change enhances.
And all you environmentalists out there, stop whining. 150 years ago this nation was so smoggy the buildings had to be scrubbed of soot every year. We were in a little ice age just 200 years ago. Its the cycle of life. You think way more of us then nature does if you think we can actually put any real dent in it. Things will change. And over the long term, they'll get better (my dream is a society with enough clean energy that we can all afford to move to massive underground complexes and restore the surface to be one big park)(oh, that means NO SOLAR PANELS MUCKING UP THE HORIZON TOO). This planet can afford for us to make our mistakes and learn from them.
Re:Why Frightened? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why Frightened? (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree with your broader point that it is foolish to expect to "freeze" nature at a particular point. You're right - life will go on. Bacteria and the cockroaches will probably be just fine.
However, it is downright idiotic to just throw up your hands and let anything go. The future is largely in our hands, and we can determine what kind of environment we will live in. (e.g. Our cities and waterways are less polluted now than 100 years ago because of a profound cultural shift and stringent regulations, not because they just "got better").
You can choose to live in a world without old-growth forest or spotted owls or wild areas, a world with a Sahara desert covering half of Africa and matching deserts on each continent. I'd rather be a little more careful and preserve some of the pretty stuff for my grandkids.
Just ask Venus and Mars whether they "self-corrected" their climate change...
Re:Why Frightened? (Score:2, Interesting)
You're wrong. Our planet can indeed be looked at as a complex living organism built around a stone. In fact, to understand its weather patterns, it MUST be looked at that way. The various bacterias, plankton, algaes, etc. have a tremendous moderating impact. And moderating doesn't always mean "calming" or "smoothing". Sometimes, a moderation involves swinging to an extreme for a while to achieve a balance again.
I too like all of the things you spoke of. I spend two weeks camping in Yellowstone every year that are what keeps me going. But, our cities and waterways are not less polluted because of a cultural shift, they are less polluted because of a technological growth that will continue.
I'm just saying we need a dose of reality. For example, every year they harp on the ozone levels in St. Louis being too high. We have all sorts of special restrictions in place trying to bring them down. But they are just starting to figure out that its not us at all. The forests to our west contain a tree that produces over 80% of our ozone in the summer. And the numbers of that tree are increasing. We can't win... that is unless we start paying people to save the environment by cutting down all of their treees. And what's wrong with not winning? We can always move! That's what they used to do when nature caused problems in one place. Rather than trying to change it, just move to another.
We think we know it all, and really we know next to nothing. No amount of supercomputer power can ever accurately predict our effects on our planet or its effects on us because ever little thing here is a variable that must be taken into account.
The only thing hurt in the long terms by these changes is our control freak egos.
Re:Why Frightened? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why Frightened? (Score:2)
Why would the planet have such a self-correcting mechanism? The earth doesn't care one way or the other whether or not it's hotter or colder. Even most species wouldn't care a whole bunch one way or the other, they'd just migrate.
The problem is, of course, we'd care. Considering how much of a pain in the ass it would be to move NYC 10 miles inland.
There is likely nothing that we mere humans can do to permanently change the planet. It's design contains a complex system of checks and balances
Are you basing this on intuition? This is some shady stuff. I know that some creationists and like-minded people would claim the earth was "designed", but I'm not sure I should take that so seriously. In fact, there is evidence that we can change climate on a global scale. Not incontrovertible evidence, but some evidence nonetheless. I'm not aware of any evidence which suggests we can't. The most you could argue for, scientifically, is that we haven't. Unless, again, you're basing your arguments on intuition.
Again speaking of temperature, from the earth's "point of view", the temperature is irrelevant, so there's no reason to have a correction mechanism. There's no selection pressure on planets that I'm aware of.
When you're ready to talk science and not new-Age mumbo-jumbo, let us know.
better start (Score:2)
Igloos? (Score:2)
Maybe at same time earth's mag field reverses... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nature reported that the magnetic field off the southern tip of Africa has already flipped. Anomalies like these have already reduced the strength of the planet's magnetic field by about 10 percent.
Fallen Angels (Score:2, Interesting)
This story has an interesting echo with Larry Niven's story "Fallen Angels, [baen.com]" available from the Baen Free Library [baen.com]. It's the story of what happens when the anti-scientist green-earthers get their way and ban greenhouse gasses. Ironic that WHOI seems to think greenhouse gasses may cause an ice age.
Igloo 101 (Score:5, Informative)
You need a long saw / chainsaw and it helps to have an ice auger.
Drill a hole in the ice (at least 8" deep) with your auger - this is your starting point.
Use your long saw (they have speciality [fishingmn.com] ice saws for this used by ice fishermen) to cut away from the hole. Make your cuts parallel from each other. Cut longways before crossways. Make your blocks about 8 inches cubed.
Once you have your first row cut, remove the ice with special tongs [kaleden.com] made for the purpose. Do not try to remove these by hand as you'll throw out your back and likely end up in your now open hole in the ice.
Work parallel from your hole towards shore, do not work towards the center of the water, and the ice can thin dramatically and quickly (especially over rivers with strong currents).
As a good safety guide, have someone else with you and a large ladder nearby if available.
Once you have enough ice blocks, you will want to choose a place to put them. As heavy as the ice blocks are, it may be tempting to build the igloo right next to where you removed them. This is a bad idea as the finished igloo will be quite heavy and could easily crash through the ice. Be careful to build this over stable flat terrain.
Arrange your first row of largest ice blocks in a circle. It doesn't need to big. The smaller it is inside, the better it will preserve warmth. Once you have the first row done, pack the crevices with snow. Put snow on top of the first row as a sort of mortar. Remember to put a hole for getting in and out!
Add one layer at a time, adding in a small opening for crawling in and out of. The opening needs to in the form of an arch, and no taller or wider than about 1 1/2 feet at most. Just barely big enough to crawl through is good.
As you build up, you can start to discover that you are bring the ice blocks towards the middle. This is the tricky part to get right. Have one person on the outside, and one in. The snow that you have been using a mortar can help or hinder here, depending on where you got it. Try to find stick snow
Cap the igloo. For your first igloo, this can be pretty tricky. If you have built it tightly, it will lean in on itself and support itself. The top piece needs to be a pressure fit piece. For this, you'll want to start with a bigger piece and cut it down to size.
You can also build an igloo out of snow, the process is much the same, but not all snow can be used for this.
Finally, pack all the crevices with snow. This will help preserve warmth and keep the wind out. All things considered these things are actually pretty comfortable for winter camping.
Remember, your just building a big Roman arch, get help, and you'll be fine. It helps to bring ice fishing gear to go ice fishing when your done:)
Re:Igloo 101 (Score:5, Informative)
You need to have snow which has been hardpacked by the wind. Up on the Bering and Arctic coasts there is plenty of that. If you live where there are trees, you will probably never be able to build one. You just won't get the right sort of snow. This is why the indians never used igloos; they lived inland, below the treeline. If you can shovel your snow, you can't build an igloo.
You cut the blocks from a circular area, making a pit in the snow. If you can't cut your snow with a saw and lift the blocks in one piece, you have the wrong sort of snow. Make the center deeper, so that there are ledges around the sides. Cut the entrance tunnel down low, so that the ledges are above the top of it. That way the tunnel is like a p-trap, which keeps the warm air inside.
I've lived in places where the locals used igloos many years ago (before my time), and I've seen igloos built by the old grandpas, to show the youngsters how it was done. I don't think that there are many people left who have ever built one. They were practical, temporary, travel shelters for folks on the Arctic coast. Someone who knows what he's doing can build a small igloo in an hour or so. Since the snow is fairly light, it can be done by one man.
You know, even the eskimos don't live in igloos .. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I recall correctly, most of the time they live in houses made of dirt and/or driftwood.
(To be fair, all the ekimos I've known lived in houses much like the house I lived in. But then again, I only lived in Anchorage and never really got to know anybody who was living way out in the styx.)
(ObPC: The Eskimos are only one of several types of natives living in Alaska, but they're the ones known for making igloos ...)
Two ways (Score:5, Funny)
The Earth's climate is getting warmer.
The Earth's climate is getting cooler.
Whichever we see, we know it was the fault of CO2, right?
Re:Two ways (Score:3, Funny)
(1) CO2 causes global warming. Suppose that's happening, then-
(2) ice cap melting: Huge amounts of fresh water dump into the oceans. That IS happening- it's been observed. So-
(3) fresh water disrupts the ocean's convection currents, as is being reported here. At which point-
(4) Ice age. At least you get your ice cap back- at least in some places maybe! The energy in the system is still elevated, but now you have a dramatically different climate picture- and that is how you get 'warming' and 'cooling' at the same time. At which point-
(5) "Whoa." The global climate goes completely chaotic, with the oceans no longer in a metastable state, and the energy from the warming producing wild variations in local weather patterns. It may stabilize at some point. It may not. Chaos means you can predict the general range of behavior, more or less, but you can't predict it literally.
(6) Invest in emergency rescue technology for weather catastrophes. Mother Nature is about to kick our ASS, and we've nobody to blame but ourselves- and our bad luck to be doing what we do at the time we're doing it. Things would probably be getting nasty even in Greenpeace-eco-treehugger-world, but that's not the world we live in, and the difference means that things will get UGLY.
Once in a million years, fate conspires against us (Score:5, Funny)
I kid you not, last year NASA published an article claiming that from the years 1976-1984, that side of the planet actually heated the sun, not the other way around.
Our only chance, is to pull as many MicroVaxen as we can out of retirement/storage, and strategically place them throughout the North Atlantic. If we start soon, maybe we can end this ice age before it even begins!
Consider the CPU temperature poll (Score:3, Funny)
Boy who cried wolf? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the news in the headlines about such massively important earth changing risks that is reported in the press I believe we all tend to dismiss any doomsayers. We have become oversaturated by the news that comes almost monthly. I don't know if this is a fault of the media or of people's inability to accept the possibility of danger. In either case, the I believe the observation is true. People just don't care because they don't know what to believe anymore.
So is this the Boy who cried wolf or are have we been warned warned of impending danger? Personally, I just don't know, but the implications are sure as hell worth some serious, multi-national investigation.
It's already freezing ass cold here! (Score:2)
I remember thinking about how I always say in the winter time up here: it's sure not global *warming* us up any here.
All I know is, if the winters here get worse than they already are, I will be heading for the equator.
"the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia"
5 degrees fahrenheit is 15 degrees celcius to us canooks.. and an average temperature drop of 15 degrees celcius will definately have me packing my bags. An Average January temperature of -25 degrees is bad, but you learn to deal with it. (plug the car in!) -40 are particularily bad days (maybe I won't go to work today) but -40 as a new average is a serious concern (to me at least).
I know, I know, the folks up in Tuktayuktuk are saying, "what a candy ass"
My obersvations (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that from 1965-1990 (a period of a general mild warming trend globally, depending on whose graphs you look at), the North Atlantic went through a period of exceptional salinity, especially on the eastern seaboard. The article makes no attempt to comment on this.
What it raises alarms based on are the last 10 years of data, in which the North Atlantic appears to be abnormally fresh. Unfortnately, we have no centuries-long data series for seawater salinity at depth, so what the article really means is "fresher than we've seen in the last 40 years," not "fresh is a manner that is historically significant."
But we've been dumping carbon in the atmosphere all century long. If human activity is to blame for the recent freshness, how can we explain the previous salinity when the human activity in question has more or less continued unchecked throughout the whole time period?
Personally, I think the truth is scarier than any environmental alarmism can paint. Articles like this would have you believe that
The climate is a delicate balance that can change suddenly.
Human activity can cause such changes.
Such a change appears imminent.
Therefore we should stop certain human activities to avoid the disaster.
All fine and good, but the truth is more like
The climate is a delicate balance that can change suddenly.
Human activity can cause such changes.
So can a whole lot of other stuff.
Supercomputers and all, we still have minimal understanding of how the climate actually works.
It's possible that major climatic change could happen within the decade as a result of human activity.
But ceasing that activity might not make a difference.
In fact, for all we know, ceasing that activity might at this point cause a climatic change that otherwise would have been avoided.
Chaotic dynamics can make you want to go run to mommy sometimes.
Now may be such a time.
Hoo boy... (Score:2, Insightful)
In the 1970's we were told that our Evil, Polluting Ways were going to cause another Ice Age. Lots of people who can't (or won't) think for themselves believed it and Earth Day was born.
Then in the 1980's we were told that our Evil Ways were going to incinerate the planet. Lots more people who refuse to think for themselves all of a sudden forgot that the planet was going to freeze and started calling upon our policymakers to take us back to a Stone Age culture to Save the Earth!
So now they're going to frighten all of the Chicken Littles (or is it Little Birdbrained Chickens?) into reversing direction again.
I think the doomsayers are having TOO MUCH FUN with all of this! It's turning into a game of "OK, what really stupid thing can we convince them into believing this time?"
Reminds me of the email virus hoax [teleport.com] I once wrote. Some people will believe anything.
All right ye Global Warmers, consider this (Score:2)
Note how from 1960-1964 to 1970-1974, the waters go from neutral to very salty, then reverse the trend and go to fresh.
I doubt anyone would seriously put forth the idea that mankind is responsible for the initial transition from fresh to salty.
Now I'm not disputing his facts, I'm disputing the conclusion that we are responsible. The climate and data is so variable over time, we *know* this. And yet people are so quick to conclude that all of a sudden, the climate is being influenced by us even though temperatures are well within the "norms" of the last few hundred years.
I use norms in quotes because there's so much variance that it's almost foolish to even use the term.
Global Thermohaline Circulation (Score:5, Informative)
The global thermohaline circulation, better known as the great oceanic conveyor belt, transports warm, salty water from the equitorial pacific ocean to the far North Atlantic via the Agulhas Current (south Africa), North Brazil Current, and the Gulf Stream. In the southern hemisphere, water temperature at the surface is essentially 0 C at 60 S latitude. In the north pacific, the same is true at 60 N latitude. In the north Atlantic, at 60 N latitude, the water temperature west of Greenland is 0, and the water temperature east of Greenland is +10. This warm water is the reason that Norwegian fjords are ice free in winter, despite the fact that they are located far north of the arctic circle. It is also why Labrador, Canada and Iceland have wildly different climates, despite their being near the same latitude.
During the boreal spring through fall, the (relatively) warm, salty water enters the Norwegian, Greenland, and Labrador seas. When winter sets in, winter storms cause the surface waters to cool (through mixing and heat flux into the atmosphere) until the water is of constant density to depths of 1000m or more. Further winter storms cool the surface waters even further, making the surface waters more dense than the deeper waters. Under these conditions, oceanic deep convection occurs. Deep convection is a rare thing--it only occurs in 6 places worldwide. Most of those are in the northern North Atlantic (Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Irminger Sea, Norwegian Sea). One is in the Mediterranean (Gulf of Lyons) and one is in Antarctica (Weddell Sea).
Oceanic deep convection is a fragile thing. There are three conditions that must be met before it can occur: A closed, bounded circulation; weakly stratified or unstratified water to depth; and sudden density change (e.g. rapid cooling at the surface). If any of these conditions is absent, deep convection cannot occur. This is why global warming presents a problem to the conveyor belt--fresher water from melting glaciers, melting multi-year sea ice, and increased rain and snow sits on the surface, but even though it might be strongly cooled, the density will not change enough for this cooled water to sink to depth. If the surface mixed layer is only 50m deep, and the layer below the surface mixed layer is cooler saltier than the surface layer, then even if the surface layer is cooled to the same temperature as the next layer, *it will only sink to that same level*. That is, 50 m. Here, deep convection is not possible.
If the conveyor belt stops, then we have a thermohaline catastrophe. In thermohaline catastrophe, then certainly the climate of western Europe would change dramatically. A lot of models are being run on this. They are trying to couple the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, and are running simulations such that 2x, 4x, and 8x the present level of CO2 is in the atmosphere. Thermohaline catastrophe occurs in a few of them, and doesn't occur in others. In some, the conveyor belt fails for a few years, but then starts up again as the a salinity gradient develops between the tropical oceans (where evaporation is high) and the subpolar oceans.
There is one other weak link in the conveyor belt--the Agulhas current. The Agulhas winds down the east coast of South Africa before leaving the coast, heading south, and then bending back east again. Occasionally the current sheds warm, salty Indian Ocean eddies into the south Atlantic before bending back on itself. These eddies, called Agulhas rings, transport heat and salt from the tropical pacific into the Atlantic basin. A Dutch-South African experiment (MARES) tracked a few of these rings for a while. The Dutch team came to the conclusion that if the Agulhas ring-shedding breaks down, that there is a risk of thermohaline catastrophe.
Here are some websites with a bit more info:
*http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schmit01/
*http://kellia.nioz.nl/mare (MARES experiment)
*http://www.marine.csiro.au/seminars
----yellowcat >- ??
Bring it On.... (Score:3, Insightful)
We must grow economies to survive (Score:4, Interesting)
The point is that we must, as a species, grow our economy and technology globally to be ready to meet whatever climatic changes we encounter (regardless of cause, natural or because of us).
In sub-saharan Africa, nearly 300,000 people will die this year because of famine, partially due to a drought. Depite a major drought in the US this year, no one will die, since the US has an advanced economy that can effectively move food from place to place.
It is also far easier for an advanced economy to handle the sacrifices of environmentalism. The US has been able to do a lot to clean up rivers and ozone/sulphur in the air. But even the West is only slowly nearing the technological capacity to truly deal with CO2 pollution, and the rest of the world will lag.
Economic and technological growth of developing countries are most hindered by their governments. Corruption, dictatorship, red tape, inflation, civil war, trade controls, and price controls are the big killers of economies. Appropriate economic policies are highly linked with economic growth and poverty reduction. Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan were very poor countries during the first half of the 20th Century, but have grown into nearly Westernized countries.
BTW, IMF and World Bank loans are mechanisms for countries to funnel money to corrupt politicians and their friends, as well as provide incentives for countries to run high budget deficits which often leads to inflation. So yes, capitalists should dislike the IMF and WB. They may be a major reason why developing country growth has actually slowed down to near zero over the last two decades.
We can live with this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Provided we're not looking at severe glaciation, just a mini-ice-age like we had a few centuries ago, Europe can probably take it. Most of us live in artificial urban environments anyway, and there's plenty of room to improve our insulation. A colder climate could devastate our agriculture, but Brussels already pays out billions of euros to people just for them _not_ to farm!
And, to be honest, we're fantastically rich by global standards. Look for English and Germans to go buying places in Spain, Italy and north Africa if things start getting a little chilly at home...
stop begging the question! (Score:3, Insightful)
Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon? (Score:4, Funny)
Sheesh, the things that mkae headlines nowadays.
Finally my English degree comes in handy! (Score:4, Interesting)
Calm down, everybody.
If you studied English in college you'd know that there was a "little ice age" in Europe from around the time Elizabeth I came to the throne (think Shakespeare) to about the time that George I came to the throne (think Defoe). (Disclaimer: both "thrones" are that of England -- I'm not that up on the history of other European countries. Sorry)
It wasn't that big of a deal. People lived. Massive migrations didn't happen. Life adjusted -- in fact, you barely hear about it in writings of the period -- the most knowledge we have is from paintings, like this one. [cdc.gov]
Besides, they're getting these conclusions from only 40 years of oceanic data? I'm not even an engineer or scientist and I understand that in massively complex natural systems fluctuations happen.
Re:Not as extreme as headline may imply (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware of what an ice age is? An ice age is characterized by summers that aren't hot enough to melt back the advancing ice sheets that developed over the winter. 1C - 2C changes in temp can affect this to some degree. The thing with long ice ages is that they are measured in geographic time, so even a few feet advancement a year can leave much of North America under ice in several tens of thousands of years.
Re:Not as extreme as headline may imply (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not as extreme as headline may imply (Score:5, Interesting)
Crop plants are very sensitive to climative changes and have particular temperature/rainfall ranges in which they thrive. Make the local weather a little too hot, a little too cold, a little too wet or a little too dry and suddenly your fruit trees fail to produce, your vegetables wilt and your grains fail to pests, if they growq at all. Minor changes in the average temperature greatly effects the success of fungus and insects in damaging crops, allowing them to spread into new regions.
To put this into better perspective, during the peak of the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago, the average temperature in was about 9 to 12F cooler than today. Even an average change half of that would create dramatic changes in natural plant distribution.
During the so called Little Ice Age from 1650-1850, a 3F temperature drop caused serious crop failure in Europe, leading to famine and disease. And that is just a 3F degree average drop.
Animals are also effected my temperature changes. Here on the Pacific NW coast, salmon require stream temperatures to be within a very delicate range in order to spawn. This is why cutting down trees (which shade the streams) causes a decline in salmon runs. That's just one of many examples.
Humans are much more adaptable to climate change than most other plants and animals. But with 6 billion+ mouths to feed, its not quite clear how we'd adapt to a climatic problem of this kind of scale.
As for the ocean conveyor belt, it naturally seems to have some tiny warming and cooling cycles which in turn effect rainfall and storm formation in many parts of the world. For a nice overview, go here: Climate Rides on Ocean Conveyor Belt [enn.com]. Over the past century+ a 20-year cycle of minor warming and cooling has been found in the conveyor belt, and supposedly the conveyor belt should be in a strong cycle right now, based of previous trends. But is it?
If global warming (natural cycles or man-made) causes too much melting of the Greenland glaciers, all of that extra fresh water poses quite a risk to the ocean conveyor belt.
Perhaps what we should be saying about the steady warming that has happened over the past 150 years is "enjoy it while it lasts."
Strategic implications of crop pattern change (Score:4, Insightful)
The politicos seem to 'get' the argument about physical security, but where is the discussion of security of food supply? Living in the UK - as I do - it alarms me to see that the only argument about agricultural subsidy is one based on trade. So before long we could easily be in a position where to feed the population there is total dependency on shipping the staple part of the diet over thousands of miles. What happens if there is a huge oil price shock? Or some similar catastrophe that disrupts the supply and which can't easily be fixed.
Seems to me that there is a fundamental duty of care amongst the elected elite that famine should be guarded *very* carefully against. It's not that long since significant starvation occurred in Europe, but I don't hear voices clamouring to ensure it doesn't again.
And before flaming me about ignoring the poor souls in the rest of the world who are starving already, or telling me it doesn't matter 'cos you live somewhere else, that's not what my post was about
Re:Not as extreme as headline may imply (Score:3, Funny)
Can anyone say "soilent green"?
I also hear insects can be quite tasty..
Re:the US will live up to its responsibility, righ (Score:2, Funny)
Re:the US will live up to its responsibility, righ (Score:2, Interesting)
If you could just go ahead and remember to let us know when that's all done, that would be greeeeeat. Until then, no one cares about your stupid USA-is-to-blame-for-everything nonsense.