Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate 33
Andrevan writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a group of US scientists has finished a journey to the southernmost point of Antarctica. The team traversed 775 miles. They hope to reveal information on global warming and precipitation trends that began at the end of the Ice Age. According to Dr. Paul Mayewski, the expedition's leader, analysis should be finished in the next year or two."
Changing climates.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, the only thing that anyone involved in the science of the whole thing is that global warming will have an effect on the climate. Its anybody's guess, really. I could mean that in the sort term temperatures rise a little allowing snow to fall in places in which it used to be too cold to snow in large quantities resulting in more sun light being reflected back. Who knows? The problem as I see it is not climate change itself. The climate will change with or without our pollution. The problem it seems is our unwillingness to deal with the fact that we will face problems. Again, contingency is seen as a waste, and disaster is seen as the failure of those who were supposed to have the contingency that was so wasteful. Shit happens. Seas rise, lakes dry up, rocks fall from the sky and stars explode
Terminology (Score:4, Funny)
Gee, I wonder why we don't have a special name for that point. Maybe, I dunno, South Spot? Southern Point? Bit at the Bottom? Nah, it's never catch on...
Re:Terminology (Score:2, Funny)
Is this not called the South Pole??
Re:Terminology (Score:2)
Re:Terminology (Score:1)
To be more specific, it looks like some yellow snow... Those crazy scientists couldn't resist!
Re:Terminology (Score:2, Informative)
With geometry, "south" is be the direction along axis of rotation, -- so the southernmost point could be the point furthest from the equator -- which might be a mountain top some distance from the "South Pole". [Imagine a plane at right angles to the South Pole -- anything piercing that is further "south", perhaps including the heads of visitors standing near the Pole.]
Re:Terminology (Score:1)
Maybe he was trying to distinguish it from the magnetic south pole, which I think is what "South Pole" means. Probably very ambiguous in usage.
CBC (Score:3, Informative)
Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.
Doh ! (Score:1)
Guess they were unlucky.... else we could have unlimited energy !! (and also maybe a war, who knows)
(hint: french book from Rene Barjavel, 'La nuit des temps' / rough translation 'the dawn of times')
Re:Doh ! (Score:3, Funny)
What do you think is UNDER the glaciers!! (Score:2)
Christian Science? (Score:1, Funny)
My poor attempt at humor (Score:1)
It's cold. Next!
Hooray for scientific method (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hooray for scientific method (Score:2, Insightful)
This project looks at the climate record across a large strech of Antarctica to see is greater detail what really happened. There's no political adgenda with that, but you sound like you have one.
It bugs me that every time someone tries to studies climate change they get called a tree hugger. Global warming is a proven fact. We need to study it more to find out why it is happening and what it will do. It's good for tree huggers as well as chemical plants to know what's comming next!
Re:Hooray for scientific method (Score:1)
Call it "Global Climate" and study the history of global weather patterns over millions of years, then you're less likely to be considered as practicing ecological nostalgia.
Re:Hooray for scientific method (Score:3, Insightful)
Separately from that, you also need to try to falsify your hypothesis - look for evidence that contradicts it. To a large extent, this is often left to the peer-review process, since those involved in finding evidence for a hypothesis may not in fact be the best people to falsify it - which is the point you were picking up on.
However, that's normal - scientists are human, too. I don't know if you develop software, but it's similar to the situation with software developers - you write some code, which you can think of as the embodiment of a hypothesis about how to solve some set of problems. You try to test it as best you can, but other testers or users are still likely to find bugs that you missed - in other words, your "hypothesis" (the software) was wrong in some respect.
One reason this happens is that during development, you tend to try harder to provide input that will make the software work, than make it fail. Only once it's working reasonably well, does it make sense to try to make it fail - before that, it's too fragile. A similar process often occurs in science - theories don't always spring fully-formed from a scientist's mind.
Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:2)
An example, he uses the Island of Tuvula as an example. He shows some raw data, but ignores an inconveint analysis of it (which can be found here [utas.edu.au]) which finds that the sea levels around Tuvula are rising (abit with a large uncertainity in the data) at a rate which is line with the IPCC estimates.
Having read a lot of John Daly's evidence I think global warming falls into the same category, trendy pseudo-science.
Whereas I (having read some of John Daly's "evidence", plus a whole lot more peer reviewed scientific articles of global warming) think that global warming is a well respected scientific theory who's critics have lost the science battle along time ago, and have hence shifted the debate into a propaganda war.
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:1)
As regards the very real propaganda war I think the Global Warmers have the edge here. There is hardly a day goes by when the TV News is not forecasting doom and overheating. And then the Weather Forecast comes on to announce that much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the grip of one of the most severe freeze-ups for 50 years. It's all very confusing.
The trouble is that it's a very difficult topic and we know precious little about many of the factors such as long (and short) term solar cycles which will influence our climate to a great extent. However, there is a well respected scientific fact (not theory), which is the past cycle of long ice ages and short warm periods. We've a few thousand years to run in our little warm period yet and then we really will have a climate change to worry about.
Anyway for our amusement, here's a bit more well respected science from 1975. http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm [globalclimate.org]
The lesson to be learnt is that it's dangerous to make long term forecasts from short term observations.
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:2)
Your link to global cooling in 1975 is also illustrative of the propaganda of the climate skeptics. While many people thought that a cooling period could result in the 70's, their wasn't a single scientific paper published in the 70's on a global ice age (at least not in the sense used in this article). On the other hand there are thousands of scientific papers on global warming. This massive difference is ignored by climate skeptics who try and equate the two.
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:2, Insightful)
Global warming is undeniably real. What's a matter of debate is whether humanity contributes significantly to it, or if it's just part of the normal cycle.
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:3)
There's not a whole lot of doubt that global warming has been taking place. The only real points in dispute are what the major causes are, whether one of the causes is human behavior, and whether the trend will continue upward. If human behavior is a major factor, then the answer is that the trend will continue upwards unless we do something.
As for your comparison to theories about population, the scare from the '60s was not based on the same degree of scientific study. In fact, it was a popular scare, much more than a scientific scare, based on popular books like Erlich's "The Population Bomb". The scientific aspect of that scare was actually tailing off, having first been raised around 1800 by Malthus.
In fact, Malthus' predictions were not completely wrong - the rate at which the human population of Earth is doubling is increasing, from about 120 years for the doubling from 1 billion to 2 billion, down to 47 years for the doublings to 4 billion. Do the math - unless population growth slows a lot, we will run into serious population problems, just not in our lifetimes.
The global warming situation is already having an effect, in our lifetime. Average global temperature increases have been measured and aren't disputed - only the causes are disputed. There's a big pool of water at the North Pole, where explorers once planted flags. There are huge and ancient ice shelfs melting and falling into the sea around Antarctica. The permafrost in Canada and Alaska is melting and affecting the few people who live there.
Sticking your head in the sand and believing what you want to believe, won't make this problem go away. So rather than spreading misinformation, like that found at the site you referenced, I recommend trying to educate yourself a bit more. No-one benefits from ignorance and the spread thereof.
Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate (Score:1)
Ugh! A name from the past.. (Score:2)
Hmmm. Way back in my BBS days I used to argue CO2 / Greenhouse Effect stuff with John. I was initially impressed with his knowledge and thought he made a good case.
However, problems arose when I started reading his book "The Greenhouse Trap" ... I noticed that he got the Stefan-Boltzman Constant (k) mixed up with Stefan's Constant (sigma) when I told him this it took me a few emails to convince him he was wrong ... and then he said well it didn't matter because he was using a ratio so the constant would cancel out (true). But I wasn't impressed with a) his lack of knowledge on something so fundamental, and b) the fact that he could not admit a mistake was made.
Then I noticed a few other things ... he argued strongly to the person in many cases where he didn't agree with someone's ideas ... any argument against his thesis by "experts" he took personally, and also would rant about scientists being corrupted by the greenies. In my opinion some of his statements were very close to libel.
Another thing about his book, in one part he argues that since there is CO2 in the air then adding any more should have no additional effect ... he seemed to not understand that opacity can be between 0 and 100%.
John used to be a greenie but was very bitter about the experience and blamed them for many woes. He told me he once had a self sufficient farm in Wales before me moved to Australia. He's a smart guy but I think he carries personal grudges into his public statements. Pity.
I finally stopped arguing with him because it got me nowhere. He has access to a lot of data and reports but he is very selective in what he references. To me the final bit of evidence that was unequivocal and "proved" global warming were the borehole temperature measurements into permafrost. John's answer was that: there is no global warming and if there is then it is due to a natural cycle. That's not exactly what he said but in more longwinded form it is the gist of his view. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the logical flaw there :)
So yeah he has some interesting things to say, but remember he is VERY selective. Read more widely.
Doh! (Score:2)
Damn! Shows what happens when you don't do any physics for a decade (though I remember the actual physics but not the names). Ok. Ok. 'k' is of course Boltzman's Constant from thermodynames , and sigma is the Stefan-Boltzman constant (or sometimes referred to as Stefan's Constant I think) from EM theory as in energy_density = sigma*T^4 etc etc
southernmost tip ??? (Score:1)