Super Pathway Discovered In Southern Ocean 167
WaltonNews writes in to let us know that a major underwater current called the Tasman Outflow has been discovered by Australian scientists. It helps to regulate the Earth's climate by providing water flow between three oceans in the southern hemisphere. Relatedly, a senior climate scientist has called for the establishment of a Southern Hemisphere network of deep ocean moorings, to complement the network already established in the North Atlantic. The intent is to detect any change in ocean circulation that may adversely influence global climate.
Dude! (Score:5, Funny)
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I was wondering how long into the thread a Finding Nemo reference would be made.
I call bullshit! (Score:4, Funny)
There are no natural processes which affect climate. We all know what affects climate, is our use of incandescent light bulbs!
If only we'd all switch to mercury filled compact flouros, we'd reduce this nations energy consumption by almost 0.005%! Not only that, we'd increase the amount of mercury in our groundwater by over 200%! Mercury is good for you and helps build strong bones and teeth.
Also, we should junk our existing cars and build and purchase new ones which are marginally more efficient.
WHEN WILL WE LEARN?! THE ONLY SOLUTION TO CLIMATE PROBLEMS IS TO SPEND SPEND SPEND SPEND ON COMPANIES AL GORE HAS STOCK IN.
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Mod me down baby, waste away those mod points...
mod styles (Score:2, Insightful)
If it were me, I'd be torn between modding down as "troll" and up as "funny". But then I have a sick sense of humor.
Does a polar bear pee in the woods (Score:2)
You don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I doubt the problem with global climate change is the change in itself. The earth has been experiencing changes in the climate since before recorded history. It is the cause and effect (of what the problem is supposed to be) that is being told to us by some that brings skepticisms.
Maybe the point of his rantings were to show how silly the debate has been so far. Here we have some people who are so certai
Re:I call bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
seems like you're better off keeping a moderately efficient car for as long as you can (maybe 10 years?) instead of dumping it before its time is up to get a hybrid. not just environmentally but financially. not having to make $300/mo payments seems like you could afford a little extra gasoline.
CFL are great, but without a wide spread recycling program it is just going to cause poison to be released into the environment. Causing severe problems to sensitive species, including ourselves. If Al Gore is so smart why did he not propose a federal mandatory disposal/recycling program for CFLs and hybrid's lead batteries?
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seems like you're better off keeping a moderately efficient car for as long as you can (maybe 10 years?) instead of dumping it before its time is up to get a hybrid. not just environmentally but financially. not having to make $300/mo payments seems like you could afford a little extra gasoline.
If all you're concerned about is your personal welfare, then I'd have to say ... it depends. Only an idiot would "dump" a working automobile. Clearly, you'd sell it, thus recouping some fraction of its value. And then you'd pay cash for the hybrid, you're unlikely to get a new car loan on a hybrid for less than 7%. I find that the best way to decide is to calculate the cost (to you) per mile. Depending on what you're driving today, how far you're driving, how fast you're driving, etc., a hybrid may or
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1. someone who didn't have a car before, has a car now. which means we have a hybrid + the old car on the road spewing out pollution, carbon, e
Pumping carbon out of the ground to feed cows (Score:2)
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cows exhale far more CO2 than they do methane. CO2 is used by plants during photosynthesis.
I don't think adding a 10x overhead by using animals for food instead of consuming the vegetation directly matters in terms of carbon output and global warming. As long as you aren't cutting down forests or pumping oil from the ground, it appears to be zero sum.
You're probably right (Score:2)
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ps - I'm not sure if everyone becoming vegetarian would have a real impact on carbon footprint. not like you have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows.
You don't have to pump carbon out of the ground to feed your cows, but that's more or less how it's done on a large scale in the US. The corn & soybeans that most cows are mostly fed are produced with large scale use of hydrocarbons. And, one could pasture a cow on land that wouldn't support the cultivation of human foodstuffs. But again, that's not how it's typically done. Eating meat is by definition a lot less efficient than eating beans & grains. Most cows are fed beans & grains, and i
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This is like the emtpy bus thing. An empty bus might get 11 mile per gallon and a fully loaded bus might get 10 miles per gallon. In your car, you get 40 miles per gallon. Now your car it more efficient over say a 100 mile trip with one passenger. you would u
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What about the "I'm an idiot who bought a car with a nickel metal-hydride battery which when refined produces shitloads of sulfer dioxide. But that's okay since carbon isn't present which makes everything fucking hunky-dory." crowd?
You must be referring to the (totally spurious) article comparing the Prius with the Hummer, where the Hummer comes out as more environmentally friendly. Perhaps some further research [thecarconnection.com] is warranted?
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* walk to work
* bicycle to work (I ride 7 miles a day for my commute)
* ride in high occupancy vehicle (train, bus, gondola, vacuum tubes)
* mix business and residential zones so you can walk to do every day things.
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I want to have my cake and eat it too.
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Particulate matter (Score:2)
I hope that was meant to be a parody (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists (i.e., real skeptics) know that NASA just had to revise the warmest year in the US on record to 1934 instead of 1998 because of a software bug that had nothing to do with Y2K errors, although it did occur in 2000. Scientists also know that 1934 was already a very close second (in the US), and happened during the US dust bowl. Scientists know the difference between l
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Who are you calling scientists? (Score:2)
Who are you calling scientists - people who merely claim to be a scientist (like the Oregon Petition), or people doing active research in the field? I do not know of a single climate scientist who disagrees completely, and only a very few who remain unconvinced (e.g., possibly Lindzen and Michaels).
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I'm not this cynical yet... (Score:2)
But close [xkcd.com]. I'd point you to an article from today's front page [slashdot.org], but that'd definitely be disingenuous because I'd be the first to point out that no single day or even season can be definitively linked to global warming. It's kind of like parenting in that way. A certain style of parenting tends to lead to ill-behaved kids, whereas another style tends to lead to well-behaved kids. However, the best parents can have an ill-behaved kid, and the worst parents can have a well-behaved kid. No single kid reflects
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I'm in Wisconsin. Should the ice caps melt and the oceans rise, we will not be in trouble. I could care less if LA and San Diego and New York City turn into places like Venice. From a population cont
Leaving the expected ranges... (Score:2)
As for temperature cycles, I'd say you're right. However, all models (and current temperature trends) suggest that we will in our lifetime. (This depends on how you're defining "expected range". I'm keeping it in the range of human civilization.)
Actually, the Ar
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Did I say 2040? (Score:2)
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http://www.met.tamu.edu/climatechange.php [tamu.edu]
More examples here
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus. htm [logicalscience.com]
The number of remotely qualified scientists who disagree that humans are responsible for a majority of recently observed warming is really, honestly, negligible.
Some things wrong. (Score:2)
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And we start another global climate change thread. (Score:1, Troll)
Adapt or die! That is the solution!
Profit by investing in the A/C and flood control industries!
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This was rated insightful?? Why?
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Someone who's more stupid than most had mod points.
IT'S SETTLED SCIENCE (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit, it's hot out today! WE'RE DOOMED!!!!
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You know, lots of people are posting variations on this as if it were some kind of clever skewering of the Al Gore and others advocating policy change to address global warming, but all it really does is demonstrate that the people posting this
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Be that as it may, it seems to me that we keep
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It's all too easy to just ignore the possibility that we might be screwing up the planet so we can happily go on and do whatever the hell we want.
Sure, it being a hot day today might have absolutelty nothing to do with what we have done
Tasmanian Outflow vs. North Atlantic Current (Score:2)
Re:Tasmanian Outflow vs. North Atlantic Current (Score:4, Funny)
Sequel time (Score:3, Funny)
Bad bad reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did you come up with this? (Score:2)
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Anyway, I don't really see what the OP's objection is. Literally he's right, but presumably they're not advocating putting in all these sensors so that we can find out about fantastic new developments that much sooner.
Meanwhile, the warming skeptics sure seem to have lots of money to spend on AdWords! I wonder if the proprietors of CoyoteBlog and the Heartland Institute are spending their own money or someone else's...?
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That is pretty normal (Score:5, Informative)
Pay attention to what the real scientist are saying directly. Get past what fox news and oil companies have to say. Listen to the top ones (such as Dr. Hansen who is one of thousands ) and even ones like Dr Grey ( from Colo State, who is one of the very few accredited skeptics). It is a good thing to pay attention to both sides, just skip the garbage.
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Good [realclimate.org] advice [www.ipcc.ch]
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Bad Marketing (Score:2)
The reporting in the two articles looks pretty good. For that matter it even looks like the science behind the reports is pretty good.
Reading the press releases at CSIRO [csiro.au], it looks like the marketers for the organization are trying to establishes a connection to global warming politics (probably in an effort to get funding). The article I linked to says:
I am going to walk out on a limb here and reject the premise
Three words ... (Score:3, Informative)
learn a lot from "former" members of the IPCC.
Energy source (Score:5, Interesting)
These flows are far more steady and reliable than the wind. And no pollution. A great source of energy.
Re:Energy source (Score:5, Interesting)
They're trying to do this in the East River in New York. Unsuccessfully so far...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/nyregion/13power .html [nytimes.com]
Re:Energy source - MOD PARENT INTERESTING (Score:2)
Interesting article, though they are using tidal currents and not oceanic currents that are normally induced by thermal convections. Nonetheless, the mechanism for harnessing energy is largely the same.
Wonder if any article similar to this was ever submitted to Slashdot?
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Bugs are to be expected in the beginning. Saying that they are unsuccessful just because they have bugs is like saying that a programmer is unsuccessful because he's debugging his program.
Of course there could be other problems not mentioned in the article. But from the information in the article I'd say their
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I stand by my "unsuccessful" claim. Yes, it looks quite promising even in early stages, but it hasn't really done anything yet. As far as I can tell, every time they try putting the turbine in the river, it breaks. If you installed a program and it crashed every few minutes, would you call it successful?
I commend them for their progress and continuing efforts to get this working. I'll call it successful when it's down there and generating electricity for a significant amount of time.
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If you installed a program and it crashed every few minutes, would you call it successful?
No, if it was marketed as finished, and yet crashed every few minutes, I would indeed call it unsuccessfull. But if I'm writing a program, and it crashes every few minutes while I'm writing it, I'd call it unfinished. Whether it's successful or not is at that stage not defined by whether it crashes or not.
I suppose we have different impressions about what stage of development they are in. I do see your point, and you could be right, but I'm not convinced, not with the information I've seen so far.
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"But the good thing is that there's more power in the East River than we thought."
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A wind farm has far, far more effect on the wind, and to have an important effect on the wind you'd need a fantastically large wind farm.
I'm quite convinced that we can tap huge quantities of energy from deep water currents without having any measurable effect at all on the currents.
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Don't for a second dismiss out of hand the effect we might have on the
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I don't want to imply that we should be careless, and just blindly deploy new technology without considering the consequences. But with your reasoning we couldn't do anything at all. Almost anything you can think of will have far more effect than turbines in deep ocean currents. Note tha
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You're taking the statements I made and slamming them over to the extreme and stating that we should never do anything that takes power from one form and converts it into a form we can use for our needs. To quote myself, let me explain:
See, I'm all for cars. They're a useful piece of technology. However, when the gasoline engine was invented and put to use, whatever consequences
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If some/most of it isn't left in place, the ecosystem we've come to love and enjoy might just collapse around us.
I'm not proposing that we sap such inconceivably fantastic amounts that only "some/most of it" is left. That would certainly be catastrophic. Not just "might", it would be catastrophic. But I'm not advocating any such unbridled excess.
Moderation and care will be necessary in any case, regardless what solutions we use. No solution is sustainable if taken to horrific excess.
My point is that taking out just the tiniest fraction of the energy would be quite enough to give us quite fantastic amounts of energy.
Actually, it may be a good way to counter (Score:2)
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I think you just hit on the solution to global warming. Counteract it by triggering cooling down here in the oceans AND generating an alternative energy source at the same time. We can even sell more high-margin SUVs to fund it, since we can counteract greenhouse heating with oceanic cooling, and tax those sales in the process to fund any environmental program of choice.
More realistically, wind turbines don't sto
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But that would change the climate (Score:3, Informative)
The efforts you suggest would change the climate. The climate change debate says that we need to stop change. It does not say that we need to work on technologies to make our lives better. If a place was covered with a glacier in 1976, then it needs to be covered with a glacier in 2076. If a place was covered with a barren desert in 1976, it needs to be covered with a desert in 217
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Well, I suppose if you like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. But then again, we haven't identified all of the causes and their extents a this point, so perhaps the best we can do is largely treat problems symptomatically for now.
While no doubt what you suggest as "conservation corps" project would certainly do good in Africa, its effect on climate change would probably be relative to pissing in Lake Superior to raise the water temperature.
Oh, yeah. What is the energy source for these desal
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Ted Stevens had this comment... (Score:3, Funny)
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Besides, "Taz" as he is now called, has become far too civilized and just another generic cartoon character.
"How come you bury me in the cold, cold ground"
Settled? (Score:2)
Arrange this next to the
Prior Art (Score:2, Funny)
We Need to Know... (Score:2)
Climate change can have huge effects on agriculture, standards of living, and even whether people can live in a certain location, but we all know that real reason is to make sure that the blame is laid on President Bush as soon as any change, however minute, is detected. If it gets warmer, it's Global Warming. If it gets cooler, it's Global Warming. If it stays the same, it's Global Warming.
In the Name of
Wow, was this in the model (Score:2)
Lucky for us we haven't committed any funds to the global warming cleanup fund yet.
Re:limited knowledge - amen (Score:2)
So much of what we think we know is wrong. It's amazing to see the new discoveries.
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We knew deep ocean currents existed, the article really just points out that we have firmer evidence of there being a common flow between all of the southern oceans. The existence of the deep Atlantic currents we knew about was pretty good evidence this one likely existed, we just hadn't found it.
As far as climate goes, the deep return currents (much like this one) are very slow. Much slower than say the Gulf Stream in the north Atlantic. The time scale for these large flows to change is in the hundreds
Re:Adverse changes? (Score:5, Informative)
Hey guys, it is mid-August in what was supposed to be a record hurricane season. No storms yet.
Apparently you do not live in Texas, where Hurricane Dean (the fourth named storm of the season) is about to hit. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good story.
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*marks amightywind as foe*
Foes don't even show up when I read comments or replies. I don't need input from the likes of you. You hope someone gets flooded out because he contradicts you?
I wish you a long and enjoyable life. I also hope you get a clue.
Anger management therapy might help (Score:2)
Re:Adverse changes? (Score:5, Funny)
Haven't you heard? All change is adverse. Change that hurts humans is bad because it hurts the oppressed, and change that helps humans is bad because it helps the oppressors. Welcome to the 21st century, it's stranger than fiction.
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How would they discriminate between adverse and beneficial changes?
A shutdown of global ocean currents, as was the state (IIRC) roughly 10,000-14,000 years ago, will screw the world as we know it hard. Such a shutdown is believed to be a likely effect of a global increase in temperatures. The mechanism is roughly: temperatures rise causing ice packs to melt. This in turn desalinates the ocean. Lower salinity shuts down the deep ocean "salt pumps" which are the major force driving the currents [lighthouse...dation.org]. Once the currents shut down, they no longer act as powerful climate modera
No Baseline (Score:2)
Your post sounds like a mismatch of peer reviewed articles. Modern agriculture started when the ocean currents formed? A shutdown of global ocean currents 10-14K years ago?
I hope the view is pretty at the top of you house of cards.
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How would a higher equatorial/polar temperature differential cause a "shutdown" of the ocean current system. The currents are thermally forced. Shouldn't they increase in strength? Use your head.
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All climate scientist are greedy liars? Cause that would have to be the case.
Maybe you should try to understand what effects hurricanes before spouting crap out your ass.
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Liar.
Nobody (reputable) claimed this would be a record hurricane season. The NHC and Klotzbach & Gray forecasts said it would be above normal. June and July are historically fairly inactive. But it's August now, and we're already up to five total named storms, with one skirting Category 5 strength right now.
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