Climate Change Driving War? 178
New submitter Stirling Newberry writes "You may have heard of The Great Moderation (PDF), which argues that business cycles have become less volatile over time, and the Green Revolution, a set of initiatives that led to increased global food production. These, it has been argued, have led to a marked decrease in war across the world. But not so fast, says a study in Science. It may well be that periods of war, past and present, can be linked to changes in climate: 'The most direct way in which extreme climate shifts influence human society is through agriculture, Zhang says; a falling supply of crops will drive up the price of gold and cause inflation. Similarly, epidemics can be exacerbated by famine. And when people are miserable, they are likely to become angry with their governments and each other, resulting in war. But golden ages rise out of these dark periods, the team argues. For instance, a 100-year cold period beginning in 1560 caused shortened crop growing seasons. The researchers found a causal linkage with a decline in average human height by nearly an inch during this period, and the century was rife with disease and conflict. But the world began to warm in 1650; when Charles II was crowned king of England in 1660, the coronation sparked the Enlightenment era in Europe.'"
bring back the kings (Score:2)
-I'm just sayin'
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at least they were doing God's will and the Enlightenment was such a cool time -I'm just sayin'
The cool thing about the Enlightenment was that it prepared the way for the abolition of both God and Kings.
Random... (Score:2)
Re:Random... (Score:4, Insightful)
It gives you a sudden urge to play broken games?
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It gives you a sudden urge to play broken games?
You have to admit, it's a pretty good analogy for the current political system.
There is no relevance in between Charles II (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment [wikipedia.org]
second, precursors of age of enlightenment that are recounted in the above article were already there, starting with early pioneers like erasmus, and going into spinoza, long before charles ii and 1660.
please dont make up ahistoric shit to back up loose arguments.
Re:There is no relevance in between Charles II (Score:5, Interesting)
In terms of climate and history, for a long time there have been observations of linkage between historical periods and climatic events, one of the most famous of these is the period of reduced growing periods known as the "Little Ice Age" and the destabilization of the medieval order on Eurasia. Another more specific one is the relationship between the volcanic eruptions of the 1770's and 1780's and cold snaps that led to poor harvests as a contributing factor to the fall of the ancien regime. Franklin speculated at the time that the eruptions were leading to cold, and Talleyrand famously quipped that "we are all dancing on a volcano," in reference to the problems of the ancien regime in France and poor harvests which were driving inflation in food and social instability.
However, until recently there were not good paleo-climate reconstructions. Paleo-climatology is a fundamentally computational discipline – it is computers and algorythms by which chronologies are constructed and pieced together: from dendrology, that is trees, ice cores, and other "proxies" for climate. The survey linked to is one of the first, but by no means the last. This is important because much of history has been outside of a real test of theories as to why what happened. As computational climatology matures, it provides a challenge to the dominant view in history, economics, and sociology, that internal factors drive history and events, and a way to apply scientific measurements. Since chronology, and dates, are often "floating" – that is, we don't really know what certain dates in the past were, only our best guesses, it means that instead of arguments over texts, we are getting measurements, and ultimately facts, to determine when events occured. If you see a date before about 1300 BC in a history text, assume it is approximate, simply because our understanding of what dates were is based on reconstructions. That is best guesses.
One of the most important examples of how this matters is in the coming of what is now called the "Neo-lithic Revolution." For a long time it was seen as an internally driven event, however, recent discoveries show that "The Younger Dryas" coincided with the explosion of domestication of plants and animals, but also how many of the first domestication events: figs, rye, dogs, and perhaps goats, were not in the present warm and stable climate era, but in the colder but relatively stable Younger Dryas period. Perhaps, and one has to say perhaps, what later became agriculture started not because it was a good deal, but because times were harder, but more consistent, and the peoples around the world started domestication because it was a cushion when hunting and gathering were not e
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Your heading/statement, I agree with.
Sorry, I'm not going to get all academic here, and start searching for references - but I can't see that any royalty ever had much to do with "enlightenment". Royalty was always conservative in the true sense of the word, rather than the common political sense that we see today. Royalty didn't voluntarily decide that it would be nice to free the serfs. Instead, the serfs held royalty at sword point, and demanded freedom.
Ehh. Enlightenment. Whatever.
However, I do bel
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Carbon Credit Schemes Are (Score:3, Interesting)
NY Times [nytimes.com]:
If not war, at least oppression.
Re:Carbon Credit Schemes Are (Score:5, Interesting)
We Agree! (Score:2)
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Spare me the rhetorical propaganda why don't you, Implicit support of fascist dictators?!? when many of them have been put in power by the West and receive military aid? It also just warms the cockles of my hart when some well off Libyan associate parrots stuff most likely learned in a western university, will make a good public official worth bribing to get the ever important permanent temporary troops installed.
I think the idea that DDT in constant use would have worked indefinitely against malaria is a f
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Implicit support of fascist dictators by giving them military aid, as compared to implicit support of them on the Left by being against their forced removal. Such hypocrisy from you.
Okay, I guess military aid to dictators is good use of your tax dollars. Most people on the Left are more interested in stopping genocides etc. and not so much running up the costs of the military industrial complex rackets.
And as for DDT, what are you arguing here? "there's no point in using anti-biotics because microbes evolve to tolerate them"? Is that your idea of a useful debating point?
You throw a number for death toll, I respond. I'm against blanket use of anti-biotics for sure, it's counterproductive exactly because it creates resistant strains of bacteria. That's what's happened to DDT with it's prolific use in agriculture because that's where the money and the prob
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Climate Wars (Score:2)
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I think the idea that climate changes in general, and food issues specifically, will lead to war is pretty well accepted. Almost every war ever was started over natural resources (WW 1 being a fairly large exception), and quite a few were started over food resources (part of Hitler's goal in WW2 was to get access to more arable land in Eastern Europe).
What I do find a bit surprising is that strong correlation between variables is deemed a causal link. It's not. A causal link is a mechanism that ties two eve
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I think the idea that climate changes in general, and food issues specifically, will lead to war is pretty well accepted.
When I see people talking about climate and its relationship with incidents such as the rise and fall of civilizations or wars specifically, I somewhat agree. However, I believe it is more complicated than this. My problem with such ideas is that they seem to minimize such things as the role of culture in the prosperity of a society. As an analogue, consider the debate about the role of "nature versus nurture" in the lives of children growing to adults. In the past it was argued that parenting was the m
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Whether or not war actually occurs, there is insufficient evidence that man they are man-made. It is hubris to think that man has such great impact on the world, that he can unleash war and destruction around the world.
There are many possible explanations for war that we tend to overlook. Volcanoes, sun activity, and natural cycles. We just don't have enough historical evidence to support they are man made.
Besides, even if we accept the questionable hypothesis that war is man-made, do we know for sure th
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Almost every war ever was started over natural resources (WW 1 being a fairly large exception), and quite a few were started over food resources (part of Hitler's goal in WW2 was to get access to more arable land in Eastern Europe).
Actually, no war has ever been started over access to food resources, although I agree that is the claim that people--including Hitler--frequently use to justify war.
No individual of any species anywhere ever kills another member of the same species over food resource competition, because it never under any circumstances makes evolutionary sense to do so. There are two reasons for this: the first is that when facing a shortage of food resources the optimal use of scare capability is to do things that will
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Since you are bringing up monkey research, there's quite a body of work in the area of studying chimps (yes, yes, great Apes vs monkeys) and how they will actually wage war against other troops. The fight there is not over mates, but over territory, which is heavily tied to food.
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I'd disagree that WWI was an exception: one of the big causes of the war was tension between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire over control of the Balkans (and the resources therein).
Re:Climate Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, both the US military and the US intelligence community have, in official reports, identified climate change as one of the biggest threats to national security that the US will have to deal with this century.
What is going to be bad, IMO, is that the shift in temperature zones is gong to turn some of the agricultural "haves" into "have nots", and vice versa. Some people are going to fight that change - with guns.
On a side note, the latest Scientific American has an article about the discovery of large deposits of rare elements in Afghanistan. My first thought was, "Oh, boy! That's really going to help stop all the fighting."
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FWIW, both the US military and the US intelligence community have, in official reports, identified climate change as one of the biggest threats to national security that the US will have to deal with this century.
Perhaps you should look at the timing [npr.org] of the reports in question. As I recall, the US now has a government which both takes AGW seriously and can compel the military to take it seriously as well. In a couple of years, we might have a new administration which doesn't take these issues as seriously. That's the problem with using official interest as an indication of the truth of an assertion.
In the story I linked above, notice that they talk about worst case scenarios, not just stuff that we think we know
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The Washington post gives some recent examples where spikes in global food prices, driven mainly by recent droughts and floods, are leading to violence: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2011/01/spike_in_global_food_prices_tr.html [washingtonpost.com]
The state of emergency in Tunisia has economists worried that we may be seeing the beginnings of a second wave of global food riots. Battered by bad weather and increasing demand from the developing world, the global food supply system is buckling under the strain
Yes, of course (Score:3)
As the Earth heats, we can expect to find less arable land. At the same time we're running out of fossil fuels which are required for the haber process to fix nitrogen for fertilizer. With nearly 7 billion people on the planet, something is going to give. There's going to be a great deal of conflict over the few resources we haven't squandered yet.
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You don't need fossil fuels to make ammonia, you can just get some hydrogen out of some water.
Methane is a cheap convenient source for hydrogen, so it is a popular feedstock.
So the problem is still just energy, fossil fuels aren't particularly crucial.
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Care to explain this one? More heat = more precipitation, longer growing seasons, and the ability to grow crops at higher latitudes. That should mean more arable land, right?
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Ask the farmers in the Midwest how all that precipitation last winter/spring helped their crop yields this year.
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Maybe they can start growing rice or some kind of seaweed, or put up a chicken-wire fence and call it a fish farm!
Re:Yes, of course (Score:4, Informative)
Even if the reservoirs had been empty there would have still been flooding. It may not have been quite as bad but it would have happened.
Regarding crop yields:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-farming-floods-arkansas-idUSTRE77T02P20110830 [reuters.com]
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0511/Mississippi-flooding-drowns-crops-and-casinos-What-s-the-economic-toll [csmonitor.com]
http://www.estormwater.com/Flooding-on-the-Farm-article9528 [estormwater.com]
It may not have been as bad as first feared but lots of farmers took it in the shorts this year because of the flooding.
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How cute, linking to a 2008 (ethanol) crop report in a discussion about the flooding [infrastructureusa.org] and/or drought [unl.edu] in 2011.
$2 billion in cattle lost, $2 billion in cotton lost, $1 billion in corn/wheat/others lost, with the wheat production estimated to be 35% of normal while prices are 139% normal. [tamu.edu] And that's just Texas, and only "so far this year" (it's expected to stay drier than normal until next year, with La Nina in effect this winter [noaa.gov]). .
NASS's nationwide crop estimate report for September [cornell.edu] (summary of the executive
Oh? (Score:4, Interesting)
As the Earth heats, we can expect to find less arable land.
That's news to Africans seeing the desert go green around them [nationalgeographic.com] as it becomes more moist, not less.
Throughout Earth's history, hot = wet, most of the time.
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Denialists parading around anecdotes as if they were the norm? No, that's not news.
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Same info from a less laughable, one-sided source:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-co2-atmosphere.html [physorg.com]
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Actually, as the earth heats, we can expect to find more arable land. Global average temperature rise has been driven by higher lows, not lower highs (that is, the difference between the low temperature and high temperature has begun to shrink, with the lows coming up, driving up the overall average). At the most extreme scenario, if the earth became much like the Late Eocene, Antarctica would become a veritable temperate paradise viable for much more biodiversity, and the tropics (with all the plant grow
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Actually, as the earth heats, we can expect to find more arable land.
Yup. Great news for those parts of Canada that are currently uninhabited. Bad for the USA and South America. See figure 3 in the following link for a projection of where we can expect increased drought this century: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110928_Butterfly.pdf [columbia.edu]
Here is a wry post on the current drought conditions in Texas. This may be a hint of what is to come: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/09/texas-drought-good-news-and-bad-news/ [chron.com]
First the really good news: according to
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You forgot, we also get increased precipitation from global warming! It'll be warmcool and drywet everywhere! :)
Funny, Texas never had droughts before we started releasing CO2...
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2011/09/chatting_with_a_noaa_meteorolo.php [dallasobserver.com]
"The good news, Hoerling says, is that this isn't global warming. "This is not t
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Funny, Texas never had droughts before we started releasing CO2...
Not like this. Check out the second graph after this link to see just how far outside the bounds of normal this current drought is. It's off the chart. http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/08/texas-drought-spot-the-outlier/ [chron.com]
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/23/the-texas-centered-drought-versus-1918-1956-and-1934/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
Take a closer look at the regional nature of 2011 and the much larger nature of the 1930s, and then spot the outlier :)
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So a small regional drought seems like just as likely an "outlier" than a large regional drought?
Sure, I'm willing to entertain that idea - got data?
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See figure 3 in the following link for a projection of where we can expect increased drought this century
You forgot, we also get increased precipitation from global warming! It'll be warmcool and drywet everywhere! :)
Well, where do you think the water from the areas experiencing drought will end up? Droughts often coincide with increased precipitation elsewhere.
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That's not too helpful if the increased precipitation comes in the form of named storms dropping rain by the foot.
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http://www.real-science.com/time-hockey-team-timeout [real-science.com]
"They need to discuss strategy. NASA says that sea level is falling due to too much rain. Hansen says that sea level is rising at a record rate and will drown Manhattan by 2008. Hadley says that we are headed for a permanent drought. These clowns need a huddle to get their story straight, because they sound like a bunch of total buffoons right now."
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"Skeptics" tend to have difficulty with nuance. (He said it would go up but they say it went down last year... I just don't know WHO to believe!). They also tend not to read original sources but rather like to read spin from sites with unintentionally ironic names.
You have referenced a NASA post that confirm exactly what I noted above (that droughts come with floods), and is exactly consistent with everything Hanson has ever published (regardless of what someone may recall from a conversation that he may
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
"The sea level was going up at about 3 mm per year. In the last year it fell about 6 mm. So that’s a change of about a centimetre of water that NASA says has fallen on land and been absorbed rather than returned to the ocean. But of course, the land is much smaller than the ocean so for the ocean to change by a centimetre, the land has to change about 2.3 cm.
To do that,
Not really (Score:2)
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As the Earth heats, we can expect to find less arable land.
Oh, really? I just see an assertion here that's contrary to reality in many ways, and thus invalid. You basically seem to be basing your opinion (as many people do) on "deserts are hot!"
So are rain forests. Believe it or not, crops like a lot of heat, which is why the non-arid parts of California tend to have a lot of them and in colder regions, people depend on at least a couple weeks of good heat every summer to make their crops flourish. In the higher latitudes, people will use cold frames and greenhouse
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What makes you think Canada wants a giant influx of American refugees? A warming Earth will be good for Canada (and Russia, and other northern countries), and it'll also work out OK for those who are allowed to emigrate to those countries, but it won't be good for everyone else.
Re:Yes, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh bull poop. Ever looked at a map? Noticed how much land mass is currently useless for growing in Russia, Canada, etc? Warm things up a bit and we will lose some land and gain some.
Maybe you should try looking at a globe rather than a map imaged from a Mercator projection. Then you will see that areas in the high (and low) latitudes are far smaller than you believe.
Secondly you might want to think about how fertile the soil in siberia would be - currently this soil is frozen in permafrost, and covered in pine forest. Neither condition is conducive to soil fertility. If the permafrost melts (releasing it's methane) then Siberia will be an infertile, poisonous swamp.
Anyway, this is the second Warmer story today, this is getting silly. This isn't dkos... or it least it wasn't.
Does this topic make you uncomfortable?
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Because we all know that pine forests are the ideal fertile land.
Oh wait no, they are the exact opposite.
If trees are growing abundantly on the land, it's a good indication that the land is fertile. They aren't "ideal" because most of the carbon in the ecosystem is in the trees not in the soil. Funny how I already knew that.
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What he is referring to is that Pine forest soil is acidic. Furthermore, pine trees prefer sandy soil - which also doesn't work for growing food stuff.
One species of tree or bush growing in a specific area is often an indication that it will be very difficult to grow anything else in there.
Re:Yes, of course (Score:5, Insightful)
The soil on much of that northern land is not really suitable for growing crops and it will take at least decades if not centuries to make it suitable. Good soil is a living thing that takes time to develop.
Re:Yes, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
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Noticed how much land mass is currently useless for growing in Russia, Canada, etc?
That's good if you're Canadian or Russian, but if you're, for instance, African, that doesn't help you too much. Much of the population lives much closer to the equator than Canada and Siberia, and a warming earth is not going to be good for them. And I don't think Canada and Russia are going to open their borders for anyone to move there who wants to.
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Actually, as far as Canada in concerned at least, we are already farming about as much as can be farmed. There is farming and ranching at least up to 60* latitude, probably further in some places. Gets nice and warm in the summer too. Axial tilt means looooooong summer days. Lots of light, very good growing season. Get far enough north and the sun doesn't set. My uncle has a ranching operation and the long days mean that he can grow as much hay in three months of almost continuous sunshine as some places ca
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Actually, it does seem like global warming will be good for some people, such as the Canadians, who will get more arable land, as well as a northwest passage for shipping, which is currently covered in ice. The Russians might do well with it too, plus the Scandinavians.
Most everyone else is going to be screwed, though. Canada is fairly welcoming to some immigrants (if you score enough points on their qualification system, or have a big bundle of cash ($300k)), but they're not going to just open their bord
Er, what? (Score:2)
There's a theory that economic stability combined with a surplus of food production leads to less war and conflict. Science's study claims (according to the summary) that changes in climate in the past have disrupted crops, leading to food deficits, and that has resulted in more war and conflict. When the climate changed again and food surpluses increased, less war and conflict.
It seems like the theory and the stu
Violent Agreement (Score:2)
You missed the part where the economic theories screwed Science's girlfriend, so Science hit the economic theories over the head with a folding chair, but then Slashdot ran into the ring and broke everything up. Then Science challenged the theories to settle it once and for all, in the cage at this weekend's Pay Per View event. Agreement, my ass! This is serious conflict.
Does this mean we get to shoot polluters? (Score:3)
And then blame the smog of war?
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No, my electricity comes from a perfectly clean nuke plant. No pollution at all, as long as Yucca Mountain opens up before we have an earthquake.
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Uranium ore comes out of the ground, where it has spent millennia leaching randomly into the water table. When it's spent, it goes back into the ground, vitrified so it can't leach into the surrounding ground.
Nuclear power is un-pollution.
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Well, for one, I don't live in a glass house. Glass has a high carbon footprint.
For another, I drive a hybrid. I'm far less of a polluter than you are. My next car will likely be all-electric, and my electricity is nuclear, which only pollutes if you let it, and I don't.
I also tend to hold in my farts, while you post yours to the net.
This subject is far (Score:2)
to subtle for /.
Not exactly a new theory ... (Score:3)
For example, the past couple decades of local wars in the Sahel are conventionally attributed to the spreading of the desert. People there have faced the choice of staying home and starving, or moving south, where the land is already at carrying capacity and the people are prepared to defend their barely-livable land from the armed refugees from up north.
Similarly, the Viking excursions are typically explained by the increasing population in Scandinavia (and the first significant adoption of agriculture there) in the 8th and 9th centuries, followed by decades in which the crops mostly failed. Again, the Norse had the choice of staying home and starving, or sailing away and looking for better places to live. But all those places were already inhabited, so it was really a choice of starve at home or fight abroad.
So what's new about this story? Isn't it just a repeat of much of our history? Or at least, it's a repeat of our explanations for much of our history.
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Well, I often find it interesting and useful when people point out that the topic being discussed isn't actually new, and other useful discussions can be found if you look for them. I wasn't trying to stop the discussion; I was mostly just reacting to the claim that this is some sort of new thought. Maybe it was new for the writer, but it's hardly new for anyone who's read much history.
This is much of the reason that some people worry so much about climate change. As the "deniers" like to point out, t
Anything else (Score:2)
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Is there anything that the shameless left claims is not effected by climate change? What a racket!
I claim that a lot of people's minds aren't affected by climate change.
Darfur (Score:2)
The situation in Darfur is an example of conflict caused by climate change. As the traditional areas the nomadic people used dried out they were forced to move south into areas where farmers were. We can expect more of it in the future.
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Fair enough, but you could make the same case for the fall of the Thracians, or the Inca or the Maya or any number of conflicts before the industrial age.
Yes, climate change can cause conflict (and Jared Diamond does a great job showing examples in his book "Collapse"). Yes, we can expect more of it in the future, because just as climate changed 1000 years ago, it will continue to change for the next 1000 years.
Jumping from that to "climate is going to change more/worse because of human activity" is a stre
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Oh thank goodness (Score:2)
Climate change responsible for all the ills of man (Score:2)
I guess Eve, Lillith and all the other woman-spawns out there are off the hook.
At least for now...
The Enlightenment was down to Charles II? (Score:2)
Talk about Anglocentrism! Are they sure it was not the fact that he was crowned king of Scotland and Wales at the same time that caused the Enlightenment?
tl;dr version - people like to eat and drink (Score:2)
Global warming problem is solvable (Score:3)
Changing physical state of matter requires a lot of energy. When we dry linen or clothes in an electrical drier, the liquid, water, changes into the gas, steam. Then the steam has to be evacuated from fabric by a fan, then condensed by a freezer again into water.
This process requires a lot of energy. As people on earth become richer, they buy and use electrical driers more an more. We speak about billions usages daily, a geological scale.
In some districts, even entire cities drying clothes or linen outdoors is forbidden. All we need to do is forbid to forbid the outdoor drying to home owners associations, municipal councils, etc.
Outdoor driers may be re-designed to look better esthetically. It is not that difficult especially if they are used and bought more.
Outdoor drying in hot sunny weather is the most efficient solar and wind device. Not possible to make anything more efficient. Besides it not only saves energy, it also actually cools the atmosphere.
So the problem is quite solvable from an engineering point of view, but there is the most difficult obstacle, - the social one.
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If every man woman and child (assuming a global populations of 7 billion) turned off 10 industrial strength 5600 watt dryers that they had been running 24 hours a day 365 days a year, then yes, this would be a good strategy for ending global warming. This would be the equivalent of the current energy imbalance. That is, this would prevent the warming not yet realized from the CO2 already emitted. It would not address the already realized warming, We would also have to stop emitting CO2 (or find more d
The enlightenment (Score:2)
Nuke the alarmists from orbit (Score:2)
The end of history? (Score:2)
"Business cycles less volatile over time"? So, we're not in the middle of a Depression (self-proclaimed and degreed economists can visit the lake, head first)? Sorry, that's only true when there's serious social control over economies. The US massively deregulated... and they're back, in spades. Deregulation can directly be related to the S&L debacle of the late eighties, and again with the tech bubble, and again with the current collapse. There is not one single economic hypothesis (theories are repeat
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Wrong.
Inflation is an increase in prices. It can be caused by an unnatural increase in the supply of currency, but it can also be caused by an overall decrease in supply or by an overall increase in demand.
The price of gold, however, is not related to anything other than the demand for gold (there's way more supply than anyone can use for anything other than swimming in). Gold is no longer a monetary standard. Anyone telling you that it is is a liar. Anyone telling you that Gold retains its value during
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http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=GLD&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=&c= [yahoo.com]^GSPC&c=^IXIC&c=^DJI
Gold was overbought at the start of the 07-08 crash, and then overbought at the end.
In between, it crashed along with stocks.
You were better off being in cash.
Since then, it's risen slightly better than stocks, but not enough to make up for the fact that it's a bloated commodity with no real value of its own except for electronic contacts and bling. If there's anything on this earth whose value is
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Most notably, the Zimbabwean Dollar and the German Mark but many other countries too, the Mexican Peso, Hungarian Krona, Greek Drachma, Chinese Yuan,
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Most failed currencies are worth more than face value now.
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1. at least the definition used by Austrians (quantification of money pool) is precise while the common definition is a watered down crap full of substitutions and holistics that doesn't pass the smell test at the gas pump and grocery store.
2. on the other hand when you measure performance from 2000 you get +400% return on gold and bullshit on inflated dollar (check out dollar index graph going down from 120 to 80)
3. 1 month ago swiss franc lost 10% in a blink of an eye just because the swiss central bank s
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Why are you measuring from 2000? Why not measure from 1980 to 2000? Oh that's right, because you're cherrypicking your data to suit your conclusion.
http://goldprice.org/charts/history/gold_all_data_o_usd.png [goldprice.org]
See any similarities there between the 76-80 period and the 00-11 period?
Gold is down 15% in the past month, btw.
If you want to know what's causing the markets to roil, it's the hedgies unwinding their equities to pay margin calls on their gold futures.
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i cherry pick? you did it first by choosing 2007. Yes, there is nothing better to show the overall performance than to pick data from the short distortion period where stuff goes up and down wildly. 10 years is a reasonably long period that smooths bumps out, 30 years is ancient history. What about 2digit inflation in the seventies that was smacked down with 20% interest rate just at the beginning of the period you suggest? Is there a double digit inflation now that will cause brutal intervention that will
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Choosing 2007 wasn't cherrypicking. It was showing that during a time when the economy was tanking, so was Gold. It was refuting a basic claim of the gold hawkers. Cash was a better investment than gold when the economy was declining.
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One possible explanation: Population dieoffs are followed by labor shortages and hence, more egalitarian societies. e.g. Black Death and Renaissance
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