Persian Gulf Temperatures May Be At the Edge of Human Tolerance In 30 Years (arstechnica.com) 488
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new climate study the Persian Gulf may become so hot and humid in the next 30 years that it will reach the threshold of human survivability. Ars reports: "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future. However, a new paper published by Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir in Nature Climate Change presents evidence that this deadly combination of heat and humidity increases could occur in the Persian Gulf much earlier than previously anticipated."
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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1) Start setting up shelters well ahead of time, so that immigrants can be housed in decent semi-permanent accommodation rather than makeshift camps that they have to vacate every few weeks. Even in crowded countries there is plenty of land (you don't need all that much), and plenty of empty office buildings that can be converted if you're given a bit of time.
2) Long term accommodation in the form of regular houses is harder to arrange (and much more expensive), but not insurmountable. And it
Quite the definition of "irony" (Score:5, Insightful)
Make sh*tloads of money selling fossil fuels to the rest of the world...
Parlay that money, and valuable commodity, into unwarranted global influence...
Have homeland rendered uninhabitable by the consequence of burning said fossil fuels...
Did they have a choice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Refusing to sell the oil certainly didn't work out too well for them either.
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Interesting result (Score:5, Insightful)
That said the basic thermodynamics of added CO2 and other heat trapping gasses is simple, well understood, and was settled long ago academically. The real cutting edge research today is determining what will happen on a regional scale. In the above study published in Nature, it's not an increase in temperature so much as its an increase in regional moisture brought on by a slight warming and a shift in climate.
It's not a dust bowl effect, think of how bad that dry heat is going to be if it turns high humidity.
While results like these could be more accurately modeled, say by having better satellites, far more money is spent arguing than buying hardware and funding research. The possible doomsday scenerio isn't a whole planet that's too hot - its far more likely a slightly insane nuclear arms bearing nation essentially being locked inside a car with the windows rolled up in a Flordia kmart parking lot in July.
Re:Interesting result (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, humid air prevents sweat from evaporating, preventing the skin's cooling down process
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The edge of human tolerance (Score:2)
FTA
Same old, same old. (Score:3)
" "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future..."
This is somehow different than the many areas on the planet where humans should not be trying to live today?
Oh, how they laughed (Score:3)
Canada and Siberia (Score:2)
Six posts at level 5 (Score:3, Insightful)
As of this writing, only 6 of 210 postings were at level 5 which just goes to show how pointlessly contentious this topic is. Maybe the Slashdot editors should think about a moratorium on climate topics for a while.
Re:Six posts at level 5 (Score:4, Insightful)
As of this writing, only 6 of 210 postings were at level 5 which just goes to show how pointlessly contentious this topic is. Maybe the Slashdot editors should think about a moratorium on climate topics for a while.
It's only really a contentious topic amongst extreme right wingers in the US, who are of course well represented on slashdot. In most of the rest of the civilised world, even conservatives generally accept that climate change is a reality.
Re:I can tolerate a really hot hottub (Score:5, Insightful)
The human body needs periods of cool temperatures to recover from being in the heat. The effects are also more severe as the heat increases and the humidity reduces the ability of the body to cool itself. When it's very humid, temperatures don't fall as much as night, which prevents the body from recovering during that period. Humans can tolerate periods of hot and even humid conditions, provided they also get time to cool off and recover. The excessive heat and warm nights due to the humidity are a bad combination. While you can tolerate a really hot bathtub, you certainly wouldn't survive being in one all the time.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I can tolerate a really hot hottub (Score:5, Informative)
The Persian Gulf is actually hotter and more humid. One city in Iran had the heat index soar to 163 degrees this past summer.
Yes, it gets very hot in parts of the US in the summer. The Gulf Coast states are very humid. It can get just as hot in the Plains, and the evapotranspiration from crops like corn can raise the dewpoints into the low 80s at times. I've experienced this living in Nebraska. But it still isn't as hot and humid as the Persian Gulf.
The other difference is that there's widespread air conditioning in the US. People still die, but it's mitigated because of the air conditioning. There's far less availability of air conditioning in the poorer countries of the Middle East. Sure, the wealthy nations like Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have plenty of air conditioning. But the same can't be said in places like Iraq and Yemen. Add to it a severe water shortage and there's potentially a big problem. The weather is worse than anywhere in the US, and the socioeconomic issues make it even worse.
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Meanwhile Dubai, Riyadh, Baghdad, Manama, etc have average summer temperatures of 40 and pushing towards 50 degrees (122F)! And _still_ with high humidify. Desert heat with ocean humidity, and yet little rain - it rarely cools below the dew point.
I spent part of my childhood there - until 01/01/79 when we left in a rush. We were about 60 miles north/inland from Abadan which is on the coast. Summer temperatures were above 50C every day and often 55 to 60.
Temperature was not the only factor though. Humidity is fractionally under 100% and there are very strong hot winds. I visited a steelworks when at college, the two felt similar. Hot and uncomfortable but the steelworks smelled better!
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When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable....In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
Mark Twain, Following The Equator
Re:I can tolerate a really hot hottub (Score:4, Informative)
Those cities are currently, probably, about as bad as the Middle East when worst cases are considered and, currently, are not particularly close to "limit of survivability" levels.
Some bits of Northern India are currently amongst the "worst" areas. The ME is geographically close but currently not so bad as they're drier.
But if the ME gets wetter then the problems there could get worse to the point where it's impossible to survive without aircon.
http://www.city-data.com/forum... [city-data.com]
35C wet bulb temperature is about the limit of survivability. You don't die instantly but unless you get somewhere cooler (lower wet bulb temperature, not necessarily absolute temperature) you will die.
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You would do well to compare the historical population trends of the souther compared to the rest of the nation before and after the invention and widespread adoption of Air Conditioning.
Hint: there's a reason slave labor was essential to the South's existence for the longest time.
in the time Before AC it was even more sparsely populated than now, had very few large cities, and most migration was away.
in the time After AC it experienced a population boom, the growth of many major cities, and migration compl
Re:I can tolerate a really hot hottub (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen more intense hate coming from supposedly educated people like you than i have from southerners as a whole. I think your worldview is skewed by hate to some degree.
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considering your comment history, the blinders you wear must be ginormous to create such a lack of self awareness.
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Oh. Because there's an agenda at work. Never mind.
Oh yeah, the sinister all powerful hippy/tree-hugger illuminati, out to get the world to stop all economies.
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... out to leech off all economies.
Fixed that for you.
Oh, and they already have a pretty nice parasitic climatology industry, it's was about $8.8 billion in 2010, currently probably substantially more than that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la... [forbes.com]
That's a lot of motivation to exaggerate or lie outright about global warming (or "climate change").
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Prime ministers are icky - who'd want to access one?
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I think you misunderstand what will happen if the conditions in a country becomes unlivable over a longer period (this compared to say a volcano or something, where the problem occurs suddenly). Specifically, the likelihood of war does not exactly decrease.
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If the survivors actually still want to fight over who gets to own a chunk of meteorite in the middle of a dead zone, hey, good for them. The sane ones will run begging for assimilation by their friends to the North.
And the whole world wins as a result. Well, except for coastal citi
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There won't be any war there because there won't be any people there. What part of "uninhabitable" are you having trouble with?
So when it becomes clear that the temps are going to get there, and the current residents have to leave, where do you think they are going to go? Do you think they will all buy plane tickets and execute an orderly withdrawal? Or do you think they might just choose to take whatever military hardware they have on hand and try to use it to make a hole they can settle into?
Re:Not Entirely A Bad Thing (Score:4, Insightful)
They will have to attack neighboring states to "make a hole" and most of the neighboring states are quite strong, militarily. Getting them to commit suicide
...will have substantial fallout, both economic and political, to say nothing of the cost in human lives. It also does not detract from the point.
They all die in a war they start that when they could have just shown up at the border, hat in hand, begging for asylum that would most assuredly be granted,
You haven't been paying attention to world politics, have you? That would most assuredly be granted? What are you smoking, what is it called, how much does it cost, and where can it be purchased?
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that is cute, you think all of a sudden one day everyone will get up and say, "let's leave"
I think that the climate will become inhospitable more decisively than you do, and that they will effectively do that due to a common root cause.
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Ah, Bill O'Reilly, the shining beacon of rationality and humanism. Nothing he says should be taken seriously, ever.
Not being in the USA, I don't know who the hell Bill O'Relly is, and don't much care. Nevertheless the statement "General Patton could destroy all of ISIS in a week." is perfectly true with the minor correction to "could have if he were still around". It doesn't matter who says it. In fact any living general who is not totally incompetent could do the same with the West's firepower at their disposal. I don't know why it is not done.
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You mean one way of causing the conflict in the middle east to escalate and start spreading outward.
Re:I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
..thats one way of solving conflict in the Middle East
You mean one way of causing the conflict in the middle east to escalate and start spreading outward.
Right... and if anybody thinks the Middle-East->Balkans->Europe or S-America->Mexico->USA migration is a problem now try to imagine what it will be like when large of South America become deforested and the Middle East becomes an uninhabitable dustbowl. Everytime I hear somebody make that: "It's not our problem, let them kill themselves down there, the best thing we can do is not interfere" like the OP I'm tempted to bring up the mess that is Syria which to a large extent became the mess it is because we listened to people who recommend apathy. Interfering is bad but at least you have some influence on the course of events, not interfering is worse because by not interfering you let the situation spin completely out of control.
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You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
And you have to do it with a mindset that we're not there to build schools or make friendly with the locals, but to suppress resistance with maximum force and minimal-to-no concern for civilian casualties and collateral damage. This isn't a "police action" or "counter-insurgency" it's more
Re:I suppose (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't what planets WWII you have been reading about but I have news for you. While we certainly did fight a total war targeting civilian sites with industrial applications like factories etc we most certainly did not target hospitals and civilian food stocks (with some notable exceptions). We did hit many of these things because bombing with WWII technology had about a 24% accuracy. The British actually counted success has hitting the correct city, at least for night raids. Hitting them and targeting them are not however the same thing.
When occupying territories we did usually install our own safety force and disarm local government employees. We did however in many case leave local governments and civil machinery intact for administrative purposes. We certainly did not inflict maximum death anywhere after the surrender or withdraw of military forces in the area. Oh and we hung around and rebuilt the place when we were done.
The problem in the middle east is that there isn't any working civil machinery and what of there is antithetical to our deeply held beliefs about justice and freedom among other things. I don't agree with your read of WWII at all. I would suggest occupied Germany isn't a good analog for anything having to do with post invasion strategy in the middle east. Where I can agree with you is about the need to occupy the territory, if you are going to invade. I would still argue that we should simply not accept refugees and invest all the money we would otherwise spend invading and occupying into simply securing our boarders and making damn sure we know everything there is to know about anyone we are permitting to enter instead but that is another discussion.
What is needed in the middle east if you are going to invade is a British colonial style system. We need to bring in our own civil infrastructure and system of law. That needs to be setup as superlative to any existing civil infrastructure, but we should leave whatever does exist intact as long as its complicit and willing to operate as our client. We need to spend 20 or 30 years ensuring that people who get with our program enjoy comfort and success and people who don't are pushed to the margins. That is how you change a culture, slowly and by making it apparent clinging to the old ways means being a nobody.
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You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
Nothing like that scale. The Germans in WWII were extremely tough fighters with a home-grown manufacturing base and deployed high tech. ISIS, for all their willy waving in front of the cameras, are nothing of the sort.
Re:I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically, you want the Americans to channel the shittiest of all dictators and along with their bombings, occupy and terrorize a population. And this is marked insightful? Disgusting.
I get it. That barbaric culture is scary. You're afraid of them breeding like rabbits and establishing sharia law after immigrating to your country. If you react in this way, there is literally nothing separating you from the terrorists. Their ideas are your ideas. You literally WANT TO TERRORIZE THEM INTO SUBMISSION.
How the fuck is this insightful? Consider if someone was saying this about the US. You just know that even though you'll subjugate the majority, you will always have an armed rebellion for as long as you're there. Legitimately fighting their brutal occupiers. If The US saw Russia doing that, they'd call them brutal aggressive occupiers and that's what you'd be.
There are better options. They are harder, complex and don't give you the satisfaction of the genocide you crave. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It may be from a movie but it's the goddamn truth. Real solutions are harder than that but maybe we humans haven't reached a level of emotional or intellectual maturity to use them yet.
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It worked with Japan, Germany and the Confederacy.
What I'm not reading about in the paper is a resistance campaign by the Germans, Japanese or the Confederate states of America.
There actually was a weak resistance to occupation staged by Nazi loyalists after the surrender. From what I've read of it, the American answer was pretty much exactly the kind of thing I've advocated was necessary. When troops rolled into a town that was yet occupied and they faced resistance, they pulled out and shelled the town.
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You can't blame the isolationist argument / strategy for failing when the so called refugee crisis is at its root a failure to follow that strategy. There is no good reason, for Syria's border states to permit the entry of refugees, let alone for Europe or USA to do so. I suspect keeping those people there would actually clean up the mess in that country more quickly as it would leave a group of people of quality (those that want a better life) there with incentive to fix things.
Secure the boarders let th
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My thought instead was that with his country at war, his country needed doctors.
Re:I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
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That strategy can't be followed because both EU and the US have multi-ethnic populations, which will tear themselves apart if the meme "members of other groups are less valuable than members of your group" grows too strong. A modern nation-state exists in a world where anyone who cares to can get their hands on weapons and explosives (and increasingly bioweapon
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Supporting increasingly brutal dictatorship in Iran in fear that the democratic government of 1953 could have communist leanings was what caused theocracy there.
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for. The increased energy in the system is already turning all of weather to a parade of freak outliers and unpredictable quirky events that occasionally spike off the charts, and that's exactly in line with the 'chaotic system' model.
I wouldn't have called the 'Earth turning to an alien planet that doesn't support life' thing in thirty years, but if you specify it's to happen in particular (unusual areas) then I'll believe that. Some areas of the planet are already close to uninhabitable and it doesn't take that much to push 'em over the brink. The thing to watch for is not places being rendered uninhabitable by weather extremes, it's more about masses of people/animals displaced because the change is a new thing that nobody's prepared for.
You can probably, right now, buy a 40-year lease on land that might as well be the Moon in 40 years. If you want a real picture of the plausibility of man-made global climate change, don't check scientists or Al Gore, consult actuaries and insurance companies. Pretty sure you'll find they're believers, because they have to actually pay for it if they choose wrong.
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:4, Funny)
Take it on the bright side, we will finally be able to enjoy a nice bottle of English wine.
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, we already did enjoy nice bottles of English wine. In the medieval warming period, vineyards were all over northern England. Today, many street names still have names of grape varieties as a result of those times.
Oh, crap. We can't talk about that. Nevermind.
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They grow wine grapes in New York and Canada... it's not very good most of the time, but they do it. "Nice bottle" is the key.
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And immediately after the Medieval Warm Period was the 300+ year-long Little Ice Age... So that's something to look forward to. A nice little reminder to Europeans that they're at the same latitude as Canada and parts of Siberia.
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"they're at the same latitude as Canada"
Canada's latitude ranges from 41.7degN to 90degN.
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Uh... Tell me why we're not allowed to talk about it? Or are you one of those people who seems to think that climate scientists are ignorant of things such as the well known historical record, the sun and etc?
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Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, we already did enjoy nice bottles of English wine. In the medieval warming period, vineyards were all over northern England. Today, many street names still have names of grape varieties as a result of those times.
Oh, crap. We can't talk about that. Nevermind.
Well, we can't talk about that with you because you're willfully ignorant and biased. If you were actually interested in the topic there's only been a few hundred research papers on the subjects of the MWP, as well as the LIA.
But you're not. You're far more interested in standing on a soap box and slinging biased half-truths and inaccuracies based on your incorrect interpretation of regional events.
*shrug* Whatever makes you happy. Thermodynamics, physics, and chemistry don't care about your biases, and the
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...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Yes, because questioning a climate theory that's only backed by a limited set of hotly debated data is the same as believing in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
I know, I know, SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS. Because most scientists are willing (under intensive peer pressure) to say that anthropogenic global warming is a settled fact, we should all just end all scientific debate and declare anyone who questions the prevailing theory as a heretic who should be arrested and imprisoned [dailycaller.com].
Never mind that nothing in scien
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New science is where everyone gets together and agrees that X is so, and henceforth X is so and no one is allowed to question X.
No one is asking for scientific debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants scientists to stop investigating the causes of global climate change in order to better predict its effects. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating science they know nothing about.
Science is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon scientific knowledge because it might someday change. When determining which science to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is
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No one is asking for scientific debate to stop.
Yes you are. Every person that shouts "Denier" the second someone doesn't tow the line, is asking for the debate to STOP. There are many many many of you.
This debate has had nothing to do with science for some time now.
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
Your exact argument has been made before. Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority, lest your argument look like this:
No one is asking for theological debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants priests to stop investigating the scriptures in order to better interpret them. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating religion they know nothing about.
Theology is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon theological understanding because it might someday change. When determining which theology to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand religion enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.
That argument would be similar to mine if only 97% of people agreed upon the basic tenants of their religion. Since there is no where near consensus on whether there even is a creator god, how many gods there are, and what the most important commandments of these gods are, this is a red herring. And don't go saying that all major religions agree upon the important stuff either, because many religions such as Buddhism have very little to do with religions such as the Abrahamic ones.
This isn't a situation where there are 3-4 different factions of scientists who agree with 97% of other members in their faction, but only agree on 80% with members of other factions. Then it would be similar to the major religions of the world. Here we have a situation where there is no sizable disagreement among qualified individuals.
Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority
Science does its best to do away with appeals to authority when actually doing cutting edge scientific research. But research would grind to a halt if no one ever treated agreed upon knowledge as fact (even if it isn't 100% proven) when building upon that research. Engineers would never have the time to apply scientific knowledge if they never trusted the consensus of scientists who made the breakthroughs.
Most knowledge is still gained by trusting authority, even by scientists. Trusting authority is not the same thing as never questioning authority.
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:5)
Whom do you mean by "we", are you a climatologist? Scientists continue "the debate" (wrong word, btw) all the time, but if around 95% of experts in the field (=working climatologists, and no one else) agree that global warming is to a large extent man-made, as a recent large meta study showed, and many people (experts, politicians, and "Joe the Plumber") agree that the effects of this warming will likely be disastrous, it's just plain stupid not to act on the basis of the experts' knowledge. That doesn't mean that the experts cannot be wrong, but their assessments are the best information we currently have.
It is crazy, and perhaps a sign of how modern media have declined, that some groups seem to have managed to "ideologize" this issue, as if ongoing research in an area had anything to do with ideology, let alone cliches like "left" and "right". It's like saying "Yeah, 95% of all medical doctors agree, on the basis of their research, that substance X causes cancer, but we will not act upon this information, because it doesn't fit our world view". What kind of world view would that be? I can only attribute this stupidity to the modern TV culture which has apparently created the impression that it is enough to put one "expert" in front of a camera in order to cast doubt on theories on which thousands of real experts have previously converged.
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...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for.
As well, we wouldn't exist without the greenhouse effect. Without some of the thermoregulation it provides, the earth would be a slightly cooler version of Mercury, hot on the day side, and really cold on the nightside.
I've found the arguments tend to shorten dramatically when I point this out, then ask why the greenhouse effect fails on a global scale, when it has to work for us to exist.
The deniers have long relied on cherry picking anomalies, and calling research scientists names instead of coming u
Re:The general consensus amongst many Americans (Score:5, Insightful)
your misusing and abusing information to make a flawed point.
"geological global average was higher than today" .... when you use a 600 million year time period.
hint: 600 million years ago complex multicellular life (things above bacterial mats and algae) didn't even exist yet.
And why just 600 million years? If we're going to geological time scales, why stop there? Why not go back further? to the cooling earth after its molten formation? Or was it just to conveniently leave out the 200 million year long glaciation period that occurred just before the arbitrary 600my cut off?
same for CO2 levels. yes, it was warmer and higher CO2 millions of years ago....and life that evolved for those conditions existed. the problem is the current situation is in not operating on evolutionary time scales. its not just the existence of the conditions, but the speed. those prior conditions occurred over hundreds of millions of years, which is actually a point supported by the very things you mention, and unlike the current conditions and trends.
and further: you're using geological time scale global averages, when the article in question is talking about a specific point in time at a specific place...the total opposite. The fact that the global average is ok for humans doesn't contradict or prevent the existence of locations not habitable by humans, places like Antarctica or the Middle East.
in short: just more unscientific denier BS.
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You will never be 100% certain until it is too late to stop it. At some point common sense has to kick in and say, youknow what there is a 99.99999999~ chance that this is happening and we need to do something.
I'm almost certain you have been misinformed. (Score:3)
The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance
The source for the quoted nonsense above is WUWT, one of many denier/front sites funded by the (untaxed) anti-science lobbyists at the . [sourcewatch.org]
The fact is that hindcasting is how climate models are tested, how else would anyone test it? You can find the code for several important models here [realclimate.org] and run it yourself for the price of a decent server.
Not only can we model the evolution of Earth's past climate and routinely hindcast the last 500yrs with high levels of "model skill", we can also model the evolution
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The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance
The source for the quoted nonsense above is WUWT, one of many denier/front sites funded by the (untaxed) anti-science lobbyists at the . [sourcewatch.org]
The fact is that hindcasting is how climate models are tested, how else would anyone test it? You can find the code for several important models here [realclimate.org] and run it yourself for the price of a decent server.
Not only can we model the evolution of Earth's past climate and routinely hindcast the last 500yrs with high levels of "model skill", we can also model the evolution of climate on other planets, in particular Mars and Venus. Here's a reliable and independent source [skepticalscience.com] that talks about hindcasting climate for testing purposes.
Note also that the uncertainty you quote is about cloud cover, the other common cherry pick used in this kind of FUD is the uncertainty surrounding the behaviour of ice. These two KNOWN uncertainties are discussed in great detail in the report you linked to. They are responsible for what scientists call "error bars". The WG1 report is however the best summary of the current state of climate science that anyone has to offer. If you want to debunk climate science that is the primary document to attack, it is the embodiment of the so called "consensus", good luck in your studies.
You are so wrong it's almost comical. As I already stated in my post as well as providing a link, the source for this is the IPCC WG1 you champion in your own retort:
Model tuning aims to match observed climate system behaviour and so is connected to judgements as to what constitutes a skilful representation of the Earth’s climate. For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system fro
Re:Whatever. (Score:5, Informative)
No we weren't. The "coming ice age" thing was an article written in the popular press and was never supported by climate science.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
Re:Whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
In reality, it was being discussed in Los Alamos during the 1940's. Early climate models suggested that we hadn't even begun to notice the effects [of all the deforestation during the Industrial Revolution over a century earlier]... but that we certainly would. It should be noted that this "braintrust of brilliance" (the world's top physcists were of course gathered there) was also discussing what we might be able to do to offset the effects...
Re:Whatever. (Score:4, Informative)
No we weren't. The "coming ice age" thing was an article written in the popular press and was never supported by climate science.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
In reality, scientists have been talking about since the 19th century. Svante Arrhenius developed the first climate model demonstrating how increases in CO2 from can warm the planet, and he did that back in the 1890's.
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Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm a "climate denialist" or whatever.
Uh, no-one self-describes as a denier because it's an epithet. But it's what you are.
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And here is a huge problem, disagree with the solution and you are a "denialist."
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It wasn't that long ago and we were supposed to be scared to death of the pending ice age that was driving us all into cold temperatures.
I remember reading science fiction about that sort of thing but apart from a bit of right-wing fearmongering nothing else.
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All of Syria is already moving to Europe because of political instability. As more muslims arrive, their influence grows in countries like France and England. That will affect the USA as well.
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The difference is that celestial mechanics is an exact science (when everything is taken into account).
Climate models are speculative bullshit that have consistently failed in their predictions.
Given the fact that the government cure to your headache would be to wrap a tourniquet around your head, doing nothing is an entirely rational response.
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Re: Whatever. (Score:4, Informative)
I think this is a fine point to interject. I am not, nor do I claim to be, a climate scientist. I am, on the other hand, a mathematician. My career was based on modeling from very large data sets. I modeled vehicular and pedestrian traffic. It's akin to attempting to model chaos.
I'll try to keep this simple.
See, you collect a whole bunch of data - everything from weather to time of day to a single individual can have an impact on the throughput of traffic. Then, you crunch this data and you end up with a model and can make predictions on it. Well, you shouldn't. This is why I'm retired today. See, you don't actually make predictions at that point. Instead - you return to the actual data and go out and make physical observations to confirm that your modeling of the existing data is accurate. If it's not then you change your algorithms AND manipulate the data until it matches reality.
Then, and only then, when you've managed to get them "close enough" can you make meaningful predictions and accurate proposals for things like route changes or configurations. You do, indeed, manipulate the data and the math used to crunch that data (an example is dropping outlying data points or optimizing for a specific period of time) until the data matches what you can verify as existing. The world is more than data points... At some point, it becomes so complex that there's absolutely zero chance at achieving perfection. That will not happen.
Now, I don't know shit about climate. I don't know if they're doing this right or wrong or if we're all going to die tomorrow. But I do know that massaging numbers and tweaking models to reflect reality is actually a damned good thing to do. In fact, doing so is why I'm retired and the company is still alive today. Not doing so is why you get some pretty screwed up traffic patterns that looked good on paper but suck in reality. That's what they get for hiring the least expensive companies. Yes, it takes more time, yes, it is more expensive. However, it's not at all unusual to manipulate data to make a model match reality. In fact, if you want to do a good job, it's pretty much a requirement and no - it will never be perfect. We simply can't account for all eventualities. You aim for a 95th percentile or greater in traffic modeling (even less for pedestrian traffic) and call it good.
So, there are probably all sorts of legitimate complaints about climate science. Data manipulation is not one of them. I'd be much more concerned to find out that they were relying on raw data without any manipulation and then comparisons with reality to determine which adjustments need to be made. If no adjustments had to be made, I'd call it straight up bullshit.
Err... End rant! Carry on with the bitch fest but, really, unless you've attempted to model a chaotic system, you're probably not actually aware of the process. I can assure you that, mathematically, this must be a similar process to what I'm most familiar with. If they were working with raw data that had not been manipulated then you'd probably end up with predictions of the climate being toadstool hamburger no later than last purple Wednesday. It's not a perfect world and there are near infinite data points to be considered if you want to try for perfection - good luck with that.
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Well, if models can't even predict past weather or climate to which there is an existing record for they sure can't predict future weather let alone climate.
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Re:Models are never evidence (Score:4)
We have exactly one planet to test things on.
Models are our best bet for predicting what is going to happen; evidence will only appear when it's too late to do something else.
Re:Models are never evidence (Score:5, Informative)
All of science is a model. Every single thing in science is a model.
Atomic theory? That's a model. Ecosystem balance? Models. Why is the sky blue? We have a model for that. How do eyes and brains turn light into vision? We have an answer, and the answer is a model. How do the planets move? That's a model.
Models are the way we know about the world. We put in the evidence, and out come predictions. We judge the model by the accuracy of the predictions.
Re:Catastrophic man-made global warming... (Score:4, Funny)
And anyway, Jesus built the pyramids as cooling centers for Middle-Eastern senior citizens.
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Not to imply that the major parties actually differ in any meaningful way, but, for the record - The whole "climate change" (vs global warming) spin caught on first in the Blue camp (although, ironically enough, Republican Spin Doctor Frank Luntz came up with the idea, it just failed to catch on amongst the Reds at first).
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For most of the 1970s, nobody knew. So "inadvertent climate modification," while clunky and dull, was an accurate reflection of the state of knowledge.
The first decisive National Academy of Science study of carbon dioxide's impact on climate, published in 1979, abandoned "inadvertent climate modification." Often called the Charney Report for its chairman, Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, declared: "if carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we find] no reason to doubt t
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We were supposed to have an ice-free northwest passage, record-breaking hurricane seasons, and low lying islands were supposed to slip beneath the waves. NONE of it has happened.
Scientists make predictions based on theory. When observations don't match predictions, the theory is modified. This does not happen in climate "science", therefore it is not science.
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Didnt we just have the strongest hurricane ever to hit?
http://www.livescience.com/188... [livescience.com]
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"Water supply fails, you all die."
This is true at every single location on the planet. without water you frigging die even if you are in the most comfortable place in the world.
And that part of the world has had water problems for over 5 centuries. But then so does every other desert.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed his point - If you can't survive for more than a few hours at a time outside, what happens when you lose power for a week?
Answer: Everyone dies. Or at least, a high enough percentage of the population to make the distinction irrelevant.
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Well, IIRC, those old magic books DO predict a future catastrophe, probably somewhere in the Middle East.
Isaiah 13:9 "Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it."
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Quick, name the last thousand minor acts of war committed on our planet - Notice any conspicuous pattern to where they primarily happened? (And yes, smartass, we can get back to dealing with Russia later).
Nothing "racist" about acknowledging that we have one problem region on the globe today, without which we'd all live in a hell of a lot better world. Do those problems stem from race, or from culture, or from religion? Don't care. Erasing th
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We have far more than one 'problem region' on the globe. ... Middle America as a whole, Ukraine (and for that matter the Baltic), Phillipines and Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand parts of China, but it makes no news, so no one cares, Tibet e.g. ... the USA, for that matter but you are so accustomed to the violence there, you won't even realize for a week when the next revolution starts.
But they don't matter that much as they have no oil there where "we" depend on.
Mexico
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised",
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Without the discoveries of the Arabs and Africans before them our current civilization would be nothing.. Civilization come and go, ours will eventually decline as well. Even our civilazation has only done better than ancient Arabia and Africa by a few hundred years. Eventually war tore them apart, and could easily do the same to us.
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africans are not like us. We have the only civilization that is worthy of the name, nobody else on Earth ever came close to it. That is a fact: Europeans >>> anybody else. Europeans are Herrenvolk, and are therefore the only culture that should legitimately rule the world.
That ended so well for you the first two times you tried that shit, Going for a third?
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Some are paid shills, and some simply believe - or at least post - whatever helps them reinforce their self-image or score social points with or for their tribe. But for most I suspect the main motivator is the sunk cost fallacy: they simply don't want to admit being wrong, since at this point that would also mean admitting either dishonesty or stupidity or both.