Scientists Propose Plan To Re-Freeze the Arctic (inhabitat.com) 401
Kristine Lofgren writes: In case you've been under a rock for the past 20 years, the Arctic is melting super fast. Certain *ahem* governments are dragging their feet doing anything about it, which means the planet could be in for a spectacular meltdown within the next 20 years. But a clever bunch of scientists have hatched a plan to re-freeze the Arctic using wind-powered pumps that will bring water to the surface, allowing it to freeze. This new layer of ice could last well into the summer, which is vital, because scientists think summer Arctic ice could be gone by 2030 -- and that causes a whole chain of terrible events that will only make our climate change problem much, much worse. The plan has a $500 billion price tag, but that's pocket change compared to the cost of dealing with an ice-free Arctic. The study has been published in The American Geophysical Union's journal Earth's Future. You can read more about the study via The Guardian.
Climate change deniers (Score:2, Interesting)
When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
Re:Climate change deniers (Score:5, Informative)
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When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
The argument is that it's cyclical and happens regardless of human action. Anyone straight "denying" is just an idiot polarized by the current state of entertainment/politics. The intelligent argument against crazy ideas like this is that companies/people are making a lot of money selling what could very well be snake oil on a process we have very little data on and therefore have very little understanding.
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Already been done ->https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj1G9gqhkYA
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When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
And presumably the other side simply pulls out this 2008 Al Gore video where he predicts that the arctic would be ice-free in 5 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Al Gore is God's gift to "deniers".
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When I get time, I'd like to use satellite photos of the arctic into a time lapse video, play it, then ask "Now, what was it you were saying about climate change being a scam?"
And presumably the other side simply pulls out this 2008 Al Gore video where he predicts that the arctic would be ice-free in 5 years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And if someone actually listens to your video of Gore, he or she will hopefully notice that Gore does not predict anything like that at all - he cites two different researchers, one who says "by 2030", and the other who says "75% chance for the next 5-7 years". The first one is still very much on track. The second one lost his bet - if via the 25% chance or because his modelling was wrong is anyones guess.
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They're becoming activists because the science is being ignored and putting our existence in jeopardy.
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Evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Models aren't evidence for or against a theory. The evidence for AGW is essentially that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that it exists in the upper atmosphere, and that we are increasing the concentration of it in the atmosphere. Very basic physical laws dictate that this will cause warming. You can prove the greenhouse gas part in your basement, to measure the upper atmosphere I'd imagine you'd need a sounding rocket. Your basement will also allow you to demonstrate a substantial positive feedback effect with water vapor. So, easily verified properties of atmospheric gases tell us that AGW must be occurring.
"But wait," you say, "who says that the real world has to match what happens in the laboratory? What if there's some bigger negative feedback loop that we don't know about?" This is a cogent objection. As it happens, that is exactly what we've been looking for (at least, since Keeling [ucsd.edu]). We haven't found one, and we've ruled out all known atmospheric phenomena. Some misunderstood part of the water cycle was probably all that could have saved us; the H2O feedback effect is quite strong. As you can see [energyvanguard.com], the amount of water that can be dissolved in air has a really nasty exponential curve to it, as anyone from the South can doubtless attest.
The science of AGW really is settled. What exactly will happen is where the models come in, and a large part of the modeled uncertainty is because they're giving projections which take into account human responses to climate change. I'm not suggesting that you take any particular action about this, but you may rely on the science being correct, so if your personal view is that that would be a situation requiring action, I would imagine that you would want to be thinking about what to do.
Re: Climate change deniers (Score:4, Insightful)
Enough already.
"NOAA climate fraud" is your hypothesis. Fine. Test it. Collect your evidence, share it and discuss it. What must that evidence consist of?
"Fraud" is going to be documents that show deliberate and deceptive behavior, likely for personal gain. Ok. Youneed to find evidence that demonstrates that tens of thousands of scientists across the entire world and spanning dozens of disciplines are deliberately deceiving the lay public on climate change. These scientists are faking their data, misrepresenting it and are working together to do this to deceive the lay public. Who, exactly, is coordinating this?
Finally, a word about how the NSF grant system works: it's really, really, hard to get funded, and once you do, you must manage the fundsyou receive with great care. It is the distribution of these federal funds that is key -- lying about _anything_ is a serious problem for thelarger institution -- let alone the NSF because Congress (and likely state legislatures) come down on these institutions like a ton of bricks.
Re: Climate change deniers (Score:5, Informative)
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Sometime in the past I posted notes I made when I was calibrating gas chromatography units. Over a decade O2 went down, CO2 and CO went up.
The units varied in location from urban city centers (showed the most) to islands out to sea (showed the least). All declined at about the same proportional rates, though the absolute rates differed.
Re:Climate change deniers (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh? You expected something else?
Holocene Optimum (Score:3)
The rate is going to be unpleasant, but more certain than that is difficult to tell, because among other things it will depend on what we do about it.
"E-Wa" has fascinating geography, and I do recommend to the interested reader the book "Roadside Geology of Washington". The Cascades are of course very active volcanically, and the scars from the Missoula Floods [wikipedia.org] are simply epic. You are correct that the absence of ice where there was ice previously indicates an upward trend over that time period. However, pri
Without even reading the $500 billion plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Without even reading the $500 billion plan, I can tell that there is no way they have though of all the consequences of using 10 million wind powered pumps to bring water to the top for it to freeze.
Re:Without even reading the $500 billion plan... (Score:4, Funny)
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More idiotic than when US scientists suggested to use a huge solar umbrella in the atmosphere to stop the climate change?
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Re:Without even reading the $500 billion plan... (Score:4, Insightful)
Without even reading the $500 billion plan, I can tell that there is no way they have though of all the consequences of using 10 million wind powered pumps to bring water to the top for it to freeze.
And isn't the Arctic ice mostly fresh water? Even if you can get the salt water to freeze, it's going to melt at a much warmer temperature and will do drastically different things to the environment than slowly melting fresh water ice.
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Think rock salt on an ice covered sidewalk.
Re: Without even reading the $500 billion plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the carefully thought out consequences of burning gigatons of ancient carbon?
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That deserves to be modded up
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You think you're going to deploy a wind powered pump in the arctic for $5000 apiece, even at scale? Not if you want that pump to last more than a single season.
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Okay, but the magnitude of the problem we're up against is so hue that anything you can think of that might make a dent in it is going to have associated numbers that make it look completely crazy.
If the numbers don't sound insane, then it can't work.
(Myself, I like the idea of parking nuclear submarines around Antarctica, and using them to power pumping stations to spray seawater in the interior. But I haven't crunched the numbers on that, I'm sure they look deranged as well.)
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Re:Without even reading the $500 billion plan... (Score:4, Funny)
Not gonna happen (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think more accurately: Russia needs oil revenue to balance its budget. If the world stops using oil, Russia stops being a superpower. So they have to fight environmental movements at all costs.
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If the world stops using oil, Russia stops being a superpower.
I guess that's Trump's attitude to climate change neatly explained then isn't it?
It's terrifying... (Score:2)
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That average is not the problem. The big problems are, sudden thaw of the permafrost releasing methane due to a weather event, causing a major short term rise, leading to more methane be released. Also there are solar peak outputs to consider, we just moved out of an ebb and now high solar output is due. So yeah, that average does not even touch extreme weather events, not just earth's but the sun as well. That is what is driving the real concern, if only perfect averages would work on everything, Casinos p
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I'm sure we can rely on you to offer up your bedroom to an immigrant family when the time comes.
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Not going to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the chronology:
1) You're being alarmist, there's no issue.
2) You're being alarmist, this isn't worth spending 500 billion on.
3) The environmental impact of attempting this could be worse than allowing things to progress naturally.
4) Too expensive, nobody goes there anyway, and we don't need polar bears to survive. Shame, though.
5) Well, now it's too late anyway.
I'm actually kind of on board with #3, but I think we really ought to be getting our asses in gear and looking at the impact of mitigation strategies at the 'global environmental engineering' scale, and maybe doing a few local-scale tests to help build better models to aid in the assessments.
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Indeed, there were so many people on this very web site that ranted that the Arctic would never melt.
When did all this weird science denialism on climate start? I first noticed it around 1996 and filed it with crystal healing pyramid power, but the shit really spread.
Re: Not going to happen (Score:3)
People resent being asked to pay more for fuel for their monster trucks.
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People resent being asked to pay more for fuel for their monster trucks.
There was not science denial during the oil shock. Back then the Republican Party was a Party that respected science instead of tea bagging.
The anti-science weirdness today can't be explained as rationally as blaming it on the price of oil especially since we've just come through a recent Saudi driven oil price war designed to put our shale oil producers out of business.
Re:Not going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
...we really ought to be getting our asses in gear and looking at the impact of mitigation strategies at the 'global environmental engineering' scale, and maybe doing a few local-scale tests to help build better models to aid in the assessments.
The idiocy in this is not only in engaging in dubious and expensive schemes that will either not work, may exacerbates the instability of the climate, could be irreversible, might lead to run-away effects etc etc - but we are doing this to avoid having to simply make a few, easy adjustments to our lifestyles, like cut back on brainless consumerism and the myth that the economy must - or even can - grow forever. We are already living on borrowed time; we are using up limited resources and we still resist even thinking about renewable energy - we are only able to feed the 7+ billion people on the planet by spending lots of energy on producing artificial fetilizers (something like 40% of the nitrogen in our bodies now comes from artificial fertilizer - check for yourself). We are already at the point where it would take just 1 year or so of disruption in our chemical industries to produce a worldwide hunger catastrophe, just to put it into a bit of perspective.
All in all, we really do need to be willing to accept changes - wasting effort on hare-brained shemes is stupid. Climate is only one of the big threats we face, and we can to some extent simply adjust to it, but unless we learn to curb overconsumption in a serious way, it won't matter all that much. Call me alarmist if you will, but I'd much rather be ridiculed by morons today, than have my children and grand-children live through the alternatives.
Cost/benefit (Score:2)
The water they pump to the surface has to freeze.. (Score:2, Informative)
What about Arctic precipitation? (Score:2)
There are long-standing speculations about decrease of ice in the Arctic possibly causing more evaporation from this ocean, hence more precipitation around it. Before we go about refreezing the area, let's see if this effect occurs.
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There are long-standing speculations about decrease of ice in the Arctic possibly causing more evaporation from this ocean, hence more precipitation around it.
The big problem with that idea is that water vapor is a GHG. We don't want more evaporation.
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"The big problem with that idea is that water vapor is a GHG. We don't want more evaporation."
Significant evaporation, enough to form clouds, would increase the area's albedo, just as if it were still an ice sheet. Let's see if this effect overpowers the greenhouse effect of water.
Maybe we should just go on without the US (Score:2, Flamebait)
You know what creationism and climate change denial have in common? Nobody outside the US takes them serious.
Maybe it is time to simply cut the loss and leave them behind. Yeah, it's sad but you can't save 'em all.
Can anyone explain how this could even work? (Score:2)
As I understand it, the problem is that X joules of energy enter the earth from sunlight. Y amount of energy leaves. Energy balance is X-Y. Thanks to greenhouse gasses, Y is now smaller. So net energy is being gained by the earth and it is warming up. This is why the ice is melting.
If the wind powered pumps don't affect Y, I don't see how this does anything.
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It sucks because warming removes arctic ice, which no longer reflects sunlight, which causes more warming. The summary suggests that when (in the future) arctic ice goes away completely during the summer, this will be very bad.
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Ah. That's bad. Though I've heard quoted price tags of a mere 10 billion a year or so to inject particles in the upper atmosphere to reflect light away - that sounds like a better idea. The injection stations also don't have to be in the arctic.
500 billion? (Score:2)
Cost (Score:2)
The plan has a $500 billion price tag, but that's pocket change compared to the cost of dealing with an ice-free Arctic.
Wouldn't billions be saved in shipping and transportation expenses if the Arctic was ice-free? That shortens the distance to Asia right?
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That shortens the distance to Asia right?
Nope. The distance between Asia to every other places still remains exactly the same.
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That shortens the distance to Asia right?
Nope. The distance between Asia to every other places still remains exactly the same.
In a pedantic sense, yes.
In a practical sense (per the distance of shipping lanes) perhaps not. But I hardly think ice-free poles, and the accompanying global rise in temperatures and sea-levels, are worth the other consequences. And those include war, mass migration of refugees, shifting of zones of arable land, uncertain survivability of plants moved to different latitudes, and so on.
Last I heard it has been growing (Score:2)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]
Oh geesh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oh geesh (Score:5, Interesting)
Ice reflects substantially more infrared energy back into space than seawater. Lowering the Earth's albedo will MAKE melting ice caps a cause of warming.
Where have we heard this before (Score:2)
or they could use ice_9 (Score:2)
Entropy (Score:2)
The local effect might be cooling, but overall...
What about Iceland? (Score:2)
Last I heard there were four volcanos in Iceland about to blow us into the next ash-cloud ice age. Can we re-purpose these ice fans as volcanic ash blowers?
I read through this plan (Score:2)
The problem is that it releases more greenhouse gasses than it traps. All we can really do is stop using carbon based fuels and wait it out. Or find a new place to live.
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The problem is that it releases more greenhouse gasses than it traps.
This has nothing to do with GHGs. This is about Albedo, and maintenance of ice that partly drives the weather systems upon which we depend.
Cheaper and better plan (Score:2)
So if the United States took this up alone and paid for it; it is a better use of money than:
- the F35.
- paying other countries to buy military equipment from us to prop up jobs.
- Mass Surviellance: this is 1/3rd the cost of JUST the Utah Datacenter
Sea ice vs projections (Score:5, Informative)
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IPCC projections are rarely worst case; they're pretty much a consensus of the AGW proponents vs the contrarians although the latter are much fewer in number and have been for 20+ years.
The cooligans & deniers love to point out when the IPCC warming projections are too high but I haven't seen them readily point out that their Arctic sea ice decline is too low. I have heard a lot of noise about how Antarctic sea is has been increasing (slowly), not so much about the accelerating melt of some important A
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Actually, it also tells you that it's worse than the models predicted.
Re:Sea ice vs projections (Score:5, Interesting)
Just another painfully obvious troll lacking any true skills at the task you have apparently chosen to devote your time to. A simpleton who sees life in only the simplest of terms lacking enough understanding of the world to face the facts head on when it's so much easier to call those more educated than you liars.
Does having your head in the sand and ass in the air make the anal rape more bearable?
So I curse thee thus:
May thou live on the coast and live long enough to get the full brunt of that which thou callest foul and profane. May you end thy days fearfully gripping to top of a telephone pole trying to escape the rising waters. May you get rescued by a boatload of scientists whom immediately throw you overboard when you start spouting off nonsense. And finally may the last thing that passes through your brain be the realization that yes, you were a truly stupid person.
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Climate change is a natural thing that has been happening since long before humans existed and will continue to happen long after humans are gone.
So is the cancer that will kill you.
It won't work, here's why (Score:2)
The plan appears to assume the problem is water transport to the poles. That is, the poles are cold enough but the problem is a lack of water to freeze on the surface.
Yet when there is global warming the first thing that happens is moisture transport increases. More water evaporates into clouds and some of it, more of it, goes to the poles than before.
Thus the long term problem is not a lack of water transport.
The plan is to pull water to the surface. (Score:5, Informative)
Instead, if we pump seawater up and drop it on the top of the ice, it will freeze quickly. So we can increase the thickness of the ice, so it will, hopefully, last longer.
If done on a large scale, however, it will warm the arctic winter, as heat is added to the system in the form of liquid water to be frozen, water surface that is 0 degrees C instead of solid ice at maybe -20 degrees C. The increased ice is probably a net positive for the artctic, but I dislike all these goengineering kludges.
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The critical two words you omitted matter.
One melts and one grows more slowly.
Record low sea ice (Score:2)
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What's your point? Because a ship got stuck in some ice are you inferring there is no Arctic ice melting issue?
Eeek, I hope you're not in a decision making position there.
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So because one ship got stuck in the ice IN THE FUCKING ARCTIC, there's no problem with loss of Arctic ice?
Did you mean this argument seriously, or are you just another Koch Brothers troll?
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In a submarine.
That was an especially cold year and a submarine that couldn't go very deep, but still that shows a massive difference.
Re:Bullshit. Ask "The Polar Ocean Challenge" (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it's not "well understood", oh great, let's just ignore it then and say there's no problem hey?
I can think of a lot of "problems" that are not well understood. They are problems all the same.
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Just plan to pay for it later when the next generation asks why you did it.
lol. I think you best be careful before you punch a hole in reality with sheer irony. You're talking about future generations? You're the cunt that claims there's no problem. You'll still be saying that when the water's lapping around your dumbass ankles.
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So that means "no problem"?
Oh, please!
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And probably about all you're capable of.
Re:Bullshit. Ask "The Polar Ocean Challenge" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that settles it. Nothing to worry about, folks. Just keep consuming those finite resources and let your grandchildren worry about any problems.
Re:Bullshit. Ask "The Polar Ocean Challenge" (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't you get the memo? The resources aren't finite, they're infinite. Oil grows back because it's not fossil fuel. Silly evolutionists, how could it be fossil fuel, the Earth is only 6000 years old!
Well DUH!
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It is our manifest destiny to be fruitful and multiply, to reap the bounties of the earth which were provided for us.
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Actually it was the same shit made up story junk news sources who are climate change deniers who were crying about an ice age in the 70's. Nothing other than a couple of quickly disproved papers ever suggested that an ice age was coming. The problem with man made climate change is that it is happening in a very short time frame and human systems and ecological systems are not robust against the short term change. Geological climate change would not bother us so much because it happens over a long time scal
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Pumping >0C water onto the remaining ice will accelerate the melting
Not in the winter. As a real world example, Canadians will pour water over outside skating rinks during the winter, and it refreshes the ice surface. No Zamboni needed. I read somewhere they heat the water as well. Can any of our Canadian friends let us know - if you are still talking to the crazy Americans?
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Pumping >0C water onto the remaining ice will accelerate the melting
Not in the winter. As a real world example, Canadians will pour water over outside skating rinks during the winter, and it refreshes the ice surface. No Zamboni needed. I read somewhere they heat the water as well. Can any of our Canadian friends let us know - if you are still talking to the crazy Americans?
If the ambient temperature is above freezing, then the ice will melt, whether you put water on it or not. If it is below freezing, then water applied to the ice surface will freeze. If it's windy, it just melts or freezes faster. "Wind chill" just refers to what the temperature feels like to us, not what it actually is.
Of course, artifical ice rinks have refrigeration units that chill the surface that the ice is applied to. So, they can survive even if the ambient temperature is above freezing. Good thing,
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That will refresh the ice surface, but it will also reduce the thickness of the ice if you don't have some form of cooling to compensate. That isn't much of a concern for skating rinks but would completely defeat the purpose for the arctic ice.
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No, not in winter.
The problem in winter is that ice (and snow on top of it) is a good insulator that, once the ice reaches around 1-2m thick causes it to continue to thicken very slowly.
It's one of the reasons why the sea ice minimum is falling faster than the maximum - the arctic winter is cold enough to (almost) completely refreeze every year but that resultant ice isn't thick enough to survive a summer season. That's why there's so mu
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How far back do we want to rewind the clock to "normal"? New York, Boston and Chicago not too long ago used to be under sheets of ice a mile or more thick. Is that "normal"? Should we arbitrarily pick 1950 as the "normal" to rewind the ice clock? Maybe pre-industrial revolution? Who is say having glaciers is "normal" at all?
You probably want to have it at some point where humans can work live and feed themselves. We -very likely, but the jury is still out - had a condition called "snowball Earth" long ago. We also had another age of coal forming with high CO2 and O2 levels. Not likely we'd want to go back to either of those ages.
Sounds like you are of the mind that "Oh well, we'll all be raptured in my lifetime, so what, me Worry?"
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Typical Christian "trash the hotel room" mentality. That's why I worry about them more than Muslims.
Islam is big, and getting bigger fast. Worry about Christianity later. The people ru[ni]ning things aren't really Christians, even when they say they are.
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I sometimes read about how American Christians refuse to accept evolution theory in class rooms and even teach creation next to evolution.
In my country they do no longer teach evolution and even teach an alternative history that skips all former empires and let it start with Mohamed. I even hear non Muslim kids recite the Koran. Why is that? Because our schools are now teaching Islam and have changed the content of the lessons in such a way that no Imam will be offended. This is in a traditional Catholic co
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The U.S. already lowered carbon emissions enough to meet the Kyoto targets [wattsupwiththat.com], years ago.
From the very beginning of the article you cited:
New EIA data shows USA inadvertently meets 1997 Kyoto protocol CO2 emission reductions without ever signing on thanks to a stagnant economy. Lowest level of CO2 emissions since 1994.
So, let's not gloat, m'kay?
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America is so awesome it lowers CO2 without even trying, and you say not to gloat? Whoa man, that some seriously absurd spin you have there! Doesn't matter HOW you meet the goals, as long as they are met.
America either isn't awesome because it's failing, or this is a temporary detente and we'll be right back up the curve in a moment.
I can see where there may be some danger since Trump is fixing the economy, but I wouldn't worry at the move to solar and other renewable sources is inevitable.
Yeah, but it can be put off for some time yet, and it may have already been put off too long.
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It's not a problem. It's natural variability.
"Natural" variability is subject to the inputs into the system. If you removed sufficient heat from the system, your natural variability would be a giant ice covering, miles deep, which extended very far south, below where New York City now lies.
As far as we know, a mere 2 degree change in the axial tilt of the Earth over 10s of 1000s of years can cause this to flip one way or the other.
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Wind power efficiency is really low.
When used mechanically, wind power efficiency is very high. You can build a wind turbine over 80% efficient out of trash in your back yard.
In addition to that that much energy WILL slow down the winds and will cause a different type of climate cataclysmic fuck up.
[citation needed]
(I happen to know that this is false, so I'd really, really love to see you look for that citation and shake your tiny fist at google.)
Also, the number of birds killed by the wind power and the number of sea lives perished due to the changed natural ocean flows will be much greater than the biodiversity lost due to the climate change.
The number of birds flying around the Arctic is very low. The point of maintaining the ice is maintaining the usual ocean currents.
For the record, warmer earth means more habitable land on earth.
[citation needed]
In fact, we don't know how much habitable land we'll end up with, we only
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1) Thermodynamics wins - to freeze the arctic they will actually generate more heat increasing overall heating of the planet.
Only if you think the Earth is a closed system. It is not.
The point to having more ice coverage is to reflect more light back into space. Thus taking the energy contained within that light away from Earth.
2) The arctic has thawed before. This is a cycle.
The fact that something has happened before does not make it a cycle. And the fact that it is happening again does not mean it is part of a natural cycle.
In the past, Earth was completely covered in ice. It was also completely ice free. Humans will find it difficult to survive in anywhere near our cur