Another 150,000 Years of CO2 Data 809
An anonymous reader writes, "We've known since 2004 that the past 440,000 years have shown atmospheric carbon dioxide levels varying between about 200 and 300 ppmv, the difference in extremes being the difference between advancing ice sheets and our current clime. In 2005 the data were analyzed back to 650,000 years and were found to be much the same — Al Gore was proud to be able to show that then-new analysis in his 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth. Now all 800,000 years of the ice column have been analyzed, and the data show much the same pattern, according to the researcher: 'When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range' — to 380 ppmv."
An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & Al (Score:5, Interesting)
O'Reilly points out that if igorants in a 3rd-world country like Brazil can wean it off oil and onto ethanol, there is no reason why people in the supposedly most technologically advanced country (i.e., the USA) cannot do the same. O'Reilly claims that the reason for America's still being dependent on foreign oil is that Washington is in the pockets of Big Oil: ExxonMobile, Chevron, and Shell.
Slow Reactions (Score:2, Interesting)
My grip with "An Inconvenient Truth" (Score:5, Interesting)
What about solar activity? (Score:1, Interesting)
Un-natural? (Score:2, Interesting)
How is it un-natural just because we influenced it? Aren't we a part of nature? Matter (which includes the elements composing Carbon and Oxygen) cannot be created or destroyed, so our behavior is simply re-arranging pre-existing (or "natural") matter. That act is neither good nor bad, normal, nor abnormal, but has (arguably) measureable consequences.
Before you mod me a troll... My personal view is that we need to be good stewards of the Earth we are given, therefore if we are causing damage then we need to adjust our behavior. For example, we changed farming practices after learning the effects of soil erosion (geological and economic) - now it is a problem we know that we have influence over and encourage others to follow sound practices. I am beginning to view atmospheric conservation the same way.
With farming, nothing changed until the damaging practices made a key resource (tillable soil) scarce. I don't think we can expect any change in human/industrial behavior until climate change gets to the point of causing tangible economic impact. What is the atmospheric equivalent of having all your topsoil blow away?
We argue over whether people BELIEVE it is happening - the real problem is whether people CARE, regardless of who is right. Science and research can educate forever, but until a problem affects people's wallet or the food on their plate, they won't care and they won't change.
Climate Change on your Laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Re:800,000 years of data insufficient (Score:3, Interesting)
But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Such an assertion implies that the following person does not exist:
Not religious
Not a bigot
Not a sexist
Not patriotic
Either no passions, or passionate about something but not unrealistic or defensive about it.
It is actually possible for someone to have no meaning in their life and be okay with it. Such a person would not show up on the radar though by definition. If they are not predisposed to group-think or following, it is likely they will be alone or conduct their life within a very small circle, such as their immediate family.
But I do have a question about your assertion. Do you feel that if a person becomes addicted to something, that addiction can replace their need for a religion? ie, alcoholism, drugs, Worlds of Warcraft?
Re:That's it! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's funny that you were marked insightful when, in fact, you were anything but.
Going to Mars and working on terraforming there will help us learn many skills that we will need to unfuck Terra, not least because the effort itself will drive technology.
Re:50 years from now, Gore will be considered a he (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, 10 years ago, there was a legitimate question about warming, now it seems the data is backing up the theory.
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to see how many of them pointed to the last two years of above normal Atlantic hurricanes as "proof" of global warming? Most experts stated that the Atlantic was in a natural peak hurricane cycle.
So far this year is running below normal. I guess global warming is over.
In this case both sides seem equally willing to abuse science to prove their point.
Skeptical (Score:4, Interesting)
Graph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide [wikipedia.org] levels were 10x what they are now
"Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day."
Plus, mars is warming with receding ice caps. Maybe solar effects are what is driving our change? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/336237
I am always a bit skeptical, since I was the generation that had both Igloo effect and global warming in the same textbook in middle school...
Re:Bad science (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, studies of just this have indicated that changes in the sun's output account for about 30% of the changes in global temperature. That's significant to be sure, but still leaves 60% to be accounted for from other sources.
And even at the most basic, think-about-it-for-five-seconds common sense level, there are clearly at least two major contributors to global temperature: 1) the amount of energy received by the sun and 2) the amount of energy retained. Or does it drop to a few degrees K where you live at night when you're only receiving energy from the stars? Do you not believe in greenhouses?
Re:Carbon Dioxide and Climate: causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, your argument has become: a change of 0.28% is responsible for all heat increase over the last century, despite the fact that solar cycles far better follow the actual temperature profile of the same period of time.
So, as I've stated in other responses, you must ignore the fact that (in the article you're commenting on) 800,000 years of data show vast (50%) swings in CO2 concentration without human intervention, but human produced CO2 must be causing the current warming trend of the last three decades/12 decades/future 10 decades (based on your current belief).
And it causes more hurricanes, except for this year, when it causes fewer.
Re:Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait -- are you saying that their measurements are in error, or are you saying that you believe the measurements, but would like more explanation of the process they reflect?
The article didn't actually state this, but it is accepted science at this point. All the article really stated was that the level of CO2 is drastically higher now than it has been within the visible past.
It does. It works both ways.
These are fascinating links. The first is to a discussion on usenet, and the second is to an ice age causation theory from 1941 (which may well be true -- it's just that that being true doesn't magically mean that the connection between CO2 and climate is untrue). I would find them more compelling if they were links to, say, papers published in peer reviewed journals which cast the "CO2 theory" of global warming into question. I can understand that you might have trouble [sciencemag.org] finding one of those, of course, since there aren't any to speak of.
(I know, I know, the scientists are all league in a secret cabal. They all know it's a lie, but they keep saying it is so they can get their grant money. The global warming "skeptics" like Bjørn Lomberg are in it for the pure love of truth, but the poor fellows just can't get their reports published because it threatens the monied orthodoxy. I know. I know.)
The realclimate.org rebuttal you linked to above is actually pretty good on its own. For the peanut gallery, I'll quote the nut of it: "The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data. ... It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Moreover, conservationism is an element of traditional Christian morality and social values - preserving God's creation. You are correct that it is not an element of the messianic, Rapture-anticipating values of contemporary Christian evangelism and fundamentalism.
I wasn't clear about the name thing. I mean "conservation" sensibly follows from "conservative" values, not the other way around.
From the Wikipedia article about conservatives:
"In early liberal philosophy 'Nature' and the environment were treated as a resource to be exploited: value derived from their human use, in accordance with the labor theory of value. Most early conservatives, however, saw the value of Nature as inherent. Both strands have influenced conservative politics in many countries, since the 19th century. The etymology emphasises the close correlation between the early conservation movement and conservative ideals."
The Repubican party definitely has a history in conservation. Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, lead conservation efforts. While he was a progressive conservative as conservatives go, he still brought nature as an issue to the forefront of American politics.
There is an interesting book about environmentally-minded conservatives [amazon.com]
Re:That's A Rather Inconvenient Truth. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Egypt may be a bad example, because the climate change in the Sahara was naturally occuring, but if I'm not mistaken Mesopotamia -- the famed "Fertile Crescent" -- is a good example of what irrigation and deforestation can do to a region if that region is not capable of supporting it. The problem was simply that the region doesn't receive enough rainfall to easily replace what was taken. Most of Europe was treated equally badly as Mesopotamia, but because it receives more rainfall it was able to sustain itself.
I think Brazil receives more than enough rain fall to sustain itself, if as you say it is done intelligently. The only reason it was ever in danger was because of modern industrial techniques that allow completely flagrant abuse of natural resources.
Not so long as the governemt has your tax dollars. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here comes the flood... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, I see we've progressed from "global warming is all a lie, so shut up" to "there's legitimate disagreement among scientists, the climate is very complex, you can't possibly understand it all, maybe it's not even humans anyway, so shut up" to "of course there's a problem, but the solution is very complex, your simpleminded solutions will never work out, you're part of the problem anyway, so shut up." It's progress, of a kind
I didn't really pretend to offer any solution -- like I said, I think we (by which I mean everyone on the planet right now) are fucked regardless of what we (by which I mean the governmental leaders who have some limited power to set policy which will reduce our CO2 emissions) do.
Since you, er, asked, I think that the solution (to the extent that one exists) lies in legal changes that forcibly change the behavior of wide ranges of people (e.g. high gas taxes), and that change the nature of the most harmful technology we're currently using (low-mileage cars and coal-burning power plants being the low-hanging fruit). Carbon sequestration will also be very important. Policy and international agreement is how we successfully attacked the ozone hole [livescience.com]. It wasn't solved by environmental people making a world-wide decision to forgo CFC-using aerosols.
Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Agriculture does not consume "topsoil which takes up to hundreds of years to build". Sure, you can bulldoze it out of the way or arrange for it to blow away, but that's stupidity rather than agriculture that's doing that. As an example, the part of England that I was born in was originally natural deciduous forest, and over the last 2000 years was farmed first for trees, then for a mixture of everything (with cows doing their bit to maintain the topsoil), and now mostly for barley. If your argument was correct we'd have had a dustbowl in the 1700s. It didn't happen - and in fact even where people have been growing wheat on chalk (with only a few inches of topsoil, and using mostly nitogen fertilizer in place of the aforementioned organic one) what soil there is is incredibly resilient.
There's a "when it's gone it's gone" argument for saying that the Brazilians should preserve their old-growth forest; but it's a bit rich coming from Europeans (in my case) who have already got rid of theirs.
Thomas Malthus was wrong when he said we'd run out of food in the 1800s, and you are too.
Re:800,000 years of data insufficient (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. How do you calibrate instruments when there cannot possibly be reliable standards to compare against? Other proxy data? Scientists who argued against global warming relied upon satellite data. Scientists arguing the other side said that the dataset was tainted because adjustments were not made to accomodate orbital degradation (i.e., the influence of Earth's gravity on the satellite's path). If such a minute change can lead to drastically different results, the reliability of these ice core studies must be viewed with a high degree of skepticism.
Also, considering that the Earth is approximately 4.5 - 5 billion years old, ice core data covering only an 800,000 year period (about 0.02% of the Earth's lifespan) the dataset is too small to draw such large conclusions. Indeed, the fact that there is only 800,000 years of available data clearly indicates that the Earth was so warm that there were no icecaps before that time.
In a lecture (ahref=http://www.msu.edu/~larsong/isp203/Lecture_ 11.pdfrel=url2html-22472 [slashdot.org]http://www.msu.edu/~larson g/isp203/Lecture_11.pdf>), Prof. Grahame J. Larson of Michigan State writes:
Thus, we have small cycles of warming and cooling within much longer warm and cold periods.
Presently, the average global surface temperature is approximately 15 C. Over the life of the Earth, this temperature has fluctuated from 12 to 22 C. ahref=http://www.scotese.com/climate.htmrel=url2ht ml-22472 [slashdot.org]http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm> We are thus coming out of a cold period. Whether that is good or bad is hard to say; but, I suspect it is likely to be more beneficial in the long run for mankind and other forms of life.
Re:So.. Are we doomed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well first of all, you could try reading the article again... It doesn't say we are bringing about dangerous climate changes (which is what the media and politicians will say it says), it says we "could be bringing about dangerous climate changes". Yes, it also doesn't say we won't bring about dangerous climate changes, and virutally no one is arguing So claiming we are 'doomed' is a bit premature (except in the sense that eventually, human interference or not, the Earth's environment will naturally change to something we cannot survive in).
Second, climate change is nothing new. Yes, it unfortunately happens too slowly for us to have a collective memory of it happening (after a few generations of an unusually stable climate, we begin to think that the current climate is 'normal' and 'unchanging'). But it does happen more often than one would think. The little ice age may not have been that big compared to other changes (including those that humans have faced in the past), but it had a tremendous impact on human civilization. Yet despite the fears of those living at the time, there was no apocalypse. The human race was able to adapt, and I'm fairly certain we (or our children or our grandchildren or whoever has to face the next disaster) will be able to adapt as well, regardless of what they have to face (a climate changed by greenhouse gases, a climate changed by the sun's output, a climate changed by a few major volcanic eruptions, or whatever).
Finally, with regard to your Katrina question, tell me where you live and I'm sure I can find some potential natural disaster that could kill you and your family. Does that make you dumb for living there? Actually, since we can usually detect hurricans for some time before they hit land, they acutally are not all that dangerous compared to other disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, crippling blizzards, tornadoes, etc.). You just have to follow certain precautions (for instance if you are told a category 5 storm is headed to your city and your house happens to be at or below sea level, GET THE ROYAL FUCK OUT OF THERE!!!!).
If you can afford to drive..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out their faq [terrapass.com] for more info.
The changes we ought to make aren't that extreme or terribly expensive -- $15 extra for a flight is about what the TSA tacks onto your ticket for passenger harassment, er security.
Re:An Inconvenient Agreement: Bill O'Reilly & (Score:3, Interesting)
Cattle just eat the top part of the grass.
Sheep eat the grass down to the ground, which damages the grass, but doesn't usually kill it off entirely, at least not if pasture rotation is practiced.
But goats pull up the roots, and that kills grass outright. (D'oh!)
And without ground cover (not necessarily trees -- grass is better for retaining topsoil and moisture), any dry region can be transformed into a desert in a very few years.
Re:Slashdot needs more tags (Score:3, Interesting)
Please correct me if I'm wrong. But I didn't think that science worked on consensus. I thought science worked on verification of repeatable tests. No consensus necessary. As soon as you rely on "consensus" to determine the truth, aren't you stepping more into the realm of politics than science?
In one of his speeches [crichton-official.com] Michael Crichton (yes, that one) had some really interesting commentary on the value of consensus in science. Here's the relevant quote:
That's pretty compelling. Is he wrong? Isn't being skeptical of claims also part of the job of science? Does the consensus of climate scientists trump normal scientific skepticism? If so, is that ok with you?