Study Finds World Warmth Edging to Ancient Levels 534
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a decades-long study by NASA scientists. According to the research, global temperatures are reaching highs not seen in thousands of years. From the article: "One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature change there is indicative of global temperature change. Therefore, by inference, the world as a whole is now as warm as, or warmer than, at any time in the Holocene. According to Lea, 'The Western Pacific is important for another reason, too: it is a major source of heat for the world's oceans and for the global atmosphere.'"
Save the Universe! (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to the machine (Score:2)
Holo-(s)cene? Ohhhh boy. Cue the Matrix jokes...
Oh no! (Score:2)
An Inconvenient Truth (Score:4, Informative)
If you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth [imdb.com], yet, do try. Like Al Gore, it's a bit clunky, but there's a lot of truth in there and shouldn't be discounted just because you may not like the presenter.
My belief is, we'll keep right on going in this direction until we feel sufficient pain* to stop. Famine and flooding will certainly increase the likelihood of conflict. Darfur as depicted in the film was an eye opener, the severe drought which may be caused by warming now appears more likely the root of conflict as people scrabble for remaining water and land.
It may become the view that USA and Europe, have had it good long enough and they should cut down on emissions first. It will come to a head when cities like Shanghai are under water and each country is blaming the other for the fine mess things are in. Those who have dipped deepest and longest into the carbon fuels trough the will have an uncomfortable time of it.
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I've gotta disagree with you there. Those who have the stongest economies* will have the less uncomfortable time of it. People can point fingers and complain all they want, but in the end, the quality of life will remain highest for those who have the best economies.
*This doesn't necessarily correlate directly with those countries who have had the longest dependence on fossil fuels. But it's
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I've gotta disagree with you there. Those who have the stongest economies* will have the less uncomfortable time of it. People can point fingers and complain all they want, but in the end, the quality of life will remain highest for those who have the best economies
I take it you weren't alive in 1973.
Those with the furthest to fall, will fall and it will not be a pleasant experience for anyone. With the astounding energy dependence of the USA I can't see it going very comfortably. Perhaps this is why
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The writers of the study entitled it this because that was the most 'interesting' scenario they modeled, the others (and there were many) weren't nearly as spectacular, some even showed a decrease in temperature.
Regardless of what the study showed, the writers only believe that global temperatures will only rise 1-3C in the next 50 years (which is how long it should t
Mod parent up (Score:2)
The MOST Inconvenient Truth (Score:2)
It appears that it has been both much warmer and much colder at different times in the past.
This time we're getting warmer, some people want to blame, some people want to do something.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain how this expected behaviour is really a problem. Sure we might be causing it this time, but it was probaly gonna do this anyway.
Lets look at what a 5C temperature change will bring. My limited understanding is it will shi
Re:The MOST Inconvenient Truth (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason it is a problem is that we aren't really prepared for it.
Well, sure, but the rate matters. A ten meter sea level rise over a thousand years means cities gradually pull back from the coasts. A ten meter sea level rise over a hundred years means cities are abandoned, causing national and international distrubances due to displaced persons etc.
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Yea verily!
I acknowledge that temperatures are changing. My question is harder: wh
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You misspelled chunky.
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nice dreamy view of the world... too bad it's not realistic.
WE will keep going in a direction that makes the rich more money. Plain and simple fact. IF thousands of people die each day because of an action that is still making some rich assholes richer, the direction will not change until those rish assholes are afraid for their own lives
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Which, hopefully, won't occur 5 years after we're experiencing catastrophic changes and can no longer change what we're doing; or have it help.
The Ostrich Algorithm can bite you in the ass.
Cheers
Full Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
Sep. 25, 2006
A new study by NASA scientists finds that the world's temperature is reaching a level that has not been seen in thousands of years.
The study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., along with scientists from other organizations concludes that, because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which has lasted nearly 12,000 years. An "interglacial period" is a time in the Earth's history when the area of Earth covered by glaciers was similar or smaller than at the present time. Recent warming is forcing species of plants and animals to move toward the north and south poles.
Image right: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows average temperatures from 2001-2005 compared to a base period of temperatures from 1951-1980. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and purple indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA
The study used temperatures around the world taken during the last century. Scientists concluded that these data showed the Earth has been warming at the remarkably rapid rate of approximately 0.36 Fahrenheit (0.2 Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years.
"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels of human-made pollution," said Hansen. In recent decades, human-made greenhouse gases have become the largest climate change factor. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and warm the surface. Some greenhouse gases, which include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, occur naturally, while others are due to human activities.
Image left: Because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels seen in the last 12,000 years. This color-coded map shows a progression of changing global surface temperatures from 1880 to 2005, the warmest ranked year on record. Dark red indicates the greatest warming and dark blue indicates the greatest cooling. Click image to view animation. Credit: NASA
The study notes that the world's warming is greatest at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and it is larger over land than over ocean areas. The enhanced warming at high latitudes is attributed to effects of ice and snow. As the Earth warms, snow and ice melt, uncovering darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, a process called a positive feedback. Warming is less over ocean than over land because of the great heat capacity of the deep-mixing ocean, which causes warming to occur more slowly there.
Hansen and his colleagues in New York collaborated with David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of UCSB to obtain comparisons of recent temperatures with the history of the Earth over the past million years. The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments.
Image left: Data from this study reveal that the Earth has been warming approximately 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years. Credit: NASA
One of the findings from this collaboration is that the Western Equatorial Pacific and Indian Oceans are now as warm as, or warmer than, at any prior time in the Holocene. The Holocene is the relatively warm period that has existed for almost 12,000 years, since the end of the last major ice age. The Western Pacific and Indian Oceans are important because, as these researchers show, temperature c
Here in Upstate (Score:3, Funny)
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I have a mate who performs hydrological computer modelling for my local water company. Flooding in any one area is usually categorised as due to storms of a severity occuring either "once in few years", "once in 10 years", "once in 20 years" etc.
He says that like all water companies, they've now had to move up each storm category because storms of a severity which
Those Ancient Internal combustion engines ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Are humans responsible for the shrinking polar ice caps on Mars as well?
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First of all, it's not temperatures that are important at all from a human standpoint. It's change in temperatures. So, an Earth on averate 10 degrees C warmer than it is today is
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It makes sense because we are being told that humans are causing the temps to "explode" over the last hundred years or so. But how then could the temps be warmer 10+K years ago? Why were the temps so high back then?
They weren't - they were colder. All they're saying is that they've examined evidence of temperatures over that period, and this is the warmest time in the entire period. They haven't reached any definite conclusions about earlier periods, although their tentative conclusions are that now is t
Wrong...frikkin'....question!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is the same question I keep seeing get asked over and over again. Here's the answer: it doesn't freaking matter. Here are two questions that I think people should spend more time mulling over:
1) Do we, as a species, WANT global temperatures to reach levels not seen since the Holocene period ?
2) If the answer to the above is "No", is there anything that we, as a species, can do to help PREVENT that from occurring?
How we got here doesn't matter. What we do now does. Some think we're helpless and that the climate's gonna do what the climate's gonna do whether or not they buy an SUV, so they buy an SUV.
Personally, I disagree.
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The holocene period is the period since the last ice age and temperatures are still moving towards the maximum of this interglacial. The global temperatures have been gradually rising during the entire holocene. In some interglacials before the previous, exceptionally cold ice age, global temperatures were slightly higher than they are now, and lions and forest elephants were to be found in northern Euro
Becasue we know (Score:2)
Return of the Old Air (Score:4, Interesting)
All that spells "extinction", or at best "civilization collapse".
Re:Return of the Old Air (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm buying ocean front property, in Wyoming (Score:3, Interesting)
And if you want to make them wealthy, buy a lot of land that will still BE land.
New Orleans is in a very BAD long term position, amortising over 30 years, you're likely to find your real-estate holdings underwater. (If you want to see how bad it can get, just look at the Champlain sea and the fact that the mid western praries are prime flat growing land because they were UNDERWATER.)
Earth is hot (Score:2)
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Its not like the earth is going to go supernova or anything.
Yeah, but that won't stop someone from claiming it will and lobbying for legislation. Cripes, don't give them ideas.
the most media-hyped environmental issue of all (Score:2, Insightful)
He's right. This issue is be
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Man, that's the first time this phrase has *ever* been used to reference something that Inhofe has said. Usually we (Oklahomans) have to apologize for him when in learned company. And trying to imagine him "focusing on the science" is a strangely comical mental exercise.
This issue is being played so much by the media it is hard to get honest science.
Please. So the media is somehow controlling the puppet strings of the reviewers, authors, and reviewers of Nature, Science, and hundreds
I've got a deal for everyone (Score:2)
We would earn millions.
It's what makes this country great (Score:2)
This is what makes our country great! We can sit around and argue all day and not have to accomplish anything!
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So who wants to be a cave man? (Score:2)
1)Stop burning all fossil fuels period. That means, we halt all energy generation and transportation not powered by wind, water or animals.
2) Stop tearing down trees and pouring concrete. Trees convert CO2 to O2 and concrete reflects energy while killing trees.
3) Halt any process, manufacturing or otherwise that produces greenhouse gases especially CO2, fluorocarbons & methane. After billions die and all economies are ruined we won't even be able t
Ecuador is the answer (Score:2)
We'll all move to Ecuador. It'll still be warm there, right?
I, for one,... (Score:4, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura [wikipedia.org]
So then doesn't that mean ... (Score:3, Interesting)
They're farming in Greenland again. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,151
There's more to it than just hot weather: WAR (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.grist.org/pdf/AbruptClimateChange2003.
"There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century. Because changes have been gradual so far, and are projected to be similarly gradual in the future, the effects of global warming have the potential to be manageable for most nations...
1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production
2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts
3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess
As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed as defense priorities shift and the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor.
This scenario poses new challenges for the United States, and suggests several steps to be taken:
Darfur as an example (Score:3, Interesting)
The two groups here are settled African-speaking agriculturalists, and semi-nomadic Arabic speakers.
As desertification takes its toll, the arable land is less and less, and hence the nomads start to encroach on the farmers. The defining event was the failing rains and ensuing famine in 1983 and 1984.
Of course, as with most human conflicts, the reasons are complex, and there are other factors contributing to this, such as regional powers meddling with
Save the Northwest Tree Octups (Score:5, Funny)
one millionth of earth history? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm quaking in my boots.
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:5, Informative)
It probably took you longer to post that question than it took me to find that answer.
=Smidge=
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I bet it took longer to write that snide comment than to to find that answer.
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Ha! I just drag the little "/." icon in my Firefox address bar to the link bar, and I've bookmarked them. Suck it, Trebeck.
RTFP (Score:2)
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:5, Informative)
To some extent it is also possible to measure even longer trends of several millions years using a few methods which have varying degrees (haha) of accuracy. Studying the geological effects on rock (i.e. calculating sea level height by erosion caused on rocks which were on the surface at a known point in time) is one of the most common.
What about tectonics? (Score:2)
I would think that plate tectonics would really disrupt any attempt to determine global sea level this way. We find aquatic fossils on mountain tops not because the sea lev
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"Perhaps historically, when the temperature goes up, Co2 is released into the atmosphere."
Yes, it can be self-reenforcing but you'd have to ask how did the temp go up in the first place? Unless the sun suddenly swelled for no known reason the only mechanism would be greenhouse gases. Methane could
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I could point out a few contrived examples, but instead, I'll just let you deduct from here.
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From the article:
"The California researchers obtained a record of tropical ocean surface temperatures from the magnesium content in the shells of microscopic sea surface animals, as recorded in ocean sediments."
. .
When applied over thousands of years, not bad. It is clearly warmer now than during the last ice age, innit?
When applied over the past thirty years the margin is large
Temperature is a poor measure of warming (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather than try look for temperature indicators, changes in amounts of ice are a far better indicator of g
More Data (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, as you mention, there is a margin of error. However, by a happy chance of mathematics, the more data you get, the more confident you become that the temperature was within so many standard deviations of the mean. The bell curve won't change shape, in fact you want it to stay the same. And if it does, that means, on average, the temperature or whatever was in and around the mean value.
Basically if you get enough data, i.e. do enough experiments, you can tell the doubters to stick their unsubstanciated opinion where the maths don't shine.
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Determining temperatures from millions of years ago is complex, but irrelevant here.
This article references the holocene; the last 10,000 years or so. "Historical" data readings properly refer to cases where someone looked at a thermometer and wrote it down, and only go back only as far as the thermometer, about 150 years. Beyond that, we must look at "proxy" records, chiefly tree-ring sizes and the molecular composition of ice-cores, which go back 2000 and 8000 years respectively. As far as the range of
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:4, Insightful)
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50% Insightful
50% Troll
TrollMods can't stand the light of day, so they prefer a thicker Greenhouse layer.
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Handler P., and K. Andsager, 1994: El-Niño, Volcanism, and Global Climate. Human Ecology, 22, 37-57
This presents one possible argument. There are others. Some have funding from here, some from there.. Almost every scientist worth his lab coat will include the magic expression "Needs More Study" somewhere his peers (and grant committee) can see.
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And even if accurate, facts are usually pretty easy to abuse into supporting a political position.
Consider. These guys want you to believe the Earth is at unprecedented highs, thus we MUST panic and DO something. Something usually being defined as harmful to Western Civilization. Note that Kyoto would only limit CO2 emmissions from advanced Western nations yet allow China and the 3rd world to spew unlimited amounts of the stuff.
No
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't actually believe there is any evidence of England's wine production threatening France. English wine has a long history [englishwineproducers.com], with the historical peak of English wine production occuring with the arrival of the wine loving Normans during the medieval warm period. The Domesday book, a census taken at that time, recorded 42 vineyards in England, all restricted to southern England, and mostly coastal southern England. It can hardly have been a threat to French wine production given that vast amounts of imported wine were available in England during that time. Wine production in England declined after that, possibly due to some climatic cooling, and possibly also due to changing cultural factors (such as an increasing taste for beer and ale), and was practically non-existent through to about the 19th century. Since then there have been various flirtations with wine growing in England, and a flowering since about 1950. There are currently far more vineyards in England than at any time in history, currently over 400 - about 10 times the number of medieval England - and extending further north than at any previous time. From this we can, at best, conclude that the medieval warm period was probably warmer than the 13th to 20th century, but then we knew that, and historical temperature reconstructions clearly show that [wikipedia.org] anyway. If you're going to consider volume of production and location of vineyards as a good proxy data source for climate, however, then you would have to conclude, given the vastly increased volume and more northerly extent of modern wine production in England, that it is warmer today than it was in the medieval warm period - again, as historical temperature reconstructions show. And let's be honest, wine growing is hardly a clear sign of a warm climate in the area the wine is grown. Canada has a large wine industry, and there are even vineyards in Alaska [denaliwinery.com]!
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Thanks but no thanks. I prefer to spread FUD and rumors.
Enough is enough /.! We are better than this! (Score:5, Insightful)
People who keep repeating that climate change is a conspiracy remind me of someone who has just been told they have a cancer and are in denial. WAKE UP! Ugh.
And another thing, how have we come to such a situation where these anti-evolutionist climate change deniers congregate to /.?
Not only do their numbers seem to be increasing, but I see people after all this time still engaging their mindless trolls!
This is the 21st century, we are a global society and as such I am personally confident that it is not a forgone conclusion that the human race is destined for a 'Bladerunner' future dystopia. However, the first step in avoiding such a fate is to acknowledge the true state of our reality. (...cue the trolls to say I'm somehow advocating the downfall of western civilization) ugh...
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Just because you can't see any clear motivation, doesn't mean their isn't one.
Their motivation may stem from any of the following:
Re:Enough is enough /.! We are better than this! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, compare that to the opposite view (that climate change is not happening). Here there is a quite understandable incentive to lie, since many of the corporations whose use of fossil fuels is the alleged cause of climate change are extremely valuable funding sources.
Both groups make claims, more or less, to scientific credibility and objective truth: one is claiming X and the other not X. (I should say that many of the claims are only qualified support: "studies support X" rather than "X is true", etc.)
One then has to make a choice. One view, the absolutist one, is that no conclusions are trustworthy for the reasons you stated and I expanded on.
Another (potentially error-prone) approach requires making a choice and determining who is more likely to be correct. With this in mind, choosing the group that has the least motivation to lie (rather than no motivation) seems like a plausible strategy.
Re:Enough is enough /.! We are better than this! (Score:5, Insightful)
When a politician lies, they get elected. And *maybe* impeached later on. (Bill Clinton)
When a corporation lies, they lose a tiny fraction of the income generated by the lie. (Enron, Big Tobacco, Microsoft)
When a scientist lies, they get about a year or two before they're caught. At which point they lose all standing among fellow scientists, get barred from all reputable journals, and often lose their university/institute jobs.
Summarized: when a scientist gets caught in a lie, their life is over. When a corporation is caught in a lie, they lose a small part of their illegitimate gains. Who has more incentive to lie?
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One word: funding.
Have we lost faith in the scientific process? Do we disbelieve that it is possible to make hypotheses and discover through investigation the nature of our reality?
Um, I take it that most people are just fed up with scientists and the entire global warming debate at all. They've been fedup since shortly after global w
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Credible? Or possible? Its possible that most scientists are left wing and support Kyoto because it has "socialist" politics. But if you can prove scientists are "mostly" left wing politically you then need to prove that:
I know you believe t
Mythbuster (Score:3, Informative)
RealClimate was started and is run by some of the best climate researchers on the planet, the study in TFA is by Hansen [wikipedia.org], yet another respected scientist that claims politicians have recently attempted to gag him [google.com.au].
The scientists predicted an ice age [realclimate.org] myth was made popular by a novel (ie: a work of fiction). A certain senator [realclimate.org] was so impressed with the novel that
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:4, Funny)
No, I'm just so disillusioned by society that I don't think anything is done honestly anymore.
Assuming you're right, that means you're probably lying since you're part of society. Assuming you're wrong, means you're mistaken. Thus, your opinion kind of defines itself as irrelevant, huh?
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Nice attempt to paint his comment as like unto Epimenides' Paradox [wikipedia.org], but it fails in that "honesty" and "truthfulness" are not the same thing. All lies are dishonest, but not all dishonesty is wholly untruthful. Furth
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How can we evaluate all the data if it is not present in the article?
If no data is given for a study we can't evaluate the data and you can ignore it if you're following the scientific method.
A list of broad, sweeping, generalizations about the way the planet is changing is not data.
The article linked to the study, which does contain the numbers including error and sources.
I really disapprove of the way the article talks about how the seas are heating up and then segeways into OH MY GOD GLOBAL WA
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:4, Insightful)
How can we evaluate data which is probably at least partially false. Several times studies like this have been caught ignoring data that didn't fit the viewpoint they were trying to advance. Several times studies have been discounted because big oil/tobacco backed them (even tho facts are facts, right?).
Ahh, but this data and the methodologies are presented and they are supported by hundreds of other studies that found the same.
Long term- science works- facts are facts. Short term- it is subject to group thinking, politics and even basically religious belief that certain concepts are right.
It has been several decades now that we've been looking at this issue and the community and studies do a good job of showing certain reliable facts, especially once studies that have been discredited when their results were refuted by dozens of people who tried to reproduce them are taken out. I think if you simply look at the studies and ignore all the press articles, it is pretty easy to see what is going on.
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"You can't convince me of anything unless you present facts before my mind that makes me think like you do" ? (grossly paraphrased)
"I submit to no authority except Reason ?"
Facts are there, dig them. Trust no one, the truth is accessible to anyone with a brain, espiecially in the internet era. But nobody ever said it would come without efforts.
Yes, it will bring you to debates, to arguments, retort, counter-retort
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People like you are the reason everything sucks. "Both sides are corrupt" and "your vote makes no difference" are messages that are drilled into our heads relentlessly in this society and as more people fall for this garbage, democracy slowly dies.
Honesty is something you need to expect from the institutions in your culture. If you don't get it, you don't lower your expectations, you get mad.
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Welcome to critical thinking where you have to gather info from various opposing sides and attempt to discern between the lies to gather what is often at best a blurry picture. But you're right in that you should pretty much never take what one side tells you for the truth, because then you're guarenteed to be wrong. (This goes along with the post above that says everyone lies, because everyone does by tilting it in their favor or framing it in their perspective)
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I would have to agree with this. A lot of 'scientific' reports are funded by political organizations that want to push an agenda. I find it hypocritical that SlashDot will rip apart and condemn a MS SQL benchmark article (for example) that has some MS funding but completely believe a scientific report on a political issue like global climate change - and yes, these days, it is a political issue.
I think there are fundamentally two kinds of thinking and everyone does both of them to some degree. You can de
Re:Historical Data Readings (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly backwords (Score:2)
Now unfortunately global warming has caused enough changes in our world that it has become an issue of economic advantage. That is to say there is much money to be made on both sides of the "debate". That won't change. This is the curse of ignorance.
When politics becomes science that may be undesirable. When sc
Two victims of Intellectual apathy. (Score:3, Insightful)
"I would have to agree with this....[slashdotters] completely believe a scientific report on a political issue like global climate change"
How can people be so ignorant about the line between science and politics. In case you have trouble I will spell it out...Science informs Policy. The science is sound and if people like the above two posters actually understood the difference between scientific findin
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No matter how much you spin things, eventually reality will have its way with you (but most people just figure that it will be their succesor's problem).
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Ironically, that's what he's fighting.
No it isn't. Showing a logical reason why a given study is wrong is science. Claiming all studies are wrong regardless of whether or not you can or bother to find fault with the actual data or methodology is simply FUD.
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BTW : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5357606
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that it would raise temperatures in the past as well!
Because 12,000 years ago, the temperature was as high as current measurements. You are saying that if US emissions of CO2 are the cause of the current rise in temperature, it must be the cause of the ancient high temperatures as well.
This is the kind of information that I try to show
You show them what? A slashdot article? I take it you give them verbal statements alone, suc
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Well, yes, but a) it took a lot longer and b) nobody cared because they lived in huts or caves. Nobody cared about sea levels, because they could move further inland without much of a problem. No cities had to be evacuated, for example.
So while the world will not end in 10 years, if the earth's temperature increase continues, it wi
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I don't know how you can look at the millions of tons of CO2 we throw into the atmosphere every day, and claim that even if there were some other cause for an increase, that we aren't adding to it to make it worse.
Re:Time Warp (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true... there have been hot periods and cold periods in Earth's past. However, what many of these new findings are suggesting is that the current rate of change exceeds what happened previously. It's that things are heating up *really fast* that is being blamed on human intervention. Further, TFA notes that we are reaching the warmest Holocene temperatures... and we're *not slowing down* yet. That's a bit frightening.
And whether any of this is due to human action or not is, to a large extent, irrelevant. If you're sitting around the house with some friends and one of them points out that the drapes in the living room just caught fire, you don't sit there and argue over whether they caught fire because of faulty electrical, errant ashes from the fireplace, or the cat knocking over a candle. You do what you can to put out the #$(*#& fire! If valid science is suggesting serious problems ahead because of global warming, let's stop arguing and do something, anything, to try and stop it.
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Yes, temperatures were this high before manufacturing and automobiles. What is concerning is not so much the current temperature, but the trend of rapid increase that has been strong since about the Industrial Revolution and appears unprecedented.
And will, if continued, in not too long reach temperatures that are, themselves, sources of grave concern. At which point, it may well be impossible to prevent catastrophic results.
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Yes, but those periods also had a tendency to kill off large percentages of human and animal life.
Seems to me that's something we should be concerned about,
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I dunno about you, but I think many people do consider it a "big deal" that our civilisation, and indeed our species, could be made obsolete by these actions, and that's the motivation for the concern over global warming.
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I think what people construe as 'BAD' is coastal cities flooding all over the globe ( think Katrina in New York, LA, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, etc. ), increasted desertification, famine, ecozone change, loss of farmland, etc. etc. The suffering, loss of life, destruction, displacement, famine and starvation are what people are concerned about and consider 'BAD'. Sure, in the course of human history there has been plenty of tours of the Four Horseman, but civilization is an attempt to mitigate these risks. I suspect a lot of people who think this kind of thing is no big deal because it has happened regularly, would change their tune is they had to flee famine or invaders.
Yes, it has happened in the past, and it certainly will happen again, but the whole point of civilization is to make life easier by removing or mitigating these risks. Some people are indifferent, and some people what to try to avoid this kind of catastrophe, for themselves and future people. Everyday that I get my fat, lazy ass up and get in the car to work on the internet, I thank god for all the technological advances that allow me to spend my life looking at pictures of naked women on the internet.
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More CO2 means more drought, which means less crops. One of the greatest impacts we could see from global warming, aside from more severe weather, is a worldwide food shortage.