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Comment Re:CO2 and climate: my take (Score 2) 323

The other things have been identified and quantified. The biggest one is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is an effect that fluctuates fairly unpredictably over multi-year time scales. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... for pretty graphs. During La-Nina years, the extra heat is stored in deeper ocean waters, so on the surface it appears cooler. However, during El-Nino years, the stored heat rises again, and heats up the atmosphere.

Because the ENSO effect is oscillating around the mean, it only provides a temporary relief from CO2-caused warming. The long term trend is still rising.

Comment Re:History? (Score 3, Insightful) 162

I don't think there's much useful ice volume data before special satellites were used to measure it. However, we can look at historical sea level data, and observe that levels have not been significantly higher in any period since the last ice age. We can also look at the temperature data, and try to model the ice sheet based on those. Since temperatures before 2005 have been lower, it is very unlikely ice loss was as great as it has been in the recent years.

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