"Old and standing in the way of progress"
Good luck with that - folks are still going to want to drive their 17 mpg cars and trucks and set their thermostats to 70* in the summer and 75* in the winter.
Nothing's going to happen until externalities are reflected in the costs of behavior.
Was this posted to smoke out the tree-huggers? ;)
Oh they'll do what they want, but I'd like for them to do it quietly, wink.
Damn I can hardly get my arms around this Redwood.
"Old and standing in the way of progress"
I'm a tree-hugger ready to be smoked out.
The U.S. is pretty stable now at around 17% of carbon emissions. The chinese tripled emissions from 2003-2009 and blew by the U.S. in 2007. They are now around 23% of total. The Indians are still only about 6% of total and a younger population. And if we look at continental Africa with 1.2 billion people and less than 2% , there are many places yet to grow. It will take a lot more than turning off the heat and air conditioning. I was told that if the entire human population wants to live at a 1970's U.S. level we need 8 planet earths.
Usage rates are learned; seed good patterns of behaviour early (or mandate it) so our space program only is burdened with towing 2-3 dinghies, er planets, back from the far reaches of the galaxy.
Presuming those rafts aren't de-populated marbles previously inhabited by such unique visionaries as ourselves.
Well, should we just throw in the towel, or still, each try to do our share? If we could start to show a reduction in per capita emissions it might give our negotiators a better position to lean on the Chinese. (Although that's hardly the only reason to be careful with our resource usage.) What are we going to do when they + India are responsible for 75% (or whatever the huge number will be) of emissions, and the earth is going completely to hell? Just say, "Well, nothing we can do about that..." ?
Until we can replace all those Chinese coal-fired power plants with cold-fusion, it's only going to get worse. (I'm not holding my breath.) And what money are they using to build up their economy that is resulting in the need for all that power? The money we pay them to buy all the cr@p we get at WalMart.
It would be interesting to come back in 500 years, and see if a human population still exists? Even better would be to put a bunch of the current claims of global warming not being a problem, or not being the result of mans actions in a time capsule. Or better yet those who argue that current corporate profits are more important than dealing with this issue. Gotta consume more, that's the ticket. Consume, consume, consume. Not really much different than what a plague of locusts does. I gotta hug another tree now.
"Marcott's data indicates that it took 4,000 years for the world to warm about 1.25 degrees from the end of the ice age to about 7,000 years ago. The same fossil-based data suggest a similar level of warming occurring in just one generation: from the 1920s to the 1940s. Actual thermometer records don't show the rise from the 1920s to the 1940s was quite that big and Marcott said for such recent time periods it is better to use actual thermometer readings than his proxies."
Is he saying that actual thermometer records are more accurate than fossil-based data? If yes, help me understand how the fossil records could be accurate enough to determine a 1.25 degree change over 4,000 years?
Maybe I missed it, but does anyone see in the article exactly how many degrees this dramatic heat spike is?
thanks
I think Marcott is saying the fossil record is pretty accurate (though how accurate isn't quite clear as there isn't a standard to test against) over this larger time span and less so for a 20 year short, very sharp spike. Thermometer tests are much more accurate here, though the fossil record seems to be sensitive enough to reflect it.
In the December 2012 issue of National Geographic there's a page of temperature readings of the last 100+ years. You can try to look it up; if you can't find it let me know if you want me to type it out. It's pretty telling.
"Old and standing in the way of progress"
I wish I had something insightful to say but I just spent a night discussing how science has failed us. In particular, regarding the colony collapse of honeybees.
All I got is this....
Floral calcium oxalate crystals as foraging cues for honeybees - International Bee Research Association
I now going the reread chapter 3 of "new kind of science", kuhn has pushed my hand.
It's been a long time since I read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," but I think he muddies the waters. It's not as if "paradigms" are randomly distributed - science does tend to improve over time and we are getting smarter and smarter. Those who claim that Kuhn "proves" that there is no truth in science are way off base.
If this means we know less today than we did 100 years ago (which I assume it doesn't) then that's patently absurd.
If it means that because we have better a understanding the world around us we are getting a better feel for what we can't explain (yet), then I agree.
If it means a third thing, then I can't understand what you are saying.
I think it misses the point to say science has failed us if it hasn't provided an answer yet.
Science is dependent on people and sometimes people take painfully long to come up the curve.
If not for science we'd all be enjoying Bud Clamato on a flat planet at the center of the universe.
Dan Fuller, local bicycle enthusiast
The earth is 4.6 billion years old. Scaling that to 46 years, humans have been here for 4 hours. The industrial revolution began 1 minute ago, and in that single minute man has destroyed more than half of the worlds forests. Do the math! It really isn't all that difficult. Even a non tree hugger might figure it out? Maybe.
Imagine what we could say about cyanobacteria? I am not saying that science has failed us,but I would argue that science was not involved in inventing beer it was with bud calmato.
I had a long discussion about the honey bee collapsed thing and then I read this and thought and then I remembered what Ray Wolfram wrote in "new kind of Science" and finally I thought there needs to be a paradigm shift.
Science hasn't failed us, I think it closer to it limit of what it can do now than say 100 years. I feel there needs to be a new philosophy...... That tackles these complex problems---> I think this climate thing is not the complex but behavior, multiple factor stuff can be.
Great White North dwellers please note: We had a record high today, by my Hg: 79 fucking degrees, though the official will be lower. Previous was 75, established in 1959. Every month we get at least one or two of these, but then again I only pay attention every other day.
That's today's anti-hypocrisy report. Tweaked my back installing the AC but hey.
"Old and standing in the way of progress"
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