Global Warming's Terrfying New Math

I know a few people on here don't "believe" in global warming, but for those with a rudimentary understanding of science and politics, this is very concerning. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to prevent the massive oil corporations and oil producing nations from totally devastating the planet and killing billions of human beings in the process.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18885083

Quote fletcher:

---

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18885083

---

Great headline, but actually read both the articles and you will find it is not a solution.

"Prof Smetacek's own analysis is that even if it were deployed on a vast scale, ocean fertilisation could only take up about a quarter of the extra carbon dioxide being deposited in the atmosphere by humanity's industry, transport and agriculture."

Stop using oil and gas based products and services. As long as we buy this stuff then there will be a market for it. But unless there's a viable alternative then that will also mean that billions die, or cold, of heat, of hunger and thirst



Come see the funny humans!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEyJiqSgMw

maybe it will all work out - by keeping the next ice age away.

Problem is - there is a bit of misinformation in that article that works AGAINST them. Global warming is not evidentially based on weather temperature rises. Global warming can decrease weather temp. It's an increase in the amount of energy in the weather system caused by warming seas and overall atmospheric warming - not "record temperatures" across the USA - which has very little to do with global warming. The second and third numbers, though, are very important. Someone in that article hasn't done their research.

There is no doubt that the sun is getting hotter. I am mystified why people still question it.

Unfortunately, NASA could be doing more. Instead of larking about on the moon and sending probes to Mars and Jupiter, what they should be doing is monitoring nearer to home and sending an investigative team to the sun to find out EXACTLY what's going off.

Until we do that, theorizing without solid evidence is just plain crazy.

No problem is insurmountable though. Surely, there has to be a way of cooling the sun down even if it's just by a few degrees. This coud be achieved, in theory at least, by triggering a large thermo nuclear explosion within it's inner orbit. Thus, the resulting shockwave will effectively 'tilt' the sun through 180 degrees, and thereby exposing us to its much cooler dark side.

if this was Facebook I would have hit the "like" button

hahahahah. Beautiful!!

We are a stupid species. I'll bet the Dodo was tasty. Too tasty as it turns out.
Like KFC but more addictive. You might not even need a secret sauce. We will never know the joy of bludgeoning a delicious Dodo. We'll have to forgive our sea fairing ancestors as they hve eaten them all..
I wish i had a leg of succulent Dodo right now.

Edited by Airfix (19/07/12 11:12 PM)

actually I'm pretty sure it tasted nasty, saw a documentary on it. I thinkl the blame was put on introduced species, rats or something.

Quote fletcher:

---

actually I'm pretty sure it tasted nasty,

---

Well good riddance then I suppose.
Swine rats! Humans are much to attractive to be responsible for an extinction of species. I knew that!

Edited by Airfix (19/07/12 11:34 PM)

Quote Airfix:

---

I wish i had a leg of succulent Dodo right now.

---

A little crude and disrespectful tbh.

As far as I'm concerned, the Dodo started going into decline after Live 8.

The only journalist whose opinions I trust on the subject is George Monbiot. He is an academic with several full professorships, and always backs up what he says with proper references to peer-reviewed journals.

See:

Monbiot on climate change denial

For a good introduction to his work.

There is no serious scientific dissent with the proposition that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat to all of us. There is a lot of PR and wishful thinking in the opposite direction.

--------------------
Instant gratification is actually pretty good. It's fast as well.

I have often heard the analogy "think of it like a fridge when you turn the power off. What happens? It defrosts of course".

But this is a naive view and fails to take into account that once defrosted, the fridge can simply be plugged back in again for it to carry on as it did before.

Perhaps a better analogy is this wider, circular fridge/defrost cycle. If our virtual fridge (the planet) is defrosting (just look at all that molten ice in the arctic polar caps) then one can justifiably assume that at some point, mother nature is going to effectively plug the planet back in once an appropriate amount of defrosting has taken place.

Hasn't mother nature always taken care of us? Even going back to the ice age and dinosaurs she has ensured the safe passage of each living being to the best of her ability. The fact that a large comet crashed into Texas thus wiping out hundreds of species came as a shock to her I imagine and in those days it was simply something that could not be avoided as the resources weren't available.

One might assume therefore, that mother nature believes things are perhaps a little too cool at the moment and that some subtle 'adjustment' is necessary. Thus, if Man could learn to harness the 'extra' sea more effectively and master the art of desalination, then the world is literally our oyster. Remember, it's a lot harder making water out of an iceberg. By prompting the melting process, mother nature is effectively simplifying the desalination process.

Perhaps mother nature is giving us a nudge, kinda like "here's more sea, now do something with it and end famine for good".

Simply viewed, we are merely a pawn in a much larger game of chess. However, at the end of the day it's up to us how we use these extra resources.

Quote narcoman:

---

Global warming is not evidentially based on weather temperature rises. Global warming can decrease weather temp. It's an increase in the amount of energy in the weather system caused by warming seas and overall atmospheric warming - not "record temperatures" across the USA - which has very little to do with global warming.

---

That's why scientists generally refer to the phenomenon as climate change rather than global warming. There is certainly some evidence that the recent wet weather could have been caused by the reduction in polar ice. The warmer polar regions could give us in the UK a colder wetter climate.

James.

--------------------
JRP Music - Audio Mastering and Restoration.
http://www.jrpmusic.net

Quote oui, miss reidy:

---

Hasn't mother nature always taken care of us? Even going back to the ice age and dinosaurs she has ensured the safe passage of each living being to the best of her ability. The fact that a large comet crashed into Texas thus wiping out hundreds of species came as a shock to her I imagine and in those days it was simply something that could not be avoided as the resources weren't available.

---

Mother Nature (who you seem to be confusing with some sort of benevolent deity) has always showed complete indifference to any individual person, creature or species. What IS amazing is how, whatever the circumstances and environment, life persists. But it won't necessarily be us!

Quote SecretSam:

---

There is no serious scientific dissent with the proposition that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat to all of us.

---

Everyone continues to ignore the elephant in the room, and that is far worse than all the pointless column inches about how bad the oil companies are, because whinging about the use of fossil fuels won't make the slightest difference, completely misses the point, and wastes timewhen we could be addressing the real problem.

And the problem here is incredibly simple and very easy (if ethically challenging) to resolve. There are far too many humans on the earth. End of story. Humans have completely infested the world and, like any infestation, it will only end when the available resources are consumed. Regardless, the world will live on quite happily -- we are not killing the earth, it will simply evolve as it always has -- but there won't be many of us left in a century or two, and maybe we'll take a lot of other species with us along the way.

If the planet's human population was a fraction of its current level, those still around could all consume as much fossil fuel as they liked, and the world would be able to cope perfectly well. There would be plenty of food too. As it is, there are way too many of us producing too much waste (of all formsm including energy) and consuming too many resources (of all forms), and regardless of how enthusiastically we embrace 'green' ways of living now, it simply won't makea any real difference. There are just way too many of us for it to make any real difference, and the population continues to rise. Adopting green energy globally today might slow the inevitably, but it won't stop it... and it would be impossible to achieve anyway.

We will inevitably kill each other off, either through glbal war, through mass illness, or simply by consuming all the resources and dying a slow and lingering death. A global epidemic of some virus could well reduce the population significantly and maybe to a sustainable population size -- something like the Spanish Flu of the early 20th Century, for example. And if governments had any sense, they wouldn't try to fight it...

If not a global epidemic, then global war is the most likely outcome, and it would be implemented long before the available resources are finally depleted. One supernation or another would crack and decide that it wanted to be the surviving race... America? Russia? Some Middle Eastern group? Who knows...

Sorry to be so gloomy, but it all seems very obvious to me. Control the population growth or go the way of the dodo! It's that simple. Nothing else will make the slightest long-term difference.

In my lifetime the global population has more than doubled from 3 billion to 7 billion. That is totally mad and completely unsustainable. It has happened becuase of improvements in medicines and the standard of living -- people live much longer and we save people who otherwise would have died. But why have we allowed that to happen?

In the 1700-1800s the global population was about 1 billion, and that level might be sustainable. If we can return to that kind of level (or smaller) the human race might stand a chance and the planet might return to more stable conditions.

Of course, it's very unlikely that any politician will have the balls to stand up and do anything about population growth it for decades to come, so it will be left either to nature, or eventually some nutter will finally grasp the bull by the horns and sort it out ruthlessly before it's too late.

Solyent Green anyone?

hugh

--------------------
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Well that's all well and good but what I really want to know is whether I should be recording at 88.2 or 96kHz. That's what matters.

Not much to add to Hugh's oratorio except to emphasise that all living organisms thrive in favourable conditions. Population exploded when coal, then oil was put to use and it has grown exponentially ever since. Of course, as with any system, if you remove the condition for growth, the whole thing comes crashing down. Oil will run out. It won't be an overnight thing but you'll be queuing up at Tesco one day for a pint of milk (the same pint that today we can't be bothered paying more than 50p for). 2-3 days a week with no deliveries into the cities. And it's way too late to start feeding off the land. Almost everything we consume is made of oil. Renewable energies are slightly pointless at this stage. But yes, agreed, the end of the world isn't nigh...

--------------------
I'm All Ears.

Quote James Perrett:

---

That's why scientists generally refer to the phenomenon as climate change rather than global warming. There is certainly some evidence that the recent wet weather could have been caused by the reduction in polar ice. The warmer polar regions could give us in the UK a colder wetter climate.

James.

---

Quite possibly. but it's happened before. Snow in the summer in the 1700s !!

Hugh - I completely agree with your take on this. Why are there so many humans? Because scientists are brilliant at overcoming nature's checks and balances. And who is going to save us? Oh yes.

It's like a giant job creation scheme. Gwet paid for creating the problem and get paid again for solving it, then get paid again for solving the problem caused by the solution. Ho hum. One scientist has suggested dumping a few million tons of organo-phosphates into the oceans to encourage plankton growth. This is the level of rationality we are dealing with. Solyent Green here we come.

I feel that the best idea is to burn all the oil and consume all the energy as fast as possible. Then it will run out quite quickly and the population will naturally be reduced and the planet might have a chance to recover. So I'd encourage the scientists to keep flying around the world measuring stuff. Doesn't matter that the data is useless in practical terms.

At any rate, I laugh with utter despair when I hear talk of 'environmentally-friendly' houses and cars. There is no such thing. The only environmentally-friendly machine is one that hasn't been built. The government advises us to keep our fridge doors closed. Then they instruct local authorities to build three million more houses, all with fridges. Brilliant.

Still, the global economic meltdown might be the solution, as long as it's permanent.

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

In my lifetime the global population has more than doubled from 3 billion to 7 billion.

---

Respect! You are DA MAN!

Quote:

---

Of course, it's very unlikely that any politician will have the balls to stand up and do anything about population growth

---

The Chinese are having a try with their One Child Policy. Though it's not that long ago France was actively encouraging large families.

(I just looked it up, and apparently they STILL are!)

Quote Exalted Wombat:

---

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

In my lifetime the global population has more than doubled from 3 billion to 7 billion.

---

Respect! You are DA MAN!

---

To be fair, I can't take any of the credit at all... although I did practice a bit in case my efforts were needed...

hugh

--------------------
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote Airfix:

---

We are a stupid species. I'll bet the Dodo was tasty. Too tasty as it turns out.

---

Sources vary on the quality of dodo meat - some say parts of it were fairly nice if cooked long enough, others say it was generally disgusting.
It wasn't human hunting that snuffed them out. It was probably introduced animals like rats and cats, that ate the eggs and chicks, that put an end to them.

If human population has more than doubled in Hugh's lifetime, then the logical conclusion is that it is Hugh we should blame. With Hugh exciting so many engineers with gearlust, affecting millions of relationships and bank balances, thereby encouraging "the demon nag seed" to propagate to such an extent that the only solution is procreation, we end up with the global baby mountain eating its way through the planet...and that is not a sexist theory! Dave

--------------------
My head hurts!

we'll be ok once we get into space (if). There's a lot of room out there if we can get past the bottleneck that living at the bottom of a gravity well causes.

all we need is to learn to control gravity, and build an FTLD, how hard can that be

Sun Ra told us, "Space is the place" but we better get there soon or we wont make it.

If we don't, well Soylent Green might be the only option. I think even though our numbers have risen, the bio-mass hasn't changed, that for every new human there is one less deer, field full of mice, schoal of fish, field of wheat etc. If we carry on "we" might be all that's left to eat, yum.

Still we may find a way, the world is far less crowded than you think, most of us live in cities. There is a lot of space for a mega-city or two. Then Judge Dredd can help us thin the ranks.

Quote fletcher:

---

I think even though our numbers have risen, the bio-mass hasn't changed, that for every new human there is one less deer, field full of mice, schoal of fish, field of wheat etc.

---

Is this "thought" based on any data? Or is it just a random idea that sounded attractive? (Did you invent homeopathy as well?)

no I didn't mean it that way, as in it's one of "my thoughts". Just seen too many half remembered BBC4 documentaries.

If I'm wrong maybe it was that if we use more of the biomass for energy etc. there is less for everything else and we lose bio-diversity. Even though it's a re-newable source, it is still a finite one, and we are part of it not seperate from it.

and yes I did invent homeopathy, and recording at 96khz sample rates as well. Don't they work for you?

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

Quote SecretSam:

---

There is no serious scientific dissent with the proposition that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat to all of us.

---

Everyone continues to ignore the elephant in the room, and that is far worse than all the pointless column inches about how bad the oil companies are, because whinging about the use of fossil fuels won't make the slightest difference, completely misses the point, and wastes timewhen we could be addressing the real problem.

---

The real problem is that half of the humans in the world need to stop living?

Its inevitable that at our current rates of fossil fuel consumption, there will be a drastic reduction in world population. But I think the danger here is that we risk doing too much damage to the planet in the meantime.

Its not as if these problems absolutely cannot be addressed (as is the case at present). A huge tax on fossil fuels would create a of problems in the short term and cause a large lowering of living standards. It was also greatly upset a lot of huge corporations and oil producing nations, and be politically and practically very difficult to implement.

But its surely better than the alternative.

I think we've also now passed a technology 'event horizon', in that we now need the technology we created to get to the resources to maintain that technology. If there was a significant tech. collapse from war, disease etc. we'd never recover because there would be no way to reach the materials we would need in order to rebuild.

Those we regard as primitive would then stand a better chance of survival than the rest, but it would be a limited survival with no future.

--------------------
It wasn't me!
(Well, actually, it probably was)

There's no doubt that there are a lot of people, doubled since i was learning geography at school and i'm fifty.

Are there "too many" people? I'm not sure. There are probably too many people who want to live like us. There's not too many people for the available space - there's bundles of space and a family of four can feed themsleves from a 10m x 10m plot, in this country anyway, that varies depending on global region obviously.

What we have is too many greedy lazy people who demand that they get 'out' an order of magnitude more than they put 'in'. Machines require energy, and every time we decide to push a button rather than doing it ourself, we use energy.

If we all lived like the average sub-saharan African then no problem.

There's the choice: a master race of one or two billion served by machines, or a human race living 'with', and not 'off'.

I think Folderol is right, very right. And i think that the UN committee and reports on population growth are really just blowing smoke up the master race's arse and concluding that if we want to continue to be fat and lazy we have to reduce world population. Notice there's no mention of reducing "our" population though, it's all about reducung the populations of areas that might have their eye on a slice of our cake.

No need to worry. Scientists have already engineered the solutions to the population explosion. Panton-Valentine leukocidin & ESBL.

For every human cell we are composed of, we support roughly 14 bacteria, without which we can't survive. Obviously it wasn't in their original design brief to kill us, but we forced mutations by using/abusing anti-biotics. Now we have bacteria we can only kill by dying. We've upset the balance of symbiosis and integration and now there is no way back. We are the Sony Corporation of all lifeforms.

Regarding climate change we probably won't survive as a species long enough to register a blip. We have sketchy data going back a couple of hundred years at best. The rest is speculation. It's like trying to recreate a song from a single sample.

--------------------
Not much in life worth running for. Or from.

Quote ow:

---

If we all lived like the average sub-saharan African then no problem.

---

Sheep do what sheep have always done. But Man is the animal that messes with things. He can, so he does. It's not very interesting being a sheep. "50 famous sheep" is a very slim volume.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

---

Quote ow:

---

If we all lived like the average sub-saharan African then no problem.

---

Sheep do what sheep have always done. But Man is the animal that messes with things. He can, so he does. It's not very interesting being a sheep. "50 famous sheep" is a very slim volume.

---

Most men don't mess with things. Most live out there lives in the way that their environment and times dictate. There are a few innovators and social escapologists, but not many. Most people are sheep...

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
You better watch out,
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seem.

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by.
With bright knives He releaseth my soul.
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places.
He converteth me to lamb cutlets,
For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger.
When cometh the day we lowly ones,
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of karate,
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.

Bleating and babbling I fell on his neck with a scream.
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you're told.
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.

[Waters]

Quote Folderol:

---

I think we've also now passed a technology 'event horizon', in that we now need the technology we created to get to the resources to maintain that technology. If there was a significant tech. collapse from war, disease etc. we'd never recover because there would be no way to reach the materials we would need in order to rebuild.

Those we regard as primitive would then stand a better chance of survival than the rest, but it would be a limited survival with no future.

---

Yes, spot on imo. I think we're already seeing this irreversible 'tech. collapse'.

I suspect we'll lose the economic ability to produce oil long before it runs out. Indeed, oil companies are already complaining that the money they need to find and develop new fields is drying up. Good news maybe. Let's hope the GM companies also run out of dosh before they destroy our food supply chain competely. I wonder if we'll end up living in houses made out of unsold CDs. I could probably roof it from stock.

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

There are far too many humans on the earth. End of story. Humans have completely infested the world and, like any infestation, it will only end when the available resources are consumed. Regardless, the world will live on quite happily -- we are not killing the earth, it will simply evolve as it always has -- but there won't be many of us left in a century or two, and maybe we'll take a lot of other species with us along the way.

---

Time for a cull!

Either that, or face total annihilation through disease, as the frequency of contact overcomes the speed with which medicine can counteract any new virus.

In about 20 or so years, I'm out of here anyway, so if the infestation wants to breed itself into extinction, then hey! Go for it!

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

Solyent Green anyone?

---

Anyone I know (and does she come with Tabasco)?

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

We will inevitably kill each other off, either through glbal war, through mass illness, or simply by consuming all the resources and dying a slow and lingering death.

---

Knowing my luck, I'll miss all the fun!

My money is on disease!

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

---

eventually some nutter will finally grasp the bull by the horns and sort it out ruthlessly before it's too late.

---

Time for small, impotent men with moustaches to put down their iPads, cancel their Linked-In memberships, stop posting on Twitter, slap their stupid, fat wives until they stop looking to see if someone has answered their friendship request on FaceBook

. . . and rise to the call and fulfil their destiny!

or it will all work out and we will find a way.

Your all getting old and losing your imagination, you see only bleakness ahead, maybe your projecting your own individual feelings about aging onto your perceptions of reality.

Young people will not give in so easily. Who knows what future discoveries will aid us, are GM crops so bad? Where's the evidence?

I live in hope still. Tough times ahead, maybe, but I think we will come through it.

GROWTH! GROWTH! GROWTH! GROWTH!

WE MUST ALL GO - SHOPPING!!!

Hugh's opinion is shared by none other than Prince Philip.
''World population needs to be decreased by 50%" ... Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh)
Great minds think alike.

Quote turbodave:

---

... the logical conclusion is that it is Hugh we should blame.

---

Absolutely not! Hugh is not to blame. It's the previous generations who fought Hitler.

Just think about genius of Adolf Hitler. Many decades ago Adolf Hitler understood things which possibly the smartest among us only recently came to realize.

All that second world war thing was such a shame and as far as I remember it were Brits who won the war. Shame on you. Now look what you have done to humanity.