SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From The Guardian :
The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it "very unlikely" that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa's top climate scientist.
[...] But Nasa said that records of temperature that go back far further, taken via analysis of ice cores and sediments, suggest that the warming of recent decades is out of step with any period over the past millennium.
[...] [Director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Gavin] Schmidt repeated his previous prediction that there is a 99% chance that 2016 will be the warmest year on record, with around 20% of the heat attributed to a strong El Niño climatic event. Last year is currently the warmest year on record, itself beating a landmark set in 2014.
(Score: 3, Touché) by dyingtolive on Friday September 02 2016, @09:01PM
I believe that it is highly possible that human activity is significantly heating this space rock, so I think I am 'on your side'. I mean, I don't KNOW FOR SURE, cause "I'm not a scientist", so I only read what they write and think to myself, "huh, this looks convincing. It sounds bad too. I wonder what we can do about it?". It's interesting though, because I find that no matter how much I think I understand something, even something I've directly observed, it generally turns out far much more complicated than I first thought as my comprehension of it improves.
In fact, the only times I've ever seen this NOT be the case is in faith based extremists. Generally those types do things like, oh I don't know, rather than attempt to explain their side with facts and reason and a logical argument, they just mount an immediate attack, throwing out insults like "idiot" and making vague accusations of conspiracy. It's preemptive, even against some fictitious argument that doesn't even exist in the context of the situation. You see that kind of stuff on tumblr a lot too, interestingly enough. Honestly I think it's a sign of mental illness, but I'm no psychologist either. I'll check it out in the DSM though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @10:55PM
> In fact, the only times I've ever seen this NOT be the case is in faith based extremists
In fact, all of us rely on faith because none of us can be experts in even just 1% of the things we encounter in life.
The question that matters is: "Who do you put your faith in?"
I choose to put my faith in the people who are scientific experts in the field. Not religionists. And definitely not those with a multi-billion dollar interest in convincing me otherwise. I accept that the people I do put my faith in are imperfect humans and for the most part they acknowledge their imperfection every time they speak on the subject. I accept that there are uncertainties about the exact geography of their knowledge. But I have yet to see any hard evidence even remotely sufficient to convince me that I should doubt that faith.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Friday September 02 2016, @10:57PM
If you can find sources from a century ago [gutenberg.org], when they were just discovering spectroscopy (especially Infrared spectroscopy), then that's a lot easier to read because there's not a 100 year ballast about rovibrational modes and symmetric Raman [wikipedia.org] stretches to wrestle through.
I have actually only done an IR spectrum once in my life (for chemistry practicum) but I remember from looking up the example spectra that almost anything with a C = O bond (except for CO2 itself, because O=C=O is symmetric, so you can only see it with Raman spectroscopy, don't remember why) had an enormously strong, enormously broad signal signifying that aldehyde or ketone fragment's vibrations. So any molecule with a C=O bond is hard to miss in infrared light, because it absorbs so strongly at one particular quite broad wavelength band.
And I've actually read bits of a book by Svante Arrhenius from 1906 where he explains about the greenhouse effect.
That's 1906, not 2006.
So this gives me enough "ammunition" to act all smug and all-knowing, that at least those few AGW skeptics that are unsure of whether the greenhouse effect exists (why do they think people invented actual greenhouses??) are either talking out of their arse, or that they're already convinced by false arguments, and don't like to be convinced by better arguments.
I've also read the AR5 (maybe AR4) executive summary report, and there the arguments for CO2 as a so-called "forcing" (important word!) of our planet's temperature are explained very clearly and concisely.
It is a blanket.
Consider an asylum seeker drowining in the Mediterranean. The Italian or Greek coast guard [wikipedia.org] fishes him up. To save his life, they wrap him in a flimsy thin metal foil blanket.
Why do they do that? Does that really work? You know that they wouldn't do it, if that procedure didn't work against hypothermia.
If only the AGW deniers could just be convinced to sleep under 3 thin 'fugee emergency blankets, + 1 wool one on top, to keep out the Evil Liberal Mind Control Rays ...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 02 2016, @11:15PM
We'd have a lot less of a problem with global warming if the coast guard didn't rescue those refugees and let them drown. And, similarly, if foreign countries stopped sending food and medical aid to Africa.
The same people bitching about global warming are the same people who are exacerbating it by encouraging reckless breeders to breed recklessly even moreso.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Saturday September 03 2016, @12:19AM
oooo, except for the inconvenient factoid that it is US spoilt 4% of the population who are using about 40-50% of the resources, soooooo, the 'logical' conclusion is to save more low-energy refugees, and for more high-energy amerikans to die off...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 03 2016, @12:59AM
Shut up, Jew.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2016, @02:19AM
Uuuuuuhhhhhhh!
You made me cum so hard, Ethan.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Saturday September 10 2016, @10:54AM
um, atheist here, not even former jew...
sorry to disappoint...
although, i must admit, i do hates me some zionists...
...so, does that make me a self-hating, gentile, honorary jew ? ? ?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2016, @11:27AM
I believe that it is highly possible that human activity is significantly heating this space rock
Exactly. But what if it is no 'space rock'?
There is no 'global' warming, because the Earth is a REALM, not a 'globe'- the Truth is stranger than fiction!
Do your OWN research!