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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:07PM
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
Three of the four major candidates for United States president have responded to America's Top 20 Presidential Science, Engineering, Technology, Health and Environmental Questions. The nonprofit advocacy group ScienceDebate.org has posted their responses online. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Jill Stein had all responded as of press time, and the group was awaiting responses from Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
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U.S. Presidential Candidates Answer ScienceDebate 2016 Questions
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(Score: 5, Informative) by zocalo on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:28PM
Shows that gentle meander of normal geological climate change since the last glaciation quite nicely vs. the last century and change, I think. I was rather surprised to see that the "little ice age" - AKA the "Maunder Minimum" for those more clued up - wasn't more visually apparent though, which seems to support the theory there was more going on than just a short term temperature fluctuation. Interesting...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday September 14 2016, @11:32PM
If you find that XKCD informative then you a should have a look at the ice cores [wikipedia.org] and the geologic evidence right below it.
Pay attention to how steep the gradients are and how they suddenly turn and drop. Ask yourself why it does that again and again according to the data (and on all scales by the way, from daily to gigayears).
It is the best data we have and there's so much we do not understand about it. Some of what we think is probably right and some of it is probably wrong.
One of the direct interpretations of that data is that we're close to another ice age either naturally (cyclic) or perhaps foreshortened by rising temperatures (caused by human activity or whatever; nature doesn't care who or why) triggering whatever mechanism has repeatedly led to a rapid decrease in temperature for a significant amount of time.
People who don't know what feedback [wikipedia.org] is or what it can look like should probably start with that (Wikipedia probably falls short but it's a start).
Remember not to pet the polar bears, they always eat you :P
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(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday September 14 2016, @11:38PM
Not gigayears, that's (perhaps not so) obviously far too much time :( (brain farts like that are embarrassing).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:53AM
As I said once before, that sediment-cores chart looks like an oscillation that's getting out of hand.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:35PM
Yes, by the planetary cycles figuring we should be entering another ice age. It should have started awhile back. And the best guess is that increasing CO2 first stalled it and then overwhelmed it. See Milankovitch cycles.
N.B.: There are other contributions, such as the position of Greenland controlling the size of the opening into the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic, etc., but (most of?) those don't change in a regular manner.
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