It was kind of rhetorical. I just can't fathom growing rice in a region that isn't semi tropical and constantly being rained on. The miracles of modern irrigation.
Once upon a time a patient told me that "climate change" is something that happens every couple hundred years and that this is no big deal. I asked him if 3 billion year old polar ice was in a habit of melting that often and he said, "Well obviously, it's cyclical!" to which a bystander said, "How can ice be 3 billion years old if it melts every couple hundred years?" His brow furrowed as he realized he had been lied to for years.
Since then, he has started one of the larger local-grown food co-ops in the area. It's pretty neat.
3 billion? Where'd you get that number?
Pretty sure I got it from Bill Nye, but I'm not 100% sure. This was a couple years ago, so I guess it's like 3,000,000,003 years now. Sorry for lack of context.
3 million is way more plausible than 3 billion, with the oldest ice cores going back about 1.5million years. I'm going to guess you accidentally switched billion for million, but million still plays into your argument without a 1000x hyperbole to ruin it.
This just popped up on my facebook feed and thought of this thread right away
3 million is way more plausible than 3 billion, with the oldest ice cores going back about 1.5million years. I'm going to guess you accidentally switched billion for million, but million still plays into your argument without a 1000x hyperbole to ruin it.
This just popped up on my facebook feed and thought of this thread right away
Can indeed confirm we had zero winter here in Arizona this year.
Also yeah, hearing billion with a B when he said million with an M sounds like something I may have done.
Yeah, I just asked the question since unfortunately the only way to combat misinformation is to make sure you're as reliable as possible. If you start fudging numbers it ruins your credibility (even if the point is still the same.)
The problem is that climate change is cyclical, but scientists still have proof that while, yes, things are still warming up since the last ice age, they're warming up at a level that is unprecedented in any of the previous cycles.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I just asked the question since unfortunately the only way to combat misinformation is to make sure you're as reliable as possible. If you start fudging numbers it ruins your credibility (even if the point is still the same.)
The problem is that climate change is cyclical, but scientists still have proof that while, yes, things are still warming up since the last ice age, they're warming up at a RATEthat is unprecedented in any of the previous cycles.
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
Yeah, I just asked the question since unfortunately the only way to combat misinformation is to make sure you're as reliable as possible. If you start fudging numbers it ruins your credibility (even if the point is still the same.)
The problem is that climate change is cyclical, but scientists still have proof that while, yes, things are still warming up since the last ice age, they're warming up at a RATEthat is unprecedented in any of the previous cycles.
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
On a somewhat related note about "10-20% of all biodiversity"...what percentage of life on the planet have we documented? I know they recently discovered a bunch of organisms in people's fucking belly buttons that were heretofore unknown, so I'm willing to bet there's some uncharted caverns in Africa and Russia that have some shit we've never seen. And then fuck the ocean! Do we even know half the organisms that live there?
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Even in places that a lot of people live there could be undocumented life. The article I'm linking below references a cave in California that was recently discovered that I believe ended up having something like 30 distinct species of spider that were completely unknown beforehand.
Were talking about a densely populated state, and there was a lot of unknown life in a single undiscovered cave. If we had serious funding for our sciences, and more people actually believed in the findings of biology we would be making all sorts of discoveries of new life on a regular basis, and who knows where that could lead. Unfortunately, we have to continue to live in our current reality where we face big problems like climate change, and we're not ready to respond to them because the people with resources to change things haven't adequately suffered or believe they can shield themselves with their money.
We need to count on climate change being fixable after it's wrecked the world a bit. If it truly isn't fixable at the point that the damage is noticeable to everyone alive, then that's all she wrote for humanity.
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
You know why people don't care about climate change? It's not the overblown rhetoric; it's the belief that it won't affect them.
Actually, it's the belief they can't do anything to stop it. Which is generally true, given the state of things.
The earth has experienced tremendous temperature and climate swings in its long history, much greater than what we are seeing now, unaided by any manmade tinkering in the climate. Any variety of events have taken place in our past which would have wiped out humanity had we been around at that point. The earth has been around for thousands of millions of years. Why do we think the climate of the past 150 years or so represents some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity? I mean this..
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
..was not caused by the industrial revolution, although the industrial revolution, globalization, destruction of fragile ecologies, pollution, etc, have obviously accelerated the trend in recent years.
It's entirely possible that humanity is just completely and irrevocably fucked due to entirely natural causes against which we are totally powerless.
Looking at the harm we do to the environment and each other, I'm not even sure that's such a bad thing. The dinosaurs went extinct, why shouldn't we? Why do we think we are so special? In the end we are minuscule particles on a tiny speck whirling through the black cosmos. Shrug.
In the particular case of AGW, we're well past the window scientists told us we had in which to act, and people have no faith whatsoever that their political leaders will do anything about it after watching decades of squandered opportunity. Enjoy life while you can and don't have kids, I guess. I think it's obvious ever since WWI and WWII that humanity has a collective death wish anyway. The things we could do to avert or mitigate climate change we are certainly not doing.
We shouldn't feel bad however, as I think the most likely answer to Fermi's Paradox is that it is in the nature ofall intelligent life to destroy itself. (See also The Great Filter). I think the most likely explanation for not having glimpsed any intelligent life in a universe billions of years old is that we are treading a well worn path to self destruction.
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
You know why people don't care about climate change? It's not the overblown rhetoric; it's the belief that it won't affect them.
Actually, it's the belief they can't do anything to stop it. Which is generally true, given the state of things.
The earth has experienced tremendous temperature and climate swings in its long history, much greater than what we are seeing now, unaided by any manmade tinkering in the climate. Any variety of events have taken place in our past which would have wiped out humanity had we been around at that point. The earth has been around for thousands of millions of years. Why do we think the climate of the past 150 years or so represents some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity? I mean this..
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
..was not caused by the industrial revolution, although the industrial revolution, globalization, destruction of fragile ecologies, pollution, etc, have obviously accelerated the trend in recent years.
It's entirely possible that humanity is just completely and irrevocably fucked due to entirely natural causes against which we are totally powerless.
Looking at the harm we do to the environment and each other, I'm not even sure that's such a bad thing. The dinosaurs went extinct, why shouldn't we? Why do we think we are so special? In the end we are minuscule particles on a tiny speck whirling through the black cosmos. Shrug.
In the particular case of AGW, we're well past the window scientists told us we had in which to act, and people have no faith whatsoever that their political leaders will do anything about it after watching decades of squandered opportunity. Enjoy life while you can and don't have kids, I guess. I think it's obvious ever since WWI and WWII that humanity has a collective death wish anyway. The things we could do to avert or mitigate climate change we are certainly not doing.
We shouldn't feel bad however, as I think the most likely answer to Fermi's Paradox is that it is in the nature ofall intelligent life to destroy itself. (See also The Great Filter). I think the most likely explanation for not having glimpsed any intelligent life in a universe billions of years old is that we are treading a well worn path to self destruction.
Nobody is saying the past 150 years represent some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity. In fact, were that the case, it would probably be a relief because it would mean our fuckedness would stop accelerating so to speak.
As much as people say 'but it's only 150 years' or '10,000 years', or 'the earth was cold before', that only supports the evidence that shit's happening at an unprecedented rate - a rate not seen in the 'thousands of millions' of years the earth has been around. Orders of magnitude faster, even when we're taking some extreme conditions and circumstances - huge geological events, large meteor impacts, that still had global catastrophic impacts. And yet, even though we aren't seeing super-volcano eruptions or mile-wide asteroids hitting the earth, things are changing at entirely unprecedented rates.
Also, downplaying impact by saying 'obviously accelerated' is like calling a nuke going off 'a bit of a bang'. Even pre-industrial revolution, the human impact and mass extinctions were happening at a previously unseen rate. These are things that - in quite a few cases - can be directly attributed to human behavior. Things like the hunting to extinction of a large portion of the planet's megafauna for example.
I agree there is a lot of 'doom and gloom', but the big problem is the evidence tends to show that chicken little is not only right, but the sky is falling faster than he thought.
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
No, it is much more valid a statement, because science is, like a real thing, you know? Sampling, extrapolation and other types of statistical analysis are well established fields that make a statement that draws error bars like '10-20%' factual within the normally accepted bounds of scientific fact.
Words have meaning and are related to their context. In this case, we're talking about things like P values and the scientific context of that statement when we speak about 'fact'. Similar to the different usage of the word 'theory' and how laymen relate it to things like...say...evolution, simply because someone with no scientific background disagrees with the statement doesn't make their interpretation equally valid to an established body of work.
You know why people don't care about climate change? It's not the overblown rhetoric; it's the belief that it won't affect them.
Actually, it's the belief they can't do anything to stop it. Which is generally true, given the state of things.
The earth has experienced tremendous temperature and climate swings in its long history, much greater than what we are seeing now, unaided by any manmade tinkering in the climate. Any variety of events have taken place in our past which would have wiped out humanity had we been around at that point. The earth has been around for thousands of millions of years. Why do we think the climate of the past 150 years or so represents some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity? I mean this..
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
..was not caused by the industrial revolution, although the industrial revolution, globalization, destruction of fragile ecologies, pollution, etc, have obviously accelerated the trend in recent years.
It's entirely possible that humanity is just completely and irrevocably fucked due to entirely natural causes against which we are totally powerless.
Looking at the harm we do to the environment and each other, I'm not even sure that's such a bad thing. The dinosaurs went extinct, why shouldn't we? Why do we think we are so special? In the end we are minuscule particles on a tiny speck whirling through the black cosmos. Shrug.
In the particular case of AGW, we're well past the window scientists told us we had in which to act, and people have no faith whatsoever that their political leaders will do anything about it after watching decades of squandered opportunity. Enjoy life while you can and don't have kids, I guess. I think it's obvious ever since WWI and WWII that humanity has a collective death wish anyway. The things we could do to avert or mitigate climate change we are certainly not doing.
We shouldn't feel bad however, as I think the most likely answer to Fermi's Paradox is that it is in the nature ofall intelligent life to destroy itself. (See also The Great Filter). I think the most likely explanation for not having glimpsed any intelligent life in a universe billions of years old is that we are treading a well worn path to self destruction.
Nobody is saying the past 150 years represent some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity. In fact, were that the case, it would probably be a relief because it would mean our fuckedness would stop accelerating so to speak.
As much as people say 'but it's only 150 years' or '10,000 years', or 'the earth was cold before', that only supports the evidence that shit's happening at an unprecedented rate - a rate not seen in the 'thousands of millions' of years the earth has been around. Orders of magnitude faster, even when we're taking some extreme conditions and circumstances - huge geological events, large meteor impacts, that still had global catastrophic impacts. And yet, even though we aren't seeing super-volcano eruptions or mile-wide asteroids hitting the earth, things are changing at entirely unprecedented rates.
Also, downplaying impact by saying 'obviously accelerated' is like calling a nuke going off 'a bit of a bang'. Even pre-industrial revolution, the human impact and mass extinctions were happening at a previously unseen rate. These are things that - in quite a few cases - can be directly attributed to human behavior. Things like the hunting to extinction of a large portion of the planet's megafauna for example.
I agree there is a lot of 'doom and gloom', but the big problem is the evidence tends to show that chicken little is not only right, but the sky is falling faster than he thought.
Absolutely. That still kind of burns me up.
I would be so happy if we could finally clone a woolly mammoth and perhaps undo some of the harm we have done if we could reestablish the species.
Extrapolation and analysis may suggest such trends, but statements without solid backing are very easy for the layman to dismiss, and can undermine further communication. That's why it's usually better to let evidence support the claims.
Such as measured global temperatures showing that warming is actually happening, with declining size of glaciers etc. Making claims on the effects on species that you literally do not know whether they exist or not probably won't help at convincing the public.
“You know the hardest part of any business is usually getting customers,” Dunakin said. “I felt like it was a really great way to educate people that this is out there, because it's going to get a huge amount of viewing, and it benefits me and it benefits the industry.”
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
Actually, making extrapolations based on the available data is kind of... how statistics works. This is entirely a valid statement
Really grazing animals like goats and sheep are great brush clearers given a bit of time to work and can do it on really hard areas that would be tough to do via mechanical mowers. And their droppings such as they are don't smell much and are good fertilizer.
Really grazing animals like goats and sheep are great brush clearers given a bit of time to work and can do it on really hard areas that would be tough to do via mechanical mowers. And their droppings such as they are don't smell much and are good fertilizer.
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
Actually, making extrapolations based on the available data is kind of... how statistics works. This is entirely a valid statement
It's valid if you want to produce really shitty statistics. Extrapolating the results of set B based on data set A, when you have zero knowledge of B, or A's relevance to it, is kinda bollocks.
It's just bad science. There's so many assumptions being made. Evidence trumps assumptions any day of the week.
The ritual shaming of the public, in which politicians blame us for their failures, seems like democratic politics in reverse. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the gall.
DisruptedCapitalist on
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
“You know the hardest part of any business is usually getting customers,” Dunakin said. “I felt like it was a really great way to educate people that this is out there, because it's going to get a huge amount of viewing, and it benefits me and it benefits the industry.”
My friend could have really used that a few years ago to clear out some blackberry bushes.
Also, the great thing about the rental goal industry is that it's self-correcting. If you ever produce more goats than the market can handle, there's a simple solution.
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
Actually, making extrapolations based on the available data is kind of... how statistics works. This is entirely a valid statement
It's valid if you want to produce really shitty statistics. Extrapolating the results of set B based on data set A, when you have zero knowledge of B, or A's relevance to it, is kinda bollocks.
It's just bad science. There's so many assumptions being made. Evidence trumps assumptions any day of the week.
Meh.
It's scientifically useful to have predictions about how much biodiversity we are loosing to slash and burn farming and expansion of human habitats in the jungles of wherever. Because it is basically science we will never have the change to do if we don't do it right now or change the effects people are having.
This is basically possible through statistics and sampling and extrapolation.
It is generally a little more complicated than just assuming a 1 to 1 correlation between known and unknown though.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Back in the late 1800s species of vine called Kudzu was introduced in the south to help stabilize the soil to make it suitable for farming. This vine had a natural insect predator back in Europe that kept it's growth under control. Said insect did not exist in the new world. It promptly grew out of control and has choked off much of the plant life in the south. My home town of Tallahassee had a problem with it spreading through City Parks making them unusable. They had the idea of hiring goats to eat it back. It worked great at first, but ended up having the opposite effect. You see, Kudzu can grow up to a foot a day. Thanks to all the dropping the goats left, it not only grew back faster, but stronger than before. Millions was wasted on the endeavor and the state is still choked off.
I don't understand why people keep talking about this climate change stuff as the humans will go extinct. There will likely be a sharp population decline, sure, but extinct? There will still be plenty of kinds of plants and animals that will live on in the different climates that are produced. As long as we don't start trading nukes, there will be people and societies that continue to live on. Hopefully they will be smarter and won't set up their next systems based on eternal exponential growth.
I don't understand why people keep talking about this climate change stuff as the humans will go extinct. There will likely be a sharp population decline, sure, but extinct? There will still be plenty of kinds of plants and animals that will live on in the different climates that are produced. As long as we don't start trading nukes, there will be people and societies that continue to live on. Hopefully they will be smarter and won't set up their next systems based on eternal exponential growth.
I think the whole "millions will die" part is what puts people off. You know, kind of how people should react to this kind of information.
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I think this is two separate questions:
Why did they start growing rice in California? Because money, duh, and because sometimes long term planning is reasonably outside of our purview.
Why do they keep growing rice in California, knowing what we do now? Because we're a bunch of fucking morons.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Pretty sure I got it from Bill Nye, but I'm not 100% sure. This was a couple years ago, so I guess it's like 3,000,000,003 years now. Sorry for lack of context.
This just popped up on my facebook feed and thought of this thread right away
Can indeed confirm we had zero winter here in Arizona this year.
Also yeah, hearing billion with a B when he said million with an M sounds like something I may have done.
Global Warming. Local Weather Extremes.
The problem is that climate change is cyclical, but scientists still have proof that while, yes, things are still warming up since the last ice age, they're warming up at a level that is unprecedented in any of the previous cycles.
A huge number of scientists say we are going through the 6th Great Extinction event too. Only this event is happening orders of magnitude than any other event in earth's history. Even the K-T Extinction event took place over millions of years. The Holocene extinction event has been going on for only around 13,000 years and has already wiped out some 10%-20% of all biodiversity. That's a rate some 10,000 times faster than any other event we know of.
On a somewhat related note about "10-20% of all biodiversity"...what percentage of life on the planet have we documented? I know they recently discovered a bunch of organisms in people's fucking belly buttons that were heretofore unknown, so I'm willing to bet there's some uncharted caverns in Africa and Russia that have some shit we've never seen. And then fuck the ocean! Do we even know half the organisms that live there?
I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but do they factor that in for "10-20% of known organisms" or am I misreading what biodiversity means?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/this-picture-shows-the/
Were talking about a densely populated state, and there was a lot of unknown life in a single undiscovered cave. If we had serious funding for our sciences, and more people actually believed in the findings of biology we would be making all sorts of discoveries of new life on a regular basis, and who knows where that could lead. Unfortunately, we have to continue to live in our current reality where we face big problems like climate change, and we're not ready to respond to them because the people with resources to change things haven't adequately suffered or believe they can shield themselves with their money.
We need to count on climate change being fixable after it's wrecked the world a bit. If it truly isn't fixable at the point that the damage is noticeable to everyone alive, then that's all she wrote for humanity.
Losing 10-20% of the organisms we do know about can be reasonably extrapolated to also losing 10-20% of the organisms we don't know about. Just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they are somehow protected from dying. And very few things are being intentionally killed by humans (unintentionally is another matter) so whether we actually know about them or not makes little difference to what is killing them.
no really fuck this winter it's killing me. it's snowing in april
Normally, I would have been out biking already, and looking forward to the local trails losing their snow cover so I can drive down them.
This year, I haven't even gone to the shed, due to the four feet of snow in the backyard.
Actually, it's the belief they can't do anything to stop it. Which is generally true, given the state of things.
The earth has experienced tremendous temperature and climate swings in its long history, much greater than what we are seeing now, unaided by any manmade tinkering in the climate. Any variety of events have taken place in our past which would have wiped out humanity had we been around at that point. The earth has been around for thousands of millions of years. Why do we think the climate of the past 150 years or so represents some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity? I mean this..
..was not caused by the industrial revolution, although the industrial revolution, globalization, destruction of fragile ecologies, pollution, etc, have obviously accelerated the trend in recent years.
It's entirely possible that humanity is just completely and irrevocably fucked due to entirely natural causes against which we are totally powerless.
Looking at the harm we do to the environment and each other, I'm not even sure that's such a bad thing. The dinosaurs went extinct, why shouldn't we? Why do we think we are so special? In the end we are minuscule particles on a tiny speck whirling through the black cosmos. Shrug.
In the particular case of AGW, we're well past the window scientists told us we had in which to act, and people have no faith whatsoever that their political leaders will do anything about it after watching decades of squandered opportunity. Enjoy life while you can and don't have kids, I guess. I think it's obvious ever since WWI and WWII that humanity has a collective death wish anyway. The things we could do to avert or mitigate climate change we are certainly not doing.
We shouldn't feel bad however, as I think the most likely answer to Fermi's Paradox is that it is in the nature ofall intelligent life to destroy itself. (See also The Great Filter). I think the most likely explanation for not having glimpsed any intelligent life in a universe billions of years old is that we are treading a well worn path to self destruction.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
You can extrapolate it like that, but it's no more valid as a statement than claiming that there's zero effect on the unknown species.
It's completely possible that there is a similar effect, but it's generally a good idea to not make claims that can't be backed up. In this case due to the organisms not being known. That kind of fuzzy claims tend to be latched onto by climate change deniers.
Nobody is saying the past 150 years represent some sort of stable point we can expect to persist in perpetuity. In fact, were that the case, it would probably be a relief because it would mean our fuckedness would stop accelerating so to speak.
As much as people say 'but it's only 150 years' or '10,000 years', or 'the earth was cold before', that only supports the evidence that shit's happening at an unprecedented rate - a rate not seen in the 'thousands of millions' of years the earth has been around. Orders of magnitude faster, even when we're taking some extreme conditions and circumstances - huge geological events, large meteor impacts, that still had global catastrophic impacts. And yet, even though we aren't seeing super-volcano eruptions or mile-wide asteroids hitting the earth, things are changing at entirely unprecedented rates.
Also, downplaying impact by saying 'obviously accelerated' is like calling a nuke going off 'a bit of a bang'. Even pre-industrial revolution, the human impact and mass extinctions were happening at a previously unseen rate. These are things that - in quite a few cases - can be directly attributed to human behavior. Things like the hunting to extinction of a large portion of the planet's megafauna for example.
I agree there is a lot of 'doom and gloom', but the big problem is the evidence tends to show that chicken little is not only right, but the sky is falling faster than he thought.
No, it is much more valid a statement, because science is, like a real thing, you know? Sampling, extrapolation and other types of statistical analysis are well established fields that make a statement that draws error bars like '10-20%' factual within the normally accepted bounds of scientific fact.
Words have meaning and are related to their context. In this case, we're talking about things like P values and the scientific context of that statement when we speak about 'fact'. Similar to the different usage of the word 'theory' and how laymen relate it to things like...say...evolution, simply because someone with no scientific background disagrees with the statement doesn't make their interpretation equally valid to an established body of work.
Absolutely. That still kind of burns me up.
I would be so happy if we could finally clone a woolly mammoth and perhaps undo some of the harm we have done if we could reestablish the species.
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Such as measured global temperatures showing that warming is actually happening, with declining size of glaciers etc. Making claims on the effects on species that you literally do not know whether they exist or not probably won't help at convincing the public.
http://kuow.org/post/goat-rentals-take-seattle-first-day-amazon-home-services
Actually, making extrapolations based on the available data is kind of... how statistics works. This is entirely a valid statement
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Hmmm... how many goats would you need to replace a lawnmower in a standard half acre plot of grass?
0.25
Perfect! I see a pair of goats in my future.
Now I just need to win the lottery to actually buy the land. Anyone willing to share tonights powerball numbers?
Also, I see a lot of sheep eating grass around British castles. The sheep on my profile is one such, from Conwy in Wales.
It's valid if you want to produce really shitty statistics. Extrapolating the results of set B based on data set A, when you have zero knowledge of B, or A's relevance to it, is kinda bollocks.
It's just bad science. There's so many assumptions being made. Evidence trumps assumptions any day of the week.
http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/california-nuts/
My friend could have really used that a few years ago to clear out some blackberry bushes.
Also, the great thing about the rental goal industry is that it's self-correcting. If you ever produce more goats than the market can handle, there's a simple solution.
It's called "Dinner."
Meh.
It's scientifically useful to have predictions about how much biodiversity we are loosing to slash and burn farming and expansion of human habitats in the jungles of wherever. Because it is basically science we will never have the change to do if we don't do it right now or change the effects people are having.
This is basically possible through statistics and sampling and extrapolation.
It is generally a little more complicated than just assuming a 1 to 1 correlation between known and unknown though.
I think the whole "millions will die" part is what puts people off. You know, kind of how people should react to this kind of information.