The Urge to Explore

I suspect the lesson is that Life in general and we in particular can adapt
to most things, provided that they happen over a reasonable timescale; the
rate of change is more relevant perhaps than its direction
Michael Martin-Smith
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Shawn Wilson wrote:
"Frank Scrooby" wrote in message
are certain types (of people) who hold the opinion that (according
to the incomplete data we have of our current climatic 'age' and of
previous climatic 'age' of life on Earth) that bio-diversity is greatest
during periods of global warming.

I don't buy into it.

Certainly the habitable area is greater without large parts of it
covered in
ice. The increased precipitation from higher temps also means that
deserts
will shrink, which is yet more area opened to life.

Biodiversity *is* higher in the tropics than in temperate
zones. What that implies for a warmer world, I couldn't say.

Paul

Actually ,it looks increasingly possible for groups of individuals and
interest groups to do just that- robots and solar sails first, suborbital
hops later and , in due time, much more. I now have a least a possibility
,and action plan, of buying a space tourist flight in 10 years or so out of
an extra year or two at work and ( hopefully) some investements.Maybe it
will not pan out ( I will have to pass a Medical in my late 60's or
thereabouts) but at least it is a reasonable possibility. I am really quite
pleased with that
Michael Martin-Smith
"trike" wrote in message
ups.com...
PS 2: If you really feel this way, quit denouncing people as
mentally ill on Usenet, and go out and find some way to earn
the umpteen trillion dollars it'd take to get to Mars. IE, get
off your lazy butt and explore, instead of whining at people
on Usenet. (Yeah, cost suddenly becomes relevant when
you're thinking of spending your OWN money, doesn't it?)

I agree with dchild. The older I get, the more I feel like: If I can't
go, then I'm certainly not paying for other people to.

I want to know what's out there as much as anyone. Curiosity is my
main personality trait. Problem is, I'm tired of footing the bill for
half-assed space missions that are being run by mindless middle
managers, not the steely-eyed misslemen of yore. You want to kill
astronauts through cost-cutting or sheer stupidity? Fine, go ahead.
But give me the opportunity to opt out when the multi-billion-dollar
bill comes due.

Doug

"Damien R. Sullivan" wrote in message
...

This isn't the first climate change, only the most recent. We already
KNOW
that existing creatures can survive higher temperatures than we have now,
since they didn't go extinct before the last ice age. They've done it
before, they can easily do it again. Nature is pretty tough, not the
fragile half dead thing greenies are always claiming it is.

It's not other species I worry about so much in global warming, though
some
will suffer. It's us. Our agriculture is adapted to the conditions of an
unusually stable 10,000 period. Start messing around with the rainfall
patterns and a lot of hell will break loose. Or shut off the North
Atlantic
Current (what really warms most of Europe), though you probably think it'd
be
fun if Europe got ruined.


Our agriculture already manages to grow food crops from the equator to
Alaska. Global warming isn't going to bring about environmental conditions
we don't already successfully deal with every day.





How come conservatives are so reckless about changing the climate
randomly?
I'd think there'd be a link between "don't mess with social traditions"
and
"don't mess with your life support system".


Ad hominem. Are you running out of arguments?

: "Shawn Wilson"
: Our agriculture already manages to grow food crops from the equator to
: Alaska. Global warming isn't going to bring about environmental conditions
: we don't already successfully deal with every day.

How do you know? For example, how did you rule out that small temprature
changes would alter weather patterns or ocean currents, reducing growing
season so that, even though crops could be had, you'd only get half the
yeild per unit area?


Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In article , Wayne Throop says...

: (Damien R. Sullivan)
: How come conservatives are so reckless about changing the climate
: randomly? I'd think there'd be a link between "don't mess with social
: traditions" and "don't mess with your life support system".

Unfortunately, the social traditions were formed when human actions
were much smaller in scope, and had smaller consequences to the
life support system.

Also, the old social traditions are linked to the old economic traditions,
which are demonstrably efficient at producing massive ammounts of wealth.
Massive ammounts of wealth may be useful to have around if one needs to,
e.g., repair, replace, or upgrade the life support system for a few billion
people. To fix big problems in general, and so any claim of the form,
"There's a huge problem that needs fixing! Quick, stop generating wealth
in massive quantities!" meets with a great deal of skepticism from most
sorts of conservatives.

And that includes the skeptical belief that maybe some of the people on
the other side are motivated as much by hostility to the idea of massive
ammounts of wealth or billions of human beings, as by concern for the
natural environment.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

"Wayne Throop" wrote in message
...

: Our agriculture already manages to grow food crops from the equator to
: Alaska. Global warming isn't going to bring about environmental
conditions
: we don't already successfully deal with every day.

How do you know?


Because none of the model predict conditions that don't already exist
somewhere on Earth?




For example, how did you rule out that small temprature
changes would alter weather patterns or ocean currents, reducing growing
season so that, even though crops could be had, you'd only get half the
yeild per unit area?


What causes short gorwing seasons is cold weather.

You have an... interesting concept of global warming if you think it's going
to cause colder weather. Warmer weather in and of itself causes longer
growing seasons. If you want to argue your effect you also have to prove it
would be stronger than the warming setting all this off. You're stacking
hypothetical on hypoothetical and trying to argue that there's a problem?
The problem seems to be your paranoia.










Wayne Throop http://sheol.org/throopw

In article Fgmte.1652$gt5.487@fed1read02,
Shawn Wilson wrote:
For example, how did you rule out that small temprature
changes would alter weather patterns or ocean currents, reducing growing
season so that, even though crops could be had, you'd only get half the
yeild per unit area?

What causes short gorwing seasons is cold weather.

Short growing seasons mostly come from cold weather, for sure. But do
remember that a higher *average* temperature doesn't rule out, say, a
tendency toward cooler and wetter autumns, which would reduce the *useful*
growing season by forcing harvesting to be done earlier. An average
warming doesn't have to be evenly distributed over the year.

Moreover, more generally, reduced crop yield is by no means out of the
question as a consequence of global warming. In particular, there's been
some recent work indicating that past natural warm periods, pleasant
though they might have been in Europe, were times of sustained severe
drought in the western half of North America. I have a dimmer
recollection that they're suspected to also involve an increased risk of
monsoon failure (the annual monsoon rains support much of southern Asia's
agriculture, but sometimes the monsoons simply don't come... occasionally,
several years in a row).

You have an... interesting concept of global warming if you think it's going
to cause colder weather.

You have a very naive concept of global warming if you think it means that
the temperature everywhere at all times of the year just goes up from what
it is now. The effects don't have to be that simple or uniform.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"George William Herbert" wrote in message
...
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) wrote:
[...]
Besides, once the Gulf Stream current gets cut off, who know whats
happens
up around here.

What do you mean, "once"?

It's been headed Spainward for the last few months, in the
intermediate shutdown pattern hypothesized but not seen in
practice to date.

Hmm, I wasn't aware that was happening.

Anything online about this recent turn of events?


Little Ice Age II, anyone? If you live in northern Europe,
buy more cold weather gear this summer and fall...

Or even New England.

(though a competing theory claims it's really the Rocky Mountains that
moderate NE and Northern Europe.)

Unfortunately we may find out "soon" which theory is right.




-george william herbert

Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) wrote:
"George William Herbert" wrote:
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) wrote:
[...]
Besides, once the Gulf Stream current gets cut off, who know whats
happens
up around here.

What do you mean, "once"?

It's been headed Spainward for the last few months, in the
intermediate shutdown pattern hypothesized but not seen in
practice to date.

Hmm, I wasn't aware that was happening.

Anything online about this recent turn of events?

Not really well covered; there's supposed to be something
in Nature magazine Real Soon Now.

The NOAA OPC Gulf Stream Finder project has some info in
realtime of what appears to be going on, see:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/gsf/

It stops at about 50 west, but you can clearly see that
the Gulf Stream isn't going north of 40 N up to that far
across the Atlantic. 40 N runs a bit south of Madrid, Spain.

Also http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ for sea surface
temperature modeling. Which clearly supports that
there's something amiss with the Gulf Stream right now.

In other cheerful news, the largest former downwelling
area in the North Atlantic, off Greenland, seems to have
turned off as well, according to breaking field reports
which remain unconfirmed and unpublished as of yet.

Little Ice Age II, anyone? If you live in northern Europe,
buy more cold weather gear this summer and fall...

Or even New England.

(though a competing theory claims it's really the Rocky Mountains that
moderate NE and Northern Europe.)

Unfortunately we may find out "soon" which theory is right.

Yeah, the global climate has always been more variable
and metastable than anyone tended to give it credit,
even scientists who studied it. The "flips" may take
as little as one year to initiate major global weather
pattern mode changes, according to some of the data
from studying (for example) the 13th century Little
Ice Age.

If we flip to that weather pattern...

North America is in for moderately dryer weather,
the West Coast in particular, similar to El Nino
effects but likely worse and sustained as the new norm.

Northern Europe is likely to get more significantly
colder and dryer.

There was widespread famine north of the Mediterranean
last time this happened; there's a lot of slack in
the food system now (widespread animal food cycle
inefficiency, etc.), fortunately, so it would take
a very significant (more than 50%) drop in agricultural
output for Europe to actually starve of its own resources,
but them starting to get hungry would have massive
impact on global food markets, as they will want to
and can afford to buy significant quantities of food
internationally.

Africa sees a sustained drought probably.
There isn't much slack in the food production system.
And they will be hit hard by price increases in
the global market for exported food, given the
likely European increased demand.

India may see the monsoon system shut down or
be drastically reduced. It is, in fact, having
125+ degree F (50+ C) unusually high temperatures
right now over northwest India, Pakistan, and
Afghanistan, there are dry wells and rivers in
central India, and the Monsoons should have started
by now and apparently haven't...


Even assuming we just entered a repeat of the Little
Ice Age of the 13th century, we have a large amount
of global resilience and transportation capability
and should be able to avoid widespread famine in
the affected areas. However, it would be a truly
major global crisis.

I don't know how to quantify the odds that we're actually
seeing that kick off right now. The variation we are
seeing right now is described to me as completely ouside
the previous north atlantic variation patterns as measured
over the last century or so. The pattern shift and
consequences as modeled and seen in historical records
seem to account for the Little Ice Age effects. However,
we don't really know much about the dynamics of how this
sort of event proceed. We arguably could be already into
the pattern shift, and out of luck. This could be a
brief instability into an intermediate pattern that
then restores to the prior pattern of the last 500
or so years, either this year, or after a year or
a few years. It could be something completely different
that we haven't historically seen or accurately modeled.

We know what the climate effects were on land in the
Little Ice Age, pretty much globally.

We have a lot of modeling that suggests that such
are linked to Gulf Stream shutdowns or intermediate
shutdown events.

We're seeing a lot of discrete phenomena which are out
of normal bounds.

If that is what's happening here, either the complete
shutdown or an intermediate shutdown and southern flow
pattern of the Gulf Stream, the results are predicted
to be clearly evident by the end of next winter.
So this is not going to be a hypothetical question
for very long.

What is very dangerous is that there hasn't been
any significant serious analysis of what, exactly,
is going to happen to the human populations as a
result of a recurring Little Ice Age, and what can
and should be done about it (and by whom) to
ameliorate the probems.


-george william herbert

"You have a very naive concept of global warming if you think it means
that
the temperature everywhere at all times of the year just goes up from
what
it is now. The effects don't have to be that simple or uniform."

Well, my point is that they won't be simple or uniform - and we don't
even know if they will be, on the whole, positive or negative, or if
taking steps to prevent further warming and/or or reverse the trend
would be more expensive than coping with the effects even if they turn
out to be negative.