Presidential Candidates .. Who Do You Like?

1.) 10 years is absolutely meaningless on a climatologic scale.
2.) Actually, no. Global warming specifically refers to anthropogenic climate change, not natural variations.

Organisms can and do change the atmosphere with potentially drastic and/or catastrophic effects over extremely long periods.

Talk to the Cyanobacteria, who by more or less industrializing photosynthesis for the first time, "poisoned" the earth's atmosphere (from the vantage point of the lifeforms of the time, anyway, asoxygen is highly toxic to most anaerobic life) - likely eliminating most forms of life that had existed up to that point, making cyanobacteria more or less single-handedly responsible for what was probably the largest mass extinction the Earth has ever seen (yes, even worse than the Permian-Triassic Boundary event). Moreover, as methane (a strong greenhouse gas) was a major component of the atmosphere at the time, the release of oxygen resulted in the oxidation of methane into carbon dioxide (much weaker greenhouse agent than methane) and water causing a severe decrease in global temperatures - a catastrophic ice age / snowball earth event called the Huronian Glaciation.

Talk to the plants of the Carboniferous period, who, by inventing the fiber lignin, greatly disrupted the carbon cycle because when they died, there were no microorganisms to break down the lignin and release the carbon back into the environment. Not only did this end up giving us the coal we use today, but it also led to a massive increase in atmospheric oxygen concentrations (essentially cheating the biogeochemical cycling of carbon out of ... the cycling part). These high oxygen concentrations paved the way for proto-millipedes the size of small vehicles, proto-dragonflies the size of eagles ... and resulted in a fire-prone landscape because lightning strikes ... had the potential to cause explosions due to the high concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere.

Of course, I mentioned those giant arthropods? Well, joke was on them - they would be victims of organism-driven atmospheric change. The evolution of lignin-digesting micro-organisms reversed the effects the carboniferous plants had on the atmosphere, and they could no longer survive, nor could they adapt fast enough to cope with falling atmospheric oxygen.

And these are all subtle changes that these organisms brought about, with effects that accumulate over long periods of time.

So if you can really rationally conclude that humans - which alter vast tracts of land very quickly, destroy large tracts of photosynthetic biomass, and facilitate the combustion huge quantities of sequestered carboniferous carbon, among other things - are not altering the makeup of the atmosphere and impacting the progression of Earth's climate - then you deserve a gold medal - for excellence in the field of self-interested denial.

I never said you don't understand that people get normal amounts of radiation, but you obviously don't understand something as you stated this:


when referencing Japan's incident.

I'd like to know how 12.something odd miles = hundreds of miles.

I'd like to know how 20-30 years is "a very long time."

12^2 * 3.14 = 452.16

why Pi squared?

(edit: I know you didn't square Pi, but mathematically you may as well have).

Just gonna leave it at that while I go do some google searches.

...did you seriously just question the formula for the area of a circle?

Ah, well ***, I had to look back to see what I said and read too fast. It still doesn't change the fact that you fabricated numbers that don't even make sense for an Island.


Never liked area formulas :P

(I wouldn't infer referencing area when the phrase "within hundreds of miles" is used, maybe if it were something like "hundreds of miles are now uninhabitable, etc.)

What?

ITT: a^2 * b = a * b^2

I'm done here.
If anyone wants to discuss giant Carboniferous insects or biogeochemical cycles, PM me.

Will you guys cut the ***already...

Does this thread serve a purpose?

I got that, I was questioning more so as to why you brought up a circle, when that's not what we were discussing.

It served as an interesting insect educational piece?

This is why:

Because land masses aren't straight lines..?

I'd estimate that the earth has been warming for about 40,000 years, and humans have only been burning fossil fuels for a palty 1/400th of that. This is what I call the 'since the last goddamn ice age' theory.

Global warming is nothing but an environmentalist scare tactic with that sort of consideration. It's used as a scapegoat to glaze over the real concerns of actual environmental damage caused by oil spills and shameless exploitation and oversubsidization of a damningly short-term energy market.

We don't not have nuclear power for sake of safety, we don't have nuclear power because the oil industry bought up or at least got in league all the oil and coal burning plants while slandering nuclear power at every turn and suppressing the same about the true environmental damage of fossil fuel burning over time (which is local toxicity, not global warming).

In the end, it's all greed, and global warming is a half-truth cover story while everything stays status-quo under the guise of 'carbon emission reduction'.

The question isn't "is the climate of the Earth changing naturally?" it's "are we causing these changes to accelerate or progress differently then they would if we weren't burning fossil fuels."

The answer - from the scientific community - is a resounding "yes."

Again, I wouldn't infer that one is speaking of area in the way it was phrased. Not many would.

still doesn't change the "very long time" bit either, unless one is going to say 30 years tops is a very long time for humans.

matter of perception?

Those answers are based on the earth indeed warming, but always without the frame of reference that the earth has been warming for 40,000 years. Pathetic that they fall to correlation = causation.

That and Controversy = grant money.

200+ miles of uninhabitable land is pretty major for a country with a population density of 541 people / square mile which is already strapped for space. So yeah, 30 years is a long time.

Meh, matter of perspective, and I imagine that some of the area will be ready much sooner than that, but it would take some time to clean it 100%

Would imagine the cities would be the first too.

That increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere increases the average retention of radiation is not a politically or economically motivated statment, it's a physical fact.

That we have significantly altered the biomass of the earth and harmed its ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere isn't a politically or economically motivated statement, it's a fact.

That we are currently releasing at rapid rates vast quantities of CO2 that were "meant" to be dealt with 300 million years ago, but were instead buried because plants got too clever for a little while ... isn't a politically or economically motivated statement, it's a fact.

Here's some stuff.

Generally speaking, most of what people know is conventional wisdom. I made the claim that areas up to 100 miles away have been found to be contaminated with radiation, thus, uninhabitable.

You then pointed out that the evacuation radius implemented by the Japanese government was 20km, which is correct. Does this mean that the area outside of 20km is safe?

Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged people living between 20 and 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors

So obviously, there's something going on here. While, after some research, 100miles was an exaggeration, it's not as much of an exaggeration as you think.

On 16 March, the U.S. Embassy advised Americans in Japan to leave areas within "approximately 50 miles" (80 km) from the plant. Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said before the United States Congress, believing the Japanese government was not telling the full story, "We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan."[32] Spain advised to leave an area of 120 km, Germany advised to leave even the metropolitan area of Tokyo, and South Korea advised to leave farther than 80 km and plans to evacuate by all possible means.[33][34]

The Swedens even suggested it go even further
http://www.thelocal.se/32698/20110320/

....but even I think that's a bit much. Just throwing that out there.

A couple more interesting reads.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

Even if I'm exaggerating the 100m radius, that's okay because that specific number wasn't a crucial part of my argument. What I'm not exaggerating, however, and what you seem to be downplaying, is the danger that region of Japan is in right now.

you said hundreds, not 100, big difference.

edit: danger they were in, not so much anymore.

people will obviously have varying definitions of a safe zone, that's to be expected.


I'll reiterate that if politics hadn't blocked aid sooner, the disaster would have been much better contained, but the situation isn't still as bad as some people claim.

edit: since most of those stories are credited with a march date, am I correct in assuming those were plans at the time of the incident, when they still weren't sure if there was going to be a full scale meltdown or not? If so, then yes, I would have probably evacuated more of an area than they did during the event.

Except global temps have been flat for the last decade....

I'm done playing with you now. Time to move on to more important things.

Anyways:
http://news.yahoo.com/skeptic-finds-now-agrees-global-warming-real-142616605.html

Three quotes to read

Global Warming skeptic admits that he's wrong after performing the actual tests

Not only did he finally admit that global warming is happening, but apparently, his numbers matched what other organizations have already presented.

The Koch brothers are oil billionaires, if you didn't know. When they found out that this skeptic was going to do his own experiments with the intent of proving global warming wrong, they poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into his research. They, more than most anyone else, would have benefited from global warming being brushed under the rug and forgotten.

Suddenly, when results didn't come up the way they wanted, everyone went hushhhhhhhh~

Hmm, I recall seeing a graph where his data was placed on top of pre-existing data and they almost look identical to each other. Forgive me but I can't seem to find it at the moment.


I'm going to repost this here, in case you didn't see it the first time
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm


Basically, you can either agree with the scientist who specialize in the field...or you can agree with the GOP and the oil companies that fund them.

Geez, tough choice.

Oh right, its those evil Koch brothers I forgot, like George Soros doesn't fund the other side? C'mon

I don't discount there has been warming, it's just very unlikely that man has any significant influence over it with our hydrocarbon energy consumption.

2000-2009 was the warmest decade in recorded history, what planet are you living on?

not a planet, a moon.

Moon Base

pretty sure temps are steady up there.

Gold medal, self-interested reality denial.