13 ms·

Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans

91 points by alexcasalboni 12y ago

padobson 12y ago
I've never been fully convinced of anthropomorphic climate change. There's just too much politics involved for me to be convinced of such relatively recent studies. That said, I'll convert all of my energy sources to PV cells tomorrow if someone gives me a way to do it without mortgaging the next ten years of my life.
- KevinEldon 12y ago
  A colleague of mine in Sacramento has installed solar power and expects to recover the investment in 6 years. If you're serious about using solar it seems like something that's achievable without mortgaging your life.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    California has the highest (I believe) state subsidies for this sort of thing. My aunt and uncle just did the same thing, and they live north of LA. It makes me wonder two things: 1. What is the ROI without the subsidies? 2. How much lower would the price be if the subsidies didn't exist?
    - ams6110 12y ago
      Subsidies don't recover the investment, they just make other people pay for it.
      - primroot 12y ago
        ... or potentially pay for their own negative externalities.
        ptaipale 12y ago
        Other people pay, regardless of whether they produce negative externalities or not.
- sgt101 12y ago
  Rather than looking at the politics perhaps you could look at the science? What would it take to convince you? Seriously - if nothing can then we have departed from rational debate, but if there is evidence that would sway you then it would be great to identify it.
  - padobson 12y ago
    I have a number of questions that I've never been able to find satisfactory answers to, and if I got them I could be convinced. But first, let me say, that this may well be moot. I think solar energy is the way to go. I think the sooner human beings stop burning things they find in the ground for energy, the better. I'll happily give my vote or my money to an elegant solution to make this happen. Next, my nutshell understanding of global warming: Temperature and carbon-based greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are closely correlated. For as far back as we can measure (many millennia when using ice cores), atmospheric temperate has been stable along with CO2 concentrations (about 280ppm). Sometime in mid 18th century, CO2 concentrations started to uptick, which caused a rise in temperatures, which in turn caused a rise in CO2 concentrations, compounding continuously to present day levels (1.5 degree temperature increase, ~400 ppm CO2 concentrations). The best explanation for the shift in the balance of the carbon cycle is the additional gases that humans add by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and making concrete. My questions: 1. Every carbon-temperature hockey stick chart I've seen starts in 1750, when humans were a negligible atmospheric carbon source. Even today, human beings are a minor source of carbon-based gases in the fast carbon cycle. While I can certainly accept that it would only take a minor addition to throw the whole system out of balance, the timing seems strange to me. How do we know that humans are responsible for the initial rise in CO2 concentrations above 280ppm that started 250 years ago when emissions paled in comparison to what they are today? 2. I've seen lots of charts that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations with temperature, but the charts I've seen (like this one: http://bit.ly/18UFLMA http://bit.ly/18UFLMA) that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations and emissions don't seem to correlate as strongly until the blade of the hockey stick, and even then the correlation usually flips, with the proportion of human emissions surpassing the proportion of CO2 concentrations. If humans are directly responsible for present day greenhouse gas concentrations, shouldn't emissions and CO2 concentrations more closely correlate? It seems like greenhouse gas concentrations don't meaningfully rise until temperature meaningfully rises first as a result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations. 3. Water vapor is a much more abundant greenhouse gas than any gases emitted by human activity. While I understand that other greenhouse gases simply have a higher capacity for trapping heat, what I don't understand is how significantly humans could impact the greenhouse effect when they don't substantially alter the most quantitatively significant greenhouse gas. 4. The most convincing argument for anthropomorphic climate change, to me, is the lack of a viable alternative. Solar forcing seems to be the best alternative offered. Do the climate models used to support anthropomorphic climate change account for variability in solar output? Is there variability in solar output? How is this measured?
- DanBC 12y ago
  > There's just too much politics involved When tobacco was under attack the companies paid for scientists and doctors to spread misleading information; they paid for FUD. Those same scientists are now employed by oil and energy companies and they are using the same tactics. The only reason there's "politics" involved is because one side is deliberately spreading lies about the entirety of the science, even the bits that we are sure about.
  - bottled_poe 12y ago
    The only reason? Don't you think it is a possibility that this is all an attempt to artificially raise costs? With increased efficiency of production, one might expect the cost of energy to decrease, but unfortunately we will need to raise them because 'climate change'. Looks like you will need to keep working your 9-5 in order to fund your way of life. Someone (not me) might say this looks like business as usual.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    This is nothing like tobacco and the amount of money spent on research to support AGW absolutely dwarfs the amount of money that the energy companies spends. Here's a simple question: for the ground based sensors used in a significant portion of land based temperature readings, what happens if you just simply forgot to mow the grass for a couple of weeks. Or, in general, just don't mow it short enough? Answer: you'll get readings 2-5F too high, especially at night. The biggest issue is that the land based sensor data we rely on is kind of junk and is constantly being tweaked and changed, and the satellite based data is only marginally better.
  - Agustus 12y ago
    Even in the smoking realm there was politics. Because there are no adults in a room to make judgement calls anymore, you need to place your claim on zero or nothing. The smoking industry could not admit there might be the slightest possibility of a link, otherwise they would have a BPA-plastic situation on their hands; the public goes into hysteria over a possible link. The lie had to be maintained in order to preserve the company. The government lied with their statistics in their attribution of risk correlations, look at how serious second hand smoke is treated as a serious concern and that was used to move the public against the cigarette companies; citing that smokers heavily affect asthma sufferers. However, the number of asthma sufferers climbed as the number of smokers declined [1], suggesting, statistically, that smoking was good overall for society. Then the government turns around and uses the smokescreen, good one Agustus, to levy a tax on the cigarettes themselves, enabling a ridiculous tax on the poor to maintain their habit. Now as smokers transition away in numbers to the less taxed and insanely less-taxed e-cigarettes, there is a push to do the same horror statistics as cigarettes; witness the e-cigarette test that used a highly modified tube to show the possibility of formaldehyde developing [2]. This being said, I have no doubt that smoking increases lung cancer and other risks. The problem is the environment in which the sides of an argument push their agendas. The politics are very real when a politician can easily overcome political hurdles to give out pork projects that would otherwise be tied up in regulatory hell. Solyndra gets built, politicians photo-op, donors get paid back, fails. Solar farms are fast-tracked through regulatory processes and impact the environment at magnitudes larger than oil [4]. Politicians recognize this, fund projects that create the article's headline and then use the issue to push an agenda which gets money to donors who in turn give it back to them next time they run a campaign. BIGGEST EXAMPLE of the lengths politicians will go to [5]: Senator Timothy Wirth: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it. DEBORAH AMOS: Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day? Senator Timothy Wirth: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot. [1] http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/urbanmaap/projects/projects_asthma2.html http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/urbanmaap/projects/projec... [2] http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2706 http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2706 [3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bank..., http://freebeacon.com/issues/billionaire-trying-to-force-costly-green-mandate-on-new-york/ http://freebeacon.com/issues/billionaire-trying-to-force-cos..., [4] http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/burned-birds-become-new-environmental-victims-energy-quest-n184426 http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/burned-birds-beco... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCfxxXRRdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCfxxXRRdY
dm3 12y ago
There's a good comment on this topic in the /r/science subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warming_is_now_slowing_down_the/cpoexfz http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warmi...
- Patient0 12y ago
  Could you repost it here? Reddit is behind a firewall where I am.
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    Reddit post, reposted here without comment or endorsement: ---- [–]horvybaby 1515 points 11 hours ago*x3 Okay, so let's get a few things correct: because perhaps Nature is behind a paywall for some people. Rahmstorf et. al. show a decrease in THC/MOC variability for the period 1970-1990, which we have then partially recovered from. The title of the Nature article is inflammatory, but the Washington Post article is significantly more so. We do not know nearly enough about THC variability to make millenial scale arguments. We only recently actually made a measurement system that can calculate the overturning (the RAPID array). Rahmstorf and others had some issues with THC shutdown in the 90's when previous studies, which at one point suggested a shutdown in THC or meridional overturning, turned out to be incorrect because of an aliasing from a sampling error: they just happened to be measuring at points in the seasonal cycle that were spaced in such a way so as to show a decrease when there was none. This led to our modern understanding of inter-annual variability in the THC, so it all worked out well. The nature paper takes pains to note that the RAPID array is just 11 years old and so we can't say anything from the results. But this proxy data must be referenced to something, and the only reasonable measurement apparatus to use is RAPID. It isn't. Using proxy data to infer something about the overturning, while reasonable, doesn't give great coherence towards present understanding of complicated, long-timescale events like the heating of the deep ocean. Furthermore, even at theirs strongest the conclusions absolutely do not support the WaPo headline. This is the sort of things that makes climate scientists like myself furious. The results end up overhyped, overblown, and for soundbites like press releases and Nature papers. This just misinforms people. Unless I hear from RAPID that the MOC/THC is reducing, I'm not trusting the authors. Just because climate change is a hot-button issue, and we want ways to convince people about its impacts, doesn't mean MOC/THC shutoffs can be pulled out of nowhere. edit: Just want to mention: this doesn't say anything about the method of analysis. The method seems to be well done and scientific and careful, given the data at hand. The issue is rather the paper title and subsequent inflation in popular media, which is silly.
restalis 12y ago
What's interesting is that beyond that "record coldest" spot in the Northern Atlantic, there are still "record warmest" places in the Arctic Ocean, north of Europe. If the temperature in those places was supposed to be dependent on the warm current from Caribbean, how come they were warmer than usual after the current slowed down?
- zzkt 12y ago
  For some more detail about the dynamics, have a look at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-...
nashashmi 12y ago
I like to think of these and other effects from global warming as the planet's system of healing. The warmer the climate gets, the more ways it tries to heals, and the more damage happens as a result. If I were to apply that theory here, how is this "slow-down" part of that process?
- pyre 12y ago
  The planet isn't an organism with an immune system reacting to infections. It's a ball of rock that "couldn't care less" if there are beings living on it. The systems that exist on the surface of the planet are just physical processes reacting to other physical processes. Nothing more. Ocean currents aren't changing as part of a process of "healing" they are changing because they are governed by the laws of physics.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    That is not completely true, virtually all the oxygen on Earth came from bacteria. Life interacts with physics.
    - f055 12y ago
      Life IS physics.
    - pyre 12y ago
      The bacteria weren't attempting to seed life or "heal" the Earth by producing oxygen. It was a by-product, that by coincidence other organisms were able to develop to use.
      - nashashmi 12y ago
        Enough with the "heal" already. I was being metaphorical.
  - nashashmi 12y ago
    That is quite arrogant of a claim that it is "just a ball of rock." The planet has methods of reversal built in. My reference to the word "healing" is its ability to reverse and go back to conditions that are normal. If you want reference, look up global dimming, and look up the problems global dimming is causing. Also, take into account the different reactions that global warming is causing. You can see "healing" elements when you notice that the ocean takes in more CO2 as the planet gets warmer. Ice caps also take in CO2. if you look at weather exteremities like freezing and hot days, snow and rain and drought, and hurricanes, you notice that greenhouse gases do react to this. On hot days, infrared energy is sent back to space. On snow, rain, and freezing days, CO2 settles. The more you look, the more you see that the planet reacts to bring things back to normal. more plants, more bacteria, more life. These processes are also part of physics. But just because the planet heals does not mean we ignore climate change. The "healing" is just as detrimental.
stinos 12y ago
According to the National Climatic Data Center, the world just saw its warmest winter ever…except for in one spot in the north Atlantic ocean (the deepest blue color above), which set a record for cold. Which is not good. (NCDC) These new NOAA data got me quite worried because they indicate that this partial recovery that we describe in the paper was only temporary, and the circulation is on the way down again Honest question: is such a small data point (a couple of months) for something relatively slow (climate change) really something to worry about? Suppose I call it an outlier (which I can't because I cannot look into the future), wouldn't that be equally wrong?
- srameshc 12y ago
  If am assuming Mr. Rahmstorf is qualified enough to understand the data. And with this part "So far, the study finds, we’re looking at a circulation that’s about 15 to 20 percent weaker. That may not sound like much, but the paper suggests a weakening this strong has not happened at any time since the year 900. Moreover, this is already more weakening than scientifically expected — and could be the beginning of a further slowdown that could have great consequences" I believe there is certainly a need to worry about.
  - dragop 12y ago
    It's Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Ocean Physics at the Potsdam Institute.

91 points by alexcasalboni 12y ago

I've never been fully convinced of anthropomorphic climate change. There's just too much politics involved for me to be convinced of such relatively recent studies. That said, I'll convert all of my energy sources to PV cells tomorrow if someone gives me a way to do it without mortgaging the next ten years of my life.

KevinEldon 12y ago
A colleague of mine in Sacramento has installed solar power and expects to recover the investment in 6 years. If you're serious about using solar it seems like something that's achievable without mortgaging your life.
- strictnein 12y ago
  California has the highest (I believe) state subsidies for this sort of thing. My aunt and uncle just did the same thing, and they live north of LA. It makes me wonder two things: 1. What is the ROI without the subsidies? 2. How much lower would the price be if the subsidies didn't exist?
  - ams6110 12y ago
    Subsidies don't recover the investment, they just make other people pay for it.
    - primroot 12y ago
      ... or potentially pay for their own negative externalities.
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        Other people pay, regardless of whether they produce negative externalities or not.
sgt101 12y ago
Rather than looking at the politics perhaps you could look at the science? What would it take to convince you? Seriously - if nothing can then we have departed from rational debate, but if there is evidence that would sway you then it would be great to identify it.
- padobson 12y ago
  I have a number of questions that I've never been able to find satisfactory answers to, and if I got them I could be convinced. But first, let me say, that this may well be moot. I think solar energy is the way to go. I think the sooner human beings stop burning things they find in the ground for energy, the better. I'll happily give my vote or my money to an elegant solution to make this happen. Next, my nutshell understanding of global warming: Temperature and carbon-based greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are closely correlated. For as far back as we can measure (many millennia when using ice cores), atmospheric temperate has been stable along with CO2 concentrations (about 280ppm). Sometime in mid 18th century, CO2 concentrations started to uptick, which caused a rise in temperatures, which in turn caused a rise in CO2 concentrations, compounding continuously to present day levels (1.5 degree temperature increase, ~400 ppm CO2 concentrations). The best explanation for the shift in the balance of the carbon cycle is the additional gases that humans add by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and making concrete. My questions: 1. Every carbon-temperature hockey stick chart I've seen starts in 1750, when humans were a negligible atmospheric carbon source. Even today, human beings are a minor source of carbon-based gases in the fast carbon cycle. While I can certainly accept that it would only take a minor addition to throw the whole system out of balance, the timing seems strange to me. How do we know that humans are responsible for the initial rise in CO2 concentrations above 280ppm that started 250 years ago when emissions paled in comparison to what they are today? 2. I've seen lots of charts that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations with temperature, but the charts I've seen (like this one: http://bit.ly/18UFLMA http://bit.ly/18UFLMA) that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations and emissions don't seem to correlate as strongly until the blade of the hockey stick, and even then the correlation usually flips, with the proportion of human emissions surpassing the proportion of CO2 concentrations. If humans are directly responsible for present day greenhouse gas concentrations, shouldn't emissions and CO2 concentrations more closely correlate? It seems like greenhouse gas concentrations don't meaningfully rise until temperature meaningfully rises first as a result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations. 3. Water vapor is a much more abundant greenhouse gas than any gases emitted by human activity. While I understand that other greenhouse gases simply have a higher capacity for trapping heat, what I don't understand is how significantly humans could impact the greenhouse effect when they don't substantially alter the most quantitatively significant greenhouse gas. 4. The most convincing argument for anthropomorphic climate change, to me, is the lack of a viable alternative. Solar forcing seems to be the best alternative offered. Do the climate models used to support anthropomorphic climate change account for variability in solar output? Is there variability in solar output? How is this measured?
DanBC 12y ago
> There's just too much politics involved When tobacco was under attack the companies paid for scientists and doctors to spread misleading information; they paid for FUD. Those same scientists are now employed by oil and energy companies and they are using the same tactics. The only reason there's "politics" involved is because one side is deliberately spreading lies about the entirety of the science, even the bits that we are sure about.
- bottled_poe 12y ago
  The only reason? Don't you think it is a possibility that this is all an attempt to artificially raise costs? With increased efficiency of production, one might expect the cost of energy to decrease, but unfortunately we will need to raise them because 'climate change'. Looks like you will need to keep working your 9-5 in order to fund your way of life. Someone (not me) might say this looks like business as usual.
- strictnein 12y ago
  This is nothing like tobacco and the amount of money spent on research to support AGW absolutely dwarfs the amount of money that the energy companies spends. Here's a simple question: for the ground based sensors used in a significant portion of land based temperature readings, what happens if you just simply forgot to mow the grass for a couple of weeks. Or, in general, just don't mow it short enough? Answer: you'll get readings 2-5F too high, especially at night. The biggest issue is that the land based sensor data we rely on is kind of junk and is constantly being tweaked and changed, and the satellite based data is only marginally better.
- Agustus 12y ago
  Even in the smoking realm there was politics. Because there are no adults in a room to make judgement calls anymore, you need to place your claim on zero or nothing. The smoking industry could not admit there might be the slightest possibility of a link, otherwise they would have a BPA-plastic situation on their hands; the public goes into hysteria over a possible link. The lie had to be maintained in order to preserve the company. The government lied with their statistics in their attribution of risk correlations, look at how serious second hand smoke is treated as a serious concern and that was used to move the public against the cigarette companies; citing that smokers heavily affect asthma sufferers. However, the number of asthma sufferers climbed as the number of smokers declined [1], suggesting, statistically, that smoking was good overall for society. Then the government turns around and uses the smokescreen, good one Agustus, to levy a tax on the cigarettes themselves, enabling a ridiculous tax on the poor to maintain their habit. Now as smokers transition away in numbers to the less taxed and insanely less-taxed e-cigarettes, there is a push to do the same horror statistics as cigarettes; witness the e-cigarette test that used a highly modified tube to show the possibility of formaldehyde developing [2]. This being said, I have no doubt that smoking increases lung cancer and other risks. The problem is the environment in which the sides of an argument push their agendas. The politics are very real when a politician can easily overcome political hurdles to give out pork projects that would otherwise be tied up in regulatory hell. Solyndra gets built, politicians photo-op, donors get paid back, fails. Solar farms are fast-tracked through regulatory processes and impact the environment at magnitudes larger than oil [4]. Politicians recognize this, fund projects that create the article's headline and then use the issue to push an agenda which gets money to donors who in turn give it back to them next time they run a campaign. BIGGEST EXAMPLE of the lengths politicians will go to [5]: Senator Timothy Wirth: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it. DEBORAH AMOS: Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day? Senator Timothy Wirth: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot. [1] http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/urbanmaap/projects/projects_asthma2.html http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/urbanmaap/projects/projec... [2] http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2706 http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2706 [3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bank..., http://freebeacon.com/issues/billionaire-trying-to-force-costly-green-mandate-on-new-york/ http://freebeacon.com/issues/billionaire-trying-to-force-cos..., [4] http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/burned-birds-become-new-environmental-victims-energy-quest-n184426 http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/burned-birds-beco... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCfxxXRRdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCfxxXRRdY

dm3 12y ago

There's a good comment on this topic in the /r/science subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warming_is_now_slowing_down_the/cpoexfz http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warmi...

Patient0 12y ago
Could you repost it here? Reddit is behind a firewall where I am.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Reddit post, reposted here without comment or endorsement: ---- [–]horvybaby 1515 points 11 hours ago*x3 Okay, so let's get a few things correct: because perhaps Nature is behind a paywall for some people. Rahmstorf et. al. show a decrease in THC/MOC variability for the period 1970-1990, which we have then partially recovered from. The title of the Nature article is inflammatory, but the Washington Post article is significantly more so. We do not know nearly enough about THC variability to make millenial scale arguments. We only recently actually made a measurement system that can calculate the overturning (the RAPID array). Rahmstorf and others had some issues with THC shutdown in the 90's when previous studies, which at one point suggested a shutdown in THC or meridional overturning, turned out to be incorrect because of an aliasing from a sampling error: they just happened to be measuring at points in the seasonal cycle that were spaced in such a way so as to show a decrease when there was none. This led to our modern understanding of inter-annual variability in the THC, so it all worked out well. The nature paper takes pains to note that the RAPID array is just 11 years old and so we can't say anything from the results. But this proxy data must be referenced to something, and the only reasonable measurement apparatus to use is RAPID. It isn't. Using proxy data to infer something about the overturning, while reasonable, doesn't give great coherence towards present understanding of complicated, long-timescale events like the heating of the deep ocean. Furthermore, even at theirs strongest the conclusions absolutely do not support the WaPo headline. This is the sort of things that makes climate scientists like myself furious. The results end up overhyped, overblown, and for soundbites like press releases and Nature papers. This just misinforms people. Unless I hear from RAPID that the MOC/THC is reducing, I'm not trusting the authors. Just because climate change is a hot-button issue, and we want ways to convince people about its impacts, doesn't mean MOC/THC shutoffs can be pulled out of nowhere. edit: Just want to mention: this doesn't say anything about the method of analysis. The method seems to be well done and scientific and careful, given the data at hand. The issue is rather the paper title and subsequent inflation in popular media, which is silly.

restalis 12y ago

What's interesting is that beyond that "record coldest" spot in the Northern Atlantic, there are still "record warmest" places in the Arctic Ocean, north of Europe. If the temperature in those places was supposed to be dependent on the warm current from Caribbean, how come they were warmer than usual after the current slowed down?

zzkt 12y ago
For some more detail about the dynamics, have a look at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-...

nashashmi 12y ago

I like to think of these and other effects from global warming as the planet's system of healing. The warmer the climate gets, the more ways it tries to heals, and the more damage happens as a result. If I were to apply that theory here, how is this "slow-down" part of that process?

pyre 12y ago
The planet isn't an organism with an immune system reacting to infections. It's a ball of rock that "couldn't care less" if there are beings living on it. The systems that exist on the surface of the planet are just physical processes reacting to other physical processes. Nothing more. Ocean currents aren't changing as part of a process of "healing" they are changing because they are governed by the laws of physics.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  That is not completely true, virtually all the oxygen on Earth came from bacteria. Life interacts with physics.
  - f055 12y ago
    Life IS physics.
  - pyre 12y ago
    The bacteria weren't attempting to seed life or "heal" the Earth by producing oxygen. It was a by-product, that by coincidence other organisms were able to develop to use.
    - nashashmi 12y ago
      Enough with the "heal" already. I was being metaphorical.
- nashashmi 12y ago
  That is quite arrogant of a claim that it is "just a ball of rock." The planet has methods of reversal built in. My reference to the word "healing" is its ability to reverse and go back to conditions that are normal. If you want reference, look up global dimming, and look up the problems global dimming is causing. Also, take into account the different reactions that global warming is causing. You can see "healing" elements when you notice that the ocean takes in more CO2 as the planet gets warmer. Ice caps also take in CO2. if you look at weather exteremities like freezing and hot days, snow and rain and drought, and hurricanes, you notice that greenhouse gases do react to this. On hot days, infrared energy is sent back to space. On snow, rain, and freezing days, CO2 settles. The more you look, the more you see that the planet reacts to bring things back to normal. more plants, more bacteria, more life. These processes are also part of physics. But just because the planet heals does not mean we ignore climate change. The "healing" is just as detrimental.

stinos 12y ago

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the world just saw its warmest winter ever…except for in one spot in the north Atlantic ocean (the deepest blue color above), which set a record for cold. Which is not good. (NCDC) These new NOAA data got me quite worried because they indicate that this partial recovery that we describe in the paper was only temporary, and the circulation is on the way down again Honest question: is such a small data point (a couple of months) for something relatively slow (climate change) really something to worry about? Suppose I call it an outlier (which I can't because I cannot look into the future), wouldn't that be equally wrong?

srameshc 12y ago
If am assuming Mr. Rahmstorf is qualified enough to understand the data. And with this part "So far, the study finds, we’re looking at a circulation that’s about 15 to 20 percent weaker. That may not sound like much, but the paper suggests a weakening this strong has not happened at any time since the year 900. Moreover, this is already more weakening than scientifically expected — and could be the beginning of a further slowdown that could have great consequences" I believe there is certainly a need to worry about.
- dragop 12y ago
  It's Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Ocean Physics at the Potsdam Institute.