Starship Asterisk*

By First Dog on the Moon http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ed-picture
Meanwhile, Phil Plait debunks this obnoxious billboad. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... wrong.html

aalundexy wrote:Is Global warming a man made Phenomenon or is it a cyclical pattern the world goes through? I've heard so many sides of the story and I can witness it first hand that Global warming is real. But there is a huge debate in the scientific community on whether it's a man made phenomenon or it's just the planet going through another phase before another ice age.

I'm glad you asked your question, and welcome to the starship aalundexy.

geckzilla wrote:There's actually not a huge debate about whether it's caused by humans or not. It is. The debate is about what effect it will have in the near and long term future and whether or not we should change ourselves. There was one thread already on this topic you may want to read through.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16778

Thank you for providing that topic link geck, even though it took up much of my week to wade through it all. And my my, what a rip snortin' debate it was for a time. Even though I don't agree with the conclusions of the anti-AGW posters, I'll still state that the forum was more interesting when they were still around. Some of them even interspersed scriptural references inside there comments, so I could have had interesting PM conversations with them had our times as members overlapped.

Someone even asked why some religious people might choose to deny AGW, and that was never answered, perhaps because there isn't a good answer. As a religious person myself, part of the reason I can readily accept AGW is what was foretold at Revelation 11:18. The end of that verse speaks of a time "to bring to ruin those ruining the earth."

Even apart from the global warming issue, increasing CO₂ is starting to have a ruinous effect on coral reefs and other sea life. As the atmospheric levels of CO₂ rise, the gas is absorbed into seawater and the acidity of seawater increases. When the ph of seawater changes too much shellfish and other reef building organisms could be wiped out, killing off reefs, some of the most bio-diverse areas of the planet. Thus AGW is not going to be beneficial to coral reefs, as some in the earlier thread contended.

Daniel

You're such a tool, Bruce. I don't even feel like moderating you anymore.

BDanielMayfield wrote:Someone even asked why some religious people might choose to deny AGW, and that was never answered, perhaps because there isn't a good answer.

Actually, there are some excellent answers, and good analysis of the strong correlation between religion and certain types of science denialism, including anti-AGW. This just isn't the forum for discussing them. But if the subject interests you, it's not hard to find forums very much open to such discussion.

What Chris said.

I well understand geckzilla's weariness, so [mod hat] Bruce, knock it off. This is not the place to discuss religion. No Biblical references, not even obliquely, no proselytizing, no faith-in-the-man-upstairs comments, nothing. Thanks. [/mod hat]

And now [bike helmet] I've got some riding to do.

Ann wrote:Well... there is actually a Norwegian town with that name.

Back when every town had its own train station, there was a story about an American tourist in Norway who looked out the window of the train he was in and saw the sign, Gods Station. (It's a misspelling - it should be godsstation.) The sign says that you are supposed to load and unload goods onto and from freight trains at this station, but the poor American read it as God's Station. You can imagine his shock as he looked out the window on the other side of the train and saw a sign with the name that you just showed us in the spoiler of your post, Beyond!

Ann

This must be the side the frozen goods are unloaded.

Global warming slowdown 'could last another decade'.



http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28870988

Beyond wrote:Global warming slowdown 'could last another decade'.



http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28870988

Which is probably bad news. The energy imbalance still exists; the excess energy is still being stored. For the moment, it's just not creating surface warming. But that stored energy is likely to be released, resulting in very rapid warming. The long term trend is not affected, it just means that the pattern is a stair step, not a line. And our political system is even less capable of dealing with that.

I had this really bizarre dream last night about being someone in the future exploring space and finding an alternate Earth. The continents were warped but still recognizable. Somehow I visited and awkwardly blended in with the people there and discovered a strange culture of wanting to be mediocre, or, rather, to not excel in any way which would be considered highly intelligent or inquisitive. Apparently the had the global warming problem too and tried to solve it by nuking Antarctica. It didn't work and they lost all hope in science. People just lived indoors. The library was full of old Disney movies.

geckzilla wrote:I had this really bizarre dream last night about being someone in the future exploring space and finding an alternate Earth. The continents were warped but still recognizable. Somehow I visited and awkwardly blended in with the people there and discovered a strange culture of wanting to be mediocre, or, rather, to not excel in any way which would be considered highly intelligent or inquisitive. Apparently the had the global warming problem too and tried to solve it by nuking Antarctica. It didn't work and they lost all hope in science. People just lived indoors. The library was full of old Disney movies.

And what led you to the conclusion that this was an alternate Earth?

Well, presumably because I was shocked to see it look so much like "my" Earth, which was back yonder some way across the galaxy. But maybe we still didn't get the whole time dilation thing and it actually was my Earth.

geckzilla wrote:I had this really bizarre dream last night about being someone in the future exploring space and finding an alternate Earth. The continents were warped but still recognizable. Somehow I visited and awkwardly blended in with the people there and discovered a strange culture of wanting to be mediocre, or, rather, to not excel in any way which would be considered highly intelligent or inquisitive. Apparently the had the global warming problem too and tried to solve it by nuking Antarctica. It didn't work and they lost all hope in science. People just lived indoors. The library was full of old Disney movies.

Won't somebody think of the penguins!?