Are we that stupid?

[Gecko Brothers]

A poll on Scifi.com in the news section there is a poll on The Day After Tomorrow which looks really cheasy in the expensive form of the word.  The  poll said "The SF movie The Day After Tomorrow is roiling debate about the possible disastrous consequences of global warming. Do you believe such a scenario is possible?"
 The answers were
a) Yes. It's only a matter of time.
b) No. It's hysterical exaggeration.
c) I'll believe it when hell (or New York) freezes over.
I of course using logic said "c" knowing it would never happen. First all global warming is mostly an overexagerated myt h produced by nut jobs that dress up as cows and mutant freaks that are not for movies. If you look overall temperatures throughout time on earth,(read Give  Me a Break by John Stossel 20/20 anchor) wether your a Creationist like me or an Evolutionist  you can see that certain times the average temperature has been way higher before than now. This is only one point but what shocks me is not the question but the response. Either the people are joking or they are seriously taking lots of pills, but most people choose "a"!
If the majority is that stupid enough to believe a hype over a movie *cough Blair Witch and Fargo and Texas Chainsaw Massacere cough* then we are really doomed!

[raj]

Sure it was warmer in the past.  That's because all the dinosaurs were driving SUVs.

[dean]

Global Warming is possible, you've also got to remember that even if temperatures of the earth have been bigger and hotter, the landscape was different.

I seriously doubt that big floods and whatnot would occur, but just a slow, constant rising of the water level: I can't see how big floods could just come about; we would be talking massive defrosting of the polar caps at one short amount of time.

[ulthar]

If you melt the North Polar Ice Cap, the water level goes DOWN.  The North Pole is all water, with ice floating on top.  If this ice (which is less dense than liquid water) melts, the result is smaller total volume. Do the experiment.  Put ice in a glass...fill to brim with water...wait for ice to melt....did it overflow?

South Pole (which is colder)  would have to melt as much, just to break 'even' with current ocean level.

As a teacher of college Chemistry for years, I am quite disappointed that so many people miss this basic fact.  Melting to polar ice caps will not cause any kind of catastrophic rise in ocean levels.  ESPECIALLY when you couple with the process energy sinking mechanisms we don't even understand that would probably kick in if the caps started to melt.

Physics Today a few months ago had an excellent article in which a science historian outlined how scientists at the turn of the century (1900) had evidence of really huge climatic changes in very short time scales (with no resulting catastrophic changes to the ecosystems), but ignored it because this evidence did not fit popular view that global climate can only change slowly.  Here's a link to my brief synopsis of this article, posted for a friend who was teaching a science class at the time:

http://www.dsbscience.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3

[Chopper]

check out the brain on brad!! ;)

[Susan]

Everytime a disaster film comes out there are always news articles and stories..people start thinking that meteor or earthquake is going to hit any minute and that everything depicted in the movie is entirely possible.

Global warming is a gradual process that will slowly affect our weather patterns. It's not like a 5 mile wide meteor is dropping from the sky and sending us into the next ice age. People get so hyper - on the flipside i have a feeling people secretly wish disaster films would come true to add some excitement to their life. ;-)

[Mr. Hockstatter]

A while ago I watched an old episode of "In Search Of" with Leonard Nemoy.  This was back in the '70s, and they were talking about the next ice age - which was already upon us back in the '70s.  They interviewed all the scientists, who assured us that the ice age was here - it's an undeniable fact, anyone who disagrees is an ignorant moron, etc.  There was Leonard Nimoy, standing in the middle of a snow drift, pointing out that the past two or three winters had been colder than normal, and as proof, well, he's standing in a freakin' snow drift!  I mean, how can anyone deny that the ice age is upon us?!?

Another comical tidbit was the old "secrects of the ice" thing on PBS.  It used to be on their website, and they had charts of global temperatures over the last couple million years.  The charts clearly showed that carbon monoxide levels (the stuff that comes from car exhaust) was higher - yes higher - two million years ago than it is now.  But the really funny part was that, right next to the chart was the PBS commentary stating that carbon monoxide levels have never been higher than they are now.  Um, I guess PBS thinks people are pretty damned stupid.

[ulthar]

I actually remember this from elementary school.  Someone, a Forest Ranger I THINK, came to talk at our school about the changing climate.  The topic of his talk was the coming Ice Age (now that I think about it, it MAY have been a film strip...one of the ones with the 'beep' when it was time to click to the next frame, or possibly a movie).

Since I remember the attempt at brainwashing our young minds with Ice Age Cometh Environmetalism in the mid 1970's, I have never given much credibility to the Global Warming doomsayers.  Well, that and the butt-loads of scientific evidence that contradicts the half baked theories of some that want to believe it for whatever reason.

[Eirik]

"Since I remember the attempt at brainwashing our young minds with Ice Age Cometh Environmetalism in the mid 1970's, I have never given much credibility to the Global Warming doomsayers."

The Global Warming people today - like the Ice Age people of the 1970s - make the same basic mistake.  They look at approximately 25 years of data and try to extrapolate from that data a trend for a planet that is millions of years old.  It would be like looking at a one week stretch in the 1922 season where Babe Ruth went 1 for 10 and concluding that he he couldn't hit.  Bottom line, it'll probably take several more centuries of recording data before mankind do any kind of meaningful trend analysis on the nature of this planet.  Doesn't mean we shouldn't look for alternatives to fossil fuels though...

[ulthar]

Eirik wrote:

> The Global Warming people today - like the Ice Age people of
> the 1970s - make the same basic mistake.  They look at
> approximately 25 years of data and try to extrapolate from that
> data a trend for a planet that is millions of years old.

That's right on the money.  That's kinda one of the things that Physics Today article hints at...when one looks at the long term data that *IS* available, the conclusions of catastrophic climate change are a bit different.

> Doesn't mean we shouldn't look for alternatives to fossil fuels
> though...

Fair enough.  Won't argue with that.  And, we *are* looking for alternatives, we just don't have anything as versatile and efficient RIGHT NOW.  I personally just think it's dumb to try to hide a reasonable scientific/technological pursuit (alternative fuels) behind all this 'the sky is falling' hysteria.

And, like it or not, fossil fuels are what we use now, and what we will use for 25 years or more.  Even if a better alternative happens next week, it will take time to adjust our entire economic base from one fuel source to another.  We have over 100 years of 'building' a fossil fuel economy, so I doubt it will go away overnight.

All I'm saying here is let's be realistic about what can be done and how fast.  Fuel cells, solar, wind, etc are not the panacea that will transform the earth's economies in the next five years.  Note again, this is NOT me saying we should not be researching ways to improve these technologies.  (Actually, wind is a bust.  There's just so much energy available in moving air, and the numbers show it just is not worth trying to extract it for large scale needs, but I digress).

[Mr. Hockstatter]

I think what the oil companies are doing will drive people to alternative fuels a lot faster than any environmental hysteria.  I mean, they take over Iraq and the price of oil goes UP?  Hello?.  Not long ago, there was actually a printed apology from the oil companies in my local gas station for how they gouged us, and of course they waited something like a week before gouging us again.  Every time anything happens, the price of gas goes up immediately, or often times weeks before anything happens in anticipation of the event.  Then when the event that made prices go up never happens, it takes half a year for the price to go down.  And of course by then five more things have happened or might happen.  

What a freakin' racket.

[raj]

And of course there are some wonderful alternatives to fossil fuel autos.
Electrics, which even if they have power, need to be recharged and where does that electricity come from?  Fossil fuel power plants!
OK, how about hydrogen powered fuel cell cars?  And where does the H come from, why it gets created (splitting H20) with energy from fossil fuel plants, or else from natural gas!

It's like getting a heroin junkie off the stuff by giving him methadone -- a synthetic opiate!

[ulthar]

Actually, I'm for nuclear cars.  

It might help with people following too close on the highway if they just recall the car they might crash into is roughly equivalent to a 20 kiloton device.

[raj]

Ford, at least, did research a nuclear car, there's a model of it in the Henry Ford Museum (I was there last weekend).  IIRC, it was from the 50s or 60s, back when nuclear power was full of promise, and they didn't think of things like waste, and accidents, and terrorists.

[Flangepart]

True. And i've heard recently about the hybred cars haveing safty concirns for rescue workers. All the power in those batteries could kill an EMT.
Gas blows up (Espchualy in movies), electricity zaps, and horses freak at the sight of a mouse, and drag you to death when you don't quite fall out of the sturrips....
MOVEMENT KILLS!