Global warming is here: Russia bans grain exports

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   William R. Wilsonposted 14 years ago

   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/world … amp;emc=th
   
   Time to stop pretending it's not real folks - grain prices are going to go up around the world, and this sort of thing will only be more frequent in the years to come.

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   ledefensetechposted 14 years ago

   It's a drought.  Happens all the time in one part of the world or another.  Jeez, you're acting like my sister does when she sees a spider.  Chill out.

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      William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Happens all the time?
      
      
      "temperatures in Moscow were forecast to exceed 100 degrees, about 25 degrees higher than usual."
      
      "....worst heat wave since record-keeping began here more than 130 years ago."
      
      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/world … amp;emc=th

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         Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah, that's about right. Does it prove human induced global warming? No.

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            William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            What will it take to prove it Misha?

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               Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               That's not my job William, to simplify your task. Keep trying

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                  William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  But I'm serious Misha.  If what is going on can be linked to human activity, don't we have a responsibility to change our actions?  Especially if it's going to get worse? 
                  
                  Brushing it off because some guy on the internet said it "can't be proven" doesn't seem very reasonable to me, given the risks involved.

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                     Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     You need to try harder if you want to scare me, William
                     
                     I don't have any interest in going in circles with you on the matter, I just chimed in because Moscow was mentioned, and I am currently in Moscow.

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                        William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        You don't have to go in circles with me about whether or not it's real.  My question is, what would it take to prove to you that human activities affect the climate? 
                        
                        I mean, at some point you just have to accept that there's no such thing as 100% certainty on anything, and act appropriately anyway.

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                     IntimatEvolutionposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     I think it does prove the link to human activity.  Humans raise the cattle, humans drive the cars, humans do a lot of farting...., so yeah it can be blamed on human activity.  To think otherwise, is like being a redneck without the slang.  It is absurd.

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               WryLiltposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               William you'd be surprised at the number of people (including scientists) who disagree with global warming as a result of human pollution.

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                  William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  I wouldn't be surprised, because I've been studying the science of global warming and writing about it for years.  I've got a nice long series of hubs about the evidence that it is real and that it's caused by humans. 
                  
                  I've seen all the arguments by the deniers.  They don't hold water.  Most of them are 15 year old talking points that keep getting recycled and overplayed by the right wing blogosphere and talking heads.

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                  Ralph Deedsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  Most of the few scientists who are skeptics or deniers are financed by Exxon, coal companies and electric power companies.

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         Evan G Rogersposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         So, one area of the world is hot... and you're claiming it's GLOBAL warming?
         
         interesting logic.

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            William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            LOL Evan.  It's called providing a relevant example.  I could continue with more if you'd like. 
            
            Worst floods in China in decades.  "More than 1,400 people are believed to have been killed this year in unusually severe flooding in central and southern China."
            
            http://drpinna.com/global-warming-breaking-news-2-8295
            
            It's happening all over the world:
            
            http://dailyqi.com/?p=22171
            
            2010 tied with 2007 as the year with the most national extreme heat records:
            
            http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/02/t … l-warming/
            
            Etc.

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            kerrygposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            So, when one area of the world is cold, it's evidence that global warming isn't happening, but when one area of the world is hot, it's ridiculous to claim it's evidence that global warming is happening. LOL. Okay.
            
            It's not just one area anyway. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
            
            Snowpocalypse and the cold snap in Russia were just localized anomalies, by the way. Globally, January and February were both among the warmest on record.

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      Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Sez the man who wants the Government Inc to spray everything with chemicals in case he catches West Nile disease.

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         Pcunixposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah, that it a bit inconsistent.

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         ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Nice job getting what I said wrong.  pcunix is just pissy because his neighbors want to spray for bugs and he's a nusto environmentalist who wants to see people die from mosquito borne illness rather than pollute his precious "ecosystem".  Given the track record of scientists over things like Climategate, I'd be very wary of putting my faith in such obviously biased studies, like the ones they've been releasing.

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            Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            No. Pretty sure you said you are in favor of the government Inc spraying just in case you get West Nile virus. You even had figures to prove that there were two dead people that could have been saved by spraying:
            
            
            
            
            
            LOL

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               ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Nice job cherrypicking what I wrote.
               
               
               
               pcunix was pissy because he wanted his local government to ban the use of those pesticides because he didn't like them.  Apparently the majority of his neighbors could care less and encourage the spraying.
               
               By the by, did you hear about the new outbreak of dengue fever?
               
               http://www.doh.state.fl.us/environment/ … aKeys.html

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                  Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  LOLO
                  
                  Nice job of cherry picking what you said. LOLOLOL
                  
                  So - you are scared of getting a disease. Now you have switched from being scared of West Nile to Dengue fever.
                  
                  You sound like my little sister when she hears there is a snake in the next door neighbor's garden.
                  
                  "Pleeze Mr. Government - spray everything and save me from the nasty Mosquitoes. I trust you to use chemicals that are safe, and I know none of the illnesses and diseases around could possibly have been caused by Big Business which pays you to do wot they sez." 

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                  Pcunixposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  It is hardly just me who thinks pesticides are dangerous.  If any of these diseases were killing hundreds of people, I might have a different opinion - though I would rather see bats encouraged because it costs less and works better long term. 
                  
                  But the actual percentages are miniscule, so I think it is beyond stupid to keep poisoning other animals and interfering with food chains.   
                  
                  And again, none of the people would vote to spend that much money on road safety improvements, caring for malnutrished children or anything like it.  Nor would they even entertain the idea that maybe little Johnny doesn't need to play sports at night.  They wouldn't vote a dime for a program to put up bat houses either and I guarantee that if there was a grant to study bats and how we might encourage the populations here, they would all hoot it down as "wasteful spending".
                  
                  But sure, I'm just being "pissy".

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   lovemychrisposted 14 years ago

   Military: Global Warming may Cause War
   Associated Press  |  April 17, 2007
   
   Military Analysts Say Global Warming Is A Threat To Our Security
   Jay Yarow | Aug. 8, 2009, 7:35 PM
   Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/military … z0vrz9sI2x
   
   Military considers global warming threat
   By Ty Tagami
   The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
   
   on and on....pages of it.

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   ReuVeraposted 14 years ago

   The only real sign of global warming is on the picture. All the rest are speculations.
   

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      Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      LOL Loving it Vera

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         ReuVeraposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I knew you would!

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      Richieb799posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Who hangs their briefs in front of a huge field

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         Ralph Deedsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         All we need is another degree of warming!

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   rebekahELLEposted 14 years ago

   people choose to believe what they want to believe, it will never change. it can be raining outside and someone standing next to you will say its sprinkling..

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   Dame Scribeposted 14 years ago

   Grain prices go up then we will have to learn gardening and grow our own food.

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   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   LOL Luckily here all mosquitoes either died out or hid out until cooler times

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8. 59

   rlaframboiseposted 14 years ago

   Global Warming is real. Man made Global Warming is a huge lie perpetrated to shift more power to governments. In the 70's it was global cooling that was gonna kill us all!
   
   The cave men didn't end the ice age by driving there SUV's and using incandescent bulbs... the Earth fluctuates in cycles and this whole "green" scam is making a lot of people rich.
   
   I advocate limiting our environmental impact, I don't advocate alarm-ism. Didn't you see those leaked papers from those scientists who were cooking the books? Its more grant money.

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      William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I did see those emails, and that was a big controversy and media storm over nothing.  Several different scientific organizations have looked over the emails and found no evidence of fraud. 
      
      I urge you to take a closer look at the science behind global warming and the effects that it will have on the planet.  Global cooling was something that appeared in a few newspapers back in the 70s.  Global warming has been studied for 150 years, and the evidence is only increasing.

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         rlaframboiseposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Well I doubt that all of the true believers would want the 150 years of research to go to waste, even if the facts say other wise. I think the over all shift away from environmentally damaging habits is a good thing I just don't like the politicization of the whole phenomenon.
         
         What struck me odd about those papers was not that I suspected fraud, I generally saw scientists who believed so strongly in their idea that if evidence wasn't matching there idea they were puzzled and though they had made errors.
         
         This really bothers me coming from the scientific community. That is something you are more likely to see in a southern baptist church.

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            rlaframboiseposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Further more if the Earths atmospheric make up were represented by 1000 marbles, 1/3 of a single marble would be CO2.

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            William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Like I said, look at the science, not the talking heads.

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         ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         You may very well by right about warming (or cooling, I'm not sure what the cause du jour is these days) but the fact remains that nobody is really talking about the important stuff.  Mitigation.  What if it turns out that humans aren't responsible for the warming (or cooling) of the planet and we've just wasted decades of energy, time and treasure on frivolous stuff?  Wouldn't our energy be better spent on finding ways to keep warming (or cooling) from being the disaster is currently is?

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            William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            So you have reached the 3rd stage of denial?
            
            http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06 … denial.php

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         Pcunixposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Conservatives don't like global warming because it might hurt business.  Religious conservatives thing some creator thing gave them the Earth to screw up and that it will be ending soon anyway (for millenia it is "ending soon") so it doesn't matter.

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      Ralph Deedsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      The scientists were absolved of "cooking the books."
      
      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/scien … ef=science

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9. 81

   kerrygposted 14 years ago

   What amuses me is that when the Eastern US had Snowpocalypse a few months back and Russia had the coldest winter in years, that was proof that global warming wasn't happening, but now that the East Coast and Russia are both broiling through record-breaking summers, it's "just a heat wave." LOL.
   
   In truth, it is just a heat wave, but Snowpocalypse was just a cold snap. Deniers apparently only recognize the difference between weather and climate when it's convenient for their arguments.
   
   That said, both are indicative of a pattern of exactly the kind of increase in extreme weather events that climate scientists have been predicting for decades would result from global warming.
   
   A couple more fun facts about 2010:
   
   * According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
   
   * Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees.

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      Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      And those records are of a whopping duration of 200-300 years at least, which definitely covers most of the age of our planet

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         William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         It definitely covers the time when 8 billion humans depend on industrial agriculture to survive...

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         kerrygposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         If 200-300 years of data was all we had, a single record breaking year (or even ten) would be insignificant. However, 200-300 years of data is not all we have.

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            Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            If you want to talk about the whole body of temp data available (even though it is indirect data and therefore not as reliable as the last 200 years), then there were no record highs established this year. There were times with much higher temps during Earth history. This is about your first "fact". Your second "fact" is clearly based on 200 years of data or so, and therefore is insignificant as you yourself just mentioned.

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               kerrygposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Misha, I am well aware that climate has changed in the past and will change again. I simply consider it monumentally stupid (and possibly suicidal) to change it deliberately for the worse. And I do believe that is what the human race is doing.
               
               We're never going to agree on this, so I'm not sure it's worth arguing any more.

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                  Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  I am not arguing, I am just exposing the fact that what you called "facts" in fact are not facts, even by your own definition.
                  
                  Therefore your beliefs based on those "facts" likely are not true, as Cagsil shows on a neighbor thread.

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                     kerrygposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     I know English isn't your first language, but please don't deliberately twist my words. I said the hottest on record, not the hottest ever.
                     
                     The fact that there were higher temps prior to the industrial revolution (and even the existence of humans as a species) is irrelevant, because the factors (such as solar activity) involved in causing those high temperatures are not currently active at a level consistent with the degree of warming that we're seeing.

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                        Mishaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        I just leave it here Kerry, I did not expect you to go that far as questioning my English. You brought up "facts" that do not support human pollution induced gw - yet you tried to dupe unsuspecting readers they do, my English has nothing to do with it. See you on other threads.

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               William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               The periods of extreme high and low temperatures in earth's prehistory were also associated with mass extinctions. 
               
               You can be flippant about it, but there are 8 billion humans and growing on this planet.  Human history, human civilization, began during an age of climate stability.  That stability is over.

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               ledefensetechposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               I'd be careful using current temp data, there are apparently problems with where these observatories are placing their sensors:
               
               http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image … change.pdf
               
               http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image … e_temp.pdf
               
               You also rightly suggested that the accuracy of our climate data decreases dramatically as we go backwards in time.  Not only have our sensors become more and more accurate and our ability to measure temperature around the world grown, tree rings aren't a very accurate way to date temperature change and once you go back far enough, all you have is tree rings.
               
               If you don't have accurate data, you can't draw an accurate conclusion.

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                  William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  Climate scientists are not amateurs, LE.  They adjust for these sorts of things:
                  
                  http://wires.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WiresAr … WCC21.html
                  
                  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-Ur … trend.html
                  
                  "Two thirds of global temperature data comes from ocean records, free of UHI effect. For land records, urban trends are compared to nearby rural data - anomalous urban trends are homogenized to match rural records (Hansen 2001). However, in most cases, the urban temperature trend is observed to be little different to the rural trend. "
                  
                  Temperature is not measured solely by mercury thermometers in backyard stations.  It is measured by satellites.  It is measured in Antarctica, in the oceans.  And the data is unequivocal - average global temperature is rising.
                  
                  
                  
                  Accuracy of climate data does decrease over time, but we have multiple streams of data.  And in fact, tree ring data only takes us back a few thousand years at most.  After that we have many other datasets that can be compared.
                  
                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology
                  
                  
                  
                  
                  So true!

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      Ralph Deedsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      A few facts are worth 100 opinions.

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    Mishaposted 14 years ago

    All what I possibly could say Milla said here
    
    http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/9928

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    ledefensetechposted 14 years ago

    They may not be amateurs, but consider the fact that many of these guys have made this their life's work.  They now have an economic incentive to push this stuff, especially when you consider many of the top-down solutions to our "climate problem".
    
    Have you seen the posts I've mad about recent breakthroughs in solar technology?  http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/49820
    
    It remains to be seen if this breakthrough will really allow solar power to compete with oil, but if it does we might really see an all electric future. 
    
    At least if we decentralize the power generation system.  That's one of the things that makes the Internet such a powerful communications tool.  Unlike movies, media and telecommunications, you can't censor what is on the Internet.  Likewise, with people generating their own power with solar, it puts them in the driver's seat, not some arbitrary third party like we have now with "public-private" electric companies.

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       William R. Wilsonposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       I don't see the financial incentive.  Scientists can find work regardless of their findings.  Those who work at universities can get tenure.  Climatologists are paid to study climate, not to push one particular theory or another. 
       
       
       
       I think I saw it already but I will check out your post again.  I agree with you that decentralizing power generation will help us all in many ways.  Part of the reason we are so addicted to coal and nuclear power in this country is that it is centralized and thus easy to bill people for.  If everyone could produce their own power it would be a major profit killer for the utilities, coal companies, etc.
       
       This is one situation where I see the market incentive as holding back innovation and positive change, not encouraging it.

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    ledefensetechposted 14 years ago

    The centralization feature is part and parcel of using something like coal or oil.  Because not every spot on Earth has deposits of oil or coal, you have to ship from the places that do have coal and oil to places who don't.  In order to simplify the logistics, large power generating plants are more cost effective than a lot of little power generating plants.  Since you can use solar power pretty much anywhere, that eliminates the logistical part of power generation.
    
    I also think there will be something of a market for power.  Remember, with solar generation you only have power for as long as the sun shines.  You can use battery power, but there are still issues with that.  You'd still need some long distance power transportation, although the load would be nothing like we see today.  Cities in particular would be massive energy hogs.  The power load increases dramatically when you consider that if you have an electric car, you'll be pulling off your grid to power it too, probably at night, when the sun isn't out.  So there are practical considerations we need to answer before we claim the advent of the renewable power grid. 
    
    I have to admit that one thing I'm looking forward to is the elimination of smog.  I'd always wondered what LA and places like Mexico City looked like before smog.  We may get a chance to experience that before too much longer.

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