SkepticLance

To Rev I did not say you were wrong about the permafrost melt causing methane emission. It is the quantification of this in terms of warming that is uncertain, along with the result of positive versus negative feed-backs. There are lots of both kinds possible. Ultimately, which dominates will be discovered in the real world, rather than in this kind of debate. For example : Warmer times lead to some areas drying, releasing dust. Extra dust in the air changes the albedo of the planet, reflecting more heat, and is a cooling effect. Extra dust also ends up in the ocean, putting iron into the surface waters, stimulating phytoplankton growth. This has various effects, from absorbing CO2 to releasing chemicals to stimulate low cloud formation, as I referred to earlier. Both are cooling effects. There are probably dozens of possible positive and negative feed-back mechanisms proposed, and I certainly am not up on all of them. We have no way of knowing which of the natural feed-backs will dominate at any stage in warming. The only guide is history. The last interglacila ended up at 2 Celsius warmer than the present and then went into a cooling phase. Perhaps that was a potent negative feed-back kicking in. I do not claim to know the answers, and I have been arguing throughout telling everyone that those who think they do, are just kidding themselves. The amount of doubt and uncertainty is massive. Rev said "We aren't talking about the LIA, though. It's about as relevant to the present day as my first girlfriend is to my marriage." This statement could not be more wrong!! If we cannot look at climate history and learn from it, we might as well give up. What happened in the Little Ice Age is very relevent. To iNow I considered replying to your post, but decided not to. You are doing a 'Reaper' on me and descending to insults and sarcasm. It is best not to reply to such, for fear of a flame war. Please desist.

CDarwin said : "Would modern hypermales really want children" What the hell has 'want' got to do with it, when we are talking about evolution? To PhDP Your arguments are a bit weak. If our hypermale uses both strategies (good father, and wild oats spreading stud), he gains benefit from both, in the form of extra offspring. Clearly better than relying on one only.

Paralith You obviously have a good understanding, and I agree with your balance, or equilibrium, concept. You should remember, though, that the 'hypermale' has two, not one, reproductive strategies. He is into sex with any woman that agrees, as well as his own well established relationship. Thus, he has his average 2.1 children with his wife, and another 0.2 children in illicit relationships. The 'good father' on the other hand, has 1.9 children with his wife, and none outside that relationship. Clearly, the 'hypermale' strategy will win in the long run. Thus, whatever qualities are regarded as 'sexy' by women will be bred over time into the male population.

iNow asked "I've not heard this before. Do you have a reputable source that I could read more about it?" That came from a New Scientist article about 2 to 4 years ago. Can't give you the exact reference apart from that, but I can explain the mechanism. Storms (apart from hurricanes) are driven by temperature differentials across different latitudes. Cold conditions further towards the poles cause air to sink and warmer air further from the poles causes air to rise. This air flow is the basis for storms. (I know it is not that simple. But these differentials are nevertheless the basis for the air movement that leads to storms.) With global warming, the temperature differential gets less, since polar regions warm up more than temperate to tropical. With a lower temperature differential, there is less air movement, and thus fewer and less potent storms. During the Little Ice Age, the temperature differential was much greater than today, since the polar regions were much colder, and the temperate regions were not much cooler than now. High differentials gave more, and more potent wind movements. iNow also said "We may not be having a greater frequency of hurricanes overall, but the intensity of those we do have has increased." As I understand it, looking at hurricanes over the past 100 years, this difference is still not statistically significant. "Sometimes disasters WILL happen as a result of climate change, and the frequency of such instances is on the rise." That is easy to say, but hard to prove. AGW is still only 0.8 C warmer than the depths of the Little Ice Age, and much less in comparison to long term average. Weather based disasters have been with us for the life of the planet, and identifying any such as being due to AGW is pretty much impossible. As I have already pointed out, weather based disasters were common and nasty in the Little Ice Age. I suspect that such are actually less frequent today, though I don't have the numbers to prove that. "For example, we KNOW that food and water resources are being dramatically impacted... And yes, it's based on science, not pessimism." Almost every year for the past 50 years, global food production has increased. On this basis, the so-called negative effect of AGW is not a dramatic impact when we look at it globally. What we get instead, is local events which are blamed on AGW. "Sorry mate, but that's just a stupid comment." Unless this statement is backed up with a proper argument, your statement is the stupid one.

Rev said "First of all, the arctic melting is likely to lead to more temperature increase because of the vast amount of methane stored in the permafrost." As I said in my recent posts, there are many negative feed-back mechanisms also. The idea above is merely one of numerous hypothesized positive feed-backs. There are an equal number of negative feed-backs envisaged. The difference is that most people are pessimists, and so we hear about the disasters, and not about the hope. The point is that we simply do not know how much warming will occur, and the pessimists are pissing in the wind just as much as anyone else. Rev also said "Just the other day I was reading how a village in Nunavit was in trouble because flash flooding was washing away the infrastructure from right under their feet." During the Little Ice Age, a series of massive Atlantic storms struck the sea coast of Britain causing enormous damage and loss of life. Entire fleets of ships and fishing boats were destroyed. As maritime disasters go, these were the worst in recorded history. Apart from hurricanes, nasty and damaging storms are more common in times of global cooling. And any increase in hurricanes is currently unproven. The point is that disasters happen all the time, and ascribing them to human induced global warming is just plain incorrect. Mother Nature is much meaner and nastier than we are! "Second of all, we are already facing food shortages and a further 2 degree temperature rise would cause more droughts and more floods." This is another assessment based on pessimism rather than science. All we know is that the climate is changing. Certainly some places will have more droughts and some will have more floods. That is a statistical certainty whether the change is overall beneficial or overall harmful. However, there are a number of clearly beneficial changes coming. For example : 6.000 years ago was a warmer period in climate history, and the Sahara Desert was much wetter, and supported a much larger population of people, including permanent settlements. When the climate cooled, the desert grew, and people had to leave. It has been suggested that global warming will once more green the desert. The world's largest land masses are in Russia and in Canada - precisely the areas that are most subject to warming. If we cannot, overall, grow more food than before, I have totally misjudged the human species. Bangladesh is one of those parts of the world currently undergoing a quiet economic revolution. It is becoming much richer, and the standard of living of the people is rising. Sure, it has a long way to go. However, your predicted flooding is many decades away also. By the time the crisis comes, its people will have had time to prepare, and a much richer economy to give them the resources for that preparation. Do not forget that sea level rise is averaging only 3 mm per year. Even in Bangladesh, that means plenty of time to prepare. Unless sea level rise accelerates, that is only 300 mm in 100 years - barely more than a foot. If we ignore the pessimists credo and go by actual data, we realise the simple truth that Bangla Desh's real problem is not the minimal sea level rise from global warming, but the much more massive short term increases during hurricanes. Bangla Desh has a crisis, but it is right now - not in some mythical global warmed future. Hurricane defenses are needed. Not global warming defenses.

Most people would agree that the French resistance in WWII were freedom fighters. They are attacking an invading army that had set up a puppet government to justify their acts. The Nazis were repressive and were stealing the right of the French citizenry to be free. Most people would agree that Al Qaeda at the World Trade Centre were terrorists. They attacked a whole lot of innocent people who had never harmed them. However, what about the insurgents in Iraq? They believe they are fighting an invading army that has set up a puppet government. They believe they are fighting a threat to their own freedom.

What is the difference?

This is not a convincing argument. The time factor may, or may not be relevent, or accurate. Or it may be a function of temperature increase. Or some other variable. The point is that runaway warming did not happen, and thus is unlikely to happen in our near future.

To Dak Re bananas I know this is not central to the debate theme, but I have this quirk - I hate to see misconceptions promulgated. The Gros Michel banana and its extinction was not the fault of humans. It was simply a banana tree that suffered a mutation to make it seedless, and was propogated by cuttings thereafter by people. It was gonna die out regardless - it could not make seeds. No doubt, its close relatives which make seeds are still growing in the wild. The die out of the Gros Michel could not alter wild banana's fitness, since there was no interbreeding. Ditto for the Cavendish, which is the one in current widespread use. Neither was bred, since there was no sexual reproduction leading to seeds - just cloning which does not permit breeding. The current problem is a natural banana disease to which the Cavendish has no immunity. This does not affect wild bananas to the same degree, which have seeds, and the genetic diversity to develop immunity. The point is that the only hope to save the Cavendish for human use is GM, or the massive use of fungicides. Seedless bananas have nothing to do with the fitness of wild bananas. They are a sterile offshoot that happens to be of value to us. Nothing else. The problem did not come because of anything humans did, except to make use of a mutant version of a banana. However, to save that mutant, which is extraordinarily useful, we need GM.

To Mr Skeptic I tend to agree. The point of similarity is that they both deal with disasters. Firemen get called to disasters. Lawyers, like vultures, seek them. However, when shit happens, someone has to clean it up. When legal shit happens, it may be necessary to get a little legal help for the clean up. Lawyers as shit shovellers.

Slight misconception here. We were talking about natural selection - not evolution. NS is based on the word 'natural' meaning 'occurring in nature'. Something that happens inside a computer is not natural, hence not NS. A computer program can evolve, but selection of variations has a different basis, even if it has some similarities. Ok, this is semantics, but word meanings are crucial to good debate.

Not at all. I have never suggested that we should do nothing. I am just trying to keep people's feet firmly on the ground. I doubt that a 2 Celsius rise, like 120,000 years ago, would cause too much harm. Most of that warming would be Arctic, and mainly reduce the lowest temperatures. The places where most of humanity lives would not suffer mcuh temperature rise. There would be some sea level rise, but that is something humanity can cope with. Possibly some places would have to be evacuated, but that can be dealt with. If you look at the last million years, and the temperatures reached during the various interglacial periods, you see an increasing trend. The last interglacial was the warmest. If the trend continues in the 'natural' way, we would expect our current interglacial to get even warmer. Hey! That is what it is doing! Sometimes I look at the opposite case. Imagine that the world is now 2 Celsius warmer than the year 2000. Imagine that we are faced with global cooling due to human activity. I suspect that the hysteria over anticipated consequences of such a cooling would be much greater than we face looking at a warming.

To iNow Solar panels share a problem with wind power. That is, it requires substantial acreage to generate a lot of ergs. Fine if you are in a desert. However, the need for power for desalination is most likely for a coastal city, where land is at a premium and expensive. You can generate your power further away and pipe it in, and that just adds cost and wasteage. A nuclear station next to a desalination plant has the added advantage that it generates heat as well as electricity, and heat can be used for desalination. When I said we cannot solve the world water problem with desalination, I meant any time in the near future. The sheer volume of fresh water needed combined with the current very high cost of desalination makes it impossible. Sure, some time in the more distant future, some genius may discover a way of desalinating vast amounts of water very cheaply, but that is not a part of today's reality, or any reality in the foreseeable future. My comment about predicting future freshwater supply came in response to a quote posted by doG (why cannot he reverse his name and show his delusion more clearly?).

Well done, iNow. That is a smart comment. Sadly, lawyers are sometimes necessary. I regard them as equivalent to firemen. We would be better off without the fire, but shit happens. I feel a little sympathy for Ku. While I am far from being religious, I am also an old bastard, and I have managed to earn and save enough to make me financially well to do compared to most people. Where I differ is that I am happily married and have been for many years. However, I have to admit to wondering what I would do if she dies. Statistically, I am more likely to kark it first, but accidents do happen. If she did, I would probably look for someone. Being a typical male, I would probably prefer someone young and good looking. And that is where the gold digger thing comes in. Why should a young and good looking lass go for an ugly old man like me? Only for money. And how would she behave? There is a damn good chance she would get bored with the old bastard and find a younger playmate. Hence the divorce. Ku says that a divorce for infidelity is OK. With a young wife and an older husband, it is also rather likely.

If Ku has $1.4 million gained purely from hard work and good savings habits, then the chances are that he is an old bastard. If the old bastard is looking for a wife, the betting is that he wants a young, good looking one. Thus, a gold digger is rather probable. Ku, by all means see a lawyer and get the very best prenup you can. Forget what that idiot of a pastor has to say. The Bible does not forbid prenups. It does, however, say some nasty things about stupidity!!!

Actually solar panels won't do it, since the power demands are way, way greater than that. The logical method of setting up desalination plants is to do it close to coastal cities, where the demand is, and set up a nuclear power station at the same time, to provide the electricity needed for both desalination and city needs. We cannot solve global water shortages with desalination. The best is to use this technology for solving local problems of water shortage. However, there are a large number of other methods of increasing the water supply. Another palliative technique I forgot to mention is increased irrigation efficiency. 80% of fresh water needs in most countries are for irrigation, and mostly they waste 90% of the water being used. Such techniques as trickle feed irrigation can cut this dramatically, and effectively double the world's fresh water supply. Most predictions of increasing problems do not take into account improving technology, and increasing investment in fresh water provision, whatever the technique. As I said before, we are unlikely to solve the problem to the degree that water shortages go away, but there is every probability that we will keep pace, so that the per capita shortage will not increase.

To lucaspa I will make you a concession in this argument. I overstated my case earlier in saying that GM would be necessary for future human survival, and that we risked extinction without it. You pointed out, correctly, that increases in technology may be sufficient. OK. Concession made. Let me rephrase. Changes to humans in the future by GM will seen to be very desirable. And of course, whatever we debate there will have no impact on what actually happens. Posterity will do as posterity decides regardless of anything we might think. I happen to think they will adopt human GM, because many changes are desirable. Some of those changes are obvious and have already been listed. Getting rid of tendencies to certain genetic diseases. Increasing resistance to cancer. Creating resistance to AIDS, malaria etc etc. In addition, there will be traits such as higher intelligence, athleticism, good looks etc. Will this decrease genetic diversity? It depends on where the added genes (or alleles if you want to be picky) come from. For example : if humanity moves into space, setting up a number of space elevators (remember we are looking ahead more than 100 years) and building habitats in space, then we will need to overcome the massive increase in hard radiation, that would cause a current astronaut to develop fatal cancer within 5 years of exposure. But there are numerous organisms with genetic mechanisms for rapid DNA repair that can stand 1000 times the hard radiation we can. To insert such genes into humans would both increase genetic diversity and give the resistance to radiation that would be needed. If we increase resistance to cancer, that may be by adding genetic material rather than deleting - thus increasing diversity. Similarly for many other GM changes. They may increase, not reduce genetic diversity. There is no special sin in adding foreign genetic material. Our 'junk' DNA already contains lots of it, courtesy of certain viruses. There is even a prairie rodent that has had snake DNA identified in its DNA, showing that viruses can transfer DNA from one species to another. I predict that more such examples will be discovered, and quite likely in humans. Finally, my point about the speed of NS stands. Even if it can be achieved in less than thousands of generations, in humans with a generation time of 20 to 25 years, it is still too damn slow. Desirable changes that are going to take hundreds of years at best, and more likely thousands, are simply not acceptable.

To iNow On an absolute scale you are correct. At no time in the world's history has there been such a need for more megatonnes of fresh water to be delivered to where it aint. However, if you read my earlier post, I used the phrase 'relative scale'. Relative to population, the water shortage is no worse than it has been lots of times in the past. In fact, I suspect it is less severe on that relative scale, since a smaller proportion of the world's population die of hunger due to drought than any time I have ever read about. 40 to 80 years ago, in India and surrounding nations, it was very common for hunger during times of drought to kill millions - sometimes up to 10 million at a time. That no longer happens. Today hunger still kills, but basically for reasons of political or economic mismanagement or corruption. We have the beginnings of the technology. There is no total water shortage on this planet. There is ample salt and freshwater for human needs no matter how far you project it into the future. The problem is that the fresh water is not distributed as we would like it to be. Take Australia for example. The driest populated continent. Two thirds of Australia suffers drought. But the rest has ample water. The top one third is monsoonal, which gives it massive rainfall for part of the year and dry for the rest. However, the aquifers are filled each wet season, so that they can be tapped and never run out. The two thirds of Australia that suffer drought could be irrigated if fresh water from the monsoonal one third gets piped there. This would be a mammoth undertaking, with hundreds or thousands of kilometres of large diameter water pipe, and enormous pumping stations. However, it is not impossible, and one day may well be done. After all, if the liquid is oil, it gets done! We will have the technology, and there is no reason, apart from human corruption and stupidity, why the supply of freshwater cannot be increased such that the problem (on a relative scale) never gets worse, and should get better.

To pantheon Overpopulation is not a matter of personal choice. As a general rule, population growth becomes zero or negative in advanced western nations, except where there are large groups of recent immigrants from third world countries. In Japan, there are desperate government efforts to get their women to have babies since the population is dropping while their elderly are increasing in number - meaning too small a tax base to support pensions. The problems are in third world nations, and are a result of lack of access to birth control. Having sex is a given. It is too powerful an instinct to reject. However, with birth control, it need not result in babies. If third world women all had access to birth control, the number of babies would drop very dramatically. To iNow You are pushing the problem of limited fresh water resources. This is not a new problem. It is as old as mankind. I always remember the ancient Persians, during the bronze age, who built hundreds of kilometers of underground canals to carry water from mountains to the dry plains for agriculture. The effort was equivalent to a multibillion dollar scheme today. I doubt that our current water shortages are any worse on the proper relative scale than has always been the case for a large proportion of our species. That said, it is still a major problem. There are many possible palliative measures, ranging from cutting edge desalination technology, to dams and canals, to giant rainwater ponds to store water etc. I think the problem will not go away, but that we have the means to prevent it becoming worse.

Projections of future population depend on who is doing the projection. I have seen a United Nations report that says the most likely maximum is about 9 billion plus or minus a number of millions, after which there will be a slow decline in numbers. That report is somewhere on their population web site at http://www.un.org/popin However, I don't have the time right now to search it out. As to what we can do to get population down a bit quicker. That is easy. Any number of studies have shown that women in third world countries simply do not want to give birth to heaps of rug rats. If they could control their own fertility, they would. All that is needed to massively reduce population growth is to see that all women have access to effective birth control. This is something that the west could do easily, with our massive resources. However, idiots take charge. Talking of idiots, Bush junior has refused to permit aid to third world countries that is meant for birth control. Doh!!

On the subject of feed-back loops .... The world has warmed many, many times. In the last interglacial, 120,000 years ago, it reached a temperature several degrees greater than today's. Yet in none of these previous warmings did a positive feed-back result in runaway warming. Instead, the world always reached a maximum, and eventually cooled down again. I interpret this to mean that, at a certain point, negative feed-back controls dominate, and stop the warming. Assuming I am right, then it is reasonable to suggest that such negative feed-back loops will cut in at some stage in the current warming. Some are obvious. The most simple is black body radiation, with the Earth radiating more heat into space as it warms up. However, there are also a number of subtle possibilities. For example, in cooler ocean waters, phytoplankton accelerates its growth as the water warms. Since these cooler waters cover a massive part of the globe, this is a major effect. As the oceans warm, phytoplankton increases, and they emit aerosols that stimulate cloud formation - a cooling effect. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/314/5804/1419 Relating to politics. I have read numerous articles on global warming, and hypothetical positive feed-back mechanisms outnumber hypothetical negative feed-back mechanisms 10 : 1 in my experience. If that aint biased politics at work I do not know what is. I am not trying to make a definitive point here. I do not know which will dominate at particular stages of the warming. And neither does anyone else, although there are lots of people arrogant enough to think they do. My point is to emphasize, once more, the level of doubt and uncertainty surrounding the future of climate change.

To Dak Your banana example is kind of interesting. The natural banana is pretty much inedible, being full of hard seeds. However, there is a rare mutation which results in a seedless variety, which normally dies out due to lack of progeny. Under human cultivation, these seedless ones are cloned, by using cuttings or buds from the base of the tree. There have been three seedless varieties. 1. Gros Michel. The best. Sweetest and best texture. Sadly, not immune to Panama disease. It died out. 2. Plantain. Basically a cooking banana. Not eaten much in the west. 3. The Cavendish. The second best that replaced the Gros Michel. The one we are all familiar with. Our current favourite is now coming under attack by Sigatoka disease. This is rife in Uganda, where the main banana crop is seriously threatened, and may spread to all banana growing areas of the world, controllable only by massive fungicide sprays. However, the major hope for the future is a new GM type of Cavendish, immune to Sigatoka disease. So this example actually points out the importance and the future with GM as a major tool. Natural selection is simply not applicable to cultivated bananas. The natural ones are inedible, and the cultivated ones are clones, lacking the genetic variation that NS works on. Thus, only GM can solve the problems of new diseases. Dak. Hate to say it, but your last two sentences from your last post are simply incorrect. Natural selection is of very problematic value to Homo sapiens since it takes too long - hundreds or thousands of generations - of no value in a rapidly changing environment, which we have created. However, applying GM to humans allows rapid adaptation to the new environments. Something NS cannot do. Of course, social and technological change is also part of the equation. These changes permit human survival and success when NS cannot do so, by virtue of being too damn slow. If we rely on NS, we will become extinct!

To Mr Skeptic Not true for the current warming. In previous periods during the current ice age, about every 100,000 years, the glacial periods give way briefly for a warmer interglacial. The warmings leading to the interglacial periods involve a rise in CO2. However, the warming on average begins about 800 years before the CO2 starts to rise. The current warming is not a period of leaving a glacial. Instead, it is a fluctuation within the interglacial, and the CO2/warming relationship is different.

Vlad That is not what I said. Our system is based on greed, which is restrained by regulation, policing and the justice system. Nothing is ever perfect, and politics, when it is good, consists to a large degree of refining systems to improve them. In that sense, things can always be made better. However, that does not mean things are really bad to start with - just imperfect. A lot of it is an attempt to achieve balance. We have companies (all kinds - not just biotech) trying to gain an advantage in the marketplace, and looking for legal loopholes to do so. Government finds out about these loopholes and plugs them, and the companies look for others. It is a kind of arms race. Nothing is perfect, but that does not suggest that things are corrupt or rotten either. My own view is that, compared to any other time in history, things overall are pretty good.

iNow said " I am just saying that you are mistaken to think that it will be a "non-event" or that it "will not get a look in." " Let me rephrase. Evolution by natural selection is always present. However, everything is relative. Once human induced genetic modification of humans takes off (in perhaps another hundred years???) the impact of NS relative to the impact of GM will be very small.