
Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans - alexcasalboni
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/23/global-warming-is-now-slowing-down-the-circulation-of-the-oceans-with-potentially-dire-consequences/?tid=rssfeed
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dm3
There's a good comment on this topic in the /r/science subreddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warmi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warming_is_now_slowing_down_the/cpoexfz)

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codeshaman
> The results end up overhyped, overblown, and for soundbites like press
> releases and Nature papers. This just misinforms people.

I understand the scientist's desire for rigour, but ...

Most people won't bother reading the article at all. If it's up-voted or liked
enough, the title _is_ the truth. We all do it. We all accept a sentence as
truth if we trust the source enough, without checking the facts. It's
impossible to check _all_ the facts _all_ the time.

But the WaPo article isn't about the truth. It's about beliefs. The party
line.

The belief that 'I, through my sinful actions am causing the ocean to slow
down'. Ridiculous, but that is what most people will get from reading that
headline. And maybe it's not that bad.

It doesn't matter what the truth is, it matters what you believe the truth to
be.

~~~
onion2k
_It doesn 't matter what the truth is, it matters what you believe the truth
to be._

The truth doesn't matter, nor does what you believe. The only thing that
actually matters is how you act. You could happily say that there's only a
0.0001% chance that humanity is affecting climate change, but if that's enough
to get you to stop doing things that _might_ harm the planet _just in case_
then that's brilliant.

The most important thing to remember with climate change is that there's _no_
downside to being less wasteful.

~~~
gus_massa
Before banning something because it may have a 0.0001% chance of being _bad_
for the Earth's climate, you should be sure that it doesn't have a 0.0002%
chance of being _good_ for the Earth's climate.

That's why you need science and proof to try to know the truth, or at least do
the best effort. If you don't care about the truth you can use Tarot cards or
Ouija tables, that are cheaper and least wasteful than a bunch of Ph.D. that
just want to put buoys and launch satellites to measure everything.

~~~
pyre
> a bunch of Ph.D. that just want to put buoys and launch satellites to
> measure everything.

I'm not really understanding here. "measuring everything" is how science is
performed. Are you for or against "science?"

~~~
gus_massa
I'm for science. I thought that " _use Tarot cards or Ouija tables_ " was
enough to mark the rest of the sentence as ironic.

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stinos
_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?

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srameshc
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
It's Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Ocean Physics at the Potsdam Institute.

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restalis
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
For some more detail about the dynamics, have a look at
[http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-
going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/)

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padobson
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.

~~~
DanBC
> 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.

~~~
padobson
Climate change is a really big deal. When we've had scientific movements of
this magnitude, the face of the movement has always been a scientist (think
Copernicus, Darwin, or Einstein).

The face of climate change is jointly Al Gore and the IPCC, which was formed
from the environmental portions of the UN.

If the face of climate change was a scientist, I'd be more apt to believe it,
and so would millions of other people of a conservative political bent.

 _An Inconvenient Truth_ is the seminal work on climate change meant to inform
the general population, and a substantial bit of the movie is spent on the
2000 presidential election controversy.

Why in the world would anyone think that Republicans and political
conservatives would just readily accept the information put forth by liberal
politicians, merited or not?

And if I'm actively looking for the truth, how can I find it? I can't spend my
lifetime doing my own research, taking my own measurements, experimenting and
publishing papers to find out on my own. It's hard to find any material for
lay people that don't have some environmental activist telling me I'm an idiot
for no believing all the science Al Gore has already presented me.

Honestly, if human beings end up going extinct because we destroyed our
atmosphere with fossil fuels, it'll be as much the gross mismanagement of the
politics by environmental liberals that's to blame as every American eating
burgers and driving SUVs.

~~~
primroot
Richard Muller and John Baez? Or is more that one face too many?

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nashashmi
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
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
That is not completely true, virtually all the oxygen on Earth came from
bacteria. Life interacts with physics.

~~~
pyre
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
Enough with the "heal" already. I was being metaphorical.

