Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ashrak on January 29, 2005, 05:23:12 pm
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anyone ealse think so? ... tsunamis snowstorms waterfloods and now there was an earthquake in estonia of all places friggin hell first one in 3 decades.
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I dunno. These things do happen. Hell, how long had Pompeii been inactive/dormant before it erupted? And then, I'm sure people were saying "The world is ending! It's a sign!"
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Well, I know that can't be true, but I had the same thought a while a ago.
After watching "The day after Tomorrow", that is. ;)
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Same as it's always been, in terms of geological events. Earth is a rather volatile planet...
In terms of weather, yes there has been a rather unusual turn to the extreme in the past 15 years or so. It's probably normal climate change, but we may well be adding to it and increasing the severity/rapidity of the change. Hard to tell since we only have records for the recent past. Either way, we're in for some hard times in the near future....
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*shifty eyes* ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP")
:nervous: :nervous:
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Originally posted by pyro-manic
It's probably normal climate change, but we may well be adding to it and increasing the severity/rapidity of the change.
then again, way also may be easing it.
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Well, yes, at some point or the other, the Earth gets buggered, like all of us really. Hopefully, whatever causes it will wait long enough for us to be able to either stop it, or get the hell out the way when it happens.
Thing is, we aren't exactly sure about anything meteorolgical, and we're even doubting what we thought we know about Geology, so while we know the Earth is a lot more complex than we originally concieved, complex does not always mean delicate.
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Man, we need another '93 superstorm. I need a Blizzard.:shaking: BAD!!!
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you guys don't think that the severe sun storms of last halloween has anything to do with changing our current weather? No sarcasm, i am actually asking. How far reaching are the effects of solar storms of that magnitude? We had Aurora Borealis here in Texas. That was freaky.
If some of our weather can be attributed to that, we can now look at the disasters that are hitting. We know that the earthquake caused the tsunami, right? Well, it would seem to me, that if the quake were a bullet, and the earth is a human body, the entry wound isn't the only damage done. Could the disasters since the big quake and the tsunami be the Earth still reeling from the impact of those? I would think that anything powerful to make a planet wobble would have a fairly sizeable number of aftershocks and side effects.
I haven't studied any of this, so none of this is based in fact, just conjecture.
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Well, the whole 'Ring of Fire' is starting to show a lot of activity at the momenrt, and 83 year old Japanese friend of mine says the Dragon of the Earth is angry at us, so mind how you go with the Kango ;)
Earthquakes and the like ring through the planet like a bell, even through the liquid core. We actually know a lot about the shape and contents of the centre of the Earth from listening to the echoes.
The reason for this appears the be that the core of the planet is getting slightly warmer. It's a cycle, as it liquifies, it loses friction and cools a few degrees, once it cools, it has a lot more friction and warms up again, it takes hundreds of thousands of years.
As to what can be done about it, not sure exactly. I don't know if our activities above the ground are amplifying or delaying the effects. All that can be said is that each 'Seismic Cycle' is slightly weaker than the last.
As for the Sunstorms, yes, they can affect weather patterns, high levels of magnetic radiation entering our atmosphere can cause turbulent weather, I think. WeatherOp may be able to confirm/disprove this.
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Originally posted by Ashrak
anyone ealse think so? ... tsunamis snowstorms waterfloods and now there was an earthquake in estonia of all places friggin hell first one in 3 decades.
These things are a natural process. The last couple of centuries were pretty good for the human race and the change in the environment is actually what helped the population boom in Europe and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. The weather changes....there have been palm trees in the arctic circle. The Earth has also at least once between a giant iceball.
There is a natural cycle to the planet...a yearly cycle or a 10,000 year cycle...it does its thing. The Earth is truly fascinating to me for that reason...its a shifting system, it accomodates change and its designed to change. Its not static and science is teaching us how different the Earth has been at different times in the past. In the future it can certainly be changed again.
The problem with human polution then?
- It introduces factors into the Earths evolution and natural change that aren't normally present.
- The Earth hasn't always been a friendly place for humans to live. If we change the way it works, it may still work and bear life...but it may not be condusive to humans.
The recent collection of events...its part of the process. Its going to happen in some order no matter what we do. Its still the ultimate power over us even when we try and fly in the face of it.
As for the earthquake and tsunami...there's been a bunch that have happened over the last 100 years. Its not like its unheard of. Its just that this time it was in a populated area and we have the world media watching. The last time it happened in this region around 100 years ago it likely killed just as many people and flattened the same towns and affected the same areas but with no media. But its a good place to live for alot of people and the towns will be rebuilt and the people will be back...until the next time. BTW: If you read about the earthquakes power and its impact on the rotation of the planet...the difference is so small its not measureable. The Earth evidently changes its angle on axis by several inches (if I'm remembering correctly) every rotation...meanwhile, the earthquake caused a small fraction of that amount in variation. Its not a revelation...its a scientific curiosity.
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Originally posted by ShadowWolf_IH
you guys don't think that the severe sun storms of last halloween has anything to do with changing our current weather? No sarcasm, i am actually asking. How far reaching are the effects of solar storms of that magnitude? We had Aurora Borealis here in Texas. That was freaky.
If some of our weather can be attributed to that, we can now look at the disasters that are hitting. We know that the earthquake caused the tsunami, right? Well, it would seem to me, that if the quake were a bullet, and the earth is a human body, the entry wound isn't the only damage done. Could the disasters since the big quake and the tsunami be the Earth still reeling from the impact of those? I would think that anything powerful to make a planet wobble would have a fairly sizeable number of aftershocks and side effects.
I haven't studied any of this, so none of this is based in fact, just conjecture.
I don't think sunstorms could effect the Earth's weather, since it is mostly magnetic.I don't know for sure, and you could probley check and get a better anwser. Now it could have caused the Aurora Borealis as far south as Texas.
Now, an Earthquake is better shown as a bone braking than a bullet, since it is the strain of the plates. Now a earthquake can eventully effect the Weather. If in turn it causes a Volcano, that erupts and sends ash in the air. It all depends on how much ash is ejected, and the change would be in the form of tempature, that might cause bigger snowstorms and such.
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I think I said this before, but Krakatoa is overdue another eruption. It exploded and destroyed itself in 1883, but has been rebuilding and is nearly back to it's former height of 2,000 feet.
Some stuff from the last time:
So great, too, was the ejective force that the fine volcanic dust was blown up to a height of fifty thousand feet, or over nine miles, into space. Another estimate gives the enormous altitude of seventeen miles to which the dust had been blown. The volcanic ash, which fell upon the neighboring islands within a circle of nine and one half miles radius, was from sixty-five to one hundred and thirty feet thick.
At that time, also, the shepherds on the Victoria plains, West Australia, thought they heard the firing of heavy artillery, at a spot one thousand seven hundred miles distant. At midnight, August 26th, the people of Daly Waters, South Australia, were aroused by what they thought was the blasting of a rock, a sound which lasted a few minutes. "The time and other circumstances show that here again was Krakatoa heard, this time at the enormous distance of two thousand and twenty-three miles."
A wave from fifty to seventy-two feet high arose and swept with resistless fury upon the shores each side of the straits. The destruction to life and property will probably never be fully known. At least thirty-six thousand lives were lost
On Monday morning, about two o'clock, the heavy cloud suddenly broke up, and finally disappeared, but when the sun rose it was found that a tract of country extending from Point Capucine to the south as far as Negery Passoerang, to the north and west, and covering an area of about fifty square miles, had entirely disappeared.
The power of the eruption was roughly equivilent to 21,000 nuclear bombs....
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the worlds not ****ed, its the people who inhabit it that are screwy :D
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The Earth has been extremely quiet the last few centuries. Here are a few things to consider.
It's cooler now than it was in the Middle Ages.
Yellowstone(yes the park) is overdue by almost 50,000 years for an eruption. When it blows, the Midwest, indeed much of the US and parts of Canada, are toast and it'll be nuclear winter type conditions just about everywhere else.
The sun is becoming more active, and anything that happens on the sun affects the Earth. When you say they're mostly magnetic, you completely leave out the scale. There have been flares recently large enough to turn Earth into a cinder.
I was taught that the End Times will come as a theif in the night and no one will know the hour of their coming.
Thing like the weather and tectonic activity are not becoming more active, they are returning to a previous level of activity, we can expect the number of natural disaters to increase in coming years, I think.
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It's cyclic. We've just never seen this before. So everyone freaks out... IMO, anyway...
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Originally posted by Liberator
The Earth has been extremely quiet the last few centuries. Here are a few things to consider.
It's cooler now than it was in the Middle Ages.
Yellowstone(yes the park) is overdue by almost 50,000 years for an eruption. When it blows, the Midwest, indeed much of the US and parts of Canada, are toast and it'll be nuclear winter type conditions just about everywhere else.
The sun is becoming more active, and anything that happens on the sun affects the Earth. When you say they're mostly magnetic, you completely leave out the scale. There have been flares recently large enough to turn Earth into a cinder.
I was taught that the End Times will come as a theif in the night and no one will know the hour of their coming.
Thing like the weather and tectonic activity are not becoming more active, they are returning to a previous level of activity, we can expect the number of natural disaters to increase in coming years, I think.
How is a bunch of charged particles going to turn the Earth into a cinder? The solar flares going on, by the time they get to us, are relatively harmless to whatevers going on down here. Because of the Earths magnetosphere which essentially protects us from the suns eruptions...the northern lights are caused by the impact of the charged particles on the magnetic "shield" as it were.
There is some thought that solar activity can impact conditions on Earth but only over a gradual period of time. A slightly more active period of the sun will not immediately or significantly have an impact...thats what they say.
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Originally posted by Liberator
It's cooler now than it was in the Middle Ages.
It's warmer, actually.
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Strangely IceFire, I was under the impression that the only thing preventing this mudball from becoming a frozen mudball had a very large impact of the weather, internal forces or no, this planet is the temperature it is thanks to the sun. If it burps, you get rain in the Gobi, or an ice storm in south Georgia. The weather, and even the tidal forces under you're feet are all driven, part and parcel, by that giant blowtorch 93,000,000 miles from here. Without it, this planet would be a frozen chunk of iron and ice with a few percentages of rarer elements.
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i always feel like humans are too arrogant. who says the earth is screwed? so the weather changes, and as a result there's an extinction of a primate species. then another species will rise up to the dubious honour of sapience. (assuming evolution, of course).
besides, it only seems like the weather's getting worse because we're living now. if we lived in the time of noah's flood we'd probably be thinking the earth is getting a bit dodgy, too. it's like wars, people always think now is a time of violence and we get all these random soothsayers saying that the end of days is near. well, i wouldn't know about that, but wars have been happening since the beginning, so i wouldn't use them as a time stick. same with weather and earthquakes and things.
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what i meant is all the weather anomalies are coming more often ... these past 2 years iv seen like 5 or 6?! while before i saw almost none
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blame the media. we've got more of the worthless parasites now, and fewer true journalists who actually report something newsworthy.
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Changing weather patterns are simply the effects of global warming and global dimming (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml)
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Originally posted by Clave
I think I said this before, but Krakatoa is overdue another eruption. It exploded and destroyed itself in 1883, but has been rebuilding and is nearly back to it's former height of 2,000 feet.
Some stuff from the last time:
So great, too, was the ejective force that the fine volcanic dust was blown up to a height of fifty thousand feet, or over nine miles, into space. Another estimate gives the enormous altitude of seventeen miles to which the dust had been blown. The volcanic ash, which fell upon the neighboring islands within a circle of nine and one half miles radius, was from sixty-five to one hundred and thirty feet thick.
At that time, also, the shepherds on the Victoria plains, West Australia, thought they heard the firing of heavy artillery, at a spot one thousand seven hundred miles distant. At midnight, August 26th, the people of Daly Waters, South Australia, were aroused by what they thought was the blasting of a rock, a sound which lasted a few minutes. "The time and other circumstances show that here again was Krakatoa heard, this time at the enormous distance of two thousand and twenty-three miles."
A wave from fifty to seventy-two feet high arose and swept with resistless fury upon the shores each side of the straits. The destruction to life and property will probably never be fully known. At least thirty-six thousand lives were lost
On Monday morning, about two o'clock, the heavy cloud suddenly broke up, and finally disappeared, but when the sun rose it was found that a tract of country extending from Point Capucine to the south as far as Negery Passoerang, to the north and west, and covering an area of about fifty square miles, had entirely disappeared.
The power of the eruption was roughly equivilent to 21,000 nuclear bombs....
I remember when they talked about St. Helens last year and they said that it might erupt huge. But, the thing nobody looks at, is that its brother Mt. Ranier is far more powerful and that it is 10 or so miles from alot of the major citys up there. A small eruption could cover those areas with 50 feet of mud.
Originally posted by karajorma
Changing weather patterns are simply the effects of global warming and global dimming (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml)
I've never really herd of that, but global warming, I hear that all the time. Maybe I need to look into that, might be interesting.:nod:
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Originally posted by Raa
Hell, how long had Pompeii been inactive/dormant before it erupted?
I think you'll find it was Vesuvius that was inactive. It's a bit difficult for a bustling Roman city to be 'inactive.' :D
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Originally posted by WeatherOp
I've never really herd of that, but global warming, I hear that all the time. Maybe I need to look into that, might be interesting.:nod:
I hadn't heard of it until that horizon a couple of weeks back either. The science behind it seems pretty accurate though and if they are correct then everyone's estimates of how bad global warming is are all lower than they should have been.
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Damnit, I want some good news for a change!! I wan't to see a headline that reads:
"World's leading scientists in agreement: don't sweat it guys, there's really nothing to worry about."
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Actually, have you ever read up on the Gaia theory?
The theory goes that if there is an imbalance in one part of the Earths' Ecosystem, another system will be affected by that change in such a way as to correct the problem. A few examples were given such as Carbon Dioxide replacement etc, and in some cases, it does seem as though the Earth has an 'Ideal' biosphere which it will naturally tend towards.
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Yeah theres been rather akward weather lately. Right after the Tsunami in fact. Here in Finland we had flooding. Really BAD flooding. The park infront of my house was totally flooded, since I live next to the sea. It had risen and totally engulfed most of it. I noticed it when I was taking my dogs out at night, then "splash splash" I look up and see the park benches almost submerged and the sea where the trail used to be. Then two weeks ago I saw a giant meteor fly past my house. Now an earthquake in Estonia? Crazy.
Though I read somewhere that the Earthquake in the indian ocean acutally shifted the earth's orbit or something. Making it spin faster as well, and have a shorter day. They said it wouldn't affect anything, that the north pole only shifted by an inch, but I think in global standards thats quite a bit. And with the crazy stuff we've been seeing of late, I guess it could all be connected.
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Originally posted by Liberator
I was taught that the End Times will come as a theif in the night and no one will know the hour of their coming.
The best thing, IMO. If we get scientists bringing portents of doom, then there'll be looting and pillaging and raping and all kinds of nasty **** going on (more so than usual I mean ;)). That's why I think that if there was some catastrophic event going to occur that some scientist already knows about, the world's governments would keep it quiet to avoid total anarchy.
karajorma & WeatherOp: I saw that programme as well. Very interesting. It'd explain why Europe has had such a jump in temperatures in recent years. Recent Horizon episodes have tended to be a bit on the melodramatic side, though, so It's probably not quite as calamitous (sp?) as it made out...
Stupid question: As Horizon and the like are public service broadcasts, what's their policy on filesharing and the like? And can you get copies of the programmes from the Beeb?
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Nahhhh... Horizon is still sensation led stuff. The Earthquake didn't shift the Earths orbit in the slightest, remember, it was nothing strength-wise, even compared to the one in Japan not that long ago, and my brother was practically on top of that when it happened.
The Tsunami was a terrible thing, I'll agree, but it was a fluke side-affect of the Earthquake, most underwater Earthquakes barely get noticed, and trust me, there are quite a lot of them.
I remember there was an Earthquake in the UK about 8 years ago, and everyone thought Scotland was going to fall into the Sea or something equally stupid.
It's easy to fall into the trap of 'The End is Near', every generation has done it since the dawn of mankind, we all secretly believe the Universe will end when we die anyway, so why should we care? ;)
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Originally posted by pyro-manic
karajorma & WeatherOp: I saw that programme as well. Very interesting. It'd explain why Europe has had such a jump in temperatures in recent years. Recent Horizon episodes have tended to be a bit on the melodramatic side, though, so It's probably not quite as calamitous (sp?) as it made out...
Stupid question: As Horizon and the like are public service broadcasts, what's their policy on filesharing and the like? And can you get copies of the programmes from the Beeb?
I don't know but I imagine they're fairly lenient with regards to it. They are certainly willing to put up transcripts of the entire show online.
I know that horizon tend to push the worst case senario (They're a TV show and it's nice to get ratings) but I tend to think they've got a handle on it. They've been making programmes on the greenhouse effect for over 20 years and the science has been pretty accurate so far. (While Channel 4 actually showed a program proving that global warming didn't exist 10 years ago. How much you want to bet that they hope no one remembers seeing it? ;) ).
I don't know if they are making it out to be worse than it will be but IIRC the Permian Extinction was set off by a 5 degree temperature change. That's about half of what the program suggested may happen.
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The planet is ****ed? You say that it's ****ed. Just because there are tsunamis and stuff, doesn't mean that we are about to die. Now, if we really we're ****ed, there would be a Sathanas currently charging up it's four BFReds and about to shoot the E- *looks up and sees a Sathanas*
****.
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Originally posted by karajorma
I hadn't heard of it until that horizon a couple of weeks back either. The science behind it seems pretty accurate though and if they are correct then everyone's estimates of how bad global warming is are all lower than they should have been.
Yeah, read that a few months ago. They found that man is not the main cause of GW and that it isn't nearly as bad as they said. Those tree huggers got the rug jerked right out underneth e'm. Allthough I do agree that we need to take more care of our forests and rivers.
And when I said "tree huggers" I ment those that would rather shoot me, than cut down a tree.:p
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They found that man is not the main cause of GW and that it isn't nearly as bad as they said.
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Wow. What a shock. I wish people would start listening to the geologists once in awhile - this might not have come as such a surprise...
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Originally posted by WeatherOp
Yeah, read that a few months ago. They found that man is not the main cause of GW and that it isn't nearly as bad as they said. Those tree huggers got the rug jerked right out underneth e'm. Allthough I do agree that we need to take more care of our forests and rivers.
And when I said "tree huggers" I ment those that would rather shoot me, than cut down a tree.:p
:wtf: How could you miss the point so completely??? Global warming is worse than they predicted. The simple fact is that air pollution was preventing the sunlight from getting through to the ground and this was masking the effects of GW by making the world cooler than it otherwise would have been.
Ironically the various clean air laws etc have actually cleaned this pollution up which means that we're getting stronger GW than was anticipated.
As for mankind not being the cause of GW where did you read that? It wasn't anywhere in the link I gave you.
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No, I think I got it off the NOAA site, or ether ABC 33/40 can't remember.
And it was kinda shocking to me too. Maybe, I can find it.
*EDIT: Here it is.
Global Warming Bombshell (http://beta.abc3340.com/externalwebsite.hrb?website=http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/10/wo_muller101504.asp)
It basicly says global warming could be....normal.
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Global warming is normal up to a point. The problem is all the **** we're churning out is adding to it.
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Agreed, even if the stuff we throw up there don't make Global Warming any worse. It is still not good for us.
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The report you link to doesn't say that global warming is normal, that it's not man made or anything of the sort.
All it does is call into question the methodology of one of the ways a trend was measured. It's not like that graph is the only evidence of global warming.