Why the Scientific Community is Concerned about Climate Change...

...and why you shouldn't hate on them.

Recently, it appears that a few tabloid articles from tabloid news agencies (Daily Mail (UK) was the first I believe to run it), have claimed to prove that climate change is a hoax.

I do not personally 100% agree with the articles of late that claim to have proven climate change to be a scam..but...there's some factors of it that I do agree with. I hate the climate change apocalyptic prognosticators as much as anyone, I think Al Gore is a sheister/buffoon, and I do not believe we will see immediate disastrous effects out of our backyard windows in the next few years.

Yet, that is not to say that because the apocalyptic prognostication faction has been slow to show us any awesome apocalypses, we can officially demote climate science to junk science.

The following are the reasons I believe climate change is occurring and why it can be very dangerous.

1. Humans evolved with their environments in a similar fashion throughout the entire planet. Humans are far and foremost a coastal sea-faring species. The percentage of humans still living in coastal regions vary from source to source yet a general estimate of 40-50% seems like the mean figure.

http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/papers/Coastal_Zone_Pop_Method.pdf

2. A 2006 study carried out by Church and White found that global sea levels are rising. They have concluded that sea levels have risen at a steady rate and will keep rising. Any proceeding study into sea levels supported the results of this study.

http://naturescapebroward.com/NaturalResources/ClimateChange/Documents/GRL_Church_White_2006_024826.pdf

So...if half of the humans on earth live on the coast and global sea levels are rising, could all these cities eventually be submerged? The answer is yes but it will not be tomorrow or next month. This is a gradual process. The cities can be submerged in 2100, 2300, 2500, 3100...we don't know. The possibility of this coastal submerging occurring is definite yet due to the time frame, me and you won't have to worry about it. Your great great grandchildren? Yes, probably.

3. Global sea/ocean temperatures are going up at an incredible rate. As water heats it expands (through convection) causing the density of the liquid to drop but the mass to increase. This only explains a portion of why water levels are rising. The other factor is that glaciers, ice shelves, and other blocks of solid liquid are also losing density and increasing in overall mass (melting).

The ant-arctic ice is staying stagnant and even growing (to the glee of climate change opponents) yet we have lost millions of square kilometers of ice in the opposite pole. Millions of square kilometers of ice in the north pole is becoming liquid.

(See: https://climate.nasa.gov/)

That's how they derive their statistics.

4. Why are global waters getting hotter? Why are they melting ice? What is causing this? Some speculate that it is only natural. Others speculate that a dense covering of gas is trapping heat within the planet, the oceans then absorb this heat and convect. The proof they cite is that they have measured the acidity of the water and it is increasing at a gradual rate as well.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F

This is the theory which gets everyone excited and worried because it is the one that links human-made pollution to the rising temperature of global waters.

2 Things to Remember...

Firstly, Tabloids are not very educational. Sadly, all news outlets are of the tabloid variety because it is the only profitable method to sell news. The definition of "tabloid" is as follows (as per wikipedia):

"Tabloid journalism tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news. Such journalism is commonly associated with tabloid sized newspapers like the National Enquirer, Globe, [Fox], or the The Sun and the former News of the World."

This is not the place to get your understanding of the world and how it operates. This style of journalism is designed to run stories that make readers mad/happy/sad (i.e. generate some sort of immediate emotional response) it is not designed to be educational. The Daily Mail (UK) column this story initially surfaced from is a tabloid...nothing more and nothing less.

If you would like to verse yourself in scientific journals and have a broader opinion on the matters at hand then by all means do so. Getting your info from scientific journals is going to give you far more credible information than a tabloid source.

Secondly, scientists understand the sands of human time in the scope of the god damned universe. Here to try and explain it is my home-slice, the deceased but still awesome Carl Sagan, and he's rappin' 'bout how short human history has been:

He's trying to explain it with calendar-esque day/hour/minute/second metrics that most of us are used to judging time in. We've only been here but for a moment, we really have. To the cosmos billions of years is nothing. Things take a long time, forces such as the erosion of rocks, the forming of continents, or the evolution of species are forces that alter the planet very GRADUALLY. You have to understand that it's not a bang-bang one-two punch. It takes a long time.

Yes, the average human only lives for about 75 years but your life is just one moment in the grand scheme of human existence. Theoretically, we can carry on the human game we're playing for billions of years right to the end (when the sun peters out), we can carry on the human game for a coupla hundred more years (by killing ourselves)...or we could even possibly harness technology, save ourselves, and fly out to settle other space rocks heated by other damned suns and play the human game infinitely.

The sensational tabloids will report the matter on either polarized perspective of climate change as if it will or will not kill us right now. People who are interested in science don't tend to think of the right now all the time, they know gradual processes take immense amounts of time.

Nuclear war will kill us all right-here-right-now and it is the only immediate apocalyptic event...but the destruction of our life-support system on earth through natural forces and/or man made pollution is a gradual process that may take thousands or hundreds of years.

Conclusion

Yes, climate change is occurring. No, it is not a hoax (my opinion anyway). Should we worry about it? Not in the immediate future.

In the case that you are a future-thinking dude/chick and wonder what the lives your great great great ancestors will be like....then yeah, you should worry.


Note (added Sept. 25/2013): I mentioned nuclear war as being the only event that will instantaneously assure our mutual destruction but I was not correct with that statement. There are many ways we can go extinct from natural causes. A good read on the subject of how we may all die is the 5th section of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's excellent book..."Death by Black Hole and other cosmic quandaries."

Heino's Final Form...Is it Finally Upon Us?

Too much serious stuff of late. I'm gonna knock out a fluff piece now. I think I am gonna write another article about Heino.

A couple of Dutch-moons ago (which is around 15 months or so), I wrote a piece about Schlagermann Extradinaire...Heino.

Right Here: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.com/2011/10/the-secret-of-re-invention-as-exampled.html

In that article we looked at Heino's many transmogrifications and Heino-Volutions throughout the 20th and 21st century. In the conclusion, I pondered if Heino was going to stay retired for good or if he had one or two transformations left in him.

Recent news articles, tweets, and Facebook updates...lead me to believe that Heino may indeed be in his lair, focusing his music power, and attempting to reach his final form.

For instance, this article from German Heavy Metal news site "Metal Hammer" is reporting that Heino is attempting to fuse his Schlager style with Metal to create a hybrid musical genre known as "Schlager-Metal." The article goes on to say that Heino will cover Rammstein songs using his new Schlager-Metal technique.

You're probably familiar with Rammstein without even knowing it. You know when you're at a strip club and there's a chick who's trying to look all domineering and intense with her stage dance? Chances are she's doing that shtick to Du Hast by Rammstein...I'd say that's the case 95% of the time.

Anyway, Heino's official Facebook Page is claiming the same thing. It has even posted a picture of Heino's new logo and a picture of Heino preforming hardcore songs with an unknown band. The following three photos are from Heino's official Facebook so it's not a joke.

An artist's view of Heino's Final Form

Heino's official new biker gang banner.

Preforming in a small club in Bremen.

From the last picture, we know that this is not a stunt. Heino is starting from ground-up to reach his next musical echelon. He's preforming in small clubs to hone his skills before he reveals his true form and what his Schlager-Metal will sound like. He's honing, cultivating, and refining his musical technique.

What is Heino's current Music Power? In the last article I made a guess-timate but...honestly I don't know. We can't measure it properly because he's been out of the lime-light for so long.

Some music scientists are estimating him at higher levels than he was during his preivous Rap incarnation...but what are they even going on exactly? Do they know something we don't? Some witnesses claim seeing Heino engaging in heavy music-training in a remote Black Forest locale with Thomas Dolby and M.C. Pow-Wow-Wow. Could there be any truth to those rumors?

Personally, I think music and Heino have a strange relationship together. I don't think Heino chose to evolve at all this time. I actually think that Heino goes deep into hiding to get away from music...yet music keeps finding him. The forces of nature keep Music and Heino bound for life in an inter-change of action and reaction. No matter how hard Heino tries to flee from music...it keeps finding him and forces him to Heino-Volve again, again, and again.

For the above reason, I don't think Heino has been practicing as much as music scientists are claiming he has. I think he is resisting the flux in the genre change....yet he knows it is futile in the end and is finally letting it take hold.

With all that considered, is it possible that Schlager-Metal will be bad? This writer thinks so. I think there's a possibility that Heino's new musical transmogrification may result in a failure. Will Schlager-Metal be more of a mutant than an offspring? Will it be a music genre gone horribly awry, with seven arms and eight heads? It is possible.

In fact, in prior eras, hadrcore and more edgey acts used to openly poke fun at Heino's style. For example, here we see the punk rock-and-roll group "Toten Hosens" (Dead Pants), famous for their songs about pushing whales and welcoming Alex, dressing up as an army of Heinoes (not as a tribute but to make fun of Heino):

In this writer's opinion...it's possible they shunned Heino because they were scared that if one day Heino was to become a hardcore act himself...that they would be unable to compete with his record sales. Were the Dead Pants poking fun...or simply taking an offsenive stance to try and keep Heino away from the hardcore genre? An obvious question to pose now would be, why is Heino still famous...yet the Dead Pants are not? Could it be that some icons last the test of the times, while others simply fade away?

In the end, the only question one has left to ask at this point in the Heino-Volution cycle is....

....Are You Ready For the Heino?


EDIT (FEB 06/13)

After hearing the album. I am going to say with 100% honesty (no sarcasm, no nothing)...it's good. Four chunes in particular (5, 7, 10, 13) are good. I'm not even joking, it's actually really good. It's not "metal" by like any metal head's standards, it's just a little harder, but it works. I'm 100% serious.

He even re-tries rapping to some extent and he pulls that off too. After laughing at Heino for many years, I'm taken back, he just shut me up. It's like a new person.

Dogs. Are they in Revo, Evo, or Devo?

I've been looking into a rather odd subject over the last 12 years or so. I've been carefully looking into the possibilities of dogs achieving total evolution and cognitive skills on par with humans. Doggie-volution, you'd call it...I guess.

I became interested in this field of study in the year 2000, after coming across a song called Where are Your Dogs? Show us Your Ugly on the internet. Well, maybe it is not exactly a "song" but more like an audio story tune, or an audio story dirge...or something.

It's an audio story tune about this dog who escapes from a plastic surgery test lab on Christmas Day (and is thus referred to as The Santa Dog). While he was in the lab, the Santa Dog got injected with human growth hormone and soon after his escape he began walking around town on his hind legs...and the "ugly humans start staying home in record numbers" in fear of the Santa Dog.

This whole concept of dogs evolving was something I found really interesting, and after being introduced to the concept, I naturally began a thorough investigation soon afterward.

From Wolves to Dogs: The Birth of the Dog

Dogs back in the day...used to be feral, vicious, ravaging beasts who traveled in packs who killed and ate all kinds of birds and deers. No one called them "doggies" back then, they were called "wolves" and everyone was dirt scared of them. You had to be scared of wolves because a pack of wolves would fuck you up back then.

It is theorized that humans thousands of years ago, in different spots of the globe, came upon wolf packs where the all the old wolves were dead and the only survivors were wolf cubs who could not fend for themselves. Humans adopted these wolf cubs and raised them and the wolves grew up to consider humans as friends and not food. Soon the wolves bred more baby wolves and the humans kept the friendliest ones in the human tribe and kicked out the ones who were too violent and feral. Basically, thanks to human influence, only the friendliest and least violent wolves got to breed and pass on their genes. Scientists call this phenomenon artificial selection.

After humans and doggies became fast and bestest friends, humans began to breed doggies more methodically. They got the dogs with the maddest skills (like hunting, smelling, running, seeing, etc.) and mated them with other dogs who displayed the maddest of skills in hopes that the puppies would be born with even madder skills. Often the puppies were indeed born with the sought after mad skills (as such).

Now we have huntin' dogs, seein' eye dogs, smellin' dogs (bloodhounds), racing dogs (greyhounds), and all kinds of skilled dogs. We even have funky dogs and nasty dogs and Dogs...woooooo!

These bad boys were being selectively pushed by humans to get better and better and in only about 100 years of breeding (1750-1850) dogs were gaining skills at alarmingly bad ass rates. In fact, with human help dogs were evolving super fast. You might go as far to say that dogs were not going through evolution...but revolution. 

The Decline of the Dog in the Victorian Era

The British Empire's Victorian Era and its legacy was notoriously bad. The English Royal Family applied all kinds of silly and odd rules to speech, writing, diction, fashion, manner, behavior, and everything else you could possibly think of. For example the measuring system they created (the imperial system) measured a unit of length known as a "rod" in regard to "the length of the left feet of 16 men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church." It's almost as if the dumbest people in society were running it.

The field of dog breeding had the same silly and odd rules applied to it in the Victoria Era. Dogs stopped being bred in hopes of getting puppies with mad-ass skills, but instead dogs started to be bred in hopes of getting a dog who's teeth were 0.01 "rods" apart, or who's eyes looked really funny, or in hopes of getting a dog who's hair looked retarded. Basically, they bred dogs for novelty and social status reasons. It was really in style to have a dog with little beady eyes who's legs didn't work...it meant you were richer than your friends.

Another huge factor that helped the decline of the dog in the Victorian Era was the notion of "pure breeding" which was big in all of Europe back then. It's not a secret that Royal Families in Europe engaged in incest and brothers, sister, mothers, and fathers all mated with each other (I'm talking about humans now, not dogs by the way). Incest in the British Royal Family is the reason they all have fucked up teeth and are morons.

Charles: a Pure Bred creature.

The current Queen Elizabeth and her husband (Phil) are both descended from Queen Victoria. They have the same blood (source). It is said Royals have to inbreed because their blood is pure and better than commoner's blood but let's be sane for a moment...inbreeding makes fucked up kids.

Take Liz's son Prince Charles for example, that's what "pure breeding" does to offsprings...it makes them look awful and have the intelligence of a peanut.

Pure Breeding when applied to dogs was not a good idea (just like it wasn't a good idea for humans). The Victorian Era bred dogs with their sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers in order to keep their genetic features "pure" and fashionable and in accordance with the silly rules they invented for dog breeding. Pure bred dogs are dumber, and far less healthy (they have all sorts of genetic problems which lead to health problems and shorter lives) than dogs who were bred for mad skills.

British and other Euro-Trash Royalty stopped the Doggie-volution (which I may remind you was no longer an evolution but a revolution) and turned it backwards. You might even say that the Euro-Royals selectively de-evolved our canines.

Oh shit. Wait a sec, that would mean we have a concrete example that devolution actually is possible and is not just a theory! AHHHHHHH! BOOGIE BOY WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! IT'S TRUE GENERAL DAD! WE REALLY ARE ALL DEVO!!!! IT'S POSSIBLE FOR EVERYONE TO D-EVOLVE!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

OH NOOOOOOO! WE ARE ALL DEVO!!!!!

Poor Doggies...What did we do to em' ?

To sum it up so far, humans put dogs into selective Revo, and then as quickly as we did we snapped them back and put them into selective Devo...and all these poor little puppy wuppies ever really wanted was just to naturally Evo.

100% De-Evolution Completed...

Poor Doggies, now that the Doggie-Volution is over, they have been reduced to pulling our sleds or being fashion accessories for skinny blonde bimbos.

The purse dog (as they are known) is a dog who is 100% de-evolved thanks to selective human breeding. It's sad, it really is. I hate seeing purse dogs, it's so stupid and it really represents the hallmark example of how humans have fucked up our doggie pals.

Dogs had no choice to team up with us. Humans are mean creatures, we would have just killed all the wolves if none of them agreed to befriend us. I wonder, on a hypothetical alternate time line, one which humans didn't survive the ice age and died out...how wolves/dogs would have faired. If humans didn't make it out of the ice age, but if every other animal did...I bet things would have been different for wolves/dogs.

Wolves would have continued hunting, foraging, and ravaging in their ecosystem for aeons and would eventually have evolved naturally with no human aid. They would have lived proud lives as warrior dogs, tailor dogs, doctor dogs, and other noble lives.

My Bias

At this point in the article, I must admit that I have a personal bias in favor or doggies. When I was a young boy, my best friend was a dog named Cubby. Me and him was tight, he was like my little brother, I even nicknamed him "Little Brutha." Me and him used to be together all the time, running all around town pulling all sorts of hoodrat stuff. Me and him played ball together and all those things. I grew up with that dog (I had him from the age of 5 to 19), he was a good dog.

So when I look at what humans are doing to our dog pals, I take it seriously because my best pal as a child unit was a dog.

What if Dogs Manage to Evolve Despite Our Efforts to Stop Them?

What if dogs are just one or two positive random mutations away from hitting a massive evolutionary growth spurt? Walking on their hinds legs, opposable thumbs, vocal chords for speech, brain development. What if dogs who display and excel in those traits manage to breed with each other for a hundred years or so? Wouldn't they gradually keep building on those mad skill sets?

Say by the year 2400, despite human efforts to make them our sled pullers, sheep herders, and purses...doggies still manage to level up a few evolutionary echelons. Would they still be our friends?

Would the dogs look at what we are doing the planet and approve of it? Would they approve of us doing everything in our power to pollute and ruin up our home? Would evolved dogs band together in tribes and launch a rebellion against humans? I dunno, but that would make a really good movie though (anyone readin' this can steal my idea if they want, I don't care).

Should we be living in fear of the inevitable doggie-volution, and their righteous and justified rebellion against human-kind? Should we ugly humans lock ourselves in our homes in record numbers? Is Santa Dog really out there waiting.....biding his/her time....for the Doggie Revolution?

......?

(This dog is walking on its hind legs because she was born without her other two...so, it's not like they can't already figure out how to walk on their hind legs. Maybe it is just a  fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves. Will dogs have a presence in the future? More importantly will these highly evolved Santa Dogs have presents in the future? I dunno.)