Originally Posted by Mikebert

I disagree. The same could have been said about old tech "big iron" companies like IBM, Xerox, Sperry-Univac, Burroughs etc. If any any industry had an incentive to invest in the new tech (PCs and the internet) it was they. Yet what happened? They largely were displaced by startups like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, American Online, Dell. Cisco, and Intel, etc.

IBM, at least, made a serious attempt at the PC market during the 1980s. I had two of their machines at one time. But, yes, the startups did eat their lunch.

This is what usually happens. How mainy railroads, or carriage companies made the transition to automobiles. Studebaker did, for a while, but mostly the new industry was dominated by startups: Oldsmobile, Ford, GM, Chrysler etc.

Two of the companies that became GM, Buick and Fisher Body, were either originally carriage companies or were owned by people who got their start as carriage makers. As for GM, it wasn't really a start-up, but a company that bought out start-ups.

If green energy becomes the next new thing, Big Oil will go the way of Big Iron. The winners of the current fossil fuel paradigm have every incentive to keep it going.

I'm teaching Environmental Science now, and one of the themes I'm going to start stressing is that there are entrepreneurial opportunities out there. It beats doom and gloom!

Originally Posted by The Pervert

IBM, at least, made a serious attempt at the PC market during the 1980s. I had two of their machines at one time. But, yes, the startups did eat their lunch.

Two of the companies that became GM, Buick and Fisher Body, were either originally carriage companies or were owned by people who got their start as carriage makers. As for GM, it wasn't really a start-up, but a company that bought out start-ups.

I'm teaching Environmental Science now, and one of the themes I'm going to start stressing is that there are entrepreneurial opportunities out there. It beats doom and gloom!

I didn't know about Buick. Thanks

Dear Mike,

Originally Posted by Mikebert

> I disagree. The same could have been said about old tech "big
> iron" companies like IBM, Xerox, Sperry-Univac, Burroughs etc. If
> any any industry had an incentive to invest in the new tech (PCs
> and the internet) it was they. Yet what happened? They largely
> were displaced by startups like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, American
> Online, Dell. Cisco, and Intel, etc.

While I have some sympathy for the point that you're trying to make,
this is totally bollixed up.

It doesn't make sense to compare IBM mainframe computers to products
from the companies you mention. Intel is a chip company. Microsoft
is a software company. Dell is a mail-order computer company. Cisco
has focused on the networking niche. And, of course, Intel is still
a chip company.

The reason for most of the major changes is not that companies
refused to invest in new technology; it's because new technology
became commoditized, and there was no longer any profit to be made.

The IBM PC was the gold standard throughout the 80s until the early
90s. You had "IBM compatible" PCs from Compaq and other companies,
and you had other PC makers that weren't so compatible and failed.
IBM remained the PC leader as long as it could retain a technical
edge through R&D. IBM lost market share when, it the early 1990s, it
was possible for anyone to build an IBM-compatible PC in his basement
from readily available components. At that point, IBM could no
longer maintain market share through technical excellence, and they
lost market share.

Microsoft has maintained its market share through technical
excellence and also (mainly) its monopoly control of Windows. Intel
has maintained a strong market share through technical excellence,
and also through an occasional investment from IBM; however, Intel has
had to share the market with AMD. Apple has maintained its market
share through technical excellence, its monopoly control of its
operating system, and its ability to create buzz as the anti-IBM and
anti-Microsoft with pastel colors.

Other companies you mention have "invested in high tech," but have
gone in different directions. Dell invested in manufacturing and
order processing technology and made a killing. Cisco invested in
high-speed networking technology and made a killing. Xerox has
invested in high-end document processing technology.

Other members of the BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data
Corporation, and Honeywell) have had varied success. NCR moved
into fault-tolerant Unix systems, and was acquired by AT&T. CDC did
OK for a while with super-computers, but eventually lost out to IBM.
And, if memory serves, doesn't Honeywell still sell high-tech
thermostats?

It's not surprising that the BUNCH companies had to drop out.
Developing a new mainframe architecture is INCREDIBLY complicated. In
the 1970s and 1980s, it was typical for IBM to have ten or twenty new
mainframe development projects going on simultaneously, because the
failure rate was so high. A new mainframe system probably had R&D
costs in the billions of dollars (which doesn't seem like much in
today's bubble-ridden world, but was real money in the 70s and 80s.)
A typical reason for one of these projects to fail is that after
spending tens or hundreds of millions to develop a prototype, they
discover that the computer runs 5-10% slower than they had
anticipated. That's enough to completely kill a mainframe project,
and force a complete restart.

Around 1994, it looked like the end of the road for IBM. Competitors
were claiming that you could get IBM-mainframe level performance by
putting together multi-processor Unix systems for a fraction of the
price. Few people at that time thought that IBM would survive long.

IBM got through that crisis for two reasons. First was account
control, which was always a large part of IBM's success. And second,
IBM was able to show that new generation IBM mainframes could
substantially outperform multi-processor Unix systems in
very high transaction environments. IBM spent mind-bogglingly large
amounts of money to develop these systems, which certainly counts as
investing in high-tech.

IBM managed to maintain its internal entrepreneurial spirit in the
1990s, despite the rise of Boomers and GenX-ers. An example of a
company that didn't was DEC, which I worked for in the 1970s, and
consulted for briefly in the 1990s. By the mid-1990s, DEC was
consumed with bureaucracy and ass-covering, and their product lines
turned to shit. They were acquired by Compaq, and then by HP.

So, putting this all together, you get companies that fit your
description (Burroughs, Univac, DEC), and just fell apart. You get
companies that invested in high-tech, just not mainframes, and have
done well. And you have IBM, which is still doing pretty well after
all these years, and hasn't yet really been displaced by anyone.

Sincerely,

John

John J. Xenakis
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com

Bill Maher had something to say about Global Warming and politics on his show last night. At the link is the print version from Salon.

I'm dressing up as a melting polar ice cap

Because that's scary. Almost as scary as the possible reelection of the party of the scaremonger in chief.
By Bill Maher

Oct. 27, 2007 | New Rule: This Halloween, every time you see something that's supposed to scare you, like a skeleton or a severed head or the ingredients in diet pudding ... take a moment and think about fear: What are you afraid of; what should you be afraid of. What's really scary this Halloween is that the same group of idea-free losers who won the last presidential election could win the next one by making us afraid of the wrong things. Which is why this year for Halloween, I'm going as something truly horrifying: a melting polar ice cap.

Originally Posted by John J. Xenakis

The reason for most of the major changes is not that companies refused to invest in new technology; it's because new technology became commoditized, and there was no longer any profit to be made.

If there was no profit to be made, how do you explain the combined market capitalization of Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Dell? IBM was once much larger that all four of these combined and they did it all.

The IBM PC was the gold standard throughout the 80s until the early
90s. You had "IBM compatible" PCs from Compaq and other companies,
and you had other PC makers that weren't so compatible and failed.

This makes my point. IBM was so strong it could, belatedly, get into the PC market and still create the dominant architecture. The architecture they created was based on Intel processers and Microsoft operating systems. Had they started in 1977 the PC they brought to market would have run an IBM operating system and maybe an IBM processor. As you know the PC-clone won out, which is testimony to Big Blue's power. But the spoils of the victory IBM won went to Microsoft (largely) and Intel.

IBM remained the PC leader as long as it could retain a technical
edge through R&D.

No it never was the leader, because the machines did not run their operating software and processors. IBM did not make this mistake with their mainframe business, in which they maintained control of the systems they developed for as long as they were in use.

Microsoft has maintained its market share through technical
excellence and also (mainly) its monopoly control of Windows.

A monopoly that could have been IBM's had they taken PCs seriously in the 1970's.

Intel has maintained a strong market share through technical excellence, and also through an occasional investment from IBM; however, Intel has had to share the market with AMD.

Here Intel was already a leading chip making in the late 1970's. IBM might (or might not) have been able to develop its own processor had they started early, but operating system would have been more important.

IBM was not originally a computer company, it was a business machine company that started out making mechanical tabulators. It made the transition to electronic computers, remaining a business machine company. They provided the complete computer package needed to carry out the business information processing an earlier generation of mechanical computers had done.

They did not act in anticipation of the PC revolution in which, instead of the processing power being centralized and shared, the processing power was distributed and data shared.

The reason this happens, is the new thing rarely looks profitable at first. Startups aren't supposed to make money and so their investors are patient. Ordinary companies aren't allowed to spend huge amounts of money on potential boondogles. This is why they usually don't make the transition. How can you (with investors demanding quarterly earnings gains) compete with startup guys whose investors don't require they make a profit?

You can't. So its usually only the very best managed companies that can make these sorts of transitions. IBM was one of them.

IF the new energy paradigm fits well with the old energy's paradigm (huge centralized plants with a distribution network) they might make a shift to a new energy paradigm. But if new automotive fuels are oxygenates (as seems likely) then they cannot be transported in conventional pipelines. They will have to be trucked, which makes centralized plants less attractive. And if these fuels are to be made out of bulky biomass (as seems likely) which is also expensive to transport, it looks like the new paradigm will decentralized production to serve local markets.

The old line companies can still get involved, but their won't be as much money in it. From pure engineering perspective the new fuels cannot compete on production costs with the old fuels. It will simply cost more to produce the new fuels than the old. But if shortage of raw materials for the old fuels (peak oil) or taxes (AGW) drives up the price of old fuels then a niche will exist for the new fuels, but the return on investment for these will be less than what it was with the old.

It will then be impossible for old fuel companies to invest in the new fuels because the return on their investors capital will be less than what they have been used to. If the companies management are capitalists they will return their surplus profits to their owners as dividends instead of investing them in the less profitable new-fuel businesses. Let their owners, if they choose, invest in new fuel companies themselves. Of course, most CEOs are not capitalists (they are empire builders) and so they will try to invest in the new technology, but they will be hampered by shareholder demands for continued high returns.

Startups don't have this problem. Hence they have a big edge. My main point still applies. Big Oil CEOs can best serve their own and their shareholders interests (which is their job) by using their political influence to try to keep the oil paradigm going as long as they can.

Originally Posted by The Rani

How far would you go to "promote" this? Just curious.

The Chinese "one child" policy would be the limit. That reflects the extreme need to stem population growth quickly.

Most advanced industrial countries (and some not-so-advanced, like Russia) have birth rates low enough to ensure an end to population growth within 50 years, barring immigration. One result is an aging population, which has its benefits. An older population generally has fewer of the usual pathologies of adolescents and young adults (crime, alcoholism, drug use, vehicle collisions) and a more skilled and stable work force. They also have fewer youth to offer as cannon fodder in war, which makes destructive wars less likely.

Countries with aging populations are likely more cautious, on the whole, than those with young populations that can be convinced that war is a far nobler enterprise than being raw labor for farms or factories.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I disagree. The same could have been said about old tech "big iron" companies like IBM, Xerox, Sperry-Univac, Burroughs etc. If any any industry had an incentive to invest in the new tech (PCs and the internet) it was they. Yet what happened? They largely were displaced by startups like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, American Online, Dell. Cisco, and Intel, etc.

This is what usually happens. How mainy railroads, or carriage companies made the transition to automobiles. Studebaker did, for a while, but mostly the new industry was dominated by startups: Oldsmobile, Ford, GM, Chrysler etc.

If green energy becomes the next new thing, Big Oil will go the way of Big Iron. The winners of the current fossil fuel paradigm have every incentive to keep it going.

The automobile was a simpler object than was a locomotive. The automobile was an inevitability because the potential of putting a small motor in a carriage and using the motor to drive the rear wheels was an inevitability.

Carriage + motor + drivetrain = automobile.

The most novel technology necessary for the automobile with an internal-combustion engine was the spark plug (1898, Tesla) which was also necessary for aviation. Steam engines were tried for cars, but they proved unreliable.

Had the spark plug not been invented, then the technology necessary for automobiles would either be a more refined steam engine or even a jet engine... but that's contrafactual history.

You are right in that the automobile succeeded over the railroad because (at least at the first) it required lesser infrastructure than did the locomotive. Rail companies owned the railroads; the public could own the roads. Sure, the highways have become Frankenstein's monsters over a century, with some undesirable effects...

I can imagine solar power supplanting the use of petroleum as a fuel for generating electricity. The technology to use a solar panel to heat water to supply old-fashioned steam heat (or warm water heat) implies that with adequate efficiencies of scale, everyone can own his own water heater in a closed system in much of America (Michigan, upstate New York, and New England, cloudy places in winter might be exceptions) that supplies not only hot water for bathing and cooking but also household heat and electrical power. There would be especially enough solar power to provide air conditioning in such hot desert and semidesert locations as in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas, and (should global warming be the cause of a certain drought)... Atlanta -- especially if we go from incandescent lighting to LEDs. The Sahara is not a desert for lack of the solar power necessary for ground cover, and boreal forests around 60 North demonstrate the ability of nature to exploit an irregular and often slight supply of solar power.

We already have enough solar power for the raw food that we eat and most fiber (cotton, fur, wool) that we wear; all of the energy necessary for growing the grain, fiber, and livestock is ultimately solar power. Likewise the fish of the sea. Agricultural shortages have more often resulted from a lack of water (droughts) or from perverse politics (Bolshevism, fascism, and Maoism) than from a lack of solar heating.

It is often possible to undercut the Big Boys with a simpler and smaller technology -- automobiles as opposed to locomotives or PCs as opposed to mainframe computers. But the railroads still exist; they remain economical means of sending bulk materials from a mass supplier (coal from a coal mine) to a mass user (a steel mill or a coal-burning powerplant).

I am a technological optimist; I believe that human imagination finds ways to evade the power of entrenched interests. There may no way to cheat the ultimate reality of the laws of thermodynamics -- that is that we can't get energy from nothingness, we can't create energy by simply segregating cold and hot without using energy (or as one fellow puts it, you can't drive a paddleboat by turning some of the Mississippi River water into steam and the rest as ice that one can cast off), and we must accept some heat loss as a norm.

The oil cartel will have to adjust to the new reality. It will eventually be obliged to find niches instead of having the means to supply all of the fuel. The question remains: can people find more efficient means of getting energy than the oil rig, which, like the locomotive or the mainframe computer, is itself a huge investment?

The Thirteenth Generation will fund the research and development that the Millennial Generation will need to do to prevent Peak Oil from bringing industrial-based, consumer-driven civilization to an end.

pbrower2a, you are an evil, anti-Millie, anti-child, ultra-enviromentalist who hates Western civilization and minorities!(TM)

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The Thirteenth Generation will fund the research and development that the Millennial Generation will need to do to prevent Peak Oil from bringing industrial-based, consumer-driven civilization to an end.

HEAR, HEAR!

Originally Posted by sean '90

pbrower2a, you are an evil, anti-Millie, anti-child, ultra-enviromentalist who hates Western civilization and minorities!(TM)

Let me show you how wrong you are:

Evil?

I want the best for humanity as a whole -- a world that offers the fullest possibilities for the enjoyment. That precludes overpopulation, one of the most obvious causes of the degradation of life. Long commutes and a world reduced to mindless consumerism is ugliness in its purest.

anti-Millie?

Naw. I think that I am an equal-opportunity barb-thrower, and I have thrown plenty of them at my own generation. For example, I think that the Boom economic elite is quite possibly the worst elite that America has known since slave-holding times. Calling it "selfish, arrogant, and ruthless" and "without discernible virtues" is as harsh a judgment as is possible; regrettably it is also true.

Anti-child

I have said "I am glad that I have no children" out of fear for what world can be theirs -- lower real wages, lack of any purpose other than the enrichment and pampering of people who treat them as cattle, debased culture, and all-in-all a grimmer, drearier world largely because of the choices that the supposed grown-ups of our time have made . Maybe I will think differently beginning on January 21, 2009, when Spurious George is out to pasture.

Ultra-environmentalist?

No. Humanity is here to stay, and so is the acquisitive urge. Resource depletion is a threat even if we deal successfully with pollution. We can go only so far with a throw-away society that consumes petroleum as if there were no limit. I think that we will find out what the limit is -- the hard way -- if we don't find suitable alternatives, such as changes in people's ways of life.

Hater of Western civilization?

I can't think of a suitable alternative. It's the not-so-civil aspects of Western civilization that I find loathsome.

Anti-minority?

Virtues and vices can appear in any package, and they can't be associated with any one skin tone or physiognomy.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Maybe I will think differently beginning on January 21, 2009, when Spurious George is out to pasture.

You think too much about one man who doesn't even know you exist.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Had the spark plug not been invented, then the technology necessary for automobiles would either be a more refined steam engine or even a jet engine... but that's contrafactual history.

Dude.

Do you even know what a diesel engine is?

And they're significantly more fuel-efficient than spark-ignition. I'm unsure whether they would have been feasible in aviation, since their weight must be a bit higher to support the greater compression, but:

Steam car: FAIL (volume-power ratio)
Jet turbine car: FAIL (it was tried; there's no way to adequately quiet the scream of Mach-speed oscillations)

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Dude.

Do you even know what a diesel engine is?

And they're significantly more fuel-efficient than spark-ignition. I'm unsure whether they would have been feasible in aviation, since their weight must be a bit higher to support the greater compression, but:

Steam car: FAIL (volume-power ratio)
Jet turbine car: FAIL (it was tried; there's no way to adequately quiet the scream of Mach-speed oscillations)

Diesel engines have worked well for large trucks and locomotives, thank you. Automobiles? Maybe the technology would have been adapted better had there been no alternative.

I once looked at a diesel car -- a Volkswagen -- and I thought its acceleration so slow that I thought the car unsafe. I am not a speed demon; I just want to get onto a highway fast enough and reach the normal speed before I get into trouble.

A diesel engine might be efficient, but utterly inappropriate for some short freeway entrances characteristic (in the 1980s and 1990s) of some Dallas-area expressways. To be sure, had the diesel engine been the only one available for automobiles, then it would have been adapted, and both highway construction and driving practices would have fit the (alternative) reality. I don't know whether Henry Ford even considered a diesel engine for his mass-market cars... but diesel engines were late to become part of automobiles, and not especially successful.

I'm inclined to think that if Tesla hadn't invented the spark plug, someone else would have not too far downstream. Yes, he was more than a little eccentric, but making sparks from electricity isn't that big a gap to jump.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Diesel engines have worked well for large trucks and locomotives, thank you. Automobiles?

Where's my lol smilie?
Comparison
A couple of examples.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Dude.

Do you even know what a diesel engine is?

And they're significantly more fuel-efficient than spark-ignition. I'm unsure whether they would have been feasible in aviation, since their weight must be a bit higher to support the greater compression, but:

Steam car: FAIL (volume-power ratio)
Jet turbine car: FAIL (it was tried; there's no way to adequately quiet the scream of Mach-speed oscillations)

As it happens a number of diesel vehicles since about the mid-eighties have had aluminum heads which cuts engine weight but also diminishes engine life. My turbo diesel Benz's engine is solid iron (which - along with the fact that Mercedes has been building diesel vehicles longer than any other automaker - is part of the reason these cars run for hundreds of thousands of miles without needing an engine rebuild and also part of the reason they'll run on just about anything). I've read that Mercedes is developing an all-aluminum diesel engine which I gather is made possible by new technologies around aluminum.

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Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts


AP
Posted: 2007-12-11 23:00:56
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (Dec. 11) - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.


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John McConnico, AP


A record amount of Greenland's ice sheet melted this summer -- 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark. And for the first time on record, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.








"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. For the past several days, government diplomats have been debating in Bali, Indonesia, the outlines of a new climate treaty calling for tougher limits on these gases.

What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice.

In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow.

More than 18 scientists told the AP that they were surprised by the level of ice melt this year.

"I don't pay much attention to one year ... but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you've got to stop and say, 'What is going on here?' You can't look away from what's happening here," said Waleed Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences. "This is going to be a watershed year."

2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:

• 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record.

• A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It's an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.

• The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

• Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004's total.

• Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, "it's very significant," said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.

- Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be released Wednesday by University of Washington's Michael Steele.

Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted — something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades — it could add more than 22 feet to the world's sea level.

However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years.

According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn't have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.

"I'm quite concerned," he said. "Now I look at 2008. Will it be even warmer than the past year?"

Other new data, from a NASA satellite, measures ice volume. NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke, reviewing it and other Greenland numbers, concluded: "We are quite likely entering a new regime."

Melting of sea ice and Greenland's ice sheets also alarms scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral.

White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun's heat off Earth, NASA's Zwally said. When there is no sea ice, about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more melting.

"That feedback is the key to why the models predict that the Arctic warming is going to be faster," Zwally said. "It's getting even worse than the models predicted."

NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often called the godfather of global warming, on Thursday was to tell scientists and others at the American Geophysical Union scientific in San Francisco that in some ways Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data.

"We have passed that and some other tipping points in the way that I will define them," Hansen said in an e-mail. "We have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll things back in time — but it is going to require a quick turn in direction."

Last year, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington and Marika Holland at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado startled their colleagues when they predicted an Arctic free of sea ice in just a few decades. Both say they are surprised by the dramatic melt of 2007.

Bitz, unlike others at NASA, believes that "next year we'll be back to normal, but we'll be seeing big anomalies again, occurring more frequently in the future." And that normal, she said, is still a "relentless decline" in ice.


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

I'll bet that the north pole will be mostly ice-free within a decade.

Originally Posted by Odin

I'll bet that the north pole will be mostly ice-free within a decade.

I want to see next years ice maps before going into full scale gloom and doom mode. I wouldn't be surprised if you are correct, however. This feels more like a tipping point gone by than a one year glitch.

Originally Posted by Odin

I'll bet that the north pole will be mostly ice-free within a decade.

Oh yeah? I'd be willing to put up €5000 against you on that (I'd put up more -- never having been one to turn down easy money -- but I can only afford to set that much aside right now to make sure I can afford to pay off on the remote chance that you accidentally turn out to be correct). We'd have to nail down your 'mostly' into something measurable, but in principle I'd take that bet.

So what do you say?

The Search for Arctic Hot Springs...

Just stumbled on an article of a expedition looking for the Arctic hot springs which were a 'hot' topic a while ago, allegedly responsible for melting the Arctic. Apparently, such springs aren't so easy to find... For discussion purposes

This summer, Reves-Sohn's expedition, dubbed Agave for Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition, spent six weeks at sea. In that time, the robots made eight dives and had a few close calls—like the time Jaguar got lodged under the ice, until the captain cracked open the floe by bumping the 14,330-ton Oden against it.

The Agave crew never found a hot spring, but they did discover that the Gakkel Ridge may be even stranger than anyone thought. The researchers came across vast, eerie patches of "fluffy stuff" that turned out to contain at least 150 different species of microbes. The yellowish fluff looked like cotton candy stuck into cracks in the seabed. The team also retrieved the exoskeleton of what appears to be an unknown species of sponge. Analysis of the creatures will continue through the winter. Science this deep takes time.

A second more detailed article.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Oh yeah? I'd be willing to put up €5000 against you on that (I'd put up more -- never having been one to turn down easy money -- but I can only afford to set that much aside right now to make sure I can afford to pay off on the remote chance that you accidentally turn out to be correct). We'd have to nail down your 'mostly' into something measurable, but in principle I'd take that bet.

So what do you say?

Here's someone taking bets:

He got three takers.

The parameters of the bet are as follows:

At no time between now and the end of the year 2020 will the minimum total Arctic Sea ice extent be less than 10 percent of the 1979-2000 average minimum annual Arctic Sea ice extent, as measured by NSIDC data or any other measurement mutually agreed-upon; provided, however, that if two or more volcanic eruptions with the energy level equal to or greater than the 1991 Mount Pinatubo shall occur between now and the end of 2020, then all bets are voided.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Here's someone taking bets:

I've looked a fair bit on the website, and can't seem to find how to contact this guy to make my easy few grand off him. Any advice?

He might have more takers if he was a bit more accessible. At least one more (me) for sure...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I've looked a fair bit on the website, and can't seem to find how to contact this guy to make my easy few grand off him. Any advice?

He might have more takers if he was a bit more accessible. At least one more (me) for sure...

One, I think he has all the takers he wants (three climate scientists, to be exact.) Two, the bet doesn't pay out until the end of 2020, so it'll be a long wait.

Originally Posted by Finch

One, I think he has all the takers he wants (three climate scientists, to be exact.)

Aha. But Mike tried to make the implication that the marginality of the counter-position was somehow demonstrated by the lack of 'money-where-your-mouth-is' takers. What you are saying, on the other hand, is that the 'bet' offered on the website Mike put up was merely a staged stunt. Which maybe it was.

Nevertheless, I did ask for terms, and the ones put up during that stunt seem fairly reasonable -- though I think it would be fair to add other automatic-out clauses to cover any major unexpected factors like regional nuclear exchanges or asteroid strikes or whatnot. The bet is regarding the validity of the climate models, and no one has gone so far as to claim that they can account for those kind of outliers.

So, concrete terms have been proposed. My offer still stands Any takers?