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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread.

QCOM 173.20

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Nov 6 3:59 PM EST

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To: Dennis Roth who wrote (6515)	12/30/2003 11:59:28 AM
From: A.J. Mullen	Read Replies (1) of 12231

There's an interesting report in the Economist of recent papers that show correlations between weather and agriculture. The impetus for agriculture, and subsequent improvements may have been climate change brought about by Milenkovich cycle - a long term wobble in the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The inhabited area of the Nile delta seems to have ebbed and flowed with the global climate pattern. That global pattern has been tracked by looking at gases (CO2 and CH4) trapped in Antarctic ice. It supposedly follows the Milankovich cycle until about 8 thousand years ago when deforestation started to make way for agriculture, then another deviation is associated with development of "wet rice" farming. The most interesting part of the report for me was the claim that the three recent cooling periods could be associated with collapses of agriculture as forest reclaimed agriculture and started extracting Co2 to make trees. Those collapses were associated with plagues and the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Black Death in Europe, and the epidemics introduced to the Americas by Europeans. I find those reports somewhat reassuring. The nightmare is that the Earth switches into a different stable state. For instance, global warming could lead to global though shutting down of the ocean circulation systems encroachment of ice and increased reflection of heat back into space. The point is that World Climate is changeable, and it can be affected by human actions. And I don't think it is good enough to say "we don't know what the effects will be, so let's not worry." I think we should worry, and take the easy steps at least to reduce the impact whose effect we don't know. Ashley Ps. That was all said a few posts back. The rationale for giving developing countries a break was that they argued that the rich countries had achieved their wealth by exploiting their coal deposits and adding to the load of CO2. That it was unreasonable of them to draw the ladder up after they had climbed it. Basically they argued that they should be allowed to create some portion of CO2 burden that the whole world will suffer. The Kyoto agreement accepted this and allowed them extra latitude. It is possible to "measure" temperature in distant past by looking at the ratio of stable isotopes trapped in air bubbles in old ice deep in ice-packs. Tree rings can be used to cast light on climate up to several thousnad years ago, as can pollen sediments and the biota trapped in marine sediments. A.

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