What Linux needs 13536

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, chrisv wrote on Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:06:12 -0600

It depends on the context. In this particular case the perturbations of the Earth's motion are rather complicated:

There are three periods involved in the Milankovitch Cycles:

1 Orbit eccentricity: 100,000 yr period. 2 Axis tilt w-r-to Ecliptic: 41,000 yrs. 3 Axis precession: ~ 23,000 years.

Interestingly, no mention at all is made regarding the orbit precession with respect to the seasons, though 3 might cover that (if the axis precesses around a half-circle the winter becomes the summer, basically).

My understanding thus far is that, 10,000 or so years back, at the beginning (well, maybe; others might claim 2,000) of civilization, mammoths wandered around in the colder areas and we were in an ice age. We are now coming out of that ice age; things will be rather warmer even without considering the extra stuff we're throwing into the Earth's atmosphere.

I suspect there will be some feedback. Plants like CO2 (though IIRC one experiment suggests that too much CO2 doesn't do much regarding O2 reclamation; instead the plant simply stores the starch and shuts off). It might be slightly stinky feedback too; algae on top of the seawater might photosynthesize, but when an algae bloom occurs, one gets a lot of dead algae, which reputedly stinks.

It also might be slightly deadly, as evidenced by two person hurricanes hitting environes near New Orleans (Katrina was almost a direct hit; Rita didn't help but pbutted to the west). Since hurricanes are fed by warm water in the Atlantic and global warming warms things, including water, I suspect things will be quite interesting (and not in a nice way) for Eastern seaboarders for some time to come -- though there are other considerations such as a rather odd 2,000-year-cycle current which, if it fails, may cause some even odder climactic effects (since the Gulf Stream depends on this current).

As for "Earth's natural systems dealing with climate change", that is a form of anthropomorphism. Of course, man is natural, and since we have intelligence (though one wonders at times!) we might be able to at least figure out what will happen next, and then even engineer something that might reduce the effect. But everything else will do what it does. Ice doesn't deal with increased global warming with anything even remotely resembling an intelligent response; it just melts, absorbing some heat while it does so and becoming water. Plants might either die off (if it gets too hot or cold) or flourish, but they don't have any brains either.

One of the wackier notions is orbiting the Earth with large aluminum reflection plates, for example. More practical alternatives, IMO, would be reforestation attempts for denuded rain forest land (and stopping the workers from clearing it in the first place), desalination and irrigation of deserts to convert them into rain forest, converting from coal-oil to renewable sources, if possible, and simply reducing the amount of energy required to get from point A to point B by encouraging trains and busses, or using small, cheap, private 1-seater commuter cars in lieu of the big SUVs Americans have up till now been favoring.

Linux might even help in that effort, although not nearly as much as in the Win95-Win98 days. Basically, Win98 didn't know how to halt, which heated the processor and wasted energy; Linux did not have this problem and processors ran cooler. Nowadays, Win2k-WinXP should at least halt the processor while waiting for the file to load... :-)

-- It's still legal to go .sigless.