3.17 Global Warming Mechanics

Whichever aspects (be it famine, floods, droughts, hurricanes, forrest fires etc) are considered resulting from global warming, they can and should be implemented through the random events system and not through 'random tile roulette'.

I just find it interesting that in all your examples you only site negative consequences of global warming. The media and Al Gore's of the world have certainly brainwashed the public.

How about increased food output in northern countries? How about the opening of the northwest passage? How about less home-heating required? How about an expansion of forested areas? (Plants love CO2.) How about making huge areas of land in Canada and Russia actually livable?

If 10,000 years ago in the ice age, there were environmentalists warning of global warming, I'm sure glad that the rest of the cavemen clubbed them over the head and ate them.
 
I just find it interesting that in all your examples you only site negative consequences of global warming. The media and Al Gore's of the world have certainly brainwashed the public.

How about increased food output in northern countries? How about the opening of the northwest passage? How about less home-heating required? How about an expansion of forested areas? (Plants love CO2.) How about making huge areas of land in Canada and Russia actually livable?

If 10,000 years ago in the ice age, there were environmentalists warning of global warming, I'm sure glad that the rest of the cavemen clubbed them over the head and ate them.
:agree:

Its been nice the past few years being able to acually go out on Holloween without a big winter coat and snow boats on. But if it gets to hot here, you better beleive I'll be moving to siberia. :lol:

But, seriously, GW should take the latatude of the plot into accound and give a higher chance of an effect happening in the equator area.
 
5. What has been said before: not everything turns to desert!! tundra to grassland - grassland to plains - plains to desert makes more sense to me. ice to tundra or water is a good idea too :goodjob: this would add realism, according to some theories in "some" years everyone will want to live in greenland because of the californian weather there!! XD
That's exactly what I was thinking. I find bit odd also that global warming removes forests/jungles - this should happen only on squares that are next to desert slots (sahara for example) and if the forest/jungle is next to another forest/jungle it should get boost to its growth rate ie. forests and jungles grow faster when there's more CO2 in the air, forests also grow farther north when the globe warms up. Flood plains shouldn't change at all, it's the river that brings fertile soil to those squares but if the river dries completely out due to global warming, then those flood plains would turn into desert (sahara / middle east).
 
I just find it interesting that in all your examples you only site negative consequences of global warming. The media and Al Gore's of the world have certainly brainwashed the public.

How about increased food output in northern countries? How about the opening of the northwest passage? How about less home-heating required? How about an expansion of forested areas? (Plants love CO2.) How about making huge areas of land in Canada and Russia actually livable?

This is complete nonsense. There are several studies on the overall effect of global-warming and while some areas may profit, the net effect will be negative. Already desertification is a problem and GW will make it worse.

And replacing home warming with air conditioning is always a trade for the worse. Some (!) plants may profit from more CO2, but more abundant forest fires will easily off-set that.

Besides do you really want to see the economic and ecological effect of a mass migration north? :rolleyes:

Sure, it's just brain-washing. That the majority of scientists is concerned about the effects - well they're just stupid, eh?
 
Sure, it's just brain-washing. That the majority of scientists is concerned about the effects - well they're just stupid, eh?
Some are , beleive me ;) ( scientific education does not exclude morons..... )

Any reasonable people would be concerned with the possible world-wide changes that a possible cooling/warming of the planet. That does not make the changes to auto appear, you know....

And to say the truth, I already worked in a related area ( study of migration pattern of fishes ) and there is strong pressure for blaming GW of everything that is changing in our world. And we are yet to see that GW is a real and long lasting phenomenon caused by CO2 stockpile or if we are being fooled by some short term data ( and even 1000 years in climatological terms is a really small sample )... it happened before.

On topic: why the hell nukes effect does not scale with map size? IMHO it doesn't make sense....
 
Some are , beleive me ;) ( scientific education does not exclude morons..... )

Actually Clima Physics excludes a lot of morons, due to level of mathematics involved. And yes, I know what I'm talking about. Yes, there are some scientists who don't agree, but it's mostly on matters of scale. All the major (different) computer simulations agree that global warming is occuring.

Any reasonable people would be concerned with the possible world-wide changes that a possible cooling/warming of the planet. That does not make the changes to auto appear, you know....

True enough, but even a sceptic like you should be able to see the danger. Even if climate change will occur with only a probability of 10% it's worthwhile to invest billions to avert it or lessen it's effects. Think of it as assurance.
 
Ammar, I'm not a skeptical ( because this is not a faith issue ), I'm simply worried that we may be taking high stakes based in data that is clearly less than we would like. If it was simply a matter of taking precautions against a possible warming, I would applaud it ( and ask for precautions against cooling as well ). But what we are seeing today is a little diferent from that, right? Both sides ( except for the scientists in the middle of this that are really trying to find what is really happening ) are ( sorry for the language ) giving the cr*p to what will happen in the future if it does not have meansurable sociological effects in the present.....
 
Ammar, I'm not a skeptical ( because this is not a faith issue ), I'm simply worried that we may be taking high stakes based in data that is clearly less than we would like. If it was simply a matter of taking precautions against a possible warming, I would applaud it ( and ask for precautions against cooling as well ). But what we are seeing today is a little diferent from that, right? Both sides ( except for the scientists in the middle of this that are really trying to find what is really happening ) are ( sorry for the language ) giving the cr*p to what will happen in the future if it does not have meansurable sociological effects in the present.....

As said, there is at least some scientific consensus on what's happening. This being said, I don't think it's valid to claim that those warning of global warming don't care about the future. Let's face it for politicans and most industrialists it's cheaper to prevent GW does not exist.
 
Let's face it for politicans and most industrialists it's cheaper to prevent GW does not exist.
Not if you convince the governement and the tax payers that is needed some extra cash to stop it and that you're the best person for the job ;)
 
You hit the nail on the head there r_rolo1 :goodjob:

Shhh Do you realise you could be burned at the stake for preaching such heresy!
 
Not if you convince the governement and the tax payers that is needed some extra cash to stop it and that you're the best person for the job ;)

Maybe, that *could* work, but IMO it's clear that the additional money wouldn't cover loss of productively.

Fortunately, at least the energy concerns have made clear where their interests lie. Just look at the "We call it life" propaganda.
 
Here's a few snips from the article in question, for those that might be interested.
Nitrogen - The Bad Guy of Global Warming
Why should we worry?
There are two main things that these nitrogen compounds affect: the environment and human health. When nitrous oxide (N2O) reaches the stratosphere it helps destroy the ozone layer, resulting in higher levels of UV radiation and increasing the risk of skin cancer and cataracts. Ironically, when N2O is nearer to the Earth’s surface it can actually make ozone, which can become smog on a still and sunny day. Smog has been linked to respiratory problems, lung damage, increased risks of cancer and a weakening of the immune system.
The overuse of fertilisers on fields and of nitrogen compounds in animal feed leads to nitrogen leaching into streams and rivers. Algae, whose growth is usually limited by nitrogen availability, use this flood of nitrogen to grow out of control, leading to big algal blooms. These use up all the oxygen in the water and block out the light, suffocating aquatic life and preventing underwater plants from photosynthesising. Worryingly, nitrate levels in the Norwegian lakes have doubled in the last ten years, and in northern Europe we are depositing nitrogen compounds at over 100 times the natural rate. The outlook for these lakes seems bleak.
Finally, nitrogen oxides contribute to global warming. Although the concentration of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is considerably lower than that of carbon dioxide, the global warming potential of nitrous oxide is over 300 times greater. So although carbon dioxide causes climate change and its associated problems, nitrogen compounds are arguably worse. They have a greater global warming potential, could lead to more exaggerated climate change problems, and cause havoc with health and the environment to boot!

I originally became aware of this from Nova (PBS), among my own personal Belief that overpopulation of the world is a greater issue than "carbon" pollutants (for many reasons I wont go into) - The earth will likely deal with the population problem, if you look at the increase in violent weather effects... it would appear to just be starting.

Fanatics of an issue tend to have tunnel vision and are very much like "Chicken Little". Global Warming may be an issue, it may be caused by the technologicalization and overpopulation of the world at large... but from what I have seen other things - like this Nitrogen issue, are far more dangerous. Even more so because they are ignored and overshadowed by the Global Warming zealots (on either side).
 
Here's a few snips from the article in question, for those that might be interested.
Nitrogen - The Bad Guy of Global Warming
Why should we worry?

Hmm, unfortunately this is neither peer-reviewed nor from somone with scientific credentials as far as I can see. Do you have a better source?

I originally became aware of this from Nova (PBS), among my own personal Belief that overpopulation of the world is a greater issue than "carbon" pollutants (for many reasons I wont go into) -

Well, obviously this is a large issue as well. But it seems to be something we can actually do very little about. Besides, it's linked anyway. More people -> more industry -> more Co2.

The earth will likely deal with the population problem, if you look at the increase in violent weather effects... it would appear to just be starting.

Now this part seems really strange with me. Sounds like you ascribe the Earth motivations. Besides, the overpopulations shouldn't cause anything at all *directly* on a global scale.

Fanatics of an issue tend to have tunnel vision and are very much like "Chicken Little". Global Warming may be an issue, it may be caused by the technologicalization and overpopulation of the world at large... but from what I have seen other things - like this Nitrogen issue, are far more dangerous.

From what I got from your article they just claim GW is really caused by Nitrogen and are still very worrieda bout GW.
 
If you google: Nitrogen Global Warming
There are 1.6 million hits ;-)

Population increases at an exponential rate. More population -> more food -> more nitrogen. More people -> increase CO2. More people -> directly increase average global temperature.
The earth is a system, whether or not it has "motivation" isn't really relevant. Natural disasters, including extreme weather events are on the rise. The violent weather has significant impact on human habitats.

Anyways I really don't want to get into the population "issue" my views aren't "PC" :)
I already got one warning for pointing out that an idiot was an idiot heh.

And I do need to disagree with Woody1 on the Hurricane issue, Nova Scotia got tagged by Hurricane Yuan a few years back... Nova Scotia almost never has any extreme weather, freak occurance and not global warming - possibly who knows. I don't claim to. But to claim that Hurricanes are on the downturn seems like bad misinformation. Even just looking within North America thats two significant hits in 3-4 years. And Louisana is only bound to get worse - the swampland marshes are disappearing at a rate of 1-2 Football fields per day (25 and 35 square miles per year) due in part to the human forced redirection of the Mississippi - loss of the wetlands = no breakland from incoming storms before it hits densely populated areas.
 
Except, of course, that's not was has resulted from global warming. The past few years have been almost void of any major hurricanes. They're way down, not up. The pseudo-scientists have no idea what the effects of global warming are, so how can we believe Firaxis has any better idea?
They'll just say "fluctuations due to climate change". "More extreme weather" is the current code for "this is all a load of BS but we have to have something to con gullible readers into buying our newspapers with". I wish I could get it through to my sister that not everything the Independent prints on its front page is truth worthy of a Geography lesson, but never mind, I'm a politician and I know the way the media works, and she's a natural scientist and doesn't.

Viz is right though, next step (for the game at least) is coastal erosion or terraforming through flooding, hurricanes etc with an emphasis on continuous progression throughout the aeons of the game, rather than just in the modern era (with perhaps one of the buildings being some kind of sea wall or coastal defence which lessens the chances of it happening within the city radius; this of course can be a more modern development depending on when it became common practice, since coastal erosion has little to do with global warming and a lot to do with the natural pattern of sea currents over time. Ask any geographer - of which there are two in my family - and they will explain that for you. Material from the NE coast of Britain usually ends up piled on a beach in Dorset, so perhaps any coastal erosion at one end of a land-mass will produce a balancing gain on the other end). On other threads I've posted as well that since climate fluctuations - including at one time the pastoralisation of Greenland - have been present throughout history, there should be some occasion for climatic variations from age to age, particularly with regards to animal or agricultural resources, e.g. like in Greenland it grows too cold over a period of a thousand years to raise wheat, corn or cows and thus the Wheat, Corn or Cows resource disappears as the result of a random but expected event.

PS Ammar, you believe what you want to, and let me believe what I want to. There is a significant move against worrying about global warming right now in this country (roughly 60% of the population don't actually believe it's a problem DESPITE what they read in most newspapers, because don't forget that the climate change lobby is also pretty powerful nowadays too) because we are facing an economic downturn and have more immediate social concerns that, unlike what my sister says, arise from genuine poverty in this country rather than being able to be ascribed to any environmental reason; if you believe some people I know the UK consistently overstates its population estimates and we have a falling birth-rate. Also we are probably looking at a global population cap of 10 billion which is supportable, given most of the Western world has a declining birth rate as well as developing societies beginning to improve infant mortality, which means that birth rates there might also start to decline as well given no need to replace dying infants.

Also, the possibility remains that there is an entirely natural element to this anyway, given longer-term fluctuations. From your response to Rolo it's actually evident you have no idea about political and social realities, what propaganda you are falling for, and so on. Knowledge of mathematics doesn't or needn't cancel out common sense or looking at the longer term perspective. I know several highly educated morons :):):D.

I'm also not going to discuss this with you or anyone else because I see no need to enter into pointless arguments with someone who doesn't take others' suggestions into account anyway. You have your opinions, I have mine, let's get back to discussing the game.
 
Hmm, unfortunately this is neither peer-reviewed nor from somone with scientific credentials as far as I can see. Do you have a better source?



Well, obviously this is a large issue as well. But it seems to be something we can actually do very little about. Besides, it's linked anyway. More people -> more industry -> more Co2.



Now this part seems really strange with me. Sounds like you ascribe the Earth motivations. Besides, the overpopulations shouldn't cause anything at all *directly* on a global scale.



From what I got from your article they just claim GW is really caused by Nitrogen and are still very worrieda bout GW.

Ammar can I just say it's great to see someone demanding scientific rigour for once. I'm not having a go at the posters in this thread as they probably understand the science better again than I do, but generally speaking I think there's a severe lack of trust in climatologists' opinions. Documentaries like GW Swindle and Al Gore's Incon Truth are absolutely terrible and make the argument far muddier than it should be.

I make my judgements based on what credible climatologists say about GW. Biologists, chemists and even physicists may have some specific expertise, they don't have the authority to be making conclusions about the world-wide effects of climate change, for example.

Even internet research including wikipedia does not make one an expert! :p

By the way, the climate change movement was around LONG before Al Gore even had any political power. He has done much to bring public attention to the issue but it is unfortunate he has done it in such a biased way. In a way he has actually hurt the credibility of the movement.

Anyway, I've stuck my foot in it but I better jump out real quick. Just wanted to give a thumbs up to Ammar (and Balderstorm) for bringing rational debate as opposed to unsubstantiated one-liners.
 
If you google: Nitrogen Global Warming
There are 1.6 million hits ;-)

Sure, and when I google "Hitler lives" I get 10.5 millions. What does that tell us? I simply do not have time to click through all these links and read what they say and check whether it's trustworthy. I checked the first two, the first is what you say the second talks mainly about other effects of Nitrogen. Since you seem confident, it should be much easier for you than for me to find a relevant and trustworthy article on this.

Population increases at an exponential rate. More population -> more food -> more nitrogen. More people -> increase CO2. More people -> directly increase average global temperature.

True. I said as much, too. Still, we cannot directly do something (or at least as much) about the overpopulation, but we can work on the CO2 output.
 
They'll just say "fluctuations due to climate change". "More extreme weather" is the current code for "this is all a load of BS but we have to have something to con gullible readers into buying our newspapers with". I wish I could get it through to my sister that not everything the Independent prints on its front page is truth worthy of a Geography lesson, but never mind, I'm a politician and I know the way the media works, and she's a natural scientist and doesn't.

Viz is right though, next step (for the game at least) is coastal erosion or terraforming through flooding, hurricanes etc with an emphasis on continuous progression throughout the aeons of the game, rather than just in the modern era (with perhaps one of the buildings being some kind of sea wall or coastal defence which lessens the chances of it happening within the city radius; this of course can be a more modern development depending on when it became common practice, since coastal erosion has little to do with global warming and a lot to do with the natural pattern of sea currents over time. Ask any geographer - of which there are two in my family - and they will explain that for you. Material from the NE coast of Britain usually ends up piled on a beach in Dorset, so perhaps any coastal erosion at one end of a land-mass will produce a balancing gain on the other end). On other threads I've posted as well that since climate fluctuations - including at one time the pastoralisation of Greenland - have been present throughout history, there should be some occasion for climatic variations from age to age, particularly with regards to animal or agricultural resources, e.g. like in Greenland it grows too cold over a period of a thousand years to raise wheat, corn or cows and thus the Wheat, Corn or Cows resource disappears as the result of a random but expected event.

PS Ammar, you believe what you want to, and let me believe what I want to. There is a significant move against worrying about global warming right now in this country (roughly 60% of the population don't actually believe it's a problem DESPITE what they read in most newspapers, because don't forget that the climate change lobby is also pretty powerful nowadays too) because we are facing an economic downturn and have more immediate social concerns that, unlike what my sister says, arise from genuine poverty in this country rather than being able to be ascribed to any environmental reason; if you believe some people I know the UK consistently overstates its population estimates and we have a falling birth-rate. Also we are probably looking at a global population cap of 10 billion which is supportable, given most of the Western world has a declining birth rate as well as developing societies beginning to improve infant mortality, which means that birth rates there might also start to decline as well given no need to replace dying infants.

Also, the possibility remains that there is an entirely natural element to this anyway, given longer-term fluctuations. From your response to Rolo it's actually evident you have no idea about political and social realities, what propaganda you are falling for, and so on. Knowledge of mathematics doesn't or needn't cancel out common sense or looking at the longer term perspective. I know several highly educated morons :):):D.

I'm also not going to discuss this with you or anyone else because I see no need to enter into pointless arguments with someone who doesn't take others' suggestions into account anyway. You have your opinions, I have mine, let's get back to discussing the game.

Just please tell me you have not watched the Channel 4 doco the Great GW Swindle. If you have, please tell me you had enough sense to dismiss its absurd claims.
 
True. I said as much, too. Still, we cannot directly do something (or at least as much) about the overpopulation, but we can work on the CO2 output.
[sarcasm] Thats where the nuclear bombs come in ;-) LOL. [/sarcasm]

Figured I need to encapsulate that.

@ PieceOfMind - thanks. And I agree Al Gore did a great disservice to the issue at large. If you were already aware of some of these global issues - and watched that... Heh what I got from his "movie" was fear mongering, I couldn't find him referencing any facts, his charts didn't have any numbers and he talked in circles. Just saying something doesn't make it true. He came across extremely uneducated to me, making huge leaps of so-called-logic with no supporting evidence in between.
 
As far as the Global Warming mechanic in CIV. It is seriously broken. I agree with previous comments, its effect should change landplots based on what is surrounding/nearby. Even saying that Tundra should go to desert, it could very well go to grassland.

The effect from nukes is limited, radiation should make swaths of land completely uninhabitable for a significant amount of time, and wipe out population and livestock. It doesn't do that, yet we have a GW mechanic in CIV that randomly turns plots to desert. That just seems completely wack to me, and adds absolutely nothing to the game. The effect is not based in reality, and its not a mechanic that adds to gameplay. Almost all proponents for a given mechanic or effect in civ use "Reality" or adds to gamePlay as a good reason for its existance. And GW has neither of those.
 
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