Which is the bigger threat: PHA's or GHG's ?

To me, pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE is more important or pressing than AGW.

(A-ha… I see a most cunning plan).
A UN Address…
We the United Nations (UN) are proposing a new world wide initiative – Titled “Space Guard” to defend the Earth from the catastrophic impact of PHAs.
It has been the consensus of the best space and rocket scientists of the last 100 years that the number of observed PHAs has grown from 0 to 1067.
This is an enormous rise in the number of PHAs and represents an unprecedented rise in the risk of a Catastrophic World Destroying Impact.
The only viable solution is a “Space Guard” managed by the UN.
A world wide “Safe Skies” levy will need to be paid to the UN to allow for the technical research, construction and staffing of “Space Guard” and associated “Safe Skies” systems.
It is anticipated that the levy will be a small portion (not more than 1.5%) of all financial transactions carried out by the worlds banks.
As an adjunct to the “Space Guard” and “Safe Skies” initiatives, a “Future Ark” initiative will also be put in place to safeguard the genetic future of the world.
The “Future Ark” initiative will include a carefully, and scientifically selected group of diverse world citizens who will be provided a share of the aforementioned “Safe Skies” levy to ensure that they are always able to be moved to a safe place in the event of the activiation of the “Space Guard” initiative.
In addition to the above, a further levy (of 1.2%) will be raised to fund a “Space Corps” – an elite military organisation with the express purpose of safeguarding the “Future Ark” selectees, and all associated assets of the Space Guard” and “Safe Skies” initiatives.
We the UN are pleased to announce these initiatives for the welfare, not only of Humanity, but of all creatures who inhabit this precious world of ours.
(parody)

Lessee, a might (one in ten? Dunno.) happen Armageddon, versus a zero in ten Thermageddon…Yeah, no contest.

“Would you bet your future on the accuracy of day seven of a seven day weather forecast?”
My future? Not. A few bucks if you give me a plus or minus 10 degrees F. window. Maybe $100 if you make that window +/- 20 degrees.
As for the title “Which is the bigger threat?”
Try these: Democrats, Republicans, the Administration, the State Department, the EPA, the Energy Dept., The Dept. of Education, the . . .

I think we need to look at this danger to Mankind as if it is an updated version of the classic game of RPS.
The Scissor team is represented by Mankind’s technology, which is always to blame for cutting Paper mercilessly and making a profit doing it.
The Rock strikes the Scissor factory, breaking the assembly line to bits and leaving a smoking debris crater. This is just traditional ‘Rock beats Scissors’ but on a much larger scale. Against such a Big Rock, Mankind’s technology didn’t stand a chance.
The GHG team picks Paper as its preferred weapon, as Paper is made from green trees which thrive on sequestering CO2. Paper thus tries to cover the Rock but the Rock is too large to be covered this time and thus strikes the Earth, burning all the forests that had sequestered carbon in earlier years. While at first the GHG team might try to argue a tie between burning paper and the Big Rock, in reality the dust and smoke from the impact and fires causes rapid cooling over the Earth.
Thus with the Big Rock, it’s “game over.”

Cap ‘n Trade NEO’s!

Graeme Rodaughan (20:38:29)
2.7% of all transactions to get Al Gore and Bono on Fireball XL5 to destinations unknown sounds good to me; I’m in.

I had understood that a lot of scientists ARE working on the path of PHAs and dealing with any that may hit us. Deflecting asteroids is not easy though and it will needs lots of taxpayers’ money and so you will have lost the support of most AGW [snip] already, whose main purpose for [snip] is because acting on any threats will hurt their bank balances. So it’s best to pretend they don’t exist.
What;’s the latest on arctic ice, given that we have had a two year spell of relative solar inactivity ?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Surely some mistake?
Reply: It is far less work to delete rather than edit your posts. Don’t make me go there. ~ charles the moderator

More time should be sprent finding and preparing for these PHA’s. The hit on Jupiter is a wakeup call. AGW is distracting needed attention from the real dangers: What’s Up in Outer Space.
How’s about a Science Diet? Cut out the greasy AGW stuff, it’s bad for you.

Thanks reviving this issue. I commented about it back in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/20/thanks-neil-michael-and-buzz/#comments (18:40:53)
but was soundly ignored by the preponderance of commentors who were sentimentally recalling the moonwalk, or who might have thought I was wielding British humor.
Here are articles that address the recent Jupiter impact, and the inevitability of a collison:
“Jupiter’s cosmic smash: what does it mean for Earth?”
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/07/jupiters-cosmic-smash-what-does-it-mean-for-earth.html
Will a Killer Asteroid Hit the Earth?
“When it comes to asteroids’ wreaking disaster on Earth, the real question is not if, but when.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=39
I think that environmental groups will ignore the reality of an eventual impact because there’s no hidden agenda that can be leveraged, i.e. CO2, capitalism, overconsumption, industrialization, etc. It’s a rather stark choice, even though the time line is vague – will we live or die? Warmists will also insist that it’s a distraction from the “real” problem of global warming.
Even though the present attitude is that nothing seems to be dangerously close, the truth is that the interrelationship of gravitational fields is too complex to be accurately modeled, given that many objects are undetected and constantly changing course. Funding for detection of NEOs was cut several years ago, but has been partially restored. Several groups are observing deep space for the hazard, but there isn’t an organized effort that would guarantee a high rate of confidence. Bottom line, the only warning we might have is a flash and explosion, and then…

Nigel S (22:10:29) :
Graeme Rodaughan (20:38:29)
2.7% of all transactions to get Al Gore and Bono on Fireball XL5 to destinations unknown sounds good to me; I’m in.
Send them on a mission to land on the Sun…
With the Gore effect in place, the sun will cool and AGW will be over…

One of the differences between climate science and astronomy is in astronomy the contribution of amateur’s is welcomed and appreciated by the professionals, where as the contribution of people like Anthony to climate science is considered an inconvenience to the professionals. I use the word professional in the literal interpretation of someone who is paid and amateur as someone who is not.

Nigel S (22:10:29) :
Fireball XL5, LOL.
Don’t forget Super Car AND The Thunderbirds as well Nigel. Surely Captain Scarlet can be counted on too, he did the Mysterons in after all. However, If all else fails ‘Stingray’ could be re-activated along with the guys on Moon Base Alpha to setup a refuge with the Terrahawks up there in Space Precinct.
There, that’s my childhood re-visited…
Oh nearly forgot… Dr Who can simply enlist the aid of the ‘Mekon’, Will Robinson and Robbie the Robot to use a ‘time ray’ and divert Asteroid Thermageddon back into the ‘Twilight Zone’ where it will orbit ceaselessly around Al Gore and AGW trapped as they are in another dimension.
Who are those men in white coats knocking on my door?

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if we get wiped out by an asteroid which we could have prevented had we put the resources into asteroid defenses instead of killing each other all over the planet or worrying about the imagined AGW Hypothesis?”
It would even be more ironic if we did spend a bunch of money on asteroid defense and got wiped out by something anyway. You can spend money on something that *might* happen or you can spend money on what *is* happening.
And you can recognize what you can’t do and not waste time and energy on it. If you can’t mitigate something larger than a certain size, then there is no sense looking at anything larger than that size. And if anything smaller than the size you can do anything about isn’t likely to cause a global catastrophe, there’s no sense worrying about that either.
Have we actually defined what we can and can not do anything about? I would say that at this point it is extremely unlikely that we can do much about anything at all even if we detected it unless we have several years notice.

Wasnt it a couple of months ago a large rock wizzed past the southern hemisphere taking everyone by suprise? Im actually pretty amazed that no one saw, or had on tracking something big enough to cause a scar on Jupiter like that.
To answer someone above who mentioned that the earth clears its orbit. Make it present tense. Earth continues to clear its orbit and the cosmos keeps hurling things at us. Two strikes on Jupiter so far within a very short timeframe though. Maybe shes doin her job and attracting the really big stuff for us?

When discussing Near Earth Objects, always Google first, and then post. Apparently we have already sent a probe to the asteroid Eros. Plans are underway for an Asteroid Defense System as we speak.
Quotes from various articles:
“What to do if an Earth-bound comet or asteroid is discovered? Early detection, preferably many years in advance, would enable us to send out exploratory spacecraft to determine the nature of the interloper, much like the spacecraft near’s current investigation of the asteroid Eros. Scientists at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories are already dreaming up a variety of ingenious defenses against an incoming asteroid. Depending on its mass and composition, they would use tailor-made nuclear explosions to pulverize small asteroids or deflect larger ones. Given enough time, and under the proper circumstances, less drastic measures would be needed. Some schemes call for conventional explosives alone, or anchoring a rocket motor or a solar sail on an asteroid to alter its orbit enough to allow it to safely bypass Earth. ”
“Scientists have proposed a variety of strategies to nudge an asteroid off course. The list is the stuff of science fiction and includes using lasers, mirrors or atomic weapons launched from Earth.”
The following is bizarre, considering that we’ve been discussing the secrecy of data sources. What are they hiding? Where is the NEO mole?
“The US military has abruptly ended an informal arrangement that allowed scientists access to data on incoming meteors from classified surveillance satellites. The change is a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks, especially those that burn up over the oceans or in other remote locations. ”
“For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth’s atmosphere but a recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that these observations are classified.”
http://www.gyre.org/news/asteroid-defense
With supervolcanoes bulging, and asteroids whistling through space, the debate over CO2 seems sillier than ever.

Apparently we have already sent a probe to the asteroid Eros. Plans are underway for an Asteroid Defense System as we speak.
Quotes from various articles:
“What to do if an Earth-bound comet or asteroid is discovered? Early detection, preferably many years in advance, would enable us to send out exploratory spacecraft to determine the nature of the interloper, much like the spacecraft near’s current investigation of the asteroid Eros. Scientists at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories are already dreaming up a variety of ingenious defenses against an incoming asteroid. Depending on its mass and composition, they would use tailor-made nuclear explosions to pulverize small asteroids or deflect larger ones. Given enough time, and under the proper circumstances, less drastic measures would be needed. Some schemes call for conventional explosives alone, or anchoring a rocket motor or a solar sail on an asteroid to alter its orbit enough to allow it to safely bypass Earth. ”
“Scientists have proposed a variety of strategies to nudge an asteroid off course. The list is the stuff of science fiction and includes using lasers, mirrors or atomic weapons launched from Earth.”
The following is bizarre, considering that we’ve been discussing the secrecy of data sources. What are they hiding? Where is the NEO mole?
“The US military has abruptly ended an informal arrangement that allowed scientists access to data on incoming meteors from classified surveillance satellites. The change is a blow to the astronomers and planetary scientists who used the information to track space rocks, especially those that burn up over the oceans or in other remote locations.”
“For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth’s atmosphere but a recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that these observations are classified.”
http://www.gyre.org/news/asteroid-defense
With supervolcanoes bulging, and asteroids whistling through space towards us, the debate over CO2 seems sillier than ever.

What is it about the AGW debate and not other areas of science that attracts so much interest from the general public? Why are you here and why is it so important to you to prove it wrong (or right)? Why not other more contentious areas of science?
I’ve heard talk about tax but let’s be honest you could disprove AGW tomorrow and ‘green tax’ would simple become regular tax. Government spending on climate change is comparatively tiny and much climate research will continue regardless. The small savings would easily disappear in the noise of government debt. At best a dollar or 2 each could be saved.
Also heard people don’t want to be forced to change their lifestyle. Well it will happen anyway. Oil prices will continue to rise and, even if AGW isn’t the reason why, people are far more motivated by money. So you can be absolutely sure over the next 50years we will no longer rely on fossils fuels for energy anyway.
Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great so many people are interested in science (despite the appalling abuses of science I’ve read) but why this issue?

Shhhhhhh! When the AGW scam collapses we don’t want Al Gore getting any new funny ideas…

On examination of the beryllium-10 record it is obvious that there are spikes – and Paul LaViolette and others have examined the ice-core record for this isotope as an indicator of cosmic ray penetration and for inter-stellar dust, all signs of a breach of the planetary defences. Richard Firestone put together a convincing case that 13,500 years ago those defences were seriously breached by cometary debris – and it is possible that we are dealing with a cyclic event of varying severity – with the last such more minor breach in 5000BP.
However, it one were to go looking for major threats more significant than AGW, the prime candidate is the Carrington event of 1859 – and the potential impact of a repeat today with vulnerable electrical grids and computer driven systems. The US National Academy of Sciences has just warned that we are not ready and it could take years to restore electrical grids. The world would face chaos – with collapsed communications, banking, trade, heating, water and food supplies.
The Carrington event occurred during a relatively low solar cycle.
These things are not readily predicted – but I would be alert if we see a major sunspot on or around August 1st (28 days after the appearance of the last sunspot with its X-ray flare). This will mean that last sunspot has maintained integrity for one solar rotation, and is beginning its spiral toward the equator. I don’t know if individual sunspots do maintain integrity through the spin-cycle, but if one produces a major flare close to the equator (and hence they occur near the maximum of the solar cycle) and at the base of the heliospheric current sheet – and more particular, in one of its spiral arms that connects to Earth – then the plasma-shock gets here in about 8 minutes! It would deliver a huge pulse.
That type of event is relatively common compared to a major asteroid impact, but just as deadly in this modern electricity-dependent world. The danger period would be from autumn of next year onwards for about two years.

dennis ward (22:23:03) :
“I had understood that a lot of scientists ARE working on the path of PHAs and dealing with any that may hit us. Deflecting asteroids is not easy though and it will needs lots of taxpayers’ money and so you will have lost the support of most AGW [snip] already, whose main purpose for [snip] is because acting on any threats will hurt their bank balances. So it’s best to pretend they don’t exist.
What;’s the latest on arctic ice, given that we have had a two year spell of relative solar inactivity ?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Surely some mistake?”
No Dennis, it’s not a mistake.
We are in a volcanic summer where blocking low pressure area’s create a situation where huge masses of ice are transported from the Arctic Sea into the Atlantic Ocean.
This process is not related to any AGW because there is NO significant AGW.
These are exactly the processes that cause further cooling of our oceans and you will experience significant effects this coming winter which will not only be harsh in the US and Canada but also in Europe.
Obviously you first need a PHA to hit you on your head before you can start thinking straight about the true effects of GHG’s.
You can download a pdf about the subject including detailed weather maps from icecap.us.
It’s the bottom article at the left column.
From Icecap.us Jul 28, 2009
Aircraft Photos of Arctic Ice
Thanks to Imelda and Edwin and Meteorologist Tim Kelley for photos from a flyover of northern end of Hudson’s Bay received last week. The photos were taken from northern Hudson Bay.
The ice has been diminishing since the mid 1990s with the warm Atlantic AMO.
The AMO turned cooler in 2008-09 resulting in some recovery.
The ice is always on the move and is affected by both ocean temperatures from water entering the arctic from the Atlantic and Pacific and the low level flow pattern. The high latitude blocking over the arctic with low pressure over Siberia as we have seen this summer leads to clockwise flow that helps move ice out of the arctic into the Atlantic. See July surface pressure below (enlarged here).
See more with larger images here. See also Tim’s post on the recent storm behaving semi tropical system of July 23-24, 2009 here.

Life is full of risks.
As we have evolved as a highly technical species, we have mitigated most of those risks and… created new ones.
We have created food security and in low places we have build coastal defenses to keep the sea out in case of a storm combined with a spring tide.
At the same time we have developed Nuclear Weapons, a rising threat as more trigger happy (“button happy” would be more appropriate) countries acquired the technology making the threat of a big scale Nuclear Conflict more realistic as time goes by. No serious efforts to mitigate this threat are undertaken, especially because the USA now has a President who believes that a weak USA will allow him to make friends with the biggest thugs on earth.
Today our political establishment of Three Hugging Gaia’s (THG’s) believe that WE, humanity, have become the biggest risk and decided to mitigate us.
As most of us here believe this is a big mistake, I think the current trend to mitigate humanity on the false grounds of GHG’s causing run away global warming, a non existing problem, is the biggest threat of all.
So I would like to suggest to add the current political threat of THG’s and the increasing probability of a Nuclear Conflict to the risk list and start the discussion again.
Even if we have all the technology available to intercept and divert or destroy potential “killer” PHA’s, we will not have the time to stop one coming from the direction of the sun.
Within 10 to 15 years from now we will be able to get an early warning for those PHA’s as well, but who cares to save a society that has decided to roll back it’s technological development to live in the Middle Ages again!

John asked “What is it about the AGW debate and not other areas of science that attracts so much interest from the general public? Why are you here and why is it so important to you to prove it wrong (or right)? Why not other more contentious areas of science?hn asked ”
John, AGW research, which by the way is mostly used to project future possible horror stories, is not the issue. Public policy like cap and trade is the issue. Now we are talking trillions of dollars, and massive impacts on life style, And for what reason are we doing this. The only true agreement in science is that the effect of cap and trade policy on AGW will be miniscule. The only possible motive left is social engineering on a world wide scale.

There’s a rerun periodically on History I think, that discusses the common “threat to the planet” scenarios. Are you looking to compete with them? If so, you might as well get the big list. http://www.armageddononline.org/end_of_civilization.php . Personally, I think it’s a pretty boring topic. Might as well speculate that termites will develop superior intelligence and take over.

Clearification: The clip about Watts and deniers ended saying nature don’t care about the deniers’ right wing political agenda. (That nature don’t care about politics is correct and intuitive.) The video was (as usual) Soviet style propaganda, with its conspiracy attacks against the enemy/the opposing view (trying to silence it).

Brandon Dobson (22:35:39) :
… the truth is that the interrelationship of gravitational fields is too complex to be accurately modeled, given that many objects are undetected and constantly changing course.
…
Oh, come on, we can model the climate perfectly! I am sure modeling NEO’s should be a piece of cake!
[/sarcoff]

Global warming can make the impact of an asteroid more severe because heated gases offer less resistance to giant space rocks, so carbon taxation is even more justified now.

asteroid defense is much more likely to turn into asteroid offense. If you can deflect an asteroid out of earth’s way, you can deflect it into earth’s way.
Why create a weapon that every mad dictator in the world will be trying to get control of?

The original Jonah Goldberg column to which his reader refers is here:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGY5ODY5Njk1NTVjNzU5NDFhOTQ0MWYxNzZhMmU5ZGM=
Good piece. If you linked it at the top, I missed it.
/Mr Lynn

I can just imagine an article in New Scientist:
“Scientists link metoerite falls with CO2 emissions”
“A new study by a group of researchers at I. Tower University has indicated that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase meteorite strikes on earth” “Dr I.P. Seesee from the Centre de Atmos Feric claims that manmade global warming will decrease the density of the atmosphere, thus reducing the friction on incoming meteors. Dr Seesee said it is well known that global warming increases the amount of water vapour the atmosphere can hold, thus reducing the density of a given volume of air.”

Deflecting a NEO is actually easy — the technique is known as a “gravity tractor”. All you need is to get it out there and match velocities several years out. Perfectly feasible if you launch say 3 for redundancy 20 years before anticipated impact. Gives 15 years to match orbits. At that point, 5 years to drag it into a clear miss orbit. Problem solved.
OF COURSE if you fail to identify the NEO until only a year or so before impact then you are up the creek without the paddle.

I think that trying to re-direct a NEO with our present technology is as much or more of a waste of time and money as trying to control the weather with CO2 level. At best we might be able to blow up an asteroid into a shotgun blast of smaller asteroids so we can impact a larger area of our planet.

To me, there are threats that are much worse, most of which we can do nothing about. Critical deductive reasoning skills have been abandoned for the difficult choice of ‘paper or plastic’.
So what do we do about the asteroid we find tomorrow that is coming towards earth? Probably trigger a rash of ‘science’ papers about the CO2 that will be released from the rocks and ocean and how bad that would be for earth’s greenhouse gas and the planet in general.
Extinction of all life on earth is not an option, it’s a very real possibility.

Speaking of predictions of catastrophe, there’s an interesting interview in Spiegel about Swine flu. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,637119,00.html . Same scare tactics, different apocalypse.

OT Anthony has experienced a crashing Monbiot article into his orbit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/jul/30/climate-change-deniers-monbiot

John (03:06:43) :
“…What is it about the AGW debate and not other areas of science that attracts so much interest from the general public? Why are you here and why is it so important to you to prove it wrong (or right)? Why not other more contentious areas of science?….Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great so many people are interested in science (despite the appalling abuses of science I’ve read) but why this issue?…”
John, There are two reasons. The first is the destruction of science. Thanks to the politicos “science” is no longer unbiased seeking of truth but a political football. This has major repercussions. For example “GMO” food was declared natural with no need for testing by “tame” scientists in the FDA and now we find major problems that may be caused by it such as bees and bats dying off not to mention sterility problems and super weeds.
The second reason is AGW as well as the “food scares” and the “banking crisis” are being used to bankrupt the first world nations allowing the UN/bankers a major grab for power.
Study up on the Federal Reserve Bank and its clones in other countries, the World bank/IMF SAPrograms and what the WTO Agreement on Ag has done to food quality (HACCP)
to get you started:
The World Bank/IMF structural adjustment programs http://www.50years.org/action/s26/factsheet2.html
http://freedomprime.blogspot.com/2008/08/money-is-created-by-banks-evidence.html
http://investment-blog.net/milton-friedman-nobel-prize-winning-economist-the-federal-reserve-definitely-caused-the-great-depression-by-contracting-the-amount-of-currency-in-circulation-by-one-third-from-1929-to-1933/
“The Fed Note is essentially unsound. It is the worst currency and the most dangerous that this Country has ever known… They should not have made the Government [liable on the private] debts of individuals and corporations, and, least of all, on the private debts of foreigners.” http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/mcfadden.html
Nine American Presidents have been the targets of assassination http://theruthlesstruth.com/wordpress/?p=742
A PRIMER ON MONEY: Congressional COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY
http://famguardian.org/Subjects/MoneyBanking/Money/patman-primer-on-money.pdf
The “food safety bills” are similar to laws in Europe used to remove millions of farmers from their land so it can be taken over by corporations. http://yupfarming.blogspot.com/2009/05/food-safety-bills-more-dangerous-than_08.html
This seems to be the grand plan for the USA: Obama’s Head Science Advisor mentioned “wildlands” in one of his speeches. The “Wildlands Project” was first conceived by Dave Foreman and H.R. 980 was first introduced in 1993 by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) http://www.utvguide.net/news/2009/05/massive-wilderness-bill-sounds-alarm-in.html
AGW is just a part of the plan. In Sept. 14, 1994 David Rockefeller, speaking at the UN Business Council,.
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
What “ major crisis” could he be talking about? Skipping ahead to the present we find stories of “JP Morgan Chase to become Megabank” and “Analysts say JP Morgan Chase (the Rockefellers, Morgans and the Rothschilds) will emerge from the bank collapse as the big winner” We also find Monsanto (85% financial institutions owned) reported record earnings in 2008. The rest of the Ag Corporations are privately owned so no reports are available. Gee what a coincidence! the Ag companies and JP Morgan Chase all come up winners while the peons in the USA lose there jobs, their homes and now food costs and taxes are poised to soar thanks to the new laws.
It is not a republic or a democracy “they” have in mind but feudalism.
David Rockefeller praised the major media for their complicity in helping to facilitate the globalist agenda by saying,
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. . . . It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
I hope that puts AGW in the proper frame of reference for you.

“That’s why it’s unlikely we will see it coming, because it won’t be moving.”
Actually for PHA’s, because of the way orbital mechanics make things move in curves it will be moving against the background, right up until it’s much too late to do anything about it.
And, unlike AGW, we *are* going to get hit. Definitely. 100%. For sure. The only question is when.

Mathman said :
“The recent collision of a PHA with Jupiter was apparently not predicted in advance.”
That’s because we’re looking for NEOs (Near Earth Objects) not NJOs. Which anyway would be damn difficult to spot, essentially impossible if the object was an asteroid. Shoemaker Levy 9 was a comet and much more easy to see.

GHG’s are so much more important because we humans are causing them. We humans are not causing the PHA’s so our activities don’t need to be curtailed and taxed in order to prevent PHA’s. Humans are evil and harmful to all life on earth so naturally an impending doom caused by human activity is more romantic and far more hyped than one that is not caused by humans and therefore beyond our control.
However, they will eventually figure out that the multitudes of humans are increasing the earth’s gravitational pull and THAT’s causing PHA’s to zero in on earth .. . . and you know how that story goes.
Sometimes my imagination gets away with me

There are closer “asteroids” (etymology:”resembling stars”) which are by far more dangerous 🙂

Visits to asteroids:
Spacecraft Deep Impact sent an impactor to hit asteroid Tempel 1 in 2006. Images of the event can be found via this link:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html
The Hayabusa probe visited asteroid Itokawa in 2005 on a sampling attempt. This is thought to have failed and despite problems with the spacecraft, it is on its way back to Earth.
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/02/20090204_hayabusa_e.html
The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft visited and landed on asteroid Eros in 2001.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/near.html
Nasa’s DAWN spacecraft is currently on its way to orbit both Ceres and Vesta.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/main/index.html
More information about missions to space can be found here:
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html

For those living in the UK, you can visit the Spaceguard Centre and see the work that is being done in the UK on Near Earth Objects.
http://www.spaceguarduk.com/spaceguard
When I last visited, they used a 14 inch refractor to do the meticulous/tedious work of plotting the orbit of newly discovered NEOs. No Goverment money. Relying solely on visitors, and interested individuals and companies.
They are in the process of installing a 24 inch (61 cm) Schmidt Camera (it is the largest telescope in Wales) at the Spaceguard Centre to conduct a wide field sky survey to detect Near Earth Objects and other transient phenomena.
I was lucky enough on my first visit to be the only person there and the owner focused the visit on my knowledge level. I had recently done a University Level course on planetary science and the search for life with a segment on asteroids, meteorites etc. I had my hand lens with me (I am taking a degree in Earth Sciences) and he let me examine many of the specimens he had.
The centre is between Knighton and Ludlow in the Welsh Marches.
Well worth a visit.

Sorry if this is too far afield…but I think it’s in the same vein.
I seem to be the only one to be a little shocked at the cavalier response to the Swine flu by WHO and others. So many seem to say its boring, overhyped, etc.
At various times estimated that 1/3, 50%, or the latest, 40% of the worlds populate will contract the Swine flu. Now it’s a very mild flu and I don’t think anyone can estimate the mortality rate accurately, but on the high end it may be 0.4%, but it’s probably lower.
According to World Population http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop the world population is about 6,930 million. So as many as 6,930 million * 0.004 ~= 28 million people may die. Assuming nothing changes this number is likely on the high side, perhaps by a factor of 10. But there is always the possibility of a more deadly mutation.
If the mortality rate increases to 10-20%, that translates into 690-1380 million potential deaths.
Can you imagine just giving up on almost 30 million people without a fight, while all of this commotion goes on about the possibility of some warming?
MikeEE

This topic is one of many answers to the “precautionary principle” argument for “doing something” about carbon dioxide emissions.
Kath, thanks for the asteroid mission list.

On moving asteroids:
The problem with most of the ‘obvious’ methods* for changing the orbit of a large body like an asteroid is that asteroids rotate. Which makes controlling the thrust rather difficult.
That’s why the gravity tractor idea is so appealing.
* Such as using a solar sail, attaching rockets or using mass drivers to shoot rocks off the surface.

Annette (07:57:53) :
“GHG’s are so much more important because we humans are causing them.”
Eh? We humans also cause gardens with cutted grass and lots of other things. CO2 is a natural gas which has varied between 2200 ppm and 180 ppm the last 50 millions of years. Now CO2 levels are lower than ever. Do you got this, or do you want a proxy graph?
http://biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
CO2 doesn’t harm the environment, so if we are cause a slight increase of CO2 — or even doubling of CO2 (which is by no means likely) that isn’t either a problem. CO2 is a good gas for nature!
The most CO2 can do is to increase temparature a few tenth of a degree Celsius. But if the climate system instead has reinforcing positive feedback for temperature — which no empirical data tells us; all ata tells us the opposite –, then CO2 may raise temperature with 2 degrees C, but that’s not dangerous either. It would be good; look at these temperature graphs from Greenland (Schwartz and Randall’s, and NASA’s) :
http://www.heuersdorf.de/Wrldclmt/Wrdclm2.jpg
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/Images/gisp2_temperature.gif
The correlation in Al Gore’s CO2 and temperature graphs describes an opposite cause and effect to what Gore falsly told the viewers. No proxy data suggests that CO2 controls the global temperature.
But the natural variation in low level cloud cover (LLC) — e g the reduced LLC by 5 percent between 1993 and 2001 — means a lot more in energy balance compared to all CO2 emissions since industrialization started. This is also the opinioin of several scientists working for in IPCC. I’ve heard Joyce Penner describing this.
But, basically, I think you’re just like any other AGW promoters. I don’t for a second think that you are willing to seriously take any of these arguments into consideration. All you’ll do is to repeat your mantra with political implications. I’m bet you’ll maybe try to change focus on this discussion, or something like that, but you’ll not prove me wrong on this; you’ll not take my arguments seriously, and you will for sure repeat your mantra (with all its strong political implications eithin the framework of AGW in the environmentalism). This is what fascism looks like.
If we are causing a supposedly dangerous (sic!) gas, CO2, we need to be forced to change our behavour = politics.
No surprice your mantra is “we humans are causing them”. All historical periods 1-2 degrees C warmer than now has been better — if we can cause that warming it’s something positive. But that positive development wouldn’t imply politics.

Report: Deflecting a Hazardous Near-Earth Object
April 2009
This short report on Near-Earth Object (NEO) hazard mitigation strategies was developed in response to a request for information by the U.S. National Research Council’s Space Sciences Board on December 17, 2008 and for the Planetary Defense Conference that took place 27-30 April 2009 in Granada Spain. Although we present example simulations for specific techniques that could be employed to deflect an Earth threatening NEO, our primary goal is to discuss some of the general principles and techniques that would be germane to all NEO deflection scenarios. This report summarizes work that was carried out in early 2009 and extends an earlier, more detailed study carried out in late 2008.
The complete report is available here (Word Document – 316K)
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/pdc_paper.html

G.Karst said :
“The reason we missed the jupiter impact is because Eugene Shoemaker is no longer with us.”
Gah! But we still have David Levy. Spotting these tiny objects at the distance of Jupiter (~630 million km at closest) is extremely difficult. Even Shoemaker-Levy 9 was only detected through a fluke.

Magnus A (10:23:51) :
Annette (07:57:53) :
“GHG’s are so much more important because we humans are causing them.”
Whoa buddy.
Read the rest of what she says! I suspect your sarcasm/humour detector needs recalibrating.
DaveE.

PHAs are natural. GHG-induced global warming is blamed on man. Of course GHG is the bigger threat!

Alarmism is bad. Unless its space rock alarmism.

“Would you bet your future on the accuracy of day seven of a seven day weather forecast?”
Given the number of times this sumer where the forcast that morning was for high 80’s and 90’s and sun, and the real weather of the day was 70’s and low 80’s and cloudy, no I don’t think I put lot’s of stock in models. Now it has cooled off enough in Omaha that some of the trees have decided to pack it in for the year and the leaves are changing.

Maybe we’ll have gravity tractor pulls someday .

The biggest threat may be from those who are trying to save us from GHGs.
I’m going to make it my life’s work to save us from those who are trying to save us.

:bear: :rofl: 😡

I wonder whether the “Anthropocentric” in the original post was deliberate or a Freudian slip?

“As for the title “Which is the bigger threat?”
Try these: Democrats, Republicans, the Administration, the State Department, the EPA, the Energy Dept., The Dept. of Education, the . . .”
Couldn’t have said it better myself!

@ Oh, bother (14:21:21) : Don’t know about that, but here’s a fun little web page to calculate impact effects based on your inputs. http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

“…but it is hard to believe that if someone murdered 8 people, at least by his own hand, that he would be still walking the streets….”
Simple: Old relatives taken from hospitals or nursing homes to live with him. They then died 2-3 days after signing new wills leaving him everything (I checked). Dad was given 6 months by the doctor and lasted three weeks under his tender care… It wasn’t until much later that I compared notes with other relatives and I saw the pattern so testing for a drug overdose could not be done without cause.
And sorry about the off topic but it is an excellent example of how money and power can corrupt absolutely.

Just finished the mid-60’s version of “Lucifer’s Hammer” – certainly couldn’t be written that way, with those stereotypes – in today’s politically corrupt environment.
Covers the people and environment of the survivors, and the victims, of a massive comet whose fragments land across the world.

If we are considering global scale natural disasters, perhaps first on the list is a ‘Carrington’ event super solar flare that may destroy our unprotected electric power grid to such an extent that several years would be required to repair the damage. At each 11-year solar maximum, it appears we could be playing a game of solar-roulette with a one chance in 45 of being hit.
Next on the list would be a super-volcano eruption. I understand the Yellowstone Super-Volcano is now overdue for its next eruption — the USGS reports no real evidence of new activity.
Perhaps on par with this would be a sub-extinction, minor asteroid impact.

Erratum: ‘Probably’ should be ‘probable’. Sure would be nice to be able to edit our comments. /Mr L

In the case of super solar flares, it may be possible to gradually install extra protective measures to prevent severe damage to our electrical distribution systems.
On another issue — major earthquakes — it has occurred to me that if we could reliably detect these events building up in advance, we might be able to mitigate the toll due to the element of surprise by pre-triggering them to occur at a time and date of our choice. This might be accomplished by setting off a huge explosion at a point of maximum tectonic stress. I think we would need to know a lot more than we do now for this to ever be attempted.

Biggest threat, humm? a community organizer with strong marxist inclinations as POTUS.
ok to snip, but I am sincere

If we include anthropogenic (man-made) as well as physiogenic (natural) disasters, I would consider a general thermo-nuclear exchange and an accidental or intentionally bioengineered “Perfect Plague” — fast-spreading, incurable and always fatal — to be the two top threats.
I believe the next Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and 100 ft high tsunami along the U. S. Pacific Northwest coast could result in a death toll that would dwarf any natural disaster of recent memory. Primarily, this would be due to the element of surprise.
Depend on it, if our luck were to run out in 2012 or 2023 and we were all served up with another ‘Carrington Event’ Super Flare, the two most common things that people faced with living several years without electrical power would be saying would be “I never imagined anything like this could ever happen.” and “What do we do now?” But most likely, our luck will hold up, just as it has 13 times since 1859.

I would say neither of those two mentioned hypotheticals is a threat. We can’t do anything about either one of them; so why should we waste time and money and other resources on either one.
Statistically speaking; neither of those things is likely to happen; but I might get killed in a car crash going home tonight.

I agree.
We do get hit by big meteorites now and then, such as the great Siberian, but bigger objects pose a much larger threat. Even so the chances are very small, and although we neither have a good enough look out to spot all the possible collisions nor good enough technology to deal with an approaching object at the moment we almost certainly will in the not too distant future.
Whether our technology could develop enough to detect and deal with the dangers of a major eruption is less certain but given the rate of scientific, technical and economic progress who knows what we will be able to accomplish in the next century or two.
It is unlikely we would ever be able to do anything about a close supernova or indeed a nearby galaxy going bang except to shelter, survive and adapt, I seem to recall Hoyle wrote a rather good book about that. He also wrote a less good one about the threat of the coming ice age: in fact his prescription would not work but we probably already have good enough technology and sufficient economic resources to deal with it if it should transpire.
The point being that none of these are theoretical hazards, they have happened before and will again although the probability of any one, or indeed all happening in the next thousand years is tiny. And who knows what we will have achieved by the end of this millenium.
Whereas the supposed risk of a tipping point causing a dangerous increase in global temperatures is pure ill founded speculation based on very simplistic ideas of how the climate behaves; with one or another absurd speculation. piled upon the next to predict catastrophe.
It is similar to the amusement of childish minds who write therr names and addresses in their textobooks followed by the world, the solar system, the milky way and finally the universe. A perfectly good address of course but hardly useful.
Any more than those wonderful calculations about one grain of wheat on the first square of the chessboard, two on the next, two times two on the next and so on: or the how quickly the growing lilies which multiply at a given rate will take over the pond and eventually the world.
It is a superb example of arrogance and ignorance, arrogance in supposing our puny efforts could affect the global, as opposd to the local, climate in any way and utter ignorance of the vast natural forces which actually drive it and about which we know very little.
It is a modern form of the ancient and constantly recurring belief in the End of Days, just dressed up in pseudo scientific claptrap rather than mysticism. But then charlatans have never scrupled to borrow the philosophy of an age to peddle their quackery so it is little surprise in a a scientific age they resort to this approach.
Which is not to say there are not serious scientific researchers out there doing excellent work from which we will learn much in time when this hubbub has died down: as it surely will.
Remember despite endless prophecies, forecastsand predictions the End of Days is always late to the point of never quite arriving. Not that this deters the believer, it is obviously some slight miscalculation over the precise date so its arrival is only postponed.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. Much less worry about it.
Because until the End of Days the world will go on spinning and we will get by by adapting and improving our technology to meet our needs as we have always done: and very successfully too.
Kindest Regards.