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if you do a search for summit, there are photos of the data center it is in. looks pretty clean to me.

https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summ...

it states it is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7.4. System User Guide - Overview - OS

How many Gt of CO2 and S have we human released into the air, since the industry revolution?

As for CO2: according to Wikipedia, around 380 Gigatonnes of carbon in the 1901-2013 timespan. Or just under 1400 Gigatonnes of CO2. So this meteor strike would have put ~1/3 of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in a single event, of what mankind has produced throughout its industrial age.

Note that the source referenced by Wikipedia only seems to have per-year totals (estimates, obviously). So I'm guessing that 380 GtC number was arrived at by adding up the annual figures.

Could you name the source of 7/bus, 2/car? The Transportation Energy Data Book http://cta.ornl.gov/data/downl... claims 1.6/car, 1.8/personal truck and 9.2/bus with no data for intercity and school buses (table 2.14, p69). Interestingly per passanger mile, cars are still more energy efficient.

Only if you're comparing full buses to empty cars. If you're comparing practical bus energy use to practical car energy use per passenger mile, Buses seem to be slightly worse, and I'm not sure it's clear that the miles themselves are equivalent - Cars go where you want them to, Buses go where the Buses go, so a trip by bus might require more miles.

Buses: 3,829 (Btu per passenger-mile)
Cars: 3,122 (Btu per passenger-mile)
Rail: 2,445 (Btu per passenger-mile)

Oak Ridge Transportation Energy Data Book - Table 2.16

My assumption is that buses are probably still reducing congestion, but in order to make use of them, there need to be enough off-peak buses that the overall ridership is not that great. I'm also gonna assume that self-driving minibuses and municipal cars could cut the off-peak energy use side of the equation.

I did look up global emissions before I replied to you, and I'm not finding data that corroborates your post. I find the opposite.

Careful there. Referring to software and applications as 'codes' is common in many industries (example "here). People that use such terminology are of much higher than average intelligence. And your mocking their industries' use of jargon will expose you as a basement hacker that hasn't been out in the world talking to actual users.

It's from the Vostok ice core (Petit 2000). You could also have found the same graph at NOAA, should you have bothered to look before declaring it made-up.

Cars: http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb3...

Yes, a list of "averages" that are likely heavily skewed by a few very expensive models at the time. On the other hand, there were plenty of options that were far less than that average. The Model T being one such car. So your original claim was highly misleading. People had options for cars that weren't nearly as skewed compared to their income as your original claim makes it seem.

Income: http://visualizingeconomics.co...

I'll give you this one. Different methodologies depending on who does the numbers give varying figures.

No. Neither Nitrogen (N2) nor Oxygen (O2) are greenhouse gases and they compose most of the atmosphere.

Ozone (O3) is a form of oxygen that is considered a greenhouse gas but its concentration is small.

The following pages summarize quite well the situation: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/curr...

More generally, the argument "it is only a small percentage of the whole atmosphere" is invalid. What is important is not the percentage of the various gases but their amount and their efficiency for trapping heat.

Also, people tend to underestimate the amounts of matter involved when talking about ppm or ppb. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... we find that "A column of air one square centimeter [cm2] (0.16 sq in) in cross-section ... has a mass of about 1.03 kilograms (2.3 lb)"

So the solar radiation that hits each cm2 of the earth surface has to go through about 1kg of air = 1000g.

The CO2 concentration is 400ppm so the solar radiation passes through 1000g * 400/1000000 = 0.4g of CO2 per cm2

Polycarbonate sheets used in most garden greenhouses has a density of 1.2g/cm3.

If atmospheric CO2 was compressed to that same density to form a hypothetical sheet of solid CO2 then its thickness would be 0.4/1.2 = 0.33 cm = 3.3mm

This is very comparable to the thickness of typical a polycarbonate sheet (3 to 6mm) so saying that 400ppm of CO2 cannot have any noticeable effects seems as stupid as saying that greenhouses are ineffective.

And the cost of electricity is about 70 to 80% less than the equivalent cost of a gasoline car per mile.

This is true right now because electricity use overnight is low, so the power companies charge lower rates. So if you're one of the few people with an EV, charging it overnight means you're paying discounted electricity prices. That's going to change if everyone gets an EV.

Current U.S. household electricity use is about 900 kWh per month. A Nissan Leaf is rated at 30 kWh/100 miles. Average vehicle miles traveled per household has been inching towards 60 miles (it dipped to 54 in 2009 - page 10). So driving those miles in EVs like the Leaf would result in about 550 kWh/mo of additional electricity consumption. Factor in charging efficiency (about 75%-80% from the numbers I've seen from Tesla and plug-in Prius owners), and it works out to closer to 700 kWh/mo. So adding an EV to the house will nearly double it's electricity use, with all of that additional consumption falling in the overnight period.

Currently, power consumption ramps up around 8 AM and peaks around 8 PM. An EV in every garage would invert that so the peak would occur overnight between 8 PM and 8 AM (certain industrial use which runs 24/7 keeps current overnight use around 67% that of day use). Consequently, electricity prices would go from being lowest overnight, to highest overnight. (This is also why the idea of using the battery in your EV to store up cheap overnight power for use during the day is never going to go anywhere.)

An EV is still cheaper to operate per mile than an ICE vehicle (because per Joule, gasoline is about 10x more expensive than coal). But instead of 70%-80% less cost per mile than an ICE, you're probably going to be in the neighborhood of 50%-60% less.

Well, two year old breakthroughs notwithstanding https://www.ornl.gov/content/h...

You have yet to bring any scientific evidence to the argument. I will say that my 50 years comment may have been optimistic.

But here are some links to ice core research with scientific data:
800,000-year Ice-Core Records of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Historical Carbon Dioxide Record from the Vostok Ice Core
Data for Historical CO2 Record from the Vostok Ice Core

You have yet to bring any scientific evidence to the argument. I will say that my 50 years comment may have been optimistic.

But here are some links to ice core research with scientific data:
800,000-year Ice-Core Records of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Historical Carbon Dioxide Record from the Vostok Ice Core
Data for Historical CO2 Record from the Vostok Ice Core

You have yet to bring any scientific evidence to the argument. I will say that my 50 years comment may have been optimistic.

But here are some links to ice core research with scientific data:
800,000-year Ice-Core Records of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Historical Carbon Dioxide Record from the Vostok Ice Core
Data for Historical CO2 Record from the Vostok Ice Core

The satellite record pretty much agrees with Cruz, hasn't been any statistically significant warming (as in temperature) for over 18 years in the satellite data. USCRN hasn't shown any significant warming either; HADCRUT, GISTEMP, BEST and USHCN show some warming.

I've seen it argued that any "indirect" energy source, such as coal burning to boil water,
nuclear to boil water,
and then steam --> electrical,
is going to lose out on cost to any "direct" energy source,
such as solar-->electrical,
wind-->electrical,
natural gas turbine-->electrical.

The argument is that the extra capital involved in the intermediate steam conversion step is going to price "indirect" power generation above all direct means.

This seems to be borne out somewhat in the real world, in that in the USA all new electrical generation capacity is overwhelmingly in "direct" conversion. This is largely driven by inexpensive natural gas, but there's plenty of solar and wind capacity being installed, too.

By this argument, both nuclear fusion and nuclear fission aren't going to be economical, ever.

Check out this report from the US DOE:
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...

It forecasts the cost of nuclear, either fission or fusion, to be higher than pretty much all alternatives. I'm not sure whether this includes externalities such as environmental damage from CO2 emissions, but that would seem to favor wind/solar even more, and these were already the winners based on cost.

Maybe nuclear power might still make economic sense for baseload applications, but if energy storage options become cheap enough (battery technology is being worked on feverishly worldwide), then nuclear plants will be relegated to niches where solar/wind/gas can't work....

The "killer app" for fission/fusion might be for energy in space, not on earth. Can't use solar very well out past the orbit of Mars, and if you're mining asteroids, there isn't going to be any wind either.

--PeterM

The article (and summary headline) is not justified by the article.

The summary headline says "One of the worst disasters in U.S. history". The first paragraph of the article says "one of the largest environmental disasters in US history." Big difference.

But even that is not ever discussed in the text of the article; the article never discusses the environmental consequences or whether they are "a disaster." It does give a number, 97,100 metric tons of methane emitted--- but that's trivial. World methane emissions are hundreds of gigatons. A hundred kilotons emitted in a leak is irrelevant. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/m...

Junk.

Here's the data.

If you look through the data you'll see these are the ten coldest years after 1849, coolest first:
      1911, 1909, 1904, 1908, 1862, 1910, 1903, 1864, 1917, 1893.

These are the ten hottest years prior to 2015, hottest first:
    2014, **2010, *2005, ***/++1998, **2003, *2006, **2009, **2002, *2007, 2013.

I've also noted El Niño years with stars and La Niña with plusses:
* = weak El Niño year
** = moderate El Niño year
***/++ = 1998 started as a very strong El Niño and ended as a moderate La Niña.

2015 is an El Niño year (which tend to be hot), but is not in this dataset yet. Note that 8/10 of the top 10 years have an El Niño component, except 2013 and 2014, which were "ordinary" but very warm years.

I didn't note the ENSO (El Niño / Southern oscillation) status for the coldest years, because all ten of the coldest years are before 1912 and there is no reliable ENSO data for before 1950 so far as I know. However it's a safe bet that many of these were La Niñas, which tend to be colder than average. The last colder-than-average year was 1985, which was a La Niña; all six La Niña years since have been warmer than the 1850-2014 average. The last "ordinary" (non-ENSO) year that was colder than average was 1970.

Here is the average temperature anomaly by decade:
Decade Anomaly
1850 -0.3174
1860 -0.3296
1870 -0.2548
1880 -0.3
1890 -0.3623
1900 -0.4099
1918 -0.2494
1930 -0.1182
1940 -0.0036
1950 -0.061
1960 -0.0535
1970 -0.0769
1980 +0.0943
1990 +0.274
2000 +0.4622
2010 +0.4998 // partial, obviously

Note that all the decades up to the 70s are colder than the "average" year because "average" is dominated by the acceleration of warming from the 90s to present.

I hope this helps.

Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply

Numbers provided by VW.

Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.

Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still ...

Does the climate realize it should care about per capita emissions rather than absolute numbers? I don't think temperatures and sea levels respond to that kind of equivocation.

Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.

Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still one of the biggest polluters when it comes to greenhouse gasses (if not the biggest). Taking that graph you linked, China emits just under 2x the amount of CO2 the US does. But does so with >4 times the number of people. Likewise India emits less than half what the US does, with ~4x bigger population. And while the EU is certainly a big emitter, it emits less than the US while having >1.5x bigger population.

That's of course with 2011 figures according to that graph.

Why not just be honest and say "Why does the Kiribati's problem take precedence over the American who wants a bigger SUV to tow his boat down his vacation home on the man-made lake so he can fish for trophies?"

Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.

But even if it weren't, try answering your own question. Why does the Kiribati resident matter more the the American? Why do thousands of Kiribati matter more than millions of Americans?

In short, fission and fusion will both always cost significantly more than the alternatives, because alternatives require less capital and do direct conversion of energy to electricity.

Citations:

http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...

https://matter2energy.wordpres...

The economic case for fusion is just too weak.

The problem is that so much capital will be tied up in the reactor + thermal conversion, that an equivalent capacity of solar/wind will always cost less. Lots less.

Citations:

http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...
https://matter2energy.wordpres...

--PM

I think the main reason that nuclear power, whether fusion or fission, is never going to be a major source of power is just pure economics.

The US Department of Energy forecast fission and fusion plants costing more than alternatives, including solar/wind.

Citation: http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...

Also, there are people who have argued that *just the steam conversion to electricity* part of a nuclear plant (either fission or fusion) is going to push the cost up over any direct conversion technology (wind, solar, hydro, natural gas turbine). Even if the fission/fusion plant were to be free, the argument goes, the steam generator would, by itself, cost more than the same MW generating capacity of solar/wind/hydro/natural gas.

Citation:
https://matter2energy.wordpres...

natural warming doesn't happen on such a short time-scale.

It most certainly does.

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

Went and looked for answers to my own question:

This report from DOE
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...

has figures showing that they forecast the cost of fusion power to be between 68 to 80 "mill/kWh", (apparently mills are thousandth's of a 1999 dollar) which is more expensive than any alternative they examined. Wind power they forecast to cost between 20 to 40 "mill/kWh".

If the people at DOE who wrote that report are good forecasters, then fusion is DOA. Alternatives will be less expensive.

Yes, you can make "technology advancement" arguments that the DOE forecasters are wrong, but the cost of wind and solar generators are dropping all the time, too, and storage options might get radically cheaper as well. I think investment in solar + wind + storage actually dwarfs investments in fusion, so the market seems intent on fulfilling DOE's prophesy.

Fusion may really only come into its own when we go live in the asteroid belt or the outer solar system.

--PeterM

2013 data says average vehicle lifetime is 16.9 year, multiply that by the overall average of 11,500 miles per year and you come out close to 200k miles at scrapping.

the sats are calibrated with ground data... Every year their numbers are adjusted up...

No, they're not. The measurements are going up, not the adjustments. The citations you yourself provided show only tiny adjustments to the trend, every few years, going both up and down - while the measured temperature trend is ever upwards.

The calibration is not re-done from scratch every year. That would be meaningless, as you say. The satellite data obviously must be kept comparable, both to itself and to ground measurements, so that any trends can be determined. Give these people some credit, would you? not to mention the expert reviewers who checked their methods.

I can't cross reference that information with any other source

Similar data is in the HadCRU and NASA datasets, not just NOAA. They're all cross-checked with each other and with related evidence. Perhaps you should look harder.

As to Vermeer, that contradicts what was in the Church paper that you cited yourself.

No, it doesn't. Church's Fig 5 and Vermeer's Fig 3 Lower are the same graph, though Vermeer has a blue trend line drawn over the red measurement line. You can see clearly they have the same values at the same decades. Fig 3 Upper is the derivative of that trend line, showing rate of change.

how long do you think CO2 remains in the atmosphere?

Individual molecules of carbon are being re-absorbed - and re-emitted - all the time, by plants and by the ocean, in large quantities (around 200Gt/year). This is normally in equilibrium, with a slow growth from geologic weathering and occasional volcanism. The rates of natural emission and uptake aren't fixed however, due to numerous feedbacks, so the best we can say is between 30 and 95 years for much of it, with perhaps 20% persisting a lot longer (thousands of years). It depends a lot on the atmospheric concentration, and how much we keep releasing. This page discusses the issue and provides lifetime graphs.

If true this implies the CO2 from our sources is being emitted at a lower rate than the biosphere's absorption ability.

Obviously that's not the case, because atmospheric levels have gone up sharply for 150 years See this ice-core data and more recent Mauna Loa data, showing a definite acceleration even in the last 50 years.
Regarding CO2 spectrum absorption, your questions were already answered by the citations I've given. Broad-spectrum sunlight is not only reflected, but also absorbed and re-radiated in infra-red (look up black-body radiation), which is then partially blocked by various greenhouse gases. This is well-understood science going back to the 1800s. and I'm not going to go over it all yet again. I've already cited papers that quantify the measured radiative forcing of CO2. There's no serious debate about this aspect, only about the feedbacks and resulting temperature rise.

Regarding ocean acidification, Turley et al 2006 is cited by many. Can't find a link to the paper, but here is a related presentation by Turley - see page 4.

Sorry, but I no longer have the time to spend with long explanations. It's taking too much time from my work. If the many peer-reviewed papers I've already provided haven't convinced you of anything, then providing more won't help. Either you're unable to follow the studies I've cited, or you're unwilling to to accept them as valid evidence, despite peer review and cross-correlation with other evidence. You claim that the broad agreement

Yes, but those transitions usually take place within thousands or tens of thousands of years.

Wrong. Why do you believe something with absolutely no scientific support?

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

Really interesting reading, found the link at the Wiki article on NEMP.

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/et...

I think, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle (as the ORNL study points out). A few things to keep in mind:

1. Even a small nuclear weapon can cause a significant EMP. Larger weapons cause a more widespread affect, but even a relatively small 2KT weapon, targeted over a key facility, could knock out power to a large area.

2. The weapon needs to be detonated above dense atmosphere.

As far as electromagnetic pulses in general, shielding is effective ... and those who say it isn't don't understand that there are right and wrong ways to shield and ground. In my work (radio engineer), I have to do some odd-looking things to protect against lightning. A single loop in a feedline to an AM tower, for example, attenuates the lightning that comes back into my facility. Thus, I have big honkin' ball gaps at the tower base, but can get by with a smaller "horn gap" at the entry to my equipment.

Our grid could be protected with reasonable expenditures. We couldn't prevent all damage, but we could limit it. Solid-state electronics have to be protected two ways: overall shielding, and limiting/protection at the I/O points. For example, an old desktop computer in a heavy metal case, with a good ground, probably wouldn't notice the EMP ... *except* for induced voltages coming in on the video, mouse and printer cables. Those would probably send the motherboard screaming into the shrubbery. :)

Nice try but like most warmists you are too mired in "open mindedness" and political correctness that you fail to engage in any active mindedness. This allows any charlatan to shovel in any crap they want, take a look at Global Carbon Emission by Type to Y2004.png, the source data can be found at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp0..., and see if the numbers still look like a "fuckton".

True, but an Al-ion battery definitely has potential*, even if this team hasn't achieved it yet.

Al also has ~5x the physical density of Li at ~1/5th the price, so even if it doesn't outperform Li's energy density for a while it will still be better for many applications.

* groan

The current temperate change is between 0.01 and 0.02 degrees/year, two orders of magnitude greater than when the ice age ended. The problem isn't so much that temperature is changing but that it's changing so fast. The greater the rate of temperature change the harder adaption will be for both human and natural systems.

I've never been able to figure out the original of those claims - do you know? I can't find any scientific sources for it - on the contrary:

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

This is mildly interesting, but note that the paper has no citations later than 1998, and the paper itself is dated that year if you go up a level, so the research is not at all recent, but nearly 20 years old.

Also, there is a clarification at the top which reads:

This represents an earlier version of our text. Some changes have been made since we stopped modifying this web version: e.g. we have added a discussion of the role of volcanic aerosols in sudden climate changes...evidence suggests the rapid cooling at the end of the Eemian interglacial was due to a big explosive volcanic event. Other 'volcanic' cooling events occurred during the Holocene.

In other words, they are talking about abrupt (and transitory) volcanic events, not Milankovitch cycles. Moreover, volcanoes produce cooling, not heating (think of the various "years without summers")

The current temperate change is between 0.01 and 0.02 degrees/year, two orders of magnitude greater than when the ice age ended. The problem isn't so much that temperature is changing but that it's changing so fast. The greater the rate of temperature change the harder adaption will be for both human and natural systems.

I've never been able to figure out the original of those claims - do you know? I can't find any scientific sources for it - on the contrary:

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

The warming data clearly indicates that rate of temperature of last 50 years is far higher than any other period in history

Why do you believe that? It's not even true for the last 150 years - even less so if we include the rest of the Holocene.

Q: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

A: So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
- Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/851...

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

(This post does not question AGW. It does question strange statements regarding our current climate that have no scientific basis)

Couple things...

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions. About 130,000 years ago, a warm phase slightly moister than the present began, and conditions at least as warm as the present lasted until about 115,000 years ago. Subsequent cooling and drying of the climate led to a cold, arid maximum about 70,000 years ago, followed by a slight moderation of climate with a second aridity maximum around 22,000-13,000 14C years ago. Conditions then quickly became warmer and moister, though with an interruption by cold and aridity in many areas around 11,000 14C years ago.

http://www.pnas.org/content/10...
Here's your citation for the 300 year drought from a respectable source (hard to filter out from all the anti climate warming sites quoting it).

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...
We are exiting an ice age. It's going to get warmer. The average temperature of the planet for hundreds of millions of years at a time was about 12 degrees higher. We may be exiting it quicker due to human intervention- but it's going to warm up as we exist the last ice age. It just might take it 10,000 to 25,000 years instead of 1,000 years.

While I respect masses of scientists saying there is warming (97%ish)... I really don't respect their models yet. Over the last 15 years, their predictions have been hysterically wrong. Predictions of super storms and repeated severe hurricane seasons after Ike, Sandy and Rita were also terribly wrong.

That warming is occurring is a measured, observable, testable fact. That the earth will be a given temperature in 100 years may be more reasonable than any prediction 20 years from now. But it may also be wildly off.

Given how badly they did with their prediction, I'm all for using LED's, CO2 scrubbers, etc. But I'm not willing to destroy the world economy by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ill thought out actions which may be simply wrong or even actually harmful.

Genuine "fluff" gets in the way of comprehension and is bad code, but structuring and redundancy are extremely valuable.

Prove it. This paper suggests it's not extremely valuable. You're saying it based on your 'intuition' which is wrong.

I do not believe there are ANY field studies in Meyer's book that show OOP "being better". You are welcome to prove me wrong.

I don't think so either. Furthermore, they probably wouldn't be accepted generally as OOP, because his definition of OOP is different than most people's (Java and C# still don't have support for contracts).

However, such studies do exist. I particularly like that paper, because the authors made an effort to understand the data, instead of merely giving a P value and hoping it would get published. For example, when the data allowed several alternative explanations, they interviewed the developers and managers of the projects to understand which interpretation was most realistic.

THAT is object oriented computer science.

Yes they do.

US stats are pretty shit.

Compared to European stats.

Fuck you USA.

Here is the paper I mentioned, and here is the USGS's take on the matter. From what I understand there are a number of ways to estimate human CO2 output, one being to add up all the fossil fuels that are being consumed globally, which is likely not terribly accurate but we're still talking about two or three orders of magnitude difference. Another estimation method uses carbon isotope ratios. I get the impression that estimating volcanic emissions is somewhat difficult, but there's a fair amount of continuous monitoring for various reasons. Terrence Gerlach, a vulcanologist with the USGS, seems to have done quite a bit of research into the subject. The nice thing about scholarly publications is that they have to tell you where the numbers come from; if one wants to find out more about either part of the estimates then you just follow the references.

In summation, parts of the estimates come from direct measurements and the other parts seem to be estimates based on fossil fuel consumption. I am sure that there's a whole world of study out there for estimating various factors.

As an aside, humans are still far from matching or exceeding the most violent outgassings that have resulted from the formation of Large Igneous Provinces. I believe the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps released about 3 orders of magnitude more CO2 than humanity has liberated. While our current burn rate would have us match those outgassings in about a thousand years, I don't believe that our fossil fuel reserves are projected to last that long. However, Large Igneous Provinces generally took millions of years to form, not hundreds; there is every reason to believe that what we are doing to the planet is unprecedented. On the other other hand, we're mostly skipping the problems with particulate matter and sulfides that came along with volcanic eruptions. For what it's worth.

The amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere is easily measurable, and it matches with the observed increase in CO2 in air, water, and biomass. It's about 40 billion tons per year now: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/GCP/carb...

The amount of CO2 naturally emitted by volcanoes and forest fires and such is a bit harder to calculate but you can get reasonable order-of-magnitude estimates. Volcanoes, for instance, emit about 0.3 billion tons per year. There are lots of sources on the US geological survey page: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/haza...

No matter how you slice it, even the most outlandish estimates for CO2 from natural sources fall 1-2 orders of magnitude short of the amount of CO2 necessary to explain the global increase.

There are natural CO2 absorbing sources but the additional amount they absorb each year is tiny.

Actually it was tested. Hastelloy with 1.1% niobium was found to be the most performant and exhibited very little cracking over prolonged periods (3000 hours at 700 degrees Celsius) in a liquid fluoride thorium solution containing tellurium (the worst offender for embrittlement). Also tested were solutions containing uranium.

Now fuck off you useful idiot.

The most obvious example; having fixed sized multi-dimensional arrays as global variables.

You mean like these ?
http://www.phy.ornl.gov/csep/p...

Fortran 90 has three varieties of dynamic arrays. All three allow array creation at run time with sizes determined by computed (or input) values. These three varieties of dynamic arrays are:

Oh I wouldn't hold my breath on the compiler parallelizing those, it has to be able to determine it's safe to do so, more often than not a programmer will have to tell it to do so with a doall.

No, no we are not in an unsually unstable period of climate. Or more accurately stated, that instability is BECAUSE OF US.

Not according to research.

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

"Thorium nuclear generated electricity is even more expensive due to the reactor design needing to be more robust."

Pardon?

Thorium LFTR cycles don't run at high pressure and aren't subject to high pressure water/steam corrosion.

Flouride corrosion is an issue, but it's easier to mitigate than water (Water's not called the universal solvent for nothing)

http://info.ornl.gov/sites/pub...

"By cladding an ASME Type III structural alloy (Alloy 617 or Alloy 800H) with a corrosion resistant layer (perhaps Hastelloy-N modified with 1.5% Niobium) you can provide the high temperature strength and corrosion resistance that advanced high performance LFTRs will require."

That problem has been solved for decades.

The USA nuclear industry keeps going with old designs for the most part because

1: that's all they're allowed to go with.
2: There haven't been any new nuclear plants online to speak of since TMI (none of the "new builds" are online yet and those were almost all started over 30 years ago in any case. TMI effectively put a halt to any unfinished systems, midbuild)
3: Accountants don't like R&D. They'd far rather run with something that works but is dangerous than something which is "untested" but is a lot safer.
4: LTFRs don't produce much weapons-grade plutonium (way down on conventional plants), which the US govt didn't like because it means the "waste" can't be mined for bombs - this is why the USA shut down LFTR research in 1972

Since the 1970s, All the R&D for alternative commercial designs has occurred in other parts of the world. Tinkering with water/steam pressure isn't new technology, nor is setting things up so that the the reactors can passively SCRAM. It's just better engineering. The fact remains that pressurised reactor systems are intrinsically dangerous, as are sodium cooled plants. Lead based systems work but are still based on fuel rods and have proven fairly unreliable in service.

The only serious issue with LFTRs has turned out to be long-term (30 year) storage of cold salts and only because nobody bothered removing the "hot stuff" when the test program finished in 1969. Once the issue was realised and the radioactives extracted, the salts have been stable and no longer require periodic melting/flowing to extract gas buildups.

It's an electrical problem in a single building.

Actually, the complex is four separate builidings connected in a U-shape; the tallest is 24 stories. The complex has its own entry on skyscraperpage.com and is also described in this 6-page PDF by Trane, the air-conditioning company. That PDF includes this description of the buildings in the complex and how it is all designed for 24/7 operation:

The facility, named for the former U.S. Senator from Georgia, is one the largest federal office buildings on the East Coast. It encompasses 1.87 million square feet of space. The structure straddles a busy downtown street. The building is also located atop an underground train tunnel of the Atlanta transit system, MARTA. The building units include the remodeled 1924 department store, Rich's, which was a downtown Atlanta landmark and an Atlanta institution.

Now this renovated six-story building and its beloved clock are a visual cornerstone for the center. Other elements are a 10-story mid-rise section, an eight-story bridge, six stories over Forsyth Street and a 24-story high-rise tower. Adjacent to the building is a 10-story parking garage. Construction of the building was a joint urban redevelopment enterprise of the City of Atlanta and the Federal Government. The design architect for the facility was the California firm of Kohn, Peterson, Fox and Associates. Newcomb & Boyd, a large Atlanta firm, was chosen as the project engineer.

Designed For 24-Hour Operation Southeastern Facility Management, Inc., is contracted by GSA to operate this facility. The system was designed for 24-hour seven days a week operation to accommodate the mission of the various agencies housed in the facility. One or more of the 1,310-ton chillers were to operate, depending on the building load, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. After 6:00 p.m., the 400-ton chiller was to carry all computer rooms and miscellaneous building loads. As a consequence, the facility designers and engineers needed to plan for continuous occupancy. Atlanta has significant cooling loads for much of the year and high humidity as well. The goal of the HVAC system design was to assure complete comfort in the building around the clock, year-round. To achieve this, significant emphasis was placed on humidity control with a central chilled water plant, air handlers for each area and a zone- controlled VAV air delivery system. Building designers also recognized that an important part of the office environment is acoustic performance. For this reason, rigorous sound level standards were set for occupied areas throughout the facility. The air conditioning system efficiency was extremely important due to the 24/7 operation.

Do you change your opinion when the facts don't agree with it? Or do you try hard to ignore it? ;)

Until a few decades ago it was generally thought that all large-scale global and regional climate changes occurred gradually over a timescale of many centuries or millennia, scarcely perceptible during a human lifetime. The tendency of climate to change relatively suddenly has been one of the most suprising outcomes of the study of earth history, specifically the last 150,000 years (e.g., Taylor et al., 1993). Some and possibly most large climate changes (involving, for example, a regional change in mean annual temperature of several degrees celsius) occurred at most on a timescale of a few centuries, sometimes decades, and perhaps even just a few years. The decadal-timescale transitions would presumably have been quite noticeable to humans living at such times, and may have created difficulties or opportunities (e.g., the possibility of crossing exposed land bridges, before sea level could rise)

The Little Ice Age was the coldest part of the Holocene. We're not even back up to the Holocene Optimum yet.

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...

Here is a graph of raw data vs. adjusted data from the GHCN. The difference isn't large enough to affect the conclusions.

Why the data was adjusted and the logic for it are available in the scientific papers on the subject. Here is a document that discusses the reasons and methods of adjustments for the USHCN. I you want more detail you'll have to dig for it yourself.

*GHCN/USHCN = Global/United States Historical Climatology Network