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Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made
bledri writes "The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature are in and Richard Muller, the study's director (formerly an AGW skeptic) declares, 'Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.'
The study was funded by the Folger Fund, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates), the Bowes Foundation, the Koch Foundation, and the Getty Foundation."
isnt that special
...is global warming good or bad.
For some it will be good. For some bad. The diversity of life has historically increased with warming. Coastal cities won't like a sea level rise though.
AFAIK The Koch Foundation isn't the same as the Koch Brothers (the folks who donate to conservative political candidates.)
Bark less. Wag more.
Those of us who live along coastal cities are f*cked. If more evidence turns up to support man-made global climate change, and the ocean levels rise, then climate deniers in congress and the senate should have to pay to relocate everyone living in coastal cities. Fair is fair but, it won't work out that way. -- Without coastal cities, import/export trade and many industries the nation relies on will be crippled. It could very possibly crush the economy and destroy civilization as we know it.
The Koch Brothers were among several funders, some of whom actually had decent motives. For example, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are not partisan conservatives. And FICER (the Gates-funded organization) actively depends on global warming existing, because their whole raison d'etre is pushing geoengineering as a solution, which would obviously be unnecessary if there were no problem for geoengineering to solve.
In fact that's probably why the outcome was actually scientifically legit: it was a study by actual scientists with a fairly broad set of backers, done at a university rather than in the private sector.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
TFS obviously tries to throw the results of this study back in the Koch Foundation's face, by singling them out when the study was funded by numerous other groups. It's just another insufferable "I told you so", which we can all relate to as making people cling ever more tightly to their beliefs or just refuse to change their ways for spite.
So wouldn't it make more sense first to sit back and see if the Koch brothers become converted skeptics like Muller? Imagine having their billions behind efforts to advance alternative energy.
(Bjorn Lomborg) as two prominent if not THE most prominent AGW skeptics to change their minds. (I've heard of these guys and if I've heard of them, since I'm not a specialist, I figure they must be prominent).
So what's it going to take? Convincing every last person that this isn't real? That's going to be pretty damned impossible because as Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.". Substitute the word "salary" with "lifestyle" (or even "SUV") and you'll see how the average American thinks.
I've read that a ten percentage increase in electrical costs would be enough to sequester all the CO2 we're currently emitting. So the fact that a ten percentage increase in something that is not a big item in the average American budget is keeping us from potentially preventing great harm to our ecology, biosphere and a great number of species on this planet (including us!) makes me realize that we will deserve the hell on earth we get.
Anyhoo - the more people on _both_ sides of the argument who actually look at the data rather than just attack the conclusions, the better for everybody concerned.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
This DVD goes over the planet's natural warming and cooling cycles in great detail, says humans account for less than 2% of global CO2 emissions (most comes from nature), and exposes the political nature of the IPCC and how they cook their pseudo-science for the political outcome they are pushing.
http://www.globalwarmingclassroom.info/
Debate is healthy, and I think anyone who is absolutely convinced that man is responsible for global warming should at least watch this documentary to see if it changes their mind, and if not point out exact flaws. This DVD has me convinced that man is not responsible and we are experiencing natural planetary cycles.
Richard Muller is a lot of things (a fairly good scientist for one), and the press keeps insisting he's a "former skeptic," but nobody seems to be able to find anything he's ever said that put him in the "skeptic" camp...
I was confused. I am prepared to believe the Koch Foundation on this because I think Global Warming exists and we are the primary cause of it. We would be the solution but I don't think we can ever organize ourselves enough to solve the problem - politicians think too shortterm and only want to be reelected. Pushing policies that will be unpopular with their constituents and their supporters (Corporations) will not result in reelection.
I think that people who believe the Koch Brothers on anything are being suckered - i.e. they are "Koch Suckers" :)
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Soon we will engage in apocalyptic greed, panic and defensiveness. Stock up on canned and dry foods... and ammo.
Step one was to deny it was real. Now we are on step two: admit it is real but that it is too expensive for us to fight it. Step three is to build another mansion on higher ground and put in larger A/C units.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Thanks for that. One thing, though -- some massive melting we are seeing goes WAY beyond typical cycles and goes into melting ice formed long before the first animals walked the earth.
I don't care about the cause. I care more about the solution. We're looking at a global extinction event and I'd like man to be able to survive it.
Global warming will also destroy crop yields - just look at the corn yield THIS YEAR.
which will affect beef production/
Global Warming will also affect fisheries. Between GW and over fishing around the World, we're going to see some real devastation there - and fisheries around the World are already in trouble. That's why you keep seeing new and different species of fish behind the counter - the other ones have been almost wiped out. (Farmed fish is an environmental and nutritional joke. But that's for another time.)
See, that's the thing that annoys me. Just about all of the "debate" in the popular media about global warming is about "lifestyle", taxes, nationalism, ... everything but food supply except when it comes to ethanol. (The corn lobby needs to be destroyed. Farm subsidies mostly enrich Cargil, Monsano, Tyson, and other huge corporate food processors. It lowers input their costs.)
So, while the general public is being distracted my non-issues about GW like losing control of our government to the UN, higher taxes and other non-sense, the folks who are profiting dearly from our current policies are getting away scott free.
And the above is just ONE facet of the true forces behind the issue.
I just don't care, either way. AGW or not, there are much more important things in my life to worry about.
"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. "
Which has pretty much been my position for a long time now. Correlation != Causation, and while therefore we have enough to go on to start taking action, we can't treat AGW like a religion. Universities can't defund people who question the status quo. We do need to keep validating this further and explaining the causality better.
You are aware that the earths spin is not centred on the magnetic poles. Our biggest heat source (the sun) is most effective above equatorial regions. These are defined by the earths rotation which has not moved that much in the entirety of human existence.
If some places have got hotter and others cooler because of climate change, that is in keeping with what has been expected. I just don't recall being told which areas will get hotter and which cooler - except by Hollywood...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
And how are global temperatures influenced by the location of the magnetic pole? The sun rays aren't influenced by the earth magnetic field.
Our increase of CO2 is still far below any volcano ...
Not surprised you cower behind anonymity when spouting utterly wrong claptrap like that. Hint: try actually finding things out before demonstrating your ignorance in public.
According to the USGS, man-made CO2 emissions are 35 billion tons per year, total volcanic output (from land and under the seas) ranges from 0.13 to 0.44 billion tons per year. Even in a year of abnormally great volcanic activity, volcanic output is tiny in comparison to that of human activity. There are only a few Mount St. Helens scale eruptions per year, but it would take 3500 of them every year to equal current man-made CO2 emissions.
From the same USGS page, in 1900, the annual anthropogenic CO2 output was about 18 times that of volcanism. In 2010 it had increased to about 135 times the annual volcanic output. These ratios are based on the maximum estimate of volcanic CO2 output. So the increase in annual anthropogenic CO2 output dwarfs the annual volcanic CO2 output.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Some people will cope with irrefutable evidence that conflicts with their world view, i.e., cognitive dissonance, by going insane.
Does this explain the current behavior of the (far) Right? Or will things get even worse in our politics?
How is this a Koch Bros Study? Did they have a hand in choosing to do it or were they opposed to it? Did they set ground rules?
Let's quote from the OP:
"...I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. Iâ(TM)ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasnâ(TM)t changed.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears arenâ(TM)t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers arenâ(TM)t going to melt by 2035. And itâ(TM)s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the âoeMedieval Warm Periodâ or âoeMedieval Optimum,â an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to âoeglobalâ warming is weaker than tenuous...."
I find his methodology and approach persuasive.
The only question I have is that historically, we've seen 'pulses' of temperature/CO2 spiking about (roughly) every 100,000 yrs for about the last million years. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.svg) The last one was about 120,000 yrs ago, and we're in a similar climbing spike right now.
I haven't heard anything about what causes these spikes, nor what mechanism offsets them. It stands to reason that this pattern would continue, which would suggest that today's warming is systemic and cyclical WITHOUT human input.
-Styopa
Sequestering carbon is dang expensive, not well understood, and we're decades from it scaling up to the 100s of GW of capacity necessary given our current generation infrastructure.
We could shut down lots of coal for a 10% increase in electricity rates, replacing it with natural gas, wind, and energy efficiency. That might reduce our carbon footprint from electrical by 10%. For another 10% increase in electricity rates, we could probably roll out GWs more storage [hydro or compressed air], roll out more wind and some solar and more energy efficiency, and cut another 10% from our electrical carbon footprint. Wind and solar prices continue to fall. The "easy" answer is to stop building coal plants, invest in energy efficiency and co-generation, improve building codes, and complement new wind and solar with storage and fast-ramping combustion turbines [which are inexpensive to build, but more expensive to operate], and useful for dealing with the intermittency of some renewables. It need not be done all at once, and some parts of the country can be done economically faster than others, but that's the way to do it at a cost which would be manageable.
Now, before I elicit the nuclear fanboys, I'll make two points: (1) nuclear power is more expensive than solar PV per kWh at a levalized cost without any subsidies for either, and (2) just as the sun doesn't shine at night, the nuclear power plants don't turn off at night. Nuclear is already more expensive than PV -- if you've got to build storage too to shift some of that unusable nighttime production to daytime, you might as well build storage and shift some of that extra PV to nighttime. Want to encourage small, identical reactors to lower cost? Sure -- but you're looking at 10-15 years before the first one is online. In the meantime, we've got to cut CO2 now, and it's far easier, cheaper, and politically possible to do it at point sources like electrical generation than it is at distributed sources like tailpipes and home furnaces.
N.America shifted South, closer to the new Equator, which would be closer to the Sun. Causing the warmer temperature. Imagine Quebec 11 years ago now sits where New York, or Boston, of course, Quebec is going to be warmer than it was 11 years ago.
Northern Europe is shifted North closer to the new North Magnetic Pole, so it will be colder there. If you notice the weather reports out of UK, they have had some of terrible Winters in the last few years.
Firstly, let us be clear on what we're talking about: current temperature appears as a statistical blip in the historical record.
Secondly, Richard Muller is not and never was a skeptic. Way back in 2003 he was saying things like, "Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." and even more incredibly, "If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion - which he does, but he’s very effective at it - then let him fly any plane he wants."(2008).
Thirdly, even William Connolley, the guy banned from editing Wikipedia for 6 months due to his attempts to rubbish skeptics, thinks Muller is a wazzock for making the claims he has. So, slashdot, the excitement you are experiencing here is really quite misplaced.
In addition, the warming could have a cascade effect with the permafrost on the ocen floor releasing Methane in greater amounts as well, which would also add to the heating cycle.
Although methane currently accounts for only 15% of warming (a far distant second to CO2's 75% contribution to warming), it is also a concern if you factor in the amounts they believe may be locked in the permafrost under the ocean floor.
It's hard to believe there are still people stupid enough to spout these two talking points, a good decade or more after they've been debunked, soundly and repeatedly.
Clearly there are though, and they're proud of their extreme ignorance.
Didn't one of the researchers claim he made things up? I remember one of the researchers in his study left and said he leapt to the conclusion.
NOTE I AM NOT saying is or is not real. I don't know. I'm not a climate scientist. Flip a coin and that will be as good as my guess.
That said, there was drama with this study months ago.
Also... did they release the Berkeley earth data yet? Because last time I checked they didn't disclose everything yet. Maybe they did and I just don't know how to look. Not sure. But that's sort of a key issue here.
Anyway, I'm glad it's being researched. Either way this is something that needs to be researched comprehensively.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What a misleading summary. What Muller claims to have shown is:
1. Warming is happening; criticisms of statistical methods can either be worked around or are shown to not be valid.
2. Solar activity and/or other proposed non-CO2 warming drivers are not responsible for the observed increase.
3. Atmospheric CO2 is by far the best correlate with global surface temperatures.
However, he then adds, "These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism," and goes on to reject a number of "alarmist" (his word) consequences of warming (more frequent hurricanes, the U.S. drought, polar bears dying, etc.)
Here's a picture for you
http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s7.htm
See the radiation belt? Could it be trapping various radiating heat energies with respect to the Magnetic Poles, not the rotational poles? The radiation belts could easily warm up locations further away from the Magnetic Poles.
Think of England, some Northern European countries, which explains the harsh winters they have in the last few years.
As a Northern European I've got to ask - what harsh winters? I sure haven't noticed them... Some places not really used to/equipped for it (like the UK) got more snow than they're used to, but I certainly wouldn't call them 'harsh' temperature wise. But that, as well as increased rain falls is to be expected with more moisture being evaporated into the atmosphere.
but the USGS didn't factor in the Methane releases and Methane is a more effective Green House Gas then CO2 ever was. Right now, the biggest contributors of Methane are all the damn cows being fed antibiotics in those massive dairy and feed lots so people can have beef on the Barbie. All you have to do is check out the various orbital colony scenarios and you soon realize that beef isn't that efficient in generating protein for consumption. Goats, sheep, chicken, rabbits and fish are far better at converting feed into protien and the reason I didn't include pork is they're number 2 in methane production.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.
I believe you're referring to methane hydrate and it's not under the ocean floor but ON it.
I'm a Democrat, and I love nuclear! (And I conditionally love fracking gas, though I think it needs better - though not onerous - regulations. I certainly love it more than coal, even in its present badly-regulated state.) The leader of my party, President Obama, defends exactly these policies, as far as I can tell. I really don't think that Democrats are the problem. I think that giant energy companies like Exxon-Mobil (the funding arm of the Republican party) are the problem. I think the (Republican) coal lobby is a problem. NIMBYism (which cuts across party lines) is a problem. And science denialism is a problem (on which Republicans have a near monopoly). In all this, it's weird to blame the Democrats.
We are the primary cause of global warming, we are the primary cause of accelerating it
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"...and they're proud of their extreme ignorance."
Nah. They're paid well for it.
They did exactly that.
It's not posted yet, but last week I attended a lecture at the Aspen Center for Physics about this very subject:
http://www.aspenphys.org/50th/events/july25.html
It will be available sometime soon here:
http://vod.grassrootstv.org/cablecast/public/Search.aspx?ChannelID=1&SimpleSearch=physics
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
That global temperature have risen during the past 100-150 years is a fact, and that greenhouse gas emissions are at least partly responsible for it was also likely. The real question is the rate of it. A 0.1C warming is harmles, a 10C warming is apocalyptic. In the past 150 years we have burned about 10% of the fossil fuels in the ground, which amounts to about 50% of the reserves we can actually extract. This resulted in a 40% increase in CO2 concentration and about 1C of warming. So if we burn the second half, it won't even rise the temperature with another degree. On the other hand, if technological advances will allow us to exploit more than that, it would result in a bigger warming, which could melt the permafrost releasing all the methane stored there in the athmosphere resulting in an unstoppable warming. Now these numbers are horribly imprecise, and to be able to plan ahead climate research should focus on getting much more accurate data.
This is all just liberal propaganda paid for by... ...oh wait...
It's pretty clear that a huge part of this study was driven by intense distrust of the academic world by the right. But, by the same token, they were a bit worried that the hippy scientists might be onto something. After all, while we might notice, that, it seems warmer in New Jersey during the winter than in our childhoods, they, by the virtue of their wealth, have to be noticing the same things for themselves worldwide. So, they found a scientist that they could trust, and have a look so that they could get the truth. One wonders if this will be the beginning of a sea change in policy making.
In my first post I assumed that the paper was correct, but now after reading the article I'm much more sceptical. They have measured the warming during the past 250 years, that is, their reference point was right in the middle of the Little Ice Age! This may not discredit everything they claim but it sure raises some serious doubts about the professionalism of the researchers involved.
Ah, but none of those are nearly as tasty as aforementioned beef, particularly on that barbie.
What Obama says in public, and what his administration does in reality, are two different, and usually diametrically opposed things. Giant energy companies don't care what they sell, as long as they make a profit doing it. The coal lobby is bipartisan. It's not just red states which are dependent on coal for electric generation capacity. And science denialism is bipartisan too. There is more to science than just CAGW and the Democrats are very, very, good at denying reality when it suits them. It's not at all weird to blame the party in power for what is happening on their watch.
Sure, I don't live in Europe. I have read of headline news about serious flights delays aout of UK the last few years because of snow storms "worse" than usual.
Perhaps your location already have all the equipments to deal with such storms, and 5-10 year swing in weather patterns may not be too noticable for your location.
I suppose we should watch out for the other places in Europe and Northen Asia having mild weather now starting to have to deal with some cooling effects.
I already quoted this link
http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s7.htm
Again, I believe the radiation belt from the illustration may be keeping or affecting the heat relative to the magnetic poles of the planet, in addition to direct Sun radiation during the day, of course.
Time Cube Guy?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't recall seeing this claim debunked. I have only seen people claim that this claim has been debunked, mixed in with ad hominem.
Perhaps the parent hasn't seen it either? Maybe you should post a link rather than being an abusive twat.
Though the methane numbers do help to attribute climate change more to the West than the rest of the world.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
If you didn't think the argument involved multiple parts, then you weren't paying attention. I find this to be one of the biggest problems with many self-proclaimed proponents of AGW is that they think if they prove something, then the argument is done, over, everything else follows logically and there can be no question. No, not at all. There are multiple stages to the argument.
The first is the claims of fact: That average surface temperature is increasing and that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing. These are claims of facts about the world, things to be observed or measured. CO2 is pretty easy given the nature of gasses diffusing to uniform, temperature is quite a bit harder. However, it looks pretty solid that yes, temperature has been increasing. So that's step one, verify the facts behind the theory.
The next step is the central theory: That the primary or exclusive cause of the observed warming is the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere due to human emissions. Like all theories, it attempts to explain the connection between facts, how things relate. So that the facts are true does not automatically imply the theory is correct. That is the point of this (and other) studies. See if there are facts that would falsify this theory, or are there other theories that would fit the available facts better. So far, it does not seem so which means that this theory is probably correct.
This is not the end of the argument though. All you've done is shown why something is happening. That doesn't mean anything in and of itself. The next part of the argument is where things get more specious: The claim that this will be a bad thing for humanity as a whole. That's not a scientific theory, that's an over-arching claim, a judgement call. It is based on a number of theories and hypothesis out there. However to be accurate it needs to be backed up by theories with evidence that indicate that things will change in negative ways. Also you have to weigh just how positive and negative all the predicted changes will be. Anyone who pretends something is all positive or all negative is pushing an agenda and/or ignoring reality. Everything has a downside, a cost. The question is how does it weigh overall?
This is a discussion that doesn't seem to happen much. The "It will be a bad thing," seem to be parroted as dogma. You accept or you get shouted down. Any hypothesis that says something bad will happen is accepted as true, any hypothesis that says something good will happen is said to be false. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
Then, after you've shown it is a net negative overall, that it is something that would be better if it didn't happen, you get down to the policy of what to do about it. This is not science at all, there is no one right answer. It is a matter of deciding what we wish to do based off of costs, likelihood of success, other downsides and so on. "Just stop burning fossil fuels," isn't the "correct" answer. It is a possible course of action, but not the only one. Geoengineering solutions would be others. Still others would be not to try and change what is happening, but rather to change ourselves and prepare to deal with the changes since though this change may be human caused it is likely at some point another will happen that isn't and thus we may not be able to affect.
So if you are hoping for the magic moment of "All debate ends and everyone agrees with me," well sorry you aren't going to see it. As I alluded to, the big thing at this point would be to show that this change is going to be a net negative for humanity. That's complex, so no surprise it is hard. Even once that is in the bag, the question remains as to what to do. To that there will never be a final "correct" answer, only possibilities that eventually will need to be weighed and chosen from (including the possibility of doing nothing).
I'd be careful about being so trivial about a 10% increase in electricity prices. It might be trivial for you, it's a fairly non-elastic good in most of the states, and increases in it, much like fuel prices, tend to hit the poor the hardest.
You could double my electricity bill and while I'd wince, I wouldn't need to substantially change my budget. Increase the bill of my grandparents on social security even 50% and they'd be cutting into the grocery money. Maybe even at 10%, but I don't know their finances that well.
Then you get into businesses and manufacturing and it's one more reason to leave the area. Civilization depends on cheap energy, the cheaper the better.
This brings up another argument - sure, global warming is happening. There will be both positives and negatives. Coastal cities might need to adjust their infrastructure in major ways; but at the same time a few degrees warmer average temperatures can add weeks to the growing season of major areas of North America, Siberia, and other regions. The studies I've seen predict warmer temperatures to increase potential farmland, not decrease it. So the question becomes: Is the economic cost of preventing global warming worth it, and by how much? I'll note that I'm in the camp of global warming is happening, and that we should do stuff about it, but the question becomes one of 'how much?'. There are easy fixes out there, and I think we should be doing more of them. But some of the proposals are crazy.
Finally - We don't ever want to become dependent upon one source of electricity. My 'ideal' carbon-neutral electrical mix is 40% nuclear, 20% solar(~20% of electricity is spent on cooling anyways, and demand is something like 50% higher during the day, so when you figure that solar only works during the day, it pretty much works out*), 20% wind, and 20% other(such as hydro, geothermal, biomass, etc...).
Another point is that if we massively go towards electrical vehicles(to get rid of that carbon), my estimates are for an average increase in electricity usage for househoulds of 50%. I figure that 'most' households, especially areas with more expensive electricity, have taken the easy fixes already - saving more juice will take things like replacing windows and putting more insulation in. Reducing a household's electrical usage by 50% to keep usage even after switching to EVs - that takes stuff like getting rid of electric heat, including the water heater(If they're on gas or oil, carbon could be avoided by switching to a heat pump, but again, that would increase electrical usage). This can be done, but isn't an 'easy fix' in most areas.
*Night usage: 1, Day usage: 1.5. Total: 2.5. 20% of 2.5 = .5, or the increase during the day.
I don't read AC A human right
I do not really care much about Global Warming or Climate Change, which seems to be the preferred term nowadays. I care even less about hippies and tree huggers telling me that I should go back to a hut in the middle of a forest.
We have to look at this from an economic perspective. The reality is that, places like China will continue to pollute a lot for as long as they possibly can. It is cheap for them to forego how this will impact their future generations. It is cheap for us to buy crap made in China when they do not have to worry about environmental standards and labor law. We cannot compete with them unless we sink to the same level, which we most definitely do not want to do. Hence I would say it is time for us to divide the World in two again (just like the good old soviet times). I believe we should creat a "Green Wall". On our side of the Green Wall, only countries that are democratic and comply with certain environmental standards can be admitted. We will only trade with them and they are only allowed to trade with us. If they trade with anyone else over the Wall, we will cut them off. Countries on the other side of the wall, could apply to join us on this side of the wall. In their case, the trade barriers would be dropped slowly until they finally become full democracies and comply to all of our standards.
The markets are here in West. Countries like China, cannot survive without access to them. Let's make this World a better place by forcing them to change if they want to continue to have access to our markets.
Green protectionism has also another advantage. Chances are that these countries would only be able to meet our envrionmental standards if they bougth technology from us. That would in essence create a huge demand for some of our exports.
BTW: I am sick and tired of stories that talk about some Western company that helped China crack down on their dissidents by selling them sniffing technology yadda... yadda...yadda. What the heck do you want our companies to do? They do not have the luxury of ignoring a market such as China if access to it as not closed to their competition. If they ignore it, the competition moves in. By allowing our country to trade with countries such as China and Equatorial Guinea, we leave our companies with little choice. If we care that we fill our tanks with oil that came from Equatorial Guinea (one of the most brutal, corrupt, and repressive regimes in the history of mankind), why not completely cut them off from access to our markets? If Europe, Japan, and North America did so, the World would be a much better place.
No, the Kochs are the same billionaires. They must have either figured out a way to monetize global warming, perhaps through an environment-monitoring division, or figured out that most people would rather have oil than a stable atmosphere.
Or maybe their foundation accidentally backed the wrong science. Even billionaires can hire people who make mistakes.
John
The Martian atmosphere is thin compared to Earth's but it's 95% CO2 vs only 1/2 a percent here on Terra. So there's significant heat-trapping potential complicated by the significant amount of dust in the Martian sky.
Comparing Mars, Earth and the Moon is problematic as only 1 has extensive and deep oceans, which store a huge amount of heat.
Mars also get cold enough that as much as a quarter of it's CO2 freezes out of the air at the poles during the winter.
I hear a lot of talk about warming in the solar system, mostly from denialist sycophants enamored of that bug-eyed Englishman. But they also claim that we've been in a solar lull for several years and this is one of the weakest cycles in a long while.
So what's warming the solar system?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Gates, Koch, Getty and Bowes. That's a pretty diverse group. Either you don't trust anyone or that's about as close as you are going to get to a fair determination.
Thats what they said when the report that the earth was round came out.
No no, you don't understand. It's all these vulgar poor people, with their cars that are causing global warning. It's time to send them all back to the fields to do some real work. No different than the aristocrats telling us we should eat less meat, so they can have it for themselves.
I am thinking Bill Gates this time, he doesn't have one yet - in fact Nobel Prizes for everyone !
There are lots of corporations that might be very happy with the massive infrastructure improvements needed to move to a more energy efficient economy. The coal industry is going to be against it, but even the oil industry getting excited about the potential of natural gas.
We're looking at a global extinction event and I'd like man to be able to survive it
I don't know about all that. Most people think low lying coastal areas and much of Florida are screwed, but we should have plenty of advance warning that the coastlines are receding, so I doubt many people will die due to that. The southern US won't be as productive as it has been, and the California agriculture miracle will dry up, but there is going to be plenty of land opened up too. Canada will benefit, along with the northern prairie in the US. Russia will see longer growing seasons and may become a major food exporter in the next 30-50 years. The tropics will be less inhabitable, possibly becoming more desert-like than today.
Oh, it will be wet. more heat means more water vapor and bigger rain events. That's happening now. If we're smart we will build more fresh water reservoirs and water pipelines. But I'm sure we won't do anything but complain.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
At some point, you might as well be abusive. Moon vs Earth temperatures is a good an example as any he could give. The difference between the two? Greenhouse effect. More Greenhouse leads to yet higher average temperatures.
The whole debate is not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about people fighting for their right to deny reality in exchange for clinging to their religious beliefs or a fat pay-cheque. There is no merit in that. No moral principle. The debate consists entirely on one side bringing up irrelevant and minor points and demanding that they be refuted in detail. This gives them time to come up with the next batch of irrelevant details
In some sense, the fact that this study was conducted was a huge gimmick: the outcome was obvious, and any scientist (yes even a physicist) who thinks he'll get better results than the guys from a field he's not from has a clearly overinflated ego.
It's not as if the Koch brothers are in the carbon emission credit trade... oh wait
Since this is the second time that line is misread that particular way, I'll offer an explanation, even though it should be obvious. California's government happens to go bankrupt from time to time. That doesn't make the state poor, because there are also people and companies in the state who own and produce assets that are valuable. Interesting that you would think that only the government can create or maintain value ;-)
As for why the state of California regularly goes bankrupt: having the populace vote on every tax increase is a surefire way of never getting taxes increased. If at the same time people vote pro-spending, government becomes unsustainable. Not that hard to figure out, definitely a construction failure, and fairly unrelated to the question of regulations.
(BTW slashdot sitll doesn't allow unicode? Why can't I put something as innocous as the not equal sign into the subject? It's 2012, not 1992)
Both? Seriously? Both sides? You're saying BOTH sides are not looking at the data???
Both sides don't have a problem reading the data, the data is clear cut. It's the anti-global warming lobby that's not looking at the data, using incoherent arguments, arguments based on religion, and when all else fails, pretending that *BOTH* sides are ignoring the data.
That isn't how physics works. Magnetic fields effect charged particles, not photons.
politicians think too shortterm
...but a proffesional public service doesn't, the long term energy plan for most industrial nations is to spend the next couple of centuries burning every last ounce of coal they can find.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"...Skewed for the interests of one set of billionaires.
"I have now been flipped, and am rewarded for serving the competing interest of an entirely opposed set of different billionaires.
"Everything you read is true. Especially if it is funded by large foundations."
FNORD
Precisely. Including the Illuminatus! reference.
The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else weâ(TM)ve tried.
If only we could stop the politicians from exhaling...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Of course global warming is real. And a good thing too, the average temps of a body without CO2 at 1 AU (like, I don't know, the moon?) is -10F. But it the increase is man-made, then the increased temps on Mars must be from the emissions from all those NASA rovers there, eh? Hello! The sun is a mildly variable star.
Exactly!
The human input into the global climate equation is, barring pretty much anything short of humans triggering a Krakatoa-sized volcanic eruption, fairly laughably insignificant.
The solar input into the global climate equation, however...
So, the obvious answer is to pass legislation to regulate the Sun's output.
The warming trend is happening since the last mini- ice age (around 1750); this trend is nothing to get excited about. If you want to prove Man-Made Global Warming you have to specify which part of this warming trend is unusual and likely man-made. This study did not do that.
None of these mechanisms operate on the timescale of AGW.
Actually they are found on the see floor sediment and the arctic permafrost. There are two primary different types.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/methane-hydrates-and-global-warming/
According to the USGS [usgs.gov], man-made CO2 emissions are 35 billion tons per year
First: This is a government study, and we all know those are never incorrect, right?
Second: how can this even be measured with any reasonable degree of accuracy?
He says the data doesn't prove causality because he is a scientist and there is always a tiny chance that there is something else is causing the global warming . But he says that the warming is overwhelmingly correlated to man made CO2 emissions. So yes being a scientist and not a sensationalist journalist he claims there is a tiny chance that there could be something else going on.
Why do you cherry pick the one sentence which could conceivably back your worldview when the entire article discusses how he thinks humans are entirely the root cause? He even states "Humans are almost entirely the cause." Oh yeah, its because you want to to feel OK about driving your SUV.
It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong.
In other words, he has serious doubts that hurricanes and other disasters will be the result of AGW.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That funny given Obama received $2.4 million in donations form big oil in 2008 compared to the $900k that McCain got in the same time period. So yeah big oils the funding arm of the republican party. In reality Big Oil puts its money on who it thinks will win based on the theory giving them money will influence them in there favor and it seems to of worked since the Democrats controlled majorities in the House, Senate and Presidency until the 2010 mid-terms elections and did jack shit.
NAH, people switched to SUV's because they WORK to earn a living rather than than being paid by their patricians to TALK.
I, with great gnashing of teeth, switched from a 16 year-old Subaru GL wagon to a Jeep Cheokee because my tools were too damned heavy for the Subaru to haul without growing mechanical performance issues. Now on 11 years and LOVE the "iron DUKE".
OH, and yeah, the 4WD is a NECESSITY for the 0300 morning drive through the snowbanks, or tornado warning, or high profile vehicle wind warnings to "the plant" to keep the light on and the water flowing.
Sell stocks in insurance companies and buy construction companies.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html Richard Muller has never been a skeptic, at best he had a moment of intellectual honesty towards skeptics when he acknowledged Steve McIntyre's debunking of Mann's Hockey Stick, only to later dismiss this as irrelevant to the global warming debate, "This result should not affect any of our thinking on global warming". Hardly surprising, as Muller considers the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels to be, "the greatest pollutant in human history" and likely to have, "severe and detrimental effects on global climate". The future outlook for global warming according to Muller is that, "it’s going to get much, much worse" and thus advocates that the United States immediately pay China and India hundreds of billions of dollars to cut back their carbon emissions or, "it'll be too late". No wonder he endorsed "The Earth is the Great Ship Titanic", Steven Chu as "perfect" for U.S. Energy Secretary and Al Gore's hypocritical alarmism...
Well, if you want to get really technical, most methane hydrate is under the ocean floor, but very close to the surface. It is excluded from great depths beneath the sea floor because the temperature starts rising, and that melts it. There are a few places where you can see methane hydrate directly exposed to sea water on the sea floor, but they aren't commonplace. It tends to be a bit more stable if some sediment is on the top.
Anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases (0.28%) are a drop in the bucket compared to natural sources(99.72%).
Volcanoes are only a small part of nature's contribution to greenhouse gases. Forests and decaying vegetation are far more significant contributors.
" The diversity of life has historically increased with warming".
Sure, but the same can be said of asteroid impacts; new studies have indicated that after as short as 10 million years, the biosphere has recovered and maybe even opened up a few new ecological niches by dislodging the old dominant species (bye bye dinosaurs!).
The problem is the word "short". On any human timescale, ten million years is a long time. In a few centuries which really is the blink of an eye in a geological sense, we'll be altering the climate substantially. For many species (millions?) it will be too fast for them to evolve.
So they'll die.
Global warming will NOT extinguish life on earth (well not unless we manage to cause a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus). It does have the potential of creating a less diverse world filled with crabgrass, cockroaches and rats and other generalist species (like us) that will take over. Our descendants for TENS OF THOUSANDS of generations may curse their selfish, short-sighted ancestors of the 21st century.
And Americans in particular.
BTW slashdot sitll doesn't allow unicode? Why can't I put something as innocous as the not equal sign into the subject? It's 2012, not 1992
Do I have to explain the 2002 bidirectional override incident again?
DOD, and the US Navy in particular, have considered climate change to be a major national security issue for several years. There is no question that "climate change" is occurring. As usual, what is in question is:
— Precisely what part human activity plays in concert with natural global climate cycles, and
— Even if human activity is the exclusive cause, exactly how much the US and other First World nations should dramatically alter their economies and energy strategies while developing economies and other major economies (such as China and India) do comparatively nothing, absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.
China is set to emit 50% more greenhouse gases than the US by 2015.
It doesn't matter that China has more people in the context of the climate change argument! If you identify some level x of greenhouse emissions as being a "bad" thing, then China emitting far more than the US is an extremely bad thing in terms of the effects that it would cause. One can argue that the US may be in a position to make the most impact, but with China set to significantly outpace the US in emissions and oil consumption, I think we need to take a look at what value the US taking a disproportionate hit in emissions control — and the dramatic impact that would have on our economy — would actually do for climate change that would be positive.
If the issue requires a global response — whatever the cause — then it necessarily must be a global response, not just First World nations sacrificing their entire economic and energy base, thus removing any influence they may have over the issue.
Put it another way: does anyone think that the evidence supports that China (or India, or any other developing economies) would be a better steward of this responsibility?
www.climatedepot.com
Marc Morano very clearly explains EVERY DAY why it's all a big con, he is happy to debate anybody, anywhere. LOL at the Slashdot sheep, going along with the 'party line' and acting all concerned about 'the planet' - idiots.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller/
Mitigation strategies become more expensive as "we" delay efforts to develop and apply those strategies.
There is now a huge separation of interests between those control access to concentrated capital from those whose lives are most directly affected by environmental conditions.
The "capitalists" have a strong interest in preserving their existing revenue streams. The interests of the rest of society are irrelevant. The truly poor in other countries, many of whom live in low lying areas and depend on water supplies that are already turning brackish due to the current rise of only a few inches. Such people have almost negative value to high-concentration capital operators, usually being in the way when one investment or another involves their displacement.
The Koch brothers and their friends the major fossil fuel industries have a strong interest in their current business model, and will fuck the rest of the world if necessary to prevent losses in their investments.
The delays that the Heartland Institute, and other thinktanks advocate WILL cause mitigation strategies to become prohibitively expensive and count on it coming out of our asses. The longer we wait, the more painful the movement will be.
To those who are skeptical of government intervention, I hesitantly agree, for two reasons: 1) It's been bought off by highly concentrated capitalists expressing their "free speech rights" drowning out all others in the public square, 2) Too many people have a problem with learned helplessness and are unwilling or unable to see the effects of the endless talk of "freedom", failing to see that "freedom" usually means "free to fuck over those that do not have the countervailing power to prevent it".
The place where I flat out disagree with that logic is that the people who pull the strings of highly concentrated capital are *far* worse. My preference for "government" intervention is precisely because in a society that has not entirely lost its capacity for small-D democratic action, government is weakened by the constant re-election of legislators & "leaders". Throw away that feedback loop by *endlessly* whining about "government" with the effect of ceding control to the few lever-pullers, and you will have something way more interesting.
P.S. I am a white guy in my mid-fifties who has been working in corporate environments large and small for 35+ years. I have seen the effects of narrow interests screwing over the others for most of those years. When authority is not balanced by strong accountability WITH TEETH, that authority is misused one hundred-point-zero percent of the time. Those with insufficiently accountable authority have an absolutely perfect record of misusing it.
CFLs are cheaper to operate than incandescents. Attic insulation usually pays for itself in less than two years.
Geeks and businesses understand "cheaper to operate" and "pays for itself". A lot of the general public does not, seeing only the initial sticker price. That's how anything with a razor and blades business model gets bought.
A small turbo-diesel car is far cheaper than a gasoline powered SUV.
What automaker headquartered in the United States makes turbo-diesel cars for sale in the United States? A lot of nationalistic people won't buy a "foreign" car: a Toyota made in a neighboring state is more "foreign" than a Ford made in Mexico because "the money goes back to Japan". In addition, what a lot of families need is an efficient station wagon, but a CAFE loophole has forced automakers to make SUVs instead of station wagons.
My 2010 TDI "Sportwagen" gets 35+ under constant in-town acceleration/deceleration during rush hour, gets 40+ in off-hour in-town driving, and 52+ on disciplined long trips.
Plenty of room for a custom bicycle (I am 6' 4", and the bike's frame is enlarged to accommodate exceptionally long legs). Or alternatively room for 4 people and all their luggage for a long weekend at a family wedding.
Being a slashdot poster, you should know about "refactoring". Doesn't happen enough in the software world, and it for sure doesn't happen often enough in the legislative world. But the answer is not "deregulating": which merely cedes the power to those who really want to socialize their responsibilities while privatizing their profits.
There has never been a free market. The only question to be answered is "who controls the market"? It could be, and usually is, the group who have the concentrated market power, or an entity that should be responsible to the society at large, whose capacity to design and implement the regulations is admittedly imperfect, but without that imperfect process, we're all fucked.
There are complex systems wherein small changes to X trigger large changes to Y. Why is that so hard to understand?
Uh... someone's reading a bit too much into that article.
If you read it correctly you'll see that his main conclusion is not that it's man-made at all.
It's that it exists(duh to those denying that) and that it's best correlated to CO2, and that CO2 is mostly man-made.
This is not causality though. And if you read well page2 you find out he's not going alarmist screaming like a headless chicken.
Good job slashdot on posting flamboyant titles to get attention.
and there's nothing new.
He says that temperature has definitely increased since 1753 (in the middle of the Little Ice Age!), and that he can't find anything which correlates with this apart from CO2. He doesn't appear to have heard of Svensmark.
And from this he claims that AGW is proven?
The earth has been known as roughly spherical - since 1500-1200 BC or thereabouts.
Ptolomaic astronomy, from the 2nd century AD, while geocentric, assumed a spherical earth, at the center of concentric heavenly spheres. Each of these had there own spherical planets embedded in their arc.
It is true that there were doctrines espoused by the Byzantine Church, which promoted a "Christian Cartography" that used Biblical references to mandate a flat-earth. These were always widely contested with the complete awareness of Ptolomaic models - solely on the basis of "Pagan" versus "Christian". These views were held by a minority of relatively unimportant European barbarians.
Using the idea that a "flat earth" was a commonly held belief in the middle ages does not illustrate the folly of an opposing argument. Rather, it demonstrates how fully history and "common knowledge" are propagandized folly.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
> So what's warming the solar system?
Furious wanking.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
That's probably as accurate as any of the denialist tripe
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Obligatory Monty Python:
A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS TOFFEE-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!
M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!
A: OH! Oh! I'm sorry! This is abuse!
M: Oh! Oh I see!
A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.
M: Oh...Sorry...
A: Not at all!
A: (under his breath) stupid git.
Gates, Koch, Getty and Bowes. That's a pretty diverse group of billionaires.
FTFY
Blasphemy! You can't say such things because they are against the economic religion of the times; you must be a communist! If you are not with us 100% you are a blaspheming communist!
Tariffs are evil protectionism, the almighty holy market is the decider and how dare you contradict it's wishes!
The all mighty market and its prophets (PACs) run the government and control the ignorant populace; it is so rigged you can't introduce reasonable tariffs anymore.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Indeed. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, here. There must be dozens of plausible explanations that protect our irrational left-wing hatred of the Kochs from any real scrutiny.
Rather, it demonstrates how fully history and "common knowledge" are propagandized folly.
I know... that is why I said it...
ahh religion, making humanity dumber since 1200 BC
Thanks man.
If a few more people were interested in actually presenting facts, there might not be controversy in the first place.
Honestly I've been very reluctant to accept AGW. There are plenty of people of people I respect who are sure that it is exaggerated or completely false. I hear them recount their points over and over and each article or soundbite in favor of their perspective gets discussed with enthusiasm.
I've done my own research and found that most people who write in favor of AGW do so without actually checking the science. They tend to be an abusive and dismissive group. That doesn't actually persuade me that AGW is bogus, I'm willing to accept that truth can be supported by assholes, but it does make it hard to find information. It is a lot easier to find deniers using facts and referencing studies. Again, that doesn't convince me since plenty of whackjobs think they have reliable sources.
I've heard the Mars talking point plenty of times and recall some doubt after looking it up myself, but it would have been nice to see a link to information rather than abuse.
I believe you are mistaken. From my reading of the article, the start date for the study has no impact on the results.
What they did was to take the global temperature record and various subsets of it (e.g. discarding urban measurements, adjusting for poor-quality measurement stations and so) and compare it to the record for various factors, such as volcanic eruptions, solar activity, and CO2 emissions, that could potentially affect temperature. Basically, they compared curves. They found a clear signal corresponding to volcanic eruptions, nothing measurable from solar cycles, and the best match by far was with CO2
Keep in mind that scientists do not measure global temperature: as different measurement stations go on- and offline and large areas of the Earth lack monitoring, that would be virtually impossible. This is why you never see claims that the global temperature used to be X, now it is Y. Instead, they measure changes in temperature. So if a given station measured Z degrees last year and Z' degrees this year, delta T = Z' - Z. That change can be compared with changes in measurements at other stations to get an overall fluctuation for a given time interval.
I am rather surprised you got modded down. I don't see any reason why you should have been. You are clear about your interpretation and the reasons for it.
Sorry, but there are "sides". Specifically, they are "truth" and "belief". You are harbouring the misconception that belief is altered by argument. It isn't. Real, deeply held beliefs are who you are, and they exist mostly as markers of the place you hold in society. I find it wonderful that you believe that you can convince people to stop being who they are in favour of reason.
In reality, there is no one who in good faith believes that they know better than the absurdly overwhelming majority of scientists in a field unless they either have not really thought about it, also believe that the scientific process is bunk, or that some crazy conspiracy is going on. Only in the first case can you convince people, but these are easily spotted: they don't ask stupid and/or made-up crazy shit.
Finally, scientific thinking is not about questioning everything and repeating all experiments in a fit of paranoia. Instead, it is about looking at the theory used to explain the experiments, figure out what else this theory predicts, and running _these_ experiments to attempt to either disprove or refine the theory. A blanket "you guys don't know stats, therefore your calculations must be wrong" to hundred of thousands of people in climate science was ridiculous, and indeed, he did find exactly the results which were the field consensus. Duh.
The diversity of life has historically increased with warming.
Huh? That contradicts everything I know about climate change, or any other kind of environmental change. When habitats change rapidly, many species find that their adaptations no longer apply, and go extinct. Google "warming diversity" and you'll see a lot of scientific studies with results along the lines of what I've just said.
I guess the logic of your argument is: evolution is life's way of adapting to change, therefore more change means more species. In the long run, that's actually true, but the process takes millions of years. In the short term, like the next few thousand years. we're looking at a planet with drastically reduced biodiversity. And guess what: that makes it a lot harder for humans to get by.
Which suggests that ultimately that nature will solve global warming for us, though not in a way that we'll be around to appreciate.
Has he found evidence of CO2 levels rising? Actual numbers?
1. How do you decide who you respect as far as statements about climatology? What standards do you apply?
2. Who is it that you're studying so far as arguments for AGW? Again, what standards do you apply?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Every single global warning study ignores the effect of the sun ... turning the study into nothing but propaganda. You have studies claiming numbers .... based on years where solar activities were at its highest point. Then totally ignore temperatures of years when solar activities were at a minimum.
The sad part is that many items in most studies could be considered in a serious way, if it was done in the content of environmental pollution and not GW.
Another thing that is ignored ..... all the talk about glaciers melting ... but zero talk about the fact that under most glaciers there is evidence of plant and animal life. What does that mean?? It means that the area WASN'T frozen from the beginning. So is it that we are warming up beyond natural temperatures or are we at the end of a recovery from an ice age?
Man made CO2 emissions can be calculated. For instance burning a ton of coal that is about 70% carbon produces about 2.5 tons of CO2. You can do similar calculations for other fossil fuels. We have pretty good numbers on how much fossil fuels are being used.
Is it really so hard to identify the characters that cause problems and outlaw them?
Yes, because a future version of Unicode may introduce more such characters. Google blacklist vs whitelist for the security principle involved.
The corn yield this year is due to the "largest drought in 50 years". http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-27/news/sns-rt-us-usa-grains-tourbre86q1hf-20120727_1_crop-tour-soy-crops-corn Our records on droughts in the continental US only go back about 110. The climate models predict continental centers drying out - a cycle of drought does not disprove or counter this.
Please help metamoderate.
Why can't I put something as innocous as the not equal sign into the subject?
No problem for me!
CO2 follows the rise in temperatures.
I won't believe it until we've watched most of the world's crops wither away causing widespread famine. And even then I won't believe it. It would have happened anyway. Nope nope nope. Science is a sham.
I don't think you get what happens when the global climate changes. Sure things get hotter or colder, but also, water distribution changes drastically as well. This is partly why we find marine life fossils in deserts. So it's not just that water levels change, but rain and weather patterns (which is really just a fancy way of expressing rain) change, temperature changes and all that. With this, wild plant life will suffer as will the lower animals which depend on those plants... and neither will migrate on their own so easily.
Man will, no doubt, be able to keep up with some elements of the changes in eco systems, but we're not particularly good at it as we still make really stupid mistakes on a frequent basis... you know, like putting frogs where they don't belong or creating GM foods which, in theory, kill insects but which actually end up breeding super-resistant insects that are even harder to kill than before. (Harder to kill and quick to reproduce means potential plagues of biblical proportions)
People are NOT looking forward enough and not seeing the whole of the world.
Mars actually has 15 times the partial pressure of CO2 compared to Earth,
Mars 0.9532 CO2 * 0.636 kPa = 0.6062352 kPa CO2, (210 K mean temp; 590.589 (W/m2 above atmosphere))
Earth 0.00038 CO2 * 101.325 kPa = 0.039010125 kPa CO2, (287.2 K mean temp; 1,366 (W/m2 above atmosphere))
0.606 / 0.039 = 15.54
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The Mars idea claims that increased solar irradiance is the cause for warming on both Earth and Mars, hence warming is unrelated to human activity. However we've had SoHo measuring the Sun from outside the Earth's atmosphere and it does not show increased irradiance. In fact when I looked at the data we seem to be close to a minimum.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.4524&ei=7IMVUOWhJqTg0QGDoIGACQ&usg=AFQjCNH4sheVAbaAZfcaDDY6LVKdg-MM8A&sig2=4CmVW9NY1BXtoGQrHnyG4w
well, technically 0AD should be the point when that started happening. his reference to 1200BC was a matter of when a round earth was first postulated. somewhere around 200BC was the first time the circumference had been accurately calculated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes ....
prior to 0AD there was even a popular "religion" that believed and sought proof of atoms and particles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism . oh where we would be today if it weren't for 0AD
That may be Muller's own opinion, but that is NOT what the Berkeley study says.
The only thing Berkeley has done so far is to gather their own statistics about land surface temperatures. That data does -- roughly -- tend to support other climate scientists statistics about PAST surface temperatures. But that's ALL it does. So far they have not even compiled ocean temperatures yet... much less come to any conclusions about CAUSE.
This article is nothing but more propaganda. The Berkeley study ONLY tends to confirm PAST, LAND, temperatures. That's all it does. They do not even have the data yet to even TRY to make conclusions about causes.
It clearly sounds like the end-times.... ;o)
I think the biggest danger may well be (as it has always been) religious nutters
Most Unicode characters are more useful for making what used to be called ASCII art than for conveying thoughts in English. The letter in Oriya script representing long î (U+0B08) looks more like the head of a Smurf than anything else. And Slashdot used to have serious problems with vandals posting ASCII art of obscene gestures.
Anthony Watts just posted some new information regarding errors in the BEST data. Perhaps Richard Muller will need to re-evaluate his "skepticism." http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
There are two glasses of water that have just been poured from the same carafe. The water is the same temperature, but one of the glasses contains ice poured from the carafe. They are both sitting next to each other on the same table in the sun. Add thermometers to take the temperature every minute. Chart it. Predict the result?
You see, the Earth is like a big glass of water with huge ice cubes on either end. The real question is what will happen to the temperature of the Earth after the poles and glaciers lose all of their ice?
Milutin Milankovic found this out (published in 1930?), however (according to the Wikipedia page; I'm not an expert) these "orbital forcings" produce temperature oscillations on the timescale of tens of thousands of years! The quickest of the three cycles described says, that the orbital forcing by axial tilt produced a maximum warming effect at 8 700 B.C. (think: before Jerusalem and before Babylon, in the time of Jericho when there were still woolly mammoths and agriculture was invented etc.) and is now slowly "cooling down" (predicting a DOWNWARD temperature trend) until the minimum at the year 11 800 (think: the Plutonium in Yucca Mountain nuclear waste has decayed to 75% of its current strength).
Therefore, orbital forcing can not be used to predict or explain a temperature change that occurs in the time period of only 200 years.
Your timescale is wrong.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Man, what have you been smoking?
The Earth's axis of rotation has not shifted significantly. As tmosely noted magnetic fields don't affect photons which are 99.999% of the energy we receive from the Sun. The magnetic pole's position does not affect the amount of sunlight that shines on any place on the Earth.
I see that the BEST data shows that there has been a significant rise in the Earth's temperature. But this may not be important any more.
Anthony Watts has just come up with his big 'Surface Stations' study, using the new Leroy methodology. This show that all the US temperature trend figures are 'spuriously doubled'.
If this paper holds, it will be a huge hole driven in the whole basis of the Global Warming hypothesis...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/#more-68286 refers...
Depends on how you define "ocean floor". It's in the sediment.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
There really isn't much at all.
Now, I can hear it now..."It's Watts...disregard".
But if you fuckers believe even a little bit of what you spout about science you will at least check the link. I doubt you will because you fucks are the most closed minded people around. If something doesn't support your position, you disregard it. Closed minded, dogmatic and ignorant.
Interesting hypothesis (not!). Now find the causal link between weather and the magnetic pole (as opposed to the rotational pole) moving.
I agree that if I were to see nothing but that graph and then those two predictions, I'd say that the more conservative one seems more likely. However, the fact that most of the scientific community doesn't agree with me sounds like pretty convincing indication that there is something more complicated going on and that I - having no expertise in this subject - shouldn't give much weight to my own guesses over the predictions of those who study the subject for living.
So... do you happen to have any actual expertise in this field, so that it would make sense for me to care about your thoughts here?
Then there are the Pythagorians which killed someone because they discovered irrational numbers. They also had a thing about people eating beans...
The bit of unfortunate sensationalism could justly back-fire all over our esteemed Dr. Miller and his ... 'findings'.
Curve fitting is not Science.
Belief is a word of Religion, not Science.
Journalism however well intentioned the News Paper Organization, a Web Site or a Blog Post is not Science.
Unfortunate that these simple truths escape our esteemed Doctor.
LoL
But Bush-the-Elder's friends? Now that carries some weight!
That would sound reasonable, but alas, that is not how the cognitive bubble works. It will be more like this:
Yes, indeed, expect Muller's BEST to have no practical effect on the cognitive bubble. That is why it is called denial.
If history has any lessons, it is that we will literally have to wait until the deniers die of old age before their "discourse" disappears into history.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Now, wake me up when the AGW loons decide that nuclear is better than coal, and I'll start taking them seriously.
Since you already have the solutions, you may have missed the fact that wind-power is just about to become cheaper than coal. And that's when we /don't/ factor in coal subsidies, which /includes/ treating the atmosphere as a free garbage dump.
It'll only be 5 years or so.
Would that make a difference to your fantasy-land? Or do you believe that we should let coal pollute for free, get additional government subsidies, and then only be replaced by nuclear, because only liberals like wind. Well??
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
But the cheap and dirty solution is always going to be cheaper than the economically responsible and affordable solution.
That would be depressing if it were true. But coal will become more expensive than wind in about 5 years. And we have every reason to expect that it will soon be more expensive than solar, but that will take longer.
Sure we need base-load power as well; however, there are many possible solutions in the works for that too.
I believe that conservatives are rightly suspicious of environmental paranoia; however, the suspicion goes too far. AGW is a real and present danger to our civilization, as the science clearly demonstrates. Also, the economics of addressing climate change really aren't that bad. Germany has been doing it, and they managed to grow their economy 3% p.a., during a global recession. Cap-and-trade has been shown to have a negligible (if any) impact on the economy, and it does reduce emissions. In short, conservatives are guilty of economic alarmism.
But I also believe that we would have been ill-served by rolling out massive wind/solar installations in the 80s/90s. (We had consensus in the scientific community in 1979, according to a NAS report from that year.) The technology was too immature. The system of grants and subsidies has helped move these technologies along tremendously, and they are almost ready for prime-time. We are less then a decade from a major shift in energy policy.
With the benefit of hindsight, I believe that we would have been best served by a carbon tax that went directly into technology R&D project, small-scale installations, and subsidies for quality energy efficient housing. It is difficult to know if this would have sped the development of technology, since society has already invested heavily in such projects. However, it would have prevented the misallocation of resources by those who -- for ideological reasons -- believe that the fossil-fuel party will last forever.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
2. Anonymously leak memos that show "scientists" you funded were making up data
3. Have FoxNews report "Scientists make up data, Global Warming a Fraud!" without reporting who paid the scientists.
4. Completely discredit all global warming research by association.
5. Profit!!
6. ??????
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
but the USGS didn't factor in the Methane releases and Methane is a more effective Green House Gas then CO2 ever was.
This is true, and the amount of methane in permafrost and on the ocean floor is stupendous; however, CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for 1000s of years. Methane is more like 2-5 years.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Even economics? It doesn't take much time to find all the economists saying there was no problem in 2007+ just as the current world "economic slowdown" (depression) was showing up.
On this very day, two years ago, the Koch bothers both scoffed at the news: http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/29/167253/global-warming-undeniable-report-says?sbsrc=thisday
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Well, that's well and good, but are the other planets warming or not? This is an important empirical question. We can speculate as to the cause or lack thereof AFTER determining if the initial assertion is true.
If poor countries can't grow their own food, subsidizing developed countries to grow it for them is not the solution. It's the fucking problem.
Beautifully put. In a bitterly beautiful way
Google "total solar irradiance". We've had direct satellite measurements of solar flux since 1978.
Imagine the climate is a glass of water, and the water level is temperature.
I was going to briefly post somewhere under this story to mention that measured temperature changes were accidentally doubled
But then I saw your post and realized that real science is totally lost upon the race of fear-inducing mouth breathers that are the core that remains of the AGW Warmists. I'll read no more Warming Cult stuff on Slashdot, you all are beyond hope.
I mean, can you even dress yourself? "Climate is like a glass of water, we are adding more water"....
HOLY CRAP SLASHDOT is 4CHAN.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How are you going to sequester the C02 coming out of your tailpipe
Electric cars displace emissions to the power plant.
and going up your furnace flue?
Heat pump (air conditioner run in reverse) and/or geothermal heating, at least for those months when outdoor temperatures aren't literally freezing.
One of the distinguishing features of self-styled "skeptics" of climate science is that their skepticism is amazingly one sided; they seem to become utterly credulous regarding any argument, no matter how blatantly lame, that seems to cast doubt on the reality of global warming. The "It's warming on Mars!" claim (accepted by many "skeptics" as unquestioned truth) is an excellent example. Of course, a genuine skeptic would immediately think, "Wait a minute. There can't be a lot of thermometers on Mars, and they can't have been there very long. I wonder how you measure a multi-decadal temperature trend on Mars? Just how good is the evidence for a warming trend on Mars, anyway?" Not very good, as it turns out.
Similarly, any genuine skeptic, hearing the claim that warming is due to the sun being a "mildly variable star" would immediately think, "Wait a minute. Thus sun is clearly visible up there in the sky. It can't be that hard to measure solar radiance. Is it really plausible that scientists haven't thought to check that?" They have. It's not the sun.
Most of the time anything with the word " Berkeley" in it indicates the presence of biased leftists.
SO Im sure that this 'study' will be releasing all its data and analysis methodes and data collection methodologies the way REAL science is supposed to so that others can inspect its validity.
Sorry if you already destroyed the data and wont disclose method and process, but thats what REAL science expects.
Just more lemmings for Algores moron parade ???
Seriously, where was this guy 20 years ago? The basic idea of global warming is not that hard to understand, and we've had decades to work it all out, now. Frankly, this guy's rejection of the "large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs" in favor of shape fitting (one of my former profs joked that he could fit a curve to the New York skyline with only 3 free variables) has all the hallmarks of a student laboriously working out for himself the implications of the reading he chose not to do; it works, and maybe he himself has a better appreciation of some of the finer points of the gross theory, but otherwise it was nothing but a waste of time and money. I am frankly convinced that it is too late to stop the worst consequences and that we need to start preparing to deal with the it. Personally, I won't miss Florida... As for what we could have done, my not-so-humble opinion is that subsidizing energy lead to profligate use and that people would drive smaller cars less often if gas cost $15/gal.
Why stop there? Maybe the whole galaxy is heating up. Demand the exoplanet termperatures.
They are monetizing it thrum carbon credits. The carbon credits industry is going to be huge.,
Calling the scientific consensus "truth" is begging the question. The scientific method is akin to credit for work shown rather than credit for correct answers (i.e. faith), so the honest argument is already over when "truth" starts getting thrown around. But based on the rest of your post, I suppose I'm preaching to the choir.
You may be correct about the whole "global weirding" thing ... but where's the evidence that us spending billions on "drastically reducing our consumption of carbon" would provide benefits in a reasonable time-frame??
That's the "sticking point" I see that's not adequately studied or addressed. It's too easy to spread fear around, and motivate people to "Start acting now!" (which usually equates to convincing government to fork over big subsidies to specific industries who claim to sell some of the solutions).
Let's not forget, for example, that this is GLOBAL warming we're talking about (even if it's popular now to call it "climate change" instead). It's not USA warming. With nations like China having far larger populations than the U.S. does, I fail to see how even a drastic reduction on the part of the U.S. would necessarily turn the problem around before it can cause the negative impact people are trying to prevent? You'd have to get the entire world on-board with these drastic changes, and I don't imagine some of the biggest contributors will show much interest.
On top of that, it seems to me like cleaner alternative forms of energy are going to come about as a natural progression of things, regardless of trying to "force" them to come about with legislation. We're fairly certain we're not going to see the price of oil dropping significantly in the future. Long before we actually use it all up, we'll hit the point where extracting it is simply a costly enough process that other alternatives start making more economic sense. Many places already want to move away from burning coal, simply because it creates pollution in the vicinity of where it's burnt (AND because cleaner burning natural gas is currently cheaper and more plentiful). This would hold true even if the climate change theory never even existed.
I'm not one of the "deniers", but I *do* know from history that government often rushes to provide solutions without realizing all of the ramifications of implementing those new changes and laws. I'd say that in most cases, it turns out we were better off without the artificial interference. (Remember the "oxygenated gasoline" mandate not that long ago, that demanded people use the alternate mix of fuel because it didn't cause as much air pollution? Not long after it was put into law, they discovered the oxygenated mix had an increased tendency to leech into ground-water and cause pollution that way, AND it gave cars less miles-per-gallon than the traditional mixture, meaning people burnt more of it. So essentially, we were better off not mandating the change at all.)
I strongly believe our plant is pretty capable of balancing things out in the long run. We only have so many natural resources of a given type to utilize, and the basics laws of physics make certain guarantees too (such as us being unable to create or destroy matter ... the finite amount we have is simply converted from one substance to another). I think I'd rather trust that than making drastic lifestyle changes that could horribly impact the quality of our lives. Scientists just decided in the last decade or less that humans created this scenario over 200-some years that we THINK we can MAYBE reverse in short order by giving up our primary forms of energy. THAT sounds less that convincing.
People who "switched to SUVs" almost always did so because they found a larger vehicle useful, and the trend was to move away from such options as full-size conversion vans or full-size station wagons.
It's ridiculous to pretend that before the SUV, everyone only drove small, economic vehicles.
What's actually happening now is we're seeing the fuel economy improve on such vehicles, since high sales volume leads to justification to invest more R&D in improving them. My Jeep Patriot 4x4 with an automatic (technically CVT) transmission got an average of 26-27MPG. That's really not too horrible for a box-shaped 4 wheel drive SUV.
The fact that modern economy cars give more leg room or more comfortable back seats than in the past isn't that relevant. What about pet owners, for example? A lot of SUV drivers I know have 1 or 2 large dogs they need to transport around regularly, and they want that enclosed space in the back of an SUV, vs. dogs laying across back seats intended for humans.
It is more than evidence, but "truth" was ill advised as a choice of word. "Search for truth" would've been better.
From the point of view of science, the goal is to establish theories, and this is done through trying (and failing) to find evidence to disprove them. To me theories are truth -- but truth until they get superseded. People frequently say "but science has been wrong so many times in the past", but this is not true: each time theories were demoted to "models" (sometimes still useful, like Newton's gravitation, sometimes not, like the epicycles describing the movement of planets).
The Earth is flat: if you map a walk taking into account the curvature of the planet, you are a crazy person! The Earth is round: if you consider it flat when piloting an intercontinental flight, you are a crazy person! The Earth is a weird-shaped blob: if you consider it to be a perfect sphere when programming your GPS satellite, you are a crazy person!
Evidence only has meaning when illuminated by a theory, otherwise, it is noise. So "search for truth" it is :)
just a couple years ago here i thought we came to a consensus that we could never trust anything koch bros-related...
How big bribe did this required?
we have a Ford Focus hatchback - easily seats 5 with a fair amount of cargo space, maybe 6 if the people in the back seat are small. Gas mileage is something in the mid-20s.
Also, you could fold down one or two of the back seats for a lot more cargo space, especially if you need the extra cargo space only occasionally.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Watts squirming?
That ain't half of it. The tag wattsupwiththat.com/tag/berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/ should point to BEST but currently directs to Watts' OWN new paper.
The guy just went over 9000.
...doesn't exist. The Kochs donate to a lot of things beneficial to society...actually more than they donate to politicians. I can boldly say this, because, yes...I worked for a Koch funded organization. Hardly anything "conspiratorial" about it. I don't agree with some of their political donations, (though their political views are actually quite different that the GOP candidates they donate to; since they are very Libertarian, pro-gay marriage, legalization of drugs, etc.) but they do a lot of good things...that you will NEVER hear in the press. I'll even say this without being anonymous, because why should I? They've done a lot more good than they've done bad. Soros probably has too.
Some of us are working on that.
... eliminate its cause. Now that its cause has been decided upon ... something a nuclear winter can fix.
Seriously, reducing a carbon footprint is often expensive. I'd put enough solar panels on my house to forget about electric bills, if it didn't cost tens of thousands of dollars and over 40 years to offset the cost (even with tax incentives). Three things keep me from a Prius/electric cars; 1. The look (I know, I'm superficial or whatever) and 2. Again, price. I can't just up and buy a new vehicle. I already did that once and I'm paying for it, 3. All electric crap, no charging stations/few and far between. Supporting free range/vegan vegies/etc., costs a shit ton. Ten bucks for 2 carrots, 20$ for half a dozen eggs. I can bike around town, sure, if I had a bike (the cost of that is not included in "too expensive, fuck green" post.) If anybody has ways I can reduce my carbon footprint without breaking my bank (preferably free), feel free to tell me.
Just retreat into your own little world making up new words to talk to your fellow reality refugees, words like warmists.
Your religion of greed and denial and suppressed guilt is so strong it has overthrown your reason, and you mumble nonsense in your fever.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Dude, seriously, don't post links from the "wattsupwiththat" site. Its almost as bad as posting links from creation science ministries or a homeopathy site.
Bad cranky un-science from a noted pseudoscience peddler.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
They could build most devices to last a solid decade now, yet the majority of our items are designed for the dump, why?
Because most people shop based on price and will take the $80 food processor over the $130 food processor? Even if the latter lasts many more years?
They produce what people will want to buy. As long as people are willing to buy cheap crap, they will produce cheap crap.
Our descendants for TENS OF THOUSANDS of generations may curse their selfish, short-sighted ancestors of the 21st century.
And Americans in particular.
This imply the assumption the human race survives GW.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I could feel a shift in the weather patterns in my bones from mid 70s into the 80s. Things changed, the Winters had changed, and they haven't been the same since. I used to talk about this back then, and people thought it was paranoid bullshit. If you paid attention to environmental issues, it wasn't surprising.
I've been giving this all some thought over the decades as we shift into twilight, and here are my thoughts on it all. Hydrocarbons, we are goofy when it comes to burning them for fuel. Our footprint is too big, and we don't have enough deep green foliage to do deep photosynthesis. We need to reside under the canopy of deep green if we can. If not, we build under what foliage we can find. Our thermal/heat sink footprint is too high. It's our structures and a lot of it is concrete.
We set by and watched Brazil trash the Amazon rain forest. We have patches of trash in our ocean the size of Texas. Forests of smoke stacks puke God only knows what into the sky. We burn the fuck out of hydrocarbons in about everything. Start adding it all up and it's insanity.
Too big to fail. Does that work with ecosystems?
Take the Red Pill.
That story reads like a testimonial and I could hardly get off of the ground with it.
1. I am a "converted skeptic", after...
2. "I intepreted the data" from a study...
3. conducted by a research center that "I founded with my daughter"..
4. that used new mathematical models "created by our lead researcher."
I stopped reading after that.
Oh lemme see....now.
The global banking system has been looted, and is in collapse and guess what? A bunch of bankers decide they need a carbon credits trading system to tax all living things on the planet and just can't figure out how to do it?
Oh I know, lets just make a study up and tell everyone no no, Man made climate change is real and everyone has to pay us a carbon tax so that we can save the planet. You know....only BANKERS can save the planet.
What a BUNCH OF CRAP.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
It depends on the quality of that beef. If you have really good-quality beef, that's hard to beat. But poor-quality? That's not worth eating. Give me any of the others any day.
There are lots of corporations that might be very happy with the massive infrastructure improvements needed to move to a more energy efficient economy. The coal industry is going to be against it, but even the oil industry getting excited about the potential of natural gas.
Any time there is change you can predict, corporations want in. Actually, most investors will want in. Everyone wants to be an early investor in something that will pay off.
The debate consists entirely on one side bringing up irrelevant and minor points and demanding that they be refuted in detail. This gives them time to come up with the next batch of irrelevant details
Which is pretty much the principle that pseudo-scientists, scammers, religious and other people are following as well.
The thing is that the human mind does not work rationally or scientifically, but it does defend what it has decided upon as truth - sometimes to the death.
The real issue here is neither meteorological nor political, it is psychological. And I claim that if we find a cure to religion, we've also found our solution to climate-change denial and Bushism.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Except that now the $130 food processor does NOT "last a few more years" it just has a better brand name and/or a few more features but dies just as quickly. Hell between the crap soldier and the making every damned thing out of plastic that $1000 laptop doesn't last a damned bit longer than the $450 as the fans are just as crappy, the heatsinks just as thin, again they complete on brand or feature NOT on durability.
You see it as "people buy on price therefor crap" but frankly I see just the opposite "everything crap therefor buy on price" because everyone I know that bought the more expensive TV, laptop, stereo, cell phone, etc? Frankly it didn't last a damned bit longer than the cheap crap sitting next to it, so why pay more?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yes I am a tree-hugger, but I am also a realist. If we continue to screw up this world, WE will die out, not nature.
To quote the great George Carlin: 'Nature will shake us off like a bad cold. Another failed experiment'.
Kinda makes you sad to think that we have come this far, simply to fall on the last few meters.
Hehe... Here's a couple of great quotes:
"Don't pray in my school, and I won't think in your church"
-- Unknown --
"'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche --
"Science gave us planes, religion gave us 9/11."
-- Daniel Schultz --
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
I wonder why the US is the only country which claims that there is no human made global warming. Everywhere else the discussion has ended and we all 6.5 billion people think that we have to do something about it. A) we have to reduce CO2-production (which we have to reduce anyway, as the resource is limited) and B) prepare for the impact of the already ongoing climate change.
Depending on the rise of the sea level, we have to move cities like Beijing, New York, London, Hamburg, and L.A.. Furthermore we will loose a lot of agricultural usable land. Instead of discussion if there is a global climate change or not, we should address the issues.
not unless we manage to cause a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus
Even then, life will go on. It may not be very complex life (then again, who knows?), but something will survive.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
If it were not for Democrats, starting with anti-nuclear Jimmy Carter, we would have 100% carbon free energy by now. That will never happen when the whole goal is not to fix the supposed problem but to increase government power. Before Global warming was the boogey-man, it was the OZONE HOLE!!! It was bad, getting worse and going to end all life on earth. Then, unexpectedly the quacks jumped to Global Warming. The "massive coastal flooding" scare is my favorite. Its the thing that is always just over the horizon, will surely be here soon, drown Manhattan Island, all of Florida underwater, definitely gonna happen but never quite does. I am sure though that the quacks will be saying 1000 years from now that it will surely happen, just in the near future, not right then. Nothing will stop a true believer in Global Warming if they lived 10,000 years.
What happened to hurricanes?????? They said hurricanes were going to be more numerous and more intense, and their computer said so! They've just about disappeared completely and proven their computer models wrong. We could use 10 hurricanes right now to break the drought. But no, like everything else they told us would surely absolutely definitely happen, it kind of went out the memory hole. Its hard to believe a climate-man who gets 100% of his predictions wrong. At some point there must be some provable evidence or you are just chasing wind. Year before last the temperature in the south got into the single digits in January. It had not been that cold in a LONG time. Oh and since drought is proof of global warming, 2 summers ago it must have gone away since it rained more in the south then it ever did in history.
Your attitude shows you have no regard for real science. You are simply one of those enviro-wackos who will spout any line available as long as it promotes your extreme agenda of government control, higher taxes and less freedom.
That's why numbers are reported as C02e, not C02.
See, for example, http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/sustainability/latest_thinking/costcurves, where the reports talk about GHG emissions in terms of GtC02e.
Why would this work differently from any other field of scientific endeavour? Say, virology, or fluid dynamics, or pharmacology, etc? In every field, people who've studied it forever are going to be the first port-of-call vs people who've studied some other branch of science.
Time to set up your own food system if you think this is the future. I say aquaponics seems like a good plan, at least until the atmosphere turns to hell.
Perhaps this time Mr. Muller has bothered to send his stuff through peer review before issuing press releases.
Or perhaps the funders don't actually determine the outcome.
Except that the public opinion IS changing.
http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-101/
http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-104/
http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-105/
Also, the price of solar power is falling fast, and wind price is going down too. It is predicted that half the world will reach residential solar grid parity as early as *2015*; wind will reach grid parity by 2025. And there are even other options such as next-generation nuclear.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
So even though AGW is probably real, rest assured that free market is moving in the right direction. Also, public opinion is becoming ever more willing to have the government interfere and accelerate the process.
See http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/11-3-11-102/
If you are serious, I'd suggest starting with Skeptical Science. They don't allow abusive comments either for or against AGW and there's a ton of information there. Start with the Big Picture link and they'll lay out a very convincing science based case for AGW.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Of course we are causing global warming, and so what? It is the natural result of nature's experiment with high intelligence. And nature is finding out that high intelligence is pathological in a species and always results in its self destruction. Peabrained dinosaurs lived for hundreds of millions of years because they conformed to their environment and were killed by it when it wanted them dead. Not so humans. We alter the environment to suit our own survival and increase. We exploit its resources to that end. We spend our lives creating order out of chaos and beltching entropy out the tailpipe. Our behavior is natural, unavoidable, and inevitably fatal. Shrug.
E Proelio Veritas.
Global warming by itself might not end life on this planet. But human beings using conventional and/or/eventually nuclear weapons to persuade other human beings to surrender their arable land and/or water...that's a different - but consequential - extinction event altogether.
It would be difficult to assert that humans would not make war for survival given that they have demonstrated a willingness to make war for oil - oil that is more of an enabler of human leisure activities, in reality, than a survival prerequisite like food and water.
(Although - to continue the emphasis on reality - oil wars are more about enabling or continuing the harvesting of the effectively imaginary wealth that is generated by the trade in oil.)
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Have you tried getting them to stop inhaling first? Unless some of the AGW skeptics on here want to argue on the cause-and-effect relationship between inhaling and exhaling, I'm pretty sure you have to stop one to get the other to stop.
NOAA overstates warming: study
What was once true, is no longer so
There could be a good reason why Charles Koch's foundation might give money to support the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study.
But let us separate that from 1) Muller's use of the temperature data, and 2) Muller's claim that he's a "recently converted skeptic", which is a flat-out lie as he has always been a warmist.
Even other warmists are ridiculing Muller's article, including scientists who used to co-author papers with him.
1) This is very old and FAILED the review process and didn't get published
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/why-the-best-papers-failed-to-pass-peer-review/#more-68366
2) It has been superceded by some correctly done science that shows "New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/#more-68286
3) Even one of his co-researchers on some are unimpressed
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/30/observation-based-attribution/
That's the real problem with deniers- they're essentially throwing in their lot with likes of the Young Earth believers and evolution deniers. For all these groups the sheer number and the basic nature of things that would have to be fundamentally misunderstood and actually different from what they are, yet somehow all conspire to give the same results as if the scientists were correct is impossible.
For Young Earthers, you can't deny carbon dating, for instance, because the follow on consequences of it being wrong in completely different fields would imply even MORE basic things were wrong and in need of a new set of explanations which coincidentally give us the same results. The fan out from carbon dating being an error essentially leaves only magic as a possible explanation for all of science.
So also with human caused global warming. The burden of having to account for the observed events and findings as the pieces start to lock together into a coherent whole, the odds that you'll be able to do that and still be doing what we call science are effectively nil.
Even Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics and God playing dice. At some point, the mountain of evidence is not just too high, but too casually interlinked to supporting lines of evidence and in fact to facts which are not even related to the field in question that any future explanation is only an elaboration of the theory, not a refutation of the theory.
Blaming America for this is strange. Other countries have contributed a lot more (overall and per GDP) CO2.
On the other hand, if you compare today's $200 full-page scanner with the $3000 scanner of the late 1990s -- the latter was built like a tank, considerably more so than even the $3000 scanner of today.
Complaining about how things that used to be built to last are being built to be cheap today doesn't mean that expensive things today are built with the durability of expensive things of yesteryear.
I'm sure the Koch Brother's personal shill and PR blatherers (Limbaugh, Hannity, and Co) are already diiging into Dr Muller's past to find any Socialist Sympathies.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imma just put this here since you didn't read it the first time:
The debate consists entirely on one side bringing up irrelevant and minor points and demanding that they be refuted in detail. This gives them time to come up with the next batch of irrelevant details
You're confusing the funders with the people doing the research.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No, I'm responding to a claim that the funders would create bias in the researchers but pointing out the funders are diverse. If you don't believe funders have an influence on the results of research your issue is with the GP.
"Our descendants for TENS OF THOUSANDS of generations may curse their selfish, short-sighted ancestors of the 21st century.
And Americans in particular."
Depends who writes the history books.
I wish I could be treated by them, but I want properly evaluated evidence that their claims are true. Without regulation, who know what that treatment could do to what's left of my knees?
Thanks for agreeing with me, but the poster I was responding to say the reason things WERE CRAP was because people only buy the cheapest crap and therefor only crap gets made. You point is exactly what i was talking about, that $3000 scanner today is just as flimsy, made with crappy thin boards and lousy parts, no different than the $200 scanner. Today they instead focus on adding more features or a better branding but NOT on quality.
I know plenty of people that will buy the more expensive unit, be it laptops or TVs or office gear or whatever, in the belief that like the old days the more expensive units will last longer, only to see first hand as they end up with the same results I told them they'd get. They get a little more speed, or more features, or a fancier label but they don't get a single day longer life out of those units they paid out the ass for.
Frankly for most electronics it doesn't matter how much you pay, its all "designed for the dump" cheapo Chinese crap.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not clear on the implications of that. Please explain, thanks.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Muller's claim that he's a "recently converted skeptic", which is a flat-out lie as he has always been a warmist.
Prove it please. This article from 2004: Global Warming Bombshell shows his earlier skeptic bonifides. True, even in this article he is concerned that global warming may be real, but he is skeptical of the research and was repeatedly so (see Quotes by Richard Muller. Remember that he did get support from the Koch Brothers who are not ones who would knowingly fund a "warmist". The main difference between him and most other skeptics was that he did not reject AGW out of hand and had a degree of open mindedness and honestly that lead him to do primary independent research which lead him to change his mind, thus proving that honest global warming skeptic doesn't always have to be a oxymoron.
Our descendants for TENS OF THOUSANDS of generations may curse their selfish, short-sighted ancestors of the 21st century. And Americans in particular.
Then fuck them. We are to squander our opportunities now (Which I might had has the potential to improve those lives far beyond mere biodiversity) because of TENS OF THOUSANDS of incompetent generations? If they want biodiversity, then they can make it.
As I see it, if we curb our civilization we can make one world with a huge diversity of life. If we don't hold back, we potentially can make millions of such worlds.
Curious that you didn't mention the Chinese, whose emissions are actually greater at this point
"Last human on earth whose mind is not made up about AGW one way or the other finally vets data from 1990-era correlation argument to his satisfaction, decides to save time by accepting microscopic scrutiny of mechanism which has occupied the rest of us since then as valid"
Heh. Killed for discovering irrational numbers. Imagine that obituary...
But the beans thing does have some science - its due to a condition called 'favism' (G6PD deficiency in modern parlance), where eating fava beans can cause haemolytic anaemia, which can have some significant negative consequences. The condition does protect against malaria somewhat, so it has an interesting population distribution, being more common in regions where malaria has been endemic for a long time.
Since Mars has 15 times as much CO2 in it's atmosphere, it's reasonable to assume that even with half the insolation, its temperatures would be more Earth-like, if CO2 were the main driver of planetary heat retention; yet that's not the case.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Except that now the $130 food processor does NOT "last a few more years" it just has a better brand name and/or a few more features but dies just as quickly. Hell between the crap soldier and the making every damned thing out of plastic that $1000 laptop doesn't last a damned bit longer than the $450 as the fans are just as crappy, the heatsinks just as thin, again they complete on brand or feature NOT on durability.
Yup. This. Sure, sometimes the pricier thing is better quality. But plenty of times it's just not. It's the same cheap shit with a fancier faceplate and c ouple more useless LEDs. there's just hardly any way for a consumer to know what's quality anymore. The only way is online reviews which have their own set of problems like rampant shilling.
You see it as "people buy on price therefor crap" but frankly I see just the opposite "everything crap therefor buy on price" because everyone I know that bought the more expensive TV, laptop, stereo, cell phone, etc? Frankly it didn't last a damned bit longer than the cheap crap sitting next to it, so why pay more?
Unfortunately, this is the rational response. Since you really have no way of knowing which higher-priced stuff is actually better quality, it's rational to assume it's all cheap crap and save money by always buying the chepest thing and assuming it will break.
Digging further into the details of Martian climate, I see we may be both oversimplifying it.
The very high percentage of CO2 notwithstanding, Mars thermal inertia is very low, in its very thin atmosphere, its soil and lack of liquid water.
I imagine its eccentric orbit doesn't help.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Other planets in the solar system warming is irrelevant? You and I disagree on the definition of that particular word, apparently.
Much simpler than Earth, we're still debating whether clouds are a positive, negative or both feedback; but the science is settled.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I don't think I'm twisting logic at all here....
First of all, most of the researchers studying climate, I'd say, are primarily motivated to report all of the details they come up with of negative implications of the situation (from doing extensive computer modeling, making charts with predictions based on previously gathered data put in a sequence, etc.). Understandable, but that can be a "can't see the forest for the trees" situation. Does anyone know for CERTAIN what the eventual outcome will be? No... but throughout history, scientists have been making predictive models and been largely incorrect.
For example, back in WWII, the military consulted with scientists when developing the atomic bomb, and were warned that detonating a nuclear bomb in the air could cause the upper layers of the atmosphere to catch on fire and literally burn away, pretty much ending life as we know it. The military obviously decided to ignore that advice and continued testing their nuclear weapons anyway -- and it turns out that no, those scientists predicted incorrectly. On a more mundane, daily basis, I get weather forecasts that are almost invariably wrong. Expect rain on Thursday? Nope... it's bright and sunny all day! Highs in the low 90's? Nope, 104! Despite all the research going into weather prediction, I can give a guess that's as good as anything they come up with for the next day's forecast, and beyond that -- nobody seems to provide anything much better than random guesses.
Where you and I disagree seems pretty simple. You feel it's got to be worthwhile to "do something" vs. "sitting back and doing nothing". I, on the other hand, feel that most of us think a little bit too highly of ourselves and our ability to "save the planet" or "save us from ourselves" in various situations. I'm not denying the fact that our collective choices for generating energy appear to be resulting in some climate changes. But I'm questioning how rational it is to believe that when we can't even come up with an accurate weather forecast a WEEK out from a given day, we somehow have the ability to reverse these temperature increases in time to prevent the proposed catastrophes we predicted MIGHT happen otherwise.
Trying to do something would be a simple "no brainer" if the stakes weren't so high. The proposed solutions involve HUGE expenditures, an assumption that the rest of the civilized world will agree to implement similar plans at correspondingly HUGE expenditures, and in some cases (such as dumping chemicals in the oceans to encourage more algae growth?), questionable side-effects that aren't being taken into account. (What would such a change do to the aquatic life, for example?) A demand to a near immediate halt to energy production done with oil and coal puts many people out of work, causes costs to skyrocket to build alternatives in a short time-frame, and could basically destabilize an entire economy. Would it even work though? Probably not if other countries just say, "Cool! Cheaper oil and coal for us to use now that the USA doesn't want it anymore!")
Thanks for agreeing with me, but the poster I was responding to say the reason things WERE CRAP was because people only buy the cheapest crap and therefor only crap gets made. You point is exactly what i was talking about, that $3000 scanner today is just as flimsy, made with crappy thin boards and lousy parts, no different than the $200 scanner. Today they instead focus on adding more features or a better branding but NOT on quality.
I suppose I disagree entirely with the premise that pricier quality items just don't exist, and that the $80 food processor and the $130 are somehow equivalent.
Sure, price does not automatically mean quality, and every brand will be different. You usually have to do a little bit of research to figure out which one is just marketing and gimmickry, and which one is the higher-quality product.
You seem to be implying that the difference between a cheaper product and a more expensive one is the name and the label, but I think that's way too broad a brush to use.
So your argument would be, CO2 causes the earth to be warmer than it would otherwise, but more CO2 doesn't. Would that be because the atmosphere is already at 100% CO2, or because all IR is currently absorbed by the atmosphere and none escapes? Because there can't be any other reasons why it wouldn't.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Presumably the reason the earth and Mars are both warming is supposed to be that " The sun is a mildly variable star." (Unless that's just something the OP interjects randomly into conversations). In which case, you'd kind of see it in more than 2 planets in this booming community of objects we call a solar system, wouldn't you? (This is where they name Pluto and/or maybe some random moon of Jupiter or Saturn or something) You need more than 50% of the objects in the solar system to be warming to be a statistically significant indicator of some common factor, such as the sun. In particular, the complete absence of any warming on the moon, the cosmic equivalent of the doghouse in our back yard, bathed in the same dosage of sun and very easy to see and measure, would be a screaming indicator that the sun isn't doing any heating on objects in our vicinity without an atmosphere.
Doesn't take a PhD in climatology to figure that out, BTW.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Hah! You're one of those sky-is-falling chicken liberals who probably believes the tiny amount of heat in a match could cause a whole house to catch fire. It's completely impossible! In fact, just the amount of heat a house receives in a day from the sun dwarfs the tiny amount of heat in a match. Liberals just want to restrict your freedom to set your own draperies on fire, and to tear down our economy by attacking the match-making industry, without which we'd still be in the caves unable to create fire.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
What about all those ice and seabed cores that show elevated carbon dioxide as a Trailing Indicator? Following that scenario, warmth causes increased life activity which, in turn, sequesters carbon dioxide as carbon compounds. Then, something changes and the place goes into a cooling phase coupled with a die-off which releases decomposition gasses including, ta-tah(!), carbon dioxide.