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UN Report: Climate Changes Overwhelming
iONiUM (530420) writes "'The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned.' A document was released by the IPCC outlining the current affects on climate change, and they are not good. For specific effects on humans: 'Food security is highlighted as an area of significant concern. Crop yields for maize, rice and wheat are all hit in the period up to 2050, with around a tenth of projections showing losses over 25%.'"
The observed temperatures are currently below the error bars of the most optimistic projection. What does this mean?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
One would think that agricultural lobbies worldwide, which are often quite politically powerful, would be screaming their heads off about climate change affecting crop yields. Have I simply failed to notice or have they been silent on the issue?
Because the first thought when confronted with a troubling scientific report is to consult an economist...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
we're all effed. even if we do an aggressive CO2 reduction in emissions, we won't get emissions down to sustainable levels by 2050. Then, it will take decades for the CO2 air concentration to reach sustainable levels. and this assumes we don't get an explosion in emissions from developing countries.
So we have 80 years of unmitigated climate change ahead of us. pretty much everybody reading this will die before there's a possibility of things improving. sorry to be a debbie downer, but these are no longer dire warnings of what might happen unless we take action, they're explanations of what will happen due to past inaction. hide yo wife, hide yo kids, hide yo husbands, cuz things are gonna start changing.
Don't worry. Big Oil has assured me that these "scientific" studies are all hokum. We're fine. Please keep burning carbon fuels. Thanks.
I will give you a hint, pro-climate change scientists tend to be funded by universities and in some cases governments.
Deniers tend to be funded by Exxon, and their like.
So tell, me who gets tot see the world on expenses - the deniers or the scientists?
If you can't see the answer than that tells me who is funding your internet connection. After all the deniers have expressly admitted paying people to spread lies.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yeah! Mongol invasions over the ice bridge to Siberia! Like the GOOD OLD days!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
ALGORE
*chug*
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
No, it's a political report that presents a scientific viewpoint. At least call it what it is.
You could, you know, if you felt like, stop watching television read the report, and other associated materials.
I know, it's a lot of work, and it's just a lot easier to repeat what you've heard.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I call it a report written by climatologists. You know, SCIENTISTS...
I get it. It tells you things you don't want to hear, so you have this need to cast aspersions on it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wow, the climate deniers are out in force on Slashdot today. Out of curiousity, are you paid? Do you all get instant alerts whenever the subject of climate is posted on Slashdot, like the Digg Patriots? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
I just hate my apartment.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I have always found it interesting that a lot of folks would prefer that such problems didn't exist when even simple logic seems to point to the fact that it is human caused. Common sense tells you that if a billion of us start to burn things it might have some negative effects. Heck, I remember as a kid we use to dig holes in a riverbank for fun and over time with a few sticks we managed to amazingly reshape the entire riverbank. Granted maybe I shouldn't be so hard on folks who refuse to believe in it. After all if it doesn't directly affect me and I can't do anything about it, it doesn't exist right?
The real problem is what to do about it. It probably isn't all gloom and doom. The UN is making a huge deal of it because let's face it there's a LOT of third world and poor countries out there where even a small shift in climate would kill millions. The UN represents ALL countries. For us richer nations it will probably be uncomfortable, maybe an inconvenience at worst so long as serious world war doesn't break out. Still I wonder how morally bad we would feel if we knew that say saving a little now could save millions in another country. Sadly I suspect in the end greed will win out and we'll likely take the difficult road in life. It seems to sadly be what we do best. Wait until things get bad or someone dies, then try to fix it if we can.
here's a more realistic assessment from a real economist
As opposed to what other sort of economists?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2589424/UK-professor-refuses-apocalyptic-UN-climate-change-survey.html#ixzz2x3avUrY3
Prof Tol disagrees with the comparative
Professor Tol told the BBC: You have a very silly statement in the draft summary that says that people who live in war-torn countries are more vulnerable to climate change, which is undoubtedly true.
But if you ask people in Syria whether they are more concerned with chemical weapons or climate change, I think they would pick chemical weapons - that is just silliness.
Not with the fundamentals:
Prof Tol does not dispute the view that climate change is caused by man - but he says its impact has been exaggerated.
I call it a report written by climatologists. You know, SCIENTISTS...
I get it. It tells you things you don't want to hear, so you have this need to cast aspersions on it.
I hate those scientists, they have an agenda. They even question God's intelligent design.
When you link to dailymail, you automatically make everyone assume you're wrong and an idiot. Just for reference. You may not be, but everyone stopped reading your post when they see the dailymail link.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Well, the report says the effects are irreversible, so does this mean we can finally stop worrying about it now?
I wonder how many corporations are already looking to make a ton of money if the environment does collapse. Look for billionaires investing in water reservoirs, fishing farms, algae growing technology. They are counting on the deaths of hundreds of millions. Where there's death, there's profit!
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
It is a report written by climatologists, but in prior reports from the same body reasonable projections have been excluded from consideration for being too extreme, so it's also a political report. Which way they are bending the studies this time I don't know. I may find out, but probably not for a month or so.
N.B.: There are a LOT of studies. You can't include all of them, not even all the ones that don't have obvious errors, and deciding which to exclude is a political decision when done under governmental supervision. Last time they excluded the extreme reports in an attempt to not appear to be crepe-hangers, and get taken seriously. It didn't work. Perhaps this time they've decided to bend the other way...or perhaps not, because I've seen reports of studies that were a LOT worse. Some of them project >6 C before the end of the century. But they were making assumptions about particulate emmissions and CO2 emmissions that CANNOT be validated, because they depend on political choices that have not yet been made. OTOH, they are right in line with the choices that have been made in the past.
P.S.: I'm quite skeptical about sequestration of CO2. I don't think it will work, and if it does work, I think it will be too expensive to use. The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay. This doesn't add in exogenous energy costs, and storage is not a major issue. If it is, just build more libraries...and fund them to retain books. Burying CO2 can expect to have undetected leakages over a period of time, and to add significantly to the cost of generating energy. To me it looks like a boondoggle created to justify continuing to burn coal.
P.P.S.: I am not a climatologist. There are likely several studies that I've never heard of, and there may well be flaws in some of the studies that I have heard of that I didn't hear about.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
nuclear winter in north Korea may also happen
We just had the first winter in the midwest that was even remotely close to our norm in 26 years.
That's right, 26 years, 1 "normal" winter.
We'll finally have the right amount of ground moisture for crops after having near drought conditions for years.
We'll finally see our water tables rise more than a smidge this spring.
Hoping we don't have another record high summer that will destroy the crops.
Go head, naysay all you want while making money hand over fist - fat lot of good that money will do you when you can't go out and grow a crop on your own now will it?
If it keeps going, only the farmers will eat, all you fatcats will starve to death unless you figure out how to eat money.
That's what GP linked to aswell, just by a proxy blog.
Assuming the projections are correct, wouldn't it make sense to eliminate using maize (corn in the US) as an additive to gasoline? When 30%+ of the corn currently being planted in the US is done so to get the Ethanol subsidy, it removes quite a bit from the food supply. I do not claim that all would be planted for food (corn price would plummet), but arable land is being used to for this 'not green' fuel additive. I say 'not green' because even the UN has acknowledged that the use is counterproductive.
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
Why, are exact numbers important? If I have a chunk of uranium in front of me, and I can't point to each individual atom and state when it will decay, does that make radioactive decay wrong?
Is this what you're left with, moving the goal posts to impossible places that no theory, no matter how comprehensive and accurate, could hope to provide an answer to, and then say "See, I knew you were wrong?"
You're like the Creationists I used to debate. Flaming morons who would say things like "If you can't show me a video of a fish evolving into land animal, evolution is wrong!"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"If you continuously prophesy gloom, you will eventually be correct".
"If you continuously prophesy spoon, you will eventually be correct".
"If you continuously prophesy loom, you will eventually be correct".
Get over it. Lean to tell the difference between a prediction based on evidence and a prophesy based on wishful thinking.
Let's say that the climate change will cause people in the UK one unit of inconvenience, to Syrians, three units of inconvenience, and chemical weapons will cause Syrians thirty units of inconvenience. The problem is, you could invade Syria and destroy the chemical weapons withing months, if you wanted. That's at most fifteen unit-years of inconvenience. But those three units of inconvenience due to climate change will apparently persist in Syria for *at least* many decades, if not a century or more. That's already dozens of unit-years of inconvenience, perhaps hundreds. Also, people have a tremendous capacity for dismissing long-term problems. Perhaps asking Syrians what they are worried about, while usually valid, isn't valid universally.
Ezekiel 23:20
What happens when the industrial nations' own food supplies are severely impacted? You seem to believe that the industrialized world has some magic pill that it can swallow to make them invincible to desertification, rain belt shifts and the like.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I notice that the OC says nothing about denier vs supporter. He talks about "experts" and implies that if one wants to see the world on an expense account, one should become a "climate change expert", regardless of side.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What studies have falsified it? JEsus fucking christ, pal, some fucking blogger you frequent doesn't constitute a "study".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
True. But I was pointing out that in reality, anyone that wants to do that and isn't a fool does so for the denier side. The people that actually believe in what they are saying are on the pro-climate side.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Not to mention all his wanna-be ripoffs on various talk radio outlets. I can practically hear the frothy apoplexy dripping from my speakers.
Tell these guys! Highly Significant indeed
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
there's a LOT of third world and poor countries out there where even a small shift in climate would kill millions.
How do you come to that conclusion - we are looking at a degree or two of change over a HUNDRED YEARS. That's not even enough that plat or animal life would fail to adapt to over five years, much less one hundred.
Mankind especially is very good at adapting to even quite sudden changes in climate, as are animals. They will move between regions, they will adapt to conditions. Areas naturally see drought and wet years over the lifespans of animals, they have to be able to deal with that - so they can also adapt to an overall change as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
", I think it will be too expensive to use."
too expensive compared to what? extinction?
"The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay."
hmm. serious chemicals in use there. Many of which will take more energy then is sequestered. So be sure it's nuclear or solar generated energy.
Of course with idiot dictation political discousre, we can't even get a serious conversion about this in many government agencies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually the SPM has be accused of not being alarmist enough.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Our food crops are all massively bio-engineered.
And you are claiming that with temperature changes of 1-2c over 100 years, there is not enough time to bio-engineer new strains that like it slightly warmer?
it was bred selectively for thousands of years.
Across many different climates, so you can just start growing strains from the climates warmer than the region you are in now - or over 100 years, just create some new strains. 100 years is plenty of time to do so naturally, even if you did want to discount doing so artificially (and frankly I think that's kind of insane given it's a more targeted and quicker change).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While it's true that without human modification of the environment we would probably be living in an ice age, there HAS been human modification of the environment, dating back at least to the first rice paddy.
I don't know who said that trees were giving way to grasses because of low CO2 levels. I suspect you misheard what was said. That's more likely to be due to levels of rain decreasing. (Levels of CO2 have been increasing all over the globe throughout at least the last two centuries. To be more specific I'd need to look up studies.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Where are all the responses explaining that the flat/cooling trend they've been modeling in Europe is a lie?
I have a colleague who is into politics--I mean really into politics, beyond party bullshit and into looking at the whole world and going, "Damn, but look over here!" He's been pointing out crazy shit like how Europe's new GPS replacement has much higher resolution than the American GPS satellite system, and how Europe's climate models are all-inclusive while American models tend to use specific models for specific analysis and ignore the vast majority of the data.
America is practically third-world.
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A non climatologist says the climatologists are wrong. You are paying attention to what an economist 'feels' is right, why?
Of, right, becasue you don't understand the science so you need to glom onto anything that supports your ignorance. Even when that person isn't an expert in the fields
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nicely said, and thanks for the link.
it appears to me there's good money to be made in solar power and electric cars. A business case for more wind turbines could make someone very rich.
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People here tend to forget that the UN is filled to the brim with corruption.
Nobody forgets that, it's just that the scientists involved don't actually work for the UN. I don't think they even get paid for their (volunteer) work on the IPCC report. There are some UN-paid staffers, but I only see about a dozen listed on the IPCC site. They're all part of the World Meteorological Organization. If you want to call the WMO a hotbed of corruption, you can try, but I'm pretty sure you don't have any reason to do so.
That their human rights body is chaired by countries with the worst human rights records -- and worse, that this is allowed to continue -- demonstrates why everything that comes out of the UN should be looked at with the greatest scepticism.
Well, a worldwide council with maybe five nations in it wouldn't be much use... Joking aside, you're about eight years out of date on that one. Regardless, I don't see how it follows that one bad organization in the UN implies the whole thing is worthless. The UN is a forum where the nations of the world get together to talk. It works about as well as the participants do. There are few (if any) nations that consistently value human rights over convenience, safety, and prejudice. There are a lot more with an interest in accurate weather and climate forecasting.
Visit the
I once saw an economist get up in a symposium and claim that the carrying capacity of the Earth -- the number of humans it could support -- was infinite.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Give or take the environmental impact of producing those chemical preservatives, and the fact that the production of paper takes a lot of electricity (to run the grinders), water (to hydrate the pulp), and heat (to dry it out again).
If you're trying to sequester carbon using wood products, I think you're better off building wooden buildings. Log buildings, in particular, would be closest to ideal since they both use the largest amount of wood per unit area (compared to timber frame or stick-built) and the wood used has the least amount of milling. Even then, there are still the issues that (unless you find some Amish to do the building for you) you're probably using fossil-fuel powered tools, and that (more fundamentally) the rate of new buildings needed is probably much smaller than the rate of carbon sequestration needed.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I explicitly modified Christian with "right-wing" for that very reason. You've simply substituted my "right-wing Christians" with "Christians" which is some form of logical fallacy, straw-man seems like the best fit; but I'm not sure and don't really care that much since this really is a religious debate and nobody's mind will change.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not sure how many of these are reachable behind the WSJ paywall. But I find it interesting how the WSJ publishes climate change minimizing articles in there "opinion" section and promotes them heavily on their site. At the same time also has excellent well written articles not as easy to find on the climate change in there hard news section.
Opinion piece attempting to poison the well before the report was released.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Fact based real reporting article published today.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
TODO create witty sig.
it's a 11 year cycle. Important to know, but in no way is it an argument against global warming.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's been a lot hotter here in the past, it's been a lot cooler here in the past. I remember the seventies; the scientific consensus was that air pollution was increasing the Earth's albedo, thereby causing global cooling. Snowball Earth was the inevitable result, and there was a lot of panic on the subject.
Two questions, then. 1) Is global warming the result of humankind's actions on the planet, and 2) regardless of the answer to #1, is there anything humankind can do about it?
A wise man once said, "Don't shit where you eat".
To some people, this is self-evident. To others, it's an impediment to expediency.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
"the brainwashed do not realize their condition" Oh the irony ...
You mean This link from the Wall Street Journal giving a more reasoned overview of the report?
The one that people calling others "deniers" are censoring so the world cannot see it?
That is a good link. Good enough to try and bury it would seem.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's absurd to equate a small shift in temperature over 100 years to an abrupt transition to the vacuum of space. There are lots of reasons to think the first world might send a lot more aid to those countries over the next 100 years, or they simply improve themselves (as some places in Africa are).
You also seem to ignore that most starvation in Africa is caused by politics, not climate issues of any kind. Botswana was a fertle country - without any shift in climate it was changed to a wasteland where people are eating rats (if they can find any left).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whatever is true the majority of the climate change industry and powers that be must not be too concerned. Why else would they keep banging their head on a primarily ascetic solution that has been proven not to work? Whatever they claim to believe countries simply will not accept the standards the IPCC wants, will fail to meet the standards they accept, or offload industry on countries that have no standards. And many say that we're all doomed anyway. This has been shown time and time again. Yet they keep pushing these failed tactics of economic downsizing and regulation that will coincidentally enrich and empower them while at the same time virtually ignoring, actively blocking, or only paying lipservice to nuclear and technological solutions.
It isn't, by the very definition of the word "religion".
Disagreement with a basic fact of language isn't a very good basis for an argument, respectful or not.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Semantics. Slow down Cowboy, Slashdot hates pithy comebacks. Anyway, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck. I can readily identify priests, temples, dogma and followers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The world is less polluted today than it was 30 years ago. And far far less than it was 100 years ago. So isn't that a shrinking pollution problem, not a growing one?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
First of all, I didn't read the summary or anything. I don't care what evidence points to what or whether A or B claim, demand or deny something. I can't help to look at it from a risk manager's point of view and, frankly, I wonder what the goal of the discussion is. Currently it feels like a political debate between two positions claiming that they're right, but no longer because they think they have the better position but only because they don't wanna relent and WANNA be right, no matter whether that has anything to do with reality or not.
At the same time, I can't help but not care who is right in the end. Because from the risk management point of view, it simply does not matter. As a risk manager, I would HAVE TO assume that global warming happens and that I have to prepare for it and formulate a plan to mitigate its effects. Why? Because of risk * cost / reward. In this case (and I get to that in a minute), cost and reward even take a back seat because risk itself outshines both.
Risk is determined by effect (what happens when the incident strikes) and chance (how likely is it that it happens). The risk is in this case paramount due to the insanely high effect and a nonzero chance of incidence. In risk management terms, an incident would threaten the continuation of operation (in this case, our life), costing at the very least millions if not billions of lives, followed by famine and very likely war for the remaining resources for the rest of the planet. Now, this would not matter yet if there is a zero chance of incidence. That is nothing I could assume for certain.
The mere fact that there is a nonzero chance of it to happen, coupled with the insanely severe effects in case of incidence, would make me recommend to prepare for the incident and at least conduct studies how it could be avoided.
The key issue here is that the incident cannot be mitigated sensibly once it happened. We can't react to it appropriately, we can only prepare for it. To pull a drastic example, once you have lung cancer, stopping smoking won't change much anymore. And I'm pretty sure you don't give a shit then whether smoking gave you cancer or whether you got it any other way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1. AFAIK, a grand total of zero of the IPCC-favored climate models work in retrospect. I.e., one should be able to plug in data up to (say) 1990 and get an accurate "forecast" of the climate from 1990 to today. If they can't do that, why should I believe they will be accurate about the climate 50 years from now?
As far as you know? Have you bothered to look?
First off, you need to realize that there are a lot of different climate models, modeling different parts of the climate system. No one model is representative of the entire climate system, as it is too big and complex for a single statistical model -- so far. That said, there are a number of models which do very well, both in terms of hindcasting and forecasting for the specific area they were created to model. Quite a few of them are overly conservative, meaning that they under-projected the deviations due to climate change.
If you want to really understand how to interpret how the models work and what their output means, I would suggest starting here.
2. This article sums up my other objection. The TL;DR version: the IPCC-favored models are based on more than a simple (and rather inarguable) "more CO2 = hotter" greenhouse effect. They all assume various kinds of positive feedback to amplify that effect. Yet, the historical record seems to show the Earth's climate is a fairly stable system, not dominated by strong positive feedback effects.
This is woefully inaccurate. I don't know of any models which assume only positive feedbacks (well, I guess there are a few very old models pre-1990 which might, but I don't think anyone uses or references them any longer).
Yes, the Earth's climate is a fairly stable system, HOWEVER there have been periods of rapid change which cannot be accounted for by simply considering "more CO2 = hotter". The science behind both positive and negative feedbacks in the climate system is still a bit nascent, at least in terms of determining where the "tipping points" are, but the physics behind the feedback processes is pretty well-established at this point.
I don't consider myself a "warmist"; I simply follow the science with a skeptical eye. I have yet to see anything that I would consider discounts AGW/CC wholesale, but I am always looking. In the meantime, I am going to go on the premise that it is largely correct and change my lifestyle to address it, and urge others to follow suit.
After all, if climate science turns out to be completely wrong, I won't have any remorse for creating a better world as a result.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
It also does not change the fact that climate change of even 2c over 100 years will not make Botswana worse or better for the people who live there. It doesn't matter if it's more arid or more rainy when all your farms have failed and gone fallow, and are maintained in the state on purpose.
Only political change will help.
As for being on the knifes edge, they are way past that. The knife is cutting deep already. Quite a lot of have died.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You need to learn how the UN committee chairmanships work. The chair position rotates through the members of the committee, so if you want to make sure that Myanmar or Liberia never chair the committee you have to make sure that they never accept membership ON the committee to start with. Of course if you want countries that officially condone torture to never chair the human rights committee you need to make sure that the US, UK, Poland (host to a US black site), Israel, Taiwan and South Korea never serve on that committee, too.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
1) IPCC reports a range, not a specific event. And it's been within that range every time.
2)
"They all assume various kinds of positive feedback to amplify that effect."
assume isn't the correct term.
"the historical record seems to show the Earth's climate is a fairly stable system,"
prior to spewing out millions of tons of CO2 beyond what the cycle can take in.
"I've always been more pro-science than many"
apparently not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Have you bothered to look? [...] there are a number of models which do very well, both in terms of hindcasting and forecasting for the specific area they were created to model. Quite a few of them are overly conservative, meaning that they under-projected the deviations due to climate change.
Not according to the last chart in the article I linked to. The vast majority have vastly overestimated future warming.
I don't know of any models which assume only positive feedbacks
I never said "only."
The science behind both positive and negative feedbacks in the climate system is still a bit nascent, at least in terms of determining where the "tipping points" are, but the physics behind the feedback processes is pretty well-established at this point.
So, then which is the accurate model that "predicts" past climate so well that I should trust its predictive ability?
In the meantime, I am going to go on the premise that it is largely correct and change my lifestyle to address it, and urge others to follow suit.
After all, if climate science turns out to be completely wrong, I won't have any remorse for creating a better world as a result.
Clearly, you are not into the whole cost/benefit analysis thing, or you'd wonder if spending money to "create a better world" was worth it if it meant spending hundreds or thousands of dollars so that the average temperature 50 years was now was .0000000000001 degree F. cooler. And I say that as someone who has recycled for nearly 40 years.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
1) We haven't been observing the sun for long enough to know whether a 200 year cycle exists.
2) We haven't been observing the sun for long enough to know whether the 80 year cycle is real or just a statistical aberration
3) The 11 year cycle is real, but presence or lack of sunspots has very little to no effect on Earth's weather.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Just now.....all my friends on Facebook are exclaiming and asking what can they burn to help global warming.
Go figure...
I call it a report written by climatologists. You know, SCIENTISTS...
This is the WG2 "summary for policy-makers" report. It is based on the WG1 scientific report, unlike the scientific report the summary is also reviewed, edited, and signed off, by the 195 governments who participate in the IPCC. When taken as a whole I can not think of any other formal review process that comes close to the scale and accuracy of the IPCC.
This is the same kind of report that made the infamous 2035 error about glaciers, however in 20+yrs nobody has spotted an error in the WG1 scientific reports. Given the scale and controversy involved that is strong evidence of an extraordinary robust process. Yet they still took the glacier error seriously enough to tighten up the process even further
With a budget of US$5-6 million per year split between 195 countries, the IPCC is a bargain. One of the main reasons it is so cheap is that the authors are not paid a dime, the budget pays for conference facilities, air fares, and a handful of full time admin staff. Detailed financial accounts are publicly available on the IPCC web site. Pity we don't get to see the accounts of the paid character assassins who attack it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think you inadvertently demonstrate my point.
If we look at the US as the touchstone of honest dealing, then the game is already rigged. The US rated 73 in the 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, placing 19th, and was behind Canada (9th at a CPI of 81) and Denmark (1st at a CPI of 91). It gets worse, however. The median CPI for the 175 countries listed was 38, held by Bukina Faso, Jamaica, Liberia and Zambia, among others. Half of the countries rated even worse, with Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia at the bottom with a CPI of only 8. Here's the thing: how can we expect the UN to be free of corruption when it is populated by countries where corruption is endemic?
It is easy to think that the IPCC is aboveboard because "science", but there are reports that the IPCC deliberately excluded input from climate scientists who did not follow the IPCC's narrative. That is not science, but corrupt practice. In the West, it is commonplace for committee reports, court rulings and the like, to include dissenting views, as a matter of transparency. The IPCC clothes itself in the garments of undeniable truth, but underneath is putrid corruption.
Does that long list really mean anything? I bet googling "comic book conference 2014" would give you a significantly longer list. I doubt any one person goes to all of them, but maybe there are a lot of them so people don't have to travel far to get to them.
Wow, a brand new system of GPS has a higher resolution than one that has been in use for a couple decades. That surely proves the earth is heating up.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
It may be colder than normal in some specific places (like the eastern part of the United States). In spite of that, worldwide temperatures are way above average (NASA released a report recently saying 2013 was one of the warmest years on record and every year in the top-10 was in the last 15 years).
The problem here that people are failing repeatedly to grasp is that science does not actually have an overarching "THEY" who will police the system and prevent rubbish papers being published. Science works on peer review, meaning that the peers (i.e. other scientists in the same field) of the person submitting the paper get to police what is written in the paper. This works if the peers are more or less skeptical, and fails badly if most peers either subscribe to or have a vested interest in supporting a set world-view. In the case of climatologists, a prophesy of doom is just what is needed to keep the grant money rolling in, hence there is a presumption that any paper that agrees with this orthodoxy must be correct.
The second bug in the system is how research is funded. Research grants typically fund a post-doctoral researcher (a person who has taken a degree and a doctorate in the subject) to work on the topic for three years. Typically this means a year to work out how to do the work, a year to actually achieve something and a year of blowing one's own trumpet to try to secure another post-doc posting. This is, as you might imagine, an inefficient way to fund research.
The third bug in the system is a lack of research support for climatologists. To be a good climatologist you have to know a lot of physics, a good deal of mathematics and a smattering of biology, meteorology and so on to actually have a vague clue how a climate system works. To model climate you need a doctoral-grade level of skill in quite sophisticated programming, including how best to use massively parallel machines. If instead of looking at the emails from the University of East Anglia leak you go and look at the code, and the HARRY_README file, then you see how this is working or rather not working in practice. The UoEA code was mostly cobol. Mostly, because Cobol sucks rather for manipulating strings; the coder used shell calls to handle these bits. You or I would likely use Perl or Python to do the same thing and would make a much better job of it, but the coder in the UoEA case was self-taught. Two words that ought to send a shudder through anyone tasked with debugging and maintaining code: Self. Taught.
That code was a mess. A complete and utter dog's dinner. The original coder was learning by making mistakes, the sorts of mistakes that get drummed out of newbie coders in their first year of a degree. Things like a sub-program failing silently, instead of screaming blue murder on STDERR, for instance. Things like not keeping adequate backups. The UoEA lost their input raw data, because they didn't have enough storage. Once the raw data was gone, they had no way to start again from scratch.
Climatology is like particle physics was fifty years ago. Particle physicists started off as jacks of all trades, and very quickly realised that an army of engineers and computer techies was needed to support a few researchers. Climatologists have yet to quite realise that they need a small army of coders and computer sysadmins to provide them with the kit and the code to run their simulations, and no, this support cannot be done by the hired help on a shoestring. Until they realise this, we will not be able to trust their results.
That magic pill? It's called 'The Pentagon', and can (and will) be used to grab whatever productive farmland exists and force the locals to export production back to the developed countries. Victorian England/Ireland is the model here, did you know that even during the worst of the Great Potato Famine the majority of the food produced in the country was exported to England? The British deliberately let the Irish starve to death because it was more profitable for the landlords to export the food than to distribute it locally.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
In fact, a great many have expressed a) doubts regarding this being the hottest period on record or b) doubts that it is caused by man.
That said, try to say that in the government grant funded, let's get ourselves an international tax (because that is REQUIRED before you can have an international army). Go check out the relationship between we these United States and the Federal Government which usurped the states on many levels.
One thing you'll notice. The Federal government gain accesses to taxes, the more and more access to taxes the Federal government received, all while the states received less access. The result is what we have today, the Federal government wields most all of the power.
How long do you think the UN with a tax base would last before it formed a security defense force? How long until it needed more taxes to support the ever increasing peace keeping missions? how long until the first UN draft of young men for war?
Oh, and remember, the UN has neither the protections of human rights that America and most of Europe has, nor does it have a democratic foundation. In the UN a tyrant like Gaddafi has equal rights to the entire nation and continent and democratically elected government of Australia. That is SCARY!!!!
Who has more money riding on math than economists?
It's faster. We could make plied bamboo 2x4 replacements. Have a building boom.
And so has the the Tea Party...
You can ALWAYS find someone more to the extreme. Heck, even the KKK protested and opposed the Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists.
I remember 6 billion would be an impossible threshold. The world would have had a global collapse. I believe there were some who said the same of 1 billion. We'll probably soon be at 10 billion.
I am always surprised when sci-fi shows exclaim that some destroyed planet had millions, or 300 million inhabitants.
Really, cause I just once want to here "There were 200 billion people on that planet."
I don't know for sure what "reports" you're referring to, but I have seen the energy industry shills complaining that the IPCC didn't include their input. The rather predictable reason was that their "input" turned out to be non-scientific opinion pieces or cherry-picked unrepresentative data. So yeah, they are excluding some things and there are perfectly valid reasons for doing so.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Warmer temperatures mean far more humidity, moisture, and the rescinding of deserts. The highest desertification periods in earth's history are often during the ice ages, when so much of the earth's moisture and water content has been frozen.
Let me exemplify. When do you need a humidifier in Connecticut? Is it during the warm muggy summer or the dry winter?
In climate science, the real debate has never been between "deniers" and the rest, but between "lukewarmers," who think man-made climate change is real but fairly harmless, and those who think the future is alarming.
Never? That is absolutely false. First, it was denying climate change was actually happening. Then, when that didn't work due to overwhelming evidence, it was okay, climate change is happening, but it couldn't possibly be caused by humans. Then, when that didn't work due to overwhelming evidence, it's now become okay, climate change is clearly happening and clearly caused by humans, but the effects don't matter. The next step we'll probably be, yep, climate change is happening, it's caused by human, the effects will soon be serious, but if we invest resources into making it better then the owners of this news conglomerate won't be quite as filthy rich, so why not just let the next generation worry about it?
"Really, the sky is falling! Really truly, we mean it this time. Don't pay attention to the previous reports that predicted the end of glaciers, an ice-free arctic, etc by around now, we were slightly off. But this time, we're absolutely positive the sky is falling.
Really.
Seriously."
-Styopa
One of the things that came out of the diplomatic cable leaks was the concern diplomats had for the mass migration the 2009-10 drought was causing, 10% of Syria's population simply abandoned the rural area due to lack of water and sought refuge in the cities. One US diplomat even correctly identified where the social strain would reach flashpoint. The fact there was an unprecedented regional drought with widespread food riots just prior to the "Arab spring" seems to have escaped people notice. The obvious cause-effect link between food shortages, internal displacement, and civil unrest seems to be lost in the noise of a bitter civil war and tens (if not hundreds) of millions of disillusioned revolutionaries now enduring the "Arab summer".
Sure it's silly to blame an historic drought and subsequent civil unrest on AGW alone, the point is not that "AGW caused the civil war or toppled Mubarak", the point is that such "dustbowl" scenarios are much more likely to occur with AGW than without it. The issue of "climate refugees" is why for almost a decade now the pentagon has put AGW at the top of it's medium term future threat list.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"You would think there are enough math geeks who would be able to see the vast amount of BS the GW people are putting out, but since they hide the raw data and have no way of adjusting for varying albedo at ground stations we just have to go by the fudged data."
This is simply and completely wrong. The data sets are OK and there is numerous adjustments & corrections applied.
Remember the Berkeley statistician who was a skeptic about the data quality & reduction procedures for various reasons? Well, he did what you said was impossible: he got the not-actually-hidden raw data, and with some colleagues re-did everything. The conclusion? The climatologists were right all along and didn't screw anything up.
And why would thousands of scientists all over the world suddenly and nearly uniformly "want" a specific outcome?
And if it's all just a giant magic trick for "moar funding!!!!" somehow maintained across generations and countries why hasn't this happened in any other area of science? And if it's all a scam, why choose one which would be opposed by many of the most powerful forces on the planet?
The ones who really "want a specific outcome" are actually the other side, for obvious reasons.
The US can always pay the interest on its loans denominated in US dollars by making dollars.
In any case, in 2013, the current interest on the US debt is about 400 billion USD. The US GDP is 16,803 billion USD, so the interest payment is about 2.3% of GDP. The US GDP could go down a bunch further.
This is a completely different situation from actually changing the global composition of physical molecules in the atmosphere, which cannot be redefined by any human action. The risk of long-term nearly irreversible changes in the physical environment vs human-to-human financial contracts?
That was, as the quote states, never the real debate. The scientific debate is between those who don't think the rate of increase is harmful, and those who think it is - but time and data have not been kind to the evangelical data-deniers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
| The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay.
The BEST form of sequestration is to put solid, compressed, carbon in permanent long-term geologic storage.
Thing is, it already comes this way, it's called "coal". We just have to STOP unearthing it, but that's not profitable.
Mea culpa.
Rare bird sighted on the Internet! Thank-you for the courtesy. It really does mean a lot.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Funny you should mention a 30 year old man. The last time the global average temperature for any month was below the 20th Century (1901-2000) average was 30 years ago in February of 1984. So that 30 year old man has never experienced a world where the monthly average temperature was below the 20th Century average.
And there are invalid reasons for doing so and you have no idea which reasons they used.
Pointing out someone has no support for their argument is not ad hominem. What *you* did was an indirect form, however.
If 90% of us drop dead, that would actually help quite a bit more than any conservation efforts. Aggressive birth control comes in a strong second for effectiveness in the medium (20-40 year) term.
If you take the historical view of humanity's behavior, you'd come to the conclusion that the 1970s were an anomaly, we should have had WW-III, then we'd be dealing with nuclear winter, potentially an ice age, instead of runaway CO2 production.
Either way, we're facing yet another of nature's challenges, whether we as a species are smart enough to achieve a soft transition remains to be seen. Personally, if we can get over the nationalistic and personal competitiveness and lust to control as much as "humanly" possible, I think there's a chance for a soft landing along these lines:
http://5050by2150.wordpress.co...
Like I said, I don't know what reports you're referring to, do you have any references to any omitted research that wasn't junk being excluded for political reasons?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
P.S.: I'm quite skeptical about sequestration of CO2. I don't think it will work, and if it does work, I think it will be too expensive to use. The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay. This doesn't add in exogenous energy costs, and storage is not a major issue. If it is, just build more libraries...and fund them to retain books. Burying CO2 can expect to have undetected leakages over a period of time, and to add significantly to the cost of generating energy. To me it looks like a boondoggle created to justify continuing to burn coal.
Carbon capture plants will require 25–40% more coal to produce the same amount of electricity compared to blithely-dump-CO2-into-the-air plants.That would tighten up the competition with wind and solar, but not make it "too expensive to use". CO2 leaking from storage remains a legitimate concern.
As for growing forests, I like the idea of turning them into buildings.
Once again the chicken littles are coming and squaking at us about the environment. This while refusing to carry cloth bags, driving-- whether electric or gasoline, instead of walking or biking or even using public transportation. Some even burn more fuel in a day that many of us will burn in the rest of our lives, on their private jets.
I didn't believe you in the past. I was right not to believe you in the past. I don't believe you now. Of what I've seen of you, you are composed of two types: oportunistic liars, and their "useful idiots". Guess what? I probably won't believe you in the future. So go away and squack someplace else.
C'mon, I would prefer if the report was just another April Fools' Day joke...
nuclear winter in north Korea may also happen
Unless I'm mistaken, (anyone?) nuclear winter isn't a localised phenomenon.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Don't tell me what I personally remember from my own life experience was a myth. Wikipedia article notwithstanding, I remember quite clearly the debates, public reporting. To be sure, I see more credible evidence to support the current theories regarding global warming, but take my word for it - global cooling was a very big concern back in the seventies.
Why do they continue to beat this dead-horse. Everyone knows its complete and utter BS. It's been proven to be BS by several studies - yet the media continues to trumpet it for those too young to remember all of the hulabuloo about the Impending Ice-Age back in the 70's - now instead of "Global Warming" it's "Climate Change"
Interestingly if you dust off a gloom and doom report from the 1970s you can even find some similar trhings to in the modern versions. Though IIRC some of the same people are involved.
- well, the climate had been changing for the last 4.3 billion years and will continue to do so without any help from humans.
If anyone deserves the title of "denier" it's those who deny that Earth's climate has always changed, sometimes very radically, long before there were any humans around.
We are like a pimple on an ant's butt... When it comes to our effect on how, when, and to what extent the climate will change...
Humans certainly can change local weather and thus have some effect on climate systems. So do many other animals. Diverting rivers or building cities are far more likely top human significent human activities though.
It's easy to say "there are reports..." but until you produce the actual reports this applies to so I can judge them myself it's just useless innuendo with no basis in reality.
Is he right? I don't know. But whoever modded him "Troll" should be really fucking ashamed of themselves.
lllll AJ
"My old granny used to say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" - you'd catch even more using shit
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"some believe the earth is flat and only 6k years old" - fortunately those idiots can be mostly ignored as they are not really dangerous but climate sceptics are idiots and potentially dangerous to the planet
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I mean the idea that global cooling was a serious concern in the science community in the 70s is a myth. I was there too.
You are right, science does not depend on you believing it. Your own thermometer is a poor substitute for a global array of thermometers.
Can you point to a list of names of the politicians that wrote the report, i'd be interested to see that.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
if you insulated it properly then cooling as well as heating would be cheaper
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You are assuming the "new" land is suitable for crops to grow. Huge swathes of it have had their topsoil removed by glaciation, meaning they will be woefully underproductive, if at all productive. Also those new areas are currently frozen tundra, which have a nasty habit of releasing methane when heated up, which is an even worse greenhouse gas. If you knew what you were talking about, you'd know this.
When Europe announced their GPS system, there was a minor backlash from a bunch of political commentators talking about how Europe is just trying to be anti-America by implementing the same thing we have. The problem is it's technically better.
The same thing is true of the climate models. Europe is investigating all climate change effects, including warming trends and cooling trends. The EU is not as bullish on global warming as the US, nor on the human impact; the UN is driven by the US (I mean it's in fucking New York), and puts out reports mostly driven by US research. Europe's more conservative stance is based on data that's just better.
By the by, they also vaccinate chickens for salmonella.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Really? Can you back that up with some data? Not sure if I believe you without evidence...
Do you post similar responses to everyone who uses the term "denier"?
After all, you read one of my other posts with the "global warming alarmist" bit, and came to this one to respond to. You think you're being clever, or whatever, but honestly it is just weak.
As to your actual claim here, I see plenty of posts from the AGW side of this issue that do no more than call names, or disparage anyone who tries to address the real points of contention in the process of the science.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Stop suggesting that I said we would grow corn 2'000 miles north of where we do now. All of global warming is talking about a change of 5 degrees or less. That's about 100 to 200 miles north. We've got plenty of people living all the way up. We're a well-off country, and we've plenty of top-soil. It's not difficult to carry it with us north 100 miles to new pastures. Welcome to new real estate opening up. The nicer it is -- in terms of temperature -- the more readily people will move there. Then they'll be talking about humans as the life-supporting teraformers of earth: able to expedite converting tundra into lucious pasture.
And if you knew what you were talking about, you'd think one step further. It takes two years for top soil to appear on a landscape once the temperature is suitable. It's tundra because it's cold. If it weren't cold, it wouldn't be tundra for very long.
Anyone who lived through all of the 70's and into today knows this intrinsically. Read up: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/e...
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
I assume you mean that the pro man-made climate change are the groups that get the funding. You must do because the amount of money spent by just the US Government (around $2B a year on just scientific studies alone, and growing) dwarfs that spent by the energy companies on research.
If you can be bothered here is the GAO Report and a much easier to read summary
Not saying the money isn't well spent, or that man-made climate change isn't happening - but its just plain wrong to say that Big Oil is outspending the poor universities when it comes to climate research.
I have a new tool when talking to deniers. I just use one word. RISK! Risk as a concept is well educated in American society.. EX-Smokers reduce their RISK of lung cancer for every year they are an EX-Smoker... So, if we talk about climate change and RISK it becomes very easy to bridge the topics... such as the RISK of invasive species spreading into new areas. http://www.fs.fed.us/ccrc/topi...
And, of course, you've checked all this land to make sure it's good for growing corn, and that it will get adequate water under most likely scenarios. There's lots of things that affect arable land besides temperature.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Too expensive meaning people operating the plants will be allowed to wiggle out of doing it. Coal is NOT the only option, and in our current situation it's a bad option. Probably worse than widespread nuclear, if reasonable oversight could be provided to the nuclear. Definitely worse than solar, even though solar requires some intermediate storage.
For the really long term I'm in favor of Solar Space Power Sattelites, but that's not something that we can reach by heading directly for it, and careful tests will be needed to ensure that it's not itself a terrible choice. (E.g., proper selection of wavelengths for downwards transmission of power. Probably some microwave wavelength is best, but you want a wavelength that's not too adversely affected by atmospheric moisture, and you also want a reception antenna that's smaller than 10 miles in radius. But you probably DON'T want a wavelength that can be focused sharply, as that's too dangerous a toy.
P.S.: Paper doesn't require that much processing to be rendered durable. It does if most of your production is aimed at cheap pulp, but even that has a pretty good lifetime. It becomes birttle after, say, 40 years (judging from 1940's science fiction that I used to collect) but even then it remains pretty much intact. There are several different processes that can be used to preserve it. I'm sure several are less harmful than what you're thinking of. Remember, the goal isn't that they should be permanently legible, but rather that they not decay into CO2. (So you want to termite-proof them, e.g.) And the chemicals that you do use can be largely recycled.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There's a lot to be said for wooden building, but they do tend to lead to destructive city fires. Also hard wood takes a long time to grow. So yes, I agree. But we need to ameliorate the problems that come with wooden buildings. Termites and fire are two of the considerations. There are many wooden buildings around here, and they are pleasant to look at. However, I prefer stucco covered wood frame buildings...probably with ceramic tile roofs. Both features decrease the ease with which fire spreads. Termites are a more difficult problem. Possibly all wood used in the lower 6 feet of the building should be chemically treated to be indigestible.
OTOH, this is just a refinement of common current practice, and probably won't increase the amount of wood used. (If logs were used, this wouldn't be true, but I have difficulty thinking of logs used for internal walls.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Perhaps you aren't familiar with just how much land we're talking about. I don't need to have checked it all. I need to have found more of it than is currently used. Yes. Yes I have. Remembering that currently we don't use even 1% of what's above it. For every degree of climate change, we get basically triple what we have currently. And again, people carry things.
I call it a report written by climatologists. You know, SCIENTISTS...
I get it. It tells you things you don't want to hear, so you have this need to cast aspersions on it.
I hate those scientists, they have an agenda. They even question God's intelligent design.
But wait; God created those guys and caused them to write the report! He's trying to send us a message!
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
You guys are looking at it all backwards. Entropy always increases. Sequestered carbon in any form will eventually return to atmospheric dispersion. Potential energy will eventually end up as dispersed heat; sequestered carbon will eventually be oxidized. Ecological niches which offer access to resources with minimal competition will eventually be populated, as long as they exist.
That fossil carbon buried underground is, almost by definition, only metastable; as is its consequence of a cooler drier planet. Eventually that potential energy in that reduced carbon will result in its oxidation, and the planet will return to the high CO2, hot, humid state which was normal for most of its history.
We are just the catalyst for this happening. Evolution by random chance came up with a species which can utilize this really huge resource, and as with any species suddenly given access to a vast resource, we've really proliferated, knocking the previous equilibrium for a loop and stressing the hell out of the other species which do not share in our windfall. Eventually, either the species' wealth of resources runs out, or its waste products overwhelm it; how far back it falls depends on how inhospitable it made the environment and how well it affairs to its new environment. But that just demonstrates what life really is, cosmically speaking; a collection of catalysts that expend the potential energy sources and asked up their return to entropy, in the processing using dune of that energy to facilitate their own existence and reproduction.
Some species was eventually going to make a meal of all the plant life represented by that fossil fuel; turned out to be us. When we make that process impossible, whether by AGW now or by using it up not too far in the future, cosmically speaking, we will be obsolete. Maybe we will be able to grab a next rung in the ladder, whether renewable energy, or nuclear, or fusion, or Dyson spheres, or go back to muscle power of humans and animals, it's not a given that we'll be moving in the direction of more abundant and cheaper energy. And it's not a given that our vast intelligence and wonderful imagination and blah blah blah will be able to think our way into keeping up civilization 's momentum without proper energy resources; after all, dolphins are pretty smart, but what the heck can they accomplish living in the ocean with no access to even fire? Brains alone won't get you a machine shop.
So, right now, we're just nature's way of disposing of that deposit of potential energy in the ground, as the universe moves on its inevitable path from big bang to heat death. Maybe we will be able to transcend that role and move forward, in which case we will really be exceptional, but at this point it's a little premature to be confident that we will transcend that role and move forward because of our exceptionalism.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I once saw an economist get up in a symposium and claim that the carrying capacity of the Earth -- the number of humans it could support -- was infinite.
Technically correct, if most of them are dead and decomposed.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Let's say that the climate change will cause people in the UK one unit of inconvenience, to Syrians, three units of inconvenience, and chemical weapons will cause Syrians thirty units of inconvenience. The problem is, you could invade Syria and destroy the chemical weapons withing months, if you wanted. That's at most fifteen unit-years of inconvenience. But those three units of inconvenience due to climate change will apparently persist in Syria for *at least* many decades, if not a century or more. That's already dozens of unit-years of inconvenience, perhaps hundreds. Also, people have a tremendous capacity for dismissing long-term problems. Perhaps asking Syrians what they are worried about, while usually valid, isn't valid universally.
Most humans are more upset when they break a shoelace than over whatever the current risk of world catastrophe is, whether AGW, nuclear war, or stray asteroid.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Who exactly do you think gets 'expenses'?
I will give you a hint, pro-climate change scientists tend to be funded by universities and in some cases governments.
Deniers tend to be funded by Exxon, and their like.
So tell, me who gets tot see the world on expenses - the deniers or the scientists?
If you can't see the answer than that tells me who is funding your internet connection. After all the deniers have expressly admitted paying people to spread lies.
The fact that so many of the denialist arguments echo the "smoking causes cancer" denialist arguments (the science isn't all in yet, there is no consensus, it might be something else, nobody looks at xxxx, etc); and in fact many of those echoing the arguments are the same folks who said them about smoking in the first place, suggests to me that the problem is not a conspiracy of lies among the AGW believers.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Oh, that explains why yesterday I was driving in snow in southern Utah, and wearing long underwear in SoCal, where normally this time of year I'd be thinking about breaking out the shorts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
We haven't managed yet to put the relatively tiny amount of nice solid high level radioactive waste into a safe underground storage, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here regarding our ability to stash away 300 billion tonnes per year of carbon in the form of CO2 anytime soon.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Not sure how many of these are reachable behind the WSJ paywall. But I find it interesting how the WSJ publishes climate change minimizing articles in there "opinion" section and promotes them heavily on their site. At the same time also has excellent well written articles not as easy to find on the climate change in there hard news section.
Opinion piece attempting to poison the well before the report was released.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Fact based real reporting article published today.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Absolutely. Because of you think about it, captains of industry, the WSJ target readership, can't do their jobs on the basis of fantasy. And, they're not the type to form opinions by reading anybody's editorials anyway, so there's no confusIon for them. Whereas the guys who happily parrot the WSJ editorials here are not usually professionally confronted with reinsurance costs for meteorological disasters, or whatever the actual news item covers.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
No, it doesn't follow that more land at a given temperature is better for growing than less land, elsewhere, at a given temperature. Soil quality and water supply matter a whole lot, also.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Soil quality and water supply follow humans -- and we have infinite water supply around here, especially going north. We can carry soil. Greenhouses are easy solutions too.
I wonder if he was talking about living in virtual realities - a lot of economists are into that stuff, since it's the only hope of allowing infinite growth in a finite world.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I suggest you study some of these things. If water followed humans, Southern California would have significantly fewer problems. Also, if you're familiar with any case where soil was moved on a large scale (say, thousands of square km), please share.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Southern California is not my country. My country's got no such problems. And seeing as how I live in a city with streets like front, lakeshore, and quay, it's basically hundreds of square kilometres of land that wasn't there.
Different country, different attributes. We've got water everywhere here. Water follows humans -- here. Not California. Here. It's a totally different climate. That's the point. If it warms up just a little bit, the soil comes for free.