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Geothermal Heat Contributing To West Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting
bricko sends this news from The University of Texas at Austin:
Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it's being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where accurate information has previously been unobtainable. The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by UTIG will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts.
The Thwaites Glacier is melting because of Geothermal heat rather than AGW? I must admit that I'm astonished. Not by the cause of the melting, but by the fact that the discovery is being announced without any attempt to spin this as proof of AGW.
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It was so much nicer when we could just attribute disasters to the Gods, sacrifice one or two goats and all be happy about it.
I am siding with those that the climate changes. In my opinion it does. If CO2 curbing means more direct taxes on me, then I am against it.
of whether humans are the cause of global warming, we should stop pollution for it's own sake! Even if we are 0% responsible, we should still cut the amount of stuff we put into the air and water.
And queue the alarmists that will take every little thing and blow so moronically out of proportion that it bears no resemblance to the data or science.
Both sides are enemies of reason and science. If you have a vested emotional interest in a given conclusion and are inclined to ignore evidence that contradicts that position or inclined to exaggerate/fabricate evidence that supports your position then you're an enemy of reason and science.
And BOTH sides of this issue have lots of those people.
There is a moderate middle that just wants to hear the science and deal with this in a reasonable fashion. But they're shouted down by the fanatics on either side that scream "YOU"RE WITH US OR AGAINST US" while foaming at the mouth like diseased animals.
That is what needs to stop. This issue have been hijacked by political interests... left and right when really it should supersede the factional struggles in our political system.
Global warming is not an issue to be used to profit the political ambitions of democrats or republicans. Socialists or capitalists... or any other label you'd prefer.
Global warming must be an issue that is dealt with in a respectful, bipartisan, and transparent fashion.
Anything short of that and any claim to scientific purity is GONE. Utterly irrelevant. It becomes nothing more then a political struggle with the issue of truth being irrelevant to the process. Power politics against power politics. One screaming stupid face against another screaming stupid face... the winner being decided by who can shout louder and longer.
Choose.
Do you want this to be about science or do you want this to be about who can yell louder? Because if you want it to be about science, the politics need to be put away.
And for that, you're going to have to stop trying to twist people's arms and ACTUALLY convince them. Which will mean compromises and respect for contradiction. It will mean going through a long drawn out process where there is no roughshodding, steamrolling, or other terms for the attempt to push things through without going through due process.
Will this take awhile? How fast is the currently process going? What we have no is sort of like stop and go traffic. Everything rushes forward for a moment and the alarmists think they've suddenly broken through. Only to have the whole thing either stop or outright reverse itself taking away most of those gains. Graph the progress over time and its not going fast if its going at all.
So why not try something else? It can't be slower then what you already have and you might find it more pleasant to actually talk respectfully with people rather then try to undermine their very right to participate in the process at all.
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It means that geothermal activity is caused by CO2 emissions too.
When I drop something, I usually blame gravity.
Everything else that happens, I blame global warming, um... climate change.
Geological processes tend to reduce the global temperature, due to the release of sulpher dioxide which reflects sunlight in the upper atmosphere. Until the 1970s, coal fired power stations had a similar cooling effect, but then scrubbers were added to remove the sulpher, since the resultant acid had other bad effects. So, if we get uncomfortably hot, then we can remove the scrubbers from the smoke stacks and pretend that they are volcanoes.
Queue the climate change deniers
...but what if I don't like being labeled with an epithet (ha, take that, you alarmist!), and furthermore, what if I don't feel like being forced to stand in a line?
Your imperative sentences are strange.
I suppose a queue is better than a stack. Fine. Queue the deniers, but stack the alarmists!
if you stand at the pole?
First of all reducing the AGW debate to "both sides" with a neutral "middle ground" is disingenuous - in the count of number of people the balance is very strongly in favor of accepting AGW to degrees ( e.g. this recent set of studies arriving at between 91-97% consensus ). The denialists get disproportionate attention, which is actually a known type of political manipulation (e.g. argument to moderation) and this type of attention has been shown to disproportionately affect people who aren't specialized in the subject matter to moderate their position when no such moderation is required (more on this subject, though I can't find the scientific paper about it right now.
Second, appeal to "scientific purity" is overshooting. Science is constantly advancing, improving models, replacing wrong assumptions with less wrong assumptions. There is nothing "pure" about it, and in no way does it need to be to advance the cause and be useful to our lives. Words such as "purity" are much too loaded to be used, exactly because of the scientific approach. There's no need to deny - the scientific world does not have all the T's crossed and the I's dotted on AGW, just as it doesn't on gravity, physics and quantum theory, but we still happily cross bridges every day. The degree of certainty has long reached sufficient levels to warrant seriously looking at how to realistically (not politically, stupid carbon credits) mitigate instead of discussing a black and white position on AGW's existence.
And thirdly the AGW debate is much bigger than the USA. I understand that you have bipartisan issues across the board (not just AGW, and to be clear: I think both parties are in the wrong) but that doesn't extend to the rest of the world and this is a global issue.
So I think that while I don't entirely agree with your argumentation, I agree with your position. AGW is a science thing - and science has agreed that it exists though not to which degree. The challenge is to find solutions, and that's also with science.
Finally, I find the actual article very intriguing and somewhat challenging to my own views on AGW, as evidenced by my first thoughts on this: could it be that the geology of the antarctic is becoming destabilized because of the lessening of the weight of the ice sheet, in turn causing more geological activity? But that's a conjecture from an explanation that wouldn't challenge AGW, and real science must of course also look for other hypotheses.
Usually (Yellowstone, Iceland, ...) geothermal sources are present tens of thousands, if not tens of millions, of years before present. Unless this is a newly-formed hot spot, the ice sheet has survived millions of years of it. Only the OTHER (read: us) source of heat is now exposing the ice sheet to more heat than it can withstand.
Bring on the geothermal heat "deniers"
We are basically at the end of a mini ice age right now.
Earth will simply return to it's natural hot state. I for one hope I live long enough to see what was buried under the ice for all those years.
People on the coast can move or build sea walls or something.
It's not that big a deal. There is plenty of uninhabited non-coastal land.
It's clear the apocalypse is coming -- whether it takes the form of Communists vs. the West, a new Crusades, or climatic change, our grandchildren are well and truly fucked.
Queue: To get in line. A favorite pasttime of the British.
Cue: A prompt to tell an actor it's time to go on stage. "That's my cue".
It's tricky, which one to use to alert a waiting group of deniers that now's the time to get in line for the echo chamber? Cue the queue?
You're just trying to justify the ongoing politicization of the issue.
Which is fine. The price of that is that the science is irrelevant and that the issue becomes one purely of politics.
That is the price. And that is not a decision I can make for you. You must make that decision yourself for yourself. But I do think its important that you understand that this choice has a cost.
You are calculating that it is more expedient to attain your goals by applying political pressure rather then go through the tedious process of actually gathering consent.
However, in doing that you force opposing forces to likewise employ political pressure. And when political pressure meets political pressure - logic is irrelevant.
I find it to be rather puzzling that people that think they have the stronger scientific argument have done more then any other to make the science irrelevant to the discussion. You've dramatically undermined your position by doing this and none of the science will be relevant in the discussion until the nature of the discussion changes.
You're going to bring up poor little villagers in the pacific that have lost their village or something due to encroaching tides due to AGW... and the opposition is going to talk about rust belt cities turned into urban wastelands due to punitive ecological controls.
You are not winning the political argument. The international coalition is toothless and if anything more against you then for you. And that is made all the stronger by the poor economy.
In short you have two options.
1. You can have the humility to have the discussion the way you should have in the first place without dismissing people or calling the science settled.
2. You can make this political, render the science irrelevant, and lose to entrenched economic forces.
Choose. You can moderate your position and actually get somewhere while enlightening everyone to the risks and problems of the issue. Or get downed out in a political screaming match and lose.
I know you don't like your choices but those are your choices. Pick one.
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stack yo mama
I never said anything about carbon credits. Kindly don't put words in my mouth or assume you know all my positions simply because I said we should do something about it.
Something is an extremely vague statement. Something could be just talking about it. Something could be a great deal more. You can't assume what I would do simply because I said "something".
As to my preferred means of dealing with the issue. I'd like to move more to closed loop fuel systems. That is, rather then taking oil out of the earth, I'd like to grow the fuel or create it using atmospheric carbon which can safety be reemitted without altering the background level of CO2 because all the CO2 used to create it came from that source.
Obviously such systems are more expensive so I wouldn't suggest we throw a huge amount of money at them. But we can do things like us solar, geothermal, nuclear (I am a big fan of nuclear power), wind etc to power chemical plants that produce fuel FROM atmospheric carbon. These plants could ramp up their production and ramp it down with the supply of power from the renewable source. This would allow us to store solar energy in a way that we cannot do right now because batteries are frankly terrible places to store energy.
I do not believe in carbon credits. I do not believe in big taxes on CO2 emitters. And I do not believe in anything that significantly increases the price of anything.
Furthermore, the sort of technology I'm talking about can be miniaturized. That means you could have a fuel refinery in your garage that makes enough fuel to keep your car filled and is supplied entirely by solar power on your roof or maybe just electricity from the grid turned into fuel.
I am not an enemy of the modern world and I'm very happy to be reasonable on everything. Don't assume I'm a fanatic please... I'm a nice guy and my ideal solution is one where EVERYONE is happy.
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Wow, so many degrees, so much research, so many educated morons, and yet, they still don't understand the greater issue. Climate changes are already here, over-long droughts, seasonal changes, abnormal floods, strange winters etc etc.
Stop squabbling about why it's happening and find a solution to stop it.
Well, at least our children (we?) are not fucked, as the previous generation managed to thwart the nuclear apocalypse.
Should we do any less with the threat of the apocalypse we are facing now?
Quick fact: earth has warmed more than the neighboring planets have.
Mercury, Earth, and Venus have gotten warmer. What do Mercury, earth, and Venus have in common? The sun, of course. Sun cycles are probably the cause of this warning.
Earth has warmed more the other two. What's special about earth? A) our atmosphere b) humans and c) water. The additional warming of earth probably has to do with our atmosphere being more affected by the increased solar output, by water holding the heat, by human activity, or by a combination of these.
Climate is change dear. Saying "Climate change" is like saying "TCP Protocol" or "NSA Agency".
There is a long way between accepting that weather patterns are changing and that a corrupt but popular, politician can assign a beurocrat the task
of deciding who can produce what, where and how much it should cost the consumer. That is in short the goal of all greenies and commies.
Full control of production ability.
I wouldn't rely on a poll in the Gardian for being balanced. Their small and shrinking readership is made up increasingly of those with hard left views, due to the content of the paper.
Incidentally the BBC advertises its jobs in there, which is why it also has such a biassed view toward left issues ( such as the famous notice board with "stop the cuts" type newspaper clippings )
That all of climate science is a complete scam, and the entire scientific community is too stupid to figure it out while I, an anonymous internet commenter, have discovered the truth.
"You're just trying to justify the ongoing politicization of the issue." -- No reasonable Individual could read the comment to which You refer and come to that conclusion. GP was clearly stating how the existence of AGW is not a political issue anymore than asking "Is 15 bigger than 5?" is a political issue.
Any problem which requires cross-the-board action to resolve will quickly become political, and will never be separated from politics. In more sane countries where the them-vs-us mentality isn't so pronounced, the politics doesn't degrade into a yelling match. That seems to be reserved for developing countries and the US.
Now, that being said, that does not reflect on the science one bit. The science is sound, the problems are real, and the time to implement solutions is now. How loudly people argue over it doesn't change the research, so your claim about "scientific purity" is abject nonsense from the get-go - science doesn't work like that.
There is no respect in a scientific discussion for those who ignore the scientific method and the findings that result from it. There simply can't be, by very definition. If we are having a discussion on scientific findings, and someone says they're bogus (but can't show how, or tries to show but their claims are demonstrably bogus themselves, as is the case with every AGW cynic) and sticks to their guns even though their issues have been debunked time and time and time again, how should the discussion proceed? Accept their opinion as equally valid as the scientific findings so as to not upset them by highlighting their inanity? That's no answer.
The problem isn't climate change. the problem is that glacier melts every 5,000 years or so. guess when it last melted? 5,000 years ago, Maybe it melted back then because the pharaohs were putting out too much CO2 with their slave labor in building the pyramids.
Is CO2 having an affect and should we try to curb it. Of course. is the planet getting warmer, Of course. Do we Want clean air to breath, of course. Those are good reasons why to clean the air. The planet however under goes constant temperature shifts. it shifts from 4 degrees colder to 4 degrees warmer every 20-40 thousand years. We don't have accurate non localized temperature maps for more than 50 years. Ice core Samples, tree samples, etc are all immediately affected by the local temperature. and we are trying to guess planetary temperature from two or maybe three locations. I am sorry but that is not statistically possible.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
1. The science is settled. This is not up for negotiation just to make some scientifically-illiterate numpty happy
2. The science is not political, but the solutions are, as they require broad cooperation to implement. That is non-negotiable, too.
The real options are:
1. Accept the scientific method, accept the findings of the world's climatologists, and implement solutions.
oh, wait, that's it. You don't seem to understand the difference between the science and the politics.
To be clear, the researchers did not find an increase in geothermal activity under the west Antarctic ice sheet, they just mapped sources of geothermal activity and found that there were significant sources. If the models do not take these into account they may greatly underestimate the rate of collapse.
Your closed loop system doesn't work as it's woefully inefficient, and as energy demands increase, the amount of temporary CO2 in the atmosphere will increase. It will help (slightly) but is rather short-sighted, and is no long-term solution. Also using electricity to create fuel from the atmospheric CO2 suffers from the same issue - it will not reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will continue to rise even if everyone used your system.
The real solutions are:
1. Carbon sequestration (a fair bit of research is required)
2. Sensible nuclear power (new reactors & fuel cycles)
3. Improved use of renewable and carbon-neutral energy sources.
Carbon credits make sense as they limit the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by the companies in the market, allowing companies to buy and sell the permission to release CO2. They are not a solution, but they are a quick fix to lessen the problems in the short-term while long-term solutions are found.
A solution where everyone is happy will not be found, as people will find problems with anything, even if it's simply because the person suggesting it is from the wrong "team", hence the need for politics.
The science is settled.
I don't know what that can possibly mean. Science, last time I checked, does not work that way.
Required reading for internet skeptics
That is not true. The WAIS last lost mass as we came out of the last glacial maximum 20,000 years ago. It melted to its current state at that time: http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/...
Just a few days ago, global warmers were suggesting that Antarctic ice losses were doubling due to global warming. Of course, the problem with that is that the warmest temperature recorded at Amundsen-Scott South pole station during the last 12 months was -21F in January, 2014 which is not exactly bikini weather and is still 53 degrees F lower than the temperature needed to melt water. Obviously, if antarctic ice is melting, it is due to volcanic or geothermal heat inputs rather than balmy surface temperatures brought about by too much carbon dioxide.
For lunatics or those who rely on funding for their science based on AGW... they'd love the "science settled".
The pyramids were not built with slave labor.
There was an article here in /. just a week or two ago saying that the Antarctic Sheet is perplexing to climatologists because it is _increasing_, not decreasing. So a glacier sloughs off, why would it alone contribute to sea level rises, while the rest of the sheet is growing? Show me your models, tell me its assumptions and approximations, demonstrate its predictions when there are deviations from those assumptions and approximations, and you will likely be apologising or rationalising the results so that they agree or can be seen to align is some way with whatever desired results you had in mind when you built it.
You know what? It isn't even worth looking up. Clearly there is FUD on this issue from all sides. Who cares? We humans will do what we do best: adapt.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
you obviously don't either. just another biased eco nutter.
1. nope, fake 97% consensus claims don't make it true, and that's not science anyway.
2. It is political, scare the voters so that when you take money off them with the excuse you are doing it for the environment (money actually gets shoveled into pockets of their funders), they don't tell you to fuck off and vote for the other guy.
options
1. nope they are not scientists so they are talking bollocks.
2. stop panicking you fucking idiots.
I have to point out that Antarctica is geothermally balanced. There's about 4km of ice in W Antarctica (much less in the east), with only a few cm added each year it turns out that the oldest ice at the base is only about 1 million years old. Why is that since it's been a continent of ice for tens of times that duration ? Glaciers calving in the sea are not enough to explain it as they run too slowly in the center. It's simply because the ice at the base melts off and the water runs to the ocean in underground (or rather under-ice) river runways. At the base of the ice, there is a thermal equilibrium between the weight of ice (lower melting point, only about -6C in the center) and the geothermal flux.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We are heating the Earth surface with too much contact human contact. Please jump in the air 100 times a day. It's not much to ask. And don't you dare rub your socks on the ground to shock your sister!
The science is settled.
I don't know what that can possibly mean. Science, last time I checked, does not work that way.
Yes, it does. It's the only way for practical research to ever happen. You can't go around questioning fundamental assumptions at every turn. This doesn't mean that those fundamental assumptions are "settled" for all time, but from a practical standpoint, science must treat some core assumptions as effectively "settled" in order to get on with any detailed research.
Example: I accept that in normal everyday life, that light obeys the "Law of Reflection." That is SETTLED science. When I'm driving my car, I don't wonder: "Gee, maybe I should do another experiment with the rearview mirror just to be sure," nor do I worry, "Oh, maybe the Law of Reflection won't work today, so I should be careful and not rely on my mirrors to tell me where things are."
More importantly, if something goes wrong with my mirrors in the real world, my first thought is definitely NOT "Oh, the Law of Reflection is probably wrong." Instead, I assume the mirrors are damaged or poorly designed or something else. At this point, that's the ONLY reasonable conclusion to come to -- as a scientist.
The science is settled.
That's what we mean by "settled" in everyday life. When we say a disagreement is "settled," for example, we don't mean that we are denying the possibilityof ever disagreeing again. We mean that we've reached a practical stability point, and it's not worth continuing the discussion further at this time.
From a scientific standpoint, it's necessary to establish these core assumptions within a research paradigm so that we can work on actually refining our work without running around questioning fundamental assumptions all the time. If you think Thomas Kuhn's notions of paradigms and scientific "revolutions" is too extreme, a very reasonable alternative is Imre Lakatos's notion of research programs , which was developed in response to Kuhn. From the Wikipedia article:
A Lakatosian research programme is based on a hard core of theoretical assumptions that cannot be abandoned or altered without abandoning the programme altogether. More modest and specific theories that are formulated in order to explain evidence that threatens the 'hard core' are termed auxiliary hypotheses. Auxiliary hypotheses are considered expendable by the adherents of the research programme - they may be altered or abandoned as empirical discoveries require in order to 'protect' the 'hard core'. Whereas Popper was generally read as hostile toward such ad hoc theoretical amendments, Lakatos argued that they can be progressive, i.e. productive, when they enhance the programme's explanatory and/or predictive power, and that they are at least permissible until some better system of theories is devised and the research programme is replaced entirely.
For the majority of climate scientists today, the assumption of global warming has become part of a "hard core" in their research programs. They believe that it's now more productive to treat this assumption as "settled" and focus on investigating other aspects of climate problems, rather than worrying about continuing to debate this fundamental question.
I suppose there are a few scientists who would continue to debate this issue specifically about global warming. But you simply cannot deny that actual scientific research in general necessarily has to accept "core assumptions" as "settled" in order to make any progress.
I don't know what that can possibly mean.
It means there is a large and growing body of research that has collected diverse and disparate lines of evidence that support the major governing theory on the topic. In particular, it's enough that we can say with a high degree of confidence that the fundamental aspects of the theory of global warming are well founded and reasonably accurate.
Science, last time I checked, does not work that way.
That's what some pendants would like you to think. They want you to ignore the fact that science is both a process and the body of knowledge collected (and verified) through that process.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Fine -- let's an a condition: "The science is as settled as the scientific conclusion that cigarette smoking causes cancer". I hope that clarifies things.
Kythe
All scientists rely on funding. And if I were looking to get rich, I'd be producing results favorable to the denialists. There's a lot more money there, and a lot less competition.
Kythe
The system I'm offering would be powered by systems that don't power the grid efficiently as it is or systems that generate so much power that no one cares if they're used efficiently.
That would be renewable energy which is all but useless because its unreliable. However, if you're using it to power a fuel generation plant then the unreliability doesn't matter so much. Grid power must meet demand at all times. No exceptions. Supply cannot go up or down randomly. It has to be meet demand period. Renewable energy is typically unable to do that because the output fluxuates constantly and often stops alltogether. If the wind stops... the power stops... if the sun goes down... the power stops. You can't use that in grid power without storage system and we don't have one.
So instead of wasting our time and money pouring that into the grid, you can instead use it to power a fuel generation plant which won't care so much if the power goes up and down. The power goes down... the plant shuts down and waits for the power to start again.
Alternatively you can use nuclear power which generates so much power that it renders the question of inefficiency irrelevant.
As to temporary carbon levels... no... the levels would be constant. You'd be taking out as much as you're putting into the system at any given time which would mean human industry would generate zero net carbon if it used this system for all fuel.
You can look at forests as an example. They suck up carbon when the trees grow and then release most of it when the trees die and decompose. Trees don't really sequester much or any carbon. They just hold on to it for a time and then release it. The a rotting tree and a tree on fire are ultimately the same thing in the end. The only difference really is that the fire releases the carbon faster but on a global scale and over time periods relevant to climate the difference is irrelevant.
Further, I'd like to point out that just because current processes for fuel conversion are not very efficient there is no chemical reason that they must be inefficient. That's more a matter of the technology not being very refined more then anything. Simply attempting it will likely improve efficiency in and of itself. And over time the efficiency will improve more.
As to your three solutions. I have no problem with any of them.
As to carbon credits, they're a great idea if you're willing to go to literal war over them.
No really. How badly to do you want to do that idea... because you're going to have to nuke cities to do it.
I know you think you can just sweet talk people into that idea... but you can't. Its a dead idea. Still born. Blue, gnarled, and strangled by its own umbilical cord.
You can clutch the corpse of that idea to yourself and pretend it lives still... but its dead. The price of bringing to life is subjugating a few billion people on the planet that won't accept it.
You don't have the military strength, moral will, or political support to do that. So at best you can delude your political allies as to the possibility and waste the opposition's time playing whack-o-mole with you.
But that's it.
I strongly suggest you come up with an idea that won't get people to come out with their pitch forks and torches.
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You can't have a balanced discussion when the people involved want to remain willfully ignorant of the science. Check that, you can't have a balanced discussion when the people involved want to deny reality (hence the term "denier"). If science and reality can't convince someone that something is happening, you're just wasting time and resources that could be better put to use elsewhere.
~X~
just saying its not political, doesnt make it true. This is a topic that has been abused by politicians in the same way immigration and drug reform have been. Both sides like to pay lip service but they only talk about it because they know it divides, We have real pressing issues that are affecting us *TODAY* that politicians dont talk about in any real substance because they would rather have americans bickering about abortion, something that is a blip on the radar in reality, or the death penalty, where we have had an avg of 2 executions a year since 76, in other words a non issue.
meanwhile they fundraise on global warming and these other issues while our bridges rot away, our people are living paycheck to paycheck more and more, and no one wants to talk about those issues seriously
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
1. The science is settled
I know right? and the world is flat, I mean the science is settled!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Do you have a theory as to what is causing Earth, Mars, and Venus to warm? Certainly not invisible aliens building invisible power plants on Mars.
I will believe the science is settled when the journals that carry articles about climate stop rejecting articles that are not "in line" with the alleged settled science, especially those articles that are brought forward by scientists who don't put the word "climate" in front of "scientist" or "researcher" when they describe themselves.
"Science" is about exploring boundaries and ideas, and a "memory hole" has no place at all in science. "Science" is about evaluating the data and resulting theories, not the person bringing the data and theories forward. "Science" is about recognizing new facts and incorporating them into existing theories...or throwing out the old theories when the new facts require those theories to be stretched all out of shape to shoehorn in the new facts, much like politicians gerrymander the boundaries of voting districts to achieve a desired result.
Why have the various predictions been so drastically wrong? That says the science is not settled. If it were, the results would better match the predictions. Especially the doomsday predictions. Not to mention the flip-flops between "global warming" and "global cooling" -- how does the settled science square with those changes in view? I'm reminded of the boy crying "Wolf!"...
I agree that there are trends in temperature change that needs to be watched closely, but I disagree that there is one "magic" solution. Indeed, I look at reduced industrial CO2 emissions as only one of many things we should look to do. For example, have you considered growing grass on the roof of your house, and on the body of your car? How about roofing over car parks, and growing plants on them? Have you looked into dense, CO2-consuming flora on the top of your office building? How many trees have you planted on your property, especially large-leaf ones?
"Climate change" is not a "Someone else's problem" -- it's YOUR problem, too. Why do I see lots of talk but little personal action? Show us how to solve the problem, don't just say "you do it."
Which means you're justifying not negociating but imposing your will. Which means you're going for the political option.
Which means the science under your policy will be irrelevant as to whether you succeed or fail to impose your will. It will come down literally to whether your faction is more politically powerful then your opposition.
The right or wrong of it will be irrelevant.
Do the logical math. Watch Variable1 interact with Variable2 through EquationX.
Check your premises and think the issue through.
What you are saying is "I think I'm right so everyone should do what I say"... that's great but you have to convince people not only that you're right but that your solutions to the problem are right.
If you refuse to go through that process then what you have to do is overwhelm/strong arm people into bending to your will. And that means whether you are right or wrong won't matter. You can strong arm people into saying the sun is made of puppies that way. Look at what is going on in the Islamic world for a good example of what I'm talking about. Do you think things work that way over there because someone convinced everyone that was the best way to run a society? No. They just threatened to kill anyone that disagreed with them. They've fought literally hundreds of wars over that over the last 400 years. You have no idea the bloodshed. But they got what they wanted.
And being right or wrong doesn't matter if you're forcing people. You're just forcing them. End of story.
I'd like to think my society is better then that. That we can arrive at common action through a less coercive policy. But that will require patience and flexibility on everyone's part to arrive at action that a plurality feels acceptable.
Any such policy is not going to make radicals on either side happy. The radicals on the right and radicals on the left will not like it because they both want the reciprocal extreme options.
What shall it be? Are you willing to try to go through a rational dialog on the issue or do you want to use power politics to compel people?
Because the choices you make there will have consequences as how things are run and maintained.
If you maintain your authority at gun point you can get people to comply. But the instant the gun wavers.. is dropped... things can shift very quickly and possibly violently.
This is an appeal for moderation, patience, and civility.
The environmental movement has damaged itself by allowing itself to be hijacked by political factions that seek to use it for their own selfish political gain. That said, if those same political forces dominate they will probably give you everything you want.
So that's a calculation you'll have to make. Of course, if you lose politically... you'll find no cooperation in the political organizations that struggled to shut it down. They'll oppose you reflexively.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
and who gets rich from these carbon credits? thats what people are missing. If I pollute, i should not simply have to pay more to do so, that does not stop the so called pollution. Carbon credits to me just show that its all a farce, someone is getting rich on carbon credits and the cost of goods rises because as everyone knows, companies DONT pay higher taxes/fees, the costs get rolled into the finished product, and WE pay for them.
If you honestly believe carbon is bad, than you need to go for broke, if not, stop playing games with peoples lives.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You've posted the automatic, chat-bot response that you've been trained to go to whenever anyone mentions the rest of the solar system. Now take two seconds to actually think about what you just said.
I said:
by a combination of these
You replied:
Nope - the sun's influence has been shown to not be as important
Then you went on with childish attacks. Think about the phrase "not AS important". That's a comparison. That phrase means one thing is important, and the other thing is more important. In other words, a combination, precisely as I said.
"You can't use simple logic ..."
Indeed, simple logic does get in the way of parroting the party line.
That's not what those studies actually say. Furthermore, even if that were true, pre-20th century, there was nearly universal agreement on the validity of classical physics, but then QM and GR came along, so consensus doesn't tell you about truth.
Funny, it seems to me that people like global warming activists have been getting "disproportionate attention", given the weakness of their actual evidence.
And the general attitude of the rest of the world is something like "oh, it's a big problem, and someone else should give us money to fix it". Then countries try to pick metrics to shift the blame on someone else. Europeans point to current per-capita emissions, the Chinese want to emit for a while in order to develop, and everybody gangs up on the US because we have money. Rationally, if you believe AGW requires action, it's clear that Europe should bear the brunt of any costs and payments for carbon emissions, China should curb its emissions, and the US is somewhere in the middle.
The second sentence doesn't logically follow from the first. Yes, AGW does exist, but whether that is a problem and whether we need to find "solutions" is an open question.
No, that doesn't work for many reasons. But it's a nice illustration about how people love to fit new data in with their existing preconceptions instead of looking at it rationally.
I know there are some erupting under the ice. Is this contributing?
It's not a geothermal event causing the ice to melt away, it's a portal to the realm of the elder gods, Cthulu is rising! (Ref: At the Mountains of Madness)
It's worth pointing out that the increased geothermal heat estimate only contributes a few per cent to the melting of the Thwaites glacier. It's predominately AGW and natural calving. I'm not saying this paper isn't important (we all know about the straw that broke the camel's back), just pointing out that it doesn't provide an alternate explanation to AGW for the melting of the Thwaite glacier.
in fact, i call "the science is settled" weasel words. it is as disingenuous as calling
darwin's theory of evolution "just a theory," and "teach the controversy," when in fact
there was none for 100 years. the whole of modern biology would be unintelligible
without it.
the idea that human activity leads to increased atmospheric co2, and that co2 is
a greenhouse gas should be more accepted than it is, but the problem is that the
zealots simultaneously pushed the harder-to-see awg claim, and made dire predictions
that will cost people bit money with it. it's a political football, and naturally when pushed
people do what they have to, including making illogical arguments.
It doesn't mean, "the science is complete".
It does mean that the results so far show with confidence that humans are responsible for the majority of global warming. This conclusion is deemed strong enough to act on.
There is still much more work to be done on nailing down mechanisms, reducing error bars etc, but none of this is likely to change the above conclusion. That would require both strong new evidence and a counter-explanation for all the results so far.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Queue the climate change deniers, who will try to skew this as meaning it's geothermal activity and not our CO2 contributions that are causing ice melt, not realizing that this really means curbing CO2 emissions is that much more important so we don't accelerate it.
Queue the anthropogenic climate change zealots who will claim that all climate change is the fault of us evil, evil humans who are a plague on the planet--who will attempt to discredit this study.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I will accept that the science is settled when the scientists and politicians who claim that the science is settled stop jetting around the world to meetings to discuss how they can get other people to stop jetting around the world to meetings.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
> There was an article here in /. just a week or two ago saying that the Antarctic Sheet is perplexing to climatologists because it is _increasing_, not decreasing.
Increasing in surface area but decrease in volume. This isn't complicated, but if you won't look stuff up then it is easy to say that all exaggeration is equal. Kind of like -1 and +10 are both numbers so they are really just the same thing.
As I made clear, your two options here are as follows:
1. Make this about science and abandon the politics. Discuss things with people. Be patient. Do not attempt to compel people to comply. Accept that there will be differences of opinions. Work for mutually agreeable solutions.
2. Make this about politics and render the science irrelevant. Try to force people with law. Do no argue. Do not negotiate. Test your political will against their political will. Shout them down. Shut them down. Take no prisoners and offer no mercy.
Those are your two options. And as much as you've said the science is settled, you've apparently chosen option 2 which means the science doesn't matter. Its all politics if you go down that road. The winner there will not be whomever has science on their side but whomever has a stronger political coalition.
And I should note... you're losing the political fight.
I strongly suggest that if you want to have a chance to win... you choose option 1. Option 2 is leading to a pathetic defeat.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
meanwhile they fundraise on global warming and these other issues while our bridges rot away, our people are living paycheck to paycheck more and more, and no one wants to talk about those issues seriously
The future and the present are both relevant. They're talking about global warming not because it's not a real problem, since it is, but because they can make a buck pretending to do something about it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yep, they were all Upper Middle Class with nothing to do all day long but stare at the little people. The rudimentary fallacies people like to spew are just too funny at times. Oh, and Obamacare isn't a tax, unless SCOTUS says it is.
> You are calculating that it is more expedient to attain your goals by applying political pressure rather then go through the tedious process of actually gathering consent.
Consent of society is always a political process, basically by definition.
You've fallen prey to the conceit of the technocrat - that pure science and hard math are all that matters. Except that both are just as susceptible to manipulation by those who choose the questions that the science is applied to answer. They are especially subject to manipulation when one side insists on framing the issue in terms of questions that seem clear-cut but, due to the nature of having only one planet, can't ever be answered with the confidence of laboratory science.
BTW, when you said "calling the science settled" you are betraying your own bias because he never wrote that.
Only read most of these comments but one that sticks out is the if you don't like paying taxes related to global warming then go private solar, etc, and take yourself off the grid. Problem is that if you start producing your own energy to any significant degree you'll find a new set of taxes and fines for not paying into the common funds via the old taxes. Instead of being rewarded for being part of the soution you're penalized even more harshly with the equivalent of the old taxes and a criminal record for not paying them..
Yes, and queue the dipshits who say any temperature rises today are due to CO2, while all the rest of the temperature rises and falls throughout the Holocene were not, yet you do not need to know why, but think crushing economies for a bogeyman is good policy. Idiot.
Then you should check up on how science works, as that is clearly what happens.
If we didn't assume certain things to be settled, no-one could use them as the basis for their work. If we assume evolution isn't settled, there would be no medicine.
I know it's easy to just claim climate change isn't settled, but that's not what the evidence or the scientists say. It makes you look a fool every time you parrot that ridiculous claim. You are denying science, just as creationists and anti-vaxxers do.
What's with the false dichotomies? It is about science, as the science is providing the evidence that bad things are and will continue to happen. Politics is needed in order to create solutions, as they require many countries working together in unison.
The political fight in the US is a joke, but elsewhere in the world it is far from being lost - quite the opposite, in fact.
So you can keep your made-up options. The science says the environment as we know it can't continue the way it is if we keep pumping CO2 out, and politics is trying to figure out ways to implement solutions to protect our little blue/green life-raft.
"you simply cannot deny that actual scientific research in general necessarily has to accept "core assumptions" as "settled" in order to make any progress."
You are jumping from Lakatos' description of how science works to saying that is the way it must work. What specific examples did Lakatos use to generate that description?
The IPCC's reports show (with a high certainty) that AGW will be a problem, and we do need to find solutions. Saying otherwise reflects very poorly on you, as it's all spelled out nice and neatly.
The "general attitude" of the rest of the world isn't what you seem to think it is. You sound like you've been listening to Christopher Monckton.
You are parroting the unfounded opinions of others, and it's pathetic. Your attitude is a major reason why this issue has become so politicised. What should be a simple case of follow-the-science (that has yielded a massive decrease in population, massive increases in quality of life, etc.) has turned into a case of lets-argue-against-science-because-we-don't-like-what-the-science-says-even-though-it's-sound-science. Again, it's pathetic. Future generations will be embarrassed that people like you ever existed.
If you make this a political struggle then your arguments are ultimately political ones.
What will matter is who supports you, how many of them there are, and how much political will and force you can bring on the issue.
You will also need to sustain that effort because you will have only attained your goal by overwhelming other factions that will likely come back for reprisals later if they feel you slighted them.
Which is what you have happening now. Look at all the reversals the AGW lobby has faced lately. Seriously. Look at the countries that have reversed course... that accepted your policy and then repudiated it.
You've gone in most cases one step forward and two steps back.
What is going on in Australia is a good example. We're also seeing rejection in Canada, most of Asia, France, and we're even seeing wobbling in Germany which is just about the strongest supporter the AGW has at this point.
Look... You have no more control over the wider battle taking place then I do. I'm just pointing out that these choices have consequences and that the results are predictable if you understand the rules.
By making this a political battle what you've done is make the environmental issue itself irrelevant. The politicians you rely upon to push your issue don't even really care about your issue. To them, its a weapon. They see it as a means to power. A talking point. Something they can say to embarrass rivals and increase poll numbers. Which means they don't care if you ever actually accomplish anything.
What they care about is if they look good from one moment to the next. Grasp that they can do this for another million years without accomplishing anything and so long as they keep getting elected they won't care.
That's politics.
If you want to actually accomplish something you have to take it away as a weapon and rather make it an issue that supersedes political rivalry. You have to make it clear it isn't sufficient to argue or try to do something. Rather you have to actually accomplish something. And if nothing is accomplished you can't reward them simply for trying.
This is one of the reasons the money in politics is so incidious because so often what is actually going on is that politicians will suggest they might do something just to get the campaign donations flowing. Its sort of like a protection racket. Would be terrible of taxes went up on your lobster fisheries... maybe you should lobby congress to make sure that doesn't happen. Imagine that but with every industry and every coalition. Then add the dollars up.
This is one of the reasons the tech issues are getting rattled right now. Washington sees all this money in Silicon valley and not enough of it is getting spent on lobbyists and campaign donations. So they fuck with the tech sector until the money starts flowing.
The various issues like AGW are no different in many cases.
They're revenue streams.
You go the political route... and its quite likely you'll pay and pay and pay... and never get anything. They'll bleed you white... of money... of will... they'll leave you disappointed, depressed, and without hope.
It takes awhile to see how it works. You watch the pattern... you see how they do things... and this is the result. Sorry to say.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
exactly my point. The people who are speaking the loudest (in politics, im not talking the avg person who truely believes in their cause) are doing so only because they know it can make them money. This is why some people such as myself have trouble taking it seriously because as GP pointed out the issue has been taken over by politicians who dont know jack shit about science, but know an awful lot about fear mongering
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Your "solution" still has a basic flaw you have not addressed - it keeps the same amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and as demand for energy increases, your "solution" ensures more and more CO2 ends up in the atmosphere. All your solution does is preserve existing fossil fuel reserves. That's it. It isn't sustainable, and will not help in the long run.
Nuclear power is great for the base load - I don't disagree with you on that point. We just need better reactors.
It limits the amount of pollution. So if you pollute, you buy some credits and use those. That means someone else won't pollute as much, maintaining the amount of pollution being emitted, making it quantifiable and more manageable.
Just because you don't like/understand carbon credits doesn't mean the science they're drawing on is bunk.
"Geological processes tend to reduce the global temperature, due to the release of sulpher dioxide which reflects sunlight in the upper atmosphere"
That is true of the big, violent eruptions like Mt St Helens, and the Indonesian volcanos. However the small, bubbly lava type (Hawaii) volcanoes don't get to put their stuff into the upper atmosphere, and the CO2 they do produce still acts as a greenhouse. Of course if a geothermal hot spot is under an ice sheet, then it has to melt the ice first before it can spew into the atmosphere.
This is why some people such as myself have trouble taking it seriously because as GP pointed out the issue has been taken over by politicians who dont know jack shit about science, but know an awful lot about fear mongering
Some people abusing an issue for their own ends doesn't change the validity of that issue, it only makes it more difficult to find a voice not focused on deception. Suggesting that you can't take an issue seriously because some people abuse it is simply making excuses.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree, we should stick to the science. Here you go:
If you dispute this science, then I recommend publishing your own peer-reviewed papers, your own models, and your own alternative hypotheses in the scientific journals. I see a lot of skeptics nit-picking the science, but not many actually taking the effort to publish in the scientific forums.
I eagerly await one of the skeptics out there to please post an equally substantive list of references to "balance" my citations, so everyone can review and compare them.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
All the raw data is available. Everything is available. Just because you want to think it isn't, and don't look for it, and ignore its very existence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You sound like an absolute fool parroting these nonsensical claims.
Furthermore, even if that were true, pre-20th century, there was nearly universal agreement on the validity of classical physics, but then QM and GR came along, so consensus doesn't tell you about truth.
I agree that consensus doesn't necessarily imply truth, but I disagree that there were was near "universal agreement" of the validity of classical physics. By the start of the 20th century, physicists knew there were lots of issues in classical physics. Classical physics could not explain the blackbody spectrum, the precession of Mercury's orbit, the propagation of an E&M wave (at the time waves were only found within a medium that could support it), radiation, and so on. Evidence kept mounting that classical physics could solve a wide array of problems, but there were phenomena that classical physics could not handle. That, in turn, led to new physics being discovered.
what's going on in Australia, Canada, and various countries in europe says otherwise.
What is more the chinese and indians whom are the ones you really need to convince are basically paying you lip service at best.
So I don't know what you think you're accomplishing. I suppose you might just be a political creature and only care about the political fortunes of the politicians. From their perpsective this is working out pretty well. They get people like you to vote for them and they don't really have to do anything to maintain that vote.
So there you go... things are working out great. Just not the way you probably think its working out.
At best you're making very marginal gains that tend to be undermined fundamentally. At worst, you're accomplishing nothing while supporting a political class that sees you basically the way most people see cheeseburgers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You seem to be conflating two closely related topics:
- Is AGW happening? -- This is a scientific question, and has been conclusively answered for a decade and more. The science now is all about dialing in the decimal points so we have a better idea of exactly what we can expect: basically - are we fucked, or are we really *really* fucked? And where is the point of no return? Anyone claiming the phenomena is still being debated by scientists is simply involved in political maneuvering.
- What should we do about it? -- This is fundamentally a political question. Science says we must reduce carbon emissions or engage in large scale geoegineering if we want to preserve a world anything like what we evolved in. How we go about doing one or both of those, or whether we prepare to adapt instead is entirely a political decision.
So, if we want to make this a scientifically grounded discussion then both extremes and the moderates must all accept that AGW is real, and from there we can begin discussing what to do about it. Anyone claiming the truth of AGW is being debated, including those calling for a "moderate" perspective on the topic, is entirely focused on denying the science for their own political ends.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
i worded that wrongly. What I was intending to say was some of the measures some of these politicians are taking seem to be based on fear mongering rather than logic.
I would wager no scientist in their right mind would say that we need to raise taxes on oil and oil based products 100% or 50% even in the short term. I would think that most scientists would be more reasonable in the approach. We do need to get off fossil fuels, even if you dont believe in global warming but because eventually they will run out, probably not in our lifetimes but it will happen.
the rational answer is to continue funding R+D, while at the same time making the oil refining process more environmentally friendly.
it seems that some politicians want to save the world, at the expense of the people, especially the poor. just 10 years ago I could get 300 miles on 10 bucks, now that same 300 miles costs me 64 bucks. to top that off the costs of goods have gone up due to this as well and the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting richer but i dont believe its because of greedy people as much as i believe its due to inept politicians trying to play god. its a mixture of both of course, but we have more oil flowing now than anytime in the past, there is no excuse for it to cost as much as it does
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
it does NOT limit the pollution, it just lines the pockets of X or Y, while raising the costs on everyone.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
That's not how this works. You propose your problem then you suggest a solution.
Everyone makes their own evaluation as to the relevance of the problem and the cost of your solution and then either accepts your offer or makes counter proposals.
Keep in mind that AGW is not the only problem in the world. We have wars, poverty, ignorance, starvation, other various natural disasters, crime, corruption, etc etc etc.
Which means you're playing a game of musical chairs with all those issues. Which issue will I under fund to keep your issue funded? You then have to convince people that your issue is more worth funding then something else.
Don't dismiss me as some simple rejectionist. I'm not dismissing you. I'm pointing out that its complicated and you're going to have to be patient and flexible.
If you start bulling over people, brow beating people, throwing political muscle around... well... you're going to get a reciprocal response.
Some have made it clear on this forum that that is exactly the route they want to take... just push through. And that's fine. But once you go down that road the science is meaningless to the struggle. Its merely about power at that point.
If you want this to not be about power and only about power. Then you have to not force people.
I sadly question whether many people know what that means. Everyone seems to only understand force. Its rather sad.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nice post. While I understand that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", there are also other things that cause more of a greenhouse effect than CO2 (water vapor, for one). Also, unless you kill off about 2B people, I don't think we're going to get our CO2 output down to 1990 level as "An Inconvenient Truth" suggests. I think the obvious thing to do is to focus on prepare, rather than assume we can prevent.
Can we use one of those spike things they use in restaurants? After all, without it the stack would fall over very quickly.
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.
Some people abusing an issue for their own ends doesn't change the validity of that issue
But it does change the economics of the issue....
...or are you one of those "at any cost" people?
"His name was James Damore."
What's more likely to cause a glacier to melt...an increase in temperatures of .5 degrees or a fucking volcano below it?
hmmmm.
AGW is a science thing - and science has agreed that it exists though not to which degree.
See. An example of GP's point. Science doesn't agree on things. Science posits theories then performs experiments and looks for evidence that both support and oppose those theories. The problem with the current climate in the climate debate is that any evidence that might oppose current theories tends to get either twisted to fit the current theories or shouted down. It's supposed to work the other way around. The theories are supposed to be twisted to fit the evidence.
could it be that the geology of the antarctic is becoming destabilized because of the lessening of the weight of the ice sheet, in turn causing more geological activity?
Wow. You could not have presented a more perfect example.
Who is John Galt?
But it does change the economics of the issue.... ...or are you one of those "at any cost" people?
I don't know, which people are those? I think we should keep the biosphere in a livable condition at any cost, though. Without that, we won't be here to argue about economics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
CO2 is naturally sequestered. If we stop emitting new CO2 that will be an enormous help.
I am not saying everything will be fixed if we do that but we won't be making it any worse. All industry if we shift to that system will emit ZERO net carbon.
That's a massive win right there. And once we have that your sequestration ideas might have a point. Short of a zero carbon emission economy you would sequester far less carbon that was being emitted.
And consider that carbon not emitted is as good as carbon take out of the system in the same sense as a penny saved is a penny earned.
Attempting to reverse all the added CO2 by artificial means is probably not practical unless you want to try some of the geo engineering ideas involving sea algae. Though I've heard that would increase ocean acidity by unacceptable amounts.
So I'm not quite sure how you're going to do that.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I don't care how right you are, it's your self-righteous and smug tone that inclines me to vote against you. Your science-only stance ignores the impact that the policies such science would propose has on my life. And it's aggravated by your "I'm holier than thou because I'm smarter than you, so do as I say" tone. And hundreds of millions of people agree with me. I'd rather let the planet burn than let you be right and let people like you tell me how to live my life. If you can't come down to my level with empathy and understanding, then to hell with you.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
At first I was thinking "what the bell I'd wrong with this guy? He can't even read what he just posted? Is he stoned or what?" Then I saw your username. Happy 420, dude.
Yes, it does. It's the only way for practical research to ever happen. You can't go around questioning fundamental assumptions at every turn. This doesn't mean that those fundamental assumptions are "settled" for all time, but from a practical standpoint, science must treat some core assumptions as effectively "settled" in order to get on with any detailed research.
The level of ignorance is astounding. "questioning fundamental assumptions" is exactly what science is all about. Nothing is ever settle in science. Major breakthroughs occur when you successfully challenge fundamental assumptions. And this gets modded up. It's no wonder the current climate debate is so off kilter.
Who is John Galt?
I would wager no scientist in their right mind would say that we need to raise taxes on oil and oil based products 100% or 50% even in the short term.
I imagine you meant the long term? Or for the short term?
it seems that some politicians want to save the world, at the expense of the people, especially the poor.
We all breathe. Reducing pollution actually means more jobs. Doing things right is harder.
just 10 years ago I could get 300 miles on 10 bucks, now that same 300 miles costs me 64 bucks.
Driving on petrofuel is unsustainable. You haven't done anything to change your habits on your own, so now you're being forced.
but we have more oil flowing now than anytime in the past, there is no excuse for it to cost as much as it does
Yes there is, and the excuse is that you have to be some kind of sociopath to think it's a good idea to be burning oil as fuel. It's too valuable to burn, and the secondary effects are harmful to our very existence. We have no need to burn it. For example have the technology (and have at least since the 1980s) to replace one hundred percent of our transportation fuel consumption with biofuels in a way which is carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. As ever, I refer you to this DoE report and information on AIWPS, as well as on Butanol.
I'm tired of your the dichotomy between economic development and ending the wasteful, harmful, and completely unnecessary refining and subsequent combustion of oil. By all means, make plastic out of it. It saves an enormous amount of energy as compared to making plastics from other sources, and the plastics can be recycled. You're repeating this logical fallacy solely to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions, and you're only impressing others suffering from the same brand of cognitive dissonance. In fact, it is wholly possible to reduce and perhaps even eliminate harmful emissions, or at least account for them (e.g. by carbon-fixing schemes) such that there is effectively zero negative impact to human health and biosphere persistence, the latter currently being an absolutely irreplaceable requirement for the former. We have numerous (one might even be tempted to say innumerable) solutions which we are not putting into place for political-economic reasons which boil down to protection of profit for a privileged class of self-entitled robber barons.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The level of ignorance is astounding.
Your level of arrogance is typical.
"questioning fundamental assumptions" is exactly what science is all about.
And yet, science is also based on assumptions. Every scientific paper doesn't start by explaining gravity, even if it's a factor in whatever it's going to go on and try to prove.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
im for reasonable solutions to an end goal of all renewable solutions, but I am not for increasing the costs of "bad things" in the short term to sway people to move towards more expensive options. I am for pumping money into R+D to bring down the price of renewables to the costs (and lower) that we have been paying for example 90s prices. I want the equivalent of a gallon of gas for a dollar again. and I believe that can be achieved. But I dont want to raise the cost of oil now, so that when we bring the price of renewables "only" down to 5 bucks a gallon people are happy with that.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It means there is a large and growing body of research that has collected diverse and disparate lines of evidence that support the major governing theory on the topic. In particular, it's enough that we can say with a high degree of confidence that the fundamental aspects of the theory of global warming are well founded and reasonably accurate.
The biggest problem with this argument is that our level of understanding of the "climate" system on this planet is miniscule when compared to the complexity of the system. This discovery is just another example. The other problem is that anything that challenges the theory of global warming seems to be either twisted to fit the current theory or ignored. The theory is supposed to be changed to fit the evidence.
That's what some pendants would like you to think. They want you to ignore the fact that science is both a process and the body of knowledge collected (and verified) through that process.
You seem to ignore the fact that science is all about challenging the "verified" body of knowledge collected. That's actually the primary point of science: doing experiments to test current theories and looking for evidence that doesn't fit current theories.
Who is John Galt?
Carbon credits to me just show that its all a farce, someone is getting rich on carbon credits
Why don't you pick an attitude and stick with it? You're in favor of unfettered economic development through handwaving away externalities which impinge on quality of life for all humans, but you're not in favor of someone profiting by handling pollution? That seems both destructive and downright hypocritical to me. With your attitude towards economic output, you really ought to be in favor of someone profiting from carbon credits.
If I pollute, i should not simply have to pay more to do so, that does not stop the so called pollution.
That's not what carbon credits are for. When you buy carbon credits, someone is supposed to be taking that money and going forth and fixing a certain amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, and this is a completely reasonable means of handling CO2 emissions specifically — and of meeting CO2 emissions targets. The standard means of doing this is planting trees, which has numerous long-term benefits aside from the obvious carbon-fixing activity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I see you are perfectly willing to spin this, though.
Wouldn't it be great if observed facts could simply exist, without being force-fitted into pre-existing ideologies or petty political agendas?
But I guess extremism is the flavor of the day, and common sense ain't so fucking common any more.
I'd generally agree. I'd also agree with your notion that many of the proposed fixes and energy around the movement is impractical.
That said, I think we can agree that in a perfect world we'd not have this CO2 emitted or have to worry about it.
We can take steps to make it better. Things that don't cost anyone much or anything but make the world a better place.
Take something like biodegradable plastic. Does that hurt anyone? Not really. You use it in places where you need something to last for a short period of time and then you want it to break down. So you employ it in say grocery bags etc. And when they're thrown away assuming they're not packed into airless/waterless landfills they'll break down harmlessly in compost.
I think I said somewhere in here we could use solar power to generate more fuels that could be used in cars as a carbon neutral fuel source. And yeah, they'd be more expensive then conventional fuels if you did it the conventional way. But maybe we can make them practical by decentralizing production. Micro sized refineries... ones so small they only produce enough fuel for maybe one or two cars could be a household appliance drinking a mixture of solar power from the roof and cheap off hours grid power. They could suck CO2 from the air and produce fuel in chemical reaction chambers.
We have the technology to do this right now.
We also have other fun things we can do like SynGas... which has been used on and off since around WW2. There are people selling machines that cost about 6000 dollars that can produce 15KW from wood pellets... and they also produce a flammable gas very much like natural gas which can be combusted in cars or used in any other task you'd find acceptable for natural gas.
All of which is carbon neutral because you're using fuel that draws its CO2 from the air. Its a closed loop. Zero net CO2.
I'm not advocating hitting people with nasty taxes or regulations. I don't think that's productive. I think that just pisses people off and makes a few politically into little tyrants that get to control everything.
Rather, I advocate win win technological changes that profit EVERYONE. Things that on balance you'll prefer because it will be cheaper or more convenient or something.
I believe we can come to common cause on the issue. But we have to respect each other's rights and interests and not push people around.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
and this is the problem. We all want the SAME goals, we just differ in how to reach them. You want the poor to suffer now so everyone can be happy later, I want to allow the poor mobility and heat now, AND work on a sustainable future. In your view there is no middle ground to me made, its YOUR way or no way
I have to drive to get to work, I cant afford to live closer to work or I would, we are not all rich people out there, some of us dont have a choice in what we can do. Id gladly rather oil barons continue to get rich if it means I can afford to drive to work, AND eat dinner at night
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Don't Bogart that joint, my friend.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
except that your wrong. Take the laws surrounding time, space and mass. For years it was "settled". Then came along this guy called Einstein. Have you ever heard of him? He proposed this far out idea which became the general theory of relativity. This completely upended the entire world of the settled science of how objects move and the worlds of kinetic and potential energy. Now we take the Newtonian view of physics as "good enough for every day use" and acknowledge that at extreme speed, it's wrong. And then when you get into relativistic physics, that's far from settled science.
Science is NEVER settled. You always have to take the view that something may come up that completely upends what we know. If you say science is settled, then you stupidly hold on to notions that may be wrong.
You are jumping from Lakatos' description of how science works to saying that is the way it must work. What specific examples did Lakatos use to generate that description?
I'm not "jumping" to anything. All of this was debated in philosophy of science 50 years ago. Not even Popper believed in the naive view of "falsifiability" that many people ascribed to him.
You want examples, read the links I gave, then read Lakatos and/oor Kuhn, then read what Popper actually wrote, rather than the simplified view that people reiterate without thinking.
These people spent many years researching the history of science and drawing lessons from it about how science works, rather than some oversimplified textbook description. I can't summarize all of it in a few sentences.
Please quote and reference specific examples where the IPCC reports "show with a high degree of certainty that AGW will be a problem".
I'm sorry, but if it's not settled it can't be used to move forward? Seriously, did you spend two seconds thinking about what you said? Do you know literally anything about the world around you? As my post above said, we use Newtonian physics all the time. We know for fact that it's wrong. But we know it's good enough for most cases. The world of relativistic physics is far from settled. Does this mean that every bit of science dealing with bodies in motion must screech to a halt until it's settled? NO! What we have is good enough, if we discover something is wrong, we can go back and correct.
Hell, we use relativistic physics to adjust the clocks on the GPS satellites to increase accuracy by accepting that clocks run at different speeds when moving at quickly. But apparently we can't do that because the science "isn't settled". I'll make sure to let the engineers of the world know that they're doing it wrong because you said so.
We are talking here about the level of "validity" of work in climate change, which is a low standard indeed.
By the standards required by mainstream physics, climate change science is little different from tea leaf reading.
I am for pumping money into R+D to bring down the price of renewables
Well, guess what? The renewables are already profitable, but they're being actively discouraged by the entrenched interests who pay for the legislation. So now that we've proven that your idea isn't going to work, will you agree to try something else? Or are you simply going to fight any viable solution for eternity so that you don't have to change your behavior?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Take the laws surrounding time, space and mass. For years it was "settled". Then came along this guy called Einstein. Have you ever heard of him?
Read my post. Read the links. THINK about what I said rather than just parroting some ideology without any comprehension.
Newton's theories were accepted assumptions for scientific research for at least 150 years. They were "settled" science. The ONLY way actual scientists could do any experiments in those 150 years -- and eventually discover the discrepancies that led people like Einstein to question Newton's theories -- was by operating under the assumption that Newton was correct. They treated it as "settled" science.
Now we take the Newtonian view of physics as "good enough for every day use" and acknowledge that at extreme speed, it's wrong.
If Newton was so "wrong," why do we still teach his stuff to introductory students all the time? I realize it doesn't work as well at extreme speed (or under extreme gravity, etc.), it's a close-enough approximation of reality that it works well for many purposes.
You've actually provided an EXACT example of the very quotation I gave from Lakatos. If we actually believed Newton's model to be completely "wrong," we wouldn't teach it to students at all. Instead, there are still many core observations derived from Newtonian mechanics which remain useful today, both as an approximation at normal speeds and in the modified Einsteinian model. Einstein did NOT supplant Newton, but rather started out as ancillary hypotheses that retained many elements of Newton while questioning a couple specific fundamental assumptions. With the full-blown theory of relativity, it was realized that there were more serious reasons to take Einstein's model as more fundamental than Newton, but claiming that Einstein "falsified" Newton's work entirely in any meaningful sense is simply wrong.
You always have to take the view that something may come up that completely upends what we know. If you say science is settled, then you stupidly hold on to notions that may be wrong.
It is a practical impossibility to live your life questioning everything at every turn. You just can't do it. And science couldn't function by doing it. If I'm doing an experiment and a marble runs a little off course, I don't stand up and shout, "Holy crap! I might have just disproved the theory of gravity!" Some tenets in science are simply more "settled" than others, and it would take a LOT to cause us to question them seriously. That's what "settled" means -- it's not currently open for debate, unless you're a wacko or have some TRULY EXTRAORDINARY new evidence.
You want the poor to suffer now so everyone can be happy later,
By supporting the status quo, what you are saying is that you want everyone (but especially the poor) to suffer so that a few people can have really big bank accounts now, and at the cost of the maintenance of semi-stasis (that is, maintenance of viabilityspecies depends for survival. In fact, the worker's share of profits as well as the worker's real purchasing power have decreased for decades while the worker's productivity has increased. You are demanding more of the same.
In your view there is no middle ground to me made, its YOUR way or no way
In the real, physics-based world that we all live in, actions have consequences which cannot simply be waved away. Not immediately addressing the carbon capture problem has real consequences upon which there is scientific consensus. It is not my way, it is reality's way. I do not set the values of the universal constants.
Id gladly rather oil barons continue to get rich if it means I can afford to drive to work, AND eat dinner at night
And as long as you are willing to give up your future and everyone else's for today's comfort, you're part of the problem. It's not me making you that. It's you. I don't choose your actions for you, and I certainly don't select your attitudes. As long as your basic attitude is selfish, there's really no appealing to your better nature. That it is comprehensible, understandable, and typical is a perfectly human defense, but does nothing to improve your condition, or anyone else's. The best maintenance of the status quo can get you is a continuing downward spiral.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I didnt say profitable. I said affordable. When renewables can cost the equivalent of 1$ per gallon of gas for the same energy output I will call it a sucess.
can you imagine if for example when color TVs came out and they cost double the same black and white TV if companies raised the cost of black and white TVs to the cost of color TVs rather than allowing the tech to mature and make the cost more reasonable? that would be a horrible way to do business to the consumer, sure its profitable for the company because if both cost the same, people will take the color over the B&W, but in the end it hurts everyone because people have less money to spend
I understand that a TV is not the equivalent of energy but i feel thats a good way of explaining what I see happening today
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Fact: Global warming exists. Fact: The ice sheet is melting due to an increase in geothermal heat in the surrounding area. Fact: The ice sheet is also being eroded by the ocean, probably from a rise in water levels. Half-Life 3 confirmed.
I have seen the light:
Carbon dioxide is the primary driver of temperature and climate.
The effects of the Sun and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun are secondary drivers of temperature and climate.
All of the 120 or so models are correct, including Mann's hockey stick of doom. Even the average of these models is correct.
The Arctic is ice free during the summer melt season.
Sea levels have continued to rise at unprecedented rates.
Hurricanes have increased in both number and intensity.
Climate refugees now outnumber war refugees.
Snow in winter is now a rare occurrence.
The atmospheric sensitivity to co2 is 1.5 C-to-4.5 C.
The life span of co2 in the atmosphere is 30-95 years but the effects may last between 500-1000 years due to over-saturated sinks.
Only 3-9% of scientists disagree with everything stated above.
I didnt say profitable. I said affordable. When renewables can cost the equivalent of 1$ per gallon of gas for the same energy output I will call it a sucess.
So because your unreasonably high bar is not being met, it's not a success? Explain why anyone should care about your uninformed opinion as to what fuel should cost? Ever tried to make your own biofuel, or even produced its feedstocks?
I understand that a TV is not the equivalent of energy but i feel thats a good way of explaining what I see happening today
I feel you've been paying too much attention to what the carefully made up heads on TV have been saying to you. They've been telling you that gas should cost a dollar a gallon, dad gum it! Never mind that fuel has become more expensive to produce because of standards designed to reduce pollution, or the influence of inflation which on its own is nearly sufficient to explain the rise of the cost of gasoline, if biofuel doesn't cost what you think it should cost then it's no good.
At times, lives are spent to secure oil. Spills with attendant negative environmental impact are regular and typical. The carbon released is unaccounted for, you get to emit that for free even though everyone has to deal with your emissions. And you want to complain that four dollars a gallon is too much? You're just an incredibly entitled individual.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think we should keep the biosphere in a livable condition at any cost, though
So lets kill all humans, and thus the biosphere remains livable. Thats one of those 'costs' that complies with the 'any' requirement.
Oh... you actually think a solution should be reasonable? Hence why some of us feel that its important that fucktards that are abusing the issue are change the economics of it. We dont want 'any cost' and neither do you (although clearly we see that you refuse to admit it.)
"His name was James Damore."
Yes, it does. It's the only way for practical research to ever happen. You can't go around questioning fundamental assumptions at every turn.
Your right, You cant go around questioning settled science. it would be wrong.
Marijuana is a dangerous and addictive substance that has no accepted medical uses. The science is settled and there is a federal law saying so. So all the Marijuana deniers are just fighting a loosing battle and need to realize that the science is settled. :P
The level of ignorance is astounding.
It's amazing to hear the insights of philosophers of science who spent their lives studying the history and methology of science called "ignorant." If you want to call Lakatos (or Kuhn or Popper or whoever) "ignorant," let's see some credentials. Or some debate on their level. This stuff is 50 years old... it's not some crazy new idea about scientific methods.
And yes, I mention Popper, because even he didn't believe in the naive view of falsifiability that everyone here often assumes. Seriously. Read his stuff. Heck, read the link I gave to the article on Lakatos that explains how Lakatos's ideas are partly similar to Popper's.
"Ignorance" is parroting some ideology without every questioning it or thinking about what you're saying. It's actually dangerous for scientists to believe in the naive view of falsifiability, because it can lead them not to understand how scientific thought actually gets shaped and how much a role various kinds of "confirmation bias" can come into the way we do experiments based on our underlying way of thinking.
"questioning fundamental assumptions" is exactly what science is all about.
Not 99% of science. Most scientists who are working every day in a lab are not actively questioning the foundations of accepted scientific theories. If they did, they'd be wasting their time... and holding back scientific progress.
Nothing is ever settle in science. Major breakthroughs occur when you successfully challenge fundamental assumptions.
Yes, that's true. But often those breakthroughs target one particular assumption in a core theory, often one that has been causing problems for some time (e.g., the discrepancies regarding the aether theory in 19th-century experiments which led to Einstein's breakthrough in relativity). They don't generally question the entire nature of the underlying scientific paradigm.
And on the few occasions when that has happened, scientific progress didn't really happen through the normal "scientific method." It's not like Galileo stood up and said, "And yet it moves!" and suddenly all scientists on Earth believed him. There was plenty of scientific evidence in favor of geocentrism at the time, and most of that evidence wasn't definitively explained until the 19th century.
Instead, many scientists liked aspects of the heliocentric model (despite the lack of empirical support), and the older geocentric physicists gradually died out in the 1600s. The definitive turning point was probably Newton's theory of universal gravitation, which put heliocentric physics on more solid ground, but it relied on "spooky" unseen forces acting at a distance, an idea that was rejected by many in the scientific establishment because it wasn't "scientific" -- it came from Newton's occult beliefs.
The history of science is "messy." "Breakthroughs" don't often happen in the clean way that is often presented in history books, and they often don't happen through application of a "normal scientific method" at all.
In fact, take a minute and think about this: how exactly does the "normal scientific method" allow you to come up with new theories in the first place? It's not enough to say, "These fundamental assumptions are wrong!" -- you need a better explanation, but where does that come from? How does the naive falsification approach to scientific methodology generate hypotheses? If all that matters is something is falsifiable, how do you determine which of the infinite number of potential hypotheses to test?
(Hint: Falsifiability doesn't generate hypotheses. Scientific paradigms or Lakatos's "research programs" do. Once we have a set of "settled" fundamental assumptions to work within, we can do 99% of normal science by resolving various issues within the research program. Eventually, enough discrepancies may pile up that someone may go back and propose something that could overturn a fundamental core assumption, but that's not what "normal science" does every day... and it couldn't function if it tried to.)
Renewables are only profitable if they are subsidized.
How did man heat up all that land under the ice!?!?!?!?
Most well written post I've seen on this topic. Thank you!
Just another day in Paradise
You seem to ignore the fact that science is all about challenging the "verified" body of knowledge collected.
No, it isn't. That doesn't make any sense. Why would people waste their time deliberately setting out to challenge "verified" knowledge? Most scientists spend their time working on fleshing out the details of that knowledge or resolving descrepancies.
Scientists don't wake up in the morning and say, "You know what, I know we've had thousands of experiments showing this to be true, but I really simply don't buy this 'verified' claim that liquid water is composed of gases like hydrogen and oxygen. Let's spend the next few weeks running experiments to challenge that notion!"
No scientist does this. The atomic theory that substances are composed of fundamental elements is pretty much "settled" science, and so is the fact that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Any person who seriously thinks scientists should be questioning something like that every day is either incredibly naive or deranged.
That's actually the primary point of science: doing experiments to test current theories and looking for evidence that doesn't fit current theories.
Nope. The primary point of 99% of science is to test hypotheses, which are usually ways of fleshing out current theories or resolving some minor discrepancies within accepted theories. If we didn't make the assumptions of those theories in the first place, we wouldn't have anything to even guide our further investigations and to come up with future hypotheses to test. If all "verified" knowledge is up for grabs, why is the testing of any of particular hypothesis to be preferred to any other? Why don't all scientists spend their days testing the "verified" claim about the atomic theory as related to water? Or just making up random strings of words to create a hypothesis to test?
(They don't. Instead, the "verified" body of knowledge tends to be questioned when lots of discrepancies start showing up in various experiments -- not sought out, but rather stumbled upon in the investigation of minor points related to bigger accepted theories.)
Except that the "science" is not "settled" because science was never involved in the process. Unless you define science as a body of politicians throwing money at studies to come to a predetermined conclusion and ignoring all the data that doesn't fit. I don't happen to subscribe to that particular definition. Additionally dissenting scientists have been blackballed, threatened, lost thier funding, and in some cases even murdered. That doesn't sound like settled science to me.
You cant go around questioning settled science. it would be wrong.
It wouldn't be "wrong." It would just be inefficient if your goal was actually to make scientific progress.
Marijuana is a dangerous and addictive substance that has no accepted medical uses.
That's not an example of a "fundamental assumption." A "fundamental assumption" is something more like "matter is composed of elements, whose fundamental unit is the atom which can be combined to produce molecules of other substances." While the atomic theory could be wrong (I suppose), there's just such a ridiculous amount of evidence in support of it that I sincerely doubt we're going to find out that it's actually "wrong" in any normal sense of the word "wrong." The exact details of how atoms work and function is being revised, but the idea that substances are composed of some more fundamental building block effectively like them is "settled" science.
The science is settled and there is a federal law saying so. So all the Marijuana deniers are just fighting a loosing battle and need to realize that the science is settled. :P
Your sarcastic statement is a perfect example of precisely what I'm talking about. If science actually operated in this pure realm of naive "instant falsifiability" that many people believe in, marijuana would have been tested and used for legitimate medical purposes decades ago. Instead, consensus (not just scientific, but social) and political pressure kept that from happening.
This is how science actually works, in all the messy real-world details. Sometimes people get thing wrong for a generation or two before they realize maybe they should question some assumption. I'm not saying it doesn't result in crappy results sometimes: I'm saying that it's simply the way human beings function, and science is a human endeavor.
What's even worse is when we refuse to acknowledge the extent that we do simply accept underlying fundamental assumptions without questioning them -- and simply keep chanting: "Science is always open to questioning accepted beliefs and testing theories that are falsifiable!" No it isn't. And the first step to ensure that we don't do stupid things like reject good medical treatments for decades for no apparent reason is to recognize that we're not as good about being able to just "falsify any previous belief" on demand as the naive view of science claims. It's only by accepting that we do have legitimate biases (often for good reasons) that we can realize they might sometimes need to be questioned.
so what do I do in your world drinky poo?? I dont live close enough to any jobs that I can work that I dont need a car, I need to eat. so should I simply quit, go on food stamps, live in government housing because hey its clean!
I never once said keep things they way they are forever, and you are being intentionally thick with your assessment. if me NEEDING a car to get to work, and food to eat is considered selfish by your standards, plain and simply you are nothing more than an asshole. Its not like we have 2 weeks to fix the world, we DO have some time and its going to take a good part of both of our lives to address. So we can either keep flinging poo at eachother (pun intended) or we can realize that as you said SOMETHING needs to be done, and at the same time work on ways to do so that allow people like me to still afford to get to work, eat and keep a roof over my head
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Your right, You cant go around questioning settled science. it would be wrong.
Its certainly not impossible that AGW will someday be proven wrong, but if it is that proof won't come from the sort of person who is loudly denying it today, it will come from climatologist.
If you aren't a climatologist you aren't qualified to deny AGW any more than the pot heads who for decades claimed that marijuana could cure anything were qualified to make those claims.
That people who are ignorant of science and scientists sometimes end up on the same side of an issue does not lend any credibility to being ignorant.
when my energy costs are over 50% of my income, there is a problem. I used a dollar as a simple number to work with, im not saying it HAS to be 1$ or im not having anything to do with it. but I never will support artificially raising costs on ANYTHING just to make other products look better in comparison
as for your last statement, Im not only talking about me, Im talking about all the people who are living paycheck to paycheck, the people that you seem to forget when coming up with your utopia
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
That's not how this works. You propose your problem then you suggest a solution.
Everyone makes their own evaluation as to the relevance of the problem and the cost of your solution and then either accepts your offer or makes counter proposals.
I disagree. First we have to agree on the science. If any solution I propose can be vetoed by someone because they reject the science, then we aren't having a discussion. If I propose eliminating oil subsidies and increasing alternative energy incentives and the response I get every single time is the accusation that I am pushing a political agenda based on pseudoscience, then I have to take step back to the science and fight for that.
The reality is that I don't care if we do anything about Global Warming for the next 20-30 years. What I care about is science, and the skeptics are calling science into question, which leads to pseudoscience taking hold in other public policy issues. To me, Global Warming is about science education. The public policy dimensions are for other people to dispute. There is no balance between skeptics and scientists. The science is overwhelming.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
You're not listening. I'm going to try again.
If you are precieved as acting in bad faith, where the conclusion of whatever you're doing is going to be harmful to a lot of people... you're going to get struck down INSTANTLY. They're not going to wait for you to get through some process. They're going to drop you as fast as they can so that if anything fails to stop you they'll have many opportunities to do it again and again and again. And by the time you get where you're trying to go you'll be so weak and reduced from all the hits that you'll be no threat.
That is the game.
So no. You're not going to get people to agree on anything unless they believe you're going to respect their interests down the road. If you're not... then they have an interest in dropping you where you stand.
Which is why you get such resistence on the AGW issue. They're not attacking you because they don't believe in AGW. They're attacking you because they are terrified of your "solutions". They see the denial as a means to stop that. So they do it.
Is this not obvious?
It seems very obvious to me. Were your solutions to AGW something like "do nothing, have a beer, fist bump, and go on with your day" then do you think anyone would be attacking AGW research? Probably a lot less.
And the politicians also wouldn't be gloming on to you because there's no power for them to suck off the issue.
its the "solution" that is the problem not the AGW science itself. That's not really at issue at this point.
Politically it will be at issue... but again that's only because its been made political.
If you want the AGW stuff to get accepted and a rational scientific discussion to happen... you need to put the weapons away. You need to make people believe you're not gearing up to fuck every one.
If you can't do that... then you shouldn't be surprised that you're getting resistance.
Really this is all very obvious... at least it seems obvious to me.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I just want to point out that these are man made volcanoes dug out by the indentured workers of the Koch brothers. If you disagree with me then you are a racist or a white man from the South. Wait, that's redundant.
"Do owls exist?"
"Are there hats?"
I've heard of those "owls", but have no proof they actually exist. Sure there are (doctored?) pictures on the internet, but has anyone really seen any for really. Nobody has ever been able to show me an own when asked. This is just another attempt by 'biologists' to get financing for their useless field of study.
Sheesh !
It wasn't that long ago in the bigger scheme of things when it was 'settled' that the cosmos revolved around the earth !
Or that EM Radiation was conducted via the aether.
Consensus is not science.
There are too many fortunes of too many types at stake to take any of the AGW debate at face value.
The existence and degree of influence of AGW on Climate Change is NOT settled.
-- kjh
And now the Faux News Quote:
It's worth pointing out that the increased geothermal heat contributes to the melting of the Thwaites glacier. It's predominately natural calving. I'm saying this paper isn't important (we all know about the alternate explanation to AGW for the melting of the Thwaite glacier.
Derp derp derp Obama's Fault!
so what do I do in your world drinky poo??
You stop making excuses for maintenance of the status quo. We can and must change as a species if we are to survive. Notably, we must stop shitting where we eat. Stop saying that it would cause massive economic harm, because that is bullshit. In fact, it would (as always) mean jobs. If you stop repeating these lies, then they will have that much less traction.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Accept that there will be differences of opinions.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yes, that's true. But often those breakthroughs target one particular assumption in a core theory, often one that has been causing problems for some time (e.g., the discrepancies regarding the aether theory in 19th-century experiments which led to Einstein's breakthrough in relativity). They don't generally question the entire nature of the underlying scientific paradigm.
Not 99% of science. Most scientists who are working every day in a lab are not actively questioning the foundations of accepted scientific theories. If they did, they'd be wasting their time... and holding back scientific progress.
I don't disagree with most of what you say. For the most part you're saying what saying what I was trying to elucidate but in a much more loquacious and elegant manner. When I wrote my reply I was focus more on climate science specifically although I didn't express that very well. I chalk it up to not having finished my morning caffeine yet. From my knowledge most scientific advance aren't from someone saying "That's wrong. I'm setting out to prove it's wrong." As you stated it's usually more a result of discrepancies in a related experiment or observed phenomenon that don't fit the assumed theory and can't be explained by problems with the method.
That being said here's the part where we differ.
For the majority of climate scientists today, the assumption of global warming has become part of a "hard core" in their research programs. They believe that it's now more productive to treat this assumption as "settled" and focus on investigating other aspects of climate problems, rather than worrying about continuing to debate this fundamental question.
Given the complexity of the system, the scale of the system and our extremely limited knowledge of system's interactions there is no way any theory of how the climate of this entire planet works should in any way be considered settled or part of a "hard core". The problem being that even though they may be right to at least some degree regarding AGW they are most likely largely wrong about the details of how and why and subsequently the consequences and causes of any consequences. These are important because they dictate what mitigating actions may be taken. History shows mitigating actions taken without sufficient understanding of a system usually results in less then desirable if not outright negative result. This has happened over and over in mankind's intervention in nature. We often take a bad situation and make it worse trying to fix it.
Now I'm not saying no action should be taken to try to limit man's contribution to carbon production. I am saying what actions we do take need to based on more solid ground rather than alarmist theories based on insufficient knowledge.
Who is John Galt?
when my energy costs are over 50% of my income, there is a problem.
The problem is not the price of fuel. The problem is the worker's ever-shrinking share of profit. Once you stop blaming people other than the selfish, greedy corporate masters, you'll stop coming up with excuses for selfishness and greed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What an idiotic post. The science isn't even settled on how fast warm water freezes vs. less-warm water in an extremely-controlled setting. The science on gravity is far from settled. The science on *Climate* hasn't even started in comparison to these. They don't even know how many millions of variables they are excluding or including incorrectly, it is more akin to pseudosciences like witch-doctoring or alchemy than it is to real sciences like chemistry or medicine. Simply because certain people are paid to take something for granted does not mean that it should be taken for granted by anyone else.
The economy is a much more measured, simpler system than climate -- and who trusts economists?
And yet, science is also based on assumptions.
Yes it is. And the level of trust in those assumptions should be based on how well our theories explain those assumptions.
Every scientific paper doesn't start by explaining gravity, even if it's a factor in whatever it's going to go on and try to prove.
No but what I have a problem with (and didn't express very well in my post) is people claiming the current theories on climate science are as well understood as the theory of gravity. And our understanding of gravity isn't particularly solid either. Our understanding of the complex interactions involved in the climate of this entire planet are miniscule when compared to our understanding of gravity.
Who is John Galt?
No but what I have a problem with (and didn't express very well in my post) is people claiming the current theories on climate science are as well understood as the theory of gravity. And our understanding of gravity isn't particularly solid either. Our understanding of the complex interactions involved in the climate of this entire planet are miniscule when compared to our understanding of gravity.
[citation needed]
Nobody has yet seen a graviton. Our understanding of gravity is so far utterly theoretical. For example, we have never succeeded in making it in the lab, as we can with magnetism. But we do have both contemporary and historical case studies where we can observe the impact (both local and global) of human activity on climate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So lets kill all humans, and thus the biosphere remains livable. Thats one of those 'costs' that complies with the 'any' requirement.
Oh... you actually think a solution should be reasonable?
Well, I think a solution should be reasonable before someone mentions it as one of the possibles. Otherwise, they're just engaging in the logical fallacy of the ridiculous example. And by they, I mean you.
We dont want 'any cost' and neither do you (although clearly we see that you refuse to admit it.)
You also don't want rational debate, which is why you left this latest lame-ass, add-nothing comment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Given that the primary point of dispute is what to do about AGW and not AGW itself, we are utlimately debating opinions.
The best or correct solution to AGW is not a matter of scientific fact. You can't say "its science" and then use that to justify carbon credits. There's no climate model that proves carbon credits will or won't be the best policy.
That is all opinion.
Which means its your opinion versus their opinion... and that means you have one of two choices.
1. You can negotiate and good faith and come to a reasonable compromise.
2. You can fight tooth and nail to dominate them and they'll return the favor leaving you both screaming at each other to no particular purpose.
Kindly think for yourself rather then quoting pithy comments from people that don't actually apply to my post or this topic.
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Well, I think a solution should be reasonable before someone mentions it as one of the possibles.
What would you have said if you REALLY meant "at all costs?"
...clearly you couldnt have said "at all costs" because we find that thats not what you mean when you say that.
"His name was James Damore."
You also don't want rational debate, which is why you left this latest lame-ass, add-nothing comment.
He added with his comment. He has noted that some costs are obviously too high and that what he calls "fucktards" distort what you call "solutions" into the realm of "too high." Until you man up and address his point rather than play your petty little social game, it is you that doesnt want what is in your words a "rational debate."
What did he add? He added a simple example of costs that even you admit are "too high." The costs he detailed are in fact so high that you consider it a "logical fallacy" to even mention them. You did claim that no costs were too high, but havent retracted that claim. Your argument is a paradox because it is not internally self-consistent. Either there are or there are not costs that are too high. You do not get to have it both ways. No progress can be made until you pick a theory.
[citation needed]
WTF are you demanding a citation about?
Nobody has yet seen a graviton. Our understanding of gravity is so far utterly theoretical. For example, we have never succeeded in making it in the lab, as we can with magnetism.
Our understanding of pretty much everything is utterly theoretical. For all we know this whole thing is just an illusion and we're in the matrix. We can experimentally in a controlled environment show cause and effect of gravity to a very small margin of error. We can't experimentally show the effect of releasing certain amounts of carbon into the atmosphere on global climate. There is no way to isolate any effects of the carbon verses a million other interactions.
But we do have both contemporary and historical case studies where we can observe the impact (both local and global) of human activity on climate.
Bullshit. Such a study would have to somehow isolate the human effects from all other interaction and effects and we don't even know and/or understand what the vast majority of the interactions are. Otherwise all the study is showing is correlation not causation.
Who is John Galt?
The science is about as settled as it gets. We could in fact find that evolution was all a big mistake, so we can't say evolution is unsettled (not to mention all the arguments about exactly how it happened).
However, I haven't come up with an example yet of when the scientific community was this wrong about the actual facts as it would be if the planet were not warming. It's easy to find bad interpretations, but the interpretations were based on facts.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Note that, according to current theory that seems pretty well-based, most matter is not composed of elements. Most of it appears to be in a form that doesn't interact with anything electromagnetically. I haven't noticed particle or solid-state physicists being too upset about this, because it really doesn't change that much of our understanding of baryonic matter.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The knowledge that the world is round predates science as we know it.
Why don't you go for geocentrism, which at one point was settled science?
The reason geocentrism was preferred was that it was in accord with observations. The observations were not in doubt, and those who argued for heliocentrism had to account for them and produce a better model. There was no theoretical basis early in the debate; only with Kepler and Newton did we get a theory explaining planetary motion (and Kepler's was more of a description than a theory).
In this case, we have a theoretical basis for AGW (it's clear that we're putting lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, and also clear that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so there's a simple causal explanation), and observations showing that it's happening. The theory is obviously lacking in many respects, but the observations exist. The planet is warming up, almost certainly largely because of human activity. Any theory that AGW is wrong will have to account for the observations better than current theories do. So far, there are no coherent objections to the observations, the closest being a exceedingly improbable conspiracy theory. If a climate scientist were to come up with one, that climate scientist would become famous.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Looking at it simply the cost of not keeping the biosphere in a livable condition is the death of all humans. More realistically the human species is very versatile and inventive so I don't expect it to die out completely but it wouldn't be shocking if the population was reduced by half or more 100 years from now if we don't address the anthropogenic causes of global warming.
So, what you're saying is that we're seriously fucked. Any mitigation of AGW is going to be harmful to a lot of people, so they'll reject it. We can't seriously lower CO2 emissions without spending a lot of money and discouraging the driving of gas guzzlers, for example. This means that nothing will be done as the problem gets worse and worse.
Unfortunately, having beers is going to do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions, or find some other way to cool the planet without majorly screwing up other stuff, or anything like that. If we're limited to solutions like having more beer, nothing useful will get done about the climate.
Do you have anything positive to say?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And yet nowhere in any of my posts have I made any mention of a need to act on Global Warming, proposed any solutions to it, or even suggested that solutions are needed. All I did was state the science, and that is what you and so many others react to. You are against the science because you fear that to concede even that much will somehow render you powerless to have a reasonable discussion about public policy.
There is the science dimension to this and there is the public policy dimension. If the skeptics would simply accept the science, they might have me as an ally when it comes to debating public policy, but when they even reject the science, I can't take anything else they say seriously.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
You should read the paper. Geothermal sources are not thought to have changed over the last 100 (or 100,000) years. They cannot be the cause of recent Antarctic melting. However they could make the collapse come about all that much quicker.
It was recently reported that the west Antarctic ice sheet had hit a tipping point and would collapse completely in about 200 years after about 9000 years of stability. The models used to conclude this would not have taken into account the high geothermal sources under the antarctic. The date of collapse may need to be revised forward taking into account this new data.
So no, I don't think this study upends any existing science. It is just one more data point.
Let me phrase it in science-fiction-y terms for you: We must maintain our life support system at all costs. If we don't do something significant and positive about CO2 (or looked at another way, negative about carbon, ho ho) and other major climate-changing activities like deforestation, then the economic impact will be the very last thing on your mind, or on anyone else's. Oddly enough fixing one problem will help fix the other problem, but nobody important seems to give a shit.
Hey, I could be wrong, this could all be a lot of shit, but when the physics of decades ago and the physics of today agree that these concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause harmful effects, and we are actually seeing effects of the kind long since predicted, I take that as a sign that the concerns are probably real and we should do something about them. Complaints about minor variances in models of a chaotic system are just wankery. The credible models only disagree, and then only to slight extents, on how fucked we are and when we will be completely fucked.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Science is always open to revision pending new information but that doesn't stop us from using the information we glean from scientific study to build this technological civilization we live in. It would paralyze progress to insist that we have to know everything before we do anything.
The scientific fundamentals of anthropogenic climate change, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that the CO2 level in the atmosphere is one of the major factors in surface and ocean temperatures on the Earth and that the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels is human emissions from fossil fuel burning are about as settled as Newton's Laws of Motion. Hoping for some revolutionary new paradigm to overturn that is wishful thinking at this point. There are all sorts of details that are still unsettled and they are getting properly debated in the scientific community but they don't waste their time arguing those fundamentals.
"You want examples, read the links I gave, then read Lakatos and/oor Kuhn, then read what Popper actually wrote, rather than the simplified view that people reiterate without thinking."
So you do not know the answer to my question?
The biggest problem with this argument is that our level of understanding of the "climate" system on this planet is miniscule when compared to the complexity of the system. This discovery is just another example. The other problem is that anything that challenges the theory of global warming seems to be either twisted to fit the current theory or ignored. The theory is supposed to be changed to fit the evidence.
This is not a discovery at all. Scientists were already aware there were geothermal heat sources under the Antarctic ice sheet. What this study did was measure the location and amount of heat in the Thwaites Glacier system far more accurately than was possible in the past. In regards to the overall effect on the Earth's climate system this is a miniscule tweak.
As far as our level of understanding of the climate system being miniscule, it's been studied scientifically for nearly 200 years. At this point it appears we understand the big picture pretty well and scientists are moving on the the detail. At this point to expect some sea change in our understanding to overturn the current theory is wishful thinking.
I'm asking you specifically what should i do since you seem to know it all I already told you I can afford to move and I need my car, so what do I do to sacrifice my fair share without causing myself to be homeless??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Why have the various predictions been so drastically wrong?
That's like asking "When did you stop beating your wife?" In order to say whether the predictions (really projections in most cases) are right or wrong you have to understand the science well enough to know what is possible in the first place. Most people saying the predictions are wrong don't have that level of understanding.
Maybe, I don't know, cut back on the ganja?
Seriously: The only way to answer your questions is to perform a full audit of your finances, a full evaluation of your skills and personality, medical condition(s) [maybe the ganja is justified, IDK] know where you live, who your friends, relatives and other contacts are etc. etc. etc.
The general and complex answer to your question is that we need to set taxes to implement policy. (My argument is neutral as to what that policy should be) One example is to increase taxes to reduce fossil fuel consumption (tricky in any case since taxes in the US will not reduce consumption in say, China. They may actually increase it. The net effect, however, may be to reduce consumption. Needs to be evaluated. Policy and Economics are complex.)
If those taxes directly or indirectly cause some people to fall below a poverty or sustainability level then the appropriate action is to subsidize such people directly. That is also complex, but reality is complex.
Otherwise your attitude makes implementing any policy impossible, because policy (taxes, laws, regulations) always affects and even creates some winners and some losers, including at extreme points.
1. Make this about science and abandon the politics.
The science is out there available for anyone to access. The IPCC Working Group 1 report is a good (if conservative) summary of the basic science. The WG 2 and WG 3 reports also summarize a lot of science. Or you can go directly to the scientific papers cited in those reports. You could even do a literature search seeking out papers that counter the IPCC reports (but you won't find a lot of them).
But most people aren't interested in understanding science well enough to have a truly informed opinion about it. You start talking about science in detail and their eyes just glaze over. How do you make it about science for them?
If you can't think about the issue constructively and instead can only think of policies that involve putting guns in people's faces and saying you'll shoot them if they disobey... I think it is you that has nothing to contribute.
This is a complex issue involving too many countries and people to be dealt with by force.
If you want to get anywhere you need mutually beneficial or affordable options.
If you can only image very damaging solutions that are very expensive and require violence to enforce... you have no solution at all. None.
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Again... the proposed solutions are unacceptable and as such efforts are taken to frustrate the entire mechanism.
Lets say for example there were a eugenics movement in the US that proposed sterilizing people that were seen as inferior or something equally monstrous.
Wouldn't you then attack the scientific basis of eugenics? What if the supporters of the position made points that were scientifically valid? There is a cold logic in the idea that isn't wrong as far as science goes. But doesn't matter because its deeply immoral.
Likewise, the people opposing the AGW movement see the solutions as poison. And so will do pretty much anything to shut it down. That means attacking the foundation of the theory as well as the credibility of the scientists as well as the data as well as everything.
Everything is attacked because the solution is unacceptable and the process has never obeyed any notion of due process in regards to determining what should or shouldn't be done.
If you subject the whole process to something that will respect everyone's interests and ensure that the whole thing don't turn into a license to screw people then you'll find less opposition to AGW.
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CO2 is naturally sequestered on a time scale of thousands of years. If we stop emitting CO2 now there will be some changes in CO2 levels as the ocean/atmosphere balance is restored, maybe 10 or 20 ppm +/-. Then it will take thousands of years for natural sequestering to reduce the level significantly.
You have a faster method of sequestering meaningful amounts of CO2 that does not cause further problems?
Someone suggested we release iron oxide powder into the oceans to cause algae blooms that will take carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it at the sea floor... but that apparently will increase ocean acidity so...
What if your idea? all we can do is reduce our emissions. Anything else seems to either cause more problems or have political costs we can't afford.
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You may need to wake to the fact that many of those climate warming predictions made for the last 15 years or so where *not* met. In fact, current data shows that there have been no significant changes, and certainly no alarming changes, on the warming side (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Easterbrook).
Now, you claim a 97% consense to the opposite, in favor of AGW. Now, that's surprising, because for one, it is not common to the scientific method to argue based on consensus (majorities are a political means, but not a scientific argument) and second, because even if a majority of scientists have a consensus on something, there is no more than exactly *one* evidence to the contrary to make all consensus essentially void. And, assuming the argument's of those 3% of scientists that stand up with a different view are as scientific as the others, you have to accept by logic that there ia plenty of evidence to the contrary of the AGW hypothesis.
And that's just stating the facts and apply logical reasoning to arrive at a conclusion.
That would not be shoking, no. In fact that would proof the theory that the Earth is a living organism capable of cleaning itse!f of a virus that has befallen it and that threatens its existence. Now, of course nobody knows what is going to happen in the next 100 years so any 'predictions' used to make people feel bad today are fear mongering and not constructive. What science should do is present the facts and then let the political forces conclude a course of action. If a scientist feels strongly that her results are being ignored and should have more political attention, then of course she can always start a political campaign, knowing that the very moment she does that means she is no longer a scientist but a political activist. Nothing wrong with that, of course, just saying.
I don't see a real good way to actively reduce the carbon that's already in the carbon cycle. Some suggest making biochar and burying it. It would be possible to some extent to speed up the natural methods of sequestering carbon by exposing more of the rock that can absorb it. My wild and crazy idea about is it that in order for solar and wind to work we have to overbuild them to some extent to account for the variable nature of them. There will be times when lots of excess power is available. We could use that power to actively extract CO2 from the atmosphere and crack it to pure carbon which we bury releasing 02 back to the atmosphere.
I think you're confusing Antarctic sea ice with the Antarctic ice sheet. The maximum sea ice extent has grown somewhat recently but the ice sheet has been losing ice.
Wow. I haven't seen that in a looong time. A website that uses frames ;)
Privacy is terrorism.
You clearly have read the IPCC reports if you are wading in on this discussion from the position you are. You are either lazy or being purposefully misleading in your position.
So you accept there's a problem. If you have read what the experts are saying, then you know that a strong reduction in CO2 is required to stop incredible damage being done to the global economy and the human species. What you seem to be claiming is that if a perfect solution can't be found, that we have to do nothing, and everyone has to be silent. Brilliant.
You are advocating tiny, insignificant, strawberry-scented "solutions" which achieve absolutely nothing without them being forced on people, and even then they are of dubious use. By your own logic you have to now shut up and never speak of them to anyone, lest you upset some people who don't seem to understand climate change or what it entails for the future of humanity, as you have turned this into a political debate.
So, to sum up: You are the very thing you claim sucks about the AGW issue.
Of course it limits the pollution. You clearly have no idea how this thing works, yet you've convinced yourself you do enough so you can get worked up and start tilting at the windmills in your head.
The government creates credits that allow X tonnes of pollution to be released. All the companies which abide by this scheme (which can be legislated to be all of them in a given area) can now only release X tonnes in total. That's a limit. This is how this works. Those who want to can buy credits from those who want to sell. Or maybe it won't work because Benghazi or something.
People couldn't deny nuclear weapons existed, which doesn't hold true for this issue. Also, people didn't have to spend any more money in order to defeat that issue, as it was solved with diplomacy, and any costs attributed to it came from the military & diplomatic sides of government. That was a far easier problem to approach, tackle, and solve than AGW. Plus there were no Koch brothers pouring billions into the pro-nuclear-Armageddon side.
Our understanding of the complex interactions involved in the climate of this entire planet are miniscule when compared to our understanding of gravity.
[citation needed]
WTF are you demanding a citation about?
WTF are you doing here if you can't read?
For all we know this whole thing is just an illusion and we're in the matrix.
Well, that added nothing to the conversation. Just like everything else you said.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm asking you specifically what should i do
No you aren't, you're just running your suck. Because I told you what to do: Stop telling lies. You are a liar, and no one should give a fuck what a liar says. As long as you repeat the lies about economic impact, you are that liar.
Now stop lying.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm glad you mentioned the eugenics movement, proponents of which used the theory of evolution to support their policy proposals. As a result, an anti-evolution movement rose up in the United States. Many people don't know this, but the Biology textbook at the heart of the Scopes Monkey Trial advocated for eugenics, but instead of attacking the policy recommendations, the anti-eugenics movement attacked evolutionary science.
The anti-AGW movement is making the exact same mistake today. By attacking the science instead of the policy, they are setting themselves up to be remembered as fools, just like the anti-evolutionists of the 1920s.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
No, I simply read carefully. The IPCC summarizes research that shows a modest degree of warming and shows that humans probably contributed to that. Most of the rest, both predictions about temperature changes and their consequences, are based on numerous assumptions that intrinsically cannot be "shown". You may think those assumptions are plausible, but that's not the same as scientific evidence.
No, I'm claiming that if the solution causes bigger problems then we shouldn't do it.
AGW is not the biggest problem we face in the world. Your ideas could cause wars and famine. We've seen nothing from AGW that implies that it will be worse then that.
Yes, there are issues in marginal societies but those societies are very sensitive and always have problems. What is more their problems are not destabilizing to global order.
Your ideas would put unbearable stresses on global diplomatic and trade systems.
You would get lots of countries that would not comply or would cheat the system. Then you'd put sanctions on those countries... then those countries and other complaint countries would find ways to cheat the sanctions... which would force countries to put additional pressure on other countries to actually impose proper sanctions or enforce existing ones that were reasonable. Then you'd get some countries that would leave the coalition... and it just wouldn't be sustainable.
Your idea assumes you actually can force people.
Consider this for one tiny moment.
What if you can't?
What if you can't force people?
What if you actually had to get them to comply by choice because you weren't strong enough to do anything else?
Did that ever occur to you? Or do you really think you can force the entire planet to obey your rules?
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Wrong. My solutions are about getting people to WANT to do the right thing of making it in their interest to do the right thing. Which means wider adoption.
Your solutions require putting a gun to the head of billions of people and nation states that will not comply with your orders.
As such, your authoritarian model not only unethical but counter productive since you won't get compliance.
All you'll do is splutter and rant... pissing people off... and accomplishing nothing.
And because you refuse to listen to anyone its impossible to reason with you. You're just a deluded fanatic that doesn't understand the limitations of force.
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Its not a mistake. Its a political ploy that works.
Again, you're not getting anywhere on this issue unless you're willing to look very hard at your proposed solutions and make them reasonable.
In regards to evolution, I can assure you that if the eugenics movement were actually a threat, we'd have wide spread denial of evolution. Yes, I know there are evangelicals that deny it but I'm not talking about them. I'm saying upwards of 60-70 percent of the population would be against evolution if it were believed that something like eugenics were being justified by it.
That's just the politics. If you want people to be reasonable on the science you're going to have to not try to use the science to justify unacceptable policy.
Here is the central mistake you're making:
You're thinking "I have science on my side, I can win any argument and get people to do anything I want so long as I said SCIENCE".
Well it doesn't work that way. Science can be used to support a position but it does not instantly win any discussion on policy. And if you try to do that then everything you're doing will come under attack including the science.
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What, line them up agaist the wall and shoot them? That's the classic final solution for those who disagree with the ascendent political thought.
Maybe you meant "Cue the deniers?"
If I go around breaking my neighbors' windows, that creates jobs for glassmakers and window installers. Never mind that my neighbors would rather have spent their money on something other than fixing broken windows.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
You haven't said one thing to change my summary of your position. Since AGW is highly likely to cause great problems, and since the only ways to significantly reduce its effects are likely to be very costly and inconvenient, and since you claim that only palatable solutions will be accepted, we're fucked.
What if we can't enforce some sort of meaningful solution? Then AGW happens, and we are facing a whole lot of potential disasters, some of which are likely to be very disruptive and expensive.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you want to run around like chicken little that's your own business.
I'd prefer to work towards attainable ends.
I didn't cause world industry to emit this CO2. That's not my fault. And it isn't my fault that you're not going to get your various ideas accepted wholesale.
All I can do is offer you ideas that might actually accomplish something. Will it be perfect? What planet and species do you think you're on and working with here?
This is earth and we're humans. Your ideas need to be less idealistic and realistic.
Getting 8 billion people to fall into line with your plan at gun point is a pipe dream... and even if you could do it which you can't... I really don't think you appreciate the human cost of getting what you want that way.
If we accept the most extreme alarmist projections on the climate that we've been fucked for years because apparently the oceans started to boil about 10 years ago and we're already dead.
Since that clearly didn't happen we can assume that the valid projections are somewhere between the least pessimistic and the most pessimistic.
Where that falls is debatable. A lot of it seems to come down to poorly understood forcing variables that have had their weightings adjusted so much that its clear they're just guessing.
So fine... that's a problem... now what can we do? Well, there are a lot of things we can do to improve our industry. But all of that starts at being rational about the whole thing and appreciating that it is a global problem and therefore local environmental regulations absent import tariffs are meaningless because you'll just export your pollution to china which at best will mean more CO2 is emitted then if it had been kept in the US with no environmental regulations.
There are a lot of technologies and processes we could use that would reduce our CO2 emissions dramatically. A lot of it involves biofuel which really should be producible on an individual basis to be really efficient. Keep in mind, that the biofuel is turning sunlight or some kind of organic energy into oil or alcohol. That means its going to take up a lot of space. What if rather then taking up a lot of space in a centralized refinery it instead takes up a few hundred square feet in the backyards of millions of homes?
The machinery for this sort of thing can be miniaturized and simplified to be operated by a normal person. Will the machine cost thousands of dollars? Sure. But then what does gasoline cost over several years for a family of 4?
Labor costs would also be largely nominal for the same reason we find cooking at home to be cheaper then eating out even though it takes more labor. The difference is that the extra labor is our own. We pay no one... its our own labor for our own production.
Look at the whole maker revolution. Its all part of the same thing. Can 3d printing ever compete with the efficiency of a conventional factory? Never. But it can be much cheaper because the cost of YOUR labor in the whole thing is effectively free. You've donated it to yourself.
There are all sorts of biofuel crops that we could employ for this sort of thing. Crops that produce oil. Crops that can be fermented and distilled. How many gallons of fuel do you need to produce in a month? You really don't need that much. Get a fast growing crop and intensively farm it on your property. This is entirely possible with current technology.
Will it take the average person some attention to make it happen? Sure. But the rising gas prices are a big motivator.
Let me give you an example of sort of economies we're talking about here.
If I go to the store to buy beer... the cheapest beer I can find... I am going to be paying about 10-11 dollars for 4 liters of beer.
If I brew it myself using whole grain brewing I can get closer to 10 liters of beer for that price... and the quality can be the equal of anything depending on my skill.
And that is assuming I buy the grain and hops AND mail order it paying shipping.
If I actually grew the stuff myself it would be even cheaper.
There are too many middle men in our supply chain and they're making an already tight logistical chain less competitive.
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So, you're not proposing to spend that much of people's money, just their time and energy. You do know that the US is fairly prominent in CO2 emissions, and US employers have been pushing employees to spend more time and energy working for them. If US employees have to brew their own beer and their own biofuels, things are going to get really ugly. It would be better to ask for money. (And more efficient. A brewer is far more efficient at making beer than you are, and the taste is probably more consistent. You're ignoring the economics here.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Biofuels if made by the refineries would cost around 5 dollars to 6 dollars a gallon before taxes. After taxes it could be closer to 7 or 8 dollars a gallon if not 10.
Its not competitive unless we do something creative.
Simply getting men with guns to force people to comply or be shot is not especially clever or creative either.
Do you have any original ideas? Ideas you came up with yourself?
Because the men with guns idea has failed and backfired... on top of being immoral and stupid... or possibly because its immoral and stupid. Either way... I'm trying to come up with ideas that don't depend on people being forced to comply at gun point. That means rethinking the industrial process.
As to self generated biofuels undermining the economy, the production of fossil fuels won't stop. We can expect that to continue for a long time to come. But we can start to break the link between that industry and every other. Farmers and other rural dwellers are best positioned to self generate because they have the land, water, and can even use waste biomass to fuel the system.
Furthermore, the decentralized systems that make this stuff will have to be manufactured and maintained. GE for example already has a SynGas generator that they're marketing to large farms. There are smaller companies that are making smaller units for smaller farms.
I've seen SynGas generators for 30 thousand dollars that produce 20kw. Carbon neutral power.
That's cheaper then solar and far more reliable.
People don't like it because it relies on burning things. And they've been mislead to think that burning things is anti environment. When really what is anti environment is burning sequestered hydrocarbons.
Wood is not a sequestered hydrocarbon.
The ideal set up for a system like this is to bundle it with a pellet mill and possibly a hammer mill.
Using the pellet mill and hammer mill... and maybe a wood chipper if needed you can process any kind of plant matter into uniform wood pellets which burn very nicely in the syngas generator.
When generating about 20kw it goes through 75 pounds of fuel in a day. Given that the average household consumes about 5-6kwh per day, you can see that one of these generators could service many homes concurrently.
And how large is this machine? I'm looking at one right now that is about 3' by 3' by 6'. Which is nothing if you consider how many homes it services.
And on top of the power, it generates a storable, portable gas that can be used in modified cars, heats water, and can heat whatever buildings are hooked up to it directly.
And with tweaking, a syngas generator can make crude, gasoline, kerosene, propane, etc. Most of them are set up to produce syngas and nothing else. But you can crack that to produce anything.
Which is where the big oil companies come in because they know more about that then anyone else. We need their help. They can provide technical expertise in return for patients and licensing all of which will sunset in about 14 years after their investment.
This is something we could do that would be applicable all over the world and could make a difference without resorting to force.
We could offer these machines to the world. Offer bio engineered crops for biofuel... genetically engineered algae... We have the technology to do these things. But it requires burying the failed and counterproductive Soylent orthodoxy.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.