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Study: Man-Made Global Warming First Became Evident In the Mid 20th Century
TapeCutter writes: In 1958 the US National Academies of Science (NAS) warned the US government that they had detected a robust Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) signal, they have not changed their mind on that claim for 57 years. Like the modern day Al Gore, Frank Capra publicized the possible effects in a popular documentary (video). Today we have news of a study from Melbourne University claiming the effects of AGW first became evident in the mid 20th century. In other words, the NAS could not have picked up the signal much earlier than they actually did. The fact that the last serious scientific objection to AGW (as a theory) was overcome in the mid 20th century by improving spectrometers in heat seeking missile was a remarkable coincidence, NAS took full advantage of that opportunity.
People like you are why the world is doomed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands.
If the "externalized costs" were incorporated into the prices you use to make your decisions, then you would decide more wisely.
The cost of a pack of cigarettes isn't just the cost to grow, process and deliver the tobacco to you, it is also the cost of treating lung cancer - not to mention the social cost of pissing off everyone who doesn't want to die prematurely.
The cost of continuing to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere isn't just the cost of extracting the fossil fuels and using them, it's the cost of relocating our cities to higher ground, and other very expensive consequences. We may pass this cost off to future generations and get away (dead) without paying for it, but it is a price that will be paid.
I love how the AGW stories always bring the lunatics typing from their mom's basements out of the woodwork.
You know nothing about science. Really, nothing.
> One of THE key tests of a scientific theorem is that it can predict
What is a 'scientific theorem'? Oh maybe you mean a scientific theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... And yet these 'state of the art' models have so far had a dismal record of prediction.
Wrong. The reputable models from the 80's and 90's (those that had a good level of peer-review and were based on sound assumptions) quite accurately predicted our current warming rate. The reason you don't know this is because you probably derive most of your 'information' from sources that actually don't deal in science.
> The obvious ones of course being nuclear power in its more modern versions
I knew you'd segue into nuclear power at the end, and you didn't disappoint! Somehow anti-AGW lunacy seems to be highly correlated with nuclear lunacy.
Nuclear energy is not going to solve our problems. It is obscenely expensive - far more expensive than wind or solar. This is true both for construction costs, maintenance costs, total lifetime costs, and also costs per final delivered kWh. Nuclear is only feasible for a very specific set of scenarios - scenarios where you have a large population or industry center located in an area that is poor in renewable energy sources. And even then, only as an augmentative power source to renewable energy, not as a sole source of power.
Nuclear is also non-renewable and reprocessing (to make it renewable) adds even more expense to the point that it could never hope to be commercially competitive. You guys believe in the free market right? That the market always knows best? Well the market decided on nuclear, and it decided that nuclear sucks. It also decided that nuclear reprocessing sucks even harder.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
The fact that the last serious scientific objection to AGW (as a theory) was overcome in the mid 20th century by improving spectrometers in heat seeking missile was a remarkable coincidence, NAS took full advantage of that opportunity.
Nobody mentioned it to me.
And I was working from the mid '60s through the early '70s in the "Infrared and Optics" lab that did the guidance systems for the BOMARK and Sidewinder, processed multispectral (including several infrared bands) aircraft and spacecraft data (from the ERTS - later renamed LandSat - and Skylab scanners), and much of the industrial-scale processing as well as the development of the equipment. The missile stuff was classified and before I joined, but the multispectral stuff was not, and was contemporary (as was the synthetic aperture radar in the other lab I worked for at the start of that period).
I did some of the software that processed that data, some of the running of the mainframes in question, maintained and augmented its OS and libraries on one of them, and, though a lowly undergrad techie at the time, talked with the researchers a lot. Some of them loved to tell me what they were up to and bounce ideas off me for my comments and opinions on them.
So I find it strange that, if they (or anybody in their field) had found a "strong" or "definitive" signal for AGW, using equipment derived from their work, they wouldn't, at least, have been talking about it a bunch, including with me, while celebrating and/or trying to get another grant out of it (and seeing if I could come up with a way to process the data to detect or falsify the signal).
As I recall, the dominant paradigm at the time was that the interglacial was ending and we were about to crash into the next ice age (or the next piece of the current one). But while that was discussed on campus it wasn't mentioned at this remote-sensing lab, either.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> It is worth noting that the various regulations and "oh my god the nuclear" fears, along with the "oh my god someone might reprocess into plutonium or nuclear weapons so we ban half of it", has caused the above...
Not really. Nuclear was already expensive in the 50's and 60's, way before these things were a huge issue. In fact most of the time the people insisting on safety were the nuclear scientists themselves, not the 'eco warrior bogeyman' you've constructed in your mind. The reason was because the scientists were responsible and acknowledged the actual real threats posed by radioactive contamination and the relative ease by which unprotected nuclear reactors could leach radioactive material into the environment.
Is there a lot of unwarranted, irrational fear about nuclear power? Sure. I'm with you 100% on that. But that doesn't mean that nuclear reactors shouldn't be made safe! It's not just accidents either. What if someone crashes a jet into a power plant with the goal of making a large area radioactive and uninhabitable? US regulations require containment buildings to be resistant to bombs and plane impacts, for good reason.
Now as to what makes nuclear power expensive. There are three major issues. One is that the economics of nuclear power favors large, multi-gigawatt, one-off designs that have huge up-front costs that simple can't be made smaller by mass production methods (attempts at small modular reactors have failed and will always fail as the economics of those are even worse). Another issue is decommissioning. Nuclear decommissioning costs are MASSIVE, because you have to extremely carefully take the reactor apart over a period of years. The third major issue is the advanced level of technology required. Custom materials, custom manufacturing processes, labor-intensive fuel preparation, reactor maintenance, and inspection costs.
> It now take more than twice as long to build a new nuclear reactor as it did to invent the things in the first place, when we didn't know how to make them work. That is absurd, imagine if cars took a month to build, you'd be saying that they didn't make any sense either...
It actually makes perfect sense once you realize that the first generation of nuclear power plants were built recklessly and with insane design decisions that made them extremely unsafe and vulnerable to both accidents and terrorist attacks. Over time, we've realized the steps that need to be taken to build safe and secure nuclear sites and these add expense and time.
And as for proliferation fears, well you can blame that on the right wing politicians who insist on backwards arms control methods like total nuclear abstinence instead of rational procedures like international inspections regimes.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
For chrissake, step out of the basement and READ. I beg you. I deplore of you. Every single point you're making has been debunked to death for years. There is no such thing as 'global warming hiatus'. Only bad data, measurement inaccuracies over the oceans, and a regional pause in warming over North America and Europe, which has been more than compensated for by an incredible degree of warming at the poles. http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...
> Every time someone takes a step, they cause a small earthquake. Does that mean they should sit very still and starve to death? Similarly, if a small amount of AGW isn't seriously dangerous, does that mean we should kill hundreds of millions of people through energy poverty to fail to solve something that really isn't that much of a problem?
Actually climate change is a very serious problem and by far the cheapest way of dealing with it is to deal with it right now. It is projected - based on optimistic predictions! - that the economic damage caused by climate change would dwarf the expense of dealing with it. And if you do it in a smart way, it doesn't even need to be that expensive to deal with. Solar and wind are already pretty cheap and could create lots of jobs. The price of oil is going to continue to rise; the sooner we reduce our oil consumption the less we have to pay in the long run. Any way you look at it, it's beneficial economically and environmentally to deal with climate change as soon as possible. Except, of course, if you're a coal magnate, which anti-agw people either are or are useful idiots for. Sorry to say this but it's true.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
The full-coverage satellite data show continued warming in the last 20 years. I don't know which data you are looking at, but of the 20 year period you are talking about, nine out of the ten warmest years are after 2005, and 2015 might set a new all time record. If it wasn't for the extreme outlier 1998, the warming in the last 20 years would have been nearly linear. Actually, one of the Anti-AGW propaganda tricks is to take an ok sounding period like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, in which 1998 is close to the start. Until 2008, it was always "the last decade doesn't show warming", after that it was "the last 15 years", and now, since 2013 and thus more than 15 years since 1998 are over, it's obviously 20 years. But for some reason, 2013, 2014 and probably also 2015 were pretty hot years globally, and thus the graph, that looked so convincingly anti-warming in 2008 was mildly constant until 2013, but since then, even 1998 does no longer help the argument, as even the graphs that take 1998 as their starting point have a rising trend.
All of the models are wildly wrong in predicting climate, so the "evidence" is pointing against any of the alarmist models you are peddling being correct.
Well that there is just flat out a lie.
You can dig out the most recent IPCC report if you like. It contains the predictions from the previous IPCC report and compares them to what actually happened. And what happened is that the actual data lay comfortably within the error bars of the temperatures predicted by the models.
Since you're such a "skeptic", I assume you've actually looked at the IPCC report in order to read it rationally and with a clear head, so I don't need to point you to the specific graph.
So, carry on, I'd love to see you twist and turn in the face of indisputable evidence.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
CO2 has risen substantially in the last decade or two - with very little corresponding warming. ... so you are simply: wrong.
Last year was the hottest in recorded history
Also keep in mind: when you open the valve of your heating, it takes a few minutes until the radiator is hot, and it takes hours until your room is significantly warmer.
The same happens with CO2. The CO2 we produce today will show up on thermometers all over the world in a few years, not tomorrow.
the EVIDENCE is that CO2 rising does not lead to temperature rise, despite many previous predictions to the contrary.
There is no evidence like that. As a stone can not raise to earth orbit, but is firmly grasped by gravity, CO2 leads to increased temperatures. There is no doubt about that. No idea why you repeatedly write nonsense like this, are you payed by some american oil/denier lobby?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
At this rate, I don't see anything suggesting that we're really seriously taking the steps needed to get off of fossil fuels before it gets ugly.
Maybe you should try researching what's going on before posting then.