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Persian Gulf Temperatures May Be At the Edge of Human Tolerance In 30 Years (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to a new climate study the Persian Gulf may become so hot and humid in the next 30 years that it will reach the threshold of human survivability. Ars reports: "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future. However, a new paper published by Jeremy Pal and Elfatih Eltahir in Nature Climate Change presents evidence that this deadly combination of heat and humidity increases could occur in the Persian Gulf much earlier than previously anticipated."
The human body needs periods of cool temperatures to recover from being in the heat. The effects are also more severe as the heat increases and the humidity reduces the ability of the body to cool itself. When it's very humid, temperatures don't fall as much as night, which prevents the body from recovering during that period. Humans can tolerate periods of hot and even humid conditions, provided they also get time to cool off and recover. The excessive heat and warm nights due to the humidity are a bad combination. While you can tolerate a really hot bathtub, you certainly wouldn't survive being in one all the time.
I think you misunderstand what will happen if the conditions in a country becomes unlivable over a longer period (this compared to say a volcano or something, where the problem occurs suddenly). Specifically, the likelihood of war does not exactly decrease.
You mean one way of causing the conflict in the middle east to escalate and start spreading outward.
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for. The increased energy in the system is already turning all of weather to a parade of freak outliers and unpredictable quirky events that occasionally spike off the charts, and that's exactly in line with the 'chaotic system' model.
I wouldn't have called the 'Earth turning to an alien planet that doesn't support life' thing in thirty years, but if you specify it's to happen in particular (unusual areas) then I'll believe that. Some areas of the planet are already close to uninhabitable and it doesn't take that much to push 'em over the brink. The thing to watch for is not places being rendered uninhabitable by weather extremes, it's more about masses of people/animals displaced because the change is a new thing that nobody's prepared for.
You can probably, right now, buy a 40-year lease on land that might as well be the Moon in 40 years. If you want a real picture of the plausibility of man-made global climate change, don't check scientists or Al Gore, consult actuaries and insurance companies. Pretty sure you'll find they're believers, because they have to actually pay for it if they choose wrong.
It doesn't matter. By this time the entire population of the middle east will have "moved" to Europe.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Bad living conditions tend to destabilize such areas. Prompting even more repressive actions from local regimes. Such areas become hotbeds for civil war, civil unrest and feed into the current trend of terrorist organizations recruiting from the local disgruntled populace.
Make sh*tloads of money selling fossil fuels to the rest of the world...
Parlay that money, and valuable commodity, into unwarranted global influence...
Have homeland rendered uninhabitable by the consequence of burning said fossil fuels...
Take it on the bright side, we will finally be able to enjoy a nice bottle of English wine.
You should try living in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, or Florida during the Summer. The heat and humidity combine to make it stiflingly hot, so much so that you practically have to swim instead of walk. You sweat just standing in the shade, but the sweat can't cool you off because of the high humidity.
Yet people do live there and surprisingly do well. In fact, more and more people are moving there, especially Yankees moving south to retire. Sometimes I wish air conditioning had never been invented!
The Middle East will not disappear, the local extremists will simply migrate even faster to Europe.
Nrrgghh... Arrrgh... Sorry, can't resist, I'll bite....
If the climate science models predict an ice age, you should be worried. You might even plan with how to avoid such a scenario; such as research ways you might pump a gas into the atmosphere to warm the earth...
If the science changes and it might; particularly if evidence from new measurements comes to light, you should adjust your behaviour accordingly. Its the rational thing to do. Not acting with the consensus of experts puts you, your descendants and everybody else's at risks.
I agree that having a cap on carbon and trade on carbon production is ripe for exploitation. But something should be done to reflect the true cost of carbon production. We've done it with cigarettes; found against initial opinion to be an existential threat to you and others; taxed sky high. We have to do it with carbon.
A couple more points.
Going against the advice of experts. Say you go to the doctors with slight headaches, doctor diagnoses cancer... Then other doctors take more measurements, using a new technology of M.R.I. and diagnose a progressive build up of fluid. Radically different treatment, but you should do something. Saying 'laalaa la. What do you experts know, you always change your mind, I'm going to carry on till it gets bad.' is not a rational response. Say exactly same scenario; but its somebody else with the symptoms; and *you* making the decision. People would be quite correct to question your morality in such a situation.
On existential threat. If I said to you, I've discovered secret evidence that says a meteor will hit the earth in 50 years; killing maybe a billion people and wrecking the earths economy. If I showed you evidence of tables of numbers, and the result of orbital simulations, making nice graphics of the impact. Would you listen?
Because the only difference is it isn't a meteor, and the evidence isn't secret.
..thats one way of solving conflict in the Middle East
You mean one way of causing the conflict in the middle east to escalate and start spreading outward.
Right... and if anybody thinks the Middle-East->Balkans->Europe or S-America->Mexico->USA migration is a problem now try to imagine what it will be like when large of South America become deforested and the Middle East becomes an uninhabitable dustbowl. Everytime I hear somebody make that: "It's not our problem, let them kill themselves down there, the best thing we can do is not interfere" like the OP I'm tempted to bring up the mess that is Syria which to a large extent became the mess it is because we listened to people who recommend apathy. Interfering is bad but at least you have some influence on the course of events, not interfering is worse because by not interfering you let the situation spin completely out of control.
All of Syria is already moving to Europe because of political instability. As more muslims arrive, their influence grows in countries like France and England. That will affect the USA as well.
It's just not survivable long term. This isn't 'the old and the weak might be in danger', it's 'you will die'.
Yes, technology will keep you alive short term.
A/C fails, you all die.
Water supply fails, you all die.
Power fails, you all die.
You have to leave town in a hurry, you all die. Look at how many people in that region are in refugee camps - all dead.
Can't grow food - O.K. import it. Ships late, you all die.
When they are talking about unihabitable they mean in. And the ground temperature thing, well bad news, it's average temperature, days are 50c, nights 30c, average is 40c, still unsurvivable.
This is NOT a problem technology will solve.
The Persian Gulf is actually hotter and more humid. One city in Iran had the heat index soar to 163 degrees this past summer.
Yes, it gets very hot in parts of the US in the summer. The Gulf Coast states are very humid. It can get just as hot in the Plains, and the evapotranspiration from crops like corn can raise the dewpoints into the low 80s at times. I've experienced this living in Nebraska. But it still isn't as hot and humid as the Persian Gulf.
The other difference is that there's widespread air conditioning in the US. People still die, but it's mitigated because of the air conditioning. There's far less availability of air conditioning in the poorer countries of the Middle East. Sure, the wealthy nations like Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have plenty of air conditioning. But the same can't be said in places like Iraq and Yemen. Add to it a severe water shortage and there's potentially a big problem. The weather is worse than anywhere in the US, and the socioeconomic issues make it even worse.
There won't be any war there because there won't be any people there. What part of "uninhabitable" are you having trouble with?
So when it becomes clear that the temps are going to get there, and the current residents have to leave, where do you think they are going to go? Do you think they will all buy plane tickets and execute an orderly withdrawal? Or do you think they might just choose to take whatever military hardware they have on hand and try to use it to make a hole they can settle into?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They will have to attack neighboring states to "make a hole" and most of the neighboring states are quite strong, militarily. Getting them to commit suicide via inadvisable military endeavors, esp. when they will have no supply lines because growing food will become impossible at the higher temperatures may also not be a bad thing. They all die in a war they start that when they could have just shown up at the border, hat in hand, begging for asylum that would most assuredly be granted, would scatter them, and make them much more concerned with their situation than with killing everyone in the world that is not Muslim.
They will have to attack neighboring states to "make a hole" and most of the neighboring states are quite strong, militarily. Getting them to commit suicide
...will have substantial fallout, both economic and political, to say nothing of the cost in human lives. It also does not detract from the point.
They all die in a war they start that when they could have just shown up at the border, hat in hand, begging for asylum that would most assuredly be granted,
You haven't been paying attention to world politics, have you? That would most assuredly be granted? What are you smoking, what is it called, how much does it cost, and where can it be purchased?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, we already did enjoy nice bottles of English wine. In the medieval warming period, vineyards were all over northern England. Today, many street names still have names of grape varieties as a result of those times.
Oh, crap. We can't talk about that. Nevermind.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Its difficult to explain anything to people that can't be summed up into one sentence or a short five sentence anectdotal story.
That said the basic thermodynamics of added CO2 and other heat trapping gasses is simple, well understood, and was settled long ago academically. The real cutting edge research today is determining what will happen on a regional scale. In the above study published in Nature, it's not an increase in temperature so much as its an increase in regional moisture brought on by a slight warming and a shift in climate.
It's not a dust bowl effect, think of how bad that dry heat is going to be if it turns high humidity.
While results like these could be more accurately modeled, say by having better satellites, far more money is spent arguing than buying hardware and funding research. The possible doomsday scenerio isn't a whole planet that's too hot - its far more likely a slightly insane nuclear arms bearing nation essentially being locked inside a car with the windows rolled up in a Flordia kmart parking lot in July.
Refusing to sell the oil certainly didn't work out too well for them either.
FTA
You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
And you have to do it with a mindset that we're not there to build schools or make friendly with the locals, but to suppress resistance with maximum force and minimal-to-no concern for civilian casualties and collateral damage. This isn't a "police action" or "counter-insurgency" it's more Caesar's Conquest of Gaul.
You have to break the culture's will to resist. You move forward and obliterate anything that offers resistance. Use every tool in the toolkit -- carpet bombing, firebombing, internment camps. You don't avoid hospitals, power plants, water plants, food warehouses -- you hit those FIRST. You advance systematically in this manner, willing to inflict total destruction and maximum death until the people and culture recognize that further resistance is futile.
Then you occupy the territory for at least a generation, gradually, over 20 or 30 years, returning them to some kind of self rule, but all the while willing to demonstrate that resistance will not be tolerated.
Anything else is totally ineffective and produces no lasting change, at huge cost.
You can get a mediocre bottle of English wine right now. Some years you can even get some that borders on being good.
When you have created numerous models, none of which fit the data, cannot predict anything accurately and have a huge financial stake in perpetuating you model, yes we are going to discount your model as being like the boy who cried wolf.
For my entire lifetime (50+ years) we have been told that a climate disaster was coming, first we were going to freeze, then boil, then drown, now be steamed to death. We know that the data is being manipulated, no one claims it is not. One side says it is being corrected, the other says it is being 'corrected' to fit an ideology.
Either way, one of two things will happen, man kind will be wiped out, or mankind will adapt. If mankind is wiped out, something else will take our place, the universe will not even notice. If mankind adapts, something else will eventually take our place and the universe will not even notice.
Something that isn't in evidence in the comments here, judging by all the racist crap that's been posted so far.
" "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future..."
This is somehow different than the many areas on the planet where humans should not be trying to live today?
I've seen more intense hate coming from supposedly educated people like you than i have from southerners as a whole. I think your worldview is skewed by hate to some degree.
No we weren't. The "coming ice age" thing was an article written in the popular press and was never supported by climate science.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You can't blame the isolationist argument / strategy for failing when the so called refugee crisis is at its root a failure to follow that strategy. There is no good reason, for Syria's border states to permit the entry of refugees, let alone for Europe or USA to do so. I suspect keeping those people there would actually clean up the mess in that country more quickly as it would leave a group of people of quality (those that want a better life) there with incentive to fix things.
Secure the boarders let the situation sort it self out.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
They grow wine grapes in New York and Canada... it's not very good most of the time, but they do it. "Nice bottle" is the key.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Pretty damn hot, but the Persian Gulf is still much warmer. The hottest part of the year in Florida is about as hot as where I live in the South-east Asian tropics. Average of about 33 degrees Cecilius with high humidity and some days in the high 30s (~ 100F) and still humid! Being European and growing up in a cool climate it feels unpleasant for me without conditioning, but survivable. Meanwhile Dubai, Riyadh, Baghdad, Manama, etc have average summer temperatures of 40 and pushing towards 50 degrees (122F)! And _still_ with high humidify. Desert heat with ocean humidity, and yet little rain - it rarely cools below the dew point.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Oh. Because there's an agenda at work. Never mind.
Oh yeah, the sinister all powerful hippy/tree-hugger illuminati, out to get the world to stop all economies.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm a "climate denialist" or whatever.
Uh, no-one self-describes as a denier because it's an epithet. But it's what you are.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I bet they're pretty good evidence when you don't have as big an emotional investment in the outcome.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Those cities are currently, probably, about as bad as the Middle East when worst cases are considered and, currently, are not particularly close to "limit of survivability" levels.
Some bits of Northern India are currently amongst the "worst" areas. The ME is geographically close but currently not so bad as they're drier.
But if the ME gets wetter then the problems there could get worse to the point where it's impossible to survive without aircon.
http://www.city-data.com/forum...
35C wet bulb temperature is about the limit of survivability. You don't die instantly but unless you get somewhere cooler (lower wet bulb temperature, not necessarily absolute temperature) you will die.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
And immediately after the Medieval Warm Period was the 300+ year-long Little Ice Age... So that's something to look forward to. A nice little reminder to Europeans that they're at the same latitude as Canada and parts of Siberia.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Oh, how they laughed when I filed a patent for a Stillsuit!
I don't what planets WWII you have been reading about but I have news for you. While we certainly did fight a total war targeting civilian sites with industrial applications like factories etc we most certainly did not target hospitals and civilian food stocks (with some notable exceptions). We did hit many of these things because bombing with WWII technology had about a 24% accuracy. The British actually counted success has hitting the correct city, at least for night raids. Hitting them and targeting them are not however the same thing.
When occupying territories we did usually install our own safety force and disarm local government employees. We did however in many case leave local governments and civil machinery intact for administrative purposes. We certainly did not inflict maximum death anywhere after the surrender or withdraw of military forces in the area. Oh and we hung around and rebuilt the place when we were done.
The problem in the middle east is that there isn't any working civil machinery and what of there is antithetical to our deeply held beliefs about justice and freedom among other things. I don't agree with your read of WWII at all. I would suggest occupied Germany isn't a good analog for anything having to do with post invasion strategy in the middle east. Where I can agree with you is about the need to occupy the territory, if you are going to invade. I would still argue that we should simply not accept refugees and invest all the money we would otherwise spend invading and occupying into simply securing our boarders and making damn sure we know everything there is to know about anyone we are permitting to enter instead but that is another discussion.
What is needed in the middle east if you are going to invade is a British colonial style system. We need to bring in our own civil infrastructure and system of law. That needs to be setup as superlative to any existing civil infrastructure, but we should leave whatever does exist intact as long as its complicit and willing to operate as our client. We need to spend 20 or 30 years ensuring that people who get with our program enjoy comfort and success and people who don't are pushed to the margins. That is how you change a culture, slowly and by making it apparent clinging to the old ways means being a nobody.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"they're at the same latitude as Canada"
Canada's latitude ranges from 41.7degN to 90degN.
And anyway, Jesus built the pyramids as cooling centers for Middle-Eastern senior citizens.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Did basic training at Ft. Benning in GA from July to November in '94, the AC was set to something like 80F in the barracks. When we finally got to go back to them after dinner it was like visiting the Arctic.
Uh... Tell me why we're not allowed to talk about it? Or are you one of those people who seems to think that climate scientists are ignorant of things such as the well known historical record, the sun and etc?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
and Australia and Antarctica. Brazil?
Ah, Bill O'Reilly, the shining beacon of rationality and humanism. Nothing he says should be taken seriously, ever.
Not being in the USA, I don't know who the hell Bill O'Relly is, and don't much care. Nevertheless the statement "General Patton could destroy all of ISIS in a week." is perfectly true with the minor correction to "could have if he were still around". It doesn't matter who says it. In fact any living general who is not totally incompetent could do the same with the West's firepower at their disposal. I don't know why it is not done.
... out to leech off all economies.
Fixed that for you.
Oh, and they already have a pretty nice parasitic climatology industry, it's was about $8.8 billion in 2010, currently probably substantially more than that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...
That's a lot of motivation to exaggerate or lie outright about global warming (or "climate change").
I think this is a fine point to interject. I am not, nor do I claim to be, a climate scientist. I am, on the other hand, a mathematician. My career was based on modeling from very large data sets. I modeled vehicular and pedestrian traffic. It's akin to attempting to model chaos.
I'll try to keep this simple.
See, you collect a whole bunch of data - everything from weather to time of day to a single individual can have an impact on the throughput of traffic. Then, you crunch this data and you end up with a model and can make predictions on it. Well, you shouldn't. This is why I'm retired today. See, you don't actually make predictions at that point. Instead - you return to the actual data and go out and make physical observations to confirm that your modeling of the existing data is accurate. If it's not then you change your algorithms AND manipulate the data until it matches reality.
Then, and only then, when you've managed to get them "close enough" can you make meaningful predictions and accurate proposals for things like route changes or configurations. You do, indeed, manipulate the data and the math used to crunch that data (an example is dropping outlying data points or optimizing for a specific period of time) until the data matches what you can verify as existing. The world is more than data points... At some point, it becomes so complex that there's absolutely zero chance at achieving perfection. That will not happen.
Now, I don't know shit about climate. I don't know if they're doing this right or wrong or if we're all going to die tomorrow. But I do know that massaging numbers and tweaking models to reflect reality is actually a damned good thing to do. In fact, doing so is why I'm retired and the company is still alive today. Not doing so is why you get some pretty screwed up traffic patterns that looked good on paper but suck in reality. That's what they get for hiring the least expensive companies. Yes, it takes more time, yes, it is more expensive. However, it's not at all unusual to manipulate data to make a model match reality. In fact, if you want to do a good job, it's pretty much a requirement and no - it will never be perfect. We simply can't account for all eventualities. You aim for a 95th percentile or greater in traffic modeling (even less for pedestrian traffic) and call it good.
So, there are probably all sorts of legitimate complaints about climate science. Data manipulation is not one of them. I'd be much more concerned to find out that they were relying on raw data without any manipulation and then comparisons with reality to determine which adjustments need to be made. If no adjustments had to be made, I'd call it straight up bullshit.
Err... End rant! Carry on with the bitch fest but, really, unless you've attempted to model a chaotic system, you're probably not actually aware of the process. I can assure you that, mathematically, this must be a similar process to what I'm most familiar with. If they were working with raw data that had not been manipulated then you'd probably end up with predictions of the climate being toadstool hamburger no later than last purple Wednesday. It's not a perfect world and there are near infinite data points to be considered if you want to try for perfection - good luck with that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
Nothing like that scale. The Germans in WWII were extremely tough fighters with a home-grown manufacturing base and deployed high tech. ISIS, for all their willy waving in front of the cameras, are nothing of the sort.
The difference is that celestial mechanics is an exact science (when everything is taken into account).
Climate models are speculative bullshit that have consistently failed in their predictions.
Given the fact that the government cure to your headache would be to wrap a tourniquet around your head, doing nothing is an entirely rational response.
Religion keeps them from leaving their homeland (aka the frickin desert). If it gets too hot they still won't move, they'll just cry to the heavens about why their deity has forsaken them instead of do the practical thing and go rent an igloo.
And here is a huge problem, disagree with the solution and you are a "denialist."
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
My thought instead was that with his country at war, his country needed doctors.
Oh, and 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere is EXTREMELY LOW by geologic measure [hugovandermolen.nl].
Let the rocks worry about what level of CO2 they're comfortable with, the levels that human beings can stand is another story.
Bury the dead in the hottest part you can find, apply pressure, fossil fuel problem solves itself!
Well, IIRC, those old magic books DO predict a future catastrophe, probably somewhere in the Middle East.
Isaiah 13:9 "Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it."
Meanwhile Dubai, Riyadh, Baghdad, Manama, etc have average summer temperatures of 40 and pushing towards 50 degrees (122F)! And _still_ with high humidify. Desert heat with ocean humidity, and yet little rain - it rarely cools below the dew point.
I spent part of my childhood there - until 01/01/79 when we left in a rush. We were about 60 miles north/inland from Abadan which is on the coast. Summer temperatures were above 50C every day and often 55 to 60.
Temperature was not the only factor though. Humidity is fractionally under 100% and there are very strong hot winds. I visited a steelworks when at college, the two felt similar. Hot and uncomfortable but the steelworks smelled better!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Plenty of room for all the displaced people in the air conditioned areas of Saudi Arabia... oh wait, none of those countries have accepted a single refugee from other places.
Guess European nations will take the next waves of refugees in with open arms and a smile.
your misusing and abusing information to make a flawed point.
"geological global average was higher than today" .... when you use a 600 million year time period.
hint: 600 million years ago complex multicellular life (things above bacterial mats and algae) didn't even exist yet.
And why just 600 million years? If we're going to geological time scales, why stop there? Why not go back further? to the cooling earth after its molten formation? Or was it just to conveniently leave out the 200 million year long glaciation period that occurred just before the arbitrary 600my cut off?
same for CO2 levels. yes, it was warmer and higher CO2 millions of years ago....and life that evolved for those conditions existed. the problem is the current situation is in not operating on evolutionary time scales. its not just the existence of the conditions, but the speed. those prior conditions occurred over hundreds of millions of years, which is actually a point supported by the very things you mention, and unlike the current conditions and trends.
and further: you're using geological time scale global averages, when the article in question is talking about a specific point in time at a specific place...the total opposite. The fact that the global average is ok for humans doesn't contradict or prevent the existence of locations not habitable by humans, places like Antarctica or the Middle East.
in short: just more unscientific denier BS.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Apart from all the successful predictions made by the models, you are absolutely right! You sound like someone parroting what they heard someone else say, and neither of you had a clue, hence you thinking it's somehow helpful to you to out yourself as a scientific illiterate for all to see, with great pride and pomp. Yay you! Good work!
You would do well to compare the historical population trends of the souther compared to the rest of the nation before and after the invention and widespread adoption of Air Conditioning.
Hint: there's a reason slave labor was essential to the South's existence for the longest time.
in the time Before AC it was even more sparsely populated than now, had very few large cities, and most migration was away.
in the time After AC it experienced a population boom, the growth of many major cities, and migration completely reversed.
and this applies to the entire Sunbelt, from Arizona to Florida, not just the South.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Well, if models can't even predict past weather or climate to which there is an existing record for they sure can't predict future weather let alone climate.
Om, nomnomnom...
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Yes, because questioning a climate theory that's only backed by a limited set of hotly debated data is the same as believing in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
I know, I know, SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS. Because most scientists are willing (under intensive peer pressure) to say that anthropogenic global warming is a settled fact, we should all just end all scientific debate and declare anyone who questions the prevailing theory as a heretic who should be arrested and imprisoned.
Never mind that nothing in science is ever supposed to be so settled and beyond question. Yeah, that's OLD SCHOOL science, though, right? New science is where everyone gets together and agrees that X is so, and henceforth X is so and no one is allowed to question X.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
considering your comment history, the blinders you wear must be ginormous to create such a lack of self awareness.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's pretty easy for you to condemn him when the most angst you have in your life is not hearing your name called in Starbucks... You have no idea what he had to go through, yet you think you can judge a guy's actions and motives because of a snippet on the TV? That speaks more to your willingness to condemn than it does the honour (or lack thereof) of the guy being condemned.
> I don't know why it is not done. Maybe because you are complete ignorant in political relation.Going to war in direct war with ISIS would destroy region again toward USA (what the fuck I am saying ? region is destroyed already , I mean in toward USA , there will be new generation of warriors who hate USA and west ) . How do I know ? apart from I am from middle east (Iran, BTW I am atheist).I studied religion very carefully because my life tied to that , because I lived whole my life where a mullah's fatwa can change people's destiny. Do you know what policy is effective in middle east ? Obama's policy , let alone middle east , let them kill each other, what the fuck are you doing there ? Do you know how much obama's policy was effective in Iran ? the famous chanting "death to america " is dead, despite regime propaganda people in recent 4 5 year understood usa is not their enemy . do you know what policy was best for mullahs and mojahedins ? fucking idiots like G.W Bush or this idiot O'Reilly who does not understand whats going on in middle east. I am 100% sure mullahs and ISIS and Al-Quaida wishes some stupid like bush ro oreilly . They are other side of coin. Do you know who fights in iran against regime ? not fucking mojahedin khalgh (which all of them was killer and murderers ) . liberal fighting there. academia fights against regime . not stupid likes you who thinks we should destroy and bomb because we are stronger . fuck off. I have seen enough of people like you. And as middle eastin atheist I blame you and only people like you . your policy introduced khomeini to region, ISIS and others.
It wasn't that long ago and we were supposed to be scared to death of the pending ice age that was driving us all into cold temperatures.
I remember reading science fiction about that sort of thing but apart from a bit of right-wing fearmongering nothing else.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I noticed you didn't link to any peer reviewed paper agreeing with your position, and whether anyone needs grants for any length of time has no bearing on the veracity of their findings of the subject at hand.
Because idiots like you will only believe it when New York is under water and even then you'll say: who cares about those liberals.
Not to imply that the major parties actually differ in any meaningful way, but, for the record - The whole "climate change" (vs global warming) spin caught on first in the Blue camp (although, ironically enough, Republican Spin Doctor Frank Luntz came up with the idea, it just failed to catch on amongst the Reds at first).
that is cute, you think all of a sudden one day everyone will get up and say, "let's leave"
I think that the climate will become inhospitable more decisively than you do, and that they will effectively do that due to a common root cause.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Prime ministers are icky - who'd want to access one?
That does pretty adequately define the word denial: "the action of declaring something to be untrue."
New science is where everyone gets together and agrees that X is so, and henceforth X is so and no one is allowed to question X.
No one is asking for scientific debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants scientists to stop investigating the causes of global climate change in order to better predict its effects. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating science they know nothing about.
Science is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon scientific knowledge because it might someday change. When determining which science to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand the science enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
So basically, you want the Americans to channel the shittiest of all dictators and along with their bombings, occupy and terrorize a population. And this is marked insightful? Disgusting.
I get it. That barbaric culture is scary. You're afraid of them breeding like rabbits and establishing sharia law after immigrating to your country. If you react in this way, there is literally nothing separating you from the terrorists. Their ideas are your ideas. You literally WANT TO TERRORIZE THEM INTO SUBMISSION.
How the fuck is this insightful? Consider if someone was saying this about the US. You just know that even though you'll subjugate the majority, you will always have an armed rebellion for as long as you're there. Legitimately fighting their brutal occupiers. If The US saw Russia doing that, they'd call them brutal aggressive occupiers and that's what you'd be.
There are better options. They are harder, complex and don't give you the satisfaction of the genocide you crave. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. It may be from a movie but it's the goddamn truth. Real solutions are harder than that but maybe we humans haven't reached a level of emotional or intellectual maturity to use them yet.
Prediction: Germany and the EU will
Invite the populations of every country bordering the Persian Gulf to move to Europe!
Why can't we talk about the MWP? It was highly localized and relatively short lived. It was followed by a little ice age. It fits in perfectly well with what we know about climatology.
Realistically, although the trend would show as a slow and gradual process, the actual turning point would not - Things will chug along like usual until, at some point, a severe heat wave will cause a truly massive die-off.
If the survivors actually still want to fight over who gets to own a chunk of meteorite in the middle of a dead zone, hey, good for them. The sane ones will run begging for assimilation by their friends to the North.
And the whole world wins as a result. Well, except for coastal cities like New York and New Orleans and all of Florida, but hey, can't make an omelet...
Tweaking can also be akin to overtraining a neural net such that it learns many individual data points rather than extracting a useful generalization, and thus it is absolutely useless for prediction. It can reproduce what it learned wonderfully, but then stumbles when you run it off the end of known data points.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Without the discoveries of the Arabs and Africans before them our current civilization would be nothing.. Civilization come and go, ours will eventually decline as well. Even our civilazation has only done better than ancient Arabia and Africa by a few hundred years. Eventually war tore them apart, and could easily do the same to us.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
In reality, it was being discussed in Los Alamos during the 1940's. Early climate models suggested that we hadn't even begun to notice the effects [of all the deforestation during the Industrial Revolution over a century earlier]... but that we certainly would. It should be noted that this "braintrust of brilliance" (the world's top physcists were of course gathered there) was also discussing what we might be able to do to offset the effects...
Yeah, I mean, look at the ice caps! Completely gone, just like they said they would be!
And Europe's latitude ranges from 36.7 degN to 82 degN. Which means there is a large overlap.
You will never be 100% certain until it is too late to stop it. At some point common sense has to kick in and say, youknow what there is a 99.99999999~ chance that this is happening and we need to do something.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
"The increased energy in the system is already turning all of weather to a parade of freak outliers and unpredictable quirky events that occasionally spike off the charts"
Yeah, I'm posting right now from the wall of the 78th cat 5 hurricane to hit the US coast in the last month. It's terrible, this global warming!
When your predictions are CONSISTENTLY wrong, it's time to re-examine your theory, not double down. Actual scientists know this.
How about when A SINGLE ONE of the predictions made by the priests of the AGW comes true?
We were supposed to have an ice-free northwest passage, record-breaking hurricane seasons, and low lying islands were supposed to slip beneath the waves. NONE of it has happened.
Scientists make predictions based on theory. When observations don't match predictions, the theory is modified. This does not happen in climate "science", therefore it is not science.
For most of the 1970s, nobody knew. So "inadvertent climate modification," while clunky and dull, was an accurate reflection of the state of knowledge.
The first decisive National Academy of Science study of carbon dioxide's impact on climate, published in 1979, abandoned "inadvertent climate modification." Often called the Charney Report for its chairman, Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, declared: "if carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we find] no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."3
In place of inadvertent climate modification, Charney adopted Broecker's usage. When referring to surface temperature change, Charney used "global warming." When discussing the many other changes that would be induced by increasing carbon dioxide, Charney used "climate change."
Definitions
Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.
Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
No we weren't. The "coming ice age" thing was an article written in the popular press and was never supported by climate science.
In reality, climate science was already talking about anthropogenic global warming way back in the 1970s.
In reality, scientists have been talking about since the 19th century. Svante Arrhenius developed the first climate model demonstrating how increases in CO2 from can warm the planet, and he did that back in the 1890's.
~X~
Didnt we just have the strongest hurricane ever to hit?
http://www.livescience.com/188...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The models have predicted the warming (but being on the conservative side, not as strong as it has happened so far). The stasis seems to have been a statistical fluke, caused by a spike due to an exceptionally strong El Nino in 1998. Since 2014 has been warmer globally than 1998, and the numbers for 2015 are not in yet, but so far point to a new global warmth record even above 2014, there is no stasis at all.
africans are not like us. We have the only civilization that is worthy of the name, nobody else on Earth ever came close to it. That is a fact: Europeans >>> anybody else. Europeans are Herrenvolk, and are therefore the only culture that should legitimately rule the world.
That ended so well for you the first two times you tried that shit, Going for a third?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Err not not really. There is plenty of debate about the causes. It is a long way from settled science.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Well, we already did enjoy nice bottles of English wine. In the medieval warming period, vineyards were all over northern England. Today, many street names still have names of grape varieties as a result of those times.
Oh, crap. We can't talk about that. Nevermind.
Well, we can't talk about that with you because you're willfully ignorant and biased. If you were actually interested in the topic there's only been a few hundred research papers on the subjects of the MWP, as well as the LIA.
But you're not. You're far more interested in standing on a soap box and slinging biased half-truths and inaccuracies based on your incorrect interpretation of regional events.
*shrug* Whatever makes you happy. Thermodynamics, physics, and chemistry don't care about your biases, and they don't stop working just because you find the results inconvenient.
~X~
No one is asking for scientific debate to stop.
Yes you are. Every person that shouts "Denier" the second someone doesn't tow the line, is asking for the debate to STOP. There are many many many of you.
This debate has had nothing to do with science for some time now.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for.
As well, we wouldn't exist without the greenhouse effect. Without some of the thermoregulation it provides, the earth would be a slightly cooler version of Mercury, hot on the day side, and really cold on the nightside.
I've found the arguments tend to shorten dramatically when I point this out, then ask why the greenhouse effect fails on a global scale, when it has to work for us to exist.
The deniers have long relied on cherry picking anomalies, and calling research scientists names instead of coming up with any science.
Ironically, just like creationists, as soon as they cherry pick something out, the scientists walk over to find the explanation. So they are kinda helpful in that regard.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No. And the northwest passage isn't navigable. If it were, China would be spending a half a trillion dollars on a new Central American canal.
...and that Angels exist, and Elvis can get your wash whiter with this one weird trick.
Science is INTERESTING, chaos theory even more so, and it's easy to see the changes if you know what to look for. The increased energy in the system is already turning all of weather to a parade of freak outliers and unpredictable quirky events that occasionally spike off the charts, and that's exactly in line with the 'chaotic system' model.
I wouldn't have called the 'Earth turning to an alien planet that doesn't support life' thing in thirty years, but if you specify it's to happen in particular (unusual areas) then I'll believe that. Some areas of the planet are already close to uninhabitable and it doesn't take that much to push 'em over the brink. The thing to watch for is not places being rendered uninhabitable by weather extremes, it's more about masses of people/animals displaced because the change is a new thing that nobody's prepared for.
You can probably, right now, buy a 40-year lease on land that might as well be the Moon in 40 years. If you want a real picture of the plausibility of man-made global climate change, don't check scientists or Al Gore, consult actuaries and insurance companies. Pretty sure you'll find they're believers, because they have to actually pay for it if they choose wrong.
I continue to try and point out the very worrying uncertainty in climate models. The IPCC's fifth AR has a chapter on climate models. In assessing the state of the art, they have the following to say(Box 9.1 for those wanting to follow along:
Model tuning aims to match observed climate system behaviour and so is connected to judgements as to what constitutes a skilful representation of the Earth’s climate. For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system
They then go on to cite a half dozen peer reviewed articles confirming this.
Now, it doesn't take much better than a layman understanding to know that the entirety of the greenhouse effect is about the energy balance. More energy entering the planet than leaving it will warm, and more leaving will cool it. The trouble is that if the energy imbalance is the driving force behind climate change, you really want to get to a point where the models can get that part right without being specifically tuned to correct it. When the models energy imbalance for hindcasting causes unrealistic drift until modellers tune and tweak things by hand to get the known 'right answer', it ain't good enough for predictions.
It's not wrong to tune models this way, nor are models not useful at this stage. The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance, let alone for predicting it for the next 30-100 years.
I noticed *no one* on /. every cites there data/research. Clearly no actually read the paper in question for example. Since like when do you need to read something if your already told it aggress with your preconceived bias. Note it does not really say what people thinks it says. In fact it pisses me off that such sloppy statistics gets in nature. But then the shittiest papers in any field are typically in nature or science.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Your exact argument has been made before. Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority, lest your argument look like this:
No one is asking for theological debate to stop. I have yet to meet or talk to anyone who wants priests to stop investigating the scriptures in order to better interpret them. This is about unqualified people, myself included, debating religion they know nothing about.
Theology is never settled, but that does not mean you should never act upon theological understanding because it might someday change. When determining which theology to act upon, consensus is very important. In fact it is basically the only important thing. Average citizens and even policy makers could never be expected to understand religion enough to join either side of the debate. Accepting the consensus is the only sane choice in these instances.
That argument would be similar to mine if only 97% of people agreed upon the basic tenants of their religion. Since there is no where near consensus on whether there even is a creator god, how many gods there are, and what the most important commandments of these gods are, this is a red herring. And don't go saying that all major religions agree upon the important stuff either, because many religions such as Buddhism have very little to do with religions such as the Abrahamic ones.
This isn't a situation where there are 3-4 different factions of scientists who agree with 97% of other members in their faction, but only agree on 80% with members of other factions. Then it would be similar to the major religions of the world. Here we have a situation where there is no sizable disagreement among qualified individuals.
Science was supposed to do away with appeals to authority
Science does its best to do away with appeals to authority when actually doing cutting edge scientific research. But research would grind to a halt if no one ever treated agreed upon knowledge as fact (even if it isn't 100% proven) when building upon that research. Engineers would never have the time to apply scientific knowledge if they never trusted the consensus of scientists who made the breakthroughs.
Most knowledge is still gained by trusting authority, even by scientists. Trusting authority is not the same thing as never questioning authority.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
As of this writing, only 6 of 210 postings were at level 5 which just goes to show how pointlessly contentious this topic is. Maybe the Slashdot editors should think about a moratorium on climate topics for a while.
Well, let's just say that I'm less than impressed by the knowledge that mankind is causing approximately 0.2% to 0.3% of the greenhouse effect on earth. I'm also less than impressed by people who when asked "What greenhouse gas has the greatest influence on the greenhouse effect on earth?" and they answer ... no, let me correct that ... parrot "Carbon Dioxide".
Hint: Carbon dioxide is only about 5% of the total greenhouse effect on earth. The actual major contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor. But the problem with water vapor is that the government can't demonize it and use it as a basis for a power grab. But carbon dioxide is quite easy to demonize. Too bad that mankind only produces about 5% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.. And too bad that several studies seem to be conveniently ignored when discussing climate change.
The key issue is that scientists have found a good correlation between global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide by examining tree growth rings, gas bubbles in ice core samples, etc. And yep, they see that higher levels of CO2 are correlated with higher temperatures and visa-versa. But there's just one little catch..... The changes in CO2 levels LAG the changes in global temperatures by approximately 40 to 50 years. I don't know about you, but I'm a firm believer that if there's a cause and effect relationship between two variables, that the cause happens before the effect, not the opposite. So if CO2 level changes lag temperature changes by several decades that indicates that temperature changes are the cause, not the effect.
Now what might be the reason for CO2 levels to change after temperature changes? One of the first things that comes to mind is that the solubility of CO2 in water is inversely proportional to temperature. Higher temperatures mean less solubility and lower temperatures means greater solubility. So if the global temperatures change, the oceanic temperatures also change, but with a significant lag due to the thermal inertia of such a great mass of water.
Some are paid shills, and some simply believe - or at least post - whatever helps them reinforce their self-image or score social points with or for their tribe. But for most I suspect the main motivator is the sunk cost fallacy: they simply don't want to admit being wrong, since at this point that would also mean admitting either dishonesty or stupidity or both.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I make no claims to the validity of the data nor of the models used by client scientists. I am not qualified to opine. I am, however, eminently qualified to opine on the processes involved in modeling large data sets and making predictions based on those results. Thus, I speak to that and that alone. I do not know enough about the subject, the data, or the models used to opine on climate science with any authority.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Absolutely. I can neither confirm nor deny that they've achieved a sweet spot. I am not a climate scientist and will not opine on such. There's an acceptable degree of both model and data tweaking. Where that line is drawn is not something I'm qualified to opine on - my comment was in reference to the expressed displeasure of them manipulating the data. Such is not only normal, it is often required, when trying to achieve a result that will actually reflect reality. I make no claims as to the validity of the science for I am not a climate scientist.
They may be raping this data all to hell and back in an effort to make the models say what they want them to say for political or financial motives, that's seemingly what you're wanting me to say. And, it's true. They might be. It is unlikely, but they could be. However, I'd be far more concerned if they were using raw data without actually taking into account a whole host of other variables that then meant adjusting the numbers to suit.
They're attempting to model a chaotic system, not an exercise in a high school physics book.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
More like "way back in the 1890s": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I am not a client scientist (this is getting old). I can not opine on the quality of their work. However, if you'll allow me some presumption...
This is pure conjecture but how I would do it, I think, given what I know:
They take past data and crunch it - and then see what their models do with that data.
The check to see that the past data matches reality.
No? They change nonsensical data (like removing the guy that is driving drunk and backwards down a one way street).
The check again. No?
They adjust the model.
Match? Probably not. Close enough? Possibly (and for brevity, we're going with this 'cause this can take a while).
Take new and more current data.
Remove nonsensical data (like the guy driving drunk and backwards down a one way street).
Run model - this time allowing the model to make predictions as to possible outcomes.
Someone, somewhere, presumably picks the worst possible outcome and runs with it to a journalist. (Not a step in my business, I'm guessing at this point.)
And, I kind of hope that is how they're doing it - except for the last part, that seems like it's a bit hasty and alarmist. However, it does get them attention. It does get them increased funding.
I make no claims as to the validity of their science. I make no claims as to the validity of their data manipulations. I am not qualified to do so. I do know that you do manipulate both data and models to reflect reality. Why? 'Cause if you don't, shit doesn't work right. No matter how hard you try. This much data, with this many variables, is not a simple examine in high school physics or science class. I worked with far less data than these guys do and we had disk arrays that enabled us to work with nearly a TB of data on a pile of clustered servers in the late 1990s. Yes, a TB. In the 1990s. I imagine that's at least an order of magnitude less data than they're working with.
Which means, if they want to make predictions other than purple toadstool that they're probably going to have to do some manipulation of the data, make some presumptions, and model based on that. Is it perfect? I kind of doubt it. Fortunately, they've lots of data and lots of models and a whole shitton of compute cycles to throw at it.
And, again, this does not make me qualified to opine on the science. I can only comment, and did only comment, on the process.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable....In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
Mark Twain, Following The Equator
No one is asking for scientific debate to stop.
Yes you are. Every person that shouts "Denier" the second someone doesn't tow the line, is asking for the debate to STOP. There are many many many of you.
This debate has had nothing to do with science for some time now.
Scientific debate is not the same as public debate. Nearly everyone wants scientists to keep debating, but you are correct that there are many many many people who want laymen to stop debating as if they have something important to bring to the discussion.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I'm sorry, dave420. Please forgive my trolling.
Mod me up if you want me to take my meds!
That strategy can't be followed because both EU and the US have multi-ethnic populations, which will tear themselves apart if the meme "members of other groups are less valuable than members of your group" grows too strong. A modern nation-state exists in a world where anyone who cares to can get their hands on weapons and explosives (and increasingly bioweapons). That's not a situation sustainable without copious amounts of what could reasonably be called bleeding-heart propaganda. And that propaganda is unsustainable for a state that closes its borders against people fleeing a war.
So, in short, your strategy is unworkable because to make it politically possible would require corrupting the entire nation into the kind of monstrosity that tends to meet a swift end, like for example Nazi Germany did.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It's not desolation if it's a humid jungle, teeming with snakes. And apples!
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Because a Republican spin doctor thought it was a good way to pretend it's not important. Same character that invented "death tax" and similar. His expertise is basically how to kill informed discussion by raping the language.
Our planet is warming as per 100+ years of instrumental data. Agreed, and I don't see anyone sane questioning this.
CO2 is a greenhouse and it contributes to warming. Agreed, and I don't see anyone sane questioning this.
Mankind is emitting CO2, and CO2 concentrations in air are increasing. Agreed, and I don't see anyone sane questioning this.
You left out the most important fourth statement:
Mankind's emissions of greenhouse gasses are a significant contributor to global climate change.
In truth the consensus of scientists even identifies humans as the primary contributor, but even the above statement is enough.
What will things look like in 2100, or in 2050?
What reduction in CO2 emissions is worthwhile?
What should we do?
The last 3 I don't exactly see the strong consensus on, and those are the points on which decisions like policy hinge.
I completely agree with this. There is very credible debate on what policies to enact to combat global climate change. No one knows these answers. All we do know is that global climate change is happening and our inaction is making it much worse.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Some would find that very ironic.
Irony is trying to have a serious discussion about hate on Slashdot.
As for the GP, just because Southerners have learned to hide their hate from you doesn't mean it's not there.
Bingo! Some people don't want to see what's right in front of them. Others can't help it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not advocating that we *should* do this but it's the *only* way that intervention will work.
We've spent how many trillions on pusillanimous police actions and "winning hearts and minds" since at least Viet Nam? And how many of them have accomplished *anything*?
You can't physically invade a country, bully it's people in half measures and hamstring your forces with politicians and public relations experts and expect to get anywhere. That WILL produce rebellion and resistance.
But if you DO invade someplace you have to go all in. You have to totally dominate the culture and people in a way that demonstrates that they have ONE choice -- submit or face the extinction of their culture. No one has conquered anything in world history without doing this.
Yeah, cut'n'paste took almost a whole second!
Anti global-warming-alarmist posts on Slashdot usually get modded down to -1, oblivion. Did not disappoint.
-Styopa
"All it takes for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing".
QED
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just because the climate can change for reasons in addition to AGW doesn't mean we're off the hook from the consequences of our actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
OK
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/03...
Right... and if anybody thinks the Middle-East->Balkans->Europe or S-America->Mexico->USA migration is a problem now try to imagine what it will be like when large of South America become deforested and the Middle East becomes an uninhabitable dustbowl. Everytime I hear somebody make that: "It's not our problem, let them kill themselves down there, the best thing we can do is not interfere" like the OP I'm tempted to bring up the mess that is Syria which to a large extent became the mess it is because we listened to people who recommend apathy. Interfering is bad but at least you have some influence on the course of events, not interfering is worse because by not interfering you let the situation spin completely out of control.
In case you haven't noticed, our interference has for the most part involved removing the dictators that had been suppressing the religious extremists since they were a threat to their own power, preventing it from spinning out of control. Somebody had a dream that the Middle East would turn into modern democracies like most of Eastern Europe if only they were removed, leading to everything from the Gulf War II to the Arab Spring. In retrospect, we can now say most of these efforts have been a horrible failure and cruel dictators have been replaced by a reign of terror by sadistic Islamist fundamentalists who will rape, kill, torture and blow up civilians including women and children and military alike in total disregard of human rights, rules of warfare and bask in their notoriety. Not even Hitler broadcast the Holocaust on YouTube. If I could go back in time I'd say bring back Saddam, Gadaffi, Assad, the Egyptian military junta and all the other bastards and don't kick the hornet's nest. None of these bastards were a threat to world peace, none of these bastards had any common cause except holding on to their own power. And they had a pretty good sense of self-preservation, which could be used to pressure them with sanctions and limit the atrocities. We took out the lesser evil so the greater evil could rise to power, if the alternative to a dictatorship is a theocracy apathy is a wise cause of action. In fact, that lesson should have been learned as far back as Afghanistan and Iran.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You really only have one choice for "interfering", and that's gearing up for a massive ground invasion with the troops and manpower to militarily occupy the region at a troop scale similar to the European theater of WWII.
And you have to do it with a mindset that we're not there to build schools or make friendly with the locals, but to suppress resistance with maximum force and minimal-to-no concern for civilian casualties and collateral damage. This isn't a "police action" or "counter-insurgency" it's more Caesar's Conquest of Gaul.
You have to break the culture's will to resist. You move forward and obliterate anything that offers resistance. Use every tool in the toolkit -- carpet bombing, firebombing, internment camps. You don't avoid hospitals, power plants, water plants, food warehouses -- you hit those FIRST. You advance systematically in this manner, willing to inflict total destruction and maximum death until the people and culture recognize that further resistance is futile.
Then you occupy the territory for at least a generation, gradually, over 20 or 30 years, returning them to some kind of self rule, but all the while willing to demonstrate that resistance will not be tolerated.
Anything else is totally ineffective and produces no lasting change, at huge cost.
Who's talking about massive ground invasions? The thing to do in Syria would have been to ensure that relatively sane people end up on top. To do that the USA, EU and Arab powers should have boosted the moderate rebel groups in a big way and organized them into some semblance of an army before they became bandits that were hard to tell apart from Al Nusra and ISIS. If that had been done the 'moderate' rebels (using that term loosely) would have become the force that ISIS is now and probably with a lot less dead civilians along the way. It would be they and the Kurds, not ISIS, who would have Assad on the ropes and the US/EU/Arab nations could now negotiate some kind of settlement with Assad through the Russians. Instead Syria was allowed to become a witch's cauldron with who-knows-what floating to the top and remarkably enough everybody was oh-so-surprised when that who-knows-what that floated to the top turned out to be ISIS. Isis got where it is now with discipline organization, suicide cars, armored jeeps, technicals (machine gun armed pickups) and old T-55 and T-62 tanks. ISIS is not exactly a high tech force but a T-55 is a pretty terrifying weapon when all you have to throw at it are AK-47s, SAWs and RPG-7s. One of the really big reasons for their success was that the Kurds and FSA were unable to knock out the tanks and especially the armored suicide trucks at ranges beyond the effective range of an RPG-7/16 both of which only have a reasonable chance of hitting a truck packed with a couple of thousand KG fertilized bomb once the truck is well within the blast radius of the payload. One of the biggest game changers was when the Germans began to deliver obsolete, I repeat **obsolete** wire guided Milan anti tank missiles to the Kurdish forces. There is a spectacular series of videos containing sequences of Peshmerga using these things to blow up ISIS suicide trucks. If you are interested in seeing what happened next. Just search youtube for 'ISIS suicide truck vs milan' ...now, that's what I call tax Euros at work. The Peshmerga are no angels but I'll pick them over ISIS any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
As for the GP, just because Southerners have learned to hide their hate from you doesn't mean it's not there.
It does mean at the bare minimum, that they're hiding it rather than bragging about it which is a big improvement. You have to wonder what's wrong upstairs with bigots who get in such a hateful and very public lather over hidden and possibly very imaginary racism. Hater gotta hate, I guess.
Are you intentionally only criticizing drinkypoo for being open and honest?
About what? He states he hates a whole region because of a racism which is remarkably subdued in that region. That indicates to me that he has not examined his arguments at all. In turn, that lack of self examination is a strong indicator for self-deception.
Is "Southerner" now a race to you?
Completely irrelevant to sumdumass's argument. Why should we be hating on a region just because it might have people who are hiding their racism?
Only if Patton were fucking incompetent. Otherwise, nuclear weapons could do it in half an hour.
However, the trouble with that plan is that -- apparently unlike you and Bill O'Reilly -- some of us aren't genocidal sociopaths!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You know why people move? Because the conditions become hostile to continued existence. Sure there'll be people who stick around, but most "normal" people will leave when conditions get overly harsh.
It's been that way for hundreds of thousands of years. If it weren't for these borders, people would move even more if they could.
That argument would be similar to mine if only 97% of people agreed upon the basic tenants of their religion.
Oh, now you suddenly accept the opinion of the unwashed masses?
I stated my reference as historical. If you transplant yourself back in the dark ages beneath 'God' chosen Kings and under the teaching of the approved clergy you'd find an extremely high consensus on basic tenants of their religion. You'd find all the same appeals to authority you have made.
When somebody questions carbon taxation as really being valid or not, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
When somebody questions the severity of future warming, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
Heck, when somebody questions if CO2 contributes to warming, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
The appropriate response in every case is to point to the evidence first. If the evidence is beyond the questioner, then fair enough to ask them to take it on trust in authority or spend a few years studying up. Just don't start pushing for making that appeal to authority the first resort because your walking down a road where even 'being right' might still leave you doing more harm than good in the long run.
We can declare with confidence that CO2 contributes, and back it up with evidence, so much less risk there. On the other hand if you go about proclaiming with certainty that 2050 will see catastrophic death, science has spoken, that's worse. If you go about proclaiming we are all doomed to that heat death unless we adopt 'measure whatever', that's worse still.
The trouble is you not only risk guessing wrong on the things we are still uncertain about, you taint all of the science by having made these prophecies upon it. Stick to the actual science and representing results appropriately, including the error bars and uncertainties. Leaving those out for expediency is a recipe for disaster.
Whom do you mean by "we", are you a climatologist? Scientists continue "the debate" (wrong word, btw) all the time, but if around 95% of experts in the field (=working climatologists, and no one else) agree that global warming is to a large extent man-made, as a recent large meta study showed, and many people (experts, politicians, and "Joe the Plumber") agree that the effects of this warming will likely be disastrous, it's just plain stupid not to act on the basis of the experts' knowledge. That doesn't mean that the experts cannot be wrong, but their assessments are the best information we currently have.
It is crazy, and perhaps a sign of how modern media have declined, that some groups seem to have managed to "ideologize" this issue, as if ongoing research in an area had anything to do with ideology, let alone cliches like "left" and "right". It's like saying "Yeah, 95% of all medical doctors agree, on the basis of their research, that substance X causes cancer, but we will not act upon this information, because it doesn't fit our world view". What kind of world view would that be? I can only attribute this stupidity to the modern TV culture which has apparently created the impression that it is enough to put one "expert" in front of a camera in order to cast doubt on theories on which thousands of real experts have previously converged.
Chinese as well. No question they built a worthy civilization. Got there first, too.
IIRC, we had Chinese, Greek, Roman, Arab all before anything else really got started. The Romans were European, so you can point to that, but the rest of Europe, not so much as early starters.
But at this point, everyone who wants to play is either playing or trying to play (often with greedy and violent idiots doing their very best to hold them down.)
Whatever truth there is to "these (insert people) were first", it's all irrelevant now other than as historical data. It's over and done with. We are where we are -- and I have to say, thinking about every "advanced" variation on civilization on the planet I know of, we have a hell of a lot further to go, so bragging seems like a very stupid thing to do, frankly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
All you need to do is go listen to the English Parliament. Plenty of English Whine there.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I enjoyed a nice bottle of English wine a couple of weeks ago. There are vineyards today all over the south coast.
but you are correct that there are many many many people who want laymen to stop debating as if they have something important to bring to the discussion.
That would be fair enough, if we happened to live in a geniocracy where an intellectual elite called the shots. But in a democracy, laymen aren't obligated to just do whatever a group of "scientists"** tell them to. And making incredibly disruptive and economically risky changes to existing systems based on what MIGHT happen 100 years from now is tricky business, to say the least. This is not to mention the fact the the scientists themselves can only posit the possible PROBLEM, not offer any practical solutions (and if they did, they would be going well outside the purview of their expertise). So don't expect Johnny Citizen to just roll over and do whatever a group of scientists tell him to. Extraordinary changes require extraordinary reasons.
** That is, if you happen to consider "environmental science" to be an actual hard science, which many skeptics both inside and outside of the mainstream scientific community don't.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
[looks vaguely guilty] My favorite wine is $3.98 a bottle, and I'm not even sure grapes are involved. I'm under the general impression you could grow whatever is in it in your basement. Sure goes nice with dinner, though. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance
The source for the quoted nonsense above is WUWT, one of many denier/front sites funded by the (untaxed) anti-science lobbyists at the .
The fact is that hindcasting is how climate models are tested, how else would anyone test it? You can find the code for several important models here and run it yourself for the price of a decent server.
Not only can we model the evolution of Earth's past climate and routinely hindcast the last 500yrs with high levels of "model skill", we can also model the evolution of climate on other planets, in particular Mars and Venus. Here's a reliable and independent source that talks about hindcasting climate for testing purposes.
Note also that the uncertainty you quote is about cloud cover, the other common cherry pick used in this kind of FUD is the uncertainty surrounding the behaviour of ice. These two KNOWN uncertainties are discussed in great detail in the report you linked to. They are responsible for what scientists call "error bars". The WG1 report is however the best summary of the current state of climate science that anyone has to offer. If you want to debunk climate science that is the primary document to attack, it is the embodiment of the so called "consensus", good luck in your studies.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The models have predicted the warming (but being on the conservative side, not as strong as it has happened so far).
But then we have analysis like this which showed the vast majority of older "conservative" models consistently exaggerating the change in temperature.
Since 2014 has been warmer globally than 1998, and the numbers for 2015 are not in yet, but so far point to a new global warmth record even above 2014, there is no stasis at all.
Here, 2014 and 2015 may both turn out to be cooler than 1998. That doesn't invalidate your argument, but it doesn't help it either.
Yep, 80% reduction in Arctic sea ice volume in my lifetime, just like the US National Academies of Science said it would in 1958.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why? - Google "Frank Luntz climate memo", I'm sick to death of debunking that red-herring for useful idiots and astroturfers..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We can declare with confidence that CO2 contributes, and back it up with evidence, so much less risk there. On the other hand if you go about proclaiming with certainty that 2050 will see catastrophic death, science has spoken, that's worse.
Strawman arguments are not helpful. No one is claiming such catastrophies with certainty. There are certainly those who claim it is a possibility, but no reputable scientist is claiming they know with certainty what the exact results of global climate change will be.
When somebody questions carbon taxation as really being valid or not, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
When somebody questions the severity of future warming, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
Heck, when somebody questions if CO2 contributes to warming, consensus is not an appropriate retort.
The appropriate response in every case is to point to the evidence first.
There are two different types of debates you are touching upon in those statements.
One is a debate of the science itself. Here asking for evidence first is the clear approach. This debate can be done by anyone with requisite knowledge. In this case it would akin to a doctoral level of understanding of the science being discussed. There are plenty of institutions which can provide this level of knowledge, and it can be gained without formal education. But a few hundred hours of reading relevant scientific journals is not even close to enough prior knowledge. Experience doing actual peer reviewed research on the subject would be the only hard prerequisite I can think of before your opinions hold some merit.
The second is a debate of public policy. Here asking for evidence first is a waste of time, as it would not be understood and could be easily misconstrued. People are going to have their own opinions here, and a debate of the merits of those opinions is meaningless. At this point scientific consensus is the only guide. People are free to fund or partake in research to add to the body of evidence used to come to scientific consensus, but that is it.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
You can't unify people who have only one thing in common: they hate Assad. While the Kurds are organized, they'd never be accepted by the Arab majority and in fact they were the least interested in fighting Assad.
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We have exactly one planet to test things on.
Models are our best bet for predicting what is going to happen; evidence will only appear when it's too late to do something else.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
That is wrong. In the medieval warming period, vineyards were all over northern England.
True is: wine was planted.
And if you have missed it: we are doing it since roughly 20 years again.
Oh, crap. We can't talk about that. Nevermind.
Ofc you can, we are just doing it, so what is your problem?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It was just 20,000 years ago that New York was buried under glacier. What makes us think that the climate is "stable" about the current situation?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Supporting increasingly brutal dictatorship in Iran in fear that the democratic government of 1953 could have communist leanings was what caused theocracy there.
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There where several short warming periods, 200 - 400 years long. I'm not sure which ine people refer to as the MWP one, I guess it is the one around 450? ... we have at least reports (written reports) from China that overlap with the periods we know in Europe.
Anyway, most of them where not localized
I for my part fear the moment when the effect that caused the short warming periods is happening again and overlapping with AGW. Or perhaps the same effect that caused one of the small ice ages is in effect right now, we just don't realize it ... and that effect vanishes in a few (dozen/hundred) years?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
1) Invest into research and effort how to reduce global warming
2) Invest into research and effort to build really high and strong wall around Middle East to keep affected people from escaping to other regions
Why I feel that solution 2 will be a lot easier to implement both politically and economically...
It may not be the same book, but the one I remember was by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, called Fallen Angels. It was written in 1991, and envisions a world where actual science has been cast aside by the mainstream in favor of dogmatic viewpoints, leading to an oncoming ice age after environmentalist movements become all powerful after making common cause with major religious elements, rejecting technology and cutting greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of faith rather than because of scientific evidence.
It was an interesting take, to be certain, and a warning against taking something on faith, and worse, making it an essential element of faith, rather than with a scientific approach. It also very heavily mocks some of the new-age BS that can be found in fringe elements. I'd say it's still worth reading, but that you need to keep it in context of the time it was written, and compare what it speculated to the way our version of the future has been turning out. Science Fiction doesn't have to be right in order to be thought provoking. I may not agree with Niven et al's political views, but they're still thoughtful and insightful writers.
Now, to be fair there was a certain bit of fear-mongering going on, but they did have a good point, at the time the novel was written. The problem was that they failed to see which side of the debate was more prone to falling into dogmatic thinking. I'm sure there are people out there on the political left for whom it is a matter of faith, because they effectively worship the earth/nature/etc to the point of refusing to make any tradeoffs - you know, the sort that protest against wind farms because they might kill birds, or might ruin the view of the ocean, etc. The thing is, those people aren't the ones in power, aren't steering the conversation, and most of us rightly think they're idiots. Right now the problem is more with the people who've made burning noxious shit for energy into an article of faith, and the ones who are making so much money off of it that they don't care what kind of damage it might be doing, and want to shut down ANY discussion of even possibly taking timid steps, to the point that even modest proposals to maybe slow down or regulate fossil fuel consumption are equated to communist tyranny outlawing every last hydrocarbon.
You sir are my hero!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Shit, if you want to get historical about it, at least head back two and a half millenia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The only thing you're going to get by giving people that choice, is even more hardcore rebellion and increased radicalization in other areas. The BEST case scenario is that the US starts really looking like a terrorist and the international community manages to make the Americans feel shitty enough about it to make the political stance untenable.
You are not going to get peace by bullying the other person into submission.
All we do know is that global climate change is happening and our inaction is making it much worse.
We don't know that either. It's damning that advocates for mitigation of global warming can't even demonstrate that mitigation will reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The problem is twofold. First, there is already a history of remarkably myopic and counterproductive mitigation efforts. For example, we have the carbon markets and the energy policies of the Eurozone. For example, Germany and Denmark's energy policies have doubled the cost of electricity in those countries without producing a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. The carbon markets have hopped from problem to problem without once addressing the worst problem of all, the hard caps on emissions, which results in a shock transition from a ridiculously elastic carbon market to a ridiculously inelastic carbon market once the demand for carbon credits eclipses the supply.
And then there's the Kyoto Protocol which had substantial demands for reduction in CO2 emissions, but nowhere near enough to reach the targets that the advocates for the treaty wanted.
Finally, there are the repeated demands to hold global temperature rise to 2 C. They aren't going to happen (unless we get some technological and economic developments that obsolete fossil fuels), but no one seems interested in coming up with a more achievable backup plan.
Now couple this history of unrealistic plans and demands with the fundamental dynamic that wealth is correlated with population decline and decline in human fertility, control of pollution, ability to adapt to or mitigate climate changes, and concern for the environment. My view is that the climate change mitigation advocates seem to propose a lot of really bad actions in response to climate change which destroys wealth, which in turn destroys our ability to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels in several different ways.
In other words, even if we considered as our most important goal maintaining the global climate at some level close to 1850, I don't see the current or proposed plans as being better for that goal than inaction!
There is nothing new about people who challenge the consensus being shouted down, called crackpots, idiots, and so on. People who claimed the NSA was spying on everybody got the same treatment for years. Some people are terrified of the idea of reality being so malleable; others just always want to be right. There was a Norwegian television program called Hjernevask (Brainwash) that allows some "social scientists" to make complete fools out of themselves. Their reactions when shown evidence that contradicts their cherished beliefs is good comedy, and an even better reminder that people who call themselves scientists are not impervious to falling into dogma. There are several episodes. Here's the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
I thought noone was a participant in a nooner...
or is that noonie?
Or maybe just noony...
no, that doesn't sound right...
Well, in any case if you get to be in a nooner, don't be gauche!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Except the people actively shutting down scientists that don't conform to the agenda:
http://www.climatedepot.com/20...
http://www.natureworldnews.com...
http://godfatherpolitics.com/2...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
To quote Chas Mulligan, you're an ignorant idiot.
For example, who invented the zero, and stirrups?
mark
Aparently the models can 'predict' historical climate, otherwise we would not call it a model (*facepalm*)
However if you have interesting anecdotes about failures of our current models: post some links!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The strongest hurricane measured to hit the Americas. There were two stronger hurricanes that his Japan. However, what happened to weather =/= climate? Is it only true when it is cold outside, but when it is warm, suddenly every weather = climate?
We haven't been able to properly measure hurricanes for very long, so using them as a result of anything is silly. Also, that strongest hurricane did no damage and killed no one, so how bad was it?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
They could just move to the newly inhabitable portions of Siberia...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
All of science is a model. Every single thing in science is a model.
Atomic theory? That's a model. Ecosystem balance? Models. Why is the sky blue? We have a model for that. How do eyes and brains turn light into vision? We have an answer, and the answer is a model. How do the planets move? That's a model.
Models are the way we know about the world. We put in the evidence, and out come predictions. We judge the model by the accuracy of the predictions.
We were supposed to have an ice-free northwest passage,
You missed the news? Perhaps google is your friend?
record-breaking hurricane seasons
You missed that news again? What about Taifoon, Typhoons, Cyclones etc. don't they count?
The last record breaking Taifoon is just a few weeks ago. Do you live in an oysters shell?
and low lying islands were supposed to slip beneath the waves. NONE of it has happened.
Again: perhaps you should switch your news source? It is happening right below your nose, some islands already got evacuated.
NONE of it has happened
ALL of it is happening right now. You just have your head in your arse.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The articles doesn't give us a single temperature estimate, which I find bizarre. Their models are quantitative. What exactly is the upper temperature bound on human survivability?
And let the world just start over in that part of the world.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, and you may have cancer. Let's treat it just in case.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Since we measure CO2 levels they have nearly doubled.
So the actuall CO2 concentration is half caused by man kind, that is 50% and not the 5% you claim.
The rest of you post is complete bollocks, no need to argue aboit it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The latitude of the New York/Ontario wine region is about the same as that of Oregon. Both regions have good rainfall and about the same amount of sun. And both regions produce some pretty good wines. At least, I can vouch for the Ontario and Oregon ones.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
That's the first time I've heard the pole is on Canadian soil.
The North Pole is not on any soil, Canadian or otherwise.
As for who owns it, that's complicated.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Um, not I, but I found it funny. You can post all you like about my supposed sockpuppet accounts, but I don't have any, I never have, and never will post as AC, or any other account than this one.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Hint: Carbon dioxide is only about 5% of the total greenhouse effect on earth. The actual major contributor to the greenhouse effect is water vapor. But the problem with water vapor is that the government can't demonize it and use it as a basis for a power grab.
No, the problem with water vapor is that there are huge reservoirs of it on almost all the globe's surface, and we can't do anything about that. The atmosphere is more or less saturated with it, to the point where it regularly precipitates out.
The problem with carbon dioxide is that it doesn't precipitate. You don't seem to have any idea how it actually traps heat: the good news is that you can replicate this in your basement if you like. The atmosphere is opaque to IR. The mean free path is on the range of meters at sea level (which is why IR photos are blurry) and tens of meters in the upper atmosphere. IR gets absorbed and re-emitted, and finally reaches a level where it is statistically not likely to hit anything if it goes upwards. That lag between when the outgoing thermal radiation is emitted and when it escapes to space is what keeps the Earth from being at its equilibrium temperature (which would be well below freezing). This is directly measurable. There is no other way for thermal energy to escape Earth aside from radiation. The effect of increased CO2 is not to absorb more radiation from the sun, nor does it affect the lower atmosphere that much, (going from a short mean free path to a shorter one isn't that big of a deal). What it does is extend the CO2-rich region further out into space, which means that it takes IR longer to leave the atmosphere, which raises the energy in the Earth's atmosphere. This is true unless everything we know about radiation is wrong, and like I said, you can verify it for yourself. The amount of warming that is guaranteed for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is about 3.7 W/m^2, or about 1 degree C global temperature. No one is worried about that.
The issue is the water vapor. There's tons of it. It's everywhere, and it's a much better greenhouse gas, and the atmosphere can hold exponentially more of it with increased temperature. Can you say, "feedback loop"? That's what keeps scientists up nights. It's not an unchecked loop, at least until solar irradiance rises enough to start cooking H2O out into space, but the Earth is as happy with global ice ages as it is with ice-free poles, and human civilization is kinda tied to the current interglacial.
What the lag says is that other factors (like Milankovich cycles) influence climate. That tiny extra percent of retained energy takes a long time to show its effect. That it does so eventually is unfortunately indisputable. The physics of atmospheric radiation are bulletproof, and are used to model and predict atmospheric conditions in the Sun, stars, and other planets. We have been trying to prove this phenomenon wrong for 200 years and counting. But if you want to try it out for yourself, CO2 and H2O are pretty easy to come by.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If watching your parents makes you peak, and you feel it appropriate to point it into your parents bedroom at that time, you're a lot weirder than I suspected. I would also question what you mean by 'finished' college.
That's an interesting thing to say considering how grammatically maladroit you are.
You can't unify people who have only one thing in common: they hate Assad. While the Kurds are organized, they'd never be accepted by the Arab majority and in fact they were the least interested in fighting Assad.
Which is why it might make sense to allow Iraq and Syria to fracture into new states along ethno-relgious lines instead of trying to maintain the Sykes-Picot borders which may have suited Britain/France back in 1918 when they laid the ground work for carving up the Middle-East into 'imperial possessions' but who make about as much sense today as square tires on a Ferrari.
in a democracy, laymen aren't obligated to just do whatever a group of "scientists"** tell them to.
This is not to mention the fact the the scientists themselves can only posit the possible PROBLEM, not offer any practical solutions.
I agree with both of these statements. Well, I do believe scientists are integral parts of coming up with potential technological solutions, but agree they should not be the ones proscribing solutions.
No one is arguing that scientists should have carte blanche powers to identify, proscribe, and enact solutions for global climate change. I have only been discussing the identification of a problem, and contending that laymen should take no part in this identification. Determining which steps to take to fix the problem is up to policy makers.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I bet they're pretty good evidence when you don't have as big an emotional investment in the outcome.
Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.
I have two questions that perhaps you could answer for me:
1. What is the difference between a model and a prediction in this case?
2. Is a prediction the same as proof that something will occur?
HAHAHA. Yeah, I'm sure that that's the case, and you didn't just pull that vertical ice measurement out of your ass.
So, because I call you out on your
"I didn't say that"
by saying
"go get an account if you don't want to have people post as you"
Suddenly, I must have created an account making fun of you? I thought about it, but frankly, why would I waste my time? You makes himself out to be so much worse than I could ever do. After all, your response to anyone discussing things with you is to insult and dodge. Just look at any of your many posts, you are still on the same arguments from months ago that I already refuted. You can't let go of anything that you are wrong on, and you even post stuff acting like another person agreeing with your own crap, like that convinces anyone.
Hell, APK you still think you are getting somewhere by making fun of my Autism, and calling me a retard. What kind of well adjusted adult would call someone a retard in polite conversation?
P.S.=> Your assburgers damaged brain (NOW THAT IS FUNNY AND YOU PROVE IT ABOVE, lmao) is showing... apk
Yup APK, I was diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome as a child, now you think I have brain damage and am a retard? When did you get your psychiatric license? Did it come from a cereal box? Heck, the very article that comment appeared on was one stating that over 50% of STEM workers have some form of autism, so you are essentially making fun of over 50% of the Slashdot community.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Except no, Syria and Iraq got to be a mess precisely because of outside interference toppling (Iraq) or trying to topple (Syria) their governments.
You should read the article better. The eastern part isn't even 15 meters deep. It's not navigable by anything of size.
And it was first navigated in 1906. That should tell you something. You should also be told something by the fact that the wiki has a listing of EVERY SINGLE SUCCESSFUL TRAVERSAL of the passage, all the way up to today. It's not open any more today than it was in 1906.
Thinking back on my chemistry classes, I seem to remember that the partial pressure of a gas over a liquid is proportional to the temperature of the liquid. Cold pop holds more CO2 than warm. It seems obvious that as the water in the oceans warms, CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Then for some reason the water cools, which sucks CO2 back in. Today, the oceans hold over 90% of all CO2 on the planet.
I'm going to speculate that English is not your first language. I was equating the value of his post with something that should be completely unnecessary to normal people and somewhat disturbing that it happened.
"That doesn't mean that the experts cannot be wrong, but their assessments are the best information we currently have."
I don't believe expert climastrologists any more than I believe expert fortune tellers.
Their predictions don't work. Using fancy math or powerful computers instead of crystal balls and tarot cards doesn't change that fact.
New borders along ethnic lines would make a lot of sense, but probably lead to a lot of unpleasant ethnic cleansing in mixed towns along the borders which nobody really has the stomach for (see the disintegration of yugoslavia). Though at this point probably nothing can be more brutal than the status quo.
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Their climate is not the same just because their latitudes are similar. Even neglecting temperature, the precipitation in New York is roughly even throughout the year, while Oregon has most of its rainfall in a 6-month period. So the rainfall totals are similar, but it's all scrunched into half of the year.
Oregon wines are generally good, New York wines are generally not.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But ocean currents give England a more moderate climate than New York.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Models are our best bet for predicting what is going to happen"
Not even the IPCC believes that. They don't even make predictions, but only "projections". That way their theories can't be falsified when their "projections" don't come true.
It worked with Japan, Germany and the Confederacy.
What I'm not reading about in the paper is a resistance campaign by the Germans, Japanese or the Confederate states of America.
There actually was a weak resistance to occupation staged by Nazi loyalists after the surrender. From what I've read of it, the American answer was pretty much exactly the kind of thing I've advocated was necessary. When troops rolled into a town that was yet occupied and they faced resistance, they pulled out and shelled the town. By the next day, the resistance leaders were lined up dead in the town square.
I think that occupation and warfare follows a certain pattern:
1) A small percentage of the population has intractable ideology and nationalism
2) After the start of hostilities, the majority of the population rallies around this nationalism and supports resistance
3) If the resistance seems effective or sustainable, the idea maintains majority support and the majority is willing to accept some level of deprivation to sustain it
4) If the resistance is met with overwhelming force and is ineffective and the burden of resistance is widely felt, the resistance loses majority support. Those who hold intractable ideologies and nationalism begin to use coercive force against their own people to sustain the cause.
5) When #4 continues for long enough, the majority begins to believe that resistance is both ineffective and the deprivation required to sustain it becomes untenable. The majority begins to turn on those who hold intractable ideologies and nationalism.
When stage 5 is reached, the occupiers have effectively won. The majority will not longer support resistance, believing it to be counter-productive.
Politics and public relations has essentially stuck American military occupation between 3 and 4, unwilling to apply a level of violence necessary to break resistance.
Now, everyone criticizes me when I advocate for this. I don't think it's good. Millions of innocent people suffer. Treasure on a vast scale is expended. Both the occupier and the occupied are scarred.
What's the alternative, though? 10 years of ineffective occupation, STILL costing millions of lives and scarring both sides to achieve NO material difference.
The third alternative is do nothing, which has its own externalities.
The magnetic north pole is located in Canada.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I hold my Ph.D in Applied Mathematics. Of course I'm not a scientist. I am a mathematician, I tell scientists that they're wrong!
Err... Sorry, I just like saying that. I've never actually had cause to actually tell a scientist that they were really wrong but some of my undergrad time was spent checking the maths for other disciplines, some of which was not entirely correct. So, maybe, sort of, kind of accurate. I guess...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That is, if you happen to consider "environmental science" to be an actual hard science, which many skeptics both inside and outside of the mainstream scientific community don't.
How retarded are you?
Environmental science is physics and math, how can you be more hardcore in science?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How retarded are you?
Environmental science is nowhere near as "hard" as physics and math. Environmental science involves MUCH more subjective human interpretation of data and much more in the way of unreproducable results than most of the traditional science fields. It's not as soft as history or sociology, but it sure as shit isn't anywhere close to the certainty of independent verifiablity of math or physics.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Oh swb, you've been reading The Prince again!
All we do know is that global climate change is happening and our inaction is making it much worse.
I'd say it the other way, our action is releasing more CO2. However, stopping our "action" may be worse for us (as a species) than not stopping. For the planet, it doesn't really matter too much, it's been hotter and more CO2 has been in the atmosphere in the past and anthropomorphically speaking, it turned out okay for us (or more specifically, it set the stage for our species). Of course our species isn't the only one on this planet, but that is in the realm of tradeoffs (e.g., we don't have passenger pigeons anymore, it was a choice we made).
It irks me that people are anthropomorphizing the planet as if it cared what we humans did to it. It is what we are doing to ourselves that is (or is not) the problem, and the solution needs to be what is best for us (not the planet).
Of course it is possible to make a good case that we should try to maintain some status quo somehow, but certainly our economic output, our growth-rate and our emissions output are not compatible with the status quo, so we need to do something. Since the answer is not in under the streetlight, we must search outside this set.
Who is to say that it isn't a superior option for our species is to simply adapt to warmer climate. It may not be as bad as the other options, or some hybrid option might turn out to be better. Simply dialing back the clock to 1990 (or whatever the current target is), is really only delaying things and detracting from a potentially better solution.
Re: Catastrophic man-made global warming...
Catastrophic? We are doing a pretty go job of it, lol.....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
HEY! Did you go through the fact detector? How did you get those facts in here? This is a SAFE SPACE. You should be ASHAMED of yourself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Environmental science is nowhere near as "hard" as physics and math. Environmental science involves MUCH more subjective human interpretation of data and much more
Any link that supports your braindead asumption?
Thermometers, hygrometers, barometers are scientific instrumemts since a few decades, centuries even.
If that is not physics and not math I'm a cangaroo.
Go back whining in your bed ... you failed at school.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You exemplify a very common problem in modern politics. You argue at length against other people who want to improve things and do not make a single useful suggestion of your own.
Actually, I did suggest something. Do nothing seems to be a better strategy. I'll repeat that suggestion first.
For my second, how about just picking low lying fruit that pretty much everyone can agree on, like increasing the albedo of urban areas and putting out coal fires?
I would be rather interested in where you're getting the figures for that assertion. Looking at the graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is that for the period from 1958 to 2015, CO2 levels have changed from 315 ppm to 405 ppm which most certainty doesn't look like "doubled".
Similarly, someone who thinks that scientific conclusions about global warming prove that all climate scientists are corrupt is trying to shut down scientific debate.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Doing nothing is probably not a good option.
Cutting down on CO2 production when feasible is almost certainly the right thing to do. Encouraging people to drive economical vehicles can drive down CO2 production at little cost. Moving to renewable energy can drive down CO2 production. Heck, using natural gas instead of coal drives down CO2 production.
We aren't going to go back to the pre-industrial age (not only because most of us would starve). We can take the CO2 reductions where we find them not too expensive.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Deniers believe AGW is not happening, and that climate scientists are pretty much all corrupt.
There's plenty of arguments to be made on what we should be doing about it. However, that requires recognizing that we've got problems.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's warmer. That's one prediction, and indeed it's warmer now.
The basic theory is fairly simple, and has been verified. Getting more detailed is taking a lot of work, but it's getting there.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If it takes 20,000 years to warm up, no problems. It's when it takes only decades to get a significant temperature rise that we're in trouble.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
...but consider that a good thing. Given how those people have been fighting each other over every square inch of that land while indulging in their religious hobby of murdering people who have nothing to do with their problems nor any power to affect them, we may finally hope to see peace when the entire, bloodthirsty, lot of them die of heat stroke.
It's warmer after "adjustments have been made to force it to be warmer.
Shut up and show me some predictions that have come true. Don't say ANYTHING ELSE (except for a concession that none of the predictions have come true) until you have done that.
Or possibly it's a huge subtle troll, but I don't get that feeling.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Oh swb, you've been reading The Prince again!
Yeah, the version with crayon drawings and simplified text for the hard of thinking.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Agreed. On BBC TV recently they featured a Syrian doctor who wanted to settle in the UK so that he could continue his medical practice. We were supposed to sympathise with him as a quiet middle-class man who just wanted to continue his quite middle-class life.
My thought instead was that with his country at war, his country needed doctors.
No, I think the point was simply that many asylum seekers aren't rapists and unemployable cut-throats as portrayed in the Daily Mail et al.
Anyway, if you're a Syrian and your choices are between supporting Assad and supporting ISIL, I think you have every right to say "the only way to win is not to play" and get on the first boat out of there.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most people look at a period from 1850 till 2015 ... no idea why you pick a graph starting 1958, that makes no sense at all. ... it is definitely not 0.5%, though.
The I wanted to make is, that the parent was wrong by a few magnitudes. It is not important if the increase is 30%, 50% or 100%
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The record on sea level rise says we're not in any real danger when you consider the 20,000 year record. It's increased a LOT faster in the past (orders of magnitude faster)...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Most of northern places like Siberia and Alaska are far beyond of human survivability.
If you're determined to deny everything, including the data, there's really no point in conversing. Check the data out for yourself.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
With your having a stronger math background and an interest in the subject, would you be willing to comment on this exchange? Basically the back and forth between Mcshane and Wyner(statistics) debating with Michael Mann and co over the later's usage of statistical methods in his proxy reconstructions.
I only picked up a minor in Math, but reading the back and forth it sure feels to me like Mann is dismissing or glossing over some pretty important criticisms levelled: ...
The process by which the complete set of 95/93 proxies is reduced to 59/57/55 is only suggestively described in an online supplement to Mann et al. (2008). As statisticians we can only be skeptical of such improvisation, especially since the instrumental calibration period contains very few independent degrees of freedom. Consequently, the application of ad hoc methods to screen and exclude data increases model uncertainty in ways that are unmeasurable and uncorrectable
The appearance of a difference in SMR Figure 1a is especially magnified because those reconstructions are smoothed. Smoothing exaggerates the difference and requires careful adjustment of fit statistics such as standard errors, adjustments which are lacking in SMR and which are in general known only under certain restrictive conditions. In contrast, consider the right panel of Figure 1 which is a reproduction of SMR Figure 1a without smoothing. The difference between a given model fit to the full dataset or the reduced data set is clearly dwarfed by the annual variation of the fit; the full and reduced set of proxies yield inconsequentially different reconstructions. ...
Additionally, SMR make no attempt to grapple with standard errors.
I'm criticizing him for grouping every person of a class (invented or not) together as if there is guilt by association no matter what reality shows.
Yes, his openness and honesty deserves to be attacked by everyone.
I have an interest in modeling but not in climate science. There's simply too much there for me to feel inclined to grasp it all. The verbiage is unfamiliar, the methods used are unique, and the results are (like it or not) politicized. The latter is probably not the case because of "scientists" but may be the case because of politicians, journalists, or "some" scientists - or for any other reasons.
I am willing to read it - I have not yet done so. I will be willing to give an opinion - even if it means that I've no opinion, after having done so. I do have a mild curiosity so now is as good a time as any to delve a little deeper.
There are quite a few links and there appears to be a lot of background information that I'll need if you want an actual informed opinion. Thus, I'll give you two choices. You can wait a short amount of time (probably this evening) and I'll delve into it and give a bit of a layman's view on what I can actually opine on. Or, if you'd rather, you can hit me up via email and be a bit more patient and I'll do my best to give you a more informed answer on the math AND the use of the math.
Given a data set, any set - really, I can make the math say what I want it to say and interpret it to say what I want it to say. The math will still be correct. The difference is knowing what maths are applicable and what the result of those maths will be - and how it actually relates to the question. My degree is in Applied Mathematics. This means, ostensibly and I like to think so, that I've demonstrated an ability to know not just how to apply mathematics to make a determination but that I've also learned, and demonstrated, that I know which maths to make use of - and in doing so, it requires domain specific knowledge and knowing which answers to seek. Hopefully, that makes sense.
The short of it is, I can't articulate a qualified reply without taking the time to understand the problem as well as the data, how the data is gathered, and which processes are being used to utilize said data. A quick glance suggests that I'll need a minimal of four to six hours to even get a decent understanding and then another similar period of time to look at the details in this specific subset. I'm willing to do that and I think you'd much prefer my answer if I did so. It is likely to take ore time than just a quick glance in this evening - probably by tomorrow night I'll have had enough free time to throw at it.
'Tis up to you but I see no reason why I can't look into it and I probably should given the myriad topics surrounding this. It has been a toxic subject and I have generally done my best to avoid it by clearly indicating that I am not, by any means, a climate scientist. I should, honestly, learn about it and this is a fine a spot as any to do that lead in.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
In this, I fully agree. However, I don't need the FUD and doom-and-gloom BS associated with AGW to make me choose to be a better steward of the earth and make more decisions as to how I conduct myself.
To see the AGW "scientists" simply shouting down any type of opposition (really? RICO laws???) rather than dealing with opposing views (as true sciences do) makes me even more resistant to them. It's unprofessional, it's unethical, and (to me) it's proof that they are relying on generating data that ensures their funding sources continue to spew dollars at them.
It simply weakens their ability to gain my trust. In the grand scheme of things, my trust means diddly squat, but if there are millions like me, that may make a difference.
Thanks so much.
I'd love it if you would be willing to take the time to look at it as long as you need. I'll fire an email off to your address listed under your profile, let me know if that's the wrong location or I can pass my address on another way if you prefer,
That is the correct email address. ;-) It will give me something new to learn. I've been meaning to learn more about it, anyhow.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
How ironic it is that one of the largest supplies of fossil fuels ever is going to experience the worst of global warming caused by the same...
so................ if it says so in a "model" then it will definitely happen, no if's and's or but's. scare tactics in full force. or somebody stands to make a bunch of money. (there was a coming ice age in the seventies btw). always a crisis. everybody is gonna DIE!!!! bla bla bla.
The westernmost parts of Africa, on the equator, that area isn't claimed by any African nation. It's too damn hot. We already know that the Sahara (word meaning desert, so the desert desert...heh), used to be more like the everglades in Florida. Hippos, crocks and so on. Yet it's sand today.
Mother nature doing her thing. Not man.
Oh, well now, if it's the consensus then it must be true.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Ugh, I don't remember posting any of this drivel, I really gotta lay off the cheap vodka. I'd buy better, you see, but all of my income comes from that hostfile and the change my mom loses in the couch cushions.
So remember everyone, fewer drunken posts if you'd just by my hostfiles!
And, sorry for making fun of your brain. That was pretty childish of me.
Mod me up if you want me to take my meds!
Here are your sources, ignorant.