Slashdot Mirror
Sea Ice In Arctic and Antarctic Is At Record Low Levels This Year (cnn.com)
dryriver quotes a report from CNN: For what appears to be the first time since scientists began keeping track, sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic are at record lows this time of year. "It looks like, since the beginning of October, that for the first time we are seeing both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice running at record low levels," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who has tracked sea ice data going back to 1979. While it is too early to know if the recent, rapid decline in Antarctic sea ice is going to be a regular occurrence like in the Arctic, it "certainly puts the kibosh on everyone saying that Antarctica's ice is just going up and up," Meier said. The decline of sea ice has been a key indicator that climate change is happening, but its loss, especially in the Arctic, can mean major changes for your weather, too. The report notes that air temperatures in the Arctic have been exceeding 35 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) above average, while "sea ice in the northern latitudes is at a lower level than ever observed for this time of the year." October and November is when the Arctic region typically gains ice. This year, air temperatures are staying much warmer and closer to the freezing mark of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. What's more is that water temperatures in the Arctic Ocean are several degrees above average, as a result of having less sea ice.
If that's what you took away from TFS or TFA, your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills are both seriously deficient. And that situation, sadly having spread to epidemic proportions, is why Trump is the next President of the United States of America.
35 degrees Fahrenheit (1.667 degrees Celsius)
is there a link to the new calibration model?
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Trump's going to fix that thin ice, and his supporters are ready to help.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
You are welcome on my lawn.
20 deg C ABOVE AVERAGE, not 20 deg C above ZERO
He's going to comb-over the ice caps?
As can be seen here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ the arctic has been losing ice for four days ( Nov 17-20 ) now. For the month of November this is an unprecedented event over the entire period of satellite observations collected from 1979 to the present.
By the way, a neat experiment which you can perform with this chart is to "turn off" all of the years, then turn on the first five years and note where they fall relative to the median and the 2nd standard deviation; then switch from the first five to the last five and make the same observation.
Above average. Does nobody read anymore? Oh wait, that's right, this is /.
Why don't we lose you instead and keep the habitable clime instead?
When we reconstitute the dinosaurs they' have a cozy climate waiting for them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And it's populated by pseudoskeptics desperate to cling to their delusions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
20C above average in the Arctic for the month of October; not 20C globally. As a result of the reduction of differences in albedo. It's not that extraordinary.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The words you missed are "above average". The average temperature is supposed to be -20 deg C (-4 deg F). Current temps are around 0 deg C (32 deg F). Hence the temps are 20 degrees C (36 deg F) above average.
Yes, it's getting warmer. Yes, the arctic sea ice is melting. Why is this on Slashdot every f*cking season? This is not news that matters or news for nerds.
35 * (5/9) = 19.44
Wouldn't record low levels by definition be the first time we've seen them?
Uhhh, democrats? Democrats need Russians!
WTF is a pseudoskeptic and how do they differ from psychochickenlittles?
In about six months or so, we will never again hear such information from anyone even tangentially related to FedGov. This incoming admin will make the Harper suppression of science look like fucking Romper Room.
Salute the idiot in chief who does deny that global warming and rising seas are an issue at all. America is under attack by an total freak. Frankenzilla is on the attack. Vlad Trumpula is sucking the life blood out of the world. Fight back while you can or the fool will kill us all with his secret weapon (total idiocy).
Carry the 1
Fake skeptics don't actually disbelieve, they just pretend to for political or financial gain, or amusement.
Someone had to do it.
Somebody is exaggerating... Even the mistake was rounded up: (9/5)*35 = 19.444
First, your conversion factor is upside down. 5/9, not 9/5.
Second, you have it backwards-- the number from the original source was 20 Celsius, and converted into Fahrenheit for the popular article. 20*9/5 = 36F, which was rounded DOWN to 35. (Correctly, since the original number was not written to two figure precision).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
1) Deny that the planet is warming
2) Deny that warming is a problem
3) Deny that humans caused the warming
4) Accept that past human actions affected the climate, but deny that future actions will affect the climate (It's too late to do anything about it)
5) Grudgingly accept that we should replace expensive fossil fuels with cheaper renewable energy.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
A less corrupt person is cleaning crooked hillary's underware.
Libs are stupid to be anything else but corrupt.
Well, obama failed to provide for displaced workers after forcing coal mines out of business. Now stupid dems can suck fat dick in the company of their saudi terrorist cave-buddies
" And that situation, sadly having spread to epidemic proportions, is why Trump is the next President of the United States of America."
I would like to share your assessment, but I believe that you are mistaken. The American Public did not recently "Dumb Down"; they just got mean. It's a cyclical thing, whether it's "Manifest Destiny" or "American Exceptionalism" or Secession or the KKK or "The Silent Majority" or "The Moral Majority", there is just this streak of Mean that certain belligerent Americans; usually White, Male and Lower to Lower Middle-Class, likes to indulge in now and again.
There is a certain massive Inferiority Complex associated with it, as well as a certain blindness. The followers of Trump will just refuse to accept the fact that Trump is _The_ One Percent that they hate, born with a Silver Spoon up his ass, the better to dish it out. Just because he at times talks like them, while talking down to them, (Did anybody else notice Trump's rising inflections in speeches towards the end of the Campaign? Damn, the Dude had heard once or twice of the Kennedies...), does not mean that Trump is anything other than that portrayed for the last three decades- a Liar, (Third marriage after many affairs.), a Cheat, (Taxes), a Swindler, (University), Inept, (Bankruptcies), a Racist, (RE Lawsuits dating back to his Father), a Crook, (Illegal Employees, including Wife #3), and has really bad hair. And bad breath. His capacity for Breath Mints is astonishing; he must have built up quite a Tolerance.
But to get back to the matter at hand; if due to the lack of Sea Ice to run it, the California Current collapses, and it has been iffy lately, say goodbye to Prevailing Westerlies and California Agriculture; say hello to Hurricanes clawing up the Pacific Coast. Collapse of the Labrador Current means that Europe freezes quicker and longer every Winter, because the Gulf Stream Counterflow collapses with it. Which means more Hurricanes on the US East Coast as well, and the Gulf of Mexico turns into a stagnant Saltwater pond.
Of course, some regions benefit. Arizona finally gets the Water that it needs, and without much warning beforehand. Eastern Siberian Permafrost thaws, due to the failure of the Kurile/Oyashio Currents, although some thought should be given to Russia controlling the new Breadbasket of the World. Some places get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some much colder, all due to the fact that Sea Ice ties up an enormous amount of Energy for long periods of time, that that isn't present in Land Ice, by the time that it melts and makes its way to Sea.
Well, it could be worse...
Trump could get "Re-Elected"...
Go fuck yourself until you can read a science book and have at least a Master's degree in statistics, climatology, modeling, or some other scientific field.
4 days out of how many million years, what is the percentage?
way to go, dude.
35 degrees Fahrenheit is 2 degrees Celsius not 20.
I don't have the link handy but sea ice levels in Antarctica are record-breakingly high.
It used to be 0c, now it is -20c. What exactly is your problem? Did you never learn how to math?
I never understood why deniers keep bringing up conditions millions of years ago, as if they were relevant to us today. Yes, the planet was once a ball of lava - what's your point?
Nothing in the past affects any of the evidence of change we see today. All that's relevant are two things - that the climate is changing, rapidly and undeniably (and the sudden decrease in Arctic ice extent is just one of many indicators of this), and that those changes will require human societies to expend a lot of money and effort to adapt to (which much of the world cannot afford).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Here's arctic and antarctic sea ice combined. : The combined graph is quite a bit more dramatic.
You know exactly what you are.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wrong
Because, obviously. They're just using this as an excuse to get more gigabit-to-home installs.
Faggots.
WTF is a pseudoskeptic and how do they differ from psychochickenlittles?
A skeptic is someone who is willing to change his or her mind once they get more information and their concerns are addressed. The pseudoskeptic is really a denier who is trying to look reasonable. They will bring up their objections (eg. "Ha! They haven't taken the sun's fluctuations into account"), and when presented with the studies that do actually explore the links between solar variation and the climate they will NEVER acknowledge that their concern has been addressed; they simply jump to the next bullet-point (eg. "the scientists are just in it for the grant money") and keep doing so until they loop back around again ("Ha! They haven't taken the sun's fluctuations into account").
They don't treat the anti-AGW claims with the same skepticism. Never once will they ever look for evidence that scientists have changed their results just to get grant money; they will just assume that this is true.
They have to respond, and in their view, the idiocy of the response is irrelevant. All that matters is that they raised an objection, no matter how utterly moronic it is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You think that a) the difference between -20C and 0C is insignificant, and b) the difference is easily explained by surface reflectances? While albedo can explain increased solar absorption and melting of ice, I have trouble connecting that to an actual temperature increase, save the relatively minor buffering by surface temperatures. Care to explain?
I didn't say "insignificant". It's just not incredible when you consider the thermal mass of the ocean. If you think about it, that's why palm trees grow on the Isle of Scilly off the southern coast of Britain, even though it's at the same latitude as Newfoundland.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Wouldn't record low levels by definition be the first time we've seen them?
You have that wrong. There have been times when the Arctic sea ice had reach record lows before (obviously not as low as now), and there have been times when the Antarctic sea ice had reached record lows. But for the first time, both of these events have happened at the same time. That is what the original sentence says.
Forgive me if I fail to get worked up over something "unprecedented" over a timer period that is the geologic equivalent of a sneeze.
Do you seriously think that has never happened before in the history of the planet? Which has at times been warmer on average than it is even now of promises to be over the next 100 years or so?
Okay, you're forgiven. Given the nature of the greenhouse effect, which can go both positive or negative, we can get spikes. especially in the negative direction. Sulfur Dioxide from volcanos can cause a temporary lowering of global or regional temperatures. in 1815, after the Volcano Tamora erupted in indonesia and New England and Europe were particularly hard hit, causing the infamous "Year without a summer." Krakatau and more recently Pinatubo and El Chichon volcanos did the same thing.
The gases that make up the positive influences on temperatures aren't as short term, but plain old weather can have rea;;y short term effects too.
What becomes of interest is when multiple years have warmer than average temps. It becomes very difficult to use randomness as an excuse to explain them away.
As noted, I have been challenged that global warming doesn't exist because the antarctic was gaining ice. It does perhaps become a little more difficult to use that chestnut as solid proof debunking the greenhouse effect.
But yeah, you are right. It's just weather.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Well, Obama failed to provide for displaced workers after forcing coal mines out of business. Now stupid dems can suck fat dick in the company of their saudi terrorist cave-buddies
The best part about all of this is that it's impossible to tell if the above is parody or not.
How about we consider countries outside the USA.
When examined, they are making US/Europe widgets for US/Europe companies exported to US/Europe consumers. That the pollution is outsourced doesn't make it not-US/Europe pollution.
Learn to love Alaska
science via cnn
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/c...
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/c...
Chicken little alive and well
Pointing and laughing is all Trumptards are good for. It's all they understand, all they respect now. Arguments, science? You have no need for them anymore.
Yes, that's it. People voted for Trump because he's less corrupt.
Play Command HQ online
we are talking a little warmer for a few days in the Antarctic at this point
In this case a few days is roughly two months. I agree we have to start adapting now, but this is because politicians failed to act 30yrs ago. We are now at the stage where the longer you work on adapting to the problem the less resources you have to fix the problem. For example, sea walls don't work if they are built on limestone, so you can save some money now by kissing Miami goodbye or start calling it Venice.
So yah, your professor did a great job of teaching you what to think and never got around to teaching you how to think. Sorry you didn't have me in college, I would have at least given you a fighting chance to think critically instead of regurgitating what your echo chamber of friends and you all think.
Feeling insecure? Need a hug?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's not (just) the temperature it's the rate of change you slivering fuckwit troll.
But...but..haven't we been told (screamed at) that weather is not climate?
Seems from the applications we've witnessed from AGW cultists that this is a mutable rule based on agenda.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
That's true. Why bother with corruption when you turn the system into a cleptocracy anyway?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A skeptic is someone who wants to see proof before he believes something, and he's looking for alternative explanations for a phenomenon, trying to see if those alternatives have better explanations for the events.
A pseudoskeptic doesn't want to believe something, so he desperately looks for alternative explanations and readily believes them, even if they're completely harebrained, as long as they offer a different idea. Because "A is what the establishment/the media/the politicans/the eggheads/insert_boogeyman_here tell me, so B has to be correct".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's awesome.
Albedo differences are nonexistent in the polar night. So that's definitely not it.
Here is temperature data for the past several decades. If you look at it, the first thing you notice is that temperature in the winter (night) is hugely variable, mainly affected by winds rather than sun, and a 30 degree swing is not entirely surprising, although it is larger than normal.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You Trumptards sure are ass-backwards. Saying Hillary is Hitler and Dems support Terrorists. Is it so difficult to see your Fuhrer (Trump) as the bringer of Fascism and Dictatorship? Oh, that's right... you guys actually WANT to destroy America.
but this is because politicians failed to act 30yrs ago.
Seriously? Politicians should have acted 30 years ago? What exactly should they have done 30 years ago, that wouldn't automatically make them lose their next election?
You can blame the people, not the politicians for doing what the people want.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Forgive me if I fail to get worked up over something "unprecedented" over a timer period that is the geologic equivalent of a sneeze.
Do you seriously think that has never happened before in the history of the planet? Which has at times been warmer on average than it is even now of promises to be over the next 100 years or so?
I'm curious why climate was defined as something which happens over 30 years. Why not 3 or 300 or 3000? I would actually like to know what the basis was for defining it that way, and an explanation for why that basis makes sense. So I'm not interested in someone just quoting or restating that definition, but an actual walk through how they arrived at that number as the correct, objective, meaningfully useful time period.
Too often in this or that field you hear of some issue that's just a consequence of how the problem was framed. So if this one is settled then it should be dead easy to answer.
I never understood why deniers keep bringing up conditions millions of years ago, as if they were relevant to us today.
Agree. It's much more relevant to point out that there was no summer sea ice in the Arctic during the early parts of our own interglacial 8000 years ago, or during the last interglacial 115000 years ago.
It seems having summer sea ice in the arctic is outside the norm.
You missed the word 'both'.
"The gases that make up the positive influences on temperatures aren't as short term"
mm, trying to erase ice ages now?
you might want to tell the ice ages that..
A skeptic is one who only believes that which has evidence. One who refuses to believe DESPITE overwhelming evidence - and in fact believes the counter-argument with NO evidence is not a skeptic. If this person claims to be one - then that would make him a pseudoskeptic since he is pretending to be a skeptic but does not actually meet the requirements.
Actual skeptics accept global warming as the theory that best fits the evidence.
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Well, let's see now:
The wildest projections for global temperatures predict a max of 5C global temperature increase
The strongest RCP 8.5 scenario assumes continued and increasing (business-as-usual) emissions reaching 936ppm CO2 by 2100. This is likely to result in 3 to 5 degrees temperature increase by 2100 - but will certainly keep increasing well beyond that, even if we suddenly stopped all our emissions. So no, 5 is not the max. Also, that's an average, and thus specific areas can climb well beyond 5C (see Fig SPM 8 [a]).
never mind that these models have been wrong and every 10 years they have to turn them down to avoid losing all credibility
Citation needed. The first IPCC report in 1990 predicted a temperature increase between 1 and 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures (see Figure 8), with a rise rate of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees per decade. Right now we're about 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, and rising at 1.7 degrees per decade.
the tropics aren't going to get much hotter due to the effects of evaporation, most of the rise will be seen at the poles and further latitudes
Again, citation needed, because Fig SPM 8 (a) shows pretty clearly that tropical land temperatures can expect 4C to 7C average rises (again under RCP 8.5).
The past is massively important to what we are currently seeing.
But solely for the purpose of identifying past forcings, so that we can evaluate them in the context of today's increases (obviously there is no direct effect). Past changes can (and did) have entirely different causes to current changes. Every natural and cyclical cause that we've identified from the paleontological record has been evaluated in the context of modern warming, and found to be insufficient to cause the observed changes.
If this global warming is due to increased solar flux/frequency shift
It definitely isn't (surely you knew that much?) See IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 8, particularly section 8.5.
a myriad of other factors not directly or indirectly caused by man
I welcome any suggestions that climatologists may not have considered. But considering you seem to believe they didn't even check solar flux, I'm not hopeful you'll think of anything new.
that argument can be made easily looking at the global temperatures over the past 500k years; hint: palm trees used to grow on Antarctica)
Again I say: so? Why do you think that current climate changes must have the same cause as past changes? Is it not conceivable to you that we could be seeing an entirely different proximate cause? I remind you once again that we've accounted for all known natural forcings, and found them insufficient to cause current observations.
BTW, palm trees grew on Antarctica 52 million years ago (not 500k), and atmospheric CO2 was at least 600ppm. That doesn't bode well for the scope of changes we're likely to see.
all the resources we pour into fighting global warming are 100% wasted
Even if we assume (against all evidence) that current warming is unrelated to human activity, transitioning our energy infrastructure to renewable and/or carbon-neutral sources is hardly wasted. Simply getting off coal will save hundreds of billions in health costs every year, in the US alone. Removing oil-burni
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
>Seriously? Politicians should have acted 30 years ago? What exactly should they have done 30 years ago, that wouldn't automatically make them lose their next election?
And that's why America can't have nice things. Most of the politicians who passed gun control in Australia in the conservative states destroyed their careers in the process (whether you support it or not is not relevant to the subject under discussion). They did it anyway - because they believed it was the right thing to do. They believed it was the best way to serve their constituencies and if it meant never being re-elected then so be it.
They had to trust that their constituents would eventually come to agree with them and thus their replacements would not roll it back.
In America - that never happens. A politician would simply never be willing to destroy his career in politics in order to do what he believes is right. If it means not getting another term, it won't get done.
The moral cowardice of American politicians is not something we should be celebrating.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's not summer in the Arctic.
It is summer in the Antarctic.
These are not the same place- they are literally on opposite ends of the earth.
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It's simple mathematics. Anything less than that and the climate effects are drowned out by weather events (the signal to noise ratio is too low). You can go UP from there as far as you want, the patterns remain the same - but it's useful to use the lowest feasible number because it allows us to actually study climate effects in human timescales. If we COULD study it on 3 year basis, we would.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You may want to re-do the math.
(9/5)*35=?
Oh, and usually when things like that happen, it's 35.4 (correctly rounded to 35) and 19.6666666 (correctly rounded to 20), or some other number that makes them right, and the idiot AC commenter a complete idiot.
Learn to love Alaska
I hope you keep that saved for copy pasting, because you'll need it when TrumperKendal reposts his discredited talking points again. And again. And again.
So will the History Channel have to cancel this season's Ice Road Truckers. On a more serious note, what happens to the outlying settlements whose supplies, if the programme claims are correct, can only be delivered by the Winter Ice Roads?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pWTNcCi3ik
Hilarious.
How about we consider countries outside the USA.
When examined, they are making US/Europe widgets for US/Europe companies exported to US/Europe consumers. That the pollution is outsourced doesn't make it not-US/Europe pollution.
This. Very much this.
And also we should consider individual nation's pollution cumulatively, not per annum -- because the aggregate is what's having these effects. US and Western Europe have been doing it for much longer than India/China/Brazil and so on.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
What's corrupt about openly pitching to foreign diplomats to pitch down $20k a night to stay in the hotel that the president owns in DC? "No no, certainly no bribery going on here..."
If you don't like the situation where a president can own a network of hundreds of companies scattered around the world directly doing business with foreign governments and be directly under his family's control, call your rep and ask them to support H.R. 6340, which extends current federal conflict of interest law to the offices of the president and vice president, requiring that their assets be kept in a blind trust or potential conflicts of interest disclosed to the Office of Government Ethics when they make a decision that could affect their assets' worth. Hardly revolutionary, as that's what Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, etc all did. The bill has teeth, too - “(f) A violation of subsection (a) shall constitute a high crime and misdemeanor for the purposes of Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution."
It's something that anybody who's nervous about the current situation and lives in the US can do to make themselves feel better.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
I eyeballed all the graphs since 1958, I couldn't see anything that looked similar to what's happening in the 2016 graph there. Saying "although it is larger than normal" feels like an understatement.
Take a look at the graphs at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php since 1958. Nothing there looks anywhere close to what's happening this year. I'd call that extraordinary.
32F = 0C
35F = 1.667C
20C = 68F
Oops.
But how do you arrive at the "lowest feasible number" ? Why is 30 feasible? What if only 300 is feasible?
> A politician would simply never be willing to destroy his career in politics in order to do what he believes is right.
Remember Jimmy Carter?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
LOL at "because they believed it was the right thing to do" - i.e. they were TYRANTS, going against the democratic wish of the majority.
Do you know what "democide" is? How come it has never happened against an ARMED populace?
I already told you - it's climate for any point where the 10-million year graph and your graph looks the same (just on a different scale).
The point where it deviates is where you've gone too small and weather data has overwhelmed the climate signal.
That point is around 20 to 25 years. So put it at 30 to give a little buffer and make it easy to remember.
We know 300 and 30 are both climate because they look exactly the same. But the 3 year graph looks VERY different from the 30 year graph - even from the last 3 years of the 30 year graph.
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Okay... so you've had one in the 20th century.
I'd argue that Lincoln would have done so if needed (not that he got the chance to) that's another in the 19th century.
Can you imagine if you could be sure of having at least 2 or 3 in every congress ?
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Because 18+ years of no warming was claimed to be "weather" by too many people. They are hoping the no warming trend won't last 30 years so they can continue their claims.
If we reach 30+ years of no warming, then 30 years will just be "weather" and then we will need 50 years for climate.
This is the honest answer no one else is likely to give you, and gives you the ACTUAL reason they are now saying 30 years, as you said instead of 300 or 3000 or even 40. It has been shown if they picked 20, all their predictions fail hard, with tons of evidence that can't be ignored proving them wrong.
and that those changes will require human societies to expend a lot of money and effort to adapt to (which much of the world cannot afford).
Hell, the rich people in North America that live mostly south of Canada and north of Mexico don't want to afford proper medical care for their fellow citizens. Why would this segment want to afford a solution to a problem in their environment that won't directly effect their bank account in any significant way for 30 years. Maybe the U.S. should ban warmer temperatures, put them on a train after inputting their information into a huge, best ever, most bigly database and deport the hot terrorist therms. And then the new overlords can do some locker room grabbing on live Facebook and charge people for watching. All proceeds could go to building a Trump Global Cooling Wall.
sure - but as long as the u.s. consumes goods from china, the fault goes back to them. go, manufacture your electronics at home under strict environmental rules, but don't whine when the price of your smartphone doubles.
I disagree. Trump promised them a rose garden. His supporters understand they won't see an actual rose garden but the warm and fuzzy thoughts of a rose garden is more than enough to vote for Trump. After all, they don't need medical insurance when GoFundMe works just fine.
No, it's just a matter of proper statistical techniques. The global temperature has been in a linear rising trend since the '70s, and there was no statistically significant deviation from that trend in the last 13,15,18+ years. If you believe otherwise, please show the maths.
American politics is like a family of 5 where the kids vote to have candy and the parents vote to eat healthy every day. Then when they are all having diabetis, they blame the people selling them the candy.
What politics should do is look at to what is best for all and that should result in having healthy food and some sweets now and then.
To me the definition of politics is to find a compromise to benefit the people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yet another Slashdotter unsure if scientists have heard of the Sun.
Play Command HQ online
Meh.
The real situation is what it is, and that seems to be plenty to discuss; I don't see the point in fantasizing catastrophe scenarios that have very little real science behind them.
For a look at what the best actual expectations are for the impact of warming and loss of sea ice, the WG-II report is still the best review: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/...
(that's rather long, but the 32 page summary is here: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images... )
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Uhhh, democrats? Democrats need Russians!
The whole country has be scared shitless of terrorists for at least the past 15 years. This is bigger than just the Democrats. A frightened population is a docile population.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I never understood why deniers
I am not the one denying anything. I am saying it is warming, but someday it will cool again, and that we'll be fine in the middle...
That is what climate data teaches us, and what *you* are denying.
I never understood why deniers keep bringing up conditions millions of years ago, as if they were relevant to us today.
Because the Earth arrived at where it was in 1979 after:
* Being hotter than it is currently
* Having more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have currently.
The whole reason we were supposed to be scared of global warming was runaway warming. But even with this recent heat spike we are not seeing runaway warming. Over 100 years we may see 2C or so of warming, but that is not runaway warming and in fact is beneficial to humanity overall because the Earth will be a more arable place.
The only thing climate related you should truly fear is a new ice age, and warming gets us farther out from that scenario.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A politician would simply never be willing to destroy his career in politics in order to do what he believes is right. If it means not getting another term, it won't get done.
Lyndon Johnson did. Reputedly, when he signed the Civil Rights Act, he commented "we have lost the south (for the Democratic party) for a generation."
His "generation" turned out to be a long one; that was 1964, and there is no sign of the south voting for Democrats again any time soon.
https://sites.google.com/site/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Well, Obama failed to provide for displaced workers after forcing coal mines out of business. Now stupid dems can suck fat dick in the company of their saudi terrorist cave-buddies
The best part about all of this is that it's impossible to tell if the above is parody or not.
Poe's Law is proven every day.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Maybe the planet misunderstood when people kept shouting to drain the swamps and watch it all burn?
IDK every year seem to be a "New Record High" even if only by 0.001K!
The Arctic as defined by north of 80N is extremely above expected temperatures, average running about 260K today, still considerably below freezing at 273.35K. Also there is a lot of variation this year.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You Trumptards sure are ass-backwards. Saying Hillary is Hitler and Dems support Terrorists. Is it so difficult to see your Fuhrer (Trump) as the bringer of Fascism and Dictatorship? Oh, that's right... you guys actually WANT to destroy America.
They're here to make America white again.
I disagree. Trump promised them a rose garden. His supporters understand they won't see an actual rose garden but the warm and fuzzy thoughts of a rose garden is more than enough to vote for Trump. After all, they don't need medical insurance when GoFundMe works just fine.
So they're happy just eating member berries?
A less corrupt person is cleaning crooked hillary's underware.
Libs are stupid to be anything else but corrupt.
That's some fine grammar and spelling you go there, Cletus.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Mohammed: Did you see Mohammed at the meeting today?
Mohammed: No, but his brother Mohammed showed up.
Mohammed: What did Mohammed talk about?
Mohammed: Mohammed introduced us to Mohammed who is also a mason!
Mohammed: A mason? No shit? How long has he been one?
Mohammed: About five years. He was referred to the local lodge by Mohammed.
Mohammed: Ah, yes, Mohammed. He has a shit ton of connections around town!
Mohammed: Yes, and our brothers, police be upon them, Mohammed and Mohammed from Egypt came, too.
Mohammed: I've been thinking of becoming a clown.
Mohammed: A clown, Mohammed, why?
Mohammed: So I can film myself being gay.
Mohammed: Oh, you.
Mohammed: So anyway, is Mohammed, Mohammed, and Mohammed coming to the next party?
Mohammed: Indeed. Mohammed was so funny last time.
Mohammed: Well it wouldn't be a party without Mohammed.
Mohammed: Yes, my friend. POLICE BE UPON THEM!
Carbon Tariffs on imported Chinese Goods, how Trumpian of you; He'll love it. it'll be great, fantastic!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Perfect! More fresh water!
Can we get some for my plants? You know, the ones that eat up CO2? Or are we just going to tax everyone out of existence?
"The gases that make up the positive influences on temperatures aren't as short term"
mm, trying to erase ice ages now?
you might want to tell the ice ages that..
Not certain what you are trying to refer to. In the context of the post, I was Responding to SuperKendall's remarks about temperature spikes noting they can go either positive or negative, with different gases. And that was factual. Sulfur dioxide is a powerful anti-greenhouse gas which can cool temperatures globally after large volcanic eruptions. It doesn't last long, forming sulfuric acid droplets which then rain out of the atmosphere.
Short term positive temp swings are harder to come by, as CO2 spends more time in the atmosphere, methane somewhat less, but not in the year long time frame.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Be specific in your demands and language.
It sounds like you are saying me must "stop climate change".
It is ridiculous and arrogant to believe you can stop climate change.
Climate Changes, That's what it does. That's what it always does, It's normal state is to be in change.
The first response of people who see it this way is the show that it was warmer previously to put you into their perspective.
They are not thinking from your perspective, so if you want a meaningful conversation you have to start with a specific and accurate descriptor.
I think what you mean is we must be in better control of the rate of climate change.
Or We must be better stewards of our environment.
Currently we are on a plan to invest Trillions of US dollars (money that doesn't come from nowhere, it comes from taxes)
to reduce the Carbon footprint of ? (Some Nations) by 2%
The stated net effect in 20 years will be a "possible" reduced warming of 0.2 deg Celsius which is below even the margin of error in the measurements.
Yes we should do something, but convincing people to open their wallets doesn't always happen with speculation talk.
Start smaller maybe?
By 2025 we want to move all non business vehicles to non CO2 emitting vehicles.
or by 2026 we want all cargo hauling ships over 50 Tons empty weight to have emissions scrubbers and so and so will pay for it.
Profit margins would be slimmer. It costs like $219 in components and $5 to manufacture. So instead of 200% profit they'll have to settle 100% profit.
I don't get it, if all the ice has melted, why hasn't Florida been covered in water? I thought that melting ice leads to a rise in the ocean level and will cause mass flooding of coastal states? Especially flat states like Florida! Someone is lying to me. Humph!
Oh that's cute, now go sit at he little Kids table and let the Grown-ups talk at the big table. How about this, it's 240K instead of the expected 220K, you that are metricly impaired may convert to the Rankin temperature scale if desired.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I considered that one - though I'm not sure it qualifies. He made a tactical political sacrifice but it didn't cost him his career and secured his legacy. The party lost out, but it had enough support in the north at the time to be a worthwhile trade-off.
I'm not diminishing that factor - giving up the south greatly reduced the democrats power in congress to this day, greatly reduced the number of times they would later take the white house. Pretty much doomed Hubert Humphrey's chance of succeeding Johnson. It was a major sacrifice for a nobel goal.
But it wasn't quite personal. The real pain wouldn't be felt by Johnson himself.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Sunrise at Point Barrow Alaska will be January 22, 2017, I don't think albedo is a big factor right now. My suspicion is this is bad, real bad and we are going to really want some of that heat that's bleeding out through the Arctic over the next few decades.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
But how do you arrive at the "lowest feasible number" ? Why is 30 feasible? What if only 300 is feasible?
Good question. Let's do some math.
From a year by year temperature graph http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... we see random temperation variation is somewhere about 0.3C. Temperature rise is on the order of 0.15 degrees per decade. Averaging reduces the noise by the square root of the number of points (Poisson statistics*). So, the temperature rise (signal) is larger then the noise (year to year variations) when 0.015*N> 0.3/SQRT(N). Thus, N^(3/2) = 0.3/0.015, and we calculate N = 7.3 years.
So, in 7.3 years the signal (temperature rise) is roughly equal to the statistical noise (year to year variation). Science typically likes to not draw conclusions until you get at least 3 standard deviations, so that would be about 20 years.
---
*footnote: correctly, Poisson statistics are dependent on the number of independent points. Year to year temperatures, however, are not completely independent-- they show some amount of correlation ("autocorrelation"). So the number of points should actually be reduced by the aurocorrelation coefficient. That will bump the number of points N up slightly. So, actually, 30 years is probably a pretty good number to guess.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Of course, one of the main reasons WHY there had been high levels of ice in the antarctic is BECAUSE of the reduced ice in the arctic.
This is almost certainly not true. They are literally poles apart, and while, figuratively, it's a small world it's actually a pretty damn big planet.
Despite being "poles apart", it turns out that there is some amount of anticorrelation between the Arctic and Antarctic temperature variations (the "polar see-saw"-- sometimes called the "bipolar see-saw"). So, while they are "poles apart", they are still in the same system.
It is true, though, that the salinity of water in the circum-Antarctic ocean really doesn't much depend on Arctic melting. It is significantly impacted by Antarctic melting, though, with the odd result that melting glacial ice actually can increase the seasonal ice. Which is exactly what you point out further in your post:
In fact, it can take hundreds to thousands of years for water from the poles to reach the equator, and much of the water that does 'reach' the equator tends to be turned back towards the pole from which it came, due to equatorial up-welling and circulatory currents. Note: the above is a bit of a generalisation and a vast simplification to make the point. Feel free to investigate the matter further, I'm just trying to demonstrate the error inherent in parent's post.
The ice-melt makes the oceans fresher and fresher water freeze more easily than salty water.
This is true however, and is likely to be part of the reason why the area of antarctic sea ice has been quite high. Antarctica is a land mass, covered in ice. Some of that ice has been observed melting, and some actually sliding into the ocean. It is this 'land ice' becoming 'sea ice' either directly, ice shelves sliding into the ocean, or indirectly, melting and refreezing, that accounts for the observations.
...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Well, Obama failed to provide for displaced workers after forcing coal mines out of business. Now stupid dems can suck fat dick in the company of their saudi terrorist cave-buddies
The best part about all of this is that it's impossible to tell if the above is parody or not.
Exactly, especially since US oil production fell under Bush and rose from 5 million barrels to 9.4 million barrels per year under Obama (source). Seems like it's the conservatives sucking Saudi dick, especially given this picture.
Enigma
Most of the politicians who passed gun control in Australia in the conservative states destroyed their careers in the process
Bullshit. Name one.
the arctic does not lose ice in the winter.
it doesn't happen.
its dark, there's no sunlight.
the average temp, both water and air is well below freezing.
until now.
until this year.
its polar winter, there is no sun, the temp should be well below freezing and the ice should be growing.
but for the first time ever, winter temps are above freezing, and the ice is actually melting.
this has not happened during human history before.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
30 years is the minimum to be considered a Climatic event, there are quasi-periodic cycles of about 22 years, 30 years, 60 years and 120 years.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
she did beat him.
by over 1.8 million votes so far.
he won because we use an archaic outdated and undemocratic system known at the electoral college.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
32 + 1.8 * c = f
32 + 1.8 * 0 = 32
or
32 + 9/5 * c = f
32 + 9/5 * 0 = 32
32 + 1.8 * 35 = f
32 + 63 = f
95 = f
oh my bad]
35 f ...
so
(35 - 32)/1.8 = 1.666666666666666666.....666666666666
there is a -32 missing from your equation....
(c-32)*(9/5) = f
bassacwards....
(F-32)*(9/5) = C
the equations you are looking for are
f = 32 + (c *1.8)
and
c = (f-32)/1.8
c = (35-32)/1.8
c=3/1.8
c=1.6
again: satellite records only go back to 1979.
bt that doesn't mean this is the first time since 1979 and that this ever occurred before then.
in fact, that's the point: everything we know about the arctic says that this has never happened before .
simply put: during arctic winter, which is now, the ice does NOT melt. .
its bad enough that it does not replenish fully each year, but thus far the winters had still been cold enough, below freezing, that ice not only didn't melt, but reformed somewhat.
i'll say it again:
-its dark. theres no sunlight
-when the temps should be well below freezing, its actually warm enough for the ice to be melting.
the arctic cycle is well studied and well known.
and it's now for the first time showing a major break in that cycle.
in fact, the most shocking part, is that ice DID start to reform, shown in the charts.
it started to follow the normal winter phase of the cycle, and then stopped.
its not like the summer melting started and then didn't stop (which would also be alarming, but if then started to freeze, it would simply be a change in the duration of the summer melting season, but the cycle as a whole still continued with each phase in tact, albeit of different lengths than before).
this is wholly different.
it started to refreeze as normal in winter.
and then it stopped and began melting again.
that means the entire cycle is breaking down.
and if that happens, the ocean currents that are driven by it also will break down, which then wreaks havoc on the weather patterns as we know it.
that means monsoons in the arizona desert, and no snowpack in the sierras.
it means a thawing of Siberia, but a freezing of Europe.
it means the gulf of Mexico becomes the worlds largest stagnant brackish sea.
it means the oceans themselves become stagnant, no more mixing of ocean layers, increases and decreases in oxygenation, throwing sea life into chaos.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I think you made some false assumptions in your numbers there. I don't know what you calculated but I'm quite certain it's not what you think it is.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Well, obama failed to provide for displaced workers after forcing coal mines out of business. Now stupid dems can suck fat dick in the company of their saudi terrorist cave-buddies
Hearing a conservative complaining because the Democrats didn't give out enough entitlements and work programs seems to be a first for me.
Can we stop talking about this retarded way to measure temperatures please? We get it, Americans are special. Do you really need to keep fucking the world over with your 17th century imperial system?
thik of the cycle breakdown this way:
youre cruising in your car doing 80 on the freeway.
now, there's a big difference between losing power and coasting to a stop on the side of the road,
and the wheels locking up throwing the car into an uncontrollable skid that flips the car and rolls it over a few times.
this unexpected break in the cycle after it had already began re-freezing represents the latter, not the former.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Where will you manufacture components?
Most of the politicians who passed gun control in Australia in the conservative states destroyed their careers in the process (whether you support it or not is not relevant to the subject under discussion). They did it anyway - because they believed it was the right thing to do.
The prime minister behind the gun legislation in Australia not only passed these laws in his first term, but was happily voted in a following 3 terms. It was the conservative states which fought this legislation the most and the fact that the laws were past anyway cemented John Howard's reputation as a strong leader of his party.
Most of Australian's weren't very aggressively against these laws.
OK, then let us put it another way.
Why would people vote in politicians who are likely to do things that are contrary to their own interests?
If, as you say, Australian politicians ended up enacting legislation that was unpopular enough to destroy their careers, why were the Australian people stupid enough to elect them in the first place? The American voters seem smarter then, in comparison. Although thegarbz seems to be refuting the example anyway.
Blaming politicians is just another excuse for not taking responsibility.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
The slashdot post, and the CNN article, are just wrong. The original data shows a +2.2 degrees Celsius *delta*, and everything after that is just bad, sloppy math.
The slashdot post, and the CNN article, are just wrong. The original data shows a 2.2 degrees Celsius *delta*, and everything after that is just bad, sloppy math.
Why is a system that more fairly represents everyone - and not just those located in those relatively small, densely populated areas known as big cities (plus the People's Republic of California) archaic and undemocratic?
An albedo near one versus an albedo near zero is a giant difference. If the sun is dropping say 200 W/m^2 in the arctic. An albedo of 0.9 means only 20 W/m^2 is absorbed and 180 reflected into space. if there are large regions of open ocean. The albedo is like 0.2 or 0.1. so in those areas, youre looking at a flux around 160 to 180 W/m^2 being absorbed.
The other thing to consider, the ocean has a much higher latant heat capacity, and convective overturn will transport that heat back up to the ocean surface once the fall winter months come around and either the surface layer cools or winds createva well mixed layer. Either way, the open water will be able to release msssive amounts of latant heat, keeping temperatures near freezing, as opposed to ice, which only transfers heat by conduction (effectively), and preventing the ocean heat content to be released back into the atmosphere.
I imagine the longer periods of open ocean will correlate with the most extreme temperature differences. But I'm conjecturing and need to check into that.
Hope this helps
Shhhh! You're interrupting the alarmist narrative designed to induce and maintain FUD! We can't have that! It'll endanger the recipients of billions of dollars of government money!
" I remind you once again that we've accounted for all known natural forcings"
PROVE IT
If we make development illegal, then they'll never catch up to us. It keeps us out ahead of the advancing 3rd world.
Learn to love Alaska
"Free Trade" should include a labor cost and environmental cost penalty. Pick the "cleanest" country and tax the others based on their savings from being dirty. Same with those that allow child labor and such.
Learn to love Alaska
Thanks for posting this link. The linked report demonstrates the issue precisely.
On page 7 of the pdf summary report, it talks about the "bad stuff" that is predicted due to climate change. The major data points given are that crop yields will fall. This is in direct opposition to all the science I have read on the topic, for example Obama's EPA.gov site says "Agriculture and fisheries are highly dependent on the climate. Increases in temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase some crop yields in some places."
They try to paint a highly negative picture, but then provide the data in chart below that. Crop yields are steadily increasing.
Whenever I look into the source data, I see this kind of thing. Dire consequences predicted, but then even a cursory examination of the data show that the prediction has been falsified.
Data points:
*) Fish failures predicted - real data shows that the fish simply move north/south (https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply)
*) Crop failure predicted - real data shows steady growth of crop yield (https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply)
*) Land flooding predicted - real data shows that the land movement effects swamp any issues with the sea rising (Florida has no problem, Louisiana has major problems) (https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-coastal-areas)
Does anyone have a prediction of "bad stuff" made in an IPCC report that has actually happened? (I am limiting "bad stuff" to things that my children's children will actually care about) The old reports are now old enough that there predictions should be apparent by now. I have reviewed the reports, and the cases I looked at (sea level rise, crop failures, fishing) were all falsified by what happened in reality.
If the IPCC has no predictive power, why should we use it to guide policy?
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
That's why people voted against her... I magically know you hated [W]
More people voted for her than for Trump. It was the states that voted against her. But don't let facts get in the way of your bizarre rant. There are several of us who voted for W who did not vote for Trump. Probably including most of the Bush family.
If you are going to mock somebody's grammar and spelling, you should probably not have errors in you own post.
No, this is not unprecedented. December 18th to December 22nd, 1980 for one example. February 5th to February 11th 1982 for another, or February 4th to Febrary 11th, 1988 It's got nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with winds. Strong winds bunch the ice up, reducing the surface area covered. Current temperature in Iqaluit is -13C. The ice isn't melting there. Current temperature in Nanisivik is -21C. It ain't melting there either. Grise Fiord, -19C. Fort Conger, -21C.
agreed. This is qualitatively different than the last 58 years of data so far. We will see if there isn't a sudden drop off to even things out, but it looks unlikely.
Yeah....no, you're just wrong:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Technically his statement was probably a tautology, but the point is actually that we've constrained all unknown forcings to a small degree of uncertainty. The water vapor feedback is both large and strongly positive, even after considering cloud formation. That should be expected, because the Earth is almost entirely opaque to IR over the entire globe, and clouds of course cover a smaller percentage.
So if we were to propose a feedback mechanism that would counteract global warming, it would need to be both extremely strong to counteract the H2O forcing, and extremely small to where it hasn't been detected yet, and it would also have to explain observed warming while providing a plausible explanation for why increased levels of CO2 will not produce additional warming.
But this isn't math class -- one does not prove science correct. The burden is on you to disprove the contemporary wisdom. What natural phenomenon do you propose that would satisfy the above criteria? What makes you think that radiative transfer equations are unknown or unknowable? What elephant is hiding in plain sight to save us from the consequences of all known physics?
Perhaps you responded to the wrong comment. See http://cci-reanalyzer.org/dail... , which is the source of the CNN misinformation. Today the Arctic region is 5.14 degrees Celsius above average - on 5/18/2016 it was 2.2 degrees Celsius above average.
"usually White, Male and Lower to Lower Middle-Class, likes to indulge in now and again."
It's funny because those who aren't belligerent Americans are usually white, male, and there were no shortage of those who were lower-middle class that didn't vote for Trump. Your narrative is racist and sexist...but in a good way!
Isnt that the group which changes data all the time? That cant acknowledge they're actually taking photographs of the effects of an active volcano on the western shelf. /., learn science and learn how to pick out scams because these 'scientists' are shift. Is this site another site paid for by George Soros?!
And they have to report about the Artic because they predicted it would not be there in 2007!! If you think this article is saying 'watch out', after watching this crap for 20+ years, what you're actually seeing is proof they have not a clue whats going on as long as we're scared and paying their random. Everyone cant wait for the Artic to melt, then NASA GISS would be right about 1 thing in 30+ years of Man made global warming. Until it melts, they're grasping at straws and blowing hot air.
Yeah, you've never looked at any economic studies on the subject.
I have looked at some economic studies and I concluded that any reduction in carbon output that does not include nuclear power is a drop in the ocean or economically unfeasible.
Energy consumption is pretty inflexible, raising the price by taxation will not reduce demand by much. All a carbon tax will do is make people poorer and government bigger. Decades of ever increasing efficiency demands means that there is not much room left to improve efficiency. Cutting energy use will mean reduced standard of living. This means replacing carbon based energy with something else if we want to reduce carbon output. Bio-fuels are a dead end because we simply cannot grow enough bio-mass, at least not with current technology and infrastructure. Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc. are expensive, unreliable, and/or geography dependent. That leaves us only with nuclear or some unforeseen leap in technology.
I took a look at your links and saw no mention of nuclear power. That's not saying they didn't consider it but by not mentioning it makes me wonder if they did. All too often I see the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming alarmists backing us into an impossible corner by denying the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. That leaves us with the very expensive unreliable energy sources or wishful thinking of some fantasy technology that will save us in the next five years. That is assuming we even have five years to fix this.
I find the CAGW arguments lacking and leaving me wondering if this can be nearly as bad as they claim. This is especially true if they say nuclear power is not to be part of the solution. If nuclear power is to be feared more than CAGW then I must conclude that CAGW is nothing to be feared. If CAGW is to be feared then nuclear power must be considered, and in a big way. Due to the operational lifespans of the typical coal and nuclear power plant we'd need to be building something like a new gigawatt scale power plant every week in the world if we are going to have carbon free energy. Maybe it's two per week, maybe its two per month, but something about that scale of nuclear build out is going to be needed to make any difference in carbon output.
If the idea of another nuclear power plant going on line every week makes you uncomfortable then you are going to be uncomfortable one way or another. Our choices are carbon based fuel, energy scarcity, or nuclear power. Anyone offering a fourth option did not do an economic study on the subject.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yes, that's what I said. I said the politicians in conservative states were punished. I never said anything at all about the PM.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
>Why would people vote in politicians who are likely to do things that are contrary to their own interests?
Ask that of the 47% who just voted in Donald Trump. The odds of him doing anything that benefits them are between zero and none. The odds of him using the presidency as his own personal piggy bank are about 100% - he has already begun and he isn't even inaugurated yet. People vote for all sorts of reasons - and regularly vote against their own interests. Hell haven't you noticed that the republican party (the party of ending welfare) is the strongest in the states where the most people require welfare to live ? And that welfare receivers are overwhelmingly republican (white welfare receivers anyway) ?
People often vote against their own interests - or they simply don't agree with you about what is in their best interest, or they think another interest is more urgent. You could call them wrong to think that, but it's not something that will ever change.
>If, as you say, Australian politicians ended up enacting legislation that was unpopular enough to destroy their careers, why were the Australian people stupid enough to elect them in the first place?
For starters ? They had no idea the politicians were going to do that. The laws were passed by a conservative government - who had nothing of the kind in their platform and no intention of doing so when they were elected. They were passed after a mass shooting (the last one Australia has ever had by the way) when the politicians, in light of the tragedy, felt they had a duty they had not previous considered.
So whether you consider gun control in the voters interest or not (I do by the way), they believed they were acting in the best interest of the voters, enough voters disagreed to destroy some careers. Those voters were probably wrong - or at the very least- have come to believe they were wrong themselves, because in the subsequent election - although those careers were destroyed, politicians running on a platform of repealing the law couldn't get elected either. They punished the politicians for doing something unpopular - but they didn't want to have it undone either.
> Although thegarbz seems to be refuting the example anyway.
thegarbz said nothing that contradicted what I said, he just thought he did.
>Blaming politicians is just another excuse for not taking responsibility.
So politicians are automatically blameless ? Taking responsibility does not mean politicians are not responsible for what they do in office. You can choose who you vote for - but you can't force them to do what they said they will after wards. The best you can do is not vote for them again. Whether that is a deterrent depends entirely on whether they consider another term to be worth more or less than what they want to do.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
But it was over the summer. You're neglecting the thermal mass of the ocean.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I personally don't rule out nuclear as a solution (heck, anything is better than coal). There are undeniably cases where nuclear is the best option. However, it's an not the cheapest and has some significant risk (low chance of failure, but expensive consequences), so there may well be better options in other cases. Any serious energy policy has to consider all the options on their merits - including renewables.
All a carbon tax will do is make people poorer and government bigger
Carbon taxes are not intended to reduce demand, they're intended to raise prices of carbon-intensive energy sources, making carbon-neutral sources like nuclear and renewables more competitive. Additionally, the revenue from the tax can be used to mitigate the health & social costs of emissions, invested in carbon-neutral energy development and infrastructure, and/or used to offset the short-term price rises for consumers. That's how it was implemented in Australia, and it was working (overall impact on CPI was tiny, fossil-fuel energy demand dropped, and carbon-neutral energy demand increased).
Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc. are expensive, unreliable, and/or geography dependent.
These are geography-dependent, but between them they can cover a very wide range of geography (nuclear is an option for the remainder). They are reliable in the sense that they have well-defined capacity factors - lower than coal (which can still be as low as 45%), but this can be covered by widely-distributed generation as it is today, with some grid-level storage as a backup. Dealing with intermittency has been well studied.
As for expense, the (unsubsidised) levelised cost of onshore wind, hydro, solar PV, and geothermal, are all well below that of nuclear and coal, especially with carbon capture.
I took a look at your links and saw no mention of nuclear power.
Yeah, a lot of the focus (and all of IPCC WGI & WGII) is on getting people to recognise the problem first. Once we're past that, we can happily debate different solutions - nuclear, solar, lawyers on bicycles or whatever.
All too often I see the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming alarmists backing us into an impossible corner by denying the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Please don't conflate the science establishing that AGW exists, with proposed solutions like whether or not we use fossil fuels or nuclear. The science only says, if we emit this much CO2, we can expect these estimated consequences. These findings are entirely independent of any solutions we choose, and sadly way too many people completely deny the science because they don't like a particular solution that someone suggested. We need to accept that the problem exists, then we can propose better solutions - which can certainly be nuclear, if you prefer.
If the idea of another nuclear power plant going on line every week makes you uncomfortable
A lot less uncomfortable than more coal plants, frankly. Though I would disagree that nuclear is our only alternative, based on the research I've done (see above links).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Does anyone have a prediction of "bad stuff" made in an IPCC report that has actually happened? ... The old reports are now old enough that there predictions should be apparent by now. I have reviewed the reports, and the cases I looked at (sea level rise, crop failures, fishing) were all falsified by what happened in reality.
You state that predictions are "falsified by what happened in reality", but you failed to show evidence for that.
I am actually quite interested. Can you point to a specific published prediction from the IPCC-- one with a date that is not still in the future-- and show me data saying that the actual result was different from the prediction by more than the published error bars?
Nice links, by the way-- very informative.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Nobody caught me on this? Always check the sources, people.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Your argument for anything other than nuclear power still breaks down to finding some new technology. Until this technology for smart grids and grid level storage exists we are left with nuclear power, expensive energy, or coal.
Carbon taxes only hurt the effort. First it increases the costs to build the coal alternatives, they still need energy to do stuff until this new thing comes online. Carbon taxes create an incentive for the government to keep coal burning. Governments don't like to see tax revenue decrease, so they'll do what they can to keep the coal burning. Carbon taxes ultimately don't fix anything, the cost to society as a whole is increased because now energy just cost more. All the taxes do is move things around a bit to disguise the fact that everyone is poorer from the taxes, including the people with the solar panels on their roof.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Except they really weren't. What you said only happened in one conservative state and that wasn't so much a swing against the party, but the introduction of a new party doing what usually happens when a third party (One Nation) is introduced to a 2-party system: rip votes away from the party they most resemble.
QLD: Liberal before gun laws. Labour after gun laws, but even labour lost seats. (One nation is the outlier here who as opposed to the gun laws).
But going through the other states now that we have the major conservative one sorted:
NT: Country Lib before gun laws, country lib after gun laws with a 2.8% swing towards them.
WA: Liberal before gun laws, liberal after gun laws with an insignificant 0.28% swing against them.
SA: Liberal before gun laws, liberal after gun laws. They had a huge 9.8% swing against them and yet still formed government on primary votes alones.
VIC: Liberal (only just) before gun laws they already had a swing against them in the previous election. Labour (by 0.4% majority) after the gun laws.
NSW: Labour before gun laws, labour after gun laws.
TAS: Labour before gun laws, and labour after gun laws. Can't comment much on the swing because Tasmania went through a massive restructure of it's political system gutting the number of seats and then going to an early election. They probably had more on their mind than the gun laws.
That's hardly a punishment. If I went to a BDSM club asking for punishment and got that result, I'd want my money back. There's a couple of people in a couple of seats who had massive swings against them due to gun laws but on the whole Australian politics was largely unaffected by it both at the federal and state levels. The politicians who passed the gun control laws most definitely did not destroy their careers any more than careers get made or destroyed every election on a myriad of very minor localised issues.
A compromise that results in the outcome you want no matter the input (as you describe) used to be called totalitarianism.
The problem is whether you think we caused it or not. The FACT remains that the climate was changing anyway!
Yes, but not that many more votes for Clinton. Almost half of the people who voted still voted against her. It should have been a landslide against Trump. The fact that it wasn't just shows how horrible of a candidate Clinton was. The DNC and Clinton knew it too, which is why wanted put in the fix to face Trump, because they knew it was Clinton's only chance to win.
Really, we can thank the utterly corrupt DNC for this mess. The whole lot of them should be thrown in in jail. All the evidence we need is in the emails if you go and read them.
Trump won by understanding how the game is played. He won by flipping several swing states over to his side, including states that have not went Republican in the presidential race for many elections. Even Bill Clinton said Hillary wasn't doing enough campaigning.
If the rules were different, I'm sure Trump would have played the game differently. He may be many things, but he is not stupid (on the other hand, from the way she ran her two campaigns as well as her tenure as Secretary of State, it's pretty clear that Hillary is incompetent). Would Trump have still won in a straight popular vote? Maybe, maybe not. We just don't know.
>With logic like that who needs enemies!
With logic like that who needs enemas!!!
Yeah, I hit Submit a little too quickly. Meh, they can't all be gems...
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Slashdot: Where "I don't agree with you" is synonymous with Troll/Flamebait
My /. Karma speaks for itself.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.