No, but I can reach out my hand to bitchslap you and take your orange. Mathematically, you losing an orange (4-1) is equivalent to me giving you -1 oranges:)
One thing all climatologists do agree on is that global warming is FAR from proven and any clue as to cause and consequence is mere conjecture, the reliability of which is anybody's guess.
As someone who went to grad school in climatology, I have to say, in a word: No. Most of us have personally read the actual scientific studies and not the media "report", and our findings are that climate change really is happening. We also don't disagree with the finding that this is due to humans more than doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past 150 years. This work has been supported by studies in climate science and geology, so it's not just one field of science. These are settled matters within the climate science community, and any efforts to stir up that there's a "debate" is sensationalist media misrepresenting science. What is up for debate is the outcome of climate change and what should (and can) be done. Clearly things are changing, but the picture of how things will change is just beginning to become clear, and so most scientists choose to voice caution: we don't know for certain what is going to happen, but we might want to think about what we're doing because rapid change is likely to be bad (and expensive).
Didn't I hear This Skeptical Piece on BBC Radio? (The piece points out that only the most sensationalist theories from the papers are actually reported by the media, and that the real data is almost never reported. Furthermore, there is a push by global warming scientists to publish irresponsibly the most outlandish theories in their 'abstracts' (which is all the media ever reads) so they can get publicity and therefore grants.).
I'll give you the sensationalism on the part of the media, as far as the rest I'm going to kindly ask you to stop talking out of your ass. Calling the character of climate scientists into question is the most common hack for people who can't produce any valid scientific counter-arguments. A great deal of scientific "reporting" in this area does little justice to the actual science they're reporting on. I'm going to call FUD on the "push by global warming scientists". We go through the same peer review process as any other branch of science, we don't publish our most "outlandish" theories, we publish what we find. Actually, a great deal of restraint is exercised by most scientists due to the political nature of the field. There are of course a couple of people who will do something sensational (i.e. the man who claimed a link between hurricanes and global warming), but this happens in other fields too. When it does, the community usually self-polices: i.e. this man took a lot of flak for inside the community precisely because his work was a little too speculative and did some hard to his credibility with the rest of the community.
I brought up reproduction... i.e. the possibility of synthesizing this compound via a genetically engineered organism, hence the scaremongering response.
Read my original comment on hypothetically genetically engineering organisms to produce the catalyst to do this and subsequent discussion. I might also suggest reading through the entire thread of a conversation vs. replying to the last comment. It tends to make more sense that way.
It has, it's called photosynthesis. Granted, here you're not liberating free hydrogen. But to counter the GP argument of using up all water on earth... can you imagine how incredibly unstable the local environment would become for one of these organisms in the wild? They'd be very liable to kill themselves off either through pH changes or simply setting their environment on fire if they reproduced unchecked. That combined with the fact you could never split all the water on earth faster than it will recombine if sunlight is your only energy input.
Both universities I've attended did something similar to this. However, on the upside, if it was anything like my universities's deals, this meant free access to MS Office and XP Pro (soon to be Vista), which aren't so cheap to obtain legally, especially given many pre-assembled computers don't come with Office anymore. The best part of the deal was you were allowed to burn your own CD of the software, and while technically the license expires when you leave the university there's no built in self-destruct like some companies (I think Matlab or Mathematica do this) to force you to buy a "full" version. As long as you have the CD, reinstall to your heart's content. I didn't find it to be such a bad deal. Even if you do prefer Linux, most people find it useful to have Windows and other MS software available. I don't think this is a 'pirate tax' so much as most universities simply find it useful to have blanket licenses for everyone there.
While that's true in some sense, the water vapor feedback on the greenhouse effect is poorly understood as of yet, both in terms of the actual physics and being able to model it well. Its distribution is very non-uniform in space and time, and it can have either a positive or negative contribution depending on a variety of factors (condensation, cloud formation, etc. etc.). A lot more study is necessary to make anything close to a definitive statement on the role of water in global warming. We have identified a few of the possible mechanisms, but the net contribution has yet to be determined.
I'll bite... global temperature is an equilibrium between energy coming in from sunlight and energy going out via radiation, the inputs from our energy production are still as of yet miniscule. What determines temperature is how efficiently Earth can re-radiate all of the incoming solar energy. Think of it this way:
Energy radiated = (some factors determining efficiency)*(temperature)
The actual equation is of course not linear in temp, but you get the idea. In order to maintain equilibrium Earth must radiate just as much energy going out as coming in, so the left side of this equation is fixed. So if you make Earth less efficient at radiating energy (i.e. by covering it in CO2 or methane), temperature goes up to compensate. What makes fusion a "solution" to global warming is we aren't pumping the atmosphere full of CO2 by burning fossil fuels anymore.
I played AO for like a month. Did they ever get around to actually adding some graphics to that game? Last time I played every spell looked EXACTLY the same.
Alternatively, I could turn this around and say that typically people who aren't pro-Palestine hate the place because it's "full of Arabs".
-OR-
It could also be because you disagree with how Israel handles conflict with Palestinians and has nothing to do with them being Jewish. Just a thought before you run off accusing people of being anti- whatever.
Temperatures _are_ higher. Ever open a warm beer? CO2 increases at warmer temperatures.
You've missed one subtle point... the total concentration of CO2 water can dissolve at saturation does decrease with increasing temperature. However, Earth's oceans are nowhere near saturation. In fact, they are one of the largest CO2 sinks in most climate models, but that's a reservoir which is rapidly filling up.
we emit annually about 0.070 kg/m2 (world average) into an atmospheric CO2 inventory of 5.4 kg/m2. 77 years of current [max] burning! And both are negligible compared to rain scrubbing of 800 kg/m2.
Have sources for those numbers? Also, the removal of CO2 via rain is mostly a net change of zero, given this thing called the hydrological cycle. That water eventually evaporates and whatever CO2 it had dissolved goes right back into the atmosphere, minus the small fraction that does react to form an inert species (i.e. via weathering of certain rocks).
P.S. as an aside to someone mentioning 1% of slashdotters having a degree in climate science... I actually do and I can tell you it's a very small field, I'd be surprised if it were even 0.1% of the people here.
Not to go ruining perfectly wonderful Bush/Katrina/goatse discussions by talking about science, but I thought I'd point out why this is actually really interesting to a lot of people outside of NASA. There are a large subset of people studying the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn because they provide really nice examples of atmospheric processes on Earth under more "ideal" circumstances. The typical storm on Jupiter or Saturn behaves much more similarly to a mid-latitude storm on Earth from a fluid mechanics point of view, meaning their energy source is related to temperature gradients or horizontal wind-shear. This is the first example of a system that behaves much more like a tropical storm does on Earth, which feed on latent energy. On Earth these systems depend critically on moisture and condensation (hence their connection with the ocean), so I'd be very very interested to find out what is the energy source for this storm on Saturn. It implies that either there is an upwelling heat source or some sort of condensable species in the atmosphere of Saturn, given the mechanics of this type of storm depend on latent heat release to form.
'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.'
The point of Maher doing this is to expose the blatant hipocrisy that is going on. The current Republican leadership has been hostile towards gay and lesbian people and their rights. They pander to an audience of religious fundamentalists on a platform that alienates a minority group while being part of that group themselves. If they kept their own internal struggles and self-loathing private then I'd say they have a right to privacy. However, as it stands their public actions and policies have the potential to make life miserable for a group of people so their hipocrisy deserves to be brought under public scrutiny. Just because the minority group happens to be gays doesn't make this ok, there would be an uproar if you had a black man advocating segregation or making interracial marriages illegal, for example.
All of the incumbents in the districts he featured were re-elected, but not everyone he interviewed. Sometimes, as in the case of Waxman (my rep), he interviewed the "challenger" because the incumbent couldn't be bothered to interview.;) Basically none of the districts he chose were in any way truly competitive.
I believe the word you are looking for is rhetoric. I'm not sure who Rick is or why he's red, especially since the Democratic party is traditionally blue.
1. grant money for global warming is more abundant when folks agree it exists.
As someone who worked in this field, I have to point out just how flat out wrong this is. Climate science is a very small fraction of the total research money out there, ignoring the fact that grant money != profit for the researcher. As a subject of study, global warming in particular has been singled out by political forces, and a number of reputable scientists who support global warming have been the targets of character assassination, or if they worked for the EPA simply no longer had a job.
1. grant money for global warming is more abundant when folks agree it exists.
This is true in all areas of science, yet science still manages to get done because most scientists are afraid of the blowhards.
3. the herd effect - some folks just don't take risks by thinking "out of the box."
I'd say the first scientists to propose anthropogenic global warming were thinking outside the box. It's not like a bunch of scientists got together and said, "You know what'd be a great hoax?"
Maybe you have to be a climate scientist to understand differently, but as I understand things, actual data trumps extrapolated data.
Yes and no. Depends how you have spaced your "actual" data. If you take 10,000 measurements in the northern hemisphere, you really don't know what's going on in the southern hemisphere. However, if you take 1000 samples spread in some reasonable fashion over the globe, you get a pretty good feel for the global trends.
I don't know about satellite data. How is done?
In general, you launch a satellite in orbit and point its instruments back at earth.
Is it accurate? What kind of sample size are we talking about? Is it accurate for measuring surface temperatures?
As someone who has run global climate models and played with actual meteorological data sets, let me say yes, they are accurate. They generally provide wider area coverage than any ground based observing station, and they are used to measure surface temps (especially for the ocean).
Also high-altitude temps are not the problem. The problem, according to global warming alarmists, are the melting ice caps and higher water temps that are killing coral reefs. In other words, surface phenomena. High altitude temps may be interesting indicators
Let me assure you, high altitude temps have a very very real impact on surface temperature. Fluctuations in the temperature of the upper troposphere have a very real impact on things like jet streams, which have a very real impact on what conditions are like at the surface.
Nanoblackhole meet Stephen Hawking. His (unproven) theory of black hole radiation predicts nanoblackholes would have a lifetime measured in nanoseconds. If he's correct, we don't have a lot to worry about until we can make black holes that actually have some mass to them. A black hole that could be created at the LHC would have an event horizon smaller than a proton. Tell me, just how does it swallow anything at all?
Re:Who would have thought that
on
The Hubble Lives On
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Keck does exceed Hubble's capabilities for most practical and scientific purposes, and definitely with the dramatic improvement of adaptive optics technology some of the impetus for an optical space telescope is gone. That said, AO isn't perfect so there are still some uses for Hubble. AO can correct for a great deal of atmospheric turbulence, but Hubble still provides more stable images than current AO. Things like the deep field images still aren't terribly practical with a telescope such as Keck because sky brightness is less severe in space, particularly in certain parts of the spectrum (a factor of 600 at 1.5 microns). Also, certain bands are still severely attenuated by the atmosphere even at the altitude of the Keck observatory (and remember, most of the suitable land-based sites are already taken). Keck is a more sensitive telescope owing to its size, so it can detect fainter objects, but remember, we're comparing a two 10m telescopes to a telescope that's around 2.5m. If we put something even modestly larger than Hubble in space it would still be better than Keck for imaging.
Slashdot Mirror
Do tell, what is so hard to comprehend here? Sea ice has been retreating at an ever-increasing rate. This is well documented.
True, but at least we will get some new shipping lanes out of it.
As someone who went to grad school in climatology, I have to say, in a word: No. Most of us have personally read the actual scientific studies and not the media "report", and our findings are that climate change really is happening. We also don't disagree with the finding that this is due to humans more than doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the past 150 years. This work has been supported by studies in climate science and geology, so it's not just one field of science. These are settled matters within the climate science community, and any efforts to stir up that there's a "debate" is sensationalist media misrepresenting science. What is up for debate is the outcome of climate change and what should (and can) be done. Clearly things are changing, but the picture of how things will change is just beginning to become clear, and so most scientists choose to voice caution: we don't know for certain what is going to happen, but we might want to think about what we're doing because rapid change is likely to be bad (and expensive).
I'll give you the sensationalism on the part of the media, as far as the rest I'm going to kindly ask you to stop talking out of your ass. Calling the character of climate scientists into question is the most common hack for people who can't produce any valid scientific counter-arguments. A great deal of scientific "reporting" in this area does little justice to the actual science they're reporting on. I'm going to call FUD on the "push by global warming scientists". We go through the same peer review process as any other branch of science, we don't publish our most "outlandish" theories, we publish what we find. Actually, a great deal of restraint is exercised by most scientists due to the political nature of the field. There are of course a couple of people who will do something sensational (i.e. the man who claimed a link between hurricanes and global warming), but this happens in other fields too. When it does, the community usually self-polices: i.e. this man took a lot of flak for inside the community precisely because his work was a little too speculative and did some hard to his credibility with the rest of the community.
I brought up reproduction... i.e. the possibility of synthesizing this compound via a genetically engineered organism, hence the scaremongering response.
Read my original comment on hypothetically genetically engineering organisms to produce the catalyst to do this and subsequent discussion. I might also suggest reading through the entire thread of a conversation vs. replying to the last comment. It tends to make more sense that way.
It has, it's called photosynthesis. Granted, here you're not liberating free hydrogen. But to counter the GP argument of using up all water on earth... can you imagine how incredibly unstable the local environment would become for one of these organisms in the wild? They'd be very liable to kill themselves off either through pH changes or simply setting their environment on fire if they reproduced unchecked. That combined with the fact you could never split all the water on earth faster than it will recombine if sunlight is your only energy input.
Well, we're getting pretty good at genetically engineering simple organisms to produce things like this on their own.... (think BT corn).
Blatant sex... as in having Justin Long get naked on tv? I don't think you want that.... well, some of us might, but that's another story.
Both universities I've attended did something similar to this. However, on the upside, if it was anything like my universities's deals, this meant free access to MS Office and XP Pro (soon to be Vista), which aren't so cheap to obtain legally, especially given many pre-assembled computers don't come with Office anymore. The best part of the deal was you were allowed to burn your own CD of the software, and while technically the license expires when you leave the university there's no built in self-destruct like some companies (I think Matlab or Mathematica do this) to force you to buy a "full" version. As long as you have the CD, reinstall to your heart's content. I didn't find it to be such a bad deal. Even if you do prefer Linux, most people find it useful to have Windows and other MS software available. I don't think this is a 'pirate tax' so much as most universities simply find it useful to have blanket licenses for everyone there.
While that's true in some sense, the water vapor feedback on the greenhouse effect is poorly understood as of yet, both in terms of the actual physics and being able to model it well. Its distribution is very non-uniform in space and time, and it can have either a positive or negative contribution depending on a variety of factors (condensation, cloud formation, etc. etc.). A lot more study is necessary to make anything close to a definitive statement on the role of water in global warming. We have identified a few of the possible mechanisms, but the net contribution has yet to be determined.
I'll bite... global temperature is an equilibrium between energy coming in from sunlight and energy going out via radiation, the inputs from our energy production are still as of yet miniscule. What determines temperature is how efficiently Earth can re-radiate all of the incoming solar energy. Think of it this way:
Energy radiated = (some factors determining efficiency)*(temperature)
The actual equation is of course not linear in temp, but you get the idea. In order to maintain equilibrium Earth must radiate just as much energy going out as coming in, so the left side of this equation is fixed. So if you make Earth less efficient at radiating energy (i.e. by covering it in CO2 or methane), temperature goes up to compensate. What makes fusion a "solution" to global warming is we aren't pumping the atmosphere full of CO2 by burning fossil fuels anymore.
I played AO for like a month. Did they ever get around to actually adding some graphics to that game? Last time I played every spell looked EXACTLY the same.
If it's Friday night and you don't otherwise know your friend is at the bar down the street, how do you know he wants you to drop by?
Hmmm.... so in order to actually track someone do you have to agree to sign up for their "sexy webcams" service?
Alternatively, I could turn this around and say that typically people who aren't pro-Palestine hate the place because it's "full of Arabs".
-OR-
It could also be because you disagree with how Israel handles conflict with Palestinians and has nothing to do with them being Jewish. Just a thought before you run off accusing people of being anti- whatever.
You've missed one subtle point... the total concentration of CO2 water can dissolve at saturation does decrease with increasing temperature. However, Earth's oceans are nowhere near saturation. In fact, they are one of the largest CO2 sinks in most climate models, but that's a reservoir which is rapidly filling up.
Have sources for those numbers? Also, the removal of CO2 via rain is mostly a net change of zero, given this thing called the hydrological cycle. That water eventually evaporates and whatever CO2 it had dissolved goes right back into the atmosphere, minus the small fraction that does react to form an inert species (i.e. via weathering of certain rocks).
P.S. as an aside to someone mentioning 1% of slashdotters having a degree in climate science... I actually do and I can tell you it's a very small field, I'd be surprised if it were even 0.1% of the people here.
Not to go ruining perfectly wonderful Bush/Katrina/goatse discussions by talking about science, but I thought I'd point out why this is actually really interesting to a lot of people outside of NASA. There are a large subset of people studying the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn because they provide really nice examples of atmospheric processes on Earth under more "ideal" circumstances. The typical storm on Jupiter or Saturn behaves much more similarly to a mid-latitude storm on Earth from a fluid mechanics point of view, meaning their energy source is related to temperature gradients or horizontal wind-shear. This is the first example of a system that behaves much more like a tropical storm does on Earth, which feed on latent energy. On Earth these systems depend critically on moisture and condensation (hence their connection with the ocean), so I'd be very very interested to find out what is the energy source for this storm on Saturn. It implies that either there is an upwelling heat source or some sort of condensable species in the atmosphere of Saturn, given the mechanics of this type of storm depend on latent heat release to form.
The point of Maher doing this is to expose the blatant hipocrisy that is going on. The current Republican leadership has been hostile towards gay and lesbian people and their rights. They pander to an audience of religious fundamentalists on a platform that alienates a minority group while being part of that group themselves. If they kept their own internal struggles and self-loathing private then I'd say they have a right to privacy. However, as it stands their public actions and policies have the potential to make life miserable for a group of people so their hipocrisy deserves to be brought under public scrutiny. Just because the minority group happens to be gays doesn't make this ok, there would be an uproar if you had a black man advocating segregation or making interracial marriages illegal, for example.
All of the incumbents in the districts he featured were re-elected, but not everyone he interviewed. Sometimes, as in the case of Waxman (my rep), he interviewed the "challenger" because the incumbent couldn't be bothered to interview. ;) Basically none of the districts he chose were in any way truly competitive.
I believe the word you are looking for is rhetoric. I'm not sure who Rick is or why he's red, especially since the Democratic party is traditionally blue.
As someone who worked in this field, I have to point out just how flat out wrong this is. Climate science is a very small fraction of the total research money out there, ignoring the fact that grant money != profit for the researcher. As a subject of study, global warming in particular has been singled out by political forces, and a number of reputable scientists who support global warming have been the targets of character assassination, or if they worked for the EPA simply no longer had a job.
This is true in all areas of science, yet science still manages to get done because most scientists are afraid of the blowhards.
I'd say the first scientists to propose anthropogenic global warming were thinking outside the box. It's not like a bunch of scientists got together and said, "You know what'd be a great hoax?"
Yes and no. Depends how you have spaced your "actual" data. If you take 10,000 measurements in the northern hemisphere, you really don't know what's going on in the southern hemisphere. However, if you take 1000 samples spread in some reasonable fashion over the globe, you get a pretty good feel for the global trends.
In general, you launch a satellite in orbit and point its instruments back at earth.
As someone who has run global climate models and played with actual meteorological data sets, let me say yes, they are accurate. They generally provide wider area coverage than any ground based observing station, and they are used to measure surface temps (especially for the ocean).
Let me assure you, high altitude temps have a very very real impact on surface temperature. Fluctuations in the temperature of the upper troposphere have a very real impact on things like jet streams, which have a very real impact on what conditions are like at the surface.Nanoblackhole meet Stephen Hawking. His (unproven) theory of black hole radiation predicts nanoblackholes would have a lifetime measured in nanoseconds. If he's correct, we don't have a lot to worry about until we can make black holes that actually have some mass to them. A black hole that could be created at the LHC would have an event horizon smaller than a proton. Tell me, just how does it swallow anything at all?
Keck does exceed Hubble's capabilities for most practical and scientific purposes, and definitely with the dramatic improvement of adaptive optics technology some of the impetus for an optical space telescope is gone. That said, AO isn't perfect so there are still some uses for Hubble. AO can correct for a great deal of atmospheric turbulence, but Hubble still provides more stable images than current AO. Things like the deep field images still aren't terribly practical with a telescope such as Keck because sky brightness is less severe in space, particularly in certain parts of the spectrum (a factor of 600 at 1.5 microns). Also, certain bands are still severely attenuated by the atmosphere even at the altitude of the Keck observatory (and remember, most of the suitable land-based sites are already taken). Keck is a more sensitive telescope owing to its size, so it can detect fainter objects, but remember, we're comparing a two 10m telescopes to a telescope that's around 2.5m. If we put something even modestly larger than Hubble in space it would still be better than Keck for imaging.