It is even more political than you think. The blog is off of the minority portion of the senate
committee web site. This is Sen. James Inhofe's stuff. Take a look at his campaign contributers:
http://opensecrets.org/politicians/allsector.asp?C ID=N00005582, Oil, Gas and Coal have him in their pocket.
I also remember those articles. They were based on the idea that ice ages are cyclic and we are due for another. I don't
remember if any of them suggested the ice age would hit maximum glaciation any time soon, but if they did they were out of sync with the
model they were discussing.
Astronomers have been pointing out for quite some time that the Sun is going to evolve into a red giant in about 4 billion
years. This is not alarmist, it's just a reflection of our understanding of stellar evolution. It does mean that the Earth will
become unihabitable.
Holding up the ice age articles and saying that science can't make up it's mind is pretty disingenous. Similarly, when people
bring up nuclear winter and say the same sort of thing, it is more talking points. It is important to look at the source of these
memes. In the present case (top article), it is Oil, Coal and Gas lapdog Sen. James Inhofe.
------
Discolsure: I have a personal finacial interest in ending global warming (see my home page).
The link comes from the minoirity in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
In other words, Sen. James Inhofe who's support comes from the coal and oil lobby. He as written
some amazingly lapdogish stuff and this could be more of the same. Comments further down
appear to bebunk what he's saying here. Better check those out before being stirred to outrage as he
intends.
The average value of a twin prime pair must even or else both members of the pair will be even and not prime.
The only even numbers which could be an average of a twin prime pair and lead to the pair members having different numbers of digits have the form 100...0 and the number one less than these is of the form 99...9 which is divisible by 3. QED.
The have been a lot of slashdot front page articles on global warming recently, and the number of comments
in each of these has been large. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 6/1455234 leads
Tuesday's comments at 567 comments, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 3/0049220 posted
on Jan 12 has 1073 comments. I'd say that that there is a mix of perspectives within the comments and the
large number of comments indicates a high level of interest. You may be correct that there is some trend to
cover this issue more closely, though the subject has also come up fairly frequently in the past, but it is
not such a bad thing for slashdot to post articles in which readers are interested.
You seem to be mixing different climate forcing mechanisms to end up in confusion.
I don't think you can point to evidence for CO2 concentrations of 8000 ppmv in the
post Cambrian history of the Earth regardless of the ice covering. Cyclic glaciation
may well be related to orbital dynamics, and it seems silly to bring this into a
discussion about the relationship between the CO2 concentration and surface temperatures
unless one is doing so to control for this seperate forcing. CO2 provides increased
infrared opacity in the atmosphere which traps heat, warming the surface. This is pretty
simple. Humans are mixing the biological and geological carbon cycles is a new way that
increases the atmospheric CO2 concentration. This is pretty simple too. What we are doing
is changing the climate.
You are correct that in situ measurements are extremely important. These
provide the ground truth against which remote sensing is calibrated.
The articles also mention cross calibration of satellites, which is also
important. One of the problems we're facing is that NOAA, NASA and
DOD have joined together to build satellites for weather monitoring and
prediction and they have run into trouble owing to their very
different procurement cultures. The Air Force procures to specs that
it sets while NASA iterates on specs before issuing contracts. This
means that the Air Force accepts bids on sometimes nearly unmeetable specs
while NASA is more certain that what is bid on can be delivered. Either
way works OK but in the Air Force method, one has to be ready to pay
for perfection since contractors are going to have to do extra engineering
to meet the specs. Putting the two together creates big problems because
the cost control culture at NASA conflicts with the cost overruns induced
by specs that can't be met with current technology.
These problems might be solved by picking one model of procurement or another,
Cheaper and Faster for NASA or Better and Faster for the Air Force.
What can't be done easily in situ is measurements of sea surface temperature,
land surface temeratures in remote locations, mid-atmosphere temperatures
and atmospheric composition with altitude. All of these are best done using
remote sensing as is ice monitoring, cloud cover monitirong, sea surface
wind monitoring and a number of other thing.
Inattention to the earth observing programs is very shortsighted and will
impact us tactically and stratigically as well shift the center of mass of
climate science out of the US.
It is true that the costs are external but is is not so easy to adjust the price at the point of purchase to
account for this. You can tax, as in Europe, and use the revenue for mitigation, but this makes a sin tax
and encourages continued use to retain the now public revenue stream. And, it is hard to imagine that a tax
that provides adequate mitigation would be tolerated. What is much more hopeful is that renewables are cheaper
now that fossil fuels. The company I sell for has only a few places where it won't compete with utilites
at the retail level and those are where renewable hydro makes retail electricity too cheap. So, the effect of
the tax might push this transition a little quicker, but a really robust tax is probably out of the question
and we need to mainly depend on the basic technology of renewables being superior.
It is true that there have been some who argue that stewardship of the
Earth is unimportant owing to the immanance of the apocalypse. The disposable Earth
theory, I guess. However Rev. Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals is a signatory to
Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action
http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/feb/evangelical/ calltoaction.pdf.
There is a diversity of views among christians, but the statement here is pretty stong.
"So here's a question: if we stopped emitting burning fossil fuels entirely, right now, would the earth start cooling?"
We don't really know. About half the CO2 from fossil fuels we put into the air is not staying there.
Most people think that is is disolving in the oceans, which are getting more acidic, but the accounting
is hard to do. If we stop burning fossil fuels, and avoid deforestation and such, it could be that
some portion of a current over concentration in the astmosphere with respect to disolved CO2 in the oceans
will be disolved in the oceans and atmospheric the CO2 concentration will drop leading to cooling.
On the other hand, the acceleration of the atmospheric CO2 concentration looks more like time to the power of time
rather than going like the rate of increase of fossil fuel burning. This is a hint, because the concentration
fluctuates. This could mean simply that sinks for CO2 are saturating, but you would still get some reduction
in the CO2 concentration if we stopped burning fossil fuels now. This could also mean that new souces of CO2
are beginning to dominate our contribution through fossil fuel burning. Potential sources are forest fires,
of which there have been a lot, or rotting thawed permafrost, or just generally increased rotting owing to
warmer temperatures. Destabilzation of methane trapped in ocean sediments might also be a large warming triggered
source.
We do know that it is not so hard to stop burning fossil fuels. You can look at my journal entries to see something
incredibly easy. Since it costs little to convert to renewables, and might even save some money, why sweat these
questions? Just convert and see if that does the trick.
Actually, you've left out that you're allowed to build just about any tools
you'd like to use to get at those questions. Just using you senses gets you
pretty far since it is pretty easy to hear a jet engine. Similarly with the
universe, the regular motions of the planets pretty much leads you to gravity
after a lot of thought. Closer measurement of Mercury ties into GR. Once you're
running experiments like WMAP, you're really on a roll. You're question isn't
silly at a deeper level since the stylish multiverse theories don't have
experimental tools to test them yet. But, there may even be echos of such
disconnected things that can be teased out. For now, when considering the
universe, you are stuck with the statistics of a sample of one. Some have
suggested that multiverses and deism have essentially equal logical weight
on account of this.
The review of the final chapter seems to me to downplay a pretty valid point:
If you have ever refereed a paper, you know that you can't much help approching
it like a term paper. You look for places to take points off. Visionary papers
are almost always unfinished and so get poor reviews. Perfectionist papers that
confirm what everyone thinks any way are harder to ding for points. (And are
more likely to be fraudulant.)
Smolin has urged at least one frind of mine to just publish a visionary work to
the archives rather than deal with a referee. This does not help with publication
metrics that people need to keep their jobs, but it does leave an open channel for
stuff that might not be wrong.
There is a whole lot of lore about this but I think you've
missed the main theme. Hunters go on expeditions and by
working in groups can handle big game like buffalo.
Gathers harvest non-agricultural materials, wild berries
and bark fibers and such.
I think you are thinking of post-resource-aquisition
fabrication.
The gender breakdown of hunters and gathers is not exclusive
and fabrication is even murkier.
Actually, a clock is very good. Sagan has pointed out that
as long as we have these weapons, their eventual use becomes
a statistical certainty. So, the clock will get to midnight
unless it is made irrelevant via total disarmament. Ralph
Nader's sister pointed out a long time ago that even just
nuclear power implies a perpetual security state. Perhaps to
make the clocks fully irrelevant, all nuclear waste must
be transmuted to stable isotopes so that the requirement for
state security structures can be relaxed to the point where
thinking of bombing someone just seems silly.
Ok, you're interested in lower fertility rather than mass murder.
I thought otherwise because you wanted a quick solution.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
Fertility is much more related to taboo than rationality.
Zero or negative population growth shows up most often in fully industrialized
societies where people tend to remain in school for much longer.
Aiming directly at fertility is bound to run into human rights
violations. China is a clear example. It is much better to accept
demographic projections and work on how all may live in comfort and without
fear. Projects like microcredit which focus on woman are probably the
most effective means to more rapid population stabilization.
Some of your suggestions for "rational" means are pretty scary.
Slashdot Mirror
It is even more political than you think. The blog is off of the minority portion of the senate committee web site. This is Sen. James Inhofe's stuff. Take a look at his campaign contributers: http://opensecrets.org/politicians/allsector.asp?C ID=N00005582, Oil, Gas and Coal have him in their pocket.
I also remember those articles. They were based on the idea that ice ages are cyclic and we are due for another. I don't remember if any of them suggested the ice age would hit maximum glaciation any time soon, but if they did they were out of sync with the model they were discussing.
Astronomers have been pointing out for quite some time that the Sun is going to evolve into a red giant in about 4 billion years. This is not alarmist, it's just a reflection of our understanding of stellar evolution. It does mean that the Earth will become unihabitable.
Holding up the ice age articles and saying that science can't make up it's mind is pretty disingenous. Similarly, when people bring up nuclear winter and say the same sort of thing, it is more talking points. It is important to look at the source of these memes. In the present case (top article), it is Oil, Coal and Gas lapdog Sen. James Inhofe.
------
Discolsure: I have a personal finacial interest in ending global warming (see my home page).
The link comes from the minoirity in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
In other words, Sen. James Inhofe who's support comes from the coal and oil lobby. He as written some amazingly lapdogish stuff and this could be more of the same. Comments further down appear to bebunk what he's saying here. Better check those out before being stirred to outrage as he intends.
Actually, it appears to be conservatives who are most upset about this. http://slashdot.org/~mdsolar/journal/160016, posted more than two hours prior to the parent, links to a National Review article on the subject. I'll relink here: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDUxMzM5NmNiM jFkMThhMjgzZjhmMDkyZGVmYzBhZjk
No, actually -2 if you are taking them in numerical order.
Proof:
The average value of a twin prime pair must even or else both members of the pair will be even and not prime.
The only even numbers which could be an average of a twin prime pair and lead to the pair members having different
numbers of digits have the form 100...0 and the number one less than these is of the form 99...9 which is divisible
by 3. QED.
How trivial, yet fun.
Here's the obligitory mention of http://stepitup2007.org/ for those who would like to participate.
Sign up to help organize an event where you live. Reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2050.
The have been a lot of slashdot front page articles on global warming recently, and the number of comments in each of these has been large. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 6/1455234 leads
Tuesday's comments at 567 comments, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 3/0049220 posted
on Jan 12 has 1073 comments. I'd say that that there is a mix of perspectives within the comments and the
large number of comments indicates a high level of interest. You may be correct that there is some trend to
cover this issue more closely, though the subject has also come up fairly frequently in the past, but it is
not such a bad thing for slashdot to post articles in which readers are interested.
You seem to be mixing different climate forcing mechanisms to end up in confusion. I don't think you can point to evidence for CO2 concentrations of 8000 ppmv in the post Cambrian history of the Earth regardless of the ice covering. Cyclic glaciation may well be related to orbital dynamics, and it seems silly to bring this into a discussion about the relationship between the CO2 concentration and surface temperatures unless one is doing so to control for this seperate forcing. CO2 provides increased infrared opacity in the atmosphere which traps heat, warming the surface. This is pretty simple. Humans are mixing the biological and geological carbon cycles is a new way that increases the atmospheric CO2 concentration. This is pretty simple too. What we are doing is changing the climate.
You are correct that in situ measurements are extremely important. These provide the ground truth against which remote sensing is calibrated. The articles also mention cross calibration of satellites, which is also important. One of the problems we're facing is that NOAA, NASA and DOD have joined together to build satellites for weather monitoring and prediction and they have run into trouble owing to their very different procurement cultures. The Air Force procures to specs that it sets while NASA iterates on specs before issuing contracts. This means that the Air Force accepts bids on sometimes nearly unmeetable specs while NASA is more certain that what is bid on can be delivered. Either way works OK but in the Air Force method, one has to be ready to pay for perfection since contractors are going to have to do extra engineering to meet the specs. Putting the two together creates big problems because the cost control culture at NASA conflicts with the cost overruns induced by specs that can't be met with current technology. These problems might be solved by picking one model of procurement or another, Cheaper and Faster for NASA or Better and Faster for the Air Force.
What can't be done easily in situ is measurements of sea surface temperature, land surface temeratures in remote locations, mid-atmosphere temperatures and atmospheric composition with altitude. All of these are best done using remote sensing as is ice monitoring, cloud cover monitirong, sea surface wind monitoring and a number of other thing.
Inattention to the earth observing programs is very shortsighted and will impact us tactically and stratigically as well shift the center of mass of climate science out of the US.
It is true that the costs are external but is is not so easy to adjust the price at the point of purchase to account for this. You can tax, as in Europe, and use the revenue for mitigation, but this makes a sin tax and encourages continued use to retain the now public revenue stream. And, it is hard to imagine that a tax that provides adequate mitigation would be tolerated. What is much more hopeful is that renewables are cheaper now that fossil fuels. The company I sell for has only a few places where it won't compete with utilites at the retail level and those are where renewable hydro makes retail electricity too cheap. So, the effect of the tax might push this transition a little quicker, but a really robust tax is probably out of the question and we need to mainly depend on the basic technology of renewables being superior.
It is true that there have been some who argue that stewardship of the Earth is unimportant owing to the immanance of the apocalypse. The disposable Earth theory, I guess. However Rev. Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals is a signatory to Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/feb/evangelical/ calltoaction.pdf.
There is a diversity of views among christians, but the statement here is pretty stong.
For those interested in the politics of global warming, http://stepitup2007.org/ is having a great big get together on April 14.
"So here's a question: if we stopped emitting burning fossil fuels entirely, right now, would the earth start cooling?"
We don't really know. About half the CO2 from fossil fuels we put into the air is not staying there. Most people think that is is disolving in the oceans, which are getting more acidic, but the accounting is hard to do. If we stop burning fossil fuels, and avoid deforestation and such, it could be that some portion of a current over concentration in the astmosphere with respect to disolved CO2 in the oceans will be disolved in the oceans and atmospheric the CO2 concentration will drop leading to cooling.
On the other hand, the acceleration of the atmospheric CO2 concentration looks more like time to the power of time rather than going like the rate of increase of fossil fuel burning. This is a hint, because the concentration fluctuates. This could mean simply that sinks for CO2 are saturating, but you would still get some reduction in the CO2 concentration if we stopped burning fossil fuels now. This could also mean that new souces of CO2 are beginning to dominate our contribution through fossil fuel burning. Potential sources are forest fires, of which there have been a lot, or rotting thawed permafrost, or just generally increased rotting owing to warmer temperatures. Destabilzation of methane trapped in ocean sediments might also be a large warming triggered source.
We do know that it is not so hard to stop burning fossil fuels. You can look at my journal entries to see something incredibly easy. Since it costs little to convert to renewables, and might even save some money, why sweat these questions? Just convert and see if that does the trick.
Thanks, now Où est-ce que j'ai laissé ma tete?
"where did I put mu glasses" in French?
Actually, you've left out that you're allowed to build just about any tools you'd like to use to get at those questions. Just using you senses gets you pretty far since it is pretty easy to hear a jet engine. Similarly with the universe, the regular motions of the planets pretty much leads you to gravity after a lot of thought. Closer measurement of Mercury ties into GR. Once you're running experiments like WMAP, you're really on a roll. You're question isn't silly at a deeper level since the stylish multiverse theories don't have experimental tools to test them yet. But, there may even be echos of such disconnected things that can be teased out. For now, when considering the universe, you are stuck with the statistics of a sample of one. Some have suggested that multiverses and deism have essentially equal logical weight on account of this.
The review of the final chapter seems to me to downplay a pretty valid point:
If you have ever refereed a paper, you know that you can't much help approching it like a term paper. You look for places to take points off. Visionary papers are almost always unfinished and so get poor reviews. Perfectionist papers that confirm what everyone thinks any way are harder to ding for points. (And are more likely to be fraudulant.)
Smolin has urged at least one frind of mine to just publish a visionary work to the archives rather than deal with a referee. This does not help with publication metrics that people need to keep their jobs, but it does leave an open channel for stuff that might not be wrong.
Rather than sour grapes, I'd call it honesty.
There is a whole lot of lore about this but I think you've missed the main theme. Hunters go on expeditions and by working in groups can handle big game like buffalo.
Gathers harvest non-agricultural materials, wild berries and bark fibers and such.
I think you are thinking of post-resource-aquisition fabrication.
The gender breakdown of hunters and gathers is not exclusive and fabrication is even murkier.
A counter example is Harvard's failure to promote Mageret Geller./ 5443/1277?ck=nck
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/286
True, astronomy does not come into the prize metric, but her work
on dark matter is revolutionary despite requiring a lot of gathering,
I saw this on TV, two goofy guys pretending to be computers.
One kept on pretending to freeze up.
I remember one of them was pretending to be a Mac.
This was suppose to be make you laugh.
This is not a bug, just a feature to make you giggle --kernels can't panic.
Actually, a clock is very good. Sagan has pointed out that as long as we have these weapons, their eventual use becomes a statistical certainty. So, the clock will get to midnight unless it is made irrelevant via total disarmament. Ralph Nader's sister pointed out a long time ago that even just nuclear power implies a perpetual security state. Perhaps to make the clocks fully irrelevant, all nuclear waste must be transmuted to stable isotopes so that the requirement for state security structures can be relaxed to the point where thinking of bombing someone just seems silly.
Actually, and India-Pakistan conflict would raise enough
soot into the atmosphere to cool the surface for several
years.
Shortened growing seasons would likely lead to famine, especially
now that world grain reserves are quite low.
Yup. But in time rather than space.
Ok, you're interested in lower fertility rather than mass murder. I thought otherwise because you wanted a quick solution. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
Fertility is much more related to taboo than rationality. Zero or negative population growth shows up most often in fully industrialized societies where people tend to remain in school for much longer.
Aiming directly at fertility is bound to run into human rights violations. China is a clear example. It is much better to accept demographic projections and work on how all may live in comfort and without fear. Projects like microcredit which focus on woman are probably the most effective means to more rapid population stabilization.
Some of your suggestions for "rational" means are pretty scary.