A newer, safer tank car has been designed and is available but the railroads don't have any mandate to use it and are only slowly replacing the thousands of older models as they age out of the fleet.
The EROEI is much lower for tar sands oil than other petroleum sources. It takes a lot of energy to liquify the tar sands and it has to be diluted or kept warm to pump via a pipeline.
I would prefer the KXL pipeline doesn't get built but in the end I'm not sure it matters. This is a problem that needs to be tackled from the demand side. As long as there is strong enough demand the supply will be provided one way or another (until it runs out or gets to costly to use). If demand is reduced enough the KXL just becomes another albatross.
The reason more refineries haven't been built in the USA is because we already have enough. The ones that exist have had no problem keeping up with demand. It wouldn't surprise me if some existing refineries have been upgraded to higher capacity though.
A buses cross sectional area may be 3 times that of a car but it's capable of carrying 8 or 10 times the number of passengers so it still wins for efficiency.
California at present gets less than half of its electricity from fossil fuel sources and most of that is from natural gas. According to Wikipedia in 2011 8.4% of their electricity was from coal and 36.5% was from natural gas. I can only presume based on California politics that those percentages have dropped a bit since then.
Often what settled means in science is that the scientists have moved on to using the settled part to build upon and extend the field. In that process of extending the field if there is something fundamentally wrong with the settled science it will be discovered. The more things that are built on top of the settled science the more settled it becomes.
As Sique says you started with the outlier year of 1998 which is called cherry picking. The fact is that if you statistically analyze the trend from 1998 it's impossible to say whether the warming trend has continued as before or the warming trend has stopped. Both statements fit within the uncertainty of the statistical analysis. That just shows that 17 years is too short a time for conclusive statistical statements in this area.
The problem is not that they [climate models] don't agree with each other, but that they have trouble agreeing with what we actually observe.
And yet they come closer to agreeing with what we observe than any other methodology we have. When you have something that does a better job than current climate model I'll start listening to you.
Maybe you can pay for lots of scientists but all the money in the world won't change the underlying empirical truth of science and in the end that's what wins in science. Most scientists are intelligent enough to know this and thus won't promote science they know to be wrong.
I'm perfectly capable of exercising my rights on behalf of the corporation I work for if I choose to without the corporation having any rights on its own.
But the next chapter is built on the previous chapter. Something that is more or less settled in science is something to build on and extend the science even further. If we spent all of our time on things that are already settled we wouldn't be advancing the science.
Thus, attempts to claim that the science is settled are attempts to shut down the scientific process.
Not really. That may happen occasionally but mostly it's about efficiency. If something is settled in science, that is if few the practitioners are debating that aspect any more, it would be a waste of resources to expend much effort on it. That said a few contrarians is probably a good thing to keep the rest honest.
People come up with theories, they get refined, debugged, and eventually tagged as a release candidate.
You're using "theories" in the common usage sense. In science what you're talking about are called hypotheses. The transition from hypothesis to theory happens after it's "tagged as a release candidate".
When it comes to using the term "settled science" you really need to define exactly what it is you're talking about. In a large complex field like climate science some things are settled and many are not so you can't apply "settled science" to it as a whole, just certain aspects of it. As you said (to paraphrase) settled means very few of the practitioners in a field are still debating that aspect of it. It's probably valuable to always have a few contrarians to challenge the consensus but they don't overturn it very often.
Newton's Laws handle friction just fine. You just have to include the forces caused by friction in your calculation. Of course that may be difficult but in theory it's not impossible.
No, the use of the term "law" in science is an old usage that doesn't get applied much any more. Theory and law essentially have the same meaning in science, that is something with lots of evidence to back it up and little evidence to reject it. What hasn't been relatively "settled" is science is generally called a hypothesis.
I don't dislike the Beatles but I think their music is highly overrated.
Maybe you had to be there. I was about 10 years old when The Beatles hit the scene. Not all of their music is great but much of it was really groundbreaking at the time. Same thing for the Stones.
Most of the concerts I go to lately are at small venues (~50 people) and they tend to be string band music so the volume isn't a problem and I'm close to the artists so I can really appreciate their artistry. I've been to a number of concerts in my life that I can still close my eyes and transport myself back to them. BB King making love to Lucille (that's his name for his guitar) where I was in the front row. Back before I was really in to classical music I went to see Van Cliburn just because he was such a big name and he just blew me away with his playing. I could go on.
I spend plenty of time not listening to music. I often go on week long whitewater rafting trips where we only have music is someone brings instruments along. In my car I listen to NPR more than anything else and they don't have a lot of music.
I understand that some people like you aren't that in to music but for me it's an integral part of my life. Different strokes for different folks as they say.
Have to agree with this. As I've aged my musical perspective has broadened to the point where I can find something to like in just about any genre of music. Not sure I've ever hear a Bieber song. Listening to Beethoven's 9th at the moment.
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A newer, safer tank car has been designed and is available but the railroads don't have any mandate to use it and are only slowly replacing the thousands of older models as they age out of the fleet.
I think the article is more about the oil from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, USA than any Canadian production.
The EROEI is much lower for tar sands oil than other petroleum sources. It takes a lot of energy to liquify the tar sands and it has to be diluted or kept warm to pump via a pipeline.
I would prefer the KXL pipeline doesn't get built but in the end I'm not sure it matters. This is a problem that needs to be tackled from the demand side. As long as there is strong enough demand the supply will be provided one way or another (until it runs out or gets to costly to use). If demand is reduced enough the KXL just becomes another albatross.
The reason more refineries haven't been built in the USA is because we already have enough. The ones that exist have had no problem keeping up with demand. It wouldn't surprise me if some existing refineries have been upgraded to higher capacity though.
People say this all the time but an ICE is one of the least efficient ways to generate electricity, especially in the fossil fuel genre.
A buses cross sectional area may be 3 times that of a car but it's capable of carrying 8 or 10 times the number of passengers so it still wins for efficiency.
Excellent comment but I still find it grating when the word "break" gets used where "brake" is correct and vice versa.
California at present gets less than half of its electricity from fossil fuel sources and most of that is from natural gas. According to Wikipedia in 2011 8.4% of their electricity was from coal and 36.5% was from natural gas. I can only presume based on California politics that those percentages have dropped a bit since then.
Now if we can just protect it from Google spying.
Latour is still wrong.
Often what settled means in science is that the scientists have moved on to using the settled part to build upon and extend the field. In that process of extending the field if there is something fundamentally wrong with the settled science it will be discovered. The more things that are built on top of the settled science the more settled it becomes.
No, North Korea and China simply have faith in different things than we do.
As Sique says you started with the outlier year of 1998 which is called cherry picking. The fact is that if you statistically analyze the trend from 1998 it's impossible to say whether the warming trend has continued as before or the warming trend has stopped. Both statements fit within the uncertainty of the statistical analysis. That just shows that 17 years is too short a time for conclusive statistical statements in this area.
The problem is not that they [climate models] don't agree with each other, but that they have trouble agreeing with what we actually observe.
And yet they come closer to agreeing with what we observe than any other methodology we have. When you have something that does a better job than current climate model I'll start listening to you.
Maybe you can pay for lots of scientists but all the money in the world won't change the underlying empirical truth of science and in the end that's what wins in science. Most scientists are intelligent enough to know this and thus won't promote science they know to be wrong.
I'm perfectly capable of exercising my rights on behalf of the corporation I work for if I choose to without the corporation having any rights on its own.
But the next chapter is built on the previous chapter. Something that is more or less settled in science is something to build on and extend the science even further. If we spent all of our time on things that are already settled we wouldn't be advancing the science.
Thus, attempts to claim that the science is settled are attempts to shut down the scientific process.
Not really. That may happen occasionally but mostly it's about efficiency. If something is settled in science, that is if few the practitioners are debating that aspect any more, it would be a waste of resources to expend much effort on it. That said a few contrarians is probably a good thing to keep the rest honest.
People come up with theories, they get refined, debugged, and eventually tagged as a release candidate.
You're using "theories" in the common usage sense. In science what you're talking about are called hypotheses. The transition from hypothesis to theory happens after it's "tagged as a release candidate".
When it comes to using the term "settled science" you really need to define exactly what it is you're talking about. In a large complex field like climate science some things are settled and many are not so you can't apply "settled science" to it as a whole, just certain aspects of it. As you said (to paraphrase) settled means very few of the practitioners in a field are still debating that aspect of it. It's probably valuable to always have a few contrarians to challenge the consensus but they don't overturn it very often.
Newton's Laws handle friction just fine. You just have to include the forces caused by friction in your calculation. Of course that may be difficult but in theory it's not impossible.
No, the use of the term "law" in science is an old usage that doesn't get applied much any more. Theory and law essentially have the same meaning in science, that is something with lots of evidence to back it up and little evidence to reject it. What hasn't been relatively "settled" is science is generally called a hypothesis.
I don't dislike the Beatles but I think their music is highly overrated.
Maybe you had to be there. I was about 10 years old when The Beatles hit the scene. Not all of their music is great but much of it was really groundbreaking at the time. Same thing for the Stones.
Most of the concerts I go to lately are at small venues (~50 people) and they tend to be string band music so the volume isn't a problem and I'm close to the artists so I can really appreciate their artistry. I've been to a number of concerts in my life that I can still close my eyes and transport myself back to them. BB King making love to Lucille (that's his name for his guitar) where I was in the front row. Back before I was really in to classical music I went to see Van Cliburn just because he was such a big name and he just blew me away with his playing. I could go on.
I spend plenty of time not listening to music. I often go on week long whitewater rafting trips where we only have music is someone brings instruments along. In my car I listen to NPR more than anything else and they don't have a lot of music.
I understand that some people like you aren't that in to music but for me it's an integral part of my life. Different strokes for different folks as they say.
Have to agree with this. As I've aged my musical perspective has broadened to the point where I can find something to like in just about any genre of music. Not sure I've ever hear a Bieber song. Listening to Beethoven's 9th at the moment.
LOL (really!)