In the northern hemisphere they actually fly in an A formation. Only in the southern hemisphere do they fly in a V.
Wouldn't that depend on whether they're flying north or south? I guess if they're flying west in the northern hemisphere they must be flying in a "less than" formation and east in a "greater than" formation then.
I think this applies more to larger birds that fly long distances in a flock. The energy savings could make a significant difference for them. I don't see small birds flying in a V formation that much.
I think the generation who grew up after the 1980s don't really grasp just how intensely we 80s kids felt the shadow of nuclear war.
You think you kids in the 80's had it bad, what about us from the 1950's and 60's? Duck and cover drills in grade school and the tension of the Cuban missile crisis. I was worried that I would never get old enough to lose my virginity.
If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.
Maybe so but there are atheists who proclaim and defend their atheism with religious fervor. But I suspect the vast majority atheists don't care to proselytize like that and have a live and let live attitude as long as your lifestyle doesn't impinge to greatly on mine.
And there is no reason to even try because in a typical year volcanoes emit less than 1% as much CO2 as human activities. Even the largest volcanic eruption of the past 100 years, Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 only produced about 0.05 Gt (gigatons) of CO2 compared to over 30 Gt of human emissions of CO2. Outside of a supervolcanic eruption volcanoes are simply not a significant source of increasing atmospheric CO2.
Any individual weather event by itself says nothing about global warming. It comes under the category of "shit happens". Only by the accumulation of data over time can climate change and global warming be discerned. Falsification in this case takes the same accumulation of data over time.
You need to learn who to really pay attention to. I you listen to actual scientists involved in studying the problem you won't hear them making the claim that any individual weather event is evidence of global warming. After all one definition of climate is the statistical average of weather over long periods of time. What they may say is that every weather event is influenced to some extent by global warming. Think of climate as a carrier wave and weather as the signal that rides that carrier wave. If the carrier wave is rising it takes the signal along with it. So no individual weather event either supports or contradicts global warming. It's only in the accumulation of data over some period of time that the reality becomes discernible.
Unfortunately human beings are kind of tuned to react to short term realities and it usually takes some effort to tune in to a longer term view. I have that problem myself but I'm getting better at it.
Did I say anything about disenfranchising minorities? What I would say is that it places a disproportionate burden on low income and poor citizens regardless of race. The time and money some of them have to spend to get ID amounts to a poll tax. For instance some Texas counties don't have DMV offices and a person may have to travel more than 100 miles to get to one. Not easy for someone who has no access to a vehicle. A 90+ year old (white) woman in Pennsylvania who has been voting for decades was unable to get an ID because she didn't have a birth certificate. A bunch of nuns in Indiana who had been voting for decades were turned back at the polls because they didn't have the necessary ID's.
Last time I opened a bank account it wasn't any more hassle than registering to vote and the only ID I've ever been required to present for medical care is my insurance card.
There could be improvements to the voter registration system but as I said, in the absence of any significant proof of in person voter fraud your voter registration card should be all the ID you need to vote with.
My PC died a week ago. It was time to replace it anyway as I bought it in 2005. The disk drive was only 60 GB and it only had 1 GB of memory. Rather than buy a put together PC with Win8 on it I went to Fry's and got all the components including OEM Windows7. It cost a bit more that way but I have what I wanted including RAID 1 on the disk(s) and an i7 processor.
When you register to vote you are generally issued a voter registration card. That should be the only ID you need to vote with. A person's eligibility to vote should be determined at the time they register.
Since the empirical evidence shows that the kind of voter fraud that requiring an ID would prevent is (practically) nonexistent the requirement is an unnecessary burden on the voter. A persons eligibility to vote should be determined at the time they register to vote and the only ID necessary to vote should be the card they receive after registering. If there was any evidence that impersonation of another voter was anything more than a trivial problem I'd be more sympathetic to ID laws but as I said the empirical evidence shows otherwise. I thought conservatives were against excessive and unnecessary regulations.
The temperature gradient attributable to the climate change is a degree per decade or so.
A degree per decade is way higher than climate science predicts regardless of whether you're talking F or C. The predictions are more on the order of 0.1 - 0.2 degrees C/decade (0.18 - 0.36 degrees F/decade). There is some speculation about a 4 degrees C rise by 2100 but that's pretty uncertain.
The heat produced by burning fossil fuels is miniscule, only a rounding error, compared to the energy coming in from the Sun. The part of the Sun's incoming energy that is not reflected is absorbed by the surface (land and oceans) and sooner or later re-emitted as infrared energy. It is that re-emitted IR energy that greenhouse gases are trapping that causes the warming.
Eight different investigations of the matter in the UK and USA found no evidence of scientific misconduct or fraud. The worst they found was a reluctance to share data. That has since been remedied.
What the CRU hack amounted to was an attempt to smear some scientists reputations because they weren't able to challenge the science they produced. It didn't work very well except among those predisposed to believe it. I'll admit I'm probably predisposed to not believe it but if any of those 8 investigations had found any bad scientific behavior I wouldn't have rejected their findings.
Consensus in science happens when the scientists in a field consider it a waste of time to argue some point because they all* agree on it. The basic points that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will cause warming and the increase in CO2 is primarily of human technological origin are consensus opinions.
*With the exception of a few obtuse contrarians that you can find in any human endeavor.
I found a citation for the source of the Gore quote and posted it way up stream but here it is again:
"Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years." cite
So it appears that Gore never actually said the Arctic sea ice would be gone in 2014. He just mentioned some U.S. Navy research that indicated it was possible that would happen. He first mentions a study that finds the Arctic sea ice could be gone in the summer in less than 22 years. Accusing Gore of saying the ice would be gone in 2014 is spinning to the max.
"It is the largest one-year increase in Arctic ice since satellite tracking began in 1978. "
That quote is a little short on information or taken out of context. I assume that it's talking about the Arctic sea ice minimum in September. Yes, that minimum in 2013 was considerably larger than it was in 2012. However, it's still the 6th lowest sea ice minimum in the record (since 1979) and well below the 1981-2010 average. Lately, in December of 2013 the sea ice extent is near a record low for the date so the larger 2013 minimum extent didn't really help much. The National Snow Ice Data Center has the graph.
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
Gore said the Artic [sic] would be ice free by 2013,
This is just another example people putting words in Gore's mouth that he never said. It is apparently derived from this quote from Gore:
Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. cite
Notice that Gore was only reporting the results of studies that he was aware of, not making an absolute statement.
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In the northern hemisphere they actually fly in an A formation. Only in the southern hemisphere do they fly in a V.
Wouldn't that depend on whether they're flying north or south? I guess if they're flying west in the northern hemisphere they must be flying in a "less than" formation and east in a "greater than" formation then.
Probably less a waste of money than your science education was apparently.
I think this applies more to larger birds that fly long distances in a flock. The energy savings could make a significant difference for them. I don't see small birds flying in a V formation that much.
I think the generation who grew up after the 1980s don't really grasp just how intensely we 80s kids felt the shadow of nuclear war.
You think you kids in the 80's had it bad, what about us from the 1950's and 60's? Duck and cover drills in grade school and the tension of the Cuban missile crisis. I was worried that I would never get old enough to lose my virginity.
Now get off my lawn!
I was just being snarky is why.
If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
Maybe so but there are atheists who proclaim and defend their atheism with religious fervor. But I suspect the vast majority atheists don't care to proselytize like that and have a live and let live attitude as long as your lifestyle doesn't impinge to greatly on mine.
Yeah, The Economist is where if go for the latest in peer reviewed climate science. /sarc
We can't do a lick about volcanoes ...
And there is no reason to even try because in a typical year volcanoes emit less than 1% as much CO2 as human activities. Even the largest volcanic eruption of the past 100 years, Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 only produced about 0.05 Gt (gigatons) of CO2 compared to over 30 Gt of human emissions of CO2. Outside of a supervolcanic eruption volcanoes are simply not a significant source of increasing atmospheric CO2.
Any individual weather event by itself says nothing about global warming. It comes under the category of "shit happens". Only by the accumulation of data over time can climate change and global warming be discerned. Falsification in this case takes the same accumulation of data over time.
You need to learn who to really pay attention to. I you listen to actual scientists involved in studying the problem you won't hear them making the claim that any individual weather event is evidence of global warming. After all one definition of climate is the statistical average of weather over long periods of time. What they may say is that every weather event is influenced to some extent by global warming. Think of climate as a carrier wave and weather as the signal that rides that carrier wave. If the carrier wave is rising it takes the signal along with it. So no individual weather event either supports or contradicts global warming. It's only in the accumulation of data over some period of time that the reality becomes discernible.
Unfortunately human beings are kind of tuned to react to short term realities and it usually takes some effort to tune in to a longer term view. I have that problem myself but I'm getting better at it.
Did I say anything about disenfranchising minorities? What I would say is that it places a disproportionate burden on low income and poor citizens regardless of race. The time and money some of them have to spend to get ID amounts to a poll tax. For instance some Texas counties don't have DMV offices and a person may have to travel more than 100 miles to get to one. Not easy for someone who has no access to a vehicle. A 90+ year old (white) woman in Pennsylvania who has been voting for decades was unable to get an ID because she didn't have a birth certificate. A bunch of nuns in Indiana who had been voting for decades were turned back at the polls because they didn't have the necessary ID's.
Last time I opened a bank account it wasn't any more hassle than registering to vote and the only ID I've ever been required to present for medical care is my insurance card.
There could be improvements to the voter registration system but as I said, in the absence of any significant proof of in person voter fraud your voter registration card should be all the ID you need to vote with.
My PC died a week ago. It was time to replace it anyway as I bought it in 2005. The disk drive was only 60 GB and it only had 1 GB of memory. Rather than buy a put together PC with Win8 on it I went to Fry's and got all the components including OEM Windows7. It cost a bit more that way but I have what I wanted including RAID 1 on the disk(s) and an i7 processor.
When you register to vote you are generally issued a voter registration card. That should be the only ID you need to vote with. A person's eligibility to vote should be determined at the time they register.
Since the empirical evidence shows that the kind of voter fraud that requiring an ID would prevent is (practically) nonexistent the requirement is an unnecessary burden on the voter. A persons eligibility to vote should be determined at the time they register to vote and the only ID necessary to vote should be the card they receive after registering. If there was any evidence that impersonation of another voter was anything more than a trivial problem I'd be more sympathetic to ID laws but as I said the empirical evidence shows otherwise. I thought conservatives were against excessive and unnecessary regulations.
The temperature gradient attributable to the climate change is a degree per decade or so.
A degree per decade is way higher than climate science predicts regardless of whether you're talking F or C. The predictions are more on the order of 0.1 - 0.2 degrees C/decade (0.18 - 0.36 degrees F/decade). There is some speculation about a 4 degrees C rise by 2100 but that's pretty uncertain.
The heat produced by burning fossil fuels is miniscule, only a rounding error, compared to the energy coming in from the Sun. The part of the Sun's incoming energy that is not reflected is absorbed by the surface (land and oceans) and sooner or later re-emitted as infrared energy. It is that re-emitted IR energy that greenhouse gases are trapping that causes the warming.
If global warming is a religion then it's an awesome religion because it has actual physical evidence to back it up.
Eight different investigations of the matter in the UK and USA found no evidence of scientific misconduct or fraud. The worst they found was a reluctance to share data. That has since been remedied.
What the CRU hack amounted to was an attempt to smear some scientists reputations because they weren't able to challenge the science they produced. It didn't work very well except among those predisposed to believe it. I'll admit I'm probably predisposed to not believe it but if any of those 8 investigations had found any bad scientific behavior I wouldn't have rejected their findings.
Nuclear powered ice breakers no less.
Protip: Any time you use the term "CAGW" you label yourself as a denier.
Consensus in science happens when the scientists in a field consider it a waste of time to argue some point because they all* agree on it. The basic points that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will cause warming and the increase in CO2 is primarily of human technological origin are consensus opinions.
*With the exception of a few obtuse contrarians that you can find in any human endeavor.
I found a citation for the source of the Gore quote and posted it way up stream but here it is again:
"Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years." cite
So it appears that Gore never actually said the Arctic sea ice would be gone in 2014. He just mentioned some U.S. Navy research that indicated it was possible that would happen. He first mentions a study that finds the Arctic sea ice could be gone in the summer in less than 22 years. Accusing Gore of saying the ice would be gone in 2014 is spinning to the max.
"It is the largest one-year increase in Arctic ice since satellite tracking began in 1978. "
That quote is a little short on information or taken out of context. I assume that it's talking about the Arctic sea ice minimum in September. Yes, that minimum in 2013 was considerably larger than it was in 2012. However, it's still the 6th lowest sea ice minimum in the record (since 1979) and well below the 1981-2010 average. Lately, in December of 2013 the sea ice extent is near a record low for the date so the larger 2013 minimum extent didn't really help much. The National Snow Ice Data Center has the graph.
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
The term "climate change" has been around a lot longer than "global warming". For example "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change" by George S Benton from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in October of 1970.
Gore said the Artic [sic] would be ice free by 2013,
This is just another example people putting words in Gore's mouth that he never said. It is apparently derived from this quote from Gore:
Last September 21 (2007), as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. cite
Notice that Gore was only reporting the results of studies that he was aware of, not making an absolute statement.