If all of the ice in the world melted sea level would rise around 230 feet (70 meters). My house would be on an island in the middle of Willamette Sound (Oregon). Of course it would take several thousand years for all of the ice on Antarctica to melt so I won't be around to see it.
If you're going to claim the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today you're going to need to cite some peer reviewed literature to back that up. I haven't seen it.
The Northwest Passage was first navigated by Roald Amundsen from 1903-1906 in a wooden ship armored for the ice conditions. It took him 4 years.
By 10,000 years ago the Chicago area didn't have that much ice left over it, maybe none. It was 20,000 years ago when the last glaciation started ending.
Nevertheless 40,000 years ago those glaciers would have been considerably larger than they are now so there is no possibility that human artifacts will be found under them. The was the height of the last glaciation (ice age).
The IPCC directs no funding for research. The pay the expenses of scientists and others when they get together to discuss what to put in the reports.
The Amazon claims in the IPCC did have scientific research to back them up. To quote the author of the studies, Daniel Nepstad:
"In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. The report that is cited in support of the IPCC statement (Rowell and Moore 2000) omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement."
Rowell and Moore 2000 was the non-peer reviewed paper that the IPCC cited for the Amazon claims.
Here are the citations of peer reviewed literature that should have been in there to back it up:
The authoritative sources are the original research. The IPCC role is merely as a compiler and summarizer of the full breadth of climate study and it does no original data collection or research of its own so it has nothing to hide (to answer BenJCarter below).
They have. If you go back far enough in time the planet didn't even exist, let alone glaciers.
I qualified it with "since then" which meant 15,000 years ago. Before the current interglacial the last time the glaciers in Peru had a chance to not exist was during the previous interglacial period over 100,000 years ago. There definitely weren't humans in the Americas then.
Scientists, when they made those projections, were being conservative, just including the factors they were sure of and discounting factors that were not well characterized yet. How much ridicule would you be heaping on them if they had overstated their projections?
Well, considering that humans didn't arrive in South America until around 15,000 years ago, 40,000 years is out. But more likely most if not all of the area under the glaciers in Peru has never before been seen by human eyes. 15,000 years ago the last glaciation was winding down so the glaciers were probably much bigger than they are now. I doubt those glaciers have ever been significantly smaller since then than they are now.
Magma currents affect climate? That's a new one on me. I guess to the extent that they change the surface topology they can affect climate but it's a geologic process that doesn't happen very fast on human time scales.
Climate models are far from perfect but they're better than you can do without them. Hansen's 1988 projections for scenario B (which was closest to actual CO2 rise in the atmosphere) are a bit above current temperatures but he used a climate sensitivity of 4 when the actual value appears to be about 3. If he had used 3 his projections would have been even closer to current temperatures.
Are you saying that the trust fund money should have just sat there rather than being invested? Do you stuff your money under the mattress rather than investing it? For a long time the safest investment in the world has been US T-Bills.
As I said, if the SS trust fund T-Bills are not paid back it's going to cause all sorts of other problems with US government borrowing. Who's going to want to buy T-Bills if we can so easily renege on that debt? I don't think we want to go there. As far as beyond 2036 (when the current trust fund is expected to be exhausted) just raising the income cap subject to FICA taxation from $106,000 to something like $250,000 would cure that problem easily. Social Security is not really much of an issue despite what people may say.
The Social Security trust fund has over $2.6 trillion in it. Calculations show it should last into the mid 2030's before being exhausted. It's been used to make the Federal deficit look smaller than it really is. If the Federal Government doesn't pay back the money it's borrowed from Social Security then we've got bigger problems to worry about. I would consider it theft of the money I've put into the system. Social Security may need some tweaks to insure its viability after 2030 but right now it's not the issue.
In the 1950's and early 1960's the top marginal tax rate was over 90% on income over the equivalent of $2-3 million today. Did people stop working then?
The Social Security tax increase has already taken place, my first paycheck in December was almost $50 smaller due to the Medicare and SS taxes increasing.
You need to go talk to whoever does your payroll because there has been no increase in Social Security or Medicare taxes and if there is it won't be until 2012.
If Congress dicks around enough the temporary reduction of FICA from 6.2% to 4.2% may go away and then your SS taxes would increase but it hasn't happened yet.
The problem is the things you would have to cut to seriously cut federal spending (defense, Social Security, Medicare) are things many tea party members don't want to cut because that would affect them directly.
Shows you what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket with Just-In-Time manufacturing and something disrupts your supply chain. Robust systems don't maximize efficiency so much as make sure there are alternatives available.
The exit video I saw was very close to the Sun. If the comet's moving moving faster than the solar wind can push the tail particles the tail will stay behind. At some point the comet slows enough for the tail to rotate to away from the Sun. That would be interesting to see.
Just because the tail of Lovejoy was bouncing around in the solar wind doesn't mean the comet's orbit is unstable. Perhaps the orbit was changed a bit by it's close encounter with the Sun but that doesn't mean it isn't stable..
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If all of the ice in the world melted sea level would rise around 230 feet (70 meters). My house would be on an island in the middle of Willamette Sound (Oregon). Of course it would take several thousand years for all of the ice on Antarctica to melt so I won't be around to see it.
If you're going to claim the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today you're going to need to cite some peer reviewed literature to back that up. I haven't seen it.
The Northwest Passage was first navigated by Roald Amundsen from 1903-1906 in a wooden ship armored for the ice conditions. It took him 4 years.
By 10,000 years ago the Chicago area didn't have that much ice left over it, maybe none. It was 20,000 years ago when the last glaciation started ending.
Nevertheless 40,000 years ago those glaciers would have been considerably larger than they are now so there is no possibility that human artifacts will be found under them. The was the height of the last glaciation (ice age).
The IPCC directs no funding for research. The pay the expenses of scientists and others when they get together to discuss what to put in the reports.
The Amazon claims in the IPCC did have scientific research to back them up. To quote the author of the studies, Daniel Nepstad:
"In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. The report that is cited in support of the IPCC statement (Rowell and Moore 2000) omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement."
Rowell and Moore 2000 was the non-peer reviewed paper that the IPCC cited for the Amazon claims.
Here are the citations of peer reviewed literature that should have been in there to back it up:
Nepstad 1994
Nepstad 1997
Nepstad 2004
And other studies since the IPCC report:
Nepstad 2007
Phillips 2009
So the IPCC's claims about the Amazon weren't wrong, just poorly referenced.
The authoritative sources are the original research. The IPCC role is merely as a compiler and summarizer of the full breadth of climate study and it does no original data collection or research of its own so it has nothing to hide (to answer BenJCarter below).
They have. If you go back far enough in time the planet didn't even exist, let alone glaciers.
I qualified it with "since then" which meant 15,000 years ago. Before the current interglacial the last time the glaciers in Peru had a chance to not exist was during the previous interglacial period over 100,000 years ago. There definitely weren't humans in the Americas then.
wattsupwiththat is not an authoritative source.
Scientists, when they made those projections, were being conservative, just including the factors they were sure of and discounting factors that were not well characterized yet. How much ridicule would you be heaping on them if they had overstated their projections?
Well, considering that humans didn't arrive in South America until around 15,000 years ago, 40,000 years is out. But more likely most if not all of the area under the glaciers in Peru has never before been seen by human eyes. 15,000 years ago the last glaciation was winding down so the glaciers were probably much bigger than they are now. I doubt those glaciers have ever been significantly smaller since then than they are now.
No, the climate Luddites are a diminishing bunch. Reality is overtaking them. In 10 years there won't be many of them left.
I count supercomputers as infrastructure. How many people worked on building the thing? Now they can start working on the next supercomputer.
Magma currents affect climate? That's a new one on me. I guess to the extent that they change the surface topology they can affect climate but it's a geologic process that doesn't happen very fast on human time scales.
Climate models are far from perfect but they're better than you can do without them. Hansen's 1988 projections for scenario B (which was closest to actual CO2 rise in the atmosphere) are a bit above current temperatures but he used a climate sensitivity of 4 when the actual value appears to be about 3. If he had used 3 his projections would have been even closer to current temperatures.
Are you saying that the trust fund money should have just sat there rather than being invested? Do you stuff your money under the mattress rather than investing it? For a long time the safest investment in the world has been US T-Bills.
As I said, if the SS trust fund T-Bills are not paid back it's going to cause all sorts of other problems with US government borrowing. Who's going to want to buy T-Bills if we can so easily renege on that debt? I don't think we want to go there. As far as beyond 2036 (when the current trust fund is expected to be exhausted) just raising the income cap subject to FICA taxation from $106,000 to something like $250,000 would cure that problem easily. Social Security is not really much of an issue despite what people may say.
The Social Security trust fund has over $2.6 trillion in it. Calculations show it should last into the mid 2030's before being exhausted. It's been used to make the Federal deficit look smaller than it really is. If the Federal Government doesn't pay back the money it's borrowed from Social Security then we've got bigger problems to worry about. I would consider it theft of the money I've put into the system. Social Security may need some tweaks to insure its viability after 2030 but right now it's not the issue.
Hence corporate taxes are lower now than at any time since before WWII. Corporations are getting all the representation they need.
In the 1950's and early 1960's the top marginal tax rate was over 90% on income over the equivalent of $2-3 million today. Did people stop working then?
Social Security already is completely self sufficient and if not for Medicare Part D then Medicare/caid would be close to that as well.
The Social Security tax increase has already taken place, my first paycheck in December was almost $50 smaller due to the Medicare and SS taxes increasing.
You need to go talk to whoever does your payroll because there has been no increase in Social Security or Medicare taxes and if there is it won't be until 2012.
If Congress dicks around enough the temporary reduction of FICA from 6.2% to 4.2% may go away and then your SS taxes would increase but it hasn't happened yet.
The problem is the things you would have to cut to seriously cut federal spending (defense, Social Security, Medicare) are things many tea party members don't want to cut because that would affect them directly.
Shows you what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket with Just-In-Time manufacturing and something disrupts your supply chain. Robust systems don't maximize efficiency so much as make sure there are alternatives available.
The exit video I saw was very close to the Sun. If the comet's moving moving faster than the solar wind can push the tail particles the tail will stay behind. At some point the comet slows enough for the tail to rotate to away from the Sun. That would be interesting to see.
Just because the tail of Lovejoy was bouncing around in the solar wind doesn't mean the comet's orbit is unstable. Perhaps the orbit was changed a bit by it's close encounter with the Sun but that doesn't mean it isn't stable..
Get a Google driverless vehicle and you can talk on your cell phone all you want. (Ref: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/13/1845259/ntsb-recommends-cell-phone-ban-for-drivers)
That would take a lot of reaction mass. More likely the comet takes the probe on a Nantucket sleighride.
Thank you for your correction to my off the cuff remark. I think the basic idea still holds though.