That's what I thought when I read that. How many relatively uneducated slaves and serfs did it take to supply the citizens of Athens with their daily bread?
The biggest reason that new nuclear plants haven't been built since the 1970' is the cost. You get a faster return on your investment with a coal plant.
I'd like to think so but for some the rational part of the argument hits hot buttons that just cause the person to close off your whole argument. I've seen this in my family.
Converting such a regressive tax as the FICA tax to the general fund is just more shenanigans. If you're going to drop SS then be honest about it and raise the income tax.
If the US Government doesn't pay off the T-Bills in the SS Trust Fund it's going to have a negative effect on the other T-Bill that the government sells. The reason the trust fund is not in "a diversified investment portfolio" is risk. US T-Bills have always been a sure thing and when they are not any more we're in big trouble.
Over 70% of the people support raising taxes on the wealthy. In the 1950's and 1960's the top marginal tax rate was more than 70% and the country did pretty well so I don't see why we can't now. (And I'm not proposing raising it to 70% again but going back to 39% isn't going to cause much pain).
You have to include the cost of decommissioning the plant at the end of its life and the cost of dealing with the waste products. And one way or another the potential liability costs if things go south. The biggest reason that no new reactors have been built since the 1970's is the cost not regulation or TMI syndrome. Huge up front costs with a long time to pay it off. Coal plants are cheaper and faster to get on line.
Polar amplification (faster warming of the polar troposphere) and stratospheric cooling are both successful predictions of the much maligned climate models. By successful I mean they were found in 1980's models and have since been observed in the real world.
Exactly.
I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the stratospheric cooling as well. One small factor that doesn't have much to do with global warming is that the thinning of ozone layer means less capture of the incoming UV radiation which would have been later emitted as IR radiation. I used to think that was a bigger factor than it turns out that it is.
But I found this blog post on Skeptical Science that helped me understand it better. Basically it's saying that the biggest factor is that the increase in CO2 concentration increases the chance of a collision between the CO2 and other molecules in the atmosphere. Those collisions often leave the CO2 molecule in an excited state which then drops back down to the unexcited state by emitting an IR photon which has a better chance of leaving the atmosphere than in the troposphere because of the thinness of the atmosphere. That's sort of what you said. The second biggest factor is that the increase in CO2 throughout the atmosphere means more of the IR in the bands that CO2 absorbs gets captured in the troposphere so less of it gets through to the stratosphere to warm it. There are some interesting comments on the blog post as well.
Even the global cooling thing was addressed. A couple of the papers on global cooling in the 1970's were concerned with the increase in industrial aerosols causing cooling. Pollution controls reduced those aerosols although they're coming back a bit with China. But China will clean up sooner or later as well.
There's a limit to how much any government or other entity can manipulate science because there's an objective truth behind it no matter how complex and difficult it is to comprehend. Sooner or later that objective truth will have to be reckoned with. Still, policy should be informed by the best available science when appropriate.
I would say using "nope" depends on your audience.
Much of the problem is the most of the teavangelical crowd is impervious to rational argument. The only way you're going to get to them is through arguments that play on their emotions.
You know, I nearly always disagree with you jmorris42 but on this point you are absolutely right. Politicians get nervous when (enough) voters start paying attention.
We could close the deficit eliminating social security, medicare and medicaid.
If you do that you're essentially converting the FICA taxes which are dedicated to SS and Medicare/caid into general fund taxes. And you're also embezzling the current surplus in the SS trust fund. I don't think that's going to fly very well with most Americans.
Human beings are well known for considering things that are too complex for them to understand as being religious in nature.
But if you want a simple thing to disprove global warming then prove that CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't act the same as CO2 in the lab by absorbing infrared radiation. If you can't prove that then disprove AGW by proving that human activities are not the source of most of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Those are the two things that are at the heart of AGW.
The soil on much of that northern land is not really suitable for growing crops and it will take at least decades if not centuries to make it suitable. Good soil is a living thing that takes time to develop.
The situation in Darfur is an example of conflict caused by climate change. As the traditional areas the nomadic people used dried out they were forced to move south into areas where farmers were. We can expect more of it in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I thought when I read that. How many relatively uneducated slaves and serfs did it take to supply the citizens of Athens with their daily bread?
The biggest reason that new nuclear plants haven't been built since the 1970' is the cost. You get a faster return on your investment with a coal plant.
I'd like to think so but for some the rational part of the argument hits hot buttons that just cause the person to close off your whole argument. I've seen this in my family.
Converting such a regressive tax as the FICA tax to the general fund is just more shenanigans. If you're going to drop SS then be honest about it and raise the income tax.
If the US Government doesn't pay off the T-Bills in the SS Trust Fund it's going to have a negative effect on the other T-Bill that the government sells. The reason the trust fund is not in "a diversified investment portfolio" is risk. US T-Bills have always been a sure thing and when they are not any more we're in big trouble.
Over 70% of the people support raising taxes on the wealthy. In the 1950's and 1960's the top marginal tax rate was more than 70% and the country did pretty well so I don't see why we can't now. (And I'm not proposing raising it to 70% again but going back to 39% isn't going to cause much pain).
You have to include the cost of decommissioning the plant at the end of its life and the cost of dealing with the waste products. And one way or another the potential liability costs if things go south. The biggest reason that no new reactors have been built since the 1970's is the cost not regulation or TMI syndrome. Huge up front costs with a long time to pay it off. Coal plants are cheaper and faster to get on line.
Polar amplification (faster warming of the polar troposphere) and stratospheric cooling are both successful predictions of the much maligned climate models. By successful I mean they were found in 1980's models and have since been observed in the real world.
Exactly.
I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the stratospheric cooling as well. One small factor that doesn't have much to do with global warming is that the thinning of ozone layer means less capture of the incoming UV radiation which would have been later emitted as IR radiation. I used to think that was a bigger factor than it turns out that it is.
But I found this blog post on Skeptical Science that helped me understand it better. Basically it's saying that the biggest factor is that the increase in CO2 concentration increases the chance of a collision between the CO2 and other molecules in the atmosphere. Those collisions often leave the CO2 molecule in an excited state which then drops back down to the unexcited state by emitting an IR photon which has a better chance of leaving the atmosphere than in the troposphere because of the thinness of the atmosphere. That's sort of what you said. The second biggest factor is that the increase in CO2 throughout the atmosphere means more of the IR in the bands that CO2 absorbs gets captured in the troposphere so less of it gets through to the stratosphere to warm it. There are some interesting comments on the blog post as well.
Then they're called positrons.
Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale
There is very little water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere above the tropopause. I believe CO2 is usually more abundant there.
Even the global cooling thing was addressed. A couple of the papers on global cooling in the 1970's were concerned with the increase in industrial aerosols causing cooling. Pollution controls reduced those aerosols although they're coming back a bit with China. But China will clean up sooner or later as well.
Too bad nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to produce power and requires such high government subsidies to be viable at all.
Problem with that is no model has ever worked without including the effects of CO2.
There are answers on stratospheric cooling here.
In the end it all boils down to physics.
The cold in question is in the stratosphere, not the troposphere. It hasn't been particularly cold on the surface.
There's a limit to how much any government or other entity can manipulate science because there's an objective truth behind it no matter how complex and difficult it is to comprehend. Sooner or later that objective truth will have to be reckoned with. Still, policy should be informed by the best available science when appropriate.
I would say using "nope" depends on your audience.
Much of the problem is the most of the teavangelical crowd is impervious to rational argument. The only way you're going to get to them is through arguments that play on their emotions.
You know, I nearly always disagree with you jmorris42 but on this point you are absolutely right. Politicians get nervous when (enough) voters start paying attention.
Hey! That's my line, written on my 8th grade notebook (the paper holding kind) in 1965.
But I didn't copyright it.
We could close the deficit eliminating social security, medicare and medicaid.
If you do that you're essentially converting the FICA taxes which are dedicated to SS and Medicare/caid into general fund taxes. And you're also embezzling the current surplus in the SS trust fund. I don't think that's going to fly very well with most Americans.
Even if the reservoirs had been empty there would have still been flooding. It may not have been quite as bad but it would have happened.
Regarding crop yields:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-farming-floods-arkansas-idUSTRE77T02P20110830
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0511/Mississippi-flooding-drowns-crops-and-casinos-What-s-the-economic-toll
http://www.estormwater.com/Flooding-on-the-Farm-article9528
It may not have been as bad as first feared but lots of farmers took it in the shorts this year because of the flooding.
Human beings are well known for considering things that are too complex for them to understand as being religious in nature.
But if you want a simple thing to disprove global warming then prove that CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't act the same as CO2 in the lab by absorbing infrared radiation. If you can't prove that then disprove AGW by proving that human activities are not the source of most of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Those are the two things that are at the heart of AGW.
Ask the farmers in the Midwest how all that precipitation last winter/spring helped their crop yields this year.
The soil on much of that northern land is not really suitable for growing crops and it will take at least decades if not centuries to make it suitable. Good soil is a living thing that takes time to develop.
The situation in Darfur is an example of conflict caused by climate change. As the traditional areas the nomadic people used dried out they were forced to move south into areas where farmers were. We can expect more of it in the future.