"Kids are different today, I hear ev'ry mother say Mother needs something today to calm her down And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day"
... they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
I said they are not looking for another theory but merely improving the current theory as new information comes to light. The current theory is no less falsifiable/quantifiable now than it was before it was improved.
If your calculation was land area (really the area of the continents) vs. ocean area then things like the Great Lakes and all rivers are included in the land area. If you just took all of the land where an acre was productive enough to support 1 person I'm not sure there would be enough to go around. Most of Canada and Siberia is not really suitable for that.
The growth in agricultural yields has been slowing since the 1980's. It's still growing but not as fast as it was in the 1960's-1980's. There's probably enough food now if it was distributed properly but you know, part of the genesis of the Egyptian and other Arab revolutions was high food prices. Because of a number of events that have reduced yields in grain growing areas over the past couple of years grain stocks are pretty low right now. It won't take a lot to turn it into a crisis. How much production has been lost this year along the Missouri and Mississippi because of the flooding?
What makes you think planktonic organisms are not affected by ocean acidification? Many if not most of the planktonic animals are the young of shell forming species.
That was not my point at all. The greenhouse gases released by the decomposition of organic material came from greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere that the organic material absorbed while it was growing. As such it was already in the carbon cycle. That of course ignores the caloric input from fossil fuels used to grow and process that organic material.
To state the obvious, modern medicine and better hygiene, mechanized production of food and more efficient distribution are the socio-economic upheavals that caused the population boom.
That's a pretty optimistic calculation. It works out to a little over 5 acres per person. But if you really looked at it I suspect less than half the land area of Earth is really suitable for human occupation or agriculture. Deserts, high mountains, the Arctic and Antarctic and bodies of water have limited opportunities for occupation and exploitation. Like it or not humans are still dependent on the natural processes of the planet to provide clean air and water and much of the food we eat and we ignore that fact at our peril.
It doesn't matter. The greenhouse gases released during this process were already in the active carbon cycle unlike the ones released from burning fossil fuels.
"Global Warming" or "Global Climate Change", nowadays, means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean. If they're a researcher in the AGW field, it's whatever will net them the biggest cash influx.
"Anthropogenic Climate Change" if you please. I hope you include yourself when you say it "means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean."
I think you will find the snowfall didn't cover all 40,000+ square miles of the Atacama Desert and many places there may still hold their records of no recorded precipitation.
I've thought about that too. But if it happens at all it doesn't last for long. I've never heard a report of finding a layer of CO2 ice in the ice cores.
But clouds both reflect sunlight and absorb infrared energy. Have you ever noticed how much warmer it is on a cloudy night than it is on a clear night? That's clouds holding heat in. Near the terminator clouds can even reflect more sunlight down to the Earth. The net effect of clouds appears to be slightly positive for global warming but the error bars stretch from slightly negative to moderately positive.
If you think they predicted no snow in the 2000's you aren't paying attention. The earliest date I've seen for that in the Mid-Atlantic region is maybe in the 2030's and I have my doubts about that. Somewhere between 2050 and 2100 seems likely to me unless we do something about GHG emissions.
Global Warming is apparently expanding the sub-tropical zones, where most of the worlds great desert's (including the Atacama) are located likely due to Hadley cell expansion. That means the southern US, particularly west of the Gulf of Mexico will experience more drought. Water evaporating off a warmer Gulf into a warmer atmosphere will likely keep the precipitation level up in the Gulf States although they may see bigger storms interspersed with longer dry spells. Other areas will get more rainfall.
*Hint* When someone changes their initial theory from something that can be quantified (ie. "global temperature will increase because of man-made greenhouse gases") to something that can't be quantified ("ie. global temperature will get both hotter and colder in different parts of the world") it means they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
No, it means the theory is improving and the tools are getting better. They don't throw out one theory and substitute another. They fix the current theory by incorporating the new insights gained. Did Einstein completely replace Newton or just show it was a subset of the overall reality? The increase in computer horsepower over the years means they can do more detailed simulations that may uncover regional differences. A typical GCM simulation runs for about a month and as the computers get faster they just add more detail. So those regional differences can be quantified somewhat and it's getting better all the time.
I think your "Some places will get hotter and some places will get colder" would be better stated as "Most places will get hotter and a few places may get colder". That's closer to what actual climate scientists are saying.
Just because it's all to complex for you to wrap you mind around doesn't mean it's not real. The Chinese sulfur and it's effects are just more data that is added to the mountain of data that already exists.
Slashdot Mirror
"Kids are different today, I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day"
Mick Jagger and Keith Richard.
There's truth in that statement.
You forgot the 10,000 foot high snorkel.
Where in Hawaii can you drive 400-500 miles in a day and not traverse the same section of road more than once?
He said:
... they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
I said they are not looking for another theory but merely improving the current theory as new information comes to light. The current theory is no less falsifiable/quantifiable now than it was before it was improved.
If your calculation was land area (really the area of the continents) vs. ocean area then things like the Great Lakes and all rivers are included in the land area. If you just took all of the land where an acre was productive enough to support 1 person I'm not sure there would be enough to go around. Most of Canada and Siberia is not really suitable for that.
The growth in agricultural yields has been slowing since the 1980's. It's still growing but not as fast as it was in the 1960's-1980's. There's probably enough food now if it was distributed properly but you know, part of the genesis of the Egyptian and other Arab revolutions was high food prices. Because of a number of events that have reduced yields in grain growing areas over the past couple of years grain stocks are pretty low right now. It won't take a lot to turn it into a crisis. How much production has been lost this year along the Missouri and Mississippi because of the flooding?
True, it may also drastically alter the oceanic food chain to the detriment of ourselves.
If you listen, yes it does. Probably not in a language you would recognize though.
What makes you think planktonic organisms are not affected by ocean acidification? Many if not most of the planktonic animals are the young of shell forming species.
That was not my point at all. The greenhouse gases released by the decomposition of organic material came from greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere that the organic material absorbed while it was growing. As such it was already in the carbon cycle. That of course ignores the caloric input from fossil fuels used to grow and process that organic material.
To state the obvious, modern medicine and better hygiene, mechanized production of food and more efficient distribution are the socio-economic upheavals that caused the population boom.
That's a pretty optimistic calculation. It works out to a little over 5 acres per person. But if you really looked at it I suspect less than half the land area of Earth is really suitable for human occupation or agriculture. Deserts, high mountains, the Arctic and Antarctic and bodies of water have limited opportunities for occupation and exploitation. Like it or not humans are still dependent on the natural processes of the planet to provide clean air and water and much of the food we eat and we ignore that fact at our peril.
I'm not sure I'd say Latin America is particularly overpopulated, especially when compared to some African and Asian countries.
It doesn't matter. The greenhouse gases released during this process were already in the active carbon cycle unlike the ones released from burning fossil fuels.
"Global Warming" or "Global Climate Change", nowadays, means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean. If they're a researcher in the AGW field, it's whatever will net them the biggest cash influx.
"Anthropogenic Climate Change" if you please. I hope you include yourself when you say it "means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean."
I think you will find the snowfall didn't cover all 40,000+ square miles of the Atacama Desert and many places there may still hold their records of no recorded precipitation.
I've thought about that too. But if it happens at all it doesn't last for long. I've never heard a report of finding a layer of CO2 ice in the ice cores.
But clouds both reflect sunlight and absorb infrared energy. Have you ever noticed how much warmer it is on a cloudy night than it is on a clear night? That's clouds holding heat in. Near the terminator clouds can even reflect more sunlight down to the Earth. The net effect of clouds appears to be slightly positive for global warming but the error bars stretch from slightly negative to moderately positive.
If you think they predicted no snow in the 2000's you aren't paying attention. The earliest date I've seen for that in the Mid-Atlantic region is maybe in the 2030's and I have my doubts about that. Somewhere between 2050 and 2100 seems likely to me unless we do something about GHG emissions.
Global Warming is apparently expanding the sub-tropical zones, where most of the worlds great desert's (including the Atacama) are located likely due to Hadley cell expansion. That means the southern US, particularly west of the Gulf of Mexico will experience more drought. Water evaporating off a warmer Gulf into a warmer atmosphere will likely keep the precipitation level up in the Gulf States although they may see bigger storms interspersed with longer dry spells. Other areas will get more rainfall.
That's science for you, willing to change when the empirical evidence changes, never an absolute final conclusion for anything.
*Hint* When someone changes their initial theory from something that can be quantified (ie. "global temperature will increase because of man-made greenhouse gases") to something that can't be quantified ("ie. global temperature will get both hotter and colder in different parts of the world") it means they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
No, it means the theory is improving and the tools are getting better. They don't throw out one theory and substitute another. They fix the current theory by incorporating the new insights gained. Did Einstein completely replace Newton or just show it was a subset of the overall reality? The increase in computer horsepower over the years means they can do more detailed simulations that may uncover regional differences. A typical GCM simulation runs for about a month and as the computers get faster they just add more detail. So those regional differences can be quantified somewhat and it's getting better all the time.
I think your "Some places will get hotter and some places will get colder" would be better stated as "Most places will get hotter and a few places may get colder". That's closer to what actual climate scientists are saying.
If I had points I'd mod you up but I would change "more frequent" to "more powerful" hurricanes and tornadoes.
The corollary to your snark is that if Washington DC gets an extra heavy snowfall that proves Global Warming doesn't exist.
Just because it's all to complex for you to wrap you mind around doesn't mean it's not real. The Chinese sulfur and it's effects are just more data that is added to the mountain of data that already exists.
You forgot the /sarcasm tag.