I think I have to disagree with you there TapeCutter. Geography may not be science in the same way as physics or chemistry but geographical formations have important effects on weather, climate and biological activity so collecting it is part of science in these areas at least.
I'm not sure saying they have "different bone structure" is accurate. While the 3 canines you mentioned vary considerably in size and therefore the bones differ in length, thickness and proportion they all probably have the same bones in the same locations and a future paleontologist may be easily able to tell they were the same species or at least be able to surmise they were very closely related.
Climate change models don't ignore the effects of water vapor at all. It's built right into them. There's a difference between water vapor and CO2.
H2O freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. That means excess water vapor in the atmosphere can condense and precipitate out. The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is dependent primarily on the temperature of the atmosphere and the availability of water to evaporate into it. It's been calculated that if you removed 100% of the water vapor from the atmosphere it would be nearly back to normal in 3 or 4 months.
CO2 freezes at -78.5C and can't be a liquid under less than 5+ atmospheres so it can't precipitate out of the atmosphere and remains a gas at normal pressures. (I wonder though if it ever gets cold enough at the poles for some CO2 to freeze out?)
So water vapor in the atmosphere is a significant amount of the over all greenhouse effect but it only changes in response to the temperature and local conditions. Increasing the temperature adds a little more water vapor which increases the temperature a bit more which adds a bit more water vapor and so on until it reaches a new equilibrium point. Water vapor by itself can't drive climate change but CO2 which doesn't precipitate out of the atmosphere can.
Umm... No, methane does NOT last longer in the atmosphere than CO2. It has an atmospheric half-life of about 7 years. And when it does oxidize in the atmosphere it becomes CO2 and H2O. CO2's atmospheric half-life is more on the order of hundreds of years.
It should also be pointed out that water vapor and clouds are two very different (although related) things and can have quite different effects on the issue.
Most of the life on earth today is evolved for the current conditions, not the conditions that existed when that carbon as sequestered from the environment. At a minimum going back to those levels of CO2 would be uncomfortable. Studies have shown that when the CO2 level in a room is 1000 ppm then over 20% of people feel discomfort from it. With business as usual we could reach that level around 2100.
You know, one big difference between the public and private sector is that when the public sector screws up or is inefficient it generally becomes public knowledge sooner or later. That's not so true in the private sector. Yes you occasionally hear stories (I recall Nike had a failed implementation of the i2 planning engine in 2000 that cost it over $100 million) but lots of stuff never sees the light of day. I know I've seen plenty of waste occurring at the place I work (like me spending time reading Slashdot;). So the perception people have is that the public sector is terribly inefficient when if they knew the full extent of waste in the private sector they'd probably see it's not as much different as they think. One of the causes of inefficiency in the public sector is having to dot all the i's and cross all the t's so someone doesn't come back later and ask "Why didn't you do such and such?" but in the private sector (particularly smaller organizations) you can cut some corners and get away with it.
The outlier in the group was 1998. It was extraordinarily hot that year. The decade since 1998 has still been hotter than any other decade that doesn't include 1998.
A better analogy than a bathtub is a tank half full of water coming in as fast as it's going out a drain in the bottom. The water level is stable. If you shrink the drain less water goes out so the level starts rising. As the level rises the pressure at the bottom increases which increases the velocity and therefore the volume of water exiting the drain. Once the level rises enough so the pressure at the bottom causes water out to equal water in again the level stabilizes at a new level. Incoming energy is the water, the drain is made up in part of GHGs and pressure is equivalent to temperature. Only if the tank overflows do you get truly catastrophic events.
The level of carbon/CO2 in the atmosphere is only relevant if that affects the ratio of C12 to C14. And strangely enough it does. C14 is created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays impact nitrogen atoms so the amount of C14 produced is dependent on the level of cosmic rays and the level of N2 in the atmosphere. Then if you put more (non-C14) CO2 in the atmosphere it dilutes the C12/C14 ratio. Cosmic ray flux varies considerably over time but there is no observed trend in the level. I'm not aware that the level of N2 in the atmosphere has varied much over time.
But it's all taken into account by calibration. C14 dating has been calibrated (using tree rings, lake and ocean sediments, coral samples & cave deposits) back 6000 years with an accuracy of +/-16 years and back 26,000 years with and accuracy of +/-163 years. C14 dating is not useful more than about 60,000 years. If you don't like it then show why it's wrong.
Sometimes I wish mother earth could send out bills for the services she provides. The things you take for granted like air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, protection from the sun's ultraviolet emissions, etc. If that happened you'd be recycling the hell out of everything you could. Those taxes and regulations you hate so much are merely an attempt to internalize some of those externalities.
"Evolution is a fact, there is no debate, this is how life began."
Of course the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about how life began, just how it developed after it got started.
"Global Warming is caused by man and we must act to stop it (and we CAN act to stop it) is a fact and there can be no debate."
It's largely a true statement that much of the current warming is caused by human activities and therefore changes in human activities will affect where it ends up. You can always debate things but unless you present evidence to refute the opposing evidence you're not going to get very far except with the ideologues who are already know the answers.
If you aren't willing dig into the subject deeply enough to understand the subject at a more basic level than what can you do other than to accept the consensus of the experts in the field?
There are plenty of people who, for ideological or economic self interest reasons, are willing to demagogue the subject of climate change (on both sides but weighed toward the "there is no global warming" side in my opinion) but I don't see that happening much in the people doing the research in the field. Too much of that and their reputation in the field will suffer.
For those of you who think the researchers are motivated by ideology more than scientific truth (not referring to you here Toast, but the reaction others will have to my statements above) I find it astounding that you could believe that world-wide the scientific community could carry out and keep hidden such an agenda over the years without someone exposing it. It's just not a credible accusation.
Well, I just don't get the "micro-evolution can only reduce information" argument. Maybe you think a new feature of evolution has to spring into place complete instead of developing slowly over many generations.
Mutations change genes. Whether that adds to, subtracts from or doesn't change the level of information (whatever you mean by that) is as random as the mutation itself. Genes can mutate in a lot of ways. They can lose parts, gain parts, change parts, rearrange parts and exchange parts. Those all result in new arrangements of genetic material that can produce new gene expressions. Probably most of the time mutations are of no consequence but sometimes they're deleterious and occasionally beneficial. There is genetic material from viruses found in the human genome. Many organisms* have far more genetic material than humans. Does that mean our genome is information poor compared to them?
*It takes about 20,000 genes to encode the proteins in a human, >46,000 in rice. Humans have 46 chromosomes, goldfish have 100 or more.
What you refer to as "macro-evolution" is merely the the accumulation of the changes from what you refer to as "micro-evolution" over thousands of generations. If you gave me an unlimited budget and 10,000 years I'd bet I could evolve a cat into a seal like creature.
From AC: "So Airlines weren't competing on price prior to deregulation? Prior to deregulation, airlines weren't trying to maximize profits?"
Before deregulation they were regulated much like public utilities with built in profits. They had assigned routes they could fly and other airlines had to get regulatory approval before they could fly the same routes. But the prices were high enough that many people just didn't fly. I was born in 1952 but never took a commercial airline flight until 1982 and that was paid for by my employer. I've still only flown 4 times for something other than business.
A lot of the loss of fun has to do with deregulation. When the airlines all have to compete on price they're going to squeeze things as much as they can get away with. For most people air travel is expensive enough that they'll put up with it to get the cheapest possible prices.
Climate models are built on physics. They make no assumptions about "global warming" (GW) being real or not. They just model the physical processes that occur and output results based on that. At least for some models the source is available but if you don't have at least a Masters in physics it's not likely you'll be able understand them to any degree. Could it be that the reason that work that discounts GW is ignored or declaimed is because it's simply wrong?
I find it bizarre that you think anyone would have to accept those things you listed to accept GW. Of course the sun has a major effect on earth but the changes that have been observed don't explain the observed changes in climate. Of course the yearly carbon cycle puts tremendous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every year and also removes a basically equal amount too. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up and down by 3-9 ppm each year because of it. But we also know how much the level of CO2 each year (lately about 3 ppm/year) and we know how much human activities produce each year (ex: 1 ton coal at 70% carbon produces about 2.3 tons of CO2 when burned). Of course volcanoes produce GHGs. But in a normal year it amounts to less then 1% of human production. It would take something like the Yellowstone Caldera going off to make much of a difference. And of course temperature has varied over the last 1M years. Otherwise there would have been no ice ages. But it's changing now at a rate not known in the historical record outside of catastrophic events which will be a problem.
The effects of sun and volcanic eruptions are included in the models. One test that was made of the models was against the inputs from the eruption of Mt. Pinitubo and they modeled the effects of it very well.
The fact is that the climate models don't work if you remove CO2 from the equations. If you can come up with a model that does work without CO2 (and is otherwise scientifically defensible) you will be famous.
"the ultimate problem is too much heat, not the gases."
Um... Its not that simple. The excess CO2 causes increased acidification of the oceans which affects ocean life. Many plants do better or worse at different CO2 levels. For instance poison oak/ivy and corn both like increased levels of the CO2, conifers in general don't.
Stating your question like that shows you don't have a clue about how climate modeling works. What you could predict from a climate model is that the decade of the 2000's will be x degrees warmer than the decade of the 1950's. And in general they do pretty good at that, usually within the error bars.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I have to disagree with you there TapeCutter. Geography may not be science in the same way as physics or chemistry but geographical formations have important effects on weather, climate and biological activity so collecting it is part of science in these areas at least.
I'm not sure saying they have "different bone structure" is accurate. While the 3 canines you mentioned vary considerably in size and therefore the bones differ in length, thickness and proportion they all probably have the same bones in the same locations and a future paleontologist may be easily able to tell they were the same species or at least be able to surmise they were very closely related.
Climate change models don't ignore the effects of water vapor at all. It's built right into them. There's a difference between water vapor and CO2.
H2O freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. That means excess water vapor in the atmosphere can condense and precipitate out. The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is dependent primarily on the temperature of the atmosphere and the availability of water to evaporate into it. It's been calculated that if you removed 100% of the water vapor from the atmosphere it would be nearly back to normal in 3 or 4 months.
CO2 freezes at -78.5C and can't be a liquid under less than 5+ atmospheres so it can't precipitate out of the atmosphere and remains a gas at normal pressures. (I wonder though if it ever gets cold enough at the poles for some CO2 to freeze out?)
So water vapor in the atmosphere is a significant amount of the over all greenhouse effect but it only changes in response to the temperature and local conditions. Increasing the temperature adds a little more water vapor which increases the temperature a bit more which adds a bit more water vapor and so on until it reaches a new equilibrium point. Water vapor by itself can't drive climate change but CO2 which doesn't precipitate out of the atmosphere can.
Umm... No, methane does NOT last longer in the atmosphere than CO2. It has an atmospheric half-life of about 7 years. And when it does oxidize in the atmosphere it becomes CO2 and H2O. CO2's atmospheric half-life is more on the order of hundreds of years.
6 billion people will never live long enough to clear cut all of the forests.
It should also be pointed out that water vapor and clouds are two very different (although related) things and can have quite different effects on the issue.
Most of the life on earth today is evolved for the current conditions, not the conditions that existed when that carbon as sequestered from the environment. At a minimum going back to those levels of CO2 would be uncomfortable. Studies have shown that when the CO2 level in a room is 1000 ppm then over 20% of people feel discomfort from it. With business as usual we could reach that level around 2100.
Actually I read "Orbital Cartoon Observatory".
You know, one big difference between the public and private sector is that when the public sector screws up or is inefficient it generally becomes public knowledge sooner or later. That's not so true in the private sector. Yes you occasionally hear stories (I recall Nike had a failed implementation of the i2 planning engine in 2000 that cost it over $100 million) but lots of stuff never sees the light of day. I know I've seen plenty of waste occurring at the place I work (like me spending time reading Slashdot;). So the perception people have is that the public sector is terribly inefficient when if they knew the full extent of waste in the private sector they'd probably see it's not as much different as they think. One of the causes of inefficiency in the public sector is having to dot all the i's and cross all the t's so someone doesn't come back later and ask "Why didn't you do such and such?" but in the private sector (particularly smaller organizations) you can cut some corners and get away with it.
The outlier in the group was 1998. It was extraordinarily hot that year. The decade since 1998 has still been hotter than any other decade that doesn't include 1998.
A better analogy than a bathtub is a tank half full of water coming in as fast as it's going out a drain in the bottom. The water level is stable. If you shrink the drain less water goes out so the level starts rising. As the level rises the pressure at the bottom increases which increases the velocity and therefore the volume of water exiting the drain. Once the level rises enough so the pressure at the bottom causes water out to equal water in again the level stabilizes at a new level. Incoming energy is the water, the drain is made up in part of GHGs and pressure is equivalent to temperature. Only if the tank overflows do you get truly catastrophic events.
The level of carbon/CO2 in the atmosphere is only relevant if that affects the ratio of C12 to C14. And strangely enough it does. C14 is created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays impact nitrogen atoms so the amount of C14 produced is dependent on the level of cosmic rays and the level of N2 in the atmosphere. Then if you put more (non-C14) CO2 in the atmosphere it dilutes the C12/C14 ratio. Cosmic ray flux varies considerably over time but there is no observed trend in the level. I'm not aware that the level of N2 in the atmosphere has varied much over time.
But it's all taken into account by calibration. C14 dating has been calibrated (using tree rings, lake and ocean sediments, coral samples & cave deposits) back 6000 years with an accuracy of +/-16 years and back 26,000 years with and accuracy of +/-163 years. C14 dating is not useful more than about 60,000 years. If you don't like it then show why it's wrong.
Sometimes I wish mother earth could send out bills for the services she provides. The things you take for granted like air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, protection from the sun's ultraviolet emissions, etc. If that happened you'd be recycling the hell out of everything you could. Those taxes and regulations you hate so much are merely an attempt to internalize some of those externalities.
"Evolution is a fact, there is no debate, this is how life began."
Of course the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about how life began, just how it developed after it got started.
"Global Warming is caused by man and we must act to stop it (and we CAN act to stop it) is a fact and there can be no debate."
It's largely a true statement that much of the current warming is caused by human activities and therefore changes in human activities will affect where it ends up. You can always debate things but unless you present evidence to refute the opposing evidence you're not going to get very far except with the ideologues who are already know the answers.
Toast,
If you aren't willing dig into the subject deeply enough to understand the subject at a more basic level than what can you do other than to accept the consensus of the experts in the field?
There are plenty of people who, for ideological or economic self interest reasons, are willing to demagogue the subject of climate change (on both sides but weighed toward the "there is no global warming" side in my opinion) but I don't see that happening much in the people doing the research in the field. Too much of that and their reputation in the field will suffer.
For those of you who think the researchers are motivated by ideology more than scientific truth (not referring to you here Toast, but the reaction others will have to my statements above) I find it astounding that you could believe that world-wide the scientific community could carry out and keep hidden such an agenda over the years without someone exposing it. It's just not a credible accusation.
"What do you get if you cross a mastiff male with a chihuahua bitch, can they breed?"
One dead chihuahua bitch.
Well, I just don't get the "micro-evolution can only reduce information" argument. Maybe you think a new feature of evolution has to spring into place complete instead of developing slowly over many generations.
Mutations change genes. Whether that adds to, subtracts from or doesn't change the level of information (whatever you mean by that) is as random as the mutation itself. Genes can mutate in a lot of ways. They can lose parts, gain parts, change parts, rearrange parts and exchange parts. Those all result in new arrangements of genetic material that can produce new gene expressions. Probably most of the time mutations are of no consequence but sometimes they're deleterious and occasionally beneficial. There is genetic material from viruses found in the human genome. Many organisms* have far more genetic material than humans. Does that mean our genome is information poor compared to them?
*It takes about 20,000 genes to encode the proteins in a human, >46,000 in rice. Humans have 46 chromosomes, goldfish have 100 or more.
What you refer to as "macro-evolution" is merely the the accumulation of the changes from what you refer to as "micro-evolution" over thousands of generations. If you gave me an unlimited budget and 10,000 years I'd bet I could evolve a cat into a seal like creature.
From AC: "So Airlines weren't competing on price prior to deregulation? Prior to deregulation, airlines weren't trying to maximize profits?"
Before deregulation they were regulated much like public utilities with built in profits. They had assigned routes they could fly and other airlines had to get regulatory approval before they could fly the same routes. But the prices were high enough that many people just didn't fly. I was born in 1952 but never took a commercial airline flight until 1982 and that was paid for by my employer. I've still only flown 4 times for something other than business.
A lot of the loss of fun has to do with deregulation. When the airlines all have to compete on price they're going to squeeze things as much as they can get away with. For most people air travel is expensive enough that they'll put up with it to get the cheapest possible prices.
Snarfy,
Climate models are built on physics. They make no assumptions about "global warming" (GW) being real or not. They just model the physical processes that occur and output results based on that. At least for some models the source is available but if you don't have at least a Masters in physics it's not likely you'll be able understand them to any degree. Could it be that the reason that work that discounts GW is ignored or declaimed is because it's simply wrong?
For more information about climate models check here:
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/
I find it bizarre that you think anyone would have to accept those things you listed to accept GW. Of course the sun has a major effect on earth but the changes that have been observed don't explain the observed changes in climate. Of course the yearly carbon cycle puts tremendous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every year and also removes a basically equal amount too. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up and down by 3-9 ppm each year because of it. But we also know how much the level of CO2 each year (lately about 3 ppm/year) and we know how much human activities produce each year (ex: 1 ton coal at 70% carbon produces about 2.3 tons of CO2 when burned). Of course volcanoes produce GHGs. But in a normal year it amounts to less then 1% of human production. It would take something like the Yellowstone Caldera going off to make much of a difference. And of course temperature has varied over the last 1M years. Otherwise there would have been no ice ages. But it's changing now at a rate not known in the historical record outside of catastrophic events which will be a problem.
The effects of sun and volcanic eruptions are included in the models. One test that was made of the models was against the inputs from the eruption of Mt. Pinitubo and they modeled the effects of it very well.
The fact is that the climate models don't work if you remove CO2 from the equations. If you can come up with a model that does work without CO2 (and is otherwise scientifically defensible) you will be famous.
"the ultimate problem is too much heat, not the gases."
Um... Its not that simple. The excess CO2 causes increased acidification of the oceans which affects ocean life. Many plants do better or worse at different CO2 levels. For instance poison oak/ivy and corn both like increased levels of the CO2, conifers in general don't.
Stating your question like that shows you don't have a clue about how climate modeling works. What you could predict from a climate model is that the decade of the 2000's will be x degrees warmer than the decade of the 1950's. And in general they do pretty good at that, usually within the error bars.
Try here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/ and here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/.
It's not necessary to melt the steel. Just soften it enough so it can no longer support the weight above it.