I've seen it claimed often that doing something about anthropogenic climate change is "economy breaking" but they never seem to consider the possible economy breaking effects that ACC may engender.
I think anything Scalia may have written or given opinions on before his death are now moot. While his writings may influence other justices he can no longer cast a vote on a decision. I'm not sure how that affects decisions that may have already been made and were in the process of having the decisions written up.
Correction, there are 11 Federal Appellate Court circuits plus the DC Court of Appeals and the Federal Circuit Court (which hears patent cases among other things).
Any tied vote (like 4-4) in the Supreme Court means the decision that was appealed to them is upheld. This could make for some disjointed justice because appellate courts are not bound by the precedents of other appellate courts (there are 9 Federal Appellate Court districts) so you could have contradictory decisions in different courts that won't be resolved until the SC is whole again.
What is going to happen next is this: Obama will nominate someone and the Senate Republicans will do everything in their power to block it. Already, Cruz and Rubio have said as much -- that the next President should be the person to make the nomination, not Obama. Obama could nominate Rush Limbaugh and Senate Republicans would object. The only hope that there is for a reasonably speedy confirmation is for moderate -- or reasonable -- Republicans to, you know, do their jobs.
The Senate Republicans are in a dicey situation. If they obstruct such a prominent nomination too long they take the chance of alienating moderate and independent voters they need to win the upcoming elections. They may decide it's not worth taking that chance.
The Senate Republicans problem is if they obstruct such a prominent nomination that long they take the chance of alienating moderates and independents in the upcoming election. That could mean they lose the Senate and a Democrat is elected POTUS. I don't think they'll take that chance especially since the next President is likely to have at least a couple of SCOTUS nominees.
Of course the driving force behind building up our civilization has come from the more temperate zones of our planet. People living in the "horrible" environments of the world are mostly subsistence survivors living off the land.
You may not be worried about a few feet of sea level rise or a degree or two of warming but what makes you think that's the end of it? What do you think your children (or your relatives children) will have to contend with after you're gone? Current worst case scenarios show around 6 feet of sea level rise and 4-6 degrees C of temperature rise by 2100.
How so? If you mount the mirrors high enough there's no problem putting dwellings under them. Most of the area of this solar plant could be inhabitable as long as you don't need direct sunlight.
Here is an interesting article on the warming on Mars, 1999-2005. It implies the shrinking of the Martian southern ice cap is a regional phenomenon rather than being global. The comments following the article are interesting too including several rebuttals by the article author.
Yes the Mauna Loa observatory has the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 starting in 1958 but since then dozens of other observatories around the world have been measuring CO2 and not all of them are located next to volcanoes (La Jolla pier being one of them). Their results match the curve of the Mauna Loa observations so it doesn't appear that volcanic emissions of CO2 have had any effect on their measurements. There is a slight variance of CO2 levels by latitude with CO2 levels at the South Pole being a few ppm less than in the Northern Hemisphere but the general rise in atmospheric CO2 is evident in both places.
If they can't predict a few years, why on earth would we trust a long term average - or trend?
The issue is the signal to noise ratio. Natural variability and weather from year to year (noise) has a greater magnitude of variation than the underlying temperature trend (signal) from year to year. It takes time for the signal to emerge from the noise.
Other lessons of history not learned: How long was action on the dangers of smoking tobacco delayed by big tobacco and their paid scientists? How long was action delayed on the dangers of lead in gasoline and paint delayed by those who had a financial interest in them?
What makes people think the climate of pre-industrial humanity is the "ideal" climate? Transitioning may be hard, but shouldn't we determine what the optimal climate is before spending resources trying to control it? Wouldn't those resources be better spent on transitioning if a warmer planet is indeed better for life?
The Earth itself doesn't give a damn about an "ideal" climate. It will keep soldiering along regardless of what happens. Life will adapt but if the change is drastic enough it takes many thousands of years to do that.
But over the past several millennia we have built up a world spanning civilization based on the climate that has existed during that time. There is no guarantee that the cost of adapting our civilization to anthropogenic climate change will be less than the cost of mitigating the problem. In fact most studies I've see say the cost of mitigation is less than adaption.
How about instead of hypothesizing that climate scientists are conspiring to make a pause in warming disappear you actually do the science to show that their adjustments were unjustified.
It hasn't been until the last few decades that temperature stations have actually taken the needs of climate science in to account. Before that Time of Observation has changed, new instruments were introduced, urban heat islands have built up around temperature stations or they were moved to a new location. In measuring ocean surface temperatures the methods have changed from throwing a wooden bucket overboard to a canvas bucket to the intake pipes of ships to the current ARGO buoys. All of those changes have to be accounted for and corrected to get a relatively accurate contiguous record.
In your link there are two observations from 1999 and 2001, about 1 Martian year apart. What about since then? Has the erosion of the Martian south polar ice cap continued? What other evidence is there in the past 15 years?
There's lots and lots of grant money out there for people in that field, but only if their results match what the politicians need to push their agendas.
I see this claim again and again. Why hasn't someone actually done the work to determine how true it is? Information about most grants from the federal government are available. Someone needs to analyze them and show how skewed the grant process is (or not as I suspect they'd find).
You kind of have it backwards. Existing global climate models are useless to predict a few years but are the best thing we have to predict what the long term averages for climate will be. Like any model in science they're never perfect and there's always room for improvement.
Were any of those "1000 cases" of classified data actually classified and marked as such when they arrived in Clinton's mailbox? None that I've heard of. In that case it's not something Clinton should be prosecuted for.
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The science isn't nearly as "dodgy" as you seem to think it is.
I've seen it claimed often that doing something about anthropogenic climate change is "economy breaking" but they never seem to consider the possible economy breaking effects that ACC may engender.
A quote often misattributed to Mark Twain sums up my feelings:
I've never wished a man dead but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure.
I think anything Scalia may have written or given opinions on before his death are now moot. While his writings may influence other justices he can no longer cast a vote on a decision. I'm not sure how that affects decisions that may have already been made and were in the process of having the decisions written up.
Correction, there are 11 Federal Appellate Court circuits plus the DC Court of Appeals and the Federal Circuit Court (which hears patent cases among other things).
Any tied vote (like 4-4) in the Supreme Court means the decision that was appealed to them is upheld. This could make for some disjointed justice because appellate courts are not bound by the precedents of other appellate courts (there are 9 Federal Appellate Court districts) so you could have contradictory decisions in different courts that won't be resolved until the SC is whole again.
What is going to happen next is this: Obama will nominate someone and the Senate Republicans will do everything in their power to block it. Already, Cruz and Rubio have said as much -- that the next President should be the person to make the nomination, not Obama. Obama could nominate Rush Limbaugh and Senate Republicans would object. The only hope that there is for a reasonably speedy confirmation is for moderate -- or reasonable -- Republicans to, you know, do their jobs.
The Senate Republicans are in a dicey situation. If they obstruct such a prominent nomination too long they take the chance of alienating moderate and independent voters they need to win the upcoming elections. They may decide it's not worth taking that chance.
The Senate Republicans problem is if they obstruct such a prominent nomination that long they take the chance of alienating moderates and independents in the upcoming election. That could mean they lose the Senate and a Democrat is elected POTUS. I don't think they'll take that chance especially since the next President is likely to have at least a couple of SCOTUS nominees.
Why don't you put up a sign at the entry of your driveway that says "This is not a through road despite what your GPS might say!"
Of course the driving force behind building up our civilization has come from the more temperate zones of our planet. People living in the "horrible" environments of the world are mostly subsistence survivors living off the land.
You may not be worried about a few feet of sea level rise or a degree or two of warming but what makes you think that's the end of it? What do you think your children (or your relatives children) will have to contend with after you're gone? Current worst case scenarios show around 6 feet of sea level rise and 4-6 degrees C of temperature rise by 2100.
If you think the "past several millennia" has had stable climate then your more deluded or higher than I ever considered!!!.
The Earth's climate has been remarkably stable and so have sea levels for the past 6,000 years or so. Last I heard that is several millennia.
But I do live in Oregon where weed is legal now so you never know ;)
What makes you think models are no good when tested against data we have? And you need to show your work.
How so? If you mount the mirrors high enough there's no problem putting dwellings under them. Most of the area of this solar plant could be inhabitable as long as you don't need direct sunlight.
Here is an interesting article on the warming on Mars, 1999-2005. It implies the shrinking of the Martian southern ice cap is a regional phenomenon rather than being global. The comments following the article are interesting too including several rebuttals by the article author.
Yes the Mauna Loa observatory has the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 starting in 1958 but since then dozens of other observatories around the world have been measuring CO2 and not all of them are located next to volcanoes (La Jolla pier being one of them). Their results match the curve of the Mauna Loa observations so it doesn't appear that volcanic emissions of CO2 have had any effect on their measurements. There is a slight variance of CO2 levels by latitude with CO2 levels at the South Pole being a few ppm less than in the Northern Hemisphere but the general rise in atmospheric CO2 is evident in both places.
If they can't predict a few years, why on earth would we trust a long term average - or trend?
The issue is the signal to noise ratio. Natural variability and weather from year to year (noise) has a greater magnitude of variation than the underlying temperature trend (signal) from year to year. It takes time for the signal to emerge from the noise.
Other lessons of history not learned: How long was action on the dangers of smoking tobacco delayed by big tobacco and their paid scientists? How long was action delayed on the dangers of lead in gasoline and paint delayed by those who had a financial interest in them?
At least Trudeau took the gag order off the scientists that required them to get approval from their government minders before talking publicly.
What makes people think the climate of pre-industrial humanity is the "ideal" climate? Transitioning may be hard, but shouldn't we determine what the optimal climate is before spending resources trying to control it? Wouldn't those resources be better spent on transitioning if a warmer planet is indeed better for life?
The Earth itself doesn't give a damn about an "ideal" climate. It will keep soldiering along regardless of what happens. Life will adapt but if the change is drastic enough it takes many thousands of years to do that.
But over the past several millennia we have built up a world spanning civilization based on the climate that has existed during that time. There is no guarantee that the cost of adapting our civilization to anthropogenic climate change will be less than the cost of mitigating the problem. In fact most studies I've see say the cost of mitigation is less than adaption.
Ha! Way to out pedant the pedant :)
How about instead of hypothesizing that climate scientists are conspiring to make a pause in warming disappear you actually do the science to show that their adjustments were unjustified.
It hasn't been until the last few decades that temperature stations have actually taken the needs of climate science in to account. Before that Time of Observation has changed, new instruments were introduced, urban heat islands have built up around temperature stations or they were moved to a new location. In measuring ocean surface temperatures the methods have changed from throwing a wooden bucket overboard to a canvas bucket to the intake pipes of ships to the current ARGO buoys. All of those changes have to be accounted for and corrected to get a relatively accurate contiguous record.
In your link there are two observations from 1999 and 2001, about 1 Martian year apart. What about since then? Has the erosion of the Martian south polar ice cap continued? What other evidence is there in the past 15 years?
There's lots and lots of grant money out there for people in that field, but only if their results match what the politicians need to push their agendas.
I see this claim again and again. Why hasn't someone actually done the work to determine how true it is? Information about most grants from the federal government are available. Someone needs to analyze them and show how skewed the grant process is (or not as I suspect they'd find).
And, since we know Mars and Venus are also getting warmer, ...
Oh please, cite the data that shows Mars and Venus are getting warmer. All I ever hear is the claim without any data to back it up.
You kind of have it backwards. Existing global climate models are useless to predict a few years but are the best thing we have to predict what the long term averages for climate will be. Like any model in science they're never perfect and there's always room for improvement.
Were any of those "1000 cases" of classified data actually classified and marked as such when they arrived in Clinton's mailbox? None that I've heard of. In that case it's not something Clinton should be prosecuted for.