I agree with you about 7 billion people. There were under 3 billion when I was born. But the only moral way I see that we could have avoided that would have been to put a bunch of money into education and raising the standard of living in those areas where the population is growing so fast. It's a certain thing that if 7 billion is too many nature will take care of the problem sooner or later.
Regarding Greenpeace. I don't deny there are hyerbolic statements from my side of the issue. I don't pay any more attention to them than I do to contrarians. I try to focus my attention on what the actual scientists who are active in the field say. They do practically nothing to politicize the issue.
Regarding the WWF. Most of what they do has little or nothing to do with AGW. To ascribe all of that money they received to AGW advocacy is probably wrong. There are probably details of what the various government grants they received were for. It would be interesting to dig into that.
I would say instead that the undue certainty in climate data from before the age of direct human observation is credible example of faked data.
Huh? There may be more uncertainty in proxy data but it's certainly not being faked.
The reason models fit the past better is that much of the unknown data from that future is known data in the past and factored in to the model runs. How do you expect scientist to predict things like the cycles of ENSO or volcanic eruptions ahead of time?
Maybe what you've heard about predictions doesn't match observational data but I suspect what you've heard about predictions have been hyped up and ignore the time frames that scientists put on them. To really understand the scientific predictions you have to get into the details and understand how the noise of natural variability affects them.
For instance your statement of 0.85C of warming. It's an observed fact, not a prediction that temperatures have increased that much since the late 1800s. But if you look at the details they also predicted the overnight low temperatures would rise more than daytime temperatures and winter temperatures would rise more than summer temperatures. Both of those have been observed to be happening.
As far as projections of future warming and the supposed "pause" you have to look at the role of natural variability over short time periods (climatologically speaking) and take into account the various scenarios they base those projections on before you can make a valid judgement.
One area where they have been wrong is Arctic sea ice. The projections for ASI in the IPCC reports has always underpredicted how fast it would go. Most scientists in the field expect ASI to be gone (defined as less than 1,000,000 km^2 remaining) in the 2040-2050 time frame but the way things are going 2025-2040 seems more likely. If you heard "But Al Gore said it would be gone by 2016!" you heard at best an outlying prediction that most in the field would not support but more likely a failure to look at the qualifications the researcher put on their statement.
From where I sit observations are matching the predictions pretty well considering the details of the predictions. I think the failure here is in your understanding of what the predictions really are and what they mean.
Regarding your direct response to me I would happily change my mind if the evidence lead away from current climate theory but it hasn't yet.
I foresee years of frustration for you as anthropogenic global warming continues to worsen despite your rejection of it. Maybe you'll eventually come around to the warmist side because the physical evidence piles up to the point where even you can't ignore it but I'm not holding out hope.
If you go to the CMIP web site it has a list of the models used. Something tells me you're not into even a minimum amount of research and want everything handed to you on a silver platter.
I think that it's actually better that the regulation started at the FCC level. The massive list of comments in favor of net neutrality is a warning to any member of Congress who would dare stand against net neutrality when the time to make legislation comes: if you stand against net neutrality, there are thousands of people who are going to do anything in their power to ensure you do not get re-elected, and no amount of corporate money is going to save you.
That hasn't stopped the Republicans from introducing several bills to undo the rules.
If you make the last mile a public utility open to any content provider then you don't need to regulate them and I'm free to select my ISP from anyone who cares to compete for my business.
Yes, I've seen people predicting extinction of the human race and I think its pretty far fetched. Homo sapiens is a very resourceful and adaptable species and as long and food and shelter can be found I expect at least a remanent of the species to survive. What may not survive is our worldwide civilization that supports over 7 billion of us.
1 foot of sea level rise may be a reasonable prediction for 50 years from now but the worlds great ice sheets are in serious imbalance right now that will probably take 500 years to reach a new equilibrium. I'd be shocked if SLR was less than 20 feet in 500 years and 60 or 80 feet wouldn't surprise me. To bad neither of us will be around to check on it or I'd make a wager with you about it.
Of course it's falsifiable, just not instantly like you want it to be. If temperatures dropped for a long enough period despite increasing CO2 and with no confounding factors like a major volcanic eruption that would falsify it. No single weather event will ever be enough to falsify it.
I think you'll be surprised^H%H%H%H%H%H%H%H shocked by how fast the transition to renewable energy will be. We're really on the cusp of the transition now and it's just a matter of how fast we can build the new infrastructure.
What's amazing to me is how much people want to trust the satellite temperature records. It must be because they show something closer to what they want. You can bet if they showed more warming than the surface records people would be all over them calling them out for data manipulation.
Deriving temperatures from satellites starts with measuring the microwave emissions of oxygen in the atmosphere. Then they have to apply adjustments for orbital variation, sensor degradation, new satellites/instruments replacing older ones, the effects of clouds and high elevation land and time of observation variations. After all of that you can finally derive a temperature for an amorphous blob of the atmosphere at some level above the surface.
Measuring at the surface with thermometers is much simpler even after all the adjustments to normalize the data set.
The Social Security Administration is required by law to invest their excess funds in Treasury Bonds which in effect makes it available to the general treasury. The problem comes when the SSA starts redeeming those bonds.
The basis of my original statement is that it's ignoring the continuing accumulation of heat in the oceans which can't be ignored because of the connections between them and the atmosphere. But you're right, I probably should have mentioned that in my original post.
They just reject the findings of said "climate" scientists.
Exactly. And when asked to come up with science of their own all they can do is pick around the edges of what the real climate scientists have said without getting very far.
Climate science (as well as meteorology)is fundamentally based on physics with a bit of geology thrown in. Lots of other sciences have their pieces to add such as astronomy, oceanography, cryology, biology, etc.
My basic comment to that is 15 years is not a climatically significant period of time. Try 30 years. My secondary comment to that is if you look at it by decadal averages the 2000s were far warmer than the 1990s and the 2010s are shaping up to be warmer than the 2000s.
A lot of people in the world have a binary view of things. Something either is or isn't and there is no nuance in their views. I assume life must be difficult for them sometimes.
People tend to think of humans as different from the rest of life on earth. All plants and animals except humans form a natural balance and live in harmony; only humans screw everything up by overpopulating themselves and their livestock while making everything else go extinct.
That was pretty much true of humans too until we developed agriculture. If we degrade the natural world to the point where the ecosystem services we depend on start to fail that will come in to play again.
All organs of all the animals are perfected for short term survival of the individual. Humans are not special, Brains are not special. That is why animals which could not adapt went extinct. Cultures that could not adapt went extinct, even in the absence of external threats.
"Perfected" is not a word I would use in regard to evolution. It's more like "good enough to get by".
Only way to control population at this point is to kill the old people. If that is not done the population will grow to something like 15 billion and stay there, unless some major event occur and kill them.
So you want to kill the people who are past their reproductive ages? Ya, that sounds like it's going to work.
More seriously if you look at the places with the fastest growing populations they all demographically skew toward a younger population.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you about 7 billion people. There were under 3 billion when I was born. But the only moral way I see that we could have avoided that would have been to put a bunch of money into education and raising the standard of living in those areas where the population is growing so fast. It's a certain thing that if 7 billion is too many nature will take care of the problem sooner or later.
Regarding Greenpeace. I don't deny there are hyerbolic statements from my side of the issue. I don't pay any more attention to them than I do to contrarians. I try to focus my attention on what the actual scientists who are active in the field say. They do practically nothing to politicize the issue.
Regarding the WWF. Most of what they do has little or nothing to do with AGW. To ascribe all of that money they received to AGW advocacy is probably wrong. There are probably details of what the various government grants they received were for. It would be interesting to dig into that.
I would say instead that the undue certainty in climate data from before the age of direct human observation is credible example of faked data.
Huh? There may be more uncertainty in proxy data but it's certainly not being faked.
The reason models fit the past better is that much of the unknown data from that future is known data in the past and factored in to the model runs. How do you expect scientist to predict things like the cycles of ENSO or volcanic eruptions ahead of time?
Maybe what you've heard about predictions doesn't match observational data but I suspect what you've heard about predictions have been hyped up and ignore the time frames that scientists put on them. To really understand the scientific predictions you have to get into the details and understand how the noise of natural variability affects them.
For instance your statement of 0.85C of warming. It's an observed fact, not a prediction that temperatures have increased that much since the late 1800s. But if you look at the details they also predicted the overnight low temperatures would rise more than daytime temperatures and winter temperatures would rise more than summer temperatures. Both of those have been observed to be happening.
As far as projections of future warming and the supposed "pause" you have to look at the role of natural variability over short time periods (climatologically speaking) and take into account the various scenarios they base those projections on before you can make a valid judgement.
One area where they have been wrong is Arctic sea ice. The projections for ASI in the IPCC reports has always underpredicted how fast it would go. Most scientists in the field expect ASI to be gone (defined as less than 1,000,000 km^2 remaining) in the 2040-2050 time frame but the way things are going 2025-2040 seems more likely. If you heard "But Al Gore said it would be gone by 2016!" you heard at best an outlying prediction that most in the field would not support but more likely a failure to look at the qualifications the researcher put on their statement.
From where I sit observations are matching the predictions pretty well considering the details of the predictions. I think the failure here is in your understanding of what the predictions really are and what they mean.
Regarding your direct response to me I would happily change my mind if the evidence lead away from current climate theory but it hasn't yet.
I foresee years of frustration for you as anthropogenic global warming continues to worsen despite your rejection of it. Maybe you'll eventually come around to the warmist side because the physical evidence piles up to the point where even you can't ignore it but I'm not holding out hope.
I see what you did there ;)
If you go to the CMIP web site it has a list of the models used. Something tells me you're not into even a minimum amount of research and want everything handed to you on a silver platter.
I think that it's actually better that the regulation started at the FCC level. The massive list of comments in favor of net neutrality is a warning to any member of Congress who would dare stand against net neutrality when the time to make legislation comes: if you stand against net neutrality, there are thousands of people who are going to do anything in their power to ensure you do not get re-elected, and no amount of corporate money is going to save you.
That hasn't stopped the Republicans from introducing several bills to undo the rules.
If you make the last mile a public utility open to any content provider then you don't need to regulate them and I'm free to select my ISP from anyone who cares to compete for my business.
Yes, I've seen people predicting extinction of the human race and I think its pretty far fetched. Homo sapiens is a very resourceful and adaptable species and as long and food and shelter can be found I expect at least a remanent of the species to survive. What may not survive is our worldwide civilization that supports over 7 billion of us.
1 foot of sea level rise may be a reasonable prediction for 50 years from now but the worlds great ice sheets are in serious imbalance right now that will probably take 500 years to reach a new equilibrium. I'd be shocked if SLR was less than 20 feet in 500 years and 60 or 80 feet wouldn't surprise me. To bad neither of us will be around to check on it or I'd make a wager with you about it.
Of course it's falsifiable, just not instantly like you want it to be. If temperatures dropped for a long enough period despite increasing CO2 and with no confounding factors like a major volcanic eruption that would falsify it. No single weather event will ever be enough to falsify it.
Tell me how you really feel.
I think you'll be surprised^H%H%H%H%H%H%H%H shocked by how fast the transition to renewable energy will be. We're really on the cusp of the transition now and it's just a matter of how fast we can build the new infrastructure.
What's amazing to me is how much people want to trust the satellite temperature records. It must be because they show something closer to what they want. You can bet if they showed more warming than the surface records people would be all over them calling them out for data manipulation.
Deriving temperatures from satellites starts with measuring the microwave emissions of oxygen in the atmosphere. Then they have to apply adjustments for orbital variation, sensor degradation, new satellites/instruments replacing older ones, the effects of clouds and high elevation land and time of observation variations. After all of that you can finally derive a temperature for an amorphous blob of the atmosphere at some level above the surface.
Measuring at the surface with thermometers is much simpler even after all the adjustments to normalize the data set.
The Social Security Administration is required by law to invest their excess funds in Treasury Bonds which in effect makes it available to the general treasury. The problem comes when the SSA starts redeeming those bonds.
Huh?
The basis of my original statement is that it's ignoring the continuing accumulation of heat in the oceans which can't be ignored because of the connections between them and the atmosphere. But you're right, I probably should have mentioned that in my original post.
They just reject the findings of said "climate" scientists.
Exactly. And when asked to come up with science of their own all they can do is pick around the edges of what the real climate scientists have said without getting very far.
Climate science (as well as meteorology)is fundamentally based on physics with a bit of geology thrown in. Lots of other sciences have their pieces to add such as astronomy, oceanography, cryology, biology, etc.
My basic comment to that is 15 years is not a climatically significant period of time. Try 30 years. My secondary comment to that is if you look at it by decadal averages the 2000s were far warmer than the 1990s and the 2010s are shaping up to be warmer than the 2000s.
Yes you should. The external costs of coal power far outweighs any external costs of solar.
Actually China used less coal in 2014 than they did in 2013.
A lot of people in the world have a binary view of things. Something either is or isn't and there is no nuance in their views. I assume life must be difficult for them sometimes.
The proper term is "Climate science deniers".
People tend to think of humans as different from the rest of life on earth. All plants and animals except humans form a natural balance and live in harmony; only humans screw everything up by overpopulating themselves and their livestock while making everything else go extinct.
That was pretty much true of humans too until we developed agriculture. If we degrade the natural world to the point where the ecosystem services we depend on start to fail that will come in to play again.
All organs of all the animals are perfected for short term survival of the individual. Humans are not special, Brains are not special. That is why animals which could not adapt went extinct. Cultures that could not adapt went extinct, even in the absence of external threats.
"Perfected" is not a word I would use in regard to evolution. It's more like "good enough to get by".
solar is cheaper than coal now
Bzzt. Wrong. Not if you include the cost of inverters, backup storage, and other little things like that.
Bzzt. Wrong. That's only true if you ignore the external costs of using coal.
And you make an assertion without a shred of proof that he's wrong.
Only way to control population at this point is to kill the old people. If that is not done the population will grow to something like 15 billion and stay there, unless some major event occur and kill them.
So you want to kill the people who are past their reproductive ages? Ya, that sounds like it's going to work.
More seriously if you look at the places with the fastest growing populations they all demographically skew toward a younger population.