For binary thinkers like him it's got to be either/or. It can't be both. They'll agree with the science that supports their position and ignore the science that doesn't.
Property taxes help pay for services to my property. The streets I drive to get there, the fire department and police department that protect my property, the land services and building code enforcement that ensure I know what my property is and that my house is built to certain standards and the education of the children that will help insure my community continues to support those other services in the future.
Actually that graph may be reasonably accurate but it's mostly irrelevant because CO2 is not the only factor affecting climate. But most of the other big climate factors operate on long enough time scales that they aren't a significant factor on century time scales. For instance you may notice that there is a big temperature drop from 5.2 to 1.64 million years ago. A major factor in that appears to be the rising of the Isthmus of Panama cutting off water flow between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans causing the climate to cool.
What you say is true. There were prehistoric lakes, several of them like Lake Bonneville and Fort Rock lake in my neck of the woods. But then the climate changed and they dried up.
If you had read the NASA release on the study you would have seen that they explicitly called out soil moisture as a factor in the predicted droughts in North America. That's what I was pointing out in my post.
In the Southwest, climate change would likely cause reduced rainfall and increased temperatures that will evaporate more water from the soil. In the Central Plains, drying would largely be caused by the same temperature-driven increase in evaporation.
So what they're saying is in the Central Plains there won't necessarily be less precipitation but hotter temperatures will cause the soil to dry out more exacerbating the drought situation.
As for the rest of your post I think if you're going to say that humans are too insignificant to affect the climate you need to quantify your objections. Saying humans are insignificant sounds sciencey but you need to provide actual evidence for that statement, not just some hand waving.
A 42% increase in atmospheric CO2 in less than 200 years and having a CO2 level that hasn't been seen for over 4 million years seems pretty significant to me. Proving the increase is human caused is trivial. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Yes, I know that water vapor causes about double the greenhouse effect that CO2 does but as a condensing greenhouse gas the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is limited by temperature. CO2 does not condense out of the atmosphere and just continues to build up as long as the amount emitted exceeds the natural rate of removal.
I've always taken the big bang theory with a grain of salt. I accepted that it was the best hypothesis of the origin of the universe we had and it did a reasonable job of explaining the observations but I always felt there was more to discover.
Having a discussion is fine but it needs to be based in reality and the reality is CO2 is a major factor in the climate change we are seeing.
I believe the biggest factor that will make the droughts stronger in the near future is higher temperatures will cause more soil drying than in past droughts.
Actually 1100 years ago CO2 was pretty much at a high point for the last 1 million years at 280 ppm. During the cycle of glaciations/interglacials that have occurred on an ~100,000 year period for the last 800,000 years the peak CO2 level was 300 ppm or below and during the height of the glaciations it dropped into the 190 ppm range. At 400 ppm now it's higher than it's been in 4 or 5 million years if not longer, before anything resembling modern humans evolved.
It's not necessarily less precipitation overall that will cause the megadroughts but higher temperatures that will cause the soil to dry our more than during past droughts. Also the precipitation patterns are trending toward more sudden big precipitation and less spread out in the past.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Too many parents today grew up in a world where children didn't get those diseases so they don't realize the dangers they impose. It's kind of like what happened with with the financial collapse in 2007. We forgot the lessons of the Great Depression and repealed a lot of rules that would have prevented a collapse on that level. Maybe we just have to keep relearning those sorts of lessons every so often.
Of course my property taxes provide me with benefits like city and county policing, educating the next generation, access to the public library and a host of other things. Taxes are the dues I pay for a civilized society.
I almost never buy lottery tickets but every once in a while when the pot gets big I'll spring for some quick picks on the off chance I'll win. It's money I can easily afford so why not take the chance. Now if I was spending every week on the lottery that would be stupid but every once in a while isn't that big a deal. It's kind of like when I go to Las Vegas and play blackjack. I'll take maybe $250 in to play with and I quit if I loose it all.
If by some strange chance I do win I'll reserve enough to live the rest of my life on, maybe $20 million and probably distribute the rest to charity (and no charity is not my needy relatives who'll be asking me for money).
buying a home. Hasn't made sense since the 1970s. The social contract is broken, you no longer can rely on job security or a decent pension. Yet the banks still expect you to pay them on time. A home is a *liability*, not an investment.
That depends entirely on your situation. For me I'll have 30 years in my current job in April and I paid off my house 6 years ago so living has become very inexpensive for me. When I retire in 2 or 3 years it will be a bonus not to have to pay rent or house payments. My basic living expenses are only about $600/month.
When you look at the economic performance of states run by conservative governors like Scott Walker and Sam Brownback in Kansas you find it doesn't compare well neighboring states that weren't run so conservatively. The mantra of cutting taxes and spending doesn't hold up very well in the real world.
I'm rooting for a sane candidate. The last time I voted for a Republican for President was for Gerald Ford in 1976 (well, John Anderson in 1988 but he was running as an independent). That doesn't mean I always vote for Democrats either, I voted for Rocky Anderson in 2012. Jeb Bush is probably one of the more sane people running on the R side but he's got too much baggage for me to consider him.
At this point I would say that the area around the Apollo 11 landing spot should be off limits to preserve it as the first place any human set foot on a body off of the Earth. Anyone going in there would just mess up the area by leaving additional footprints and looting what's left there. We ought to put a dome over it to keep it pristine.
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
For many areas, particularly sub-tropical regions solar power production matches with the air conditioning peak draw enough that it's well worth pursuing.
In most sciences a lot of money gets spent on hardware and in climate science particularly there is a lot of expensive hardware and research. So there may be more money spent on climate science than by the anti side. But how much does it cost to design, build, launch and process the data from a satellite? How much does a super computer cost? How much does it cost to launch nearly 4,000 Argo floats? What's the cost of mounting a research expedition to some remote place? How much of that government money is spent on PR would be a better comparison because that's what the climate science denial side has, PR.
Presumably, this single anecdote you are offering as evidence involves a scientist working on something useful.
How do we judge what is going to be useful? How many of the things we take for granted today would have been considered useful before they were discovered? If we limit scientific research only to what we can see is useful we risk missing something that may turn out to be even more useful in the future. Humanity is where it is from people pushing the edge of knowledge and expanding it to even greater understanding. Do you really want to turn off that fountain of bounty that basic research feeds?
Slashdot Mirror
For binary thinkers like him it's got to be either/or. It can't be both. They'll agree with the science that supports their position and ignore the science that doesn't.
Property taxes help pay for services to my property. The streets I drive to get there, the fire department and police department that protect my property, the land services and building code enforcement that ensure I know what my property is and that my house is built to certain standards and the education of the children that will help insure my community continues to support those other services in the future.
WtfUWT. ROTFLMAO.
Actually that graph may be reasonably accurate but it's mostly irrelevant because CO2 is not the only factor affecting climate. But most of the other big climate factors operate on long enough time scales that they aren't a significant factor on century time scales. For instance you may notice that there is a big temperature drop from 5.2 to 1.64 million years ago. A major factor in that appears to be the rising of the Isthmus of Panama cutting off water flow between the tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans causing the climate to cool.
For the last 800,000 years temperature and CO2 have tracked pretty well together.
What you say is true. There were prehistoric lakes, several of them like Lake Bonneville and Fort Rock lake in my neck of the woods. But then the climate changed and they dried up.
If you had read the NASA release on the study you would have seen that they explicitly called out soil moisture as a factor in the predicted droughts in North America. That's what I was pointing out in my post.
In the Southwest, climate change would likely cause reduced rainfall and increased temperatures that will evaporate more water from the soil. In the Central Plains, drying would largely be caused by the same temperature-driven increase in evaporation.
So what they're saying is in the Central Plains there won't necessarily be less precipitation but hotter temperatures will cause the soil to dry out more exacerbating the drought situation.
As for the rest of your post I think if you're going to say that humans are too insignificant to affect the climate you need to quantify your objections. Saying humans are insignificant sounds sciencey but you need to provide actual evidence for that statement, not just some hand waving.
A 42% increase in atmospheric CO2 in less than 200 years and having a CO2 level that hasn't been seen for over 4 million years seems pretty significant to me. Proving the increase is human caused is trivial. CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Yes, I know that water vapor causes about double the greenhouse effect that CO2 does but as a condensing greenhouse gas the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is limited by temperature. CO2 does not condense out of the atmosphere and just continues to build up as long as the amount emitted exceeds the natural rate of removal.
I've always taken the big bang theory with a grain of salt. I accepted that it was the best hypothesis of the origin of the universe we had and it did a reasonable job of explaining the observations but I always felt there was more to discover.
Having a discussion is fine but it needs to be based in reality and the reality is CO2 is a major factor in the climate change we are seeing.
I believe the biggest factor that will make the droughts stronger in the near future is higher temperatures will cause more soil drying than in past droughts.
Actually 1100 years ago CO2 was pretty much at a high point for the last 1 million years at 280 ppm. During the cycle of glaciations/interglacials that have occurred on an ~100,000 year period for the last 800,000 years the peak CO2 level was 300 ppm or below and during the height of the glaciations it dropped into the 190 ppm range. At 400 ppm now it's higher than it's been in 4 or 5 million years if not longer, before anything resembling modern humans evolved.
It's not necessarily less precipitation overall that will cause the megadroughts but higher temperatures that will cause the soil to dry our more than during past droughts. Also the precipitation patterns are trending toward more sudden big precipitation and less spread out in the past.
Works for parking disputes too I hear. /s
I think you hit the nail on the head. Too many parents today grew up in a world where children didn't get those diseases so they don't realize the dangers they impose. It's kind of like what happened with with the financial collapse in 2007. We forgot the lessons of the Great Depression and repealed a lot of rules that would have prevented a collapse on that level. Maybe we just have to keep relearning those sorts of lessons every so often.
Of course my property taxes provide me with benefits like city and county policing, educating the next generation, access to the public library and a host of other things. Taxes are the dues I pay for a civilized society.
In comparison to Wisconsin I was thinking more about Minnesota.
And since I paid my house off 6 years ago I'm spending $0 a month (well really I have to reserve about $200/month for property taxes).
I almost never buy lottery tickets but every once in a while when the pot gets big I'll spring for some quick picks on the off chance I'll win. It's money I can easily afford so why not take the chance. Now if I was spending every week on the lottery that would be stupid but every once in a while isn't that big a deal. It's kind of like when I go to Las Vegas and play blackjack. I'll take maybe $250 in to play with and I quit if I loose it all.
If by some strange chance I do win I'll reserve enough to live the rest of my life on, maybe $20 million and probably distribute the rest to charity (and no charity is not my needy relatives who'll be asking me for money).
buying a home. Hasn't made sense since the 1970s. The social contract is broken, you no longer can rely on job security or a decent pension. Yet the banks still expect you to pay them on time. A home is a *liability*, not an investment.
That depends entirely on your situation. For me I'll have 30 years in my current job in April and I paid off my house 6 years ago so living has become very inexpensive for me. When I retire in 2 or 3 years it will be a bonus not to have to pay rent or house payments. My basic living expenses are only about $600/month.
When you look at the economic performance of states run by conservative governors like Scott Walker and Sam Brownback in Kansas you find it doesn't compare well neighboring states that weren't run so conservatively. The mantra of cutting taxes and spending doesn't hold up very well in the real world.
I'm rooting for a sane candidate. The last time I voted for a Republican for President was for Gerald Ford in 1976 (well, John Anderson in 1988 but he was running as an independent). That doesn't mean I always vote for Democrats either, I voted for Rocky Anderson in 2012. Jeb Bush is probably one of the more sane people running on the R side but he's got too much baggage for me to consider him.
LOL, me too.
Not a good start.
At this point I would say that the area around the Apollo 11 landing spot should be off limits to preserve it as the first place any human set foot on a body off of the Earth. Anyone going in there would just mess up the area by leaving additional footprints and looting what's left there. We ought to put a dome over it to keep it pristine.
The plural of thesis is theses.
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
For many areas, particularly sub-tropical regions solar power production matches with the air conditioning peak draw enough that it's well worth pursuing.
LOL. What can of worms? You think scientists are going to get sued over their science? Ain't going to happen.
I'm going to steal that list. It's spot on.
In most sciences a lot of money gets spent on hardware and in climate science particularly there is a lot of expensive hardware and research. So there may be more money spent on climate science than by the anti side. But how much does it cost to design, build, launch and process the data from a satellite? How much does a super computer cost? How much does it cost to launch nearly 4,000 Argo floats? What's the cost of mounting a research expedition to some remote place? How much of that government money is spent on PR would be a better comparison because that's what the climate science denial side has, PR.
Presumably, this single anecdote you are offering as evidence involves a scientist working on something useful.
How do we judge what is going to be useful? How many of the things we take for granted today would have been considered useful before they were discovered? If we limit scientific research only to what we can see is useful we risk missing something that may turn out to be even more useful in the future. Humanity is where it is from people pushing the edge of knowledge and expanding it to even greater understanding. Do you really want to turn off that fountain of bounty that basic research feeds?