The scientific quality of WG2 is unfortunately rather low
Thanks for your blithe dismissal of that, but I think the many climate experts and scientific bodies who contributed to and reviewed it have a more credible opinion.
it's easier to just quote some scientists who are typically described as skeptics [wsj.com]
Well, if that's your best source for your opinions, it's no wonder you're labouring under this misapprehension. Maybe you should be listening to actualclimatescientists? Or if you just want to see a bunch of signatures, try this letter, signed by 255 scientists.
If you want us to believe that WG2's conclusions are inaccurate and can be safely ignored, you're going to need much more credible evidence than that.
life has been most widespread and most diverse in the warmest periods of earth's history
That's only true when the warming is gradual. Rapid climatic change causes a dramatic rise in the extinction rate, and loss of diversity. This has happened a number of times in the paleolithic record.
Change is always difficult, but always inevitable.
This particular change is caused by us - it's far from inevitable. And it's much cheaper for us to invest in switching to a carbon-neutral economy than it is to adapt to the adverse effects - not to mention the many benefits of getting off fossil fuels.
What you're saying is, ok, so we're crapping in our bed... well, it was inevitable, guess we should just get comfortable - cleaning it is too much work after all, and besides it's nice and warm now.
I take it you're not disputing that 98% of climatologists are convinced that climate change is occurring, and is human-caused.
As for the negative effects of this change, IPCC Working Group II covered that pretty well. There's plenty of similar reports from otherbodies too, including individualclimatologists.Are you claiming that these do not represent the majority opinion, or just nit-picking about the exact figure?
Fair point; I'm not aware of any formal surveys of climatologists about actual recommendations as to solutions, only on the proposition that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause.
However, the IPCC Working Group III addresses mitigation, and recommends a variety of measures, most of which are designed to reduce emission or increase uptake of CO2, and in some cases methane. I wouldn't describe this as a survey, but given that it was produced in consultation with a large number of scientists and scientific bodies, I'd call it the best representation of consensus available. Certainly I'm unaware of consensus on any other methods.
My point was that you're completely overlooking the massive short-term costs of adapting to the change (and the links discuss this too).
You might be able to argue that our total area of arable land will not decrease overall; it might even increase, given a few centuries to allow the biosphere to adapt (species migration, topsoil development etc). Greenland won't be growing tomatoes overnight.
But the costs I (and those links) described are much more short-term than that. Katrina DID happen overnight, and we'll see many more events like that as the sea level rises and extreme weather becomes more common. Droughts are already a problem in many countries, and are predicted to increase. Already some small islands in Indonesia are no longer viable; 22% of Bangladesh will be inundated, along with large chunks of our coastal cities.
There would have to be some astonishingly good overall long-term benefits to make up for these kind of short-term costs.
Right now it would be career suicide for any but the most established or most fringe to come out against man made global warming.
See, ask any scientist, and they'd say you're wrong: it would make them famous to come out against man-made global warming - IF they could prove it. Overthrowing established science pretty much guarantees your career, but only if your evidence is solid enough to hold up against very careful scrutiny.
To postulate that so many thousands of climatologists are supporting AGW simply to "fit in", you then have to assume that they all are:
a) Ignoring/hiding evidence to the contrary, and
b) Manufacturing evidence that supports AGW, and
c) Willing to compromise their personal and scientific integrity, and
d) Risking their careers when this is eventually discovered, not to mention
e) Throwing away a chance to present the real evidence and become famous as the guy who conclusively disproved AGW.
Or, perhaps it really is true that after decades of research and analysis, these thousands of climatologists have been doing their jobs like most other scientists; finding and presenting peer-reviewed evidence that has convinced them beyond any reasonable doubt that AGW is not only real, but is one hell of a threat to our society.
I'm with you on the environmental benefits, but I think it's more important than that. We're being told that, if we don't act, the cumulative cost to the global economy will be almost beyond measuring, not to mention the cost in human suffering. Given the status quo, and the need for rapid change in the face of spiralling costs if we don't, this requires either strong political will (obviously lacking) to push the country to a carbon-neutral energy infrastructure, or at the very least some sharp prods to the marketplace in the form of a carbon price.
Sounds like he was just asking you to point one out.
Assuming you can, does that lead you to conclude that no scientific consensus can be relied upon in any way? Because there's a lot of engineers out there who would disagree.
If anyone thinks they can prove a specific scientific theory wrong in the face of consensus, they're going to need some very strong evidence. This has indeed happened in the past (though rarely), but nobody has yet brought up any evidence strong enough to convince any actual climatologists.
we can all agree that weathermen's (climatologists) predictions are basically a joke
Weather != climate. Meterologist != climatologist. We don't agree on that at all.
in the 1970s these same climatologists were claiming that the ice age was right around the corner.
Only 10% of scientists predicted cooling in the 1970s. 62% predicted warming (the rest took no stance). After 30 years additional research, we have a much stronger consensus of 98%.
I am absolutely not equipped to say that they are right or wrong. What I will say is that they are often wrong about what is going to happen tomorrow.
So because you can't predict the flip of a coin, you're saying anyone who predicts the average result of 10,000 flips should be ignored, regardless of the consequences?
I agree most of us are not equipped to judge - but climatologists are, better than anyone else. You probably accept the assertions of most branches of science, even the weird ones like quantum physics, so refusing to listen to one particular branch of science just because its conclusions might directly inconvenience you doesn't sound all that rational.
There are indeed other ways, but the GP is correct in that the consensus is that greenhouse gases need to be reduced.
The problems with the alternatives are that they're untested, often expensive, possibly ineffective and certainly risky. We don't know how well they'll work or what side effects they'll have, nor will they solve other issues like ocean acidification. Returning CO2 levels to historical norms is (relatively) straightforward, well-understood, and a much safer approach in general.
Sure does. If you cherry-pick one subset of the data (such as only the lower atmosphere temperatures), or one scientist (such as Dr Spencer), you might find they support your view.
But if you look at the big picture (such as the global combined land and ocean temperature index in the NASA graph), if you study all the climate indicies like the thousands of climatologists do, you'll get a much better idea of what the global climate is doing - and you'll probably arrive at the same conclusion as 98% of those climatologists - AGW is happening right now, and if we don't pull our fingers out and act right now, we're in for a world of hurt.
If climate change is stopped, billions of people will die
[Citation needed]. The costs (desertification, acidification, extinctions, sea level rises, population displacements, extreme weather events, famines from crop failures due to changing weather patterns etc etc) are hugely greater than the benefits (which are mostly longer-term).
Consider also that the enormous cost to the global economies adapting to such major changes will far outweigh the short-term costs of subsidising a carbon-neutral energy infrastructure.
If you're genuinely interested in learning more, you could start here, or skip straight to the IPCC WGII report that discusses this.
Only Android's kernel is GPL; the rest of Android was written or paid for by Google. They didn't have to open the vast majority of Android with an Apache license, but they did anyway (to encourage adoption).
And long before that, they were trying to negotiate patent fees with the various vendors, but were ignored. The lawsuits were the last resort, and have mostly ended in the vendors settling. Revenues have been rolled back into a fund for future research. Read more here.
They said it would be offered on application. It's not a standard consumer plan, that's all. Dedicated fibre links are available too. And the fibre is "rated" for far higher than 2Gbps - it's capable of terabits/second. There's already a planned upgrade path to 40Gbps.
Latency is an issue, but caching can help many things, and fibre shaves off 20-40ms compared to ADSL.
for a reason, and it's not just his name or that he attended seminary school.
Read up on his actions as Health Minister, where he fought to block the drug RU486 (a friend of a friend died as a direct result), and Parliament had to vote specially to restrain him. Religious beliefs should not become national policy.
Remember, corporations are people too, and if the public gets an interest in these talks, that could seriously damage the corporate bottom line, which is about as physical as you can get.
You might think so, but that often isn't the case. In AU, nearly 2.5 years after release, COD: Modern Warfare 2 still costs $80! Even if you manage to buy during a rare 30%-off special, that's still more than it ever cost in the US, even allowing for our 10% GST or stronger dollar.
And it's not just popular games either, nor is Steam the only offender. Xbox Live is usually worse, and there are 3 year old games on retail shelves that cost the full RRP of $109. Don't even get me started on iTunes music. Importing (from the UK, usually) is cheaper, but it's ludicrous that a boxed product can be manufactured then shipped all the way to AU via the UK and still be half the price of a simple download.
While customers are flocking to import sites, local retailers are going out of business, and distributors just shrug and say, "It's the publisher's decision" (while collecting their "suggested" cut). The publishers, naturally, aren't commenting.
Electricity is 100% efficient at producing heat, though there are better ways (heat pumps can be 200%+ efficient at producing heat, if you don't mind cooling the surrounding environment).
But as you say, using electricity to heat something isn't often the best way to solve a problem, including when the problem is humidity.
At least if you pull down the blinds. But then, so are all other electrical heaters, and indeed pretty much most electrical equipment. Light, and all other radiated energy, all ends up as heat in the end. The only difference is how a heater distributes the heat, and and how convenient that process is.
Reverse-cycle air conditioners are an exception, as they're heat pumps, not radiators.
So, it's a race then, between Cameron's Deep Sea Challenge and Hawke/Virgin Oceanic's Deep Flight Challenger (which I think is a lot cooler - it "flies" rather than just sinks).
Don't know any dates for either attempt, other than '2012' for Deep Flight's first descent.
Slashdot Mirror
The scientific quality of WG2 is unfortunately rather low
Thanks for your blithe dismissal of that, but I think the many climate experts and scientific bodies who contributed to and reviewed it have a more credible opinion.
it's easier to just quote some scientists who are typically described as skeptics [wsj.com]
Well, if that's your best source for your opinions, it's no wonder you're labouring under this misapprehension. Maybe you should be listening to actual climate scientists? Or if you just want to see a bunch of signatures, try this letter, signed by 255 scientists.
If you want us to believe that WG2's conclusions are inaccurate and can be safely ignored, you're going to need much more credible evidence than that.
life has been most widespread and most diverse in the warmest periods of earth's history
That's only true when the warming is gradual. Rapid climatic change causes a dramatic rise in the extinction rate, and loss of diversity. This has happened a number of times in the paleolithic record.
Change is always difficult, but always inevitable.
This particular change is caused by us - it's far from inevitable. And it's much cheaper for us to invest in switching to a carbon-neutral economy than it is to adapt to the adverse effects - not to mention the many benefits of getting off fossil fuels.
What you're saying is, ok, so we're crapping in our bed... well, it was inevitable, guess we should just get comfortable - cleaning it is too much work after all, and besides it's nice and warm now.
I take it you're not disputing that 98% of climatologists are convinced that climate change is occurring, and is human-caused.
As for the negative effects of this change, IPCC Working Group II covered that pretty well. There's plenty of similar reports from other bodies too, including individual climatologists.Are you claiming that these do not represent the majority opinion, or just nit-picking about the exact figure?
Fair point; I'm not aware of any formal surveys of climatologists about actual recommendations as to solutions, only on the proposition that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause.
However, the IPCC Working Group III addresses mitigation, and recommends a variety of measures, most of which are designed to reduce emission or increase uptake of CO2, and in some cases methane. I wouldn't describe this as a survey, but given that it was produced in consultation with a large number of scientists and scientific bodies, I'd call it the best representation of consensus available. Certainly I'm unaware of consensus on any other methods.
My point was that you're completely overlooking the massive short-term costs of adapting to the change (and the links discuss this too).
You might be able to argue that our total area of arable land will not decrease overall; it might even increase, given a few centuries to allow the biosphere to adapt (species migration, topsoil development etc). Greenland won't be growing tomatoes overnight.
But the costs I (and those links) described are much more short-term than that. Katrina DID happen overnight, and we'll see many more events like that as the sea level rises and extreme weather becomes more common. Droughts are already a problem in many countries, and are predicted to increase. Already some small islands in Indonesia are no longer viable; 22% of Bangladesh will be inundated, along with large chunks of our coastal cities.
There would have to be some astonishingly good overall long-term benefits to make up for these kind of short-term costs.
Right now it would be career suicide for any but the most established or most fringe to come out against man made global warming.
See, ask any scientist, and they'd say you're wrong: it would make them famous to come out against man-made global warming - IF they could prove it. Overthrowing established science pretty much guarantees your career, but only if your evidence is solid enough to hold up against very careful scrutiny.
To postulate that so many thousands of climatologists are supporting AGW simply to "fit in", you then have to assume that they all are:
a) Ignoring/hiding evidence to the contrary, and
b) Manufacturing evidence that supports AGW, and
c) Willing to compromise their personal and scientific integrity, and
d) Risking their careers when this is eventually discovered, not to mention
e) Throwing away a chance to present the real evidence and become famous as the guy who conclusively disproved AGW.
Or, perhaps it really is true that after decades of research and analysis, these thousands of climatologists have been doing their jobs like most other scientists; finding and presenting peer-reviewed evidence that has convinced them beyond any reasonable doubt that AGW is not only real, but is one hell of a threat to our society.
I'm with you on the environmental benefits, but I think it's more important than that. We're being told that, if we don't act, the cumulative cost to the global economy will be almost beyond measuring, not to mention the cost in human suffering. Given the status quo, and the need for rapid change in the face of spiralling costs if we don't, this requires either strong political will (obviously lacking) to push the country to a carbon-neutral energy infrastructure, or at the very least some sharp prods to the marketplace in the form of a carbon price.
Sounds like he was just asking you to point one out.
Assuming you can, does that lead you to conclude that no scientific consensus can be relied upon in any way? Because there's a lot of engineers out there who would disagree.
If anyone thinks they can prove a specific scientific theory wrong in the face of consensus, they're going to need some very strong evidence. This has indeed happened in the past (though rarely), but nobody has yet brought up any evidence strong enough to convince any actual climatologists.
we can all agree that weathermen's (climatologists) predictions are basically a joke
Weather != climate. Meterologist != climatologist. We don't agree on that at all.
in the 1970s these same climatologists were claiming that the ice age was right around the corner.
Only 10% of scientists predicted cooling in the 1970s. 62% predicted warming (the rest took no stance). After 30 years additional research, we have a much stronger consensus of 98%.
I am absolutely not equipped to say that they are right or wrong. What I will say is that they are often wrong about what is going to happen tomorrow.
So because you can't predict the flip of a coin, you're saying anyone who predicts the average result of 10,000 flips should be ignored, regardless of the consequences?
I agree most of us are not equipped to judge - but climatologists are, better than anyone else. You probably accept the assertions of most branches of science, even the weird ones like quantum physics, so refusing to listen to one particular branch of science just because its conclusions might directly inconvenience you doesn't sound all that rational.
There are indeed other ways, but the GP is correct in that the consensus is that greenhouse gases need to be reduced.
The problems with the alternatives are that they're untested, often expensive, possibly ineffective and certainly risky. We don't know how well they'll work or what side effects they'll have, nor will they solve other issues like ocean acidification. Returning CO2 levels to historical norms is (relatively) straightforward, well-understood, and a much safer approach in general.
It depends what graph you look at
Sure does. If you cherry-pick one subset of the data (such as only the lower atmosphere temperatures), or one scientist (such as Dr Spencer), you might find they support your view.
But if you look at the big picture (such as the global combined land and ocean temperature index in the NASA graph), if you study all the climate indicies like the thousands of climatologists do, you'll get a much better idea of what the global climate is doing - and you'll probably arrive at the same conclusion as 98% of those climatologists - AGW is happening right now, and if we don't pull our fingers out and act right now, we're in for a world of hurt.
Maybe we should start letting it get warmer now.
You obviously didn't read the links I provided, or you'd realise what a bone-headed decision that would be.
If climate change is stopped, billions of people will die
[Citation needed]. The costs (desertification, acidification, extinctions, sea level rises, population displacements, extreme weather events, famines from crop failures due to changing weather patterns etc etc) are hugely greater than the benefits (which are mostly longer-term).
Consider also that the enormous cost to the global economies adapting to such major changes will far outweigh the short-term costs of subsidising a carbon-neutral energy infrastructure.
If you're genuinely interested in learning more, you could start here, or skip straight to the IPCC WGII report that discusses this.
Only Android's kernel is GPL; the rest of Android was written or paid for by Google. They didn't have to open the vast majority of Android with an Apache license, but they did anyway (to encourage adoption).
Pfft, houses have hardly any bandwidth at all!
I dunno; my station wagon filled with 32GB microSD cards has 73x more bandwidth.
That's Ric Richardson? Huh. I bought my first Amiga from that guy, back in '86.
And long before that, they were trying to negotiate patent fees with the various vendors, but were ignored. The lawsuits were the last resort, and have mostly ended in the vendors settling. Revenues have been rolled back into a fund for future research. Read more here.
They said it would be offered on application. It's not a standard consumer plan, that's all. Dedicated fibre links are available too. And the fibre is "rated" for far higher than 2Gbps - it's capable of terabits/second. There's already a planned upgrade path to 40Gbps.
Latency is an issue, but caching can help many things, and fibre shaves off 20-40ms compared to ADSL.
for a reason, and it's not just his name or that he attended seminary school.
Read up on his actions as Health Minister, where he fought to block the drug RU486 (a friend of a friend died as a direct result), and Parliament had to vote specially to restrain him. Religious beliefs should not become national policy.
Remember, corporations are people too, and if the public gets an interest in these talks, that could seriously damage the corporate bottom line, which is about as physical as you can get.
You might think so, but that often isn't the case. In AU, nearly 2.5 years after release, COD: Modern Warfare 2 still costs $80! Even if you manage to buy during a rare 30%-off special, that's still more than it ever cost in the US, even allowing for our 10% GST or stronger dollar.
And it's not just popular games either, nor is Steam the only offender. Xbox Live is usually worse, and there are 3 year old games on retail shelves that cost the full RRP of $109. Don't even get me started on iTunes music. Importing (from the UK, usually) is cheaper, but it's ludicrous that a boxed product can be manufactured then shipped all the way to AU via the UK and still be half the price of a simple download.
While customers are flocking to import sites, local retailers are going out of business, and distributors just shrug and say, "It's the publisher's decision" (while collecting their "suggested" cut). The publishers, naturally, aren't commenting.
Electricity is 100% efficient at producing heat, though there are better ways (heat pumps can be 200%+ efficient at producing heat, if you don't mind cooling the surrounding environment).
But as you say, using electricity to heat something isn't often the best way to solve a problem, including when the problem is humidity.
At least if you pull down the blinds. But then, so are all other electrical heaters, and indeed pretty much most electrical equipment. Light, and all other radiated energy, all ends up as heat in the end. The only difference is how a heater distributes the heat, and and how convenient that process is.
Reverse-cycle air conditioners are an exception, as they're heat pumps, not radiators.
So, it's a race then, between Cameron's Deep Sea Challenge and Hawke/Virgin Oceanic's Deep Flight Challenger (which I think is a lot cooler - it "flies" rather than just sinks).
Don't know any dates for either attempt, other than '2012' for Deep Flight's first descent.
Read up on Welsh's Deep Flight Challenger. As TFA says, it makes the 1960 vehicle, the Bathyscaphe Trieste, look like a zeppelin compared to a fighter jet.