You have to admire the denialist logical facility. 1) AGW is a fiction, because historically high CO2 follows high temperatures, not the other way around. 2) AGW is a fiction, because currently high CO2 follows low temperatures.
I venture that if someone holds these opinions, you will never be able to create a logical argument powerful enough to cause him to abandon them.
the population of the earth could go up to 100 trillion, but if they aren't burning fossil carbon, they're not contributing any net CO2 increase, A subsistence farmer who powers his whole existence by burning wood and/or water wheels and/or windmills and/or livestock fed on plants grown without artificial fertilizer and/or human power fed on plants grown without artificial fertilizer has zero net CO2 increase. there may well be plenty of other pollution issues, but as far as CO2 is concerned, if all the CO2 you pump into the air was pulled out of the air by plants within the past year, it's pretty obvious you're not increasing the concentration.
So, you would suggest that the process of a plant taking CO2 from the air to produce carbohydrate, which is then metabolized by a cow releasing CO2 into the air, is causing atmospheric CO2 to increase? Boy, if we could harness that process...
Or are you suggesting that modern agriculture, which is highly fossil fuel driven to create huge amounts of ammonium nitrate in order to produce enormous yields of corn and soybeans for cheap animal fodder, is generating excess CO2?
then perhaps you can point to those places on the graph where the volcano emitted some CO2 and threw the graph off. Because I see the annual variation and a general rise. Or are you suggesting that the volcano is emitting CO2 pretty much in sync with the amount of carbon human beings are burning, which itself is disappearing rather than showing up in the atmosphere? Occam is razoring his throat in his grave.
ah yes "Combining these results with global estimates from previous studies, the erosion induced terrestrial carbon sink can potentially offset as much as 10 percent of the global fossil-fuel emissions of carbon dioxide in 2005." http://www.csrees.usda.gov/funding/nri/highlights/2007_no9.pdf Nothing to worry about, then. Everybody back to sleep.
what makes you think the earth has a negative feedback mechanism in the climate, other than black body radiation? a giant AC? how can you believe there is negative feedback, then assert that the climate is unstable two paragraphs later? what makes you think that nobody has ever thought beyond "man change - man change bad"? Projection? What do you think climatologists and so on do all day? Party with that vast grant money the denialists think they are all conspiring to steal?
If anything, looking at the actual history of the climate, the climate is stable at a much warmer, wetter, and CO2 laden point than the one we are at now, and at which every living organism has evolved. It seems likely that this is related to all the CO2 pulled out of the air and buried during the carboniferous period, which coincided with the change in climate. in which case, returning a lot of that carbon into the air, a million times faster than it was taken out, might be expected to jar the climate from its current metastable state.
I repeat: what makes you think the earth has a negative feedback mechanism in the climate?
Well, answer this truthfully, if you will. Had the Soviet Union announced a plan to save the freezing people of the earth, create longer growing seasons, etc by pumping large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, would you have been happy with that? Do you think the heartland institute would be publishing articles in favor?
It's interesting, because this is something that ought to get both sides of the great divide. If you believe in evolution, you'd be inclined to believe that suddenly changing an environment that all living things have evolved into would be a bad idea; but for all those who believe instead in special creation by a benevolent deity and/or intelligent design, it's surprising that they would believe that He flubbed creating an optimal climate, but luckily one will appear as a random side-effect of burning petroleum and coal.
i suspect we're more likely to be destroyed (as an advanced technological culture, at least, if not as a species) by the increasing scale of the power we are harnessing as part of our instinctive drive to get off this rock and the increasingly severe lag of our mastery over our own destructive and stupid urges than we are by any of the natural processes which come around periodically to open new evolutionary niches, from which we would like to escape.
as was pointed out to me recently (to my great disappointment), this multiple infinite universes model would also require universes where everything is made of green cheese, for example; even universes where 2+2=5, at least where that was the belief of every human being, and possibly where that was true, depending on how well you can argue. that took a lot of the wind out of my infinite universe sails, which is too bad as I get a lot of mileage out of that theory in the consolation department.
"intelligence" is still a made up concept, which means something different to everyone, which correlates with no specific physiological function, and which experts in the field have come to consider a mashup of several different behavioral competences. We are barely able to quantify it within our own species with any degree of accuracy, we can't measure it in other species to which we are closely related, and we can't even recognize it at all in species like spiders or ants/termites which are capable of constructing highly complex artifacts and/or societies, even though on they are truly not that far from us evolutionarily, even by terrestrial standards (compare to starfish or crinoids, for example). Most people who have any interest in the subject at all still believe that you can help planaria learn to navigate a maze by feeding them other planaria who have mastered it.
So the hopes for finding extraterrestrial intelligence? Might as well hope for finding extraterrestrial golf clubs.
indeed. new estimate, 6000 plus or minus 500, far higher than old estimate, 5000 presumably plus or minus 500. Hey, i've just returned from the future, the year 2513, plus or minus 500 years! I have so much to tell you citizens of the distant past, the year 1513 plus or minus 500 years!
do it the microsoft way (as i've heard anyway) which is at the end of every day, there must be a compiled and running version available to be shipped if necessary, even if not every feature is implemented.
absolutely. every civil engineering project, every skyscraper, etc is a one-off experimental research project involving hitherto unknown variables in site, climate, etc which has to be right the first time, no prototyping. by comparison, cranking out aircraft carriers or such is a breeze.
as a corollary, if you ask any experienced software developer about estimating how far along the project is, you get a blank stare while they think to themselves "how much time is left until the deadline? halfway?" then promptly answer "We're halfway done!"
It's always amazing how much of biology is self-assembling. to me, the question is, how do you keep whatever started the disease in the first place from continuing to destroy the new cells?
"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then." -THE MYTH OF THE 1970s GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
No, they don't have that. The Hebrew is quite clear, and it means murder, not kill.
No, it does not mean that it means unlawful (as under God's law) killing..
That's a bit circular, don't you think? A law which says, "Thou shalt not kill, except for legally"? I freely admit not being an expert on current Hebrew, let alone Biblical, but retzach, as in the Ten Biggies, kind of connotes to me a certain degree of intent, not necessarily murder, but deliberate as distinct from, say, negligent manslaughter. The ethical and moral implications of that, i can't theorize. I do note that when Cain slays Abel, it's not retzach, the word used is yehargehu, which to me is a more general meaning of killing, but again the deeper meaning of all these word choices is beyond me.
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You have to admire the denialist logical facility.
1) AGW is a fiction, because historically high CO2 follows high temperatures, not the other way around.
2) AGW is a fiction, because currently high CO2 follows low temperatures.
I venture that if someone holds these opinions, you will never be able to create a logical argument powerful enough to cause him to abandon them.
the population of the earth could go up to 100 trillion, but if they aren't burning fossil carbon, they're not contributing any net CO2 increase, A subsistence farmer who powers his whole existence by burning wood and/or water wheels and/or windmills and/or livestock fed on plants grown without artificial fertilizer and/or human power fed on plants grown without artificial fertilizer has zero net CO2 increase. there may well be plenty of other pollution issues, but as far as CO2 is concerned, if all the CO2 you pump into the air was pulled out of the air by plants within the past year, it's pretty obvious you're not increasing the concentration.
So, you would suggest that the process of a plant taking CO2 from the air to produce carbohydrate, which is then metabolized by a cow releasing CO2 into the air, is causing atmospheric CO2 to increase? Boy, if we could harness that process...
Or are you suggesting that modern agriculture, which is highly fossil fuel driven to create huge amounts of ammonium nitrate in order to produce enormous yields of corn and soybeans for cheap animal fodder, is generating excess CO2?
then perhaps you can point to those places on the graph where the volcano emitted some CO2 and threw the graph off. Because I see the annual variation and a general rise. Or are you suggesting that the volcano is emitting CO2 pretty much in sync with the amount of carbon human beings are burning, which itself is disappearing rather than showing up in the atmosphere? Occam is razoring his throat in his grave.
so, the teachers' unions are behind global warming. glad that's cleared up. Damn them and their vast wealth and power.
ah yes
"Combining these results with global estimates from previous studies, the erosion induced terrestrial carbon sink can potentially offset as much as 10 percent of the global fossil-fuel emissions of carbon dioxide in 2005." http://www.csrees.usda.gov/funding/nri/highlights/2007_no9.pdf
Nothing to worry about, then. Everybody back to sleep.
what makes you think the earth has a negative feedback mechanism in the climate, other than black body radiation? a giant AC? how can you believe there is negative feedback, then assert that the climate is unstable two paragraphs later? what makes you think that nobody has ever thought beyond "man change - man change bad"? Projection? What do you think climatologists and so on do all day? Party with that vast grant money the denialists think they are all conspiring to steal?
If anything, looking at the actual history of the climate, the climate is stable at a much warmer, wetter, and CO2 laden point than the one we are at now, and at which every living organism has evolved. It seems likely that this is related to all the CO2 pulled out of the air and buried during the carboniferous period, which coincided with the change in climate. in which case, returning a lot of that carbon into the air, a million times faster than it was taken out, might be expected to jar the climate from its current metastable state.
I repeat: what makes you think the earth has a negative feedback mechanism in the climate?
Well, answer this truthfully, if you will. Had the Soviet Union announced a plan to save the freezing people of the earth, create longer growing seasons, etc by pumping large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, would you have been happy with that? Do you think the heartland institute would be publishing articles in favor?
It's interesting, because this is something that ought to get both sides of the great divide. If you believe in evolution, you'd be inclined to believe that suddenly changing an environment that all living things have evolved into would be a bad idea; but for all those who believe instead in special creation by a benevolent deity and/or intelligent design, it's surprising that they would believe that He flubbed creating an optimal climate, but luckily one will appear as a random side-effect of burning petroleum and coal.
i suspect we're more likely to be destroyed (as an advanced technological culture, at least, if not as a species) by the increasing scale of the power we are harnessing as part of our instinctive drive to get off this rock and the increasingly severe lag of our mastery over our own destructive and stupid urges than we are by any of the natural processes which come around periodically to open new evolutionary niches, from which we would like to escape.
as was pointed out to me recently (to my great disappointment), this multiple infinite universes model would also require universes where everything is made of green cheese, for example; even universes where 2+2=5, at least where that was the belief of every human being, and possibly where that was true, depending on how well you can argue. that took a lot of the wind out of my infinite universe sails, which is too bad as I get a lot of mileage out of that theory in the consolation department.
"intelligence" is still a made up concept, which means something different to everyone, which correlates with no specific physiological function, and which experts in the field have come to consider a mashup of several different behavioral competences. We are barely able to quantify it within our own species with any degree of accuracy, we can't measure it in other species to which we are closely related, and we can't even recognize it at all in species like spiders or ants/termites which are capable of constructing highly complex artifacts and/or societies, even though on they are truly not that far from us evolutionarily, even by terrestrial standards (compare to starfish or crinoids, for example). Most people who have any interest in the subject at all still believe that you can help planaria learn to navigate a maze by feeding them other planaria who have mastered it.
So the hopes for finding extraterrestrial intelligence? Might as well hope for finding extraterrestrial golf clubs.
-90% of an actor's craft is done with his face and when you can no longer see the actor's face he can no longer convey emotion..;
So what do they do? Hid Levar Burton's big expressive eyes behind a visor. Didn't make sense to me then and doesn't now.
you'd think that the fact that, as the BBC news item pointed out, the detectors needed no battery or other power supply might have been a first clue.
indeed. new estimate, 6000 plus or minus 500, far higher than old estimate, 5000 presumably plus or minus 500.
Hey, i've just returned from the future, the year 2513, plus or minus 500 years! I have so much to tell you citizens of the distant past, the year 1513 plus or minus 500 years!
if you want privacy, you shouldn't be on the table in the first place. hey, we gotta eat on that table.
do it the microsoft way (as i've heard anyway) which is at the end of every day, there must be a compiled and running version available to be shipped if necessary, even if not every feature is implemented.
absolutely. every civil engineering project, every skyscraper, etc is a one-off experimental research project involving hitherto unknown variables in site, climate, etc which has to be right the first time, no prototyping. by comparison, cranking out aircraft carriers or such is a breeze.
as a corollary, if you ask any experienced software developer about estimating how far along the project is, you get a blank stare while they think to themselves "how much time is left until the deadline? halfway?" then promptly answer "We're halfway done!"
"freedom escargot"
It's always amazing how much of biology is self-assembling. to me, the question is, how do you keep whatever started the disease in the first place from continuing to destroy the new cells?
"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then."
-THE MYTH OF THE 1970s GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
that'll do until we run out of helium.
A recent scientific study just came out saying that scientists are better endowed and make better lovers then non-scientists.
There, that should put things in our favor when we go out to the nightclubs.
And just who is putting out these studies, I must ask?
You get good ethics from good upbringing (and some genetics).The most unethical people through history has been highly educated.
To both suggestions, I retort "George W. Bush".
No, they don't have that. The Hebrew is quite clear, and it means murder, not kill.
No, it does not mean that it means unlawful (as under God's law) killing. .
That's a bit circular, don't you think? A law which says, "Thou shalt not kill, except for legally"?
I freely admit not being an expert on current Hebrew, let alone Biblical, but retzach, as in the Ten Biggies, kind of connotes to me a certain degree of intent, not necessarily murder, but deliberate as distinct from, say, negligent manslaughter. The ethical and moral implications of that, i can't theorize. I do note that when Cain slays Abel, it's not retzach, the word used is yehargehu, which to me is a more general meaning of killing, but again the deeper meaning of all these word choices is beyond me.