I don't buy the "community cutting every head that strives to get ahead" argument
Well, YMMV, but often the first observable moments of peer pressure denigrating education are centered around use of Standard American English rather than local dialect. Some folks are able to camouflage their work on education by retaining their local dialect in public, and hiding their education level from their peers, but they still live with the knowledge that they are considered betrayers of their local culture. I've known quite a few folk who later regretted not pursuing education because of the negative social connotations in their subculture, and it's sad to see that kind of tragedy in action.
I'm not sure how this works out with french canadians (do they harass children who learn english?), but I do understand that the French are particularly persnickety about their language. It may be that french in canada is more associated with a region, but the AAVE in the US is generally more associated with a certain socio-economic class...or are french canadians generally poorer than english speaking canadians? My ignorance of Canada is quite vast...I mostly just consider it Northern Minnesota.
It's not a black/white thing - it's a subculture thing. In the UK, don't you guys have regions where they speak in thick accents....Cockney? I'm not sure exactly what street slang and subcultures exist in the UK, but I would assume they do, even if they aren't aligned the same way as in the US.
I understand the semantic argument you're making, using the term "dialect of power" instead of "proper" in order to symmetrically oppose any positive connotations of "proper", but this kind of argument is the kind of intellectualism that actually keeps people from escaping the poverty and violence of "non-power" subcultures.
Both have their own (ofttimes overlapping) rules of grammar and vocabulary.
I would submit that Standard American English has clearly codified rules, and AAVE has merely observations of the language in action, at best. Since AAVE is something that is taught without little in the way of literacy (that is to say, it is a predominantly oral tradition), it is difficult to equate it to something like Standard American English.
There is nothing more "proper" or "correct" about Standard American English
But there is something much more useful about Standard American English - it is the key to education, employment, and as you so cleverly put it, "power". Now perhaps the escape of poverty is not "proper" or "correct", and I accept your critique of my use of the term "proper" - but surely you must agree that learning Standard American English is beneficial on a myriad number of levels, and those subcultures that denigrate learning it are inflicting harm upon themselves.
AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place. Pidgin in Hawaii, Creole in Louisiana...most localities have slang, dialects and accents that can be terribly confusing for outsiders. I'd bet even with the "African-American Vernacular English" you've got slang variations between regions.
Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers. With groups that consider their suffering a badge of pride, and dissuade others from escaping the cycles of poverty and violence often associated with those groups, it's really difficult to make any headway. It may not be politically correct to mention, but a lot of the damage done in impoverished communities is self inflicted.
I don't think you have refuted the GW hypothesis, you've only shown that spikes in temperature have happened without a preceding spike in CO2.
I think perhaps you need to specify your GW hypothesis more carefully then. We may not have very much disagreement as to whether CO2 can have a positive feedback effect, the disagreement is in the magnitude. There really are three scenarios:
1) It has a strong positive feedback effect with no upper limit. CO2, once started, overwhelms all other effects. Obviously this is falsified by the fact that we never had a catastrophic feedback in history, and CO2 has been much higher. If CO2 overwhelmed all other effects, we'd never see a return from the positive feedback loop.
2) It has a strong positive feedback effect with a very high limit. CO2, once started, overwhelms all other effects until it reaches a saturation point, but then it stops applying. If the historical record showed an increase in CO2 to a maximum saturation level, and then that established a temperature floor, we might agree, but obviously the historical record shows no such thing.
3) It has a minor positive feedback effect. CO2, once started, can add a small bit of positive feedback, but is generally overwhelmed by any other effects, including clouds, Milankovich cycles, etc, etc. Most likely given the ice age cycles observed, and even the past 15 years of cooling with increased CO2.
For #1, we should definitely be worried, but that's really the least likely of all. #2 might be worrisome, except for the fact that a warmer world has historically been better for humans - if we believed it to be true, we might actually want to encourage CO2 emissions to increase plant growth, crop yields, and habitability across the globe
Of course, #3 is probably closest to the truth. CO2 is a minor player, and more often follows rather than leads temperature changes.
But again, I ask you, if you believe either #1 or #2, what evidence could you observe that would be an acceptable refutation?
Now, can you think of any other observations of either the historical record or future records that would refute your hypothesis. Be specific, like "10 years of increasing CO2 with flat or decreasing temperatures".
For GW, how about
"Significantly increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere causes global temperatures to rise
So, let's take the falsification of that as rising CO2 levels, but lower global temperatures. Ice cores clearly show a CO2 lag to temperature, so we've refuted that. Or you could take a 15 year period of rising CO2 and lower or stable temperatures.
After proving that, for AGW test
"Human activity has caused a significant net increase of carbon in the atmosphere".
That's not a test for AGW - that's a test for ACO2 emissions. Not the same thing.
For catastrophic AGW, pick your catastrophe:
"Increased global temperature causes polar ice to melt and sea levels to rise."
"Increased global temperature causes more intense weather events."
"Increased global temperature makes individual habitats unsuitable for their installed base"
You've completely missed out on magnitude here - polar ice melting with a 2cm sea level rise isn't a big deal. There of course, is no association between intense weather events and average global temperature (you can have many many distributions of temperature around the globe with an average temp of 22C, not all of them are prone to intense weather), and your last one, on "individual habitats" completely conflates weather with climate.
But seriously, what would be your refutation test for any of those catastrophes? Higher global temperatures and lower sea levels in the historical record? Lower global temperatures and more intense weather events in the historical record? Stable habitats over the course of thousands of years despite increases and decreases in local "individual habitats"? We got all of those.
And I would think their refutation has merit; the preponderant evidence deserves more weight than anomalies.
Um, no. If you have the hypothesis that "all swans are white", finding 10,000 white swans doesn't stop the discovery of a single black swan from refuting your hypothesis. If a theory has to dismiss every refutation by calling it an "anomaly", or come up with ad hoc adjustments to account for contrary evidence, it's not a very good theory at all.
If their logic is flawed, woops, never mind, you've demonstrated that's not your specialty.
Well, perhaps explaining logic to you is not my specialty, or maybe you're just having a hard time understanding it:) Let me know what data observations would refute your hypothesis, and we'll work from there.
but to disprove AGW, scientists need reproducible counter-evidence.
Actually, to disprove AGW, or more specifically catastrophic AGW, it first must be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis. Simply claiming that every weather condition and every measurement is an affirmation of the theory is a tautology, not science.
There is plenty of counter-evidence out there, but the AGW dodge is always about "the preponderance" of the evidence, neatly avoiding any refutation by pretending that science is some sort of democracy with majority rule.
Anyway, it looks like the NASA folks who helped NOAA with NOAA-16 are suffering the same types of measurement problems as the NASA folks who worked on WISE - I certainly hope there is some sort of coordination between groups (if they are different), to share best practices and learn from the failures they've had.
"The NOAA-16 satellite is working beautifully," said Harry McCain, NASA's project manager for the Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite program.
"We're extremely pleased with the success of the verification process, and look forward to a successful mission for NOAA-16," said Mike Mignogno, NOAA's polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite manager.
"This success is due to the professionalism of a large team of NASA, NOAA and contractor personnel," McCain added.
So, you're right, "America" plus "Space" doesn't equal "NASA", but "NOAA-16" equals "NASA, NOAA plus contractors"
"readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F."
Well, the electorate chooses the legislators, and they are supposed to be chosing those of a finer clay to govern.
Bastiat has a ready reply for that as well (emphasis my own):
"When it is time to vote, apparently the voter is not to be asked for any guarantee of his wisdom. His will and capacity to choose wisely are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What! are the people always to be kept on leashes? Have they not won their rights by great effort and sacrifice? Have they not given ample proof of their intelligence and wisdom? Are they not adults? Are they not capable of judging for themselves? Do they not know what is best for themselves? Is there a class or a man who would be so bold as to set himself above the people, and judge and act for them? No, no, the people are and should be free. They desire to manage their own affairs, and they shall do so. But when the legislator is finally elected—ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The peo- ple are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initi- ate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation"
It seems difficult to assert that the masses cannot be trusted to make their own choices, but are infallible at choosing someone to make those choices for them.
In other words, the above research points towards falsifying the primary economic ideology that has been used to govern America since Reagan
I'm not sure if that's quite the case - the economic ideology of the free market and the economic ideology of centralized control are *both* confounded by irrational humans.
Myself, I am more of a Keynsian. I think the market is useful, but it can run amok if not attended to by a government powerful enough to guide it towards the public good.
Any casual search of google will reveal refutations of Keynsian economics, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. On the other hand, I might suggest Bastiat's "The Law" (http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf) as a refutation of the idea of a flawless government (emphasis my own):
"The Superman Idea The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority."
Not expressing an opinion on this one way or the other, but it seems that in this case, the leak *can possibly* prevent rash US behavior, and the leak *will* incite Taliban retribution.
Of course there are other ways to prevent rash US behavior without going public with raw data, and even if "unincited" the Taliban have no qualms about applying retribution without any sort of due diligence.
It seems that 1st world countries, the US in particular, hamstrings itself by trying to be nice while going to war. Now overall, I think that's a good thing, but it puts us at a disadvantage when fighting an enemy that has no such reservations.
Well, obviously the only thing Assange can do is dump stuff - his organization isn't setup to do any sort of quality control at all, and he's probably more interested in making his own political points than the lives of some far away villagers. And frankly, if people are honest with themselves, the same can probably be of ourselves as well.
The real question is this - at what point do people start gaming the system? Don't like your afghan neighbor? Drop something on WikiLeaks! Given a Taliban that is willing to kill, well, just about anyone without remorse, it seems that false positives could be a real problem.
Cue the conspiracy theory that these leaked civilian names are actually part of a US led misinformation campaign in 3...2...1...
Both the "EMISSIONS TRADING" and "KYOTO2" proposals don't seem to exempt Least Developed Countries at all - only the "GREENHOUSE DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS (GDRS)" seems to explicitly set an exemption.
So perhaps your use of the phrase "under actual consideration" was ignorantly, or conveniently chosen:)
You were not referring to the effects of an actual reductions scheme that anybody has proposed to implement. And - if I take your statements at face value, you knew that nobody had proposed such a scheme- you were, in fact, hoping to be free to simply criticise a scheme that nobody was actually advocating. In short, you proposed to burn a strawman.
Oh certainly, I was criticizing a strawman - but that's all that we have at this point. A specific scheme that will effectively reduce CO2 emissions while exempting developing nations is a mythical fantasy, an attempt to avoid the harsh truths that reducing global CO2 emissions will cause economic harm to those who can least afford it.
You had the option of agreeing to my explanation: that you didn't know that Least Developed Countries are exempt from paying under any scheme under actual consideration ever.
There have been thousands of schemes under 'consideration' - asserting that I'm ignorant of the specifics of any individual one, or set of them, isn't an argument, it's dodging the issue. You're still unable to illustrate any emissions reduction scheme that can do so without applying globally.
FYI - China and India are Developing Nations, not Least Developed Nations (like Bangladesh)
You're moving the goalposts again:) Here's your quote:
"Please demonstrate the causal link between carbon emissions reduction schemes, and a doubling of the cost of fuel in Kenya. Bearing in mind that Kenya, as a least developed country, is not required to buy carbon credits for it's emissions."
As you helpfully provided earlier, Kenya is a Developing Nation, not a Least Developed Nation.
"The study finds that in 2004, emissions from developing economies made up 73 per cent of the global growth in emissions largely due to moving energy-intensive activities from developed to developing countries."
If you introduce an emissions control scheme that only focuses on third world countries, it simply provides incentives for moving those emissions to countries where they are allowed. The literature here is pretty robust, and I'm sure you could find more examples on scholar.google.com.
You are essentially asking me to describe the mechanics of how are CO2 emissions reduction scheme would work. But if you DON'T KNOW how the scheme would work how can you know that the cost of fuel in Kenya will double?
You're contention with my assertion is based on the starting conditions - i.e., how I believe a CO2 emissions reduction scheme would work versus how you believe a CO2 emissions reduction scheme would work. You're asking for an answer without clarifying your beginning assumptions.
So, I don't know how your scheme would work, because you still refuse to tell me how you would make a scheme work:) What I can interpolate from your implications, though, is that your scheme's basis includes a fatal flaw - the imposition of caps on 1st world countries but not 3rd world countries. Your premise being an irrational one, your conclusions simply cannot follow.
I will have to conclude that since you don't know that, that your whole argument is fallacious, because you didn't even understand the detail of the scheme you were commenting upon.
Oh, I quite understand the detail of the scheme I was commenting on, but you clearly haven't explained the scheme you intended for my comment to apply to. To be perfectly clear, I am commenting on any "effective" world-wide scheme used in order to cap emissions and therefore raise world-wide energy prices. As a further assertion, I would claim (and I would suppose you may or may not agree), that any emissions cap scheme that is not world-wide, and only raises energy prices in certain localities, cannot possibly be effective at reducing global CO2 emissions.
In future, you might not want to enter into discussions on topics which you nothing about.
Well, I certainly know nothing about the inner workings of your mind, and where your imagination leads you while responding to others' comments, but perhaps I can offer you an alternative - you might want to be more clear about your premises before entering into discussions which you believe you know something about.
Well, thanks for introducing a strawman.
Offer an alternative then:)
You made the assertion at hand - you should know whether or not the 'caps' (if caps are used in as a mechanism) apply to Least Developed nations or they do not.
I made the assertion based on the premise that any "effective" cap scheme would have to be worldwide in scope. You are engaging in a false argument over my conclusion without addressing the real issue - the premise. If you want to argue about a strawman where caps are magically efficient without applying to third world countries, that's great - but at least understand that your confusion is because of your lack of knowledge.
Given that you made (and are defending) the assertion at hand, your statement reads like a Chewbacca Defence.
:) Ah, South Park. You sound like an intelligent guy, but you're beating this semantic horse to death. Why don't we start from the beginning, since you've lost track of the conversation:
I said: "Okay, here's your choice - a) watch your children die of starvation this year. b) survive an extra two hurricanes in your lifetime, and relocate inland 5 miles over your lifetime." No mention of caps, no assertion of "doubling of fuel cost in Kenya". Your reply was:
"1. How would pricing carbon emissions cause children to starve? Demonstrate the causal link. You can use the proposed pricing models going into Copenhagen for reference if you like."
I responded with a hypothetical scenario where if fuel prices are 10% of the cost of food (transportation), and they double, you get to pick a child to starve to death.
You responded with: "Bearing in mind that Kenya, as a least developed country, is not required
Clearly this is not the case as I am the one asking, and you are the one failing to answer
The lady doth protest too much. Your question is meaningless without the further clarification I'm asking for. When you're talking about implementing CO2 emissions caps on only the 1st world countries, how does that prevent global CO2 emissions from creating the same kind of warming you suspect would happen without caps? You frame your question in terms of avoiding caps in 3rd world countries, but that framing contradicts your motivation in the first place. Is this simply an inherent hypocrisy in your position, or do you not understand how you're undermining your own assertions?
2. When I use the phrase "extreme weather events" am I referring primarily to hurricanes?
And now I'm supposed to be a mind reader for you? How about this - when I use the phrase "da kine", am I referring primarily to food?
You keep asking questions that either have none of the important context they should, or assume that I have some sort of omniscient knowledge of the inner workings of your mind.
1. Is Bangladesh bordering on the North Atlantic, or in fact, nowhere near it?
Does global temperature determine weather, or is it in fact completely independent of weather distribution?
No, that is you - you asserted that introducing a carbon emissions trading scheme will double the cost of fuel in Kenya.
But you want to move the goal posts by saying you don't intend a carbon emissions trading scheme to apply to 3rd world countries...which undermines your entire point in the first place, since if you don't implement a *global* scheme, you're not going to affect the *global* outcome. Keep trying to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube!
So - what evidence do you have for your assertion?
Well, put the goalposts in one place and leave them there, and it will be perfectly clear to you:)
I understand the semantic defense you're trying to raise, but really, you're avoiding the hard questions that deep inside, you know you can't answer.
Thank you for your very informative clarification. I get the whole sub-lethal does issue (sounds a lot like antibiotics).
For the "domestic applications", I believe I saw a bunch of old footage of DDT applications to houses in Singapore, essentially fumigating the entire place -> would that apply to your position?
And what is the significance of the "longer than six months" transmission season?
Lastly, do you have any insight into the use of DDT in south africa? Specifically its reintroduction:
current desert areas are huge, have been productive in the ice ages.
I'd have to see some sort of citation for that. I know that agricultural practices can cause desertification, and the last ice age may have correlated with those agricultural practices, but you run into the contradiction of observation of the biodiversity in the tropics, the temperate zone, and the arctic/antarctic. The clear relationship between life and temperature is that the warmer it is, the more life you have. Granted, deserts can occur in the arctic and the tropics (remember, even cold areas can have very little precipitation), but these are local phenomena in a global pattern that shows warmth improves the ability of life to live.
Well, there's all kinds of ways to slice the statistics, but I think you make my point for me - 2005 was an anomaly and the decline since then contraindicates a relationship between global temperature and hurricanes.
I guess you could put it the other way - pretend for a second that hurricanes are what cause global warming - the more hurricanes, the more warming. Would the hurricane data we have lead us to believe that 1990 - 2009 was a cooling period, a warming period, or flat? Naive inspection from one end point to another seems to indicate we went from 8 to 3 - and should have experienced a drop in temperatures.
Now, the problems with the surface temperature record aside, does this align with what people believe has been happening to global average temperatures?
Since you speculation over the efficacy of a CO2 emissions pricing scheme DOES NOT translate into any sort clarification, we'll return to the question at hand:
You're avoiding the question again. When you're talking about implementing CO2 emissions caps on only the 1st world countries, how does that prevent global CO2 emissions from creating the same kind of warming you suspect would happen without caps? You frame your question in terms of avoiding caps in 3rd world countries, but that framing contradicts your motivation in the first place. Is this simply an inherent hypocrisy in your position, or do you not understand how you're undermining your own assertions?
2. When I use the phrase "extreme weather events" am I referring primarily to hurricanes?
Please clarify then. For example, would you assert that an increase in devastating cold snaps such as those currently killing people in Peru is due to global warming?
the secondary failing of your hypothesis being that it is contradicted by the accepted hypothesis - that is to say, the evidence that supports it.
Wait a tic, you're the one making an assertion here - simply calling it "accepted" is not a logical defense at all. What evidence do you have to support your "accepted" hypothesis, and what observations would confound it?
By which you mean - what will convince us that your hypothesis is right.
Nope, I'm not offering an alternative here - it could be that aliens cause global warming, or underground leprechauns, but I'm not making that claim. You assert that human based CO2 is causing it, and I'm asking you very clearly to illustrate what observed data could confound that hypothesis.
If you cannot imagine a falsifiability test of your hypothesis in the observed data, you're simply asserting a religion, not science.
You seem to be assuming a spectrum where on one end of the scale, the temperature is absolute zero and there are no disasters, and on the other end, the temperature is very high and natural disasters are common. You say "driving", but I never said temperature was the only factor. I assumed it was one factor.
Thank you for the clarification. I guess what I'm trying to understand, then, is how big of a factor temperature is. If it's a dominant factor, say, 75% determinant, then perhaps we could see a reduction of 75% if we got to an arbitrarily cold global climate. Would you care to put a # on the applicability of that factor? If it's only 10% or less, maybe we don't have to worry at all.
I started looking for information to back up my statement and found that the most recent studies do not support more frequent natural disasters, but they do support stronger disasters with a longer duration [nationalgeographic.com]. I was wrong about that, and I apologize.
No apology necessary - there is a *lot* of competing literature out there, and I don't doubt that intelligent people have made arguments on both sides of the issue, regardless of how it is framed. The citation you gave indicates a 2.5% possible increase, "probably not detectable" according to article. These kinds of numbers seem at least reasonable to me, but I wonder how they can be empirically tested - that is to say, if we cannot measure things accurately, how can we know what particular hypothesis is true?
For one thing, I do not know that coal will be the cheapest energy, forever. During that time, if we ramp up production of renewable energy sources, then renewable energy will become cheaper as we find more efficient ways to manufacture them.
I think you've got the cart before the horse there - if we find more efficient ways to manufacture other forms of energy (solar, wind), then we'll have a ramp up of production. In the end, though, I think the specific energy of petroleum puts it above and beyond the efficiency of any other fuel source.
Then there is the evidence for global warming. Even if it does not result in an increase in the number of natural disasters, we are still gambling with the world's economy.
I'm not sure if I follow - is there some reason for us to believe that if the temperature is warmer somewhere, the economy is worse? I would suggest that the bigger gamble with the world's economy would be to implement growth killing policies by artificially inflating the price of energy...although it's actually hard to call that a "gamble", since we're almost certain to lose big if we do that.
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Well, YMMV, but often the first observable moments of peer pressure denigrating education are centered around use of Standard American English rather than local dialect. Some folks are able to camouflage their work on education by retaining their local dialect in public, and hiding their education level from their peers, but they still live with the knowledge that they are considered betrayers of their local culture. I've known quite a few folk who later regretted not pursuing education because of the negative social connotations in their subculture, and it's sad to see that kind of tragedy in action.
I'm not sure how this works out with french canadians (do they harass children who learn english?), but I do understand that the French are particularly persnickety about their language. It may be that french in canada is more associated with a region, but the AAVE in the US is generally more associated with a certain socio-economic class...or are french canadians generally poorer than english speaking canadians? My ignorance of Canada is quite vast...I mostly just consider it Northern Minnesota.
It's not a black/white thing - it's a subculture thing. In the UK, don't you guys have regions where they speak in thick accents....Cockney? I'm not sure exactly what street slang and subcultures exist in the UK, but I would assume they do, even if they aren't aligned the same way as in the US.
I understand the semantic argument you're making, using the term "dialect of power" instead of "proper" in order to symmetrically oppose any positive connotations of "proper", but this kind of argument is the kind of intellectualism that actually keeps people from escaping the poverty and violence of "non-power" subcultures.
I would submit that Standard American English has clearly codified rules, and AAVE has merely observations of the language in action, at best. Since AAVE is something that is taught without little in the way of literacy (that is to say, it is a predominantly oral tradition), it is difficult to equate it to something like Standard American English.
But there is something much more useful about Standard American English - it is the key to education, employment, and as you so cleverly put it, "power". Now perhaps the escape of poverty is not "proper" or "correct", and I accept your critique of my use of the term "proper" - but surely you must agree that learning Standard American English is beneficial on a myriad number of levels, and those subcultures that denigrate learning it are inflicting harm upon themselves.
AFAIK, this kind of thing happens all over the place. Pidgin in Hawaii, Creole in Louisiana...most localities have slang, dialects and accents that can be terribly confusing for outsiders. I'd bet even with the "African-American Vernacular English" you've got slang variations between regions.
Part of the problem here is that speaking proper english is often seen as "selling out", and any attempts to crawl out of poverty or to get educated are harshly treated by peers. With groups that consider their suffering a badge of pride, and dissuade others from escaping the cycles of poverty and violence often associated with those groups, it's really difficult to make any headway. It may not be politically correct to mention, but a lot of the damage done in impoverished communities is self inflicted.
I think perhaps you need to specify your GW hypothesis more carefully then. We may not have very much disagreement as to whether CO2 can have a positive feedback effect, the disagreement is in the magnitude. There really are three scenarios:
1) It has a strong positive feedback effect with no upper limit. CO2, once started, overwhelms all other effects. Obviously this is falsified by the fact that we never had a catastrophic feedback in history, and CO2 has been much higher. If CO2 overwhelmed all other effects, we'd never see a return from the positive feedback loop.
2) It has a strong positive feedback effect with a very high limit. CO2, once started, overwhelms all other effects until it reaches a saturation point, but then it stops applying. If the historical record showed an increase in CO2 to a maximum saturation level, and then that established a temperature floor, we might agree, but obviously the historical record shows no such thing.
3) It has a minor positive feedback effect. CO2, once started, can add a small bit of positive feedback, but is generally overwhelmed by any other effects, including clouds, Milankovich cycles, etc, etc. Most likely given the ice age cycles observed, and even the past 15 years of cooling with increased CO2.
For #1, we should definitely be worried, but that's really the least likely of all. #2 might be worrisome, except for the fact that a warmer world has historically been better for humans - if we believed it to be true, we might actually want to encourage CO2 emissions to increase plant growth, crop yields, and habitability across the globe
Of course, #3 is probably closest to the truth. CO2 is a minor player, and more often follows rather than leads temperature changes.
But again, I ask you, if you believe either #1 or #2, what evidence could you observe that would be an acceptable refutation?
http://www.sciencebits.com/IceCoreTruth
Feel free to verify at your leisure.
Now, can you think of any other observations of either the historical record or future records that would refute your hypothesis. Be specific, like "10 years of increasing CO2 with flat or decreasing temperatures".
So, let's take the falsification of that as rising CO2 levels, but lower global temperatures. Ice cores clearly show a CO2 lag to temperature, so we've refuted that. Or you could take a 15 year period of rising CO2 and lower or stable temperatures.
That's not a test for AGW - that's a test for ACO2 emissions. Not the same thing.
You've completely missed out on magnitude here - polar ice melting with a 2cm sea level rise isn't a big deal. There of course, is no association between intense weather events and average global temperature (you can have many many distributions of temperature around the globe with an average temp of 22C, not all of them are prone to intense weather), and your last one, on "individual habitats" completely conflates weather with climate.
But seriously, what would be your refutation test for any of those catastrophes? Higher global temperatures and lower sea levels in the historical record? Lower global temperatures and more intense weather events in the historical record? Stable habitats over the course of thousands of years despite increases and decreases in local "individual habitats"? We got all of those.
Um, no. If you have the hypothesis that "all swans are white", finding 10,000 white swans doesn't stop the discovery of a single black swan from refuting your hypothesis. If a theory has to dismiss every refutation by calling it an "anomaly", or come up with ad hoc adjustments to account for contrary evidence, it's not a very good theory at all.
Well, perhaps explaining logic to you is not my specialty, or maybe you're just having a hard time understanding it :) Let me know what data observations would refute your hypothesis, and we'll work from there.
Actually, to disprove AGW, or more specifically catastrophic AGW, it first must be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis. Simply claiming that every weather condition and every measurement is an affirmation of the theory is a tautology, not science.
There is plenty of counter-evidence out there, but the AGW dodge is always about "the preponderance" of the evidence, neatly avoiding any refutation by pretending that science is some sort of democracy with majority rule.
Anyway, it looks like the NASA folks who helped NOAA with NOAA-16 are suffering the same types of measurement problems as the NASA folks who worked on WISE - I certainly hope there is some sort of coordination between groups (if they are different), to share best practices and learn from the failures they've had.
Well, a quick google on NOAA-16 leads to this:
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2000/nov00/noaa00r323.html
So, you're right, "America" plus "Space" doesn't equal "NASA", but "NOAA-16" equals "NASA, NOAA plus contractors"
Apology accepted :)
Apparently their problems include the NOAA-16 satellite too:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/climate-reports/7491-official-satellite-failure-means-decade-of-global-warming-data-doubtful
"readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F."
Bastiat has a ready reply for that as well (emphasis my own):
"When it is time to vote, apparently the voter is not to be asked for any guarantee of his wisdom. His will and capacity to choose wisely are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What! are the people always to be kept on leashes? Have they not won their rights by great effort and sacrifice? Have they not given ample proof of their intelligence and wisdom? Are they not adults? Are they not capable of judging for themselves? Do they not know what is best for themselves? Is there a class or a man who would be so bold as to set himself above the people, and judge and act for them? No, no, the people are and should be free. They desire to manage their own affairs, and they shall do so.
But when the legislator is finally elected—ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The peo- ple are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initi- ate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation"
It seems difficult to assert that the masses cannot be trusted to make their own choices, but are infallible at choosing someone to make those choices for them.
I'm not sure if that's quite the case - the economic ideology of the free market and the economic ideology of centralized control are *both* confounded by irrational humans.
Any casual search of google will reveal refutations of Keynsian economics, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. On the other hand, I might suggest Bastiat's "The Law" (http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf) as a refutation of the idea of a flawless government (emphasis my own):
"The Superman Idea
The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority."
Not expressing an opinion on this one way or the other, but it seems that in this case, the leak *can possibly* prevent rash US behavior, and the leak *will* incite Taliban retribution.
Of course there are other ways to prevent rash US behavior without going public with raw data, and even if "unincited" the Taliban have no qualms about applying retribution without any sort of due diligence.
It seems that 1st world countries, the US in particular, hamstrings itself by trying to be nice while going to war. Now overall, I think that's a good thing, but it puts us at a disadvantage when fighting an enemy that has no such reservations.
Well, obviously the only thing Assange can do is dump stuff - his organization isn't setup to do any sort of quality control at all, and he's probably more interested in making his own political points than the lives of some far away villagers. And frankly, if people are honest with themselves, the same can probably be of ourselves as well.
The real question is this - at what point do people start gaming the system? Don't like your afghan neighbor? Drop something on WikiLeaks! Given a Taliban that is willing to kill, well, just about anyone without remorse, it seems that false positives could be a real problem.
Cue the conspiracy theory that these leaked civilian names are actually part of a US led misinformation campaign in 3...2...1...
Regarding proposals:
http://www.newint.org/features/2009/01/01/climate-justice-countdown1/
Both the "EMISSIONS TRADING" and "KYOTO2" proposals don't seem to exempt Least Developed Countries at all - only the "GREENHOUSE DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS (GDRS)" seems to explicitly set an exemption.
So perhaps your use of the phrase "under actual consideration" was ignorantly, or conveniently chosen :)
Oh certainly, I was criticizing a strawman - but that's all that we have at this point. A specific scheme that will effectively reduce CO2 emissions while exempting developing nations is a mythical fantasy, an attempt to avoid the harsh truths that reducing global CO2 emissions will cause economic harm to those who can least afford it.
There have been thousands of schemes under 'consideration' - asserting that I'm ignorant of the specifics of any individual one, or set of them, isn't an argument, it's dodging the issue. You're still unable to illustrate any emissions reduction scheme that can do so without applying globally.
You're moving the goalposts again :) Here's your quote:
"Please demonstrate the causal link between carbon emissions reduction schemes, and a doubling of the cost of fuel in Kenya. Bearing in mind that Kenya, as a least developed country, is not required to buy carbon credits for it's emissions."
As you helpfully provided earlier, Kenya is a Developing Nation, not a Least Developed Nation.
Care to put your foot further in your mouth? :)
Kenya is not on your Least Developed Countries list, FYI :):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_Developed_Countries
Here's your African Least Developed Countries:
Angola
Benin
Burkina Faso[13]
Burundi[13]
Central African Republic[13]
Chad[13]
Comoros[14]
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia[13]
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau[14]
Lesotho[13]
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi[13]
Mali[13]
Mauritania
Mozambique
Niger[13]
Rwanda[13]
São Tomé and Príncipe[14]
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Togo
Tanzania
Uganda[13]
Zambia[13]
More specifics on the movement of emissions from developed to developing countries:
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/developing-nations-blamed-for-co2-increase.html
"The study finds that in 2004, emissions from developing economies made up 73 per cent of the global growth in emissions largely due to moving energy-intensive activities from developed to developing countries."
If you introduce an emissions control scheme that only focuses on third world countries, it simply provides incentives for moving those emissions to countries where they are allowed. The literature here is pretty robust, and I'm sure you could find more examples on scholar.google.com.
You're contention with my assertion is based on the starting conditions - i.e., how I believe a CO2 emissions reduction scheme would work versus how you believe a CO2 emissions reduction scheme would work. You're asking for an answer without clarifying your beginning assumptions.
So, I don't know how your scheme would work, because you still refuse to tell me how you would make a scheme work :) What I can interpolate from your implications, though, is that your scheme's basis includes a fatal flaw - the imposition of caps on 1st world countries but not 3rd world countries. Your premise being an irrational one, your conclusions simply cannot follow.
Oh, I quite understand the detail of the scheme I was commenting on, but you clearly haven't explained the scheme you intended for my comment to apply to. To be perfectly clear, I am commenting on any "effective" world-wide scheme used in order to cap emissions and therefore raise world-wide energy prices. As a further assertion, I would claim (and I would suppose you may or may not agree), that any emissions cap scheme that is not world-wide, and only raises energy prices in certain localities, cannot possibly be effective at reducing global CO2 emissions.
Well, I certainly know nothing about the inner workings of your mind, and where your imagination leads you while responding to others' comments, but perhaps I can offer you an alternative - you might want to be more clear about your premises before entering into discussions which you believe you know something about.
Offer an alternative then :)
I made the assertion based on the premise that any "effective" cap scheme would have to be worldwide in scope. You are engaging in a false argument over my conclusion without addressing the real issue - the premise. If you want to argue about a strawman where caps are magically efficient without applying to third world countries, that's great - but at least understand that your confusion is because of your lack of knowledge.
I said: "Okay, here's your choice - a) watch your children die of starvation this year. b) survive an extra two hurricanes in your lifetime, and relocate inland 5 miles over your lifetime." No mention of caps, no assertion of "doubling of fuel cost in Kenya". Your reply was:
"1. How would pricing carbon emissions cause children to starve? Demonstrate the causal link. You can use the proposed pricing models going into Copenhagen for reference if you like."
I responded with a hypothetical scenario where if fuel prices are 10% of the cost of food (transportation), and they double, you get to pick a child to starve to death.
You responded with: "Bearing in mind that Kenya, as a least developed country, is not required
The lady doth protest too much. Your question is meaningless without the further clarification I'm asking for. When you're talking about implementing CO2 emissions caps on only the 1st world countries, how does that prevent global CO2 emissions from creating the same kind of warming you suspect would happen without caps? You frame your question in terms of avoiding caps in 3rd world countries, but that framing contradicts your motivation in the first place. Is this simply an inherent hypocrisy in your position, or do you not understand how you're undermining your own assertions?
And now I'm supposed to be a mind reader for you? How about this - when I use the phrase "da kine", am I referring primarily to food?
You keep asking questions that either have none of the important context they should, or assume that I have some sort of omniscient knowledge of the inner workings of your mind.
Does global temperature determine weather, or is it in fact completely independent of weather distribution?
Oh, a bangladesh link for you, btw:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jxWAlO7hpr2AXkrZMWswKyK39gOA
But you want to move the goal posts by saying you don't intend a carbon emissions trading scheme to apply to 3rd world countries...which undermines your entire point in the first place, since if you don't implement a *global* scheme, you're not going to affect the *global* outcome. Keep trying to squeeze that toothpaste back into the tube!
Well, put the goalposts in one place and leave them there, and it will be perfectly clear to you :)
I understand the semantic defense you're trying to raise, but really, you're avoiding the hard questions that deep inside, you know you can't answer.
Thank you for your very informative clarification. I get the whole sub-lethal does issue (sounds a lot like antibiotics).
For the "domestic applications", I believe I saw a bunch of old footage of DDT applications to houses in Singapore, essentially fumigating the entire place -> would that apply to your position?
And what is the significance of the "longer than six months" transmission season?
Lastly, do you have any insight into the use of DDT in south africa? Specifically its reintroduction:
http://www.southafrica.info/about/health/malaria-190906.htm
Thanks again, hey!, if I had mod points I'd be bumping you up.
Actually, plankton are mostly limited by nutrients, not temperature.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/31/walking-the-plank-ton/
I'd have to see some sort of citation for that. I know that agricultural practices can cause desertification, and the last ice age may have correlated with those agricultural practices, but you run into the contradiction of observation of the biodiversity in the tropics, the temperate zone, and the arctic/antarctic. The clear relationship between life and temperature is that the warmer it is, the more life you have. Granted, deserts can occur in the arctic and the tropics (remember, even cold areas can have very little precipitation), but these are local phenomena in a global pattern that shows warmth improves the ability of life to live.
Well, there's all kinds of ways to slice the statistics, but I think you make my point for me - 2005 was an anomaly and the decline since then contraindicates a relationship between global temperature and hurricanes.
I guess you could put it the other way - pretend for a second that hurricanes are what cause global warming - the more hurricanes, the more warming. Would the hurricane data we have lead us to believe that 1990 - 2009 was a cooling period, a warming period, or flat? Naive inspection from one end point to another seems to indicate we went from 8 to 3 - and should have experienced a drop in temperatures.
Now, the problems with the surface temperature record aside, does this align with what people believe has been happening to global average temperatures?
You're avoiding the question again. When you're talking about implementing CO2 emissions caps on only the 1st world countries, how does that prevent global CO2 emissions from creating the same kind of warming you suspect would happen without caps? You frame your question in terms of avoiding caps in 3rd world countries, but that framing contradicts your motivation in the first place. Is this simply an inherent hypocrisy in your position, or do you not understand how you're undermining your own assertions?
Please clarify then. For example, would you assert that an increase in devastating cold snaps such as those currently killing people in Peru is due to global warming?
Wait a tic, you're the one making an assertion here - simply calling it "accepted" is not a logical defense at all. What evidence do you have to support your "accepted" hypothesis, and what observations would confound it?
Nope, I'm not offering an alternative here - it could be that aliens cause global warming, or underground leprechauns, but I'm not making that claim. You assert that human based CO2 is causing it, and I'm asking you very clearly to illustrate what observed data could confound that hypothesis.
If you cannot imagine a falsifiability test of your hypothesis in the observed data, you're simply asserting a religion, not science.
Thank you for the clarification. I guess what I'm trying to understand, then, is how big of a factor temperature is. If it's a dominant factor, say, 75% determinant, then perhaps we could see a reduction of 75% if we got to an arbitrarily cold global climate. Would you care to put a # on the applicability of that factor? If it's only 10% or less, maybe we don't have to worry at all.
No apology necessary - there is a *lot* of competing literature out there, and I don't doubt that intelligent people have made arguments on both sides of the issue, regardless of how it is framed. The citation you gave indicates a 2.5% possible increase, "probably not detectable" according to article. These kinds of numbers seem at least reasonable to me, but I wonder how they can be empirically tested - that is to say, if we cannot measure things accurately, how can we know what particular hypothesis is true?
I think you've got the cart before the horse there - if we find more efficient ways to manufacture other forms of energy (solar, wind), then we'll have a ramp up of production. In the end, though, I think the specific energy of petroleum puts it above and beyond the efficiency of any other fuel source.
I'm not sure if I follow - is there some reason for us to believe that if the temperature is warmer somewhere, the economy is worse? I would suggest that the bigger gamble with the world's economy would be to implement growth killing policies by artificially inflating the price of energy...although it's actually hard to call that a "gamble", since we're almost certain to lose big if we do that.