The problem is that when they first came up with CAGW as a theory, they needed big results to make it more dramatic - so they tossed out pretty much all of the negative feedbacks, and emphasized the positive ones.
They assumed a huge positive feedback from water vapor, literally tripling the observed effect of CO2. Due to that, we should have seen a big increase in relative AND absolute humidity over the last two decades. Didn't happen.
There's one "buffer."
They also used a very, very weak cloud model, which would have given them a big negative feedback.
There's another.
Those two account for a lot of the discrepancies between models and real-world effects, but there are other "buffers" we keep finding out about.
They dont account for the sun? Son, that the was among the first things they looked at. And theyve looked at it several times since. It's not the sun, son. If it was the sun, we would be cooling right now.
The 11yr cycle bit is also misleading: there is some periodicity, but there is a lot of noise in that signal, as shown in this graph (which also conventiently shows that temperatures, and solar output have been moving in opposite directions for the past 35 years): http://www.skepticalscience.co... From: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
It's the sun. And no, according to the guys who actually study this sort of thing, we're not far enough into the solar minimum to be in an actual cooling phase yet. Give it a couple more years.
No, the CAGW fans didn't look at the sun "first" - and they keep looking everywhere else. I had a climate scientist angrily tell me that "insolation is a constant!" Not according to the astronomers, it isn't.
What's even more fun is that, even if you treat total solar irradiance as a (very wobbly) constant, you have moderate variations in the frequencies of light that make up that "constant." On big variable is the amount of UV light that makes up sunlight - and (again, oddly enough), that variation has a strong match to global warming.
Some of the CAGW folks looked at the number of sunspots (after the skeptics pointed out the Sun as a possible driver) - but that's not the cycle to look for. It's actually a combination of several cycles, and the 11 year cycle is pretty much the least of those.
One more thing: if you're interested in following the ACTUAL debate over CAGW, stay away from skepticalscience. They're deeply dishonest, and have a strong tendency to delete any posts that argue against CAGW in any way.
Actually, over the last few years, you haven't seen more typhoons, in the numbers that would be necessary to make the predictions correct. There were going to be a LOT of tropical cyclones, and a lot stronger, worldwide. They're trying to find excuses, but they were still wrong.
The kicker is that, in "total cyclone energy," the planet as a whole is well off the peak of the 1990s - more than 1/3 lower in total energy.
We're also well off the mark in total number of major storms - about 25% below what we saw per year in 1997, for example.
No, North America isn't being missed because of the jet stream, that's just silly. The jet stream has been all over the place, and even the meteorologists were surprised by the lack of storms, give that we had good conditions for them in several years.
"Many droughts around the world," yes, but not as many as there have been historically. We've actually seen a DECREASE in drought impact, worldwide, since the middle of the century. Again, the opposite of CAGW predictions.
The ice cap is NOT shrinking. You're a few years out of date on that one.
The Antarctic isn't gaining ice because of "fresh water" - it's gaining ice because it's COLD. Again, in the face of CAGW predictions. They "found" some warming - which, oddly enough, only showed up right next to the bases, where the thermometer readings were skewed by the humans in the area. Once you get a couple of miles away from the airfields and heated buildings, the warming isn't there.
When you actually look at the science itself, it's pretty clear. And nowhere near what the proponents claim.
For that matter, when you look at the history of AGW catastrophism, you see a lot of, well, denial. By the people whose predictions failed miserably.
So far we have NOT seen an increase in the number and size of hurricanes. We have also NOT seen an increase in droughts, an increase in tornado numbers or strength, a decrease in winter snow, or a number of other things. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of events that were predicted as part of CAGW that have not happened (and in many cases, the reverse has come to pass).
We still have a fairly icy polar ice cap (the "sciency" prediction from just a few years back was that it would effectively be gone by now).
We're also about 0.1 C below the low-end value of over 95% of predictions for global temperatures (and 0.5 C below the "most probable" number). That in itself invalidates CAGW as a scientific theory.
Yes, the Earth has warmed. Yes, some of it has been due to CO2 increases by humans.
But the amount - and the results - are both badly blown predictions. That means that the followers of CAGW are, by and large, denying science because it didn't give them the result they wanted.
RTGs only lose about one percent per year (less than that, usually). With the power bonus you get from RTGs (more power per weight when compared to solar panels at that distance from the Sun), you still end up with a large bonus of generated power, even when using the smallest types of RTGs that have been deployed.
A SNAP-3B would have started with about 52 watts, and after twelve years would have about 45 watts of power - compared to the 32 watts worth of solar power available from panels - for a total weight of about five pounds, and a much, much less complex system (versus solar cell deployment/pointing and batteries).
The SNAP-9A RTGs put out over 500 watts of power - about 16 times what the solar panels on Philae would produce at the time it intercepted the comet.
Those RTGs weighed only about 25 pounds each - much less than a set of solar panels + batteries. That power increase would have allowed a lot of extra options (such as a higher quality datalink) for about the same overall weight.
A SNAP-3B RTG could have put out about 50 watts - a bonus of about 50% power - and weighed less than FIVE pounds.
Does the same. They hire the same sort of people, pay the same sort of money, and use the same tactics (and many worse ones).
Except they're getting all whiny because it's not working for them on the Keystone XL thing, so they're trying the old "those evil, mind-controlling oil companies" story on a different class of public relations targets.
...is "broke" because we're funding a lot of things out of it that aren't highways.
If the money was used as originally intended - to fund building and maintenance of the Interstate highway system - it would be brimming with cash. Instead, it's also being used for lots of other projects, like mass transit, bicycle paths, and landscaping for roads. About a quarter of the income from the HTF goes to non-highway projects.
Oddly enough, if you moved the non-highway spending out of the Highway Trust Fund, it would be completely solvent, with a decent surplus for more highway spending on things like bridge repair.
Do you ignore the recent extreme temperature records on purpose, or what exactly do you consider "severe weather"?
I consider actual severe weather as predicted, not the supposed "extreme" temperature records (which aren't that far out of normal).
We were told that hurricanes, for example, would be increasing dramatically in the short term. The incidence of hurricanes - and hurricane severity - has gone down, for much the same reason as the article gives for increased lightning strikes.
We were told that snow would be a "thing of the past" in many parts of the world (such as the United Kingdom) by now. Nope.
Tornadoes increasing in frequency and power? For the same reason, AGAIN? Not so much.
The only straw you have to grasp at is "temperature extremes" - which aren't that extreme, and which are mostly showing up in urban centers, due to the Urban Heat Island effect. They're having some severe issues with measurement. For example, they set a new high temperature record for May (102 F) in Wichita, Kansas - but that "record" was at a thermometer surrounded by asphalt, in the middle of an airport, which has been surrounded by developments since the original record was set in 1933...
You should note, by the way, that the "scientific" global warming prediction wasn't for high temperature records, but for higher low temperatures at night and at higher latitudes.
An article about a study predicting increased lightning strikes due to global warming has nothing to do with all of the other (failed) studies predicting increased hazards due to global warming?
"All [models] in our ensemble predict that [the United State's] mean CAPE will increase over the 21st century, with a mean increase of 11.2 percent per degree Celsius of global warming,"
Do tell. How is this different?
Or is there some sort of rule about how things can be mentioned in stories, but not mentioned in the comments here?
Predicting an increase in severe weather due to global warming (no, it hasn't happened)?
Predicting an increase in hurricanes and hurricane energy DtGW (again, no, it hasn't happened)?
Predicting a decrease in snowfall DtGW (once more, nope)?
Predicting the complete loss of the Arctic ice cap by 2014 DtGW (increasing, recently)?
Or any of the other myriad of weather-influenced increases or losses DtGW? That also, incidentally, haven't come to pass?
There is one almost-certain prediction that you can use: if someone predicts ANYTHING "due to Global Warming" with a target date of 2100, it's almost certainly wrong, wrong, wrong, and should be discarded immediately.
Actually, my reading skills are fine. It's his legal skills that are in a world of hurt.
For one thing, the actual complaint is that the bad review keeps turning up on the first page of his Google results. For another, the "right to be forgotten" was aimed at search engines, not content providers. Asking the Post to remove the review is, of course, way off base, legally.
He decided to use it to try and lose a bad review through using the RtbF as a censorship tool.
So everyone - yes, EVERYONE - should oblige him. You can't fire a shotgun and then pretend that only one pellet has an effect.
The people who sold chemical weapons tech to Iraq were European countries like Germany, assisted by France and others. The weapons casings were from Spain and China. The ones made in Spain were based on old US designs (which is mentioned in the article, but the part where they were knockoff designs without US input was glossed over).
The US sold Iraq some smaller helicopters and some agricultural insecticides (which were not, in any reasonable fashion, convertible to chemical weapons). We didn't sell them any sort of chemical weapons - or weapons of any kind, for that matter.
We did send them some biological agents - again, for agricultural purposes, like anthrax. Look up "American Type Culture Collection" for how this works. Iraq tried to repurpose the anthrax for weapons (and failed, apparently).
It's only "2075" if human performance follows a smooth curve.
What it will take in reality is two or three extreme performers in a group, each putting in a run equivalent to a Bob Beamon long jump. Actually, less. You're looking at about a five percent increase in performance versus the current world record.
There are certainly at least three people like that in the world right now - people with the right build, freakish VO2 max scores, and the sort of mental determination to stick with professional marathon running.
The problem is, they're probably not marathon runners - yet. Or possibly ever.
But sooner or later - and I'm betting sooner - it will happen. Probably closer to 2025 than 2075.
"These solar households are now buying less and less electricity, but the utilities still have to manage the costs of connecting them to the grid."
The pro-solar folks think the utilities should pay this cost, instead of the people who actually incur that cost? Do tell.
If the power companies didn't have to worry about connecting all of that moderately-erratic power to the grid, they could easily "build down" over the next decade or two - and chop lots of unprofitable customers from their systems. They could dump pretty much all of the rural customers, and wouldn't have to worry about capacity expansion in the near future. They could even shut down a lot of older power plants that are low performers, profit-wise, instead of having to fight the government to build new plants while trying to keep the old ones running.
You mean "they predict they will hit the target in six years." They hit 31.5%, and might have hit the 33% - if you believe a government spokesman.
This is only "locally-generated" power, by the way: they don't count the power imported from other states, and fail to mention that overall power generation in South Australia is expected to decline due to cheaper power imported from places like Victoria.
They also won't add "one additional dollar to energy prices" by adding the many additional dollars to taxes levied by the federal government.
This kid managed to make a rugged, reliable piece of hardware that recognizes many fingerprints, will withstand regular impacts from firing, and managed to make the failure rate only one in ten thousand.
Oh, wait - he made a plastic prototype, and hasn't actually tested it in a firing weapon?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that when they first came up with CAGW as a theory, they needed big results to make it more dramatic - so they tossed out pretty much all of the negative feedbacks, and emphasized the positive ones.
They assumed a huge positive feedback from water vapor, literally tripling the observed effect of CO2. Due to that, we should have seen a big increase in relative AND absolute humidity over the last two decades. Didn't happen.
There's one "buffer."
They also used a very, very weak cloud model, which would have given them a big negative feedback.
There's another.
Those two account for a lot of the discrepancies between models and real-world effects, but there are other "buffers" we keep finding out about.
They dont account for the sun?
Son, that the was among the first things they looked at.
And theyve looked at it several times since.
It's not the sun, son.
If it was the sun, we would be cooling right now.
The 11yr cycle bit is also misleading: there is some periodicity, but there is a lot of noise in that signal, as shown in this graph (which also conventiently shows that temperatures, and solar output have been moving in opposite directions for the past 35 years): http://www.skepticalscience.co...
From: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
It's the sun. And no, according to the guys who actually study this sort of thing, we're not far enough into the solar minimum to be in an actual cooling phase yet. Give it a couple more years.
No, the CAGW fans didn't look at the sun "first" - and they keep looking everywhere else. I had a climate scientist angrily tell me that "insolation is a constant!" Not according to the astronomers, it isn't.
What's even more fun is that, even if you treat total solar irradiance as a (very wobbly) constant, you have moderate variations in the frequencies of light that make up that "constant." On big variable is the amount of UV light that makes up sunlight - and (again, oddly enough), that variation has a strong match to global warming.
Some of the CAGW folks looked at the number of sunspots (after the skeptics pointed out the Sun as a possible driver) - but that's not the cycle to look for. It's actually a combination of several cycles, and the 11 year cycle is pretty much the least of those.
One more thing: if you're interested in following the ACTUAL debate over CAGW, stay away from skepticalscience. They're deeply dishonest, and have a strong tendency to delete any posts that argue against CAGW in any way.
Actually, over the last few years, you haven't seen more typhoons, in the numbers that would be necessary to make the predictions correct. There were going to be a LOT of tropical cyclones, and a lot stronger, worldwide. They're trying to find excuses, but they were still wrong.
The kicker is that, in "total cyclone energy," the planet as a whole is well off the peak of the 1990s - more than 1/3 lower in total energy.
We're also well off the mark in total number of major storms - about 25% below what we saw per year in 1997, for example.
No, North America isn't being missed because of the jet stream, that's just silly. The jet stream has been all over the place, and even the meteorologists were surprised by the lack of storms, give that we had good conditions for them in several years.
"Many droughts around the world," yes, but not as many as there have been historically. We've actually seen a DECREASE in drought impact, worldwide, since the middle of the century. Again, the opposite of CAGW predictions.
The ice cap is NOT shrinking. You're a few years out of date on that one.
The Antarctic isn't gaining ice because of "fresh water" - it's gaining ice because it's COLD. Again, in the face of CAGW predictions. They "found" some warming - which, oddly enough, only showed up right next to the bases, where the thermometer readings were skewed by the humans in the area. Once you get a couple of miles away from the airfields and heated buildings, the warming isn't there.
When you actually look at the science itself, it's pretty clear. And nowhere near what the proponents claim.
For that matter, when you look at the history of AGW catastrophism, you see a lot of, well, denial. By the people whose predictions failed miserably.
So far we have NOT seen an increase in the number and size of hurricanes. We have also NOT seen an increase in droughts, an increase in tornado numbers or strength, a decrease in winter snow, or a number of other things. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of events that were predicted as part of CAGW that have not happened (and in many cases, the reverse has come to pass).
We still have a fairly icy polar ice cap (the "sciency" prediction from just a few years back was that it would effectively be gone by now).
We're also about 0.1 C below the low-end value of over 95% of predictions for global temperatures (and 0.5 C below the "most probable" number). That in itself invalidates CAGW as a scientific theory.
Yes, the Earth has warmed. Yes, some of it has been due to CO2 increases by humans.
But the amount - and the results - are both badly blown predictions. That means that the followers of CAGW are, by and large, denying science because it didn't give them the result they wanted.
RTGs only lose about one percent per year (less than that, usually). With the power bonus you get from RTGs (more power per weight when compared to solar panels at that distance from the Sun), you still end up with a large bonus of generated power, even when using the smallest types of RTGs that have been deployed.
A SNAP-3B would have started with about 52 watts, and after twelve years would have about 45 watts of power - compared to the 32 watts worth of solar power available from panels - for a total weight of about five pounds, and a much, much less complex system (versus solar cell deployment/pointing and batteries).
The SNAP-9A RTGs put out over 500 watts of power - about 16 times what the solar panels on Philae would produce at the time it intercepted the comet.
Those RTGs weighed only about 25 pounds each - much less than a set of solar panels + batteries. That power increase would have allowed a lot of extra options (such as a higher quality datalink) for about the same overall weight.
A SNAP-3B RTG could have put out about 50 watts - a bonus of about 50% power - and weighed less than FIVE pounds.
Does the same. They hire the same sort of people, pay the same sort of money, and use the same tactics (and many worse ones).
Except they're getting all whiny because it's not working for them on the Keystone XL thing, so they're trying the old "those evil, mind-controlling oil companies" story on a different class of public relations targets.
...is "broke" because we're funding a lot of things out of it that aren't highways.
If the money was used as originally intended - to fund building and maintenance of the Interstate highway system - it would be brimming with cash. Instead, it's also being used for lots of other projects, like mass transit, bicycle paths, and landscaping for roads. About a quarter of the income from the HTF goes to non-highway projects.
Oddly enough, if you moved the non-highway spending out of the Highway Trust Fund, it would be completely solvent, with a decent surplus for more highway spending on things like bridge repair.
Do you ignore the recent extreme temperature records on purpose, or what exactly do you consider "severe weather"?
I consider actual severe weather as predicted, not the supposed "extreme" temperature records (which aren't that far out of normal).
We were told that hurricanes, for example, would be increasing dramatically in the short term. The incidence of hurricanes - and hurricane severity - has gone down, for much the same reason as the article gives for increased lightning strikes.
We were told that snow would be a "thing of the past" in many parts of the world (such as the United Kingdom) by now. Nope.
Tornadoes increasing in frequency and power? For the same reason, AGAIN? Not so much.
The only straw you have to grasp at is "temperature extremes" - which aren't that extreme, and which are mostly showing up in urban centers, due to the Urban Heat Island effect. They're having some severe issues with measurement. For example, they set a new high temperature record for May (102 F) in Wichita, Kansas - but that "record" was at a thermometer surrounded by asphalt, in the middle of an airport, which has been surrounded by developments since the original record was set in 1933...
You should note, by the way, that the "scientific" global warming prediction wasn't for high temperature records, but for higher low temperatures at night and at higher latitudes.
An article about a study predicting increased lightning strikes due to global warming has nothing to do with all of the other (failed) studies predicting increased hazards due to global warming?
"All [models] in our ensemble predict that [the United State's] mean CAPE will increase over the 21st century, with a mean increase of 11.2 percent per degree Celsius of global warming,"
Do tell. How is this different?
Or is there some sort of rule about how things can be mentioned in stories, but not mentioned in the comments here?
Predicting an increase in severe weather due to global warming (no, it hasn't happened)?
Predicting an increase in hurricanes and hurricane energy DtGW (again, no, it hasn't happened)?
Predicting a decrease in snowfall DtGW (once more, nope)?
Predicting the complete loss of the Arctic ice cap by 2014 DtGW (increasing, recently)?
Or any of the other myriad of weather-influenced increases or losses DtGW? That also, incidentally, haven't come to pass?
There is one almost-certain prediction that you can use: if someone predicts ANYTHING "due to Global Warming" with a target date of 2100, it's almost certainly wrong, wrong, wrong, and should be discarded immediately.
Actually, my reading skills are fine. It's his legal skills that are in a world of hurt.
For one thing, the actual complaint is that the bad review keeps turning up on the first page of his Google results. For another, the "right to be forgotten" was aimed at search engines, not content providers. Asking the Post to remove the review is, of course, way off base, legally.
He decided to use it to try and lose a bad review through using the RtbF as a censorship tool.
So everyone - yes, EVERYONE - should oblige him. You can't fire a shotgun and then pretend that only one pellet has an effect.
Sure. Remove the Google link to the bad review.
And every other link to the guy. Forever.
No more searches on him, for the entire rest of his performing career.
It's the only way to keep that review from sneaking back into future search results.
They have a history of "direct action" against French nuclear plants.
They fired five RPG-7 rounds at the Superphenix when it was still under construction in 1982.
The people who sold chemical weapons tech to Iraq were European countries like Germany, assisted by France and others. The weapons casings were from Spain and China. The ones made in Spain were based on old US designs (which is mentioned in the article, but the part where they were knockoff designs without US input was glossed over).
The US sold Iraq some smaller helicopters and some agricultural insecticides (which were not, in any reasonable fashion, convertible to chemical weapons). We didn't sell them any sort of chemical weapons - or weapons of any kind, for that matter.
We did send them some biological agents - again, for agricultural purposes, like anthrax. Look up "American Type Culture Collection" for how this works. Iraq tried to repurpose the anthrax for weapons (and failed, apparently).
The test reactor (to prove that they can get fusion) is the short timeline.
The five year timeline is the first power-producing design.
...because we've seen their act too many times, and pretty much everything except the location of the doors is common sense in the first place.
Anyone who can't figure that stuff out is probably traveling with an adult to handle the actual decisions.
It's only "2075" if human performance follows a smooth curve.
What it will take in reality is two or three extreme performers in a group, each putting in a run equivalent to a Bob Beamon long jump. Actually, less. You're looking at about a five percent increase in performance versus the current world record.
There are certainly at least three people like that in the world right now - people with the right build, freakish VO2 max scores, and the sort of mental determination to stick with professional marathon running.
The problem is, they're probably not marathon runners - yet. Or possibly ever.
But sooner or later - and I'm betting sooner - it will happen. Probably closer to 2025 than 2075.
Lots and lots of NewEgg.
All of the time.
Forever.
You can never get away...
HIV made a cross-species jump in the 1920s, and went on to kill millions.
But Ebola couldn't possibly mutate enough to survive slightly longer when exposed to air.
I feel much safer now.
"These solar households are now buying less and less electricity, but the utilities still have to manage the costs of connecting them to the grid."
The pro-solar folks think the utilities should pay this cost, instead of the people who actually incur that cost? Do tell.
If the power companies didn't have to worry about connecting all of that moderately-erratic power to the grid, they could easily "build down" over the next decade or two - and chop lots of unprofitable customers from their systems. They could dump pretty much all of the rural customers, and wouldn't have to worry about capacity expansion in the near future. They could even shut down a lot of older power plants that are low performers, profit-wise, instead of having to fight the government to build new plants while trying to keep the old ones running.
You mean "they predict they will hit the target in six years." They hit 31.5%, and might have hit the 33% - if you believe a government spokesman.
This is only "locally-generated" power, by the way: they don't count the power imported from other states, and fail to mention that overall power generation in South Australia is expected to decline due to cheaper power imported from places like Victoria.
They also won't add "one additional dollar to energy prices" by adding the many additional dollars to taxes levied by the federal government.
Yeah, I just bet it is.
This kid managed to make a rugged, reliable piece of hardware that recognizes many fingerprints, will withstand regular impacts from firing, and managed to make the failure rate only one in ten thousand.
Oh, wait - he made a plastic prototype, and hasn't actually tested it in a firing weapon?
Do tell.
No, I know where they are. They just bribed me.
The genes are obviously smart enough to hide from researchers.