The article about the article is an accurate summary of the actual article. Current solar tech does not make much economic sense,
True... and false. Economic viability is not a dichotomy. The truth is, it makes sense right now, in some markets, and doesn't make sense in other markets. As the technology gets cheaper, it makes sense in more and more markets.
so we are spending billions to subsidize it, rather than spending enough on research and development of new tech that does make sense.
I agree that it makes sense to spend on research and development of new tech. A nice side effect of this is that subsidizing new tech almost always has spin-off applications that weren't previously forseen.
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times!
So, you're basically chiming in here to agree with the global climate models. There was more carbon dioxide in the paleozoic, and the climate was warmer.
Yep. The climate was warmer, and the dinosaurs lived with it
Of course, the planet didn't have any ice caps then, and a lot of what we call "farmland" they called "shallow ocean".
We are... slightly.
This a big problem. It's nice to start with little measures, like green energy initiatives (and even carbon taxes, which have been proposed but not enacted.) But the problem is measured in the tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. It will take a more than a few half-hearted initiatives to deal with it.
She thought she was sending naked pictures and could maybe win some extra points when grade time came around but it turned out she was just sending naked pictures with no long game payout and that's harassment.
More like she was told she would not get good grades if she didn't and she really needed this. Fear can do weird things to people.
From the article, it was apparently an open course online, with no grades and no credit. (And she was in another country, so there was no personal contact, either.)
So you see nothing wrong with a professor using his status to obtain sexual favors?
Even if they are offered?
I have two friends, one of whom is a professor and the other is the student that he married 45 years ago (which was before I knew them). Sometimes it works.
That was a bit before the present-day restrictions on "harassment," though.
It's a tricky question. I would say that the dividing line is coercion-- is the professor using some form of threat, or promising good grades?
I have no idea whether this anonymous coward is trying to be ironic, is putting forth a strawman argument, or is serious.
If it's attempted irony, it fails. Irony usually is invisible on the intertubes, since there's so much cluelessness here anyway that it blends right in.
Yow! That graph is pretty frightening. CO2 basically goes off the chart in the present, way above anything in the past..
That's beside the point: the thing to observe is that that graph clearly indicates that climate temperature is not significantly tracking CO2 levels. While there may be some effect, it's demonstrably not what drives temperature in the graph.
We can reach this conclusion because in the graph, historically speaking, temperature and CO2 track each other very well; but when CO2 was pushed separately consequent to our emissions, temperature did not follow.
Sorry, not enough information in that graph to draw that conclusion. This is a graph where the smallest division on the time axis is 10,000 years. It's clear that carbon dioxide and temperature correlate together very well, but it's impossible to tell which drives which-- note that there's also the possibility that they both feed back into each other, and that higher temperatures increase carbon dioxide AND higher carbon dioxide drives higher temperature.
In any case, you'd want measurements from more than just Antarctic temperature.
Here's a lecture from University of Barcelona pointing out what you just said, but with better graphs and drawing the conclusion that you can't draw a conclusion: http://www.am.ub.edu/~jmiralda...
And here's an article from 2012, on the other hand, saying that newer studies show that in fact higher carbon dioxide did cause the rising temperatures at the end of the ice age:
http://www.usnews.com/news/art... With a nice graph here: http://www.livescience.com/194...
Yow! That graph is pretty frightening. CO2 basically goes off the chart in the present, way above anything in the past..
That's temperature in Antarctica, though.
-- that graph only goes back half a million years. As a previous poster noted, the last time the CO2 was this high was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: carbon dioxide levels spiked, the Earth heated by about 5.6 C, and there was, indeed, a massive die-off. That was 56 million years ago.
Correct. This is, basically, continuing policies set up by Bush on the excuse "911 happened, OMG".
Obama ran on the platform that he wasn't Bush. Pity, I rather liked that platform, too bad he didn't carry forward with it.
The IRS targeting of political opponents killed any chance this will ever happen.
I do point out that the IRS is supposed to deny tax-free status for political organizations. That's their job. Political advocacy groups aren't tax exempt. And shouldn't be.
The IRS failed if they did not investigate some political groups that were "favored" ideologies. (I don't know whether they did or didn't, actually.)
Slashdot Mirror
The article about the article is an accurate summary of the actual article. Current solar tech does not make much economic sense,
True... and false. Economic viability is not a dichotomy. The truth is, it makes sense right now, in some markets, and doesn't make sense in other markets. As the technology gets cheaper, it makes sense in more and more markets.
so we are spending billions to subsidize it, rather than spending enough on research and development of new tech that does make sense.
I agree that it makes sense to spend on research and development of new tech. A nice side effect of this is that subsidizing new tech almost always has spin-off applications that weren't previously forseen.
but we can see from the last 20 years that a massive increase in CO2 does not bring with it an equivalent increase in temperature
Looks rising to me: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
If you pick just the part of the curve where the temperature isn't rising, you can find data that looks like temperature isn't rising.
But, as of this year, actually it is rising: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea... http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...
If you get your data from what anonymous cowards posting on the internet, a factor of three is pretty good agreement.
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times!
So, you're basically chiming in here to agree with the global climate models. There was more carbon dioxide in the paleozoic, and the climate was warmer. Yep. The climate was warmer, and the dinosaurs lived with it Of course, the planet didn't have any ice caps then, and a lot of what we call "farmland" they called "shallow ocean".
We probably won't get the dinosaurs back, though.
We are... slightly. This a big problem. It's nice to start with little measures, like green energy initiatives (and even carbon taxes, which have been proposed but not enacted.) But the problem is measured in the tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. It will take a more than a few half-hearted initiatives to deal with it.
She thought she was sending naked pictures and could maybe win some extra points when grade time came around but it turned out she was just sending naked pictures with no long game payout and that's harassment.
More like she was told she would not get good grades if she didn't and she really needed this. Fear can do weird things to people.
From the article, it was apparently an open course online, with no grades and no credit. (And she was in another country, so there was no personal contact, either.)
Even if they are offered?
I have two friends, one of whom is a professor and the other is the student that he married 45 years ago (which was before I knew them). Sometimes it works.
That was a bit before the present-day restrictions on "harassment," though.
It's a tricky question. I would say that the dividing line is coercion-- is the professor using some form of threat, or promising good grades?
Also, mandatorily drug tested.
I have no idea whether this anonymous coward is trying to be ironic, is putting forth a strawman argument, or is serious. If it's attempted irony, it fails. Irony usually is invisible on the intertubes, since there's so much cluelessness here anyway that it blends right in.
CO2 levels have not been this high in any time period we've been able to provide an estimate for. Look at the historical CO2 levels against temperature.
Yow! That graph is pretty frightening. CO2 basically goes off the chart in the present, way above anything in the past..
That's beside the point: the thing to observe is that that graph clearly indicates that climate temperature is not significantly tracking CO2 levels. While there may be some effect, it's demonstrably not what drives temperature in the graph.
We can reach this conclusion because in the graph, historically speaking, temperature and CO2 track each other very well; but when CO2 was pushed separately consequent to our emissions, temperature did not follow.
Sorry, not enough information in that graph to draw that conclusion. This is a graph where the smallest division on the time axis is 10,000 years. It's clear that carbon dioxide and temperature correlate together very well, but it's impossible to tell which drives which-- note that there's also the possibility that they both feed back into each other, and that higher temperatures increase carbon dioxide AND higher carbon dioxide drives higher temperature.
In any case, you'd want measurements from more than just Antarctic temperature.
Here's a lecture from University of Barcelona pointing out what you just said, but with better graphs and drawing the conclusion that you can't draw a conclusion: http://www.am.ub.edu/~jmiralda...
And here's an article from 2012, on the other hand, saying that newer studies show that in fact higher carbon dioxide did cause the rising temperatures at the end of the ice age: http://www.usnews.com/news/art...
With a nice graph here: http://www.livescience.com/194...
CO2 levels have not been this high in any time period we've been able to provide an estimate for. Look at the historical CO2 levels against temperature.
Yow! That graph is pretty frightening. CO2 basically goes off the chart in the present, way above anything in the past..
That's temperature in Antarctica, though.
-- that graph only goes back half a million years. As a previous poster noted, the last time the CO2 was this high was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: carbon dioxide levels spiked, the Earth heated by about 5.6 C, and there was, indeed, a massive die-off. That was 56 million years ago.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic....
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/PETM.asp
You seem to be vehemently agreeing with me.
I don't want to put this all on Obama
Correct. This is, basically, continuing policies set up by Bush on the excuse "911 happened, OMG". Obama ran on the platform that he wasn't Bush. Pity, I rather liked that platform, too bad he didn't carry forward with it.
The IRS targeting of political opponents killed any chance this will ever happen.
I do point out that the IRS is supposed to deny tax-free status for political organizations. That's their job. Political advocacy groups aren't tax exempt. And shouldn't be.
The IRS failed if they did not investigate some political groups that were "favored" ideologies. (I don't know whether they did or didn't, actually.)