There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task [...]
Apparently you've never had to provide computing support directly to ordinary US customers.
But this isn't support directly to consumers. It's shipping an alternate install image. There's a single one-time cost to set up the system and then it's all automatic.
There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task, again both things that damage Mozilla's brand.
This.
My first thought is that it's either a direct MS plot, or the devious idea of an MS fan high in Dell's corporate structure.
I considered that but a plot to have someone sell a competitor's product would be an epic level of deviousness.
More likely I think someone at Dell knew a lot of non-techy people would really like Firefox preinstalled, were scared to do it themselves, and so decided to fleece them a bit providing the service.
Someone is willing to pay me 16$ to install firefox, why would the firefox terms and conditions apply to me? I'm not selling their product.
If you're advertising yourself as a Firefox installer then you're using Mozilla.org's trademark to do so.
Consider how Red Hat works, Red Hat doesn't sell Linux, they sell services surrounding their own version of Linux, RHEL. If someone else tries to distribute RHEL they get in trouble with Red Hat so you get things like CentOS that remove the trademarks.
Personally I think Mozilla has a case here. The price is fairly high and if I saw this I'd assume that Dell had some kind of deal with Mozilla and that Mozilla was comfortable fleecing consumers which damages Mozilla's brand. There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task, again both things that damage Mozilla's brand.
I doubt a majority of Crimeans want annexation by Russia or even independence, but Putin doesn't win elections via his charming personality. Any election referendum held under Russian occupation will result in a pro-Russia vote.
Honestly, after the p-value article, why is this crap still being published? p value was said to mean its worth a second look, but NOT imply anything else
Second, notice its not in PLOS one. Wonder why? Oh right, they require all data to be public, so you can't "use a model" that just happens to make the results you were looking for.
Lastly, percentages e.g. 19 times more likely! See http://xkcd.com/1252/ Without the baseline, this 19 times more likely is utterly useless. If their "average case" had a 0.000000000001% chance of death, 19 times that would be 0.000000000019% Thats still pretty low. It reeks of numbers manipulation in an attempt for publicity and funding. If the baseline was something reasonably high, like say 1%, and it jumped to 19%, sure that's quite significant! However, were that the case, it would be far more exciting to say that, than simply 19 times, and they would have done so. My guess is my examples are hyperbole, and the actual is probably closer to 0.1 with those markers, their modeling, number fudging, etc, 1.9%. Still not an accurate predictor of mortality, and basically useless.
Fortunately there's a paper linked to in the summary that answers your concerns.
The 5-y mortality for persons with a biomarker score within the highest quintile was 19 times higher than for those in the lowest quintile (288 versus 15 deaths during 5 y, corresponding to 15.3% versus 0.8%). Individuals within the highest quintile were further differentiated in terms of their short-term probability of dying according to their biomarker score percentiles: 23% of the individuals with a biomarker score within the highest percentile had died within the first year of follow-up (23 out of 99), and the estimated 5-y mortality was 49% (Figure 5B).
I'm not gonna run the numbers but 288 vs 15 is probably outside of most p-values.
Also note this was a replication of another study, once could be publication bias, but replication raises the odds you're looking at something real.
23% first year mortality for the highest percentile group?? That's definitely something worth writing home about (and you might want to send a will along with it).
I'm curious how these people were classified as 'apparently healthy'. It sounds like these biomarkers were all associated with various health conditions. Did these people have undiagnosed health problems that would have been discovered with a general checkup or did this indicate the presence of problems that would have been otherwise undetected?
Assange is an asshole womanizing narcissist, Manning was a transsexual on the brink of a gender change with (understandable) anger issues, Snowden is... weirdly normal aside from some seemingly irrational choices in countries to hide in.
Of course you have to take a hatchet piece by a "ghostwriter" with a grain of salt but we already knew Assange could be sleazy from his behaviour that led to the rape charges (regardless of whether you think the charges are legit).
At the end of the day to be a prominent activist you have to believe your issue is so important that it's worthwhile provoking confrontations and stirring up trouble, you need an ideology strong enough to motivate you to throw away a normal life and career to pursue your issue. Normal well adjusted people generally don't become dedicated activists.
I think WikiLeaks is a great idea but nice normal people don't make things like WikiLeaks.
Are you claiming that climate scientists aren't backing their numbers up?
Of course not. I'm claiming you don't know what they are doing to back up their numbers. Because if you did, you wouldn't have come to the same conclusion that you did in the earliest post, that is, that all the predictions are consistent with each other.
I'm not sure about that. I'd say they were all within the general scientific consensus (I remember one being out there but I don't have time to reread them now).
They discussed different aspects, and the consensus has uncertainties which they were scattered around, but they were working from the same general climate model.
You need to have a reason for choosing your number, and evidence to back it up.
The guy who predicted no ice by 2015, for example, explained his reasoning. His reasoning was: extrapolating based on current trends (at the time) there would be no ice by 2015.
So? I think you're talking about Peter Wadhams predicting 2015-16 back in 2012, other scientists disagree and use other models, but that's the number he got. And it's not like me made it up, he studied the topic, and if he used extrapolation it's because he showed some justification about why extrapolation was appropriate over that time period.
Are you claiming that climate scientists aren't backing their numbers up? I find that very doubtful, the entire basis of science is that you back up your claims with evidence. The changing cutoffs have to do with us readjusting our goals. There's a lot of scientists saying we're going to see problems at this point no matter what, both because of the current CO2 level and because of the lack of political action. They're saying it might be time to discuss climate engineering. The claims have changed from 2005 in a real way.
Those people exist, but to think they're the driving force behind the science of global warming is nonsense. The scientists' motivation is they're trying to save us and the planet, they're not involved in some bizarre plot to create a world government based on carbon credits.
As I said with shifting goalposts there's not much point in aiming for 350 ppm when we're already past 400 ppm. But that doesn't change that any cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, we have probability X of getting effect Y, if you change X or Y you get a completely different cutoff.
Assume they have a perfect model and they're all aiming for the same 450 ppm which was a hard cutoff
See, this is the sort of stuff you do. Did you pull that number out of your ass? Why do you make stuff up instead of going out and finding out what the hard cut off actually is? Your failure to do research is why you say stupid things.
For all your talk about past predictions I'm surprised you didn't recognize a proposed stabilization level from the Kyoto protocol. I can't remember if it was part of the initial treaty or a later meeting but the 450 ppm figure has been very well publicized.
Actually right in my initial response to you I did directly address the discussion about predictions and tipping points. I was incorrect in thinking you were discussing the wrong topic, but I still engaged you on the right topic.
And as I pointed out you've been oversimplifying the nature of the predictions. Assume they have a perfect model and they're all aiming for the same 450 ppm which was a hard cutoff, you'll still see predictions of the nature you posted! Why?
Because if you cut CO2 by X% annually starting in 2000 you can dodge it, but if you wait till 2005 you need to do X+Y%, and so on. At each benchmark the chance of society actually following through gets less and less, so in 2000 it was too late to act because X% wasn't politically feasible, and in 2005 it was even more too late to act.
The only scenario in which an 'act by X' date is relevant is if the act is just flipping some binary switch. The problem is you're applying a standard of prediction that even under the most favourable circumstances the scientists couldn't fulfill.
You seem to enjoy that patronizing tone. I get the feeling that your AGW denialism is based more on desire to look smarter than everyone else than it is on an impartial examination of the data.
It's mainly an awareness that we can't have an interesting conversation on the topic until you improve your knowledge. Any conversation until then will be me teaching, with you arguing all the way. That's not very fun for me, so instead I'll try to motive you to learn on your own.
When you're done, we can have an enjoyable conversation, and probably both learn.
On what basis do you think you're more knowledgeable? There were two issues, one I forget the exact issue which was just a dumb mistake on my part, but before that Amiga3D's initial statement had a flawed premise which I overlooked which led me to make an inaccurate statement (and led to my subsequent confusion).
Amiga said "I remember climate experts shouting back in the last millennium that if we didn't do radical change by 2000 it'd be too late to make a difference. Why does that target date keep moving?"
The flaw is that 2000 was probably the date to avoid significant AGW entirely, it's not too late to make a difference, it's just too late to miss it entirely. We can no longer avoid it so we have new rough deadlines we can try to hit to avoid some of the probable future consequences.
You can't give an exact date or number because both the action we take (how much we reduce CO2 and methane) and the results we get (heat, storms, droughts), even if they could be perfectly predicted are on a sliding scale. It looks like moving the goalposts because that's what we're doing, 200x is past, xxx PPM is past, we're going to get some global warming, so lets choose a new goal and try to accomplish that instead.
You can use that standard it you want to but it's kinda useless in practice. Say it turns out that low levels of background radiation are good for us, does that mean radiation is no longer pollution?
Actually yes.
There are background levels of radiation. In amounts around as high as that, radiation is not really pollution.
The same goes for CO2. The amounts we are emitting are not nearly enough to be pollution, the ONLY concern was the RUNAWAY greenhouse effect, which is not happening.
So if AGW was a real threat would you consider CO2 pollution?
Forget about decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers.
You are forgetting about the same decades having many papers showing there is no runaway warming.
I don't know if you're being cute with the term 'runaway warming', referring to the short investigation into cooling, or are talking about denialist cargo-cult journals. If you're going to claim there's no scientific consensus around AGW then we're no longer discussing the same reality and I'll just claim 1998 was an outlier because of the emergence of Sauron.
There's also the worry that the changing climate will lead to larger storm surges
The "more XTREME Weather" line is the equivalent of "we took away all your privacy and freedom because of the CHILDREN".
Ahh, now I understand your model of the climate science community:
Step 1) Create a fake global warming scare
Step 2) ?
Step 3) PROFIT
Because all the science indicates that it almost certainly IS happening.
Science should look up the overall levels of Earth temperatures because there is no runaway warming, and hardly any warming of any sort at the moment.
But in reality of course, many real scientists would not agree with your statement.
Ahh yes, countless scientists studying the climate simply forgot to check the thermometers, it's a common mistake.
And I'm going to assume your 'many real scientists' doesn't include many climate scientists. I can show you a list of creationist scientists as well, I guess Kan Ham was right!
Just because CO2 does not directly cause adverse changes the way Chernobyl or Bhopal did does not mean that CO2 is not pollution.
The fact that the entire plant kingdom relies on CO2 rules it out as pollution for me. The Earth's whole ecosystem is devoted to processing CO2. It's probably the most benign thing we could possibly be emitting.
You can use that standard it you want to but it's kinda useless in practice. Say it turns out that low levels of background radiation are good for us, does that mean radiation is no longer pollution? We use sound to talk, I guess I can open a night club next to your house because there's no such thing as noise pollution.
A much better standard is pollution is anything that's harmful when emitted in excess or the wrong circumstance, CO2 emissions are harming the planet right now, thus they're pollution.
A rapid increase in temperatures basically undermine all that investment we have made.
As I said it's clear that will not happen. CO2 levels have risen heavily, temperatures is flat. It's clear that the levels of XO2 we are producing are not enough to cause a runaway effect.
Forget about decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers. They apparently were just doing a grade 3 science fair experiment with glass jar, you've pointed that out and now none of us have to worry and can go back to seeing what happens if we drop nails in Coke.
Many of our largest population and industrial centers are in areas directly threatened by rising sea water.
NOTHING is threatened by sea level rise of around a foot over 100 years. That is LOTS of time to adapt and shift. We also can tell now the absurd predictions of 20 feet sea level rise are not going to happen either. Even the IPCC admits that now.
There's also the worry that the changing climate will lead to larger storm surges which combined with the sea levels could cause a lot more damage. Though I'd agree that the other consequences from global warming are a lot more serious.
We should do our best to mitigate that and slow down the increase in the greenhouse effect
Why should we expend any effort to stop something that is not happening, when all that effort can go to fight real issues?
That's the thing that tans my hide. People are expending so much effort to fight CO2 that real problems are utterly ignored. The planet is being fucked for sure but it's not by CO2, and all action taken against CO2 is to me the same as action against the planet.
Because all the science indicates that it almost certainly IS happening. You are apparently not convinced, I don't know why, but the fact that you do not agree with the science does not jeopardize my belief in the science at all because nearly all the very smart and honest people who study the topic agree that it is happening and it's a serious problem.
Per capita you're mostly only beat by the middle east whom I agree is a problem but a smaller one than the US.
Emissions per GPD don't work well since I wouldn't expect them to scale linearly. Only with advanced economies with similar per capita would I even begin to bother looking at it.
The US has 4.5% of the world's population and is supplying 18% of the CO2 emissions, and way you look at it it's utterly indefensible. If there's any country who's a major part of the problem it's the US and they really need to fix it.
You seem to enjoy that patronizing tone. I get the feeling that your AGW denialism is based more on desire to look smarter than everyone else than it is on an impartial examination of the data.
Sometimes the naysayers are right, but generally the scientists who study it for a living are right, and the "research" you've been doing is nothing more than cargo cult science. You claim the scientists should be able to offer some simple test or benchmark because that's how you declare science is done, and when they can't do that because that's not how the problem works you declare that's not science!
I'm sorry for being harsh but I find the arrogance that underlies your position to be maddening. You're not some brilliant impartial arbitrator of truth, you're just some guy who read some convincing articles or blog posts, decided they were gospel, and you think you're some freethinking defending Galileo against the church of big science.
Now we just need to convince the Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, and Greenland ice sheet to stop their damn melting. Please do tell them about the fraudulent data they're using.
The further north you go the more liberal you get, the US north is more liberal than the US south, Canada is far more liberal than the US north, and Northern Europe is notoriously liberal.
The Arctic ice and Greenland ice sheet are so liberal they're gay married and are probably melting just to collect welfare and refreeze later with the free health care. The damn commies are further left than Sean Penn's dry cleaned underwear.
I think the hippie perception might be a problem since our belief systems are driven by status.
You don't see many anti-vaxxers in the tech community because we associate it with people like Jenny McCarthy and duncy models are people we generally mock rather than emulate.
AGW denialism on the other hand plays into geek status. Claiming to be a denialist signals not only that you're really curious about science, but that you have such a natural aptitude that you can step back and point out these massive errors that the whole climate science community has been making.
You can also point out all the celebrities (including duncy model types) who are concerned about AGW and imply opponents are just being memorized by the pretty celebrities and fancy degrees and not looking at the actual science. It's even better if you can point out that the records don't quite line up with the models so you can make some claims about shifting goalposts and failed hypothesis.
Ironically this tendency is why denialists piss off people (including me) so much. To go into someone else's domain of expertise, poke around a bit, then declare that person and their entire field is completely wrong and the actual truth is X, it just strikes me as extraordinary combination of ignorance and arrogance.
I think that's the way to combat AGW denialism, they're trying to associate AGW with a duncy art stereotype and incompetent groupthinking scientists. We need to fight back and point out the root of denialism is the asshole no-nothing who claims to be the smartest guy in the room. (But don't worry, they're in good company with the bible-thumping fundies as well)
The list is bogus.I would love to see what happens to a journalist that says politically incorrect stuff, like racist or anti-gay rants, in the top countries of this list. He would "only" be foired and sued if he was lucky, and arrested in the worse case scenario.
Freedom to say only what people consider nice and acceptable is no freedom at all. Any country that has "hate speech" laws has no grounds to criticize US lack of free speech.
I'm not a fan of hate speech laws (though I don't know who on that list besides Canada has them) but I think going after whistleblowers is worse. Hate speech laws target tone, silencing whistleblowers targets content.
I'm not sure what you would expect to see as evidence,
Yes, I know.
Seriously, for me the evidence would be the scientific consensus to agree we hit the tipping point. But you already disregard the scientific consensus, and if the science doesn't predict a great big sign at some point you're just giving yourself an excuse to always disagree.
As for the 90's predictions I can't remember what was in the media, much less the actual science,
Yes, I am not surprised. You like to talk more than you like to learn.
You like to insult more than you like to discuss. Here's a link about the first IPCC report from all the way back in 1990 (the 2nd report in '95 didn't change much).
Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other... scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.
So where's this crazy prediction you're talking about?
Bah, I was thinking of another discussion and misremembered what Amiga3D was talking about..
No prob. You still should learn to read.:)
I read fine, we ended up talking about different things (I thought you meant predictions of major catastrophes now).
I'm still not sure you have a strong argument though. Think of it like we're driving a car at a brick wall, the longer we wait before hitting the brakes the harder we're going to hit. By the early 2000's we knew we'd get at least a minor collision, by now it's going to be significant, if we wait until the 2020's or longer it's just going to keep getting more severe. AGW isn't a binary thing, the more you get the worse it is, the fact we're going to deal with some unavoidable consequences doesn't mean we shouldn't stop what we can.
I mean, that's your hypothesis, right? But you haven't read to see if your hypothesis matches the data. The reality is, that there's no particular evidence that we have passed any sort of irreversible tipping point, especially not a kind of tipping point talked about by those like Hansen, where civilization itself is at risk.
I don't know if you followed AGW through the 90s, but the expectation was that the temperature would begin to rise almost exponentially, based on computer models. In 1998 it looked like it was happening, but the trend just didn't continue.
Another fun one, if you look for it, was the prediction that the north pole would be free from summer ice by 2015. Do a search, you'll find that prediction. We'll have to wait until next year to see if that prediction holds.
I'm not sure what you would expect to see as evidence, I'd fully expect us to be in store for severe unavoidable consequences well in excess of those consequences occurring. The lack of arctic sea might be one such piece of evidence as arctic ocean albedo is probably one of the feedbacks (and thawing of the permafrost a major one). The 2015-16 prediction is a valid one though I'm not sure how much it means on its own (it's really warm now, whether it remains warm enough over the next couple years to melt the summer ice doesn't say much about about the models of the future).
As for the 90's predictions I can't remember what was in the media, much less the actual science, but the 2-4 C by the end of the century figure has been around a while, that doesn't really jive with them projection a massive exponential increase starting in '98.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task [...]
Apparently you've never had to provide computing support directly to ordinary US customers.
But this isn't support directly to consumers. It's shipping an alternate install image. There's a single one-time cost to set up the system and then it's all automatic.
There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task, again both things that damage Mozilla's brand.
This.
My first thought is that it's either a direct MS plot, or the devious idea of an MS fan high in Dell's corporate structure.
I considered that but a plot to have someone sell a competitor's product would be an epic level of deviousness.
More likely I think someone at Dell knew a lot of non-techy people would really like Firefox preinstalled, were scared to do it themselves, and so decided to fleece them a bit providing the service.
Someone is willing to pay me 16$ to install firefox, why would the firefox terms and conditions apply to me? I'm not selling their product.
If you're advertising yourself as a Firefox installer then you're using Mozilla.org's trademark to do so.
Consider how Red Hat works, Red Hat doesn't sell Linux, they sell services surrounding their own version of Linux, RHEL. If someone else tries to distribute RHEL they get in trouble with Red Hat so you get things like CentOS that remove the trademarks.
Personally I think Mozilla has a case here. The price is fairly high and if I saw this I'd assume that Dell had some kind of deal with Mozilla and that Mozilla was comfortable fleecing consumers which damages Mozilla's brand. There's also the case that the high price Dell is signalling that Firefox costs money and installing it is a non-trivial task, again both things that damage Mozilla's brand.
I doubt a majority of Crimeans want annexation by Russia or even independence, but Putin doesn't win elections via his charming personality. Any election referendum held under Russian occupation will result in a pro-Russia vote.
Honestly, after the p-value article, why is this crap still being published? p value was said to mean its worth a second look, but NOT imply anything else
Second, notice its not in PLOS one. Wonder why? Oh right, they require all data to be public, so you can't "use a model" that just happens to make the results you were looking for.
Lastly, percentages e.g. 19 times more likely! See http://xkcd.com/1252/ Without the baseline, this 19 times more likely is utterly useless. If their "average case" had a 0.000000000001% chance of death, 19 times that would be 0.000000000019% Thats still pretty low. It reeks of numbers manipulation in an attempt for publicity and funding. If the baseline was something reasonably high, like say 1%, and it jumped to 19%, sure that's quite significant! However, were that the case, it would be far more exciting to say that, than simply 19 times, and they would have done so. My guess is my examples are hyperbole, and the actual is probably closer to 0.1 with those markers, their modeling, number fudging, etc, 1.9%. Still not an accurate predictor of mortality, and basically useless.
Fortunately there's a paper linked to in the summary that answers your concerns.
The 5-y mortality for persons with a biomarker score within the highest quintile was 19 times higher than for those in the lowest quintile (288 versus 15 deaths during 5 y, corresponding to 15.3% versus 0.8%). Individuals within the highest quintile were further differentiated in terms of their short-term probability of dying according to their biomarker score percentiles: 23% of the individuals with a biomarker score within the highest percentile had died within the first year of follow-up (23 out of 99), and the estimated 5-y mortality was 49% (Figure 5B).
I'm not gonna run the numbers but 288 vs 15 is probably outside of most p-values.
Also note this was a replication of another study, once could be publication bias, but replication raises the odds you're looking at something real.
23% first year mortality for the highest percentile group?? That's definitely something worth writing home about (and you might want to send a will along with it).
I'm curious how these people were classified as 'apparently healthy'. It sounds like these biomarkers were all associated with various health conditions. Did these people have undiagnosed health problems that would have been discovered with a general checkup or did this indicate the presence of problems that would have been otherwise undetected?
Assange is an asshole womanizing narcissist, Manning was a transsexual on the brink of a gender change with (understandable) anger issues, Snowden is... weirdly normal aside from some seemingly irrational choices in countries to hide in.
Of course you have to take a hatchet piece by a "ghostwriter" with a grain of salt but we already knew Assange could be sleazy from his behaviour that led to the rape charges (regardless of whether you think the charges are legit).
At the end of the day to be a prominent activist you have to believe your issue is so important that it's worthwhile provoking confrontations and stirring up trouble, you need an ideology strong enough to motivate you to throw away a normal life and career to pursue your issue. Normal well adjusted people generally don't become dedicated activists.
I think WikiLeaks is a great idea but nice normal people don't make things like WikiLeaks.
I etch them into stone plates then hide them deep in a cave in the Amazon surrounded by deadly booby-traps.
It's pretty secure but it's a bit of a pain to access them when I forget the login for my hockey pool.
Clearly you don't understand the scientists' devious plan.
Step 1: Create the fraudulent religion of global warming.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: PROFIT
Are you claiming that climate scientists aren't backing their numbers up?
Of course not. I'm claiming you don't know what they are doing to back up their numbers. Because if you did, you wouldn't have come to the same conclusion that you did in the earliest post, that is, that all the predictions are consistent with each other.
I'm not sure about that. I'd say they were all within the general scientific consensus (I remember one being out there but I don't have time to reread them now).
They discussed different aspects, and the consensus has uncertainties which they were scattered around, but they were working from the same general climate model.
You need to have a reason for choosing your number, and evidence to back it up.
The guy who predicted no ice by 2015, for example, explained his reasoning. His reasoning was: extrapolating based on current trends (at the time) there would be no ice by 2015.
So? I think you're talking about Peter Wadhams predicting 2015-16 back in 2012, other scientists disagree and use other models, but that's the number he got. And it's not like me made it up, he studied the topic, and if he used extrapolation it's because he showed some justification about why extrapolation was appropriate over that time period.
Are you claiming that climate scientists aren't backing their numbers up? I find that very doubtful, the entire basis of science is that you back up your claims with evidence. The changing cutoffs have to do with us readjusting our goals. There's a lot of scientists saying we're going to see problems at this point no matter what, both because of the current CO2 level and because of the lack of political action. They're saying it might be time to discuss climate engineering. The claims have changed from 2005 in a real way.
Those people exist, but to think they're the driving force behind the science of global warming is nonsense. The scientists' motivation is they're trying to save us and the planet, they're not involved in some bizarre plot to create a world government based on carbon credits.
As I said with shifting goalposts there's not much point in aiming for 350 ppm when we're already past 400 ppm. But that doesn't change that any cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, we have probability X of getting effect Y, if you change X or Y you get a completely different cutoff.
Assume they have a perfect model and they're all aiming for the same 450 ppm which was a hard cutoff
See, this is the sort of stuff you do. Did you pull that number out of your ass? Why do you make stuff up instead of going out and finding out what the hard cut off actually is? Your failure to do research is why you say stupid things.
For all your talk about past predictions I'm surprised you didn't recognize a proposed stabilization level from the Kyoto protocol. I can't remember if it was part of the initial treaty or a later meeting but the 450 ppm figure has been very well publicized.
Actually right in my initial response to you I did directly address the discussion about predictions and tipping points. I was incorrect in thinking you were discussing the wrong topic, but I still engaged you on the right topic.
And as I pointed out you've been oversimplifying the nature of the predictions. Assume they have a perfect model and they're all aiming for the same 450 ppm which was a hard cutoff, you'll still see predictions of the nature you posted! Why?
Because if you cut CO2 by X% annually starting in 2000 you can dodge it, but if you wait till 2005 you need to do X+Y%, and so on. At each benchmark the chance of society actually following through gets less and less, so in 2000 it was too late to act because X% wasn't politically feasible, and in 2005 it was even more too late to act.
The only scenario in which an 'act by X' date is relevant is if the act is just flipping some binary switch. The problem is you're applying a standard of prediction that even under the most favourable circumstances the scientists couldn't fulfill.
You seem to enjoy that patronizing tone. I get the feeling that your AGW denialism is based more on desire to look smarter than everyone else than it is on an impartial examination of the data.
It's mainly an awareness that we can't have an interesting conversation on the topic until you improve your knowledge. Any conversation until then will be me teaching, with you arguing all the way. That's not very fun for me, so instead I'll try to motive you to learn on your own.
When you're done, we can have an enjoyable conversation, and probably both learn.
On what basis do you think you're more knowledgeable? There were two issues, one I forget the exact issue which was just a dumb mistake on my part, but before that Amiga3D's initial statement had a flawed premise which I overlooked which led me to make an inaccurate statement (and led to my subsequent confusion).
Amiga said "I remember climate experts shouting back in the last millennium that if we didn't do radical change by 2000 it'd be too late to make a difference. Why does that target date keep moving?"
The flaw is that 2000 was probably the date to avoid significant AGW entirely, it's not too late to make a difference, it's just too late to miss it entirely. We can no longer avoid it so we have new rough deadlines we can try to hit to avoid some of the probable future consequences.
You can't give an exact date or number because both the action we take (how much we reduce CO2 and methane) and the results we get (heat, storms, droughts), even if they could be perfectly predicted are on a sliding scale. It looks like moving the goalposts because that's what we're doing, 200x is past, xxx PPM is past, we're going to get some global warming, so lets choose a new goal and try to accomplish that instead.
That's all the old 200x quotes really show.
You can use that standard it you want to but it's kinda useless in practice. Say it turns out that low levels of background radiation are good for us, does that mean radiation is no longer pollution?
Actually yes.
There are background levels of radiation. In amounts around as high as that, radiation is not really pollution.
The same goes for CO2. The amounts we are emitting are not nearly enough to be pollution, the ONLY concern was the RUNAWAY greenhouse effect, which is not happening.
So if AGW was a real threat would you consider CO2 pollution?
Forget about decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers.
You are forgetting about the same decades having many papers showing there is no runaway warming.
I don't know if you're being cute with the term 'runaway warming', referring to the short investigation into cooling, or are talking about denialist cargo-cult journals. If you're going to claim there's no scientific consensus around AGW then we're no longer discussing the same reality and I'll just claim 1998 was an outlier because of the emergence of Sauron.
There's also the worry that the changing climate will lead to larger storm surges
The "more XTREME Weather" line is the equivalent of "we took away all your privacy and freedom because of the CHILDREN".
Ahh, now I understand your model of the climate science community:
Step 1) Create a fake global warming scare
Step 2) ?
Step 3) PROFIT
Because all the science indicates that it almost certainly IS happening.
Science should look up the overall levels of Earth temperatures because there is no runaway warming, and hardly any warming of any sort at the moment.
But in reality of course, many real scientists would not agree with your statement.
Ahh yes, countless scientists studying the climate simply forgot to check the thermometers, it's a common mistake.
And I'm going to assume your 'many real scientists' doesn't include many climate scientists. I can show you a list of creationist scientists as well, I guess Kan Ham was right!
Just because CO2 does not directly cause adverse changes the way Chernobyl or Bhopal did does not mean that CO2 is not pollution.
The fact that the entire plant kingdom relies on CO2 rules it out as pollution for me. The Earth's whole ecosystem is devoted to processing CO2. It's probably the most benign thing we could possibly be emitting.
You can use that standard it you want to but it's kinda useless in practice. Say it turns out that low levels of background radiation are good for us, does that mean radiation is no longer pollution? We use sound to talk, I guess I can open a night club next to your house because there's no such thing as noise pollution.
A much better standard is pollution is anything that's harmful when emitted in excess or the wrong circumstance, CO2 emissions are harming the planet right now, thus they're pollution.
A rapid increase in temperatures basically undermine all that investment we have made.
As I said it's clear that will not happen. CO2 levels have risen heavily, temperatures is flat. It's clear that the levels of XO2 we are producing are not enough to cause a runaway effect.
Forget about decades of research and thousands of peer reviewed papers. They apparently were just doing a grade 3 science fair experiment with glass jar, you've pointed that out and now none of us have to worry and can go back to seeing what happens if we drop nails in Coke.
Many of our largest population and industrial centers are in areas directly threatened by rising sea water.
NOTHING is threatened by sea level rise of around a foot over 100 years. That is LOTS of time to adapt and shift. We also can tell now the absurd predictions of 20 feet sea level rise are not going to happen either. Even the IPCC admits that now.
There's also the worry that the changing climate will lead to larger storm surges which combined with the sea levels could cause a lot more damage. Though I'd agree that the other consequences from global warming are a lot more serious.
We should do our best to mitigate that and slow down the increase in the greenhouse effect
Why should we expend any effort to stop something that is not happening, when all that effort can go to fight real issues?
That's the thing that tans my hide. People are expending so much effort to fight CO2 that real problems are utterly ignored. The planet is being fucked for sure but it's not by CO2, and all action taken against CO2 is to me the same as action against the planet.
Because all the science indicates that it almost certainly IS happening. You are apparently not convinced, I don't know why, but the fact that you do not agree with the science does not jeopardize my belief in the science at all because nearly all the very smart and honest people who study the topic agree that it is happening and it's a serious problem.
Per capita you're mostly only beat by the middle east whom I agree is a problem but a smaller one than the US.
Emissions per GPD don't work well since I wouldn't expect them to scale linearly. Only with advanced economies with similar per capita would I even begin to bother looking at it.
The US has 4.5% of the world's population and is supplying 18% of the CO2 emissions, and way you look at it it's utterly indefensible. If there's any country who's a major part of the problem it's the US and they really need to fix it.
You seem to enjoy that patronizing tone. I get the feeling that your AGW denialism is based more on desire to look smarter than everyone else than it is on an impartial examination of the data.
Sometimes the naysayers are right, but generally the scientists who study it for a living are right, and the "research" you've been doing is nothing more than cargo cult science. You claim the scientists should be able to offer some simple test or benchmark because that's how you declare science is done, and when they can't do that because that's not how the problem works you declare that's not science!
I'm sorry for being harsh but I find the arrogance that underlies your position to be maddening. You're not some brilliant impartial arbitrator of truth, you're just some guy who read some convincing articles or blog posts, decided they were gospel, and you think you're some freethinking defending Galileo against the church of big science.
Now we just need to convince the Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, and Greenland ice sheet to stop their damn melting. Please do tell them about the fraudulent data they're using.
The further north you go the more liberal you get, the US north is more liberal than the US south, Canada is far more liberal than the US north, and Northern Europe is notoriously liberal.
The Arctic ice and Greenland ice sheet are so liberal they're gay married and are probably melting just to collect welfare and refreeze later with the free health care. The damn commies are further left than Sean Penn's dry cleaned underwear.
I think the hippie perception might be a problem since our belief systems are driven by status.
You don't see many anti-vaxxers in the tech community because we associate it with people like Jenny McCarthy and duncy models are people we generally mock rather than emulate.
AGW denialism on the other hand plays into geek status. Claiming to be a denialist signals not only that you're really curious about science, but that you have such a natural aptitude that you can step back and point out these massive errors that the whole climate science community has been making.
You can also point out all the celebrities (including duncy model types) who are concerned about AGW and imply opponents are just being memorized by the pretty celebrities and fancy degrees and not looking at the actual science. It's even better if you can point out that the records don't quite line up with the models so you can make some claims about shifting goalposts and failed hypothesis.
Ironically this tendency is why denialists piss off people (including me) so much. To go into someone else's domain of expertise, poke around a bit, then declare that person and their entire field is completely wrong and the actual truth is X, it just strikes me as extraordinary combination of ignorance and arrogance.
I think that's the way to combat AGW denialism, they're trying to associate AGW with a duncy art stereotype and incompetent groupthinking scientists. We need to fight back and point out the root of denialism is the asshole no-nothing who claims to be the smartest guy in the room. (But don't worry, they're in good company with the bible-thumping fundies as well)
The list is bogus.I would love to see what happens to a journalist that says politically incorrect stuff, like racist or anti-gay rants, in the top countries of this list. He would "only" be foired and sued if he was lucky, and arrested in the worse case scenario.
Freedom to say only what people consider nice and acceptable is no freedom at all. Any country that has "hate speech" laws has no grounds to criticize US lack of free speech.
I'm not a fan of hate speech laws (though I don't know who on that list besides Canada has them) but I think going after whistleblowers is worse. Hate speech laws target tone, silencing whistleblowers targets content.
I'm not sure what you would expect to see as evidence,
Yes, I know.
Seriously, for me the evidence would be the scientific consensus to agree we hit the tipping point. But you already disregard the scientific consensus, and if the science doesn't predict a great big sign at some point you're just giving yourself an excuse to always disagree.
As for the 90's predictions I can't remember what was in the media, much less the actual science,
Yes, I am not surprised. You like to talk more than you like to learn.
You like to insult more than you like to discuss. Here's a link about the first IPCC report from all the way back in 1990 (the 2nd report in '95 didn't change much).
Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other ... scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.
So where's this crazy prediction you're talking about?
Bah, I was thinking of another discussion and misremembered what Amiga3D was talking about..
No prob. You still should learn to read. :)
I read fine, we ended up talking about different things (I thought you meant predictions of major catastrophes now).
I'm still not sure you have a strong argument though. Think of it like we're driving a car at a brick wall, the longer we wait before hitting the brakes the harder we're going to hit. By the early 2000's we knew we'd get at least a minor collision, by now it's going to be significant, if we wait until the 2020's or longer it's just going to keep getting more severe. AGW isn't a binary thing, the more you get the worse it is, the fact we're going to deal with some unavoidable consequences doesn't mean we shouldn't stop what we can.
I mean, that's your hypothesis, right? But you haven't read to see if your hypothesis matches the data. The reality is, that there's no particular evidence that we have passed any sort of irreversible tipping point, especially not a kind of tipping point talked about by those like Hansen, where civilization itself is at risk.
I don't know if you followed AGW through the 90s, but the expectation was that the temperature would begin to rise almost exponentially, based on computer models. In 1998 it looked like it was happening, but the trend just didn't continue.
Another fun one, if you look for it, was the prediction that the north pole would be free from summer ice by 2015. Do a search, you'll find that prediction. We'll have to wait until next year to see if that prediction holds.
I'm not sure what you would expect to see as evidence, I'd fully expect us to be in store for severe unavoidable consequences well in excess of those consequences occurring. The lack of arctic sea might be one such piece of evidence as arctic ocean albedo is probably one of the feedbacks (and thawing of the permafrost a major one). The 2015-16 prediction is a valid one though I'm not sure how much it means on its own (it's really warm now, whether it remains warm enough over the next couple years to melt the summer ice doesn't say much about about the models of the future).
As for the 90's predictions I can't remember what was in the media, much less the actual science, but the 2-4 C by the end of the century figure has been around a while, that doesn't really jive with them projection a massive exponential increase starting in '98.