"In the system you've described, it's still a plurality"
"That lack of gridlock is a problem."
That's just the house of reps, there is also the senate and cerimonial head of state who's elected by parliment, like the Queen in the UK the GG's only real power is that he can sack the government if a double dissolution arises (gridlock is so bad that technically the govt can't get their shit together enough to pass budgets and pay bills). I highly recommend the Britsh sit-com "Yes (Prime)Mininster" for a demonstration of the gridlock found in the westminster system, it may not be so funny to an American but it's a classic comedy everywhere the westminster sytem is used because it contains more than a grain of truth.
The stories you see on slashdot about the Aussie net censorship is another example of westminster gridlock. The endless inquries and trials that all parties engage in is designed to keep the endless trickle of wack-job independents (that often hold the balance of power in the senate), chasing their own tails. The last govt were right wingers and ran trials to appease a pro-censorship independent, after dragging on for ages the lefties killed the mandatory black list and the law became provide money to companies to implement a voluntray to the user "clean feed" on all internet connections.
Now the lefties are in power the situations is reversed, the leties are holding a trial to appease two pro-censorship independents and the right wingers and greenies are vowing to kill the mandatory blacklist in the senate. They have the power to do so and if a bill is rejected twice the govt must withdraw or face the prospect of being sacked by the GG/Queen.
In practical terms this means that since the net became popular in the mid to late 90's we have spent millions in trials to get a law that forces ISP's to offer an optional "clean feed" the only place the filter is mandatory is on governments computers accessed by kids, such as at public schools. The rest of the world can and do ignore the filter, well all except for the ~5% of people that vote for the wackjob independents who in turn occasionaly get lucky enough to hold the balance of power.
The main difference in US vs Oz political nighmares is the US could conciveably suffer a military coup. In Oz the public service could conciveably evolve into something like the movie Brazil.
A 200MW windfarm cost $2-300 Million, just a wild guess but I think the insurance bill alone for "4-5 heavy lifts" would be comprable. Their SBP project is nothing more than a gee-wizz hook to get brand recognition.
I'm an Aussie living in Melbourne so I get the joke. Occasionaly we get a news report of a London heat wave with a few days around 30degC, old people are dropping dead and young people are splashing around half naked in city fountains. It seem bizzare since a hot day here is 10-15degC hotter and we don't have dramas with old people until it gets around 40 or above.
A few years back I went on my first trip to the UK (at the end of July) we had a 3 day stop over in Hong Kong on the way. Hong Kong was as unbearable as Darwin is in the wet season, 30-35 deg, no breeze and near 100% humidity. As we were approaching London the pilot announced the temprature in London had just broken it's record maximum temp ( 32degC IIRC ). The wife and I snickered at each other...the english have no idea what hot is... We stopped snickering as soon we walked out of the airport and hit a wall of warm humid air that was exactly like Hong Kong or Darwin, the only weather difference between the three places was the pollution levels.
Of course the reason for the discomfort is high humidity from the massive ocean currents that bring warm water from the Gulf of Mexico.
"...either the party or some other entity gets to choose how to allocate the seats it gets..."
This is not how it works in Australia or any place that implements the westminster system.
For every seat the party puts their candidate on the ballot or a candidate can put him/herself on the ballot without a party. Whoever's name wins the election wins the seat. The winner can swap parties and still hold their seat, although doing so is usually political suicide. Nobody can swap seats without an election.
The party who has more than 50% of the seats gets to form government. If no party has the required numbers of seats a coalition government must be formed or another election held. The government then gets to appoint the prime-minister who in turn appoints ministers. The government can choose any sitting member they like, needless to say they always pick someone from thier own party/coalition.
The two leaders of the two largest parties are the obvious pre-election contenders for the prime-minister's spot but to be prime-minister they must win their seat just like any other member.
Having said that, Solaren's web site is all about down to earth renewable projects. The 200MW of power the power company has pledged to buy is the equivalent of 40 commercial windmills. My guess is this is a "foot in the door" deal that cost neither party a cent but Solaren now know what the power company are willing to pay. Using this knowledge they can go back at a later date and convert the pie-in-the-sky pledge into a purchase from a normal wind/solar farm that will do the same thing for the same predetermined price.
"In any other situation, losing the freedom of action over your property is grounds for police intervention against the perpetrator. What is different here?"
The difference is the initial seller wants to keep some rights to the property AFTER they have sold it. How far do you let those rights go? If you sell something on ebay do you have to contact the manafacturer to ask what price you are allowed to sell it for? Should the manafacturer have the right to refuse to sell to a retailer who stocks a competing product? Should the manafacturer be able to fix prices below cost in one country so that the locals cannot compete and when they go under the manafacturer jacks the price back up again?
And what of the retailers rights? - Retailers are not a private franchise and no manafacturer should be allowed to treat them as such, the retailer buys the product and it's his to do with as he sees fit, no strings attached.
"I pointed out that assaults on unarmed and non-violent protesters are routine, that the media knows it and that they are only writing about it this time because someone died."
The first comment on your bbc link says...
"I have benon a few marches but am reluctant to do so any more because of intimidation by the police even when the marches are peaceful and orderly they film you and basically treat protesters as criminals. It seems to me that individually the police are OK and some are wonderful, bu when they ar in large numbers and in riot gear they seem to become gung-ho and see themselves as above the law. Some independant authority should be filming the police at these protests so they they behave"
Notice that unlike your comment the quoted comment did not accuse the bbc of being complicit in the alleged strong arm tactics of the police that they are reporting in the story.
Notice how you are able to freely use your hyperbole to whine about a bbc comment rejection on someone else's site. This is because bbc 'censorship' relates to comments on it's own site whereas China's censorship relates to eveything one reads in China.
"Thus when one of the very few things that should legitimately be kept secret appears there it is evidence that someone is incompetent; not that Wikileaks is irresponsible."
Seems to me it's stronger evidence of irresponsibility than it is of incompetence, after all the person who leaked the information need not be incompetent.
When will people stop with this stupid argument? You act as if for each arce of arable land that is lost another instantly springs up somewhere else on the planet. OTOH, voluntary and cheap birth control is effective provided they also have a viable pension scheme to support them in old age.
There are several problems with concrete compared to ashphalt, but in this context the fact that mixing concrete is a chemical reaction that releases CO2 is relevant in any cost benifit analysis. White paint OTOH often contains titanium oxide so not only do you get higher reflection, you also get a surface that "absorbs" air pollution (and a boom in the sunglasses industry).
It always amazes me that people doubt the ability of climate scientsist to monitor and explain changes on Earth where there are hundreds of lines of evidence with literally millions of data sets. What's even more amazing is they base these doubts on evidence from the same climate scientists monitoring and explaining changes in other planets, planets where we have far fewer and much shorter lines of evidence.
Do you really think that many scientists have somehow failed to notice the firey ball in the sky? Besides the output of the sun has gone down over the last decade and the RATE of temprature INCREASED has somewhat flattened over the last few. With a bit of luck it will go into a long quiet period and give us a bit more time to do something "down to earth" about our emmissions.
"Wouldn't [Venus] provide a stable base line to compare our own planet's temperature against?"
No, Earth's climate is unique due to the influence of life apon it for the last ~4 billion years. But even ignoring the fact life is largely responsible for the composition of Earth's atmosphere, Venus has a day longer than it's year, has a more circular orbit than Earth, does not posses an ocean, has an atmosphere 100X more dense,... Possibly it serves as a nearby example of the runaway greenhouse effect, but that's about it.
"Venus seems like it would be a great indicator of planetary warming due to solar variance."
Even if it was, why use indirect techniques that will take years of observation to give an outdated result when we already have direct monitoring of the sun's output?
Dude, test your own information, here is how others here have done it.
1. Pick someone who sounds qualified from your list.
2. Look them up on google scholar.
3. Compare what they say in their own words to the out of context quotes in the propoganda piece.
4. If not convinced article and list are a crock of shit, goto 1.
"Also Mann's hockey stick (which was popularized by Gore) has been discredited. It's been shown that the algorithm he used will produce a hockey stick from almost any data because it preferentially selects/emphasizes the data that will create a hockey stick."
Again read the fucking testimony, it is the primary source of your disinformation and it directly contradicts your claims.
Yep, sample size matters. I agree we needed the sattelite that's now at the bottom of the southern ocean. However we don't need it to be sure our CO2 is a problem, we already have satellites such as MOPITT, GOME, OMI, TES to measure atmospheric gasses/areosols and their distributions, there are at least two gravity probes that yeild data on ice loss plus information that is vital for modeling ocean currents. Add to that highly sensitive altimiters for, snow depth, sea level, etc plus all the run of the mill weather satellites and we have a sizeable armarda of sattelites collecting evidence from space.
There are also litterally millions of sensors spread across the globe in various networks bobbing about in and under the sea, on land, on glaciers, in rivers, in aircraft, weather ballons, rooftops, submarines, ocean liners, etc, we started building and maintaining this massive data set in earnest about 150yrs ago when physicists argued over wether the sun was made of coal or not. Then you have paleotologists who look at dust and gas trapped in ice cores, tree rings, the tickness of sea shells, isotopes in microsopic samples, pollen distribution, the independent lines of evidence are vast and go all the way back to Fourier in the 1820's. To seriously debunk the claim that AGW is the major factor in the observed warming requires extrodinary evidence that is currently only noticable by it's absence.
What we needed the OCO satellite for was to more acurately pinpoint the major changes in emmision sites (NO2 is also a GHG as is Methane). If an international treaty is to be effective this type of data is essential and the more acurate the more certainty there is for business in a future carbon market. If the treaty includes land use issues such as tree planting, highly accurate data will be needed to audit those claims and monitor this experiment we call the industrial revolution.
Personally without such data I think the planting of trees for carbon credits is of dubious value to fixing AGW and ripe for corruption. Trees are valuable in their own right, far better if a farmer got a credit when he plows biochar into the ground. Making and burrying biochar is an efficient carbon negative process that can run on raw sewarge and other waste organic matter, not only does it's sequester the carbon for 1000yrs but will also fertilize the soil and reduce the need for oil based fertilizers. However, even on a massive scale, biochar alone is not enough to counter our current emmissions.
If you haven't read the IPCC reports the best place to start skimming is here, the reports go back nearly two decades and it's interesting to read some of the older ones and compare their warnings to recent events. These people are certainly not infallible but nothing is, they represent the world's scientific institutions and IMHO getting that many experts to agree virtually gaurentees their statements will be qualified, conservative, and backed by a mountain of evidence.
"You've got to be kidding me....[the hockey stick]...has also been discredited"
He isn't kidding you but someone obviously is. Can you name an institution with more credible statistical expertise than the national academies? Again, here is the link to their testiomony in the Mann/McIntyre beat up that supposedly discredited Mann.
And very profitable it can be too.
This is the best joke of all, the scientists who write the IPCC reports do not get paid. Even if they did the IPCC has a budget of a measly $5-6 million a year despite being sourced from the governments of 300+ politically diverse nations. I've worked in busnisses with twice that budget for 25 people, the IPCC reports have a tad more than 25 people behind them, people who collectively REPRESENT every major science body on the planet. Personally I think the IPCC ranks as one of the most robust peer-reveiw process ever undertaken and it has been acomplished for less than what it costs to make a hollywood block-buster.
Of course they could be wrong and any scientist worth their salt will demonstrate that with error bars, that's how science progresses, but given the track record of science do you know of a better philosophy for understanding the natural world?
Do not take the following rant as pertaining to you personally, for all I know you could be a teenager who hates his science teacher.
Creationists are a rare sight on slashdot but moderate belivers who are conflated with creationists are not so rare. I am not relious in the slightest but I have been accused of subscribing to "AGW religion", "worshiping Al Gore", etc. In fact similar comments when not aimed at a particular person but at some general group (such as greenies, IPCC, Al Gore and his mates), will regularly be modded +5 insightfull.
Perhaps the most despised religion on slashdot however are the scientologists, their method of shouting lies untill you belive them is bizzare but for some reason it does work on a suprising number of people. There are genuine disagreements in climate science and there is are general consensus represented by the IPCC reports yet a good number of slashdotters attack these claims with the same methods the shop keeper uses in monty python's dead parrot sketch, and in some cases the same methods as scientologists.
To be fair to all slashdotters these posts only stay positive until the cult mebers blow all their mod points, by the time it's at the bottom of the page the moderation is more...well...moderate. This must be a dilema for them wrt do they blow all the points early, wait until near archiving, or just concentrate on keeping the best machevellian posts up at +5?
I'm 50yrs old and remember the "tabacco scientists" with great clarity, when that enevitably collapsed in total ridicule many of the same "tabacco scientists" became "climate skeptics". They go by names such as the Heartland institute, Marshall institute, Frontiers of Freedom, etc, and are backed by people such as ex-senator Malcolm Wallop, senator Inhofe, and a sizable number of politicians around the planet that have a coal mine on their turf. ExonMobile also fund this anti-science campaing, not because they are an oil company but because they have large investments in coal. The same machevelian bullshit goes on here in Oz but ranting about that on a US centric site would require a shitload of links to people most slashdotters have never heard of.
As I said above, I'm not from the US, I couldn't care less about the 2000 election but I can smell the anti-science lobbyists in those organisations from half a world away. Thing is I don't know if slashdotters who drink their kool aid are simply ignorant, misinformed, practicing luddities
The NW passage was not suitable for cruise ships in 1906. Besides none of the crossings via a temporary route say anything much about climate.
"Al's famous hockey stick is dirty data taken from weather stations that have experienced heat islands being installed in the form of pavement. Go check out surface data.org. Sometimes one needs to "scrub" the data, and throw out obviously tainted data from a compromised station."
First of all it's Mann et al's hockey stick not Al Gore's, second there is no such "surface data.org" web site, third the source of your half truth is the national academies testimony to the senate which states...
"The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years....[snip]...
We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities."/end_quote
"Remember all the data pointed to a new ice age in 1970, now the same data points to warming..."
No, but I am old enough to remember reading a whole lot of newspaper articles based on one national geographic article that by chance I also read when in HS. I do remember when the negative forcing of soot was offsetting the positive forcing of CO2 more than in is now. Again looking at the national academies, they first warned of global warming in the 50's, nothing has changed in those warnings except the credibility and urgency have increased by orders of magnitute.
"Turns out that just about all dust in antarctic PENINSULA ice record comes from Patagonia."/fixed
Not sure what your point is here because more dust/soot sitting on the ice speeds up the rate of melting, your link correctly states that the dust levels are low right now because the glaciers are MELTING in patagonia?
I'm not sure where you get your information but if I were you I would start to question them since the sources you do give, are now publishing papers that make Al Gore's movie look optimistic.
I agree. A cap and trade scheme needs to be transparent and auditable for it to become a viable market, trees and many other land use credit schemes do not currently fall into that category. There is substantial evidence that fast rotation plantations may actully output more CO2 from the soil than they absorb from the atmosphere.
As with any complex problem we should start with the things we can measure and control in a large scale and meaningfull way, ie: coal, oil, gas, concrete, sustainable bio-fuel, sustainable bio-char.
"Those are the folks who worry most about the environment."
Sorry to burst your political bubble but this environmentalist grew up in the Aussie bush where lawyers are non-existant and most of the critters are anything but cute and furry.
Slashdot Mirror
"In the system you've described, it's still a plurality"
"That lack of gridlock is a problem."
That's just the house of reps, there is also the senate and cerimonial head of state who's elected by parliment, like the Queen in the UK the GG's only real power is that he can sack the government if a double dissolution arises (gridlock is so bad that technically the govt can't get their shit together enough to pass budgets and pay bills). I highly recommend the Britsh sit-com "Yes (Prime)Mininster" for a demonstration of the gridlock found in the westminster system, it may not be so funny to an American but it's a classic comedy everywhere the westminster sytem is used because it contains more than a grain of truth.
The stories you see on slashdot about the Aussie net censorship is another example of westminster gridlock. The endless inquries and trials that all parties engage in is designed to keep the endless trickle of wack-job independents (that often hold the balance of power in the senate), chasing their own tails. The last govt were right wingers and ran trials to appease a pro-censorship independent, after dragging on for ages the lefties killed the mandatory black list and the law became provide money to companies to implement a voluntray to the user "clean feed" on all internet connections.
Now the lefties are in power the situations is reversed, the leties are holding a trial to appease two pro-censorship independents and the right wingers and greenies are vowing to kill the mandatory blacklist in the senate. They have the power to do so and if a bill is rejected twice the govt must withdraw or face the prospect of being sacked by the GG/Queen.
In practical terms this means that since the net became popular in the mid to late 90's we have spent millions in trials to get a law that forces ISP's to offer an optional "clean feed" the only place the filter is mandatory is on governments computers accessed by kids, such as at public schools. The rest of the world can and do ignore the filter, well all except for the ~5% of people that vote for the wackjob independents who in turn occasionaly get lucky enough to hold the balance of power.
The main difference in US vs Oz political nighmares is the US could conciveably suffer a military coup. In Oz the public service could conciveably evolve into something like the movie Brazil.
A 200MW windfarm cost $2-300 Million, just a wild guess but I think the insurance bill alone for "4-5 heavy lifts" would be comprable. Their SBP project is nothing more than a gee-wizz hook to get brand recognition.
5MW mills are common, 2MW are old hat. Capacity depends on location.
I'm an Aussie living in Melbourne so I get the joke. Occasionaly we get a news report of a London heat wave with a few days around 30degC, old people are dropping dead and young people are splashing around half naked in city fountains. It seem bizzare since a hot day here is 10-15degC hotter and we don't have dramas with old people until it gets around 40 or above.
A few years back I went on my first trip to the UK (at the end of July) we had a 3 day stop over in Hong Kong on the way. Hong Kong was as unbearable as Darwin is in the wet season, 30-35 deg, no breeze and near 100% humidity. As we were approaching London the pilot announced the temprature in London had just broken it's record maximum temp ( 32degC IIRC ). The wife and I snickered at each other...the english have no idea what hot is... We stopped snickering as soon we walked out of the airport and hit a wall of warm humid air that was exactly like Hong Kong or Darwin, the only weather difference between the three places was the pollution levels.
Of course the reason for the discomfort is high humidity from the massive ocean currents that bring warm water from the Gulf of Mexico.
"...either the party or some other entity gets to choose how to allocate the seats it gets..."
This is not how it works in Australia or any place that implements the westminster system.
For every seat the party puts their candidate on the ballot or a candidate can put him/herself on the ballot without a party. Whoever's name wins the election wins the seat. The winner can swap parties and still hold their seat, although doing so is usually political suicide. Nobody can swap seats without an election.
The party who has more than 50% of the seats gets to form government. If no party has the required numbers of seats a coalition government must be formed or another election held. The government then gets to appoint the prime-minister who in turn appoints ministers. The government can choose any sitting member they like, needless to say they always pick someone from thier own party/coalition.
The two leaders of the two largest parties are the obvious pre-election contenders for the prime-minister's spot but to be prime-minister they must win their seat just like any other member.
1) Crime, wealth, intelligence, are independent variables.
2) Only small fry with zero political influence will be caught.
3) See #2
4) See #2
Remove prohibition and even the most powerfull and influential drug lords will disappear into the dustbin of history.
"couldn't this also be used as a weapon?"
No, it will never get off the ground.
Having said that, Solaren's web site is all about down to earth renewable projects. The 200MW of power the power company has pledged to buy is the equivalent of 40 commercial windmills. My guess is this is a "foot in the door" deal that cost neither party a cent but Solaren now know what the power company are willing to pay. Using this knowledge they can go back at a later date and convert the pie-in-the-sky pledge into a purchase from a normal wind/solar farm that will do the same thing for the same predetermined price.
"In any other situation, losing the freedom of action over your property is grounds for police intervention against the perpetrator. What is different here?"
The difference is the initial seller wants to keep some rights to the property AFTER they have sold it. How far do you let those rights go? If you sell something on ebay do you have to contact the manafacturer to ask what price you are allowed to sell it for? Should the manafacturer have the right to refuse to sell to a retailer who stocks a competing product? Should the manafacturer be able to fix prices below cost in one country so that the locals cannot compete and when they go under the manafacturer jacks the price back up again?
And what of the retailers rights? - Retailers are not a private franchise and no manafacturer should be allowed to treat them as such, the retailer buys the product and it's his to do with as he sees fit, no strings attached.
"I pointed out that assaults on unarmed and non-violent protesters are routine, that the media knows it and that they are only writing about it this time because someone died."
The first comment on your bbc link says...
"I have benon a few marches but am reluctant to do so any more because of intimidation by the police even when the marches are peaceful and orderly they film you and basically treat protesters as criminals. It seems to me that individually the police are OK and some are wonderful, bu when they ar in large numbers and in riot gear they seem to become gung-ho and see themselves as above the law. Some independant authority should be filming the police at these protests so they they behave"
Notice that unlike your comment the quoted comment did not accuse the bbc of being complicit in the alleged strong arm tactics of the police that they are reporting in the story.
Notice how you are able to freely use your hyperbole to whine about a bbc comment rejection on someone else's site. This is because bbc 'censorship' relates to comments on it's own site whereas China's censorship relates to eveything one reads in China.
Or, for an even more reliable solution; The pencil.
WL idea of transparency is peeking through OTHER PEOPLES curtains, they are no so quick to throw their own curtains open.
"Thus when one of the very few things that should legitimately be kept secret appears there it is evidence that someone is incompetent; not that Wikileaks is irresponsible."
Seems to me it's stronger evidence of irresponsibility than it is of incompetence, after all the person who leaked the information need not be incompetent.
When will people stop with this stupid argument? You act as if for each arce of arable land that is lost another instantly springs up somewhere else on the planet. OTOH, voluntary and cheap birth control is effective provided they also have a viable pension scheme to support them in old age.
There are several problems with concrete compared to ashphalt, but in this context the fact that mixing concrete is a chemical reaction that releases CO2 is relevant in any cost benifit analysis. White paint OTOH often contains titanium oxide so not only do you get higher reflection, you also get a surface that "absorbs" air pollution (and a boom in the sunglasses industry).
"Good enough for you?"
No, but the question in step #4 is; is it good enough for you? If it is then there is no point continuing the discussion.
It snowed again yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Consensus in these parts is "Global warming: Bring it on!"
I'm assuming your house is not built on permafrost?
It always amazes me that people doubt the ability of climate scientsist to monitor and explain changes on Earth where there are hundreds of lines of evidence with literally millions of data sets. What's even more amazing is they base these doubts on evidence from the same climate scientists monitoring and explaining changes in other planets, planets where we have far fewer and much shorter lines of evidence.
Do you really think that many scientists have somehow failed to notice the firey ball in the sky? Besides the output of the sun has gone down over the last decade and the RATE of temprature INCREASED has somewhat flattened over the last few. With a bit of luck it will go into a long quiet period and give us a bit more time to do something "down to earth" about our emmissions.
"Wouldn't [Venus] provide a stable base line to compare our own planet's temperature against?"
No, Earth's climate is unique due to the influence of life apon it for the last ~4 billion years. But even ignoring the fact life is largely responsible for the composition of Earth's atmosphere, Venus has a day longer than it's year, has a more circular orbit than Earth, does not posses an ocean, has an atmosphere 100X more dense,... Possibly it serves as a nearby example of the runaway greenhouse effect, but that's about it.
"Venus seems like it would be a great indicator of planetary warming due to solar variance."
Even if it was, why use indirect techniques that will take years of observation to give an outdated result when we already have direct monitoring of the sun's output?
Dude, test your own information, here is how others here have done it.
1. Pick someone who sounds qualified from your list.
2. Look them up on google scholar.
3. Compare what they say in their own words to the out of context quotes in the propoganda piece.
4. If not convinced article and list are a crock of shit, goto 1.
"Also Mann's hockey stick (which was popularized by Gore) has been discredited. It's been shown that the algorithm he used will produce a hockey stick from almost any data because it preferentially selects/emphasizes the data that will create a hockey stick."
Again read the fucking testimony, it is the primary source of your disinformation and it directly contradicts your claims.
Surfacestations.org is 404.
Yep, sample size matters. I agree we needed the sattelite that's now at the bottom of the southern ocean. However we don't need it to be sure our CO2 is a problem, we already have satellites such as MOPITT, GOME, OMI, TES to measure atmospheric gasses/areosols and their distributions, there are at least two gravity probes that yeild data on ice loss plus information that is vital for modeling ocean currents. Add to that highly sensitive altimiters for, snow depth, sea level, etc plus all the run of the mill weather satellites and we have a sizeable armarda of sattelites collecting evidence from space.
There are also litterally millions of sensors spread across the globe in various networks bobbing about in and under the sea, on land, on glaciers, in rivers, in aircraft, weather ballons, rooftops, submarines, ocean liners, etc, we started building and maintaining this massive data set in earnest about 150yrs ago when physicists argued over wether the sun was made of coal or not. Then you have paleotologists who look at dust and gas trapped in ice cores, tree rings, the tickness of sea shells, isotopes in microsopic samples, pollen distribution, the independent lines of evidence are vast and go all the way back to Fourier in the 1820's. To seriously debunk the claim that AGW is the major factor in the observed warming requires extrodinary evidence that is currently only noticable by it's absence.
What we needed the OCO satellite for was to more acurately pinpoint the major changes in emmision sites (NO2 is also a GHG as is Methane). If an international treaty is to be effective this type of data is essential and the more acurate the more certainty there is for business in a future carbon market. If the treaty includes land use issues such as tree planting, highly accurate data will be needed to audit those claims and monitor this experiment we call the industrial revolution.
Personally without such data I think the planting of trees for carbon credits is of dubious value to fixing AGW and ripe for corruption. Trees are valuable in their own right, far better if a farmer got a credit when he plows biochar into the ground. Making and burrying biochar is an efficient carbon negative process that can run on raw sewarge and other waste organic matter, not only does it's sequester the carbon for 1000yrs but will also fertilize the soil and reduce the need for oil based fertilizers. However, even on a massive scale, biochar alone is not enough to counter our current emmissions.
If you haven't read the IPCC reports the best place to start skimming is here, the reports go back nearly two decades and it's interesting to read some of the older ones and compare their warnings to recent events. These people are certainly not infallible but nothing is, they represent the world's scientific institutions and IMHO getting that many experts to agree virtually gaurentees their statements will be qualified, conservative, and backed by a mountain of evidence.
"You've got to be kidding me....[the hockey stick]...has also been discredited"
He isn't kidding you but someone obviously is. Can you name an institution with more credible statistical expertise than the national academies? Again, here is the link to their testiomony in the Mann/McIntyre beat up that supposedly discredited Mann.
And very profitable it can be too.
This is the best joke of all, the scientists who write the IPCC reports do not get paid. Even if they did the IPCC has a budget of a measly $5-6 million a year despite being sourced from the governments of 300+ politically diverse nations. I've worked in busnisses with twice that budget for 25 people, the IPCC reports have a tad more than 25 people behind them, people who collectively REPRESENT every major science body on the planet. Personally I think the IPCC ranks as one of the most robust peer-reveiw process ever undertaken and it has been acomplished for less than what it costs to make a hollywood block-buster.
Of course they could be wrong and any scientist worth their salt will demonstrate that with error bars, that's how science progresses, but given the track record of science do you know of a better philosophy for understanding the natural world?
Do not take the following rant as pertaining to you personally, for all I know you could be a teenager who hates his science teacher.
Creationists are a rare sight on slashdot but moderate belivers who are conflated with creationists are not so rare. I am not relious in the slightest but I have been accused of subscribing to "AGW religion", "worshiping Al Gore", etc. In fact similar comments when not aimed at a particular person but at some general group (such as greenies, IPCC, Al Gore and his mates), will regularly be modded +5 insightfull.
Perhaps the most despised religion on slashdot however are the scientologists, their method of shouting lies untill you belive them is bizzare but for some reason it does work on a suprising number of people. There are genuine disagreements in climate science and there is are general consensus represented by the IPCC reports yet a good number of slashdotters attack these claims with the same methods the shop keeper uses in monty python's dead parrot sketch, and in some cases the same methods as scientologists.
To be fair to all slashdotters these posts only stay positive until the cult mebers blow all their mod points, by the time it's at the bottom of the page the moderation is more...well...moderate. This must be a dilema for them wrt do they blow all the points early, wait until near archiving, or just concentrate on keeping the best machevellian posts up at +5?
I'm 50yrs old and remember the "tabacco scientists" with great clarity, when that enevitably collapsed in total ridicule many of the same "tabacco scientists" became "climate skeptics". They go by names such as the Heartland institute, Marshall institute, Frontiers of Freedom, etc, and are backed by people such as ex-senator Malcolm Wallop, senator Inhofe, and a sizable number of politicians around the planet that have a coal mine on their turf. ExonMobile also fund this anti-science campaing, not because they are an oil company but because they have large investments in coal. The same machevelian bullshit goes on here in Oz but ranting about that on a US centric site would require a shitload of links to people most slashdotters have never heard of.
As I said above, I'm not from the US, I couldn't care less about the 2000 election but I can smell the anti-science lobbyists in those organisations from half a world away. Thing is I don't know if slashdotters who drink their kool aid are simply ignorant, misinformed, practicing luddities
You have have been misinformed.
....[snip]...
We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues. However, our reservations with some aspects of the original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming, and will continue to warm, as a result of human activities." /end_quote
/fixed
The NW passage was not suitable for cruise ships in 1906. Besides none of the crossings via a temporary route say anything much about climate.
"Al's famous hockey stick is dirty data taken from weather stations that have experienced heat islands being installed in the form of pavement. Go check out surface data.org. Sometimes one needs to "scrub" the data, and throw out obviously tainted data from a compromised station."
First of all it's Mann et al's hockey stick not Al Gore's, second there is no such "surface data.org" web site, third the source of your half truth is the national academies testimony to the senate which states...
"The basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Dr. Mann and his colleagues was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years
"Remember all the data pointed to a new ice age in 1970, now the same data points to warming..."
No, but I am old enough to remember reading a whole lot of newspaper articles based on one national geographic article that by chance I also read when in HS. I do remember when the negative forcing of soot was offsetting the positive forcing of CO2 more than in is now. Again looking at the national academies, they first warned of global warming in the 50's, nothing has changed in those warnings except the credibility and urgency have increased by orders of magnitute.
"Turns out that just about all dust in antarctic PENINSULA ice record comes from Patagonia."
Not sure what your point is here because more dust/soot sitting on the ice speeds up the rate of melting, your link correctly states that the dust levels are low right now because the glaciers are MELTING in patagonia?
I'm not sure where you get your information but if I were you I would start to question them since the sources you do give, are now publishing papers that make Al Gore's movie look optimistic.
I agree. A cap and trade scheme needs to be transparent and auditable for it to become a viable market, trees and many other land use credit schemes do not currently fall into that category. There is substantial evidence that fast rotation plantations may actully output more CO2 from the soil than they absorb from the atmosphere.
As with any complex problem we should start with the things we can measure and control in a large scale and meaningfull way, ie: coal, oil, gas, concrete, sustainable bio-fuel, sustainable bio-char.
"Those are the folks who worry most about the environment."
Sorry to burst your political bubble but this environmentalist grew up in the Aussie bush where lawyers are non-existant and most of the critters are anything but cute and furry.