"Brazilian cities were able to know the election results in the same day of voting, before midnight. That's pretty damn efficient."
That's not particularly unusual with paper, eg: it frequently occurs here in Australia where voting is also compulsory. Should the race be very close I prefer to wait for them to recount by hand any number of times rather than be confronted with an unauditable number in a database. In a case such as the 2000 US election I would prefer to see the highest court in the land order a "do-over" in the disputed electorate(s) rather than watch them pick a winner.
"Furthermore, as fas as trusting or not trusting goes, voting with pen and paper is not as perfect as one might think."
I don't think anyone is claiming paper is perfect. Paper has well known problems, taking advantage of those problems requires large numbers of people and the methods they use are detectable at a relatively small scale. OTOH a computer without a paper audit trail also has well known problems but these can be taken advantage of by a small number of people using methods that are undetectable even at a large scale (discounting exit polls).
In other words, some level of fraud is enevitable, paper makes retail fraud possible, no paper makes wholesale fraud possible.
"They both just repeatedly misstated the other campaign's position while only extolling the virtues of their own."
That's their job but I think there was much more to it than that. I'm a 50-ish Aussie who knows virtually nothing about Biden or Palin, I watched the debate on youtube expecting to see a loudmouth yanky politician argue with a rabid "soccer mom". What I saw was a polished statesman forced into debating a not so rabid "soccer mom", eg: in his conclusion he pratically begged the American people to choose reason and science over fear and faith.
That he had to have the debate with such an ordinary crackpot speaks volumes for American democracy, choosing Biden would speak equally well of Joe Sixpack.
"Guess what, hire 10 really good developers and they will do a much nicer job."
Clearly you don't have any experience "hearding cats" or implementing large systems. If I followed you're advice I would get 10 'nice' applications, none of which address the problem at hand.
I understand that's the case from an academic viewpoint, but who researches everything to the Nth degree? WP gives a good rundown on a wide variety of subjects and links the subjects together, statements of fact are backed by citations. The contraversial will attract vandals and astroturf but I can live with that since it's free and the vast majority of it's content is not contraversial.
"Basically because there's two extreme conditions. Out here and in there. One can't help but have a boundary."
And if two boundrys come in contact then they can't seperate without some part of the boundary exceeding the speed of light relative to another part of the boundry, smashing them together at LHC speeds won't make that happen.
"That's crap. The price of the shares has no bearing on the ability of the companies to generate profit."
It should however reflect that ability but that is beside the point. What we are talking about in this crisis is the ability of companies to obtain credit and that definitely does have something to do with the stock price, even if you are a bank.
If a bank has trouble raising credit then it's stock price plummets, if a bank's stock price plummets then they will have trouble raising credit. If someone has the financial muscle to short a few big bank to the point where their stocks drop rapidly then credit will freeze because banks will not trust each other. When banks don't trust each other we get a credit crunch, exactly the situation we find ourselves in now.
This is not to say that shorting caused the mess but in these circumstances it's certainly not going to help clean it up.
I can't see what all the WP fuss is about, I find WP quick and informative. It has NEVER been ok to cite encyclopedia's in academic papers and there is no such thing as perfect information.
IIRC, well before C-sharp there was some sort of scripting language that was developed over a series of articles in Dr. Dobbs (~15-20yrs ago), it was called D-flat.
"It's not clear from the wording whether that includes the output of North American industry, or just the habits of individuals."
Joe sixpack (the US variety) releases ~4t/yr and IIRC we need to cut our global emmissions from ~10Gt to 3-5Gt and keep it there, assuming all else remains the same that's "only" ~3 sq kilometers annually, but you also need an extra 300 gigawatts to run the machines, after you build 300 million of them... Which leads me to think if it's not economical to do CC at the source then it's very unlikely to be economical elsewhere.
"Bad decisions and investments should end up this way. Poof. Now we go after the fools who made it happen, and toss 'em in jail."
Precisely, except the "poof" you mention is not their money dissapearing it's ours, and since I am not an American I cannot vote to punish them. Doing nothing and hoping the ideology in your link can clean up the mess it created is akin to having a blow tourch held against your face and refusing to move because it "sucks to be them".
"The alternative is mortgaging your children's future. They'll be the ones paying the bill if the bailout happens."
The history of reserve bank interventions around the world over the last 3-4 decades shows that assumption to be incorrect. Your nation has borrowed too much, the rest of the world want their money back, they have no interest in seeing the US economy resemble the disaster that occured in Argentina, (for now) your nations creditors are the only ones keeping you from another great depression.
"Please explain how global temperatures can be increasing if the warmest year on record is either ten or eighty years ago, depending on how you look at the data?"
I'm assuming you are asking that question in good faith so a good faith answer is to say "statistical inference". But the mathematical naiveity that your question displays means that the "statistical inference" answer will be useless to you since the myriad of "ways of looking" at the data will all seem equally valid. Suffice to say that if you throw away ALL the temprature stats and just look at the physics/chemistry, you can still make a strong case for AGW.
This is not a criticisim of your intelligence but rather an observation of your lack of knowledge about statistical techniques. Eienstien once replied to a similarly naive question from a reporter - "I cannot tell you how to bake a cake when you have no concept of flour, milk and eggs."
First you said to the GP "point to credible data" and when he does you simply state "No". It may also have escaped your notice but you are the one making extrodinary claims yet you have given nothing to support them.
It may not come as a surprise to you but I think you have a mental problem that forces you to project your intellectual failings onto others. OTOH perhaps you know what you are doing and enjoy being a fool/troll. Either way you need phycological help.
"Science before alarmism please...[snip]...spending it on useless CO2-reducing economic disaster-schemes"
Me thinks you are projecting your own (economic) alarmisim onto others. Also how is it that renewables are never counted as a adaption by Lomborg? Some of Loborg's adaption strategy is common sense but combined with his bad math and demands for inaction on the root cause his view is quite rightly considered as nonsense by most.
Simarly his "cost of CO2 reduction" estimates count the entire cost of replacing all existing power plants. It seems to have escaped Lomborg's attention but "replacing all existing power plants" has to be done anyway over the next 40yrs, or are you and Lomborg now suggesting that coal fired plants are somehow free of any costs and will last forever?
Something no economic alarmists seems capable of grasping is that the biggest potential loser in CO2 reduction is not the economy it's the coal industry, I'm sure Lomborg knows their lobbyists much more intimately than I do and they have made him fully aware of these economic "facts".
Excellent post, just one nit-pick in that I think the sensitivity comment is not very clear. Climate sensitivity is an output of the models (ie: a result). Basically it tells you how much the planet will warm due to a given increase in CO2.
Most studies are interested in the climate's sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 over the pre-industrial level. The uncertainties in the inputs come from the accuracy of the observations, most studies use the IPCC's estimates and uncertainties for known forcings as input.
"...or would it be better to go ahead and destroy (or at least tax to ruin) western civilization as a precautionary measure?"
There are GW alarmists and economic alarmists, you seem to be in the later category.
"I find it odd that the IPCC fails to mention that increased underwater volcanic activity under the arctic has been occurring since at least 1999"
I don't find it odd that you would bring up the volcano myth to support your alarmist stance. The IPCC correctly ignored increased volcanic activity because: A) It's not occuring, and B) Even if it was occuring as claimed then the heat created is not enough to be relevant.
What bothers me about Prometheus is that they were told by NOAA to stop pretending NOAA supports their view, thus the NOAA disclaimer plastered all over the site. Try realclimate.org, at least they have the guts to link to the people who disagree with them (such as prometheus).
Yes the IPCC were wrong about methane as I said in my earlier post, however 'historically' they have underestimated future trends. Not surprising because conservative statements are to be expected when you stop and think how hard it is to get 2500 experts to agree on anything.
A couple of examples... The IPCC (and even the most alarmed of alarmists) were conservative in their estimations of Artic breakup (an 80-100yr underestimate in 1997 down to a 40-50yr underestimate in 2007). The IPCC were also conservative in their estimation of the rise in emmissions over the last decade, the recent observations comes in just below the IPCC's 1997 "worst case" senario, but since it was still within their range then they "got it right".
The first part of your post seems to be talking about something I never said, perhaps there is another raving loony in this thread.
I think it's great the CERN are taking the idea seriously enough to test it, lets hope Svenmark is brave enough to face up to the results should they turn out to be different to what he expects.
Having said that (and assuming cosmic rays do influence clouds), the effect of GH gasses doesn't go away just because somebody found out more about clouds. This is like saying gravity is wrong because the Wright brothers discovered flight. What would happen is that the error bars of the estimated forcing effect of clouds will narrow and that would be a GoodThing(TM) for climate modeling.
"Myself I like facts to support my arguments, and I'm also a strong believer in falsifiability in science."
Strange then that we haven't seen any from you in this thread, but since you have now named a source I will happily be moded flaimbait again by repating my original call of bullshit to your "facts". I like this random site by an amature astronomer, it mentions Svensmark, but I encourage readers to do their own debunking like that scientific amature has done, what follows is my own summary...
Svensmark for those who don't know him belives cosmic rays influence cloud cover, and this explains...well, everything! The glaring problem with this idea, (that incidently demands a "do nothing because nothing can be done" response), is that the 3-4 decade long data set that measures cosmic rays shows no statisticaly significant trend whatsoever. Extra points for those who can find the raw cosmic data sets, AFAIK they are available 'somewhere' on the net. Svensmark now claims that the current cooling is because of a change in cosmic rays, problem is we are not currently cooling and no change in cosmic rays has been detected. Now some people will confuse cosmic rays with sunspots and this is encouraged by Svensmark, problem is that if it's "sunspots" then why doesn't the climate have an 11yr cycle like sunspot activity does? - IMHO and as a holder of a science degree Svensmark's "theory's" are like swiss cheese and his motivations for demanding inactivity are embarrasingly obvious.
For those who like Occam's razor here's how to shave Svensmark: Clouds are the most uncertain part of climate models, the effect of cosmic rays on clouds is even less certain and produces no detectable forcing outside the current margin of error for clouds.
Here is a similarly terse application of Occam by the UK's Met office. It's the only myth they can be bothered debunking in their "toolkit", the rest of their toolkit panel contains "facts" that you might want to look at, you know - to support your future arguments.
BTW: A genuine attempt on your behalf to debunk those "facts" will also inform your "strong beliefs" as only genuine skepticisim can.
"we aren't currently getting the warmest temperatures of this century, so why has it just started now??"
It's called thermal inertia, however your question is still interesting.
I have followed the IPCC for many years and one of their biggest failures in accuracy has been what is sometimes called the "missing methane" problem. The 1997 IPPC report (and those that followed) predicted methane would keep rising but the follow up observations have (until now) shown the trend to be flat for the last 10yrs or so.
In otherwords the question is not why has it started rising again but rather why did it take an unexpected break for a decade?
BTW: I find it odd that the psuedo-skeptics have not lept on the missing methane issue as a way to discredit the IPCC, surely that would be more plausable than denying the North Pole is disintergrating, but that's politics for ya!
Slashdot Mirror
If the economy gets worse then having a lot of kids might not seem so silly when you reach old age.
"Brazilian cities were able to know the election results in the same day of voting, before midnight. That's pretty damn efficient."
That's not particularly unusual with paper, eg: it frequently occurs here in Australia where voting is also compulsory. Should the race be very close I prefer to wait for them to recount by hand any number of times rather than be confronted with an unauditable number in a database. In a case such as the 2000 US election I would prefer to see the highest court in the land order a "do-over" in the disputed electorate(s) rather than watch them pick a winner.
"Furthermore, as fas as trusting or not trusting goes, voting with pen and paper is not as perfect as one might think."
I don't think anyone is claiming paper is perfect. Paper has well known problems, taking advantage of those problems requires large numbers of people and the methods they use are detectable at a relatively small scale. OTOH a computer without a paper audit trail also has well known problems but these can be taken advantage of by a small number of people using methods that are undetectable even at a large scale (discounting exit polls).
In other words, some level of fraud is enevitable, paper makes retail fraud possible, no paper makes wholesale fraud possible.
"They both just repeatedly misstated the other campaign's position while only extolling the virtues of their own."
That's their job but I think there was much more to it than that. I'm a 50-ish Aussie who knows virtually nothing about Biden or Palin, I watched the debate on youtube expecting to see a loudmouth yanky politician argue with a rabid "soccer mom". What I saw was a polished statesman forced into debating a not so rabid "soccer mom", eg: in his conclusion he pratically begged the American people to choose reason and science over fear and faith.
That he had to have the debate with such an ordinary crackpot speaks volumes for American democracy, choosing Biden would speak equally well of Joe Sixpack.
"Guess what, hire 10 really good developers and they will do a much nicer job."
Clearly you don't have any experience "hearding cats" or implementing large systems. If I followed you're advice I would get 10 'nice' applications, none of which address the problem at hand.
"Linus Pauling won two Nobel prizes, and he might still be the only person to have two Noble prizes to his name."
Marie Curie: Physics and Chemistry.
I understand that's the case from an academic viewpoint, but who researches everything to the Nth degree? WP gives a good rundown on a wide variety of subjects and links the subjects together, statements of fact are backed by citations. The contraversial will attract vandals and astroturf but I can live with that since it's free and the vast majority of it's content is not contraversial.
"Basically because there's two extreme conditions. Out here and in there. One can't help but have a boundary."
And if two boundrys come in contact then they can't seperate without some part of the boundary exceeding the speed of light relative to another part of the boundry, smashing them together at LHC speeds won't make that happen.
"That's crap. The price of the shares has no bearing on the ability of the companies to generate profit."
It should however reflect that ability but that is beside the point. What we are talking about in this crisis is the ability of companies to obtain credit and that definitely does have something to do with the stock price, even if you are a bank.
If a bank has trouble raising credit then it's stock price plummets, if a bank's stock price plummets then they will have trouble raising credit. If someone has the financial muscle to short a few big bank to the point where their stocks drop rapidly then credit will freeze because banks will not trust each other. When banks don't trust each other we get a credit crunch, exactly the situation we find ourselves in now.
This is not to say that shorting caused the mess but in these circumstances it's certainly not going to help clean it up.
I can't see what all the WP fuss is about, I find WP quick and informative. It has NEVER been ok to cite encyclopedia's in academic papers and there is no such thing as perfect information.
It's like a watt but there are more of them ;)
"E#==F."
IIRC, well before C-sharp there was some sort of scripting language that was developed over a series of articles in Dr. Dobbs (~15-20yrs ago), it was called D-flat.
"It's not clear from the wording whether that includes the output of North American industry, or just the habits of individuals."
Joe sixpack (the US variety) releases ~4t/yr and IIRC we need to cut our global emmissions from ~10Gt to 3-5Gt and keep it there, assuming all else remains the same that's "only" ~3 sq kilometers annually, but you also need an extra 300 gigawatts to run the machines, after you build 300 million of them... Which leads me to think if it's not economical to do CC at the source then it's very unlikely to be economical elsewhere.
"Bad decisions and investments should end up this way. Poof. Now we go after the fools who made it happen, and toss 'em in jail."
Precisely, except the "poof" you mention is not their money dissapearing it's ours, and since I am not an American I cannot vote to punish them. Doing nothing and hoping the ideology in your link can clean up the mess it created is akin to having a blow tourch held against your face and refusing to move because it "sucks to be them".
"The alternative is mortgaging your children's future. They'll be the ones paying the bill if the bailout happens."
The history of reserve bank interventions around the world over the last 3-4 decades shows that assumption to be incorrect. Your nation has borrowed too much, the rest of the world want their money back, they have no interest in seeing the US economy resemble the disaster that occured in Argentina, (for now) your nations creditors are the only ones keeping you from another great depression.
"Please explain how global temperatures can be increasing if the warmest year on record is either ten or eighty years ago, depending on how you look at the data?"
I'm assuming you are asking that question in good faith so a good faith answer is to say "statistical inference". But the mathematical naiveity that your question displays means that the "statistical inference" answer will be useless to you since the myriad of "ways of looking" at the data will all seem equally valid. Suffice to say that if you throw away ALL the temprature stats and just look at the physics/chemistry, you can still make a strong case for AGW.
This is not a criticisim of your intelligence but rather an observation of your lack of knowledge about statistical techniques. Eienstien once replied to a similarly naive question from a reporter - "I cannot tell you how to bake a cake when you have no concept of flour, milk and eggs."
First you said to the GP "point to credible data" and when he does you simply state "No". It may also have escaped your notice but you are the one making extrodinary claims yet you have given nothing to support them.
It may not come as a surprise to you but I think you have a mental problem that forces you to project your intellectual failings onto others. OTOH perhaps you know what you are doing and enjoy being a fool/troll. Either way you need phycological help.
"Science before alarmism please...[snip]...spending it on useless CO2-reducing economic disaster-schemes"
Me thinks you are projecting your own (economic) alarmisim onto others. Also how is it that renewables are never counted as a adaption by Lomborg? Some of Loborg's adaption strategy is common sense but combined with his bad math and demands for inaction on the root cause his view is quite rightly considered as nonsense by most.
Simarly his "cost of CO2 reduction" estimates count the entire cost of replacing all existing power plants. It seems to have escaped Lomborg's attention but "replacing all existing power plants" has to be done anyway over the next 40yrs, or are you and Lomborg now suggesting that coal fired plants are somehow free of any costs and will last forever?
Something no economic alarmists seems capable of grasping is that the biggest potential loser in CO2 reduction is not the economy it's the coal industry, I'm sure Lomborg knows their lobbyists much more intimately than I do and they have made him fully aware of these economic "facts".
Excellent post, just one nit-pick in that I think the sensitivity comment is not very clear. Climate sensitivity is an output of the models (ie: a result). Basically it tells you how much the planet will warm due to a given increase in CO2.
Most studies are interested in the climate's sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 over the pre-industrial level. The uncertainties in the inputs come from the accuracy of the observations, most studies use the IPCC's estimates and uncertainties for known forcings as input.
"...or would it be better to go ahead and destroy (or at least tax to ruin) western civilization as a precautionary measure?"
There are GW alarmists and economic alarmists, you seem to be in the later category.
"I find it odd that the IPCC fails to mention that increased underwater volcanic activity under the arctic has been occurring since at least 1999"
I don't find it odd that you would bring up the volcano myth to support your alarmist stance. The IPCC correctly ignored increased volcanic activity because: A) It's not occuring, and B) Even if it was occuring as claimed then the heat created is not enough to be relevant.
What bothers me about Prometheus is that they were told by NOAA to stop pretending NOAA supports their view, thus the NOAA disclaimer plastered all over the site. Try realclimate.org, at least they have the guts to link to the people who disagree with them (such as prometheus).
Yes the IPCC were wrong about methane as I said in my earlier post, however 'historically' they have underestimated future trends. Not surprising because conservative statements are to be expected when you stop and think how hard it is to get 2500 experts to agree on anything.
A couple of examples... The IPCC (and even the most alarmed of alarmists) were conservative in their estimations of Artic breakup (an 80-100yr underestimate in 1997 down to a 40-50yr underestimate in 2007). The IPCC were also conservative in their estimation of the rise in emmissions over the last decade, the recent observations comes in just below the IPCC's 1997 "worst case" senario, but since it was still within their range then they "got it right".
The first part of your post seems to be talking about something I never said, perhaps there is another raving loony in this thread.
I think it's great the CERN are taking the idea seriously enough to test it, lets hope Svenmark is brave enough to face up to the results should they turn out to be different to what he expects.
Having said that (and assuming cosmic rays do influence clouds), the effect of GH gasses doesn't go away just because somebody found out more about clouds. This is like saying gravity is wrong because the Wright brothers discovered flight. What would happen is that the error bars of the estimated forcing effect of clouds will narrow and that would be a GoodThing(TM) for climate modeling.
"Myself I like facts to support my arguments, and I'm also a strong believer in falsifiability in science."
Strange then that we haven't seen any from you in this thread, but since you have now named a source I will happily be moded flaimbait again by repating my original call of bullshit to your "facts". I like this random site by an amature astronomer, it mentions Svensmark, but I encourage readers to do their own debunking like that scientific amature has done, what follows is my own summary...
Svensmark for those who don't know him belives cosmic rays influence cloud cover, and this explains...well, everything! The glaring problem with this idea, (that incidently demands a "do nothing because nothing can be done" response), is that the 3-4 decade long data set that measures cosmic rays shows no statisticaly significant trend whatsoever. Extra points for those who can find the raw cosmic data sets, AFAIK they are available 'somewhere' on the net. Svensmark now claims that the current cooling is because of a change in cosmic rays, problem is we are not currently cooling and no change in cosmic rays has been detected. Now some people will confuse cosmic rays with sunspots and this is encouraged by Svensmark, problem is that if it's "sunspots" then why doesn't the climate have an 11yr cycle like sunspot activity does? - IMHO and as a holder of a science degree Svensmark's "theory's" are like swiss cheese and his motivations for demanding inactivity are embarrasingly obvious.
For those who like Occam's razor here's how to shave Svensmark: Clouds are the most uncertain part of climate models, the effect of cosmic rays on clouds is even less certain and produces no detectable forcing outside the current margin of error for clouds.
Here is a similarly terse application of Occam by the UK's Met office. It's the only myth they can be bothered debunking in their "toolkit", the rest of their toolkit panel contains "facts" that you might want to look at, you know - to support your future arguments.
BTW: A genuine attempt on your behalf to debunk those "facts" will also inform your "strong beliefs" as only genuine skepticisim can.
I wish it was, but the skeptic inside me refuses to let go of the facts.
Chinese currency is artifically pegged to the US dollar by the Chinese government, ironically the US has been complaining about that for years.
"Of course water is warmer... since the last glacial period... since the Little Ice Age... Oh, but recently oceans and atmosphere have been cooling."
How is this bullshit insightfull?
"we aren't currently getting the warmest temperatures of this century, so why has it just started now??"
It's called thermal inertia, however your question is still interesting.
I have followed the IPCC for many years and one of their biggest failures in accuracy has been what is sometimes called the "missing methane" problem. The 1997 IPPC report (and those that followed) predicted methane would keep rising but the follow up observations have (until now) shown the trend to be flat for the last 10yrs or so.
In otherwords the question is not why has it started rising again but rather why did it take an unexpected break for a decade?
BTW: I find it odd that the psuedo-skeptics have not lept on the missing methane issue as a way to discredit the IPCC, surely that would be more plausable than denying the North Pole is disintergrating, but that's politics for ya!