I like banging heads too, so I am going to keep trying to sell you on my point that climate is simpler than weather:)
The sunspot cycle was an attempted analogy to tropical cyclones that flopped badly. I generally agree with most of your post except the paragraph starting with..."The 11/22 year cycle is not a model, it's not a prediction. It is an observation.". Yes it is an observation and I assume it would be inserted into models of the Sun to make certain predictions (gravity is also an observation we cannot explain but we make accurate predictions based on it all the time). I agree with the "sun up" argument because we understand the geometry behind predicting sun rise but I don't see your point unless you are saying that prediction without complete understanding is pointless (refer gravity).
What has got scientists alarmed is the fact that many of the observed features of climate (eg: ocean currents, permafrost, glaciers) that were predictable are now changing (like going from 11->17). This is not hard to explain (in a broad sense) since as something warms it will become more turbulent, therfore you can confidently expect more melting and extreme local weather events.
Take the monsoon season as an example, we can confidently predict that on a warming earth the average number of cyclones in the tropics will increase, we can explain why and recently we have observed that prediction seems to be coming to fruition. However even armed with that knowlage about the climate we have no idea how many cyclones will occur in a given season, nor does it help us work out when (during the season) and where (in the tropics) a particular cyclone will develop. Predicting individual cyclones (local weather) involves taking measurements and extrapolating, because of the chaotic nature of weather extrapolation is useless for predicting anything more than a few days into the future. Because we cannot predict the weather for next week does not mean we can't predict the overall outcomes of climate change over the next hundred years. One climate factor we cannot predict is the amount of CO2 humans will pump into the atmosphere over that time scale, most models expess it as a variable to produce "what if" senarios.
Another example is the "conveyer belt" or the Gulf stream. We can (roughly)measure the rate of increase of fresh water into the artic end of the current due to increased melting. We also know that if "enough" fresh water runs off Greenland then the Gulf stream will slow down or even stall for quite some time (until the icecap is gone or stops melting). If the Gulf stream stalls Western Europeans will freeze thier balls off while at the same time will also be enduring severe drought. This information is useless when it comes to pedicting a white christmas for Barcelona in 2020 or even 2005.
The problem is not that the climate is changing, it has done this in the past before humans even set foot on the planet, the problem is that it is changing so rapidly that (if it continues) life forms will not have a chance to adapt (unless you subscribe to the bush-head-in-the-sand-models). Inceased CO2 is the main culprit. It is not the only factor and somethings such as sunspots and volcanos may have a good or bad influence but that influence (if any) has been part of the record for a few hundred years and is negligable compared to increased CO2.
What am I trying to say: Weather is (semi)chaotic, it is difficult to predict beyond a few days because we do not understand the how to predict chaotic systems. Climate has regular long term patterns based on large scale thermodynamics and geographical features, we alreay understand the basic principles of what drives those patterns and can thus readily create "what if" senarios based on increasingly accurate measurements.
Most water supplies have a scummy film that grows on the inside of the pipes (even copper pipes), the film is impervious to chlorinated water. Water companies want a simple way to remove it.
Homer at sushi bar - "What is number 23? I haven't had that one yet".
Waiter - "Number 23 is Poison Fish".
Homer - "Poision!!"
Waiter - "Do not be concerned about eating poison fish it is the head chef's speciality, also there is a map to the hospital on the back of your menu."
"I'm not going to say, "Convert now heathen, for the end is nigh!", but I do hope you will at least consider it because frankly the prospect of darkness without dawn is utterly depressing to me."
I have considered it and found myself siding with Thomas.
"The point is that predicting the weather should be a lot easier than predicting the climate as weather is here and now (i.e. days or weeks) while climate is obviously a long term problem."
You still don't get the point, Climate is much easier to predict than weather. As an example lets use the Sun.
"I work with models that predict the eruption of solar events and the subsequent energetic particles that make their way to Earth."
In other words you work on models that predict short term Solar weather, Solar weather is influenced by the sunspot cycle (Solar Climate). Would you say that the intensity, location and timing of an individual sunspot is easier to predict than the 11yr cycle maxima and minima?
"If you don't think that physicists challenge each others models"
This come under the heading of "refining the model" (see previous post), "um suck" is not an acceptable challenge unless it is has some explaination added to it. The "huge error bars" you speak off relate to the rate of warming. No peer-reviewed litrature doubts that the climate record is showing an alarmigly rapid warming of the planet since the early 1950's
"you don't spend much time around scientists" - I have a BSc(CS) and have worked with countless Phd's for over 15yrs, does that qualify?
OTOH: I accept there are many serious limitations to the various models (although you have failed to point one out yet). I also loved the movie "Fight Club".
"If you claim the Bible to be completely holy, you put it in the place of God" - That is the most rational argument I have ever heard to counter the "do it my way because the bible says so" crowd.
Many people also "discount its actual worth" simply because it is a religious text. Even if you do not belive in the Christian God, the Bible is chock full of valuable life lessons. To take each word literally would imply the reader is either brain-dead or cannot see the forest for the trees.
Personally I sit on the fence between agnostic and atheist, I realise both views are a matter of faith, even my precious science is based on the faith that something called the Universe exsits outside my own thought processes.
"We cant even predict the weather without real-time pictures, to say nothing of climate prediction."
This is by far the most common fallacy when climate change is being discussed, I can't be bothered explaining, look it up for yourself using peer-reviewed sources.
As for sunspots, accurate records were not available until well after the invention of the telescope, so claims regarding unusual sunspot activity before the 17th century are anecdotal at best. To then go on and claim that the non-existant records are correlated with climate fluctuations is pure bullshit. I do know of any peer-reviewed study that has been published linking sunspots to major climate change but there are a plethora of industry shrills and whaco's who spout this crap to anyone who is still willing listen.
""the best-predicting climate models"... um suck."
I don't understand the pathological aversion to climate models by so called scientifically minded people. I don't hear anyone refuting physists, chemists, etc, with such well thought out arguments as "um suck". Science is the art of building and refining models. If you can't, (or don't want to), understand that fundemental point then I suggest you might find more solice in religion or witchcraft.
The interesting thing about the Aboriginals is that they introduced fire as a hunting tool (herd animals in a certain direction) and they brought thier dogs with them. In Tasmania the Aboriginals were cut off before they learnt how to use fire and dogs. The extinction record of Tasmania is very different to the mainland. Human initiated fires have been blamed in many places for changing forests into grassland and grasslands into desert.
Unfortunately when Europeans arrived they hunted the Tasmanian Aboriginals and the Tasmanian tiger into extintion.
Re:A few things I hate about cubicle life.
on
Cubicle Privacy
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· Score: 1
"What would you call a major annoyance?" - Unemployment.
I decided to amuse myself by looking at the response to the recent Amnesty International report.
Here is my favourite quote, "Well, sometimes to defeat an enemy you must act like the enemy." I wanted to post a sarcastic reply about how one tells the difference between "us & them" but was asked to login, considering that this thread is all about the government snooping into ISP records I declined to join.
The "war on drugs" has been a 60 year long global spy operation instigated by the West (mainly US/UK). It has been an effective cover story for supplying military choppers and other weapons to people such as the current leaders of Burma. The "war on terror" is simply an expansion of those efforts.
Defense against...what, the rest of humanity who mainly just want enough to eat, fuck and be left alone. Nation states are akin to coporate depatments and these devices are our new clock-cards.
Orwell was the prophet of our times but unfortunately he did not offer us any alternatives so we will all sort of just grumble and punch the card when we want to have a vacation...
I went to school in the 1960's, we had a system where the parents would write the child's lunch order on an envelope that enclosed the correct payment. The envelopes were collected in the morning and lunch was delivered to you in class. No problems with bullying from other kids or knowing what your kid eats for lunch, but...
If a kid were so brave as to suggest that this was an invasion of privacy the average teacher would quite literally slap them across the head for being a smart-arse. If you "stole" the money from the envolope to spend after school the beating would be enhanced by the use of leather or cane. In both cases the teacher would inform the parent who was also quite likely to smack you around a bit.
The scary thing about this little trip down memory lane is that my generation are now firmly in control of the planet.
"If a psycho stabs me, is the knife's manufacturer or seller to blame?"
Probably not, but let's try the opposite extreme: If I sell nukes to Iran do I bear some responsibility for what they do with them? If the Pentagon or IDF caught me in the act what would be my defense against being executed as an "obvious terrorist"?
A knife has many uses and can be easily made with stuff lying around the average garden shed. Guns, (the non-hunting variety), and nukes are designed with the sole purpose of killing people from a safe distance. To make either requires stuff not generally found in the average garden shed.
Dafur is a glaring example of how much arms dealers care about people killed by thier products. Convincing the security council members to put an arms embargo on Sudan would go a long way towards curtailing the violence but this will not happen because at least one of the veto wielding members also happens to be the main arms supplier. I thought continuing to sell arms to people who are known to be actively involved in genocide would make the sellers accessories to genocide. Apparently it has nothing to do it, they are just honest bussiness men trying to make a buck.
IIRC: In Bowling for Columbine, (I know the GPP said F.9/11), K-Mart pledged to stop selling munitions. I don't live in the US but would be interested to know if they kept thier pledge, anyone?
Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh. If you had of stayed at school maybe you could have found out in 20 seconds like I did (don't feak out, it's a joke).
Slashdot Mirror
I like banging heads too, so I am going to keep trying to sell you on my point that climate is simpler than weather
The sunspot cycle was an attempted analogy to tropical cyclones that flopped badly. I generally agree with most of your post except the paragraph starting with..."The 11/22 year cycle is not a model, it's not a prediction. It is an observation.". Yes it is an observation and I assume it would be inserted into models of the Sun to make certain predictions (gravity is also an observation we cannot explain but we make accurate predictions based on it all the time). I agree with the "sun up" argument because we understand the geometry behind predicting sun rise but I don't see your point unless you are saying that prediction without complete understanding is pointless (refer gravity).
What has got scientists alarmed is the fact that many of the observed features of climate (eg: ocean currents, permafrost, glaciers) that were predictable are now changing (like going from 11->17). This is not hard to explain (in a broad sense) since as something warms it will become more turbulent, therfore you can confidently expect more melting and extreme local weather events.
Take the monsoon season as an example, we can confidently predict that on a warming earth the average number of cyclones in the tropics will increase, we can explain why and recently we have observed that prediction seems to be coming to fruition. However even armed with that knowlage about the climate we have no idea how many cyclones will occur in a given season, nor does it help us work out when (during the season) and where (in the tropics) a particular cyclone will develop. Predicting individual cyclones (local weather) involves taking measurements and extrapolating, because of the chaotic nature of weather extrapolation is useless for predicting anything more than a few days into the future. Because we cannot predict the weather for next week does not mean we can't predict the overall outcomes of climate change over the next hundred years. One climate factor we cannot predict is the amount of CO2 humans will pump into the atmosphere over that time scale, most models expess it as a variable to produce "what if" senarios.
Another example is the "conveyer belt" or the Gulf stream. We can (roughly)measure the rate of increase of fresh water into the artic end of the current due to increased melting. We also know that if "enough" fresh water runs off Greenland then the Gulf stream will slow down or even stall for quite some time (until the icecap is gone or stops melting). If the Gulf stream stalls Western Europeans will freeze thier balls off while at the same time will also be enduring severe drought. This information is useless when it comes to pedicting a white christmas for Barcelona in 2020 or even 2005.
The problem is not that the climate is changing, it has done this in the past before humans even set foot on the planet, the problem is that it is changing so rapidly that (if it continues) life forms will not have a chance to adapt (unless you subscribe to the bush-head-in-the-sand-models). Inceased CO2 is the main culprit. It is not the only factor and somethings such as sunspots and volcanos may have a good or bad influence but that influence (if any) has been part of the record for a few hundred years and is negligable compared to increased CO2.
What am I trying to say: Weather is (semi)chaotic, it is difficult to predict beyond a few days because we do not understand the how to predict chaotic systems. Climate has regular long term patterns based on large scale thermodynamics and geographical features, we alreay understand the basic principles of what drives those patterns and can thus readily create "what if" senarios based on increasingly accurate measurements.
"I'm sick of this thread, its all torque." - and no traction.
Damm you beat me to it and I have no mod points to give you.
Most water supplies have a scummy film that grows on the inside of the pipes (even copper pipes), the film is impervious to chlorinated water. Water companies want a simple way to remove it.
Homer at sushi bar - "What is number 23? I haven't had that one yet".
Waiter - "Number 23 is Poison Fish".
Homer - "Poision!!"
Waiter - "Do not be concerned about eating poison fish it is the head chef's speciality, also there is a map to the hospital on the back of your menu."
You finally got an interview with that oh-so-fuckable headhunter at the agency, didn't-ja.
Then she told you it takes more than "installing a distro on mum's PC" to get a $100K blow
You ran off home to mum's basement, had a wank (staring the headhunter), got stoned and started posting.
"I'm not going to say, "Convert now heathen, for the end is nigh!", but I do hope you will at least consider it because frankly the prospect of darkness without dawn is utterly depressing to me."
I have considered it and found myself siding with Thomas.
"The point is that predicting the weather should be a lot easier than predicting the climate as weather is here and now (i.e. days or weeks) while climate is obviously a long term problem."
You still don't get the point, Climate is much easier to predict than weather. As an example lets use the Sun.
"I work with models that predict the eruption of solar events and the subsequent energetic particles that make their way to Earth."
In other words you work on models that predict short term Solar weather, Solar weather is influenced by the sunspot cycle (Solar Climate). Would you say that the intensity, location and timing of an individual sunspot is easier to predict than the 11yr cycle maxima and minima?
"If you don't think that physicists challenge each others models"
This come under the heading of "refining the model" (see previous post), "um suck" is not an acceptable challenge unless it is has some explaination added to it. The "huge error bars" you speak off relate to the rate of warming. No peer-reviewed litrature doubts that the climate record is showing an alarmigly rapid warming of the planet since the early 1950's
"you don't spend much time around scientists" - I have a BSc(CS) and have worked with countless Phd's for over 15yrs, does that qualify?
OTOH: I accept there are many serious limitations to the various models (although you have failed to point one out yet). I also loved the movie "Fight Club".
"If you claim the Bible to be completely holy, you put it in the place of God" - That is the most rational argument I have ever heard to counter the "do it my way because the bible says so" crowd.
Many people also "discount its actual worth" simply because it is a religious text. Even if you do not belive in the Christian God, the Bible is chock full of valuable life lessons. To take each word literally would imply the reader is either brain-dead or cannot see the forest for the trees.
Personally I sit on the fence between agnostic and atheist, I realise both views are a matter of faith, even my precious science is based on the faith that something called the Universe exsits outside my own thought processes.
"We cant even predict the weather without real-time pictures, to say nothing of climate prediction."
... um suck."
This is by far the most common fallacy when climate change is being discussed, I can't be bothered explaining, look it up for yourself using peer-reviewed sources.
As for sunspots, accurate records were not available until well after the invention of the telescope, so claims regarding unusual sunspot activity before the 17th century are anecdotal at best. To then go on and claim that the non-existant records are correlated with climate fluctuations is pure bullshit. I do know of any peer-reviewed study that has been published linking sunspots to major climate change but there are a plethora of industry shrills and whaco's who spout this crap to anyone who is still willing listen.
""the best-predicting climate models"
I don't understand the pathological aversion to climate models by so called scientifically minded people. I don't hear anyone refuting physists, chemists, etc, with such well thought out arguments as "um suck". Science is the art of building and refining models. If you can't, (or don't want to), understand that fundemental point then I suggest you might find more solice in religion or witchcraft.
Can you show us some evidence for this assertion or am I meant to be laughing?
Tell that to the Cockroaches and Ants, they need a good laugh.
The interesting thing about the Aboriginals is that they introduced fire as a hunting tool (herd animals in a certain direction) and they brought thier dogs with them. In Tasmania the Aboriginals were cut off before they learnt how to use fire and dogs. The extinction record of Tasmania is very different to the mainland. Human initiated fires have been blamed in many places for changing forests into grassland and grasslands into desert.
Unfortunately when Europeans arrived they hunted the Tasmanian Aboriginals and the Tasmanian tiger into extintion.
"What would you call a major annoyance?" - Unemployment.
Yeah I agree. Just because the US govt is armed to the teeth and parinoid does not mean everyone else is harmless.
I decided to amuse myself by looking at the response to the recent Amnesty International report.
Here is my favourite quote, "Well, sometimes to defeat an enemy you must act like the enemy." I wanted to post a sarcastic reply about how one tells the difference between "us & them" but was asked to login, considering that this thread is all about the government snooping into ISP records I declined to join.
The "war on drugs" has been a 60 year long global spy operation instigated by the West (mainly US/UK). It has been an effective cover story for supplying military choppers and other weapons to people such as the current leaders of Burma. The "war on terror" is simply an expansion of those efforts.
Money will set you free, good plan but I think you are missing the point.
Defense against...what, the rest of humanity who mainly just want enough to eat, fuck and be left alone. Nation states are akin to coporate depatments and these devices are our new clock-cards.
/rant, nothing personal Doc Ruby.
Orwell was the prophet of our times but unfortunately he did not offer us any alternatives so we will all sort of just grumble and punch the card when we want to have a vacation...
I went to school in the 1960's, we had a system where the parents would write the child's lunch order on an envelope that enclosed the correct payment. The envelopes were collected in the morning and lunch was delivered to you in class. No problems with bullying from other kids or knowing what your kid eats for lunch, but...
If a kid were so brave as to suggest that this was an invasion of privacy the average teacher would quite literally slap them across the head for being a smart-arse. If you "stole" the money from the envolope to spend after school the beating would be enhanced by the use of leather or cane. In both cases the teacher would inform the parent who was also quite likely to smack you around a bit.
The scary thing about this little trip down memory lane is that my generation are now firmly in control of the planet.
Thanks for the input, but we're already aware of the Whitehouse's response to Mr. Moore.
"If a psycho stabs me, is the knife's manufacturer or seller to blame?"
Probably not, but let's try the opposite extreme: If I sell nukes to Iran do I bear some responsibility for what they do with them? If the Pentagon or IDF caught me in the act what would be my defense against being executed as an "obvious terrorist"?
A knife has many uses and can be easily made with stuff lying around the average garden shed. Guns, (the non-hunting variety), and nukes are designed with the sole purpose of killing people from a safe distance. To make either requires stuff not generally found in the average garden shed.
Dafur is a glaring example of how much arms dealers care about people killed by thier products. Convincing the security council members to put an arms embargo on Sudan would go a long way towards curtailing the violence but this will not happen because at least one of the veto wielding members also happens to be the main arms supplier. I thought continuing to sell arms to people who are known to be actively involved in genocide would make the sellers accessories to genocide. Apparently it has nothing to do it, they are just honest bussiness men trying to make a buck.
IIRC: In Bowling for Columbine, (I know the GPP said F.9/11), K-Mart pledged to stop selling munitions. I don't live in the US but would be interested to know if they kept thier pledge, anyone?
Yeah, I remeber Gigantor as a cartoon series when I was a kid (60's) but I prefered Prince Planet.
Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh. If you had of stayed at school maybe you could have found out in 20 seconds like I did (don't feak out, it's a joke).
Where I live, petrol is ~US$3.50/gallon but we "pay" alot more than what appears on the pump.