I don't believe we'll ever be able to get back a US where there isn't government subsidies in everything.
I think I've spotted your problem: there has NEVER been an America where there weren't government subsidies in everything. Accepting that reality is the first step to recognizing problems and solutions.
Yes, but the only time it makes more sense to give the public a temperature in Kelvins is when you have some good reason for which to set the reference at absolute zero.
As opposed to the freezing point of water? Sure, people are familiar with the properties of water, but does it really make sense to translate anyway? "You know how water freezes? Well, this reaction takes place 5400 Fahrenheit above that." Informative.
I think it would have made more sense to convert it to Celsius, since the public will at least be somewhat familiar with that scale.
If anyone believes that climate models are an adequate basis for public policy, then they also necessarily believe we ought to immediately implement global free trade, because economic models are of far higher quality than climate models, and the underlying processes are far better understood, and all economic models show that global free trade would be of vast economic benefit, to the extent of saving millions of human lives per year.
I accept the results of climate models. And despite your laughable statement that "economic models are of far higher quality than climate models" (which they aren't, because physics is better understood than economic thoery), I accept the value of global free trade.
I've been touting this idea for years: when drugs are seized, they should be poisoned and sold back on the streets and the money put back into the War on Drugs. And don't make a secret of it either: hold a press conference, with the chief of police saying "We seized a ton of pot last night. It's now in circulation with a shitload of toxin in it. Good luck, suckers!"
I mean, it's a fucking WAR on Drugs, right? The news channels need a body count. Then, after a few senators' daughters drop dead, maybe we can reconsider the rationale for it all.
However, from the perspective of the news media, "The death of one man is an obituary, the death of millions is a long-running and frankly rather tedious investigative series on page A15, and the deaths of a few hundred all at once is days of front page stories with large pictures"
And just wait until a blonde teenage girl is killed — they'll talk about that crap for YEARS. *coughcough*Austin yogurt shop murders*coughcough*
No. But it should certainly exclude him from suggesting policy regarding sex offenders.
That's as may be, but the corresponding argument to which I was replying was that all physicists should be excluded from suggesting policy regarding sex offenders if it turned out that Isaac Newton liked to squoosh the nadges on the odd paperboy.
So what you're saying is that *no* amount of malfeasance will convince you the belief system is invalid.
Why, because scientists being dicks to each other is out of character? Please. And as for dismissing the general public, you should have seen some of the bullshit mail I got from the general public as an astronomer (O may "God" bless you Honest John Malatich you crazy-ass sumbitch!). And that was just from the self-motivated whack jobs; I can only imagine the volume of shit what climatologists get from those in the general public, especially as they tend to be well-funded by those with financial and political agendas.
Personally I will not waste my time discussing science with deniers face to face, any more than I will listen to rant about Jeebus as you try to hand me your pamphlet. Now skeptics are another matter, but you better be prepared to answer some basic physics questions, lest ye be a denier in skeptic's clothing.
And besides, malfeasance is not counter-evidence. If it turns out that Isaac Newton was a child-molester who enjoyed stealing from the Treasury while screaming blasphemes about Christ's after-Last Supper activities at the Archbishop of Canterbury, it would not affect his theory on the motions of the planets or those on the nature of light.
Conversely, if it turned out he never kicked a puppy, gave his possessions to the needy, and died keeping the temple of his body virginal so he could sit at the right hand of God, it would not make his theory valid at speeds near that of light.
are we even sure there's a correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature ? And, if that's the case, what those gases are and where they come from?
Yes. For example, if there were no greenhouse effect at all (that is, if components of the atmosphere were transparent across the EM spectrum),
the Earth would be about 35 degrees Celsius cooler than it is given its distance from the Sun. Venus has an atmosphere about equal in mass to our
total atmosphere (that is, air + oceans) but composed almost completely of CO2, which we know spectrally is opaque to huge swaths of the infrared spectrum.
Because of the absorption of re-radiated solar input, Venus is 400 degrees Celsius hotter than its orbital distance would suggest.
Undebatable, or basically not worth the time to debate anyone who disagrees with that assertion.
The real debate is whether or not the extraction and burning of fossil fuels adds enough CO2 to our atmosphere to noticeably change the climate.
Current science yields a consensus on the side of "yes", with some qualifications. Debates among qualified individuals are ongoing on the effects of changes in solar input, the individual validity of the various computer modelling efforts, &c.
Now, while the scientists argue over those points of qualification, politicians and other idiots use these differences as reasons to sit around with their thumbs up their asses like they want to do anyway. I will add that I have noticed that these are the same people also support the teaching of creationism in schools (teach the controversy!), but oppose the teaching of sex education in schools (you're giving our children mixed messages!). A lot of them also think that
displaying the Ten Commandments everywhere will make America wholesome again, just like it was when your melanin count determined which bathroom you could take a crap in, or even earlier when it determined if a person with less melanin could own you. Often this was the order of business in the very states these politicians represent! Draw your own conclusions.
Pick one:
If you have read the literature and understand the science well enough to make cogent arguments against the conclusions, that makes you a skeptic.
If you have not read the literature, have no grasp of the science behind it, but accept the conclusions because you like them, that makes you a zealot.
If you have not read the literature, have no grasp of the science behind it, but reject the conclusions because you don't like them, that makes you a denier.
I merely stated that the term "denier" applies to you, and pointed out your defensiveness about being labeled as such. (The facetiousness was value-added content just for my own amusement.) As for whether you are a geocentric Intelligent Design-loving Scientologist, that's just as likely as any other supposition on my part. Since you seem to be a "skeptic" about one particular field of science based on no reasoning whatsoever (other than "It's so complicated, waaaa"), why not the rest of them?
What you and everyone else just can't seem to grasp is that it is the very "peer review process" that has been compromised. In climate science peer review has become nothing more than a circle jerk, so claiming something has been peer reviewed means diddly squat.
So, what you are saying is that *no* amount of scientific data and publication will convince you, because the "peer review process" has been compromised.
The same argument made about biology among the "Intelligent Design" crowd.
That's called denial.
That makes you a denier.
How much of the literature have you actually read, yourself? Not books. Not newspaper articles. Not a lecture from a blond melonhead on FNC. Actual, peer-reviewed, scientific articles written by actual scientists who understand science and do science for a living. Seriously. How much. And how much did you understand. What other scientific theories did you put to the same rigors before you accepted them. Heliocentrism? Gravity? Do you refuse to fly because you don't feel the jury is completely out on the Bernoulli effect? But perhaps I *am* being presumptuous; based on recent surveys, and assuming you are American, it's about a 50-50 chance that you don't even accept the well-established theory of evolution.
"But, but, but, the climate is complicated." Complicated? Shit, the human body is complicated. When you get sick, do you comb through the medical journals to find out the double-blind study on the latest treatment your ailment (which you have diagnosed using your years of medical training and the DSM, no doubt). Because hey, if you don't, you are putting your very life in the hands of scientists WHO MAY BE IN ON THE CONSPIRACY. My God man, it's YOUR LIFE, employ some of that "skepticism". When you feel that lump under your armpit, get thee to a homeopath and crystal healer! And don't forget to stop by a Scientology church for your free audit — it could be a fat thetan.
But of course not. While doctors can and do make mistakes, on the whole they are generally treating their patients under the current understanding of their field. So it is with climatologists. So please, spare me your hurt wittle feewings because I know the difference between a skeptic and a denier, and say so. And while you're at it, Google "confirmation bias".
Their contribution will most likely be just another thumb on the political scale of this controversial topic.
And it won't satisfy any of the AGW deniers. I mean, they're already tinfoiled up about THE GRAND SCIENTIFIC CONSPIRACY; does the UN think their findings won't be rejected as some commie-pinko-Third World black-helicopter invasion of 'Merican sovereignty?
Let me start by saying that I am a big supporter of the recently-announced expansion of nuclear plants. I say, if we're going to dig into the ground for fuel, better it be uranium left over from the formation of the Earth than the carbon it has spent millions of years sequestering. (Digression: Suck it, AGW-deniers).
I'm a little pissed off about the leak, for two reasons:
1. I'm not a big fan of plant managers of any stripe lying under oath, nuclear plant managers doubly so. We have enough hippie crap out there about nuclear power without your bullshit ass-covering. Here's hoping we use some of those prison cells my tax dollars have helped build.
2. That's a waste of perfectly good tritium, at a time when our Helium-3 stocks are becoming very low. THINK OF THE DAUGHTER NUCLIDES!
Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect is dwarfed by the #1 GHG, water vapor.
Water vapor precipitates out on a short cycle, especially when carried via weather patterns — and, with cloud formation, even has your vaunted negative feedback cycle (in isolation, at least). The cycle for removing CO2 is much longer and much more involved.
The history of not sharing data, models (i.e., statistical) and computer code should at least suggest that we need to review what's already been done to make sure it's correct.
Here, knock yourself out. Plenty more where that came from.
What's the 'correct' temperature, anyways?
Depends on where your house is. Half of America lives within 50 miles of a coastline.
You may have much lower standards for accepting scientific theories as truth, but you should at least recognize it when you do so.
When I decide not to go down a dark alley, it's not because I looked up the local crime statistics. I know enough about science in general to be able to judge the approach, results, limitations, and (yes) politics outside my particular bailiwick (astrophysics, should you be curious. Credentials available upon request).
Truth? If I wanted truth, I'd go to the philosophy department.
Measuring changes in temperature that problematic in terms of accuracy and precision, even with modern instruments, let alone paleoclimate estimates based on proxy measurements. Not to mention the questionable manipulations done to those proxies.
Then you ask the impossible, since satellite baselines are short, and all temperature measurements that predate satellite monitoring are proxy measurements.
Unvalidated (and possibly unvalidateable) models with huge uncertainties for very important aspects of the system they are modeling (e.g., clouds). These models are generally dominated by positive feedback, the hallmark of an unstable system. The runaway warming they predict doesn't seem to match what we know about the history or even current behavior of the climate.
The fact that the models are dominated by positive feedback could point to flaws in the model. They could also point to positive feedbacks in the *system* being modeled. There is, however, a well-understood negative feedback: sequestration of carbon in the form of carbonate formation in the ocean, and the burial of large amounts of plant matter under geologic strata. The cost of the first is increased ocean acidifiaction, which has been observed. The second dampener is being circumvented by the excavation and burning of the fossil fuels from which it is made.
Evidence of complex behavior on the part of the climate that suggests other, probably stronger influences on the system than CO2.
Not irrelevant, but hardly the issue. We know that CO2 is an effective greenhouse gas, and a useful one at that, since the Earth (and Mars) would be noticeably colder in its absence. We also know the consequences of too much CO2, as evidenced by the energy budget of Venus, three times warmer than the Earth with only twice the solar input. (It may comfort you to know that it would be a bit warmer without all of those clouds.)
And, there are stronger greenhouse gases than CO2, one of which is methane. A considerable amount of which is sequestered in the permafrosts covering Russia and Canada. Sure hope those areas don't warm up and provide a positive feedback into the system.
Historical evidence of temperature leading changes in CO2.
I hope you aren't suggesting the use of temperature proxies. Time machine?
Feel free to wait until you are satisfied to do something. As a childless, misanthropic atheist, I have no dog in this fight, and almost relish the thought of the retarded apes I leave behind drowning in their own shit. But don't pretend that your penchant for doing nothing is because of your deep respect and understanding of the scientific method.
What's your point? I was talking about public perception, not reactor design. Joe Schmo knows fuckall about pebble-bed vs MSRs. My point was that the percentage of people who recognize "Chernobyl" is much higher than some movie made in 1979. And that *that* is the source of inertia on nuclear power.
No, actually that was my point. We don't have a large sample of Earths upon which to test, we have one. Expecting the same sort of experimental evidence that one would for a drug trial is, to put it bluntly, douchetastic.
A situation, I might add, not unique to climatology. Astronomy, evolutionary biology, and geology suffer from the same limitation. Accept it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I've spotted your problem: there has NEVER been an America where there weren't government subsidies in everything. Accepting that reality is the first step to recognizing problems and solutions.
As opposed to the freezing point of water? Sure, people are familiar with the properties of water, but does it really make sense to translate anyway? "You know how water freezes? Well, this reaction takes place 5400 Fahrenheit above that." Informative.
Oh, you're not American.
I accept the results of climate models. And despite your laughable statement that "economic models are of far higher quality than climate models" (which they aren't, because physics is better understood than economic thoery), I accept the value of global free trade.
Got any more questions, asshole?
*Except banks and investment firms. Oh, and Halliburton and Blackwater.
I've been touting this idea for years: when drugs are seized, they should be poisoned and sold back on the streets and the money put back into the War on Drugs. And don't make a secret of it either: hold a press conference, with the chief of police saying "We seized a ton of pot last night. It's now in circulation with a shitload of toxin in it. Good luck, suckers!"
I mean, it's a fucking WAR on Drugs, right? The news channels need a body count. Then, after a few senators' daughters drop dead, maybe we can reconsider the rationale for it all.
And just wait until a blonde teenage girl is killed — they'll talk about that crap for YEARS. *coughcough*Austin yogurt shop murders*coughcough*
That's as may be, but the corresponding argument to which I was replying was that all physicists should be excluded from suggesting policy regarding sex offenders if it turned out that Isaac Newton liked to squoosh the nadges on the odd paperboy.
Actually it's quite good. It tells me that you can't do math.
Why, because scientists being dicks to each other is out of character? Please. And as for dismissing the general public, you should have seen some of the bullshit mail I got from the general public as an astronomer (O may "God" bless you Honest John Malatich you crazy-ass sumbitch!). And that was just from the self-motivated whack jobs; I can only imagine the volume of shit what climatologists get from those in the general public, especially as they tend to be well-funded by those with financial and political agendas.
Personally I will not waste my time discussing science with deniers face to face, any more than I will listen to rant about Jeebus as you try to hand me your pamphlet. Now skeptics are another matter, but you better be prepared to answer some basic physics questions, lest ye be a denier in skeptic's clothing. And besides, malfeasance is not counter-evidence. If it turns out that Isaac Newton was a child-molester who enjoyed stealing from the Treasury while screaming blasphemes about Christ's after-Last Supper activities at the Archbishop of Canterbury, it would not affect his theory on the motions of the planets or those on the nature of light.
Conversely, if it turned out he never kicked a puppy, gave his possessions to the needy, and died keeping the temple of his body virginal so he could sit at the right hand of God, it would not make his theory valid at speeds near that of light.
Yes. For example, if there were no greenhouse effect at all (that is, if components of the atmosphere were transparent across the EM spectrum), the Earth would be about 35 degrees Celsius cooler than it is given its distance from the Sun. Venus has an atmosphere about equal in mass to our total atmosphere (that is, air + oceans) but composed almost completely of CO2, which we know spectrally is opaque to huge swaths of the infrared spectrum. Because of the absorption of re-radiated solar input, Venus is 400 degrees Celsius hotter than its orbital distance would suggest. Undebatable, or basically not worth the time to debate anyone who disagrees with that assertion.
The real debate is whether or not the extraction and burning of fossil fuels adds enough CO2 to our atmosphere to noticeably change the climate. Current science yields a consensus on the side of "yes", with some qualifications. Debates among qualified individuals are ongoing on the effects of changes in solar input, the individual validity of the various computer modelling efforts, &c.
Now, while the scientists argue over those points of qualification, politicians and other idiots use these differences as reasons to sit around with their thumbs up their asses like they want to do anyway. I will add that I have noticed that these are the same people also support the teaching of creationism in schools (teach the controversy!), but oppose the teaching of sex education in schools (you're giving our children mixed messages!). A lot of them also think that displaying the Ten Commandments everywhere will make America wholesome again, just like it was when your melanin count determined which bathroom you could take a crap in, or even earlier when it determined if a person with less melanin could own you. Often this was the order of business in the very states these politicians represent! Draw your own conclusions.
Pick one:
If you have read the literature and understand the science well enough to make cogent arguments against the conclusions, that makes you a skeptic.
If you have not read the literature, have no grasp of the science behind it, but accept the conclusions because you like them, that makes you a zealot.
If you have not read the literature, have no grasp of the science behind it, but reject the conclusions because you don't like them, that makes you a denier.
I merely stated that the term "denier" applies to you, and pointed out your defensiveness about being labeled as such. (The facetiousness was value-added content just for my own amusement.) As for whether you are a geocentric Intelligent Design-loving Scientologist, that's just as likely as any other supposition on my part. Since you seem to be a "skeptic" about one particular field of science based on no reasoning whatsoever (other than "It's so complicated, waaaa"), why not the rest of them?
That's just what Big Plankton wants you to think. You bought the lie!
You left an important word — qualified outsider.
Repeat after me — "Weather is not climate; climate is not weather."
Here ya go. Now you can't say that you've never seen a report that says that there has been warming since 1998.
The aberration of starlight. The phases of Venus. Measurement of the Earth and Sun's gravitational influence on interstellar probes. To name a few.
Yes, yes I have. In fact, I am in the office on a Saturday writing code to trace out asteroid orbits.
No, but I am an end user of the Hipparcos database. I guess that would fall under "trust".
So, what you are saying is that *no* amount of scientific data and publication will convince you, because the "peer review process" has been compromised. The same argument made about biology among the "Intelligent Design" crowd.
That's called denial.
That makes you a denier.
How much of the literature have you actually read, yourself? Not books. Not newspaper articles. Not a lecture from a blond melonhead on FNC. Actual, peer-reviewed, scientific articles written by actual scientists who understand science and do science for a living. Seriously. How much. And how much did you understand. What other scientific theories did you put to the same rigors before you accepted them. Heliocentrism? Gravity? Do you refuse to fly because you don't feel the jury is completely out on the Bernoulli effect? But perhaps I *am* being presumptuous; based on recent surveys, and assuming you are American, it's about a 50-50 chance that you don't even accept the well-established theory of evolution.
"But, but, but, the climate is complicated." Complicated? Shit, the human body is complicated. When you get sick, do you comb through the medical journals to find out the double-blind study on the latest treatment your ailment (which you have diagnosed using your years of medical training and the DSM, no doubt). Because hey, if you don't, you are putting your very life in the hands of scientists WHO MAY BE IN ON THE CONSPIRACY. My God man, it's YOUR LIFE, employ some of that "skepticism". When you feel that lump under your armpit, get thee to a homeopath and crystal healer! And don't forget to stop by a Scientology church for your free audit — it could be a fat thetan.
But of course not. While doctors can and do make mistakes, on the whole they are generally treating their patients under the current understanding of their field. So it is with climatologists. So please, spare me your hurt wittle feewings because I know the difference between a skeptic and a denier, and say so. And while you're at it, Google "confirmation bias".
But hey, thanks for making my point.
And it won't satisfy any of the AGW deniers. I mean, they're already tinfoiled up about THE GRAND SCIENTIFIC CONSPIRACY; does the UN think their findings won't be rejected as some commie-pinko-Third World black-helicopter invasion of 'Merican sovereignty?
By the time our enemi...ZERG RUSH! RUN!
Let me start by saying that I am a big supporter of the recently-announced expansion of nuclear plants. I say, if we're going to dig into the ground for fuel, better it be uranium left over from the formation of the Earth than the carbon it has spent millions of years sequestering. (Digression: Suck it, AGW-deniers). I'm a little pissed off about the leak, for two reasons:
1. I'm not a big fan of plant managers of any stripe lying under oath, nuclear plant managers doubly so. We have enough hippie crap out there about nuclear power without your bullshit ass-covering. Here's hoping we use some of those prison cells my tax dollars have helped build.
2. That's a waste of perfectly good tritium, at a time when our Helium-3 stocks are becoming very low. THINK OF THE DAUGHTER NUCLIDES!
Or you could try O-C-A-N-A-D-A.
Water vapor precipitates out on a short cycle, especially when carried via weather patterns — and, with cloud formation, even has your vaunted negative feedback cycle (in isolation, at least). The cycle for removing CO2 is much longer and much more involved.
Here, knock yourself out. Plenty more where that came from.
Depends on where your house is. Half of America lives within 50 miles of a coastline.
When I decide not to go down a dark alley, it's not because I looked up the local crime statistics. I know enough about science in general to be able to judge the approach, results, limitations, and (yes) politics outside my particular bailiwick (astrophysics, should you be curious. Credentials available upon request).
Truth? If I wanted truth, I'd go to the philosophy department.
Then you ask the impossible, since satellite baselines are short, and all temperature measurements that predate satellite monitoring are proxy measurements.
The fact that the models are dominated by positive feedback could point to flaws in the model. They could also point to positive feedbacks in the *system* being modeled. There is, however, a well-understood negative feedback: sequestration of carbon in the form of carbonate formation in the ocean, and the burial of large amounts of plant matter under geologic strata. The cost of the first is increased ocean acidifiaction, which has been observed. The second dampener is being circumvented by the excavation and burning of the fossil fuels from which it is made.
Not irrelevant, but hardly the issue. We know that CO2 is an effective greenhouse gas, and a useful one at that, since the Earth (and Mars) would be noticeably colder in its absence. We also know the consequences of too much CO2, as evidenced by the energy budget of Venus, three times warmer than the Earth with only twice the solar input. (It may comfort you to know that it would be a bit warmer without all of those clouds.) And, there are stronger greenhouse gases than CO2, one of which is methane. A considerable amount of which is sequestered in the permafrosts covering Russia and Canada. Sure hope those areas don't warm up and provide a positive feedback into the system.
I hope you aren't suggesting the use of temperature proxies. Time machine? Feel free to wait until you are satisfied to do something. As a childless, misanthropic atheist, I have no dog in this fight, and almost relish the thought of the retarded apes I leave behind drowning in their own shit. But don't pretend that your penchant for doing nothing is because of your deep respect and understanding of the scientific method.
What's your point? I was talking about public perception, not reactor design. Joe Schmo knows fuckall about pebble-bed vs MSRs. My point was that the percentage of people who recognize "Chernobyl" is much higher than some movie made in 1979. And that *that* is the source of inertia on nuclear power.
No, actually that was my point. We don't have a large sample of Earths upon which to test, we have one. Expecting the same sort of experimental evidence that one would for a drug trial is, to put it bluntly, douchetastic.
A situation, I might add, not unique to climatology. Astronomy, evolutionary biology, and geology suffer from the same limitation. Accept it.