This is always the problem with people imagining horrifying artificial intelligences that will snuff out humanity. To do that, you have to be motivated to achieve that end.
Not really. A self-sufficient AI could easily come to the conclusion that humans (and life in general) should be eradicated from a number of different avenues of thought. An AI could be incredibly subtle and patient about doing it as well. Humans aren't really good with subtle or patience, especially if the actions seem to be perfectly good and well reasoned.
"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."
Yes, because a news site without links to the actual published research or subsequent scientific discussion is to be taken at face value. However, it didn't take much Googling to find that the so-called study being referenced in the link was authored by none other than Judith Curry, a well-known climate crank. Her work has been scientifically eviscerated many times over. In other words, she has no credibility.
The latest research, done by several different scientists at several different institutions over the past couple years seem to be averaging around 4C. The AR5 centered around 3C.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear... ""Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "
Why would a 150 year melt cycle be "right on time" in warming world? Never mind somebody made the headline "Unprecedented melting of Greenland ice".
How can a cyclical even be unprecedented?
Again, you are mixing journalistic sensationalism with actual science. That being said, irregardless of the event, Greenland is experiencing rapid mass loss. There have been multiple papers on the subject.
I believe Mr. Hansen left shortly after this. I could be wrong but I think it was around that time.
This had nothing to do with why he left NASA. HE RETIRED. He mentioned his retirement several years before he actually left. He worked there for 46 years. Now he's following his passion as the director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
What I don't agree with are the people who are using things like Malaria and HIV statistics to try and show how the media is playing up this issue.
You may not agree with it, but that is exactly what they are doing.
Both are less serious and more controllable diseases with much bigger sample sizes.
I don't even....
As/if more Ebola cases arise, the contractions will increase exponentially and they'll stop comparing this to "more serious diseases".
Not happening, at least not in countries with reasonable sanitary practices. Ebola is difficult to catch, and it has a high mortality rate. These two factors prevent it from becoming the next big pandemic. To wit, the guy who was first diagnosed in the US was in Dallas, a city of 1.5 million people. Out of those 1.5 million people, he infected two, and they were the nurses who were directly caring for him.
Yes Ebola is lethal, but so is EEE and yet I don't see you in a panic about EEE (and that's spread by mosquitos). You're far more likely to get EEE than Ebola (along with a whole host of other diseases). You're more likely to die falling out of your chair while reading this than die from Ebola.
What I don't understand is why they are letting doctors who work on Ebola patients back into teh country without being screened?
There are people arguing to shut down all travel from West Africa, even if that's too much in your opinion, at least screen these doctors.
Customs: What was your reason for leaving the country? Doctor: I was treating patients with Ebola. Customs: Due to national security, we can not let you into the country until you've been tested and cleared. Doctor: But I have plans to go bowling in Brooklyn in about week! Customs: You're retarded.
Chances are, the conversation wouldn't happen like that and the doctor would be understanding of the situation. So why aren't we just doing that to begin with?
Because it would be ineffective. As has been mentioned numerous times, it's easy enough to lie and/or take a circuitous/non-documented route. Screening for possible Ebola victims would be about as effective as screening for terrorists: UST (Useless Security Theater).
What's really happening is climate destabilization. It really doesn't take a lot to destabilize the climate system; plus or minus 2 degrees is enough to bring on the heat or cause an ice age. But the real kicker is you don't even need to cause the whole delta. You only need to push the climate past a tipping point and the positive or negative feedbacks do the rest.
The climate is just like any other thermodynamic system. You add or remove energy from the system, it's going to destabilize until it reaches a new balanced state.
Very few of the people who are now dead licked it. Yes, the media loves fear stories and it's overblown, but you're underblowing it.
Incorrect. The practices of the most affected countries is the equivalent of "licking" it (drinking the water used to wash the dead). Combined with a mistrust of health workers/modern medicine/sanitation practices it's a wonder why it hasn't spread farther than it has.
AIDS doesn't cause contagious blood, spit, diarrhea, and vomit to go everywhere. Ebola does.
AIDS doesn't infect health care workers who are treating patients unless there's a needlestick or sexual contact. Ebola does, with alarming frequency. Even if you DO have sex with someone with AIDS, it's not 100% that you'll get AIDS.
AIDS can't be spread by sneezing or coughing. It's possible Ebola *is*.
In terms of contagiousness, Ebola seems 10x worse. It's like saying "smallpox is no worse than chickenpox". Maybe if you put them both on a logarithmic plot and back up 50 feet!
--PM
The 1918 influenza outbreak killed an estimated 25 million people in it's first 25 weeks, and killed an estimated 50 million in the course of the year. It infected over 500 million people in total.
The regular yearly flu kills anywhere from about 4,000 to 40,000 people a year in the US and infects many many more.
And yet, you don't seem to be panicking about that.
Heart disease kills a million a year. Cancer kills about half that. Car crashes kill about 40,000 a year.
And yet you don't seem to be losing your mind over it.
In fact, there's a whole list of things that are more likely to kill you on a day to day basis and Ebola is right down there around lightning strike, terrorist attack, and getting hit with a meteor.
Well, since you seem to be content in wrapping yourself in tin foil you don't have much to worry about, do you?
Try sticking to the facts. If Ebola was anywhere close to how bad you're trying to make it most of western Africa would look like a mass grave. Strangely, it doesn't. Even with their piss poor conditions, poor sanitation, and customs which actively encourage the spread of the disease the numbers of infections has been small and limited almost entirely to the region where the outbreak started.
The current outbreak began in December of 2013 and has infected approximately 8400 people and killed about half of them.
By comparison the 1918 influenza pandemic during a similar period of time infected approximately 500 million people, with 25 million people killed in the first 25 weeks of the outbreak.
I don't see any reason to get whipped up into a frothing panic over Ebola, which is what you and the news cycle seem to want.
It's actually a generating station. The PNM San Juan Generating Station is a very large plant located in Waterflow, NM. In GE, you can see all the massive piles of coal all around the area, along with all the smoke stacks and some rather questionable looking ponds of water.
Because that is what every new report is field of science that we don't actually understand.
And we don't. As regards global climate we have models and data but we don't really understand what is going on here. We never have...
Correction. You never have. High school physics and chemistry is all you need to create a basic physical model to demonstrate planetary warming with increased greenhouse gas contributions. The first climate model to demonstrate planetary warming with increased greenhouse gas concentrations was formulated back in 1899. You read that right. Svante August Arrhenius, the father of modern chemistry, created the first climate model and was one of the first to predict global warming in response to human activities.
Global warming is not magic. It's not even new science. It's basic thermodynamics that even someone without a calculator or computer could figure out. That's why scientists don't bother having conversations with idiots/deniers. For their inanity to be even remotely correct would indicate that some of the most fundamental concepts of physics (laws of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, etc.) would also need to be incorrect. Now if they had really strong evidence to show that this was indeed the case, then great. Publish and get ridiculously rich. But graphturbation is not strong evidence, and neither are ridiculous conspiracy theories that make no logical sense.
Instead, we'll probably breed right up to the edge of capacity and then die in billions when something unexpected happens.
No, we won't....But with about two billion people being born in each new generation, and a lifespan of approximately five generations, it appears that we're on track to peak at about 10B people, before we start declining.
We won't make it to 10 billion. There aren't enough resources to do so, even if climate destabilization wasn't going to add further havoc. Not just fossil fuels, but arable land, water, etc. All our "plans" have been burning the candle at both ends, with hardly any thought being directed to building a sustainable civilization. Actions have consequences, and we're going to be seeing a lot of them.
No probably about it. By every known measure the planet has warmed over the past 150+ years.
We don't know for how much longer.
Yes we do. As long as we keep pumping more GHG's into the atmosphere the planet will continue to warm. And after we stop or at least get back to some sort of equilibrium the planet will keep warming for another 30-40 years due to climatological lag. Then it will stay warm until the system (or we) start taking some of the excess GHG's and getting them back out of the atmosphere.
We don't know how much warmer.
Yes we do. Climate sensitivity studies indicate that at our current rate of emissions we will warm the planet by about 4C by 2100.
We don't know how it's happening, mostly.
Yes we do. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics of how it's happening have been around for more than 100 years. It's not rocket science. A high school physics text gives enough background to create a basic model to demonstrate warming in relation to increased GHGs.
We don't know why it's happening.
Yes we do. Human emissions of GHGs. The level of GHG's in the atmosphere have increased greatly since human industrialization (isotopic analysis of carbon shows the source is fossil fuels). After that, physics does the rest.
That's climate in a nutshell.
Only if you're a complete idiot.
Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that?
Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated.
A government can't even get well understood problems under control... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.
Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated. Traffic models and climate models have nothing to do with each other.
The only thing you've managed to demonstrate here is your total ignorance on the topic.
I think what annoys me the most about climate alarmism is the false certainty such as conflating opinion with fact. The second most annoying thing is the lack of scientific grounds for the arguments made.
"Alarmism" as you call it, is social. I've yet to read any scientific papers claiming we're all going to die.
As for your "lack of scientific grounds", that's just bullshit. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics were worked out well over a century ago. The first prediction of AGW was made by Arrhenius in 1899 (he also created the first climate model and is considered the father of modern chemistry). If you want to go further back you could talk a look at the preliminary work on greenhouse gas theory from Fourier (1825).
For example, the above two links in the parent post show considerable divergence between the models and reality (sea level and polar ice extent while substantially and suspiciously downplaying the temperature difference between model and reality). The "myth" is confirmed but the writer portrays it as affirmation of their desired conclusion.
Irrelevant. Those aren't scientific papers. They're not peer-reviewed. Any idiot on the web can say whatever they want. That doesn't make them a legitimate source of information.
Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).
Ignorance only hurts your argument. Climate models are physical simulations. They work based on physics, not some statistical curve fitting which is what you seem to be implying. Climate models are initialized with some historical set of conditions, and then run forward to see how well they model climate responses.
That's why physical models in general (fluid dynamic models, gravitational models, weather models, climate models, etc.) can be used for helping make useful decisions and research.
We see this attitude in action in the current story. First, the story noted that these models don't actually predict past events when they're run backwards from a current state. Then someone rationalizes that it's because the observations are wrong, not the models. This not only runs counter to your empty assertion that the models predict the known past, but also is profoundly anti-scientific.
You have terrible reading comprehension. The article (which isn't the paper) says the scientists used climate models to look into the past, not "run the models backwards". Running them backwards doesn't even make any sense. You can read the paper to see their methodology.
The issue the paper is addressing, which you fail to grasp, is that the the data from recent higher accuracy observations (namely the ARGO network) are reporting a lot more warmth than was previously estimated from earlier, lower quality observations. They then analyzed the discrepancies and discovered that global ocean heat in the upper 700m may have been off by as much as 25%, which would have potential impacts on things like CO2 sensitivity studies.
Here are two examples where the most FUD-inducing interpretations are used. The climate models are "too conservative" because they allegedly underplay sea level rise, but the corresponding inability of the models to predict temperature increase is not (though that means the models are exaggerating sensitivity of carbon dioxide temperature forcing, the most important of the unknowns in climate research.
So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?
You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.
You know, if you could engage your brain for 5 seconds instead of going to your default ideology routine, you may be able to figure this one out for yourself. The oceans are not static objects. Ocean currents can and do have periods that can span a couple decades. These currents can bring warmer or cooler waters to the surface.
Form there, it's basic physics. If the air is warmer than the water, the water heats up. If the air is colder than the water, the air heats up. If the net energy balance of the system is positive, then the water (having much greater heat storage capacity) will gradually warm up over time. As the currents cycle there will be periods where air temperatures will be cooler and periods where air temperatures will be warmer. And again, if the net energy balance is positive then temperatures will stair-step higher and higher (which is what we've been seeing).
To be fair... I have worked on many software projects in my life and have also worked with government software projects. A simple fact of life is that government funded software projects are only given to blood sucking leeches that intentionally underbid and lie their asses off about delivery schedules. Legitimate software houses who actually can plan projects and meet schedules are never evaluated.
I'll let you in a little secret. Plans and schedules mean exactly dick on government software projects. You'll have idiots and imbeciles with no technical experience making major changes a week before a deliverable. You'll get reports that your software doesn't work when deployed, and find out a week later that they didn't bother to inform you that they decided to move to a completely different environment. You'll get new requirements on the day of delivery. You'll meet deadlines and won't hear anything for days or even weeks until you get some angry email from somewhere asking why a problem that was never reported hasn't been fixed yet. You'll be forced to use their dev environments, but not given the privileges necessary to actually use them. You'll get countless technical decisions made...without anyone actually consulting the technical team. And I'm just getting started.
It doesn't matter how competent your team may be. If the government side of the project is managed by a bunch of monkeys on meth, you're going to have a bad time. Double that if your company is hell bent on getting their foot in the door that they're willing to bend over backwards just to keep them happy.
And guess who gets tarred and feather when everything goes to hell? I'll give you a hint. It's not that G15 manager who needs a Garmin in order to find where to put the Charmin.
A successful government software project requires competence on both sides. It is a rare circumstance when that is the case.
I see you have a very selective memory. Please read the original plan and then follow the idiotic path of compromises that Republicans forced onto it rendering it into the watered down ridiculous mess that it is.
But then again, the democrats didn't help things either since they were so desperate to get SOMETHING through that they were willing to do just about anything without really thinking through the consequences of their actions.
And of course, the ones ultimately to blame are ourselves. Congress's successes and failures are a direct reflection of the voting population. It's not democrats or republicans. It's this bizarre us vs. them mentality that prevents anything useful or effective being done. It's not a fucking football game. The leaders we elect are supposed to get shit done, not to act like spoiled 2 year olds when they don't get their way.
It's life. Family > Job. Health > Job. Life > Job.
You sound like you're still young, unattached, and naive. I'm passionate about what I do, but I'm not going to deliberately choose a course of action that will lead to 12 hour days for months at a time. Nor am I going to selfishly place my passions before my family's needs, or detrimentally affect my health and well being by being a continuously sleep deprived stressed out mess.
Umm... JSON is a pretty significant force behind modern Web design. Without it, the Web would still be a pretty static place.
Judging by the number of broken web sites I've seen lately, we could use a bit more staticness and a bit less dynamicness.:-}
...laura
Well what do you expect? Web technologies are a hodge-podge, organically grown mess trying to shoe-horn a paradigm into something that was never meant to handle it in the first place.
You jest but first it was global warming, then global cooling, than warming again and finally climate change.
The greenhouse effect was first proposed by Fourier (yes, that Fourier) in 1825. Way back before modern technology and computers he already figured out the basic relationship between heat trapping gases and planetary temperatures. From his paper in 1827:
"The establishment and progress of human societies, the action of natural forces, can notably change, and in vast regions, the state of the surface, the distribution of water and the great movements of the air. Such effects are able to make to vary, in the course of many centuries, the average degree of heat; because the analytic expressions contain coefficients relating to the state of the surface and which greatly influence the temperature."[
In 1864, John Tyndall furhter refined Fouriers work to show that different gases had different absorption spectra, and that water vapor, methane, and CO2 specifically were potent green house gases.
In 1896, Svante Arrhenius (considered the father of modern chemistry) put forth the first climate model and was one of the first to quantify the impact of CO2 on planetary temperature.
Since then, the science has only improved. We've gone from basic physics models to complex integrated global climate models. And they all show the same thing.
There was never any "global cooling". There were a handful of discredited papers in the 70's that tried to establish a possible cooling scenario. However the overwhelming majority of papers on the topic were all discussing warming and it's impacts.
And warming, while accurate, doesn't really define what the real problem is. Warming isn't the problem. It's what happens as a result of the warming that's problem. The additional energy into the climate system shifts the climate, which we, as a civilization, depend on. Also, warming gives the impression that every place on Earth is going to get warmer, which is not the case.
Climate change is a more accurate description of what's happening.
What it should be is "atmospheric CO2 level rise"
That is all the more we can really say in macro. All these attempts to predict outcomes have only damaged their credibility. Rational thinking people should still find it of great concern that we have ever increasing and never before seen (while humans have walked the earth) CO2 levels, and you follow that up with and their exist relation ships between solar energy retention, ocean currents, ocean acidity, and mean temperatures, etc with that.
Nobody really knows what will happen at least not on a short ( 0-50 year) time scale. If they just would have been honest up front about the fact that human activity is radically altering the composition of the atmosphere and that there will be consequences but those can't be entirely identified because its a hugely complex interconnected system maybe it would be taken seriously.
Instead we got decades of alarmist and bogus predictions. its no surprise that so many folks are so dismissive now.
Incorrect. We can say quite a bit about the macro. There is quite a compendium of science out there. The problem is that people don't know the difference between a projection 100 years into the future about general climate conditions and the weather in their backyard. Ignorance is the problem, and there are those who hope people stay that way.
I and many others would like to see this contrary evidence you speak of, along with the physics that model the scenario AND can adequately explain observations from both present and past AND does not violate little things like thermodynamics and conservation of energy.
slashdot today!?... difference between North and South
There is a distinction between the two, of course, but it is without difference to the topic of this thread. Both ice-caps were supposed to shrink (with dire consequences for the rest of the world, of course).
One expedition set out to measure the loss of the ice, found itself stuck in it — not that it changed the leading professor's opinion about the global warming...
The Antarctic sea ice extent was not and is not projected to shrink in the near term. It was expected to expand as a result of the influx of fresh water from increasing land ice melt. As the planet continues to warm it will reach a point where the ice extent will start shrinking again (as the 0C starts pushing further south), but that isn't projected to happen until later this century.
If you're going to troll, at least try to do a decent job.
1. Al Gore is not now, nor has ever been, a climate scientist. 2. His remarks were purely speculative and had absolutely zero scientific support. There is not a single peer-reviewed research paper anywhere that makes such a claim. 3. The AR4 and AR5 model ensembles show an ice free summers in the arctic around the middle of this century. 4. The article is talking about ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, which has absolutely nothing to do with the ARCTIC SEA ICE.
Climate model ensembles have consistently predicted an overall increase in ANTARCTIC SEA ICE in the near term as a result of increased freshwater runoff from the continent. The decrease in salinity allows for ice to form at higher temperatures, thus expanding the sea ice extent.
All models are wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect model outside of trivial classroom models e.g. spherical cow. Modeling fluid dynamics for aerodynamic lift, structural integrity models for bridges and buildings, etc . all have errors. They don't account for all variables and it is impossible to do so.
Science isn't built on models. Models are built on science. As with any other branch of science models are used to help get a better understanding of the phenomena being studied. Models are TOOLS that are built out of the results of science.
As to GCM's in particular, there is plenty of information out there describing the models, their error bounds, what they account for, what they don't, so on and so forth. For a layman's summary the IPCC does a fairly decent job describing the models, what they're used for, and accuracy.
WUWT is one of the absolute worst sites you can go to for any kind of "scientific analysis". They wouldn't make it through a first year statistical analysis course, let alone any sort of rigorous review process.
Slashdot Mirror
This is always the problem with people imagining horrifying artificial intelligences that will snuff out humanity. To do that, you have to be motivated to achieve that end.
Not really. A self-sufficient AI could easily come to the conclusion that humans (and life in general) should be eradicated from a number of different avenues of thought. An AI could be incredibly subtle and patient about doing it as well. Humans aren't really good with subtle or patience, especially if the actions seem to be perfectly good and well reasoned.
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
Of course NASA is used to doing this.
The ocean below 1.24 miles hasn't warmed. The ocean above that has, and it turns out it has warmed more than originally thought: Link.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Doubled CO2 means under 2 degrees warming
"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."
Yes, because a news site without links to the actual published research or subsequent scientific discussion is to be taken at face value. However, it didn't take much Googling to find that the so-called study being referenced in the link was authored by none other than Judith Curry, a well-known climate crank. Her work has been scientifically eviscerated many times over. In other words, she has no credibility.
The latest research, done by several different scientists at several different institutions over the past couple years seem to be averaging around 4C. The AR5 centered around 3C.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...
""Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "
Why would a 150 year melt cycle be "right on time" in warming world? Never mind somebody made the headline "Unprecedented melting of Greenland ice".
How can a cyclical even be unprecedented?
Again, you are mixing journalistic sensationalism with actual science. That being said, irregardless of the event, Greenland is experiencing rapid mass loss. There have been multiple papers on the subject.
I believe Mr. Hansen left shortly after this. I could be wrong but I think it was around that time.
This had nothing to do with why he left NASA. HE RETIRED. He mentioned his retirement several years before he actually left. He worked there for 46 years. Now he's following his passion as the director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
What I don't agree with are the people who are using things like Malaria and HIV statistics to try and show how the media is playing up this issue.
You may not agree with it, but that is exactly what they are doing.
Both are less serious and more controllable diseases with much bigger sample sizes.
I don't even....
As/if more Ebola cases arise, the contractions will increase exponentially and they'll stop comparing this to "more serious diseases".
Not happening, at least not in countries with reasonable sanitary practices. Ebola is difficult to catch, and it has a high mortality rate. These two factors prevent it from becoming the next big pandemic. To wit, the guy who was first diagnosed in the US was in Dallas, a city of 1.5 million people. Out of those 1.5 million people, he infected two, and they were the nurses who were directly caring for him.
Yes Ebola is lethal, but so is EEE and yet I don't see you in a panic about EEE (and that's spread by mosquitos). You're far more likely to get EEE than Ebola (along with a whole host of other diseases). You're more likely to die falling out of your chair while reading this than die from Ebola.
What I don't understand is why they are letting doctors who work on Ebola patients back into teh country without being screened?
There are people arguing to shut down all travel from West Africa, even if that's too much in your opinion, at least screen these doctors.
Customs: What was your reason for leaving the country?
Doctor: I was treating patients with Ebola.
Customs: Due to national security, we can not let you into the country until you've been tested and cleared.
Doctor: But I have plans to go bowling in Brooklyn in about week!
Customs: You're retarded.
Chances are, the conversation wouldn't happen like that and the doctor would be understanding of the situation.
So why aren't we just doing that to begin with?
Because it would be ineffective. As has been mentioned numerous times, it's easy enough to lie and/or take a circuitous/non-documented route. Screening for possible Ebola victims would be about as effective as screening for terrorists: UST (Useless Security Theater).
What's really happening is climate destabilization. It really doesn't take a lot to destabilize the climate system; plus or minus 2 degrees is enough to bring on the heat or cause an ice age. But the real kicker is you don't even need to cause the whole delta. You only need to push the climate past a tipping point and the positive or negative feedbacks do the rest.
The climate is just like any other thermodynamic system. You add or remove energy from the system, it's going to destabilize until it reaches a new balanced state.
Very few of the people who are now dead licked it. Yes, the media loves fear stories and it's overblown, but you're underblowing it.
Incorrect. The practices of the most affected countries is the equivalent of "licking" it (drinking the water used to wash the dead). Combined with a mistrust of health workers/modern medicine/sanitation practices it's a wonder why it hasn't spread farther than it has.
AIDS doesn't cause contagious blood, spit, diarrhea, and vomit to go everywhere. Ebola does.
AIDS doesn't infect health care workers who are treating patients unless there's a needlestick or sexual contact. Ebola does, with alarming frequency. Even if you DO have sex with someone with AIDS, it's not 100% that you'll get AIDS.
AIDS can't be spread by sneezing or coughing. It's possible Ebola *is*.
In terms of contagiousness, Ebola seems 10x worse. It's like saying "smallpox is no worse than chickenpox". Maybe if you put them both on a logarithmic plot and back up 50 feet!
--PM
The 1918 influenza outbreak killed an estimated 25 million people in it's first 25 weeks, and killed an estimated 50 million in the course of the year. It infected over 500 million people in total.
The regular yearly flu kills anywhere from about 4,000 to 40,000 people a year in the US and infects many many more.
And yet, you don't seem to be panicking about that.
Heart disease kills a million a year. Cancer kills about half that. Car crashes kill about 40,000 a year.
And yet you don't seem to be losing your mind over it.
In fact, there's a whole list of things that are more likely to kill you on a day to day basis and Ebola is right down there around lightning strike, terrorist attack, and getting hit with a meteor.
Perspective. It helps.
Well, since you seem to be content in wrapping yourself in tin foil you don't have much to worry about, do you?
Try sticking to the facts. If Ebola was anywhere close to how bad you're trying to make it most of western Africa would look like a mass grave. Strangely, it doesn't. Even with their piss poor conditions, poor sanitation, and customs which actively encourage the spread of the disease the numbers of infections has been small and limited almost entirely to the region where the outbreak started.
The current outbreak began in December of 2013 and has infected approximately 8400 people and killed about half of them.
By comparison the 1918 influenza pandemic during a similar period of time infected approximately 500 million people, with 25 million people killed in the first 25 weeks of the outbreak.
I don't see any reason to get whipped up into a frothing panic over Ebola, which is what you and the news cycle seem to want.
As opposed to the bittorrent user(s) who are pushing everyone else out of the way and preventing their access?
Its one thing to do so with permission from the network owners .. its another thing to wade in and beat up on people just so you can get what you want.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
No, but the second wrong sure makes you feel better.
It's actually a generating station. The PNM San Juan Generating Station is a very large plant located in Waterflow, NM. In GE, you can see all the massive piles of coal all around the area, along with all the smoke stacks and some rather questionable looking ponds of water.
Because that is what every new report is field of science that we don't actually understand.
And we don't. As regards global climate we have models and data but we don't really understand what is going on here. We never have...
Correction. You never have. High school physics and chemistry is all you need to create a basic physical model to demonstrate planetary warming with increased greenhouse gas contributions. The first climate model to demonstrate planetary warming with increased greenhouse gas concentrations was formulated back in 1899. You read that right. Svante August Arrhenius, the father of modern chemistry, created the first climate model and was one of the first to predict global warming in response to human activities.
Global warming is not magic. It's not even new science. It's basic thermodynamics that even someone without a calculator or computer could figure out. That's why scientists don't bother having conversations with idiots/deniers. For their inanity to be even remotely correct would indicate that some of the most fundamental concepts of physics (laws of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, etc.) would also need to be incorrect. Now if they had really strong evidence to show that this was indeed the case, then great. Publish and get ridiculously rich. But graphturbation is not strong evidence, and neither are ridiculous conspiracy theories that make no logical sense.
Instead, we'll probably breed right up to the edge of capacity and then die in billions when something unexpected happens.
No, we won't....But with about two billion people being born in each new generation, and a lifespan of approximately five generations, it appears that we're on track to peak at about 10B people, before we start declining.
We won't make it to 10 billion. There aren't enough resources to do so, even if climate destabilization wasn't going to add further havoc. Not just fossil fuels, but arable land, water, etc. All our "plans" have been burning the candle at both ends, with hardly any thought being directed to building a sustainable civilization. Actions have consequences, and we're going to be seeing a lot of them.
Enough already.
Agreed.
The Earth is warmer, probably.
No probably about it. By every known measure the planet has warmed over the past 150+ years.
We don't know for how much longer.
Yes we do. As long as we keep pumping more GHG's into the atmosphere the planet will continue to warm. And after we stop or at least get back to some sort of equilibrium the planet will keep warming for another 30-40 years due to climatological lag. Then it will stay warm until the system (or we) start taking some of the excess GHG's and getting them back out of the atmosphere.
We don't know how much warmer.
Yes we do. Climate sensitivity studies indicate that at our current rate of emissions we will warm the planet by about 4C by 2100.
We don't know how it's happening, mostly.
Yes we do. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics of how it's happening have been around for more than 100 years. It's not rocket science. A high school physics text gives enough background to create a basic model to demonstrate warming in relation to increased GHGs.
We don't know why it's happening.
Yes we do. Human emissions of GHGs. The level of GHG's in the atmosphere have increased greatly since human industrialization (isotopic analysis of carbon shows the source is fossil fuels). After that, physics does the rest.
That's climate in a nutshell.
Only if you're a complete idiot.
Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that?
Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated.
A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.
Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated. Traffic models and climate models have nothing to do with each other.
The only thing you've managed to demonstrate here is your total ignorance on the topic.
I think what annoys me the most about climate alarmism is the false certainty such as conflating opinion with fact. The second most annoying thing is the lack of scientific grounds for the arguments made.
"Alarmism" as you call it, is social. I've yet to read any scientific papers claiming we're all going to die.
As for your "lack of scientific grounds", that's just bullshit. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics were worked out well over a century ago. The first prediction of AGW was made by Arrhenius in 1899 (he also created the first climate model and is considered the father of modern chemistry). If you want to go further back you could talk a look at the preliminary work on greenhouse gas theory from Fourier (1825).
For example, the above two links in the parent post show considerable divergence between the models and reality (sea level and polar ice extent while substantially and suspiciously downplaying the temperature difference between model and reality). The "myth" is confirmed but the writer portrays it as affirmation of their desired conclusion.
Irrelevant. Those aren't scientific papers. They're not peer-reviewed. Any idiot on the web can say whatever they want. That doesn't make them a legitimate source of information.
Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).
Ignorance only hurts your argument. Climate models are physical simulations. They work based on physics, not some statistical curve fitting which is what you seem to be implying. Climate models are initialized with some historical set of conditions, and then run forward to see how well they model climate responses.
That's why physical models in general (fluid dynamic models, gravitational models, weather models, climate models, etc.) can be used for helping make useful decisions and research.
We see this attitude in action in the current story. First, the story noted that these models don't actually predict past events when they're run backwards from a current state. Then someone rationalizes that it's because the observations are wrong, not the models. This not only runs counter to your empty assertion that the models predict the known past, but also is profoundly anti-scientific.
You have terrible reading comprehension. The article (which isn't the paper) says the scientists used climate models to look into the past, not "run the models backwards". Running them backwards doesn't even make any sense. You can read the paper to see their methodology.
The issue the paper is addressing, which you fail to grasp, is that the the data from recent higher accuracy observations (namely the ARGO network) are reporting a lot more warmth than was previously estimated from earlier, lower quality observations. They then analyzed the discrepancies and discovered that global ocean heat in the upper 700m may have been off by as much as 25%, which would have potential impacts on things like CO2 sensitivity studies.
Here are two examples where the most FUD-inducing interpretations are used. The climate models are "too conservative" because they allegedly underplay sea level rise, but the corresponding inability of the models to predict temperature increase is not (though that means the models are exaggerating sensitivity of carbon dioxide temperature forcing, the most important of the unknowns in climate research.
You are viewing a c
So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?
You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.
You know, if you could engage your brain for 5 seconds instead of going to your default ideology routine, you may be able to figure this one out for yourself. The oceans are not static objects. Ocean currents can and do have periods that can span a couple decades. These currents can bring warmer or cooler waters to the surface.
Form there, it's basic physics. If the air is warmer than the water, the water heats up. If the air is colder than the water, the air heats up. If the net energy balance of the system is positive, then the water (having much greater heat storage capacity) will gradually warm up over time. As the currents cycle there will be periods where air temperatures will be cooler and periods where air temperatures will be warmer. And again, if the net energy balance is positive then temperatures will stair-step higher and higher (which is what we've been seeing).
To be fair... I have worked on many software projects in my life and have also worked with government software projects. A simple fact of life is that government funded software projects are only given to blood sucking leeches that intentionally underbid and lie their asses off about delivery schedules. Legitimate software houses who actually can plan projects and meet schedules are never evaluated.
I'll let you in a little secret. Plans and schedules mean exactly dick on government software projects. You'll have idiots and imbeciles with no technical experience making major changes a week before a deliverable. You'll get reports that your software doesn't work when deployed, and find out a week later that they didn't bother to inform you that they decided to move to a completely different environment. You'll get new requirements on the day of delivery. You'll meet deadlines and won't hear anything for days or even weeks until you get some angry email from somewhere asking why a problem that was never reported hasn't been fixed yet. You'll be forced to use their dev environments, but not given the privileges necessary to actually use them. You'll get countless technical decisions made...without anyone actually consulting the technical team. And I'm just getting started.
It doesn't matter how competent your team may be. If the government side of the project is managed by a bunch of monkeys on meth, you're going to have a bad time. Double that if your company is hell bent on getting their foot in the door that they're willing to bend over backwards just to keep them happy.
And guess who gets tarred and feather when everything goes to hell? I'll give you a hint. It's not that G15 manager who needs a Garmin in order to find where to put the Charmin.
A successful government software project requires competence on both sides. It is a rare circumstance when that is the case.
I see you have a very selective memory. Please read the original plan and then follow the idiotic path of compromises that Republicans forced onto it rendering it into the watered down ridiculous mess that it is.
But then again, the democrats didn't help things either since they were so desperate to get SOMETHING through that they were willing to do just about anything without really thinking through the consequences of their actions.
And of course, the ones ultimately to blame are ourselves. Congress's successes and failures are a direct reflection of the voting population. It's not democrats or republicans. It's this bizarre us vs. them mentality that prevents anything useful or effective being done. It's not a fucking football game. The leaders we elect are supposed to get shit done, not to act like spoiled 2 year olds when they don't get their way.
It's life. Family > Job. Health > Job. Life > Job.
You sound like you're still young, unattached, and naive. I'm passionate about what I do, but I'm not going to deliberately choose a course of action that will lead to 12 hour days for months at a time. Nor am I going to selfishly place my passions before my family's needs, or detrimentally affect my health and well being by being a continuously sleep deprived stressed out mess.
Umm... JSON is a pretty significant force behind modern Web design. Without it, the Web would still be a pretty static place.
Judging by the number of broken web sites I've seen lately, we could use a bit more staticness and a bit less dynamicness. :-}
...laura
Well what do you expect? Web technologies are a hodge-podge, organically grown mess trying to shoe-horn a paradigm into something that was never meant to handle it in the first place.
You jest but first it was global warming, then global cooling, than warming again and finally climate change.
The greenhouse effect was first proposed by Fourier (yes, that Fourier) in 1825. Way back before modern technology and computers he already figured out the basic relationship between heat trapping gases and planetary temperatures. From his paper in 1827:
"The establishment and progress of human societies, the action of natural forces, can notably change, and in vast regions, the state of the surface, the distribution of water and the great movements of the air. Such effects are able to make to vary, in the course of many centuries, the average degree of heat; because the analytic expressions contain coefficients relating to the state of the surface and which greatly influence the temperature."[
In 1864, John Tyndall furhter refined Fouriers work to show that different gases had different absorption spectra, and that water vapor, methane, and CO2 specifically were potent green house gases.
In 1896, Svante Arrhenius (considered the father of modern chemistry) put forth the first climate model and was one of the first to quantify the impact of CO2 on planetary temperature.
Since then, the science has only improved. We've gone from basic physics models to complex integrated global climate models. And they all show the same thing.
There was never any "global cooling". There were a handful of discredited papers in the 70's that tried to establish a possible cooling scenario. However the overwhelming majority of papers on the topic were all discussing warming and it's impacts.
And warming, while accurate, doesn't really define what the real problem is. Warming isn't the problem. It's what happens as a result of the warming that's problem. The additional energy into the climate system shifts the climate, which we, as a civilization, depend on. Also, warming gives the impression that every place on Earth is going to get warmer, which is not the case.
Climate change is a more accurate description of what's happening.
What it should be is "atmospheric CO2 level rise"
That is all the more we can really say in macro. All these attempts to predict outcomes have only damaged their credibility. Rational thinking people should still find it of great concern that we have ever increasing and never before seen (while humans have walked the earth) CO2 levels, and you follow that up with and their exist relation ships between solar energy retention, ocean currents, ocean acidity, and mean temperatures, etc with that.
Nobody really knows what will happen at least not on a short ( 0-50 year) time scale. If they just would have been honest up front about the fact that human activity is radically altering the composition of the atmosphere and that there will be consequences but those can't be entirely identified because its a hugely complex interconnected system maybe it would be taken seriously.
Instead we got decades of alarmist and bogus predictions. its no surprise that so many folks are so dismissive now.
Incorrect. We can say quite a bit about the macro. There is quite a compendium of science out there. The problem is that people don't know the difference between a projection 100 years into the future about general climate conditions and the weather in their backyard. Ignorance is the problem, and there are those who hope people stay that way.
I and many others would like to see this contrary evidence you speak of, along with the physics that model the scenario AND can adequately explain observations from both present and past AND does not violate little things like thermodynamics and conservation of energy.
There is a distinction between the two, of course, but it is without difference to the topic of this thread. Both ice-caps were supposed to shrink (with dire consequences for the rest of the world, of course).
One expedition set out to measure the loss of the ice, found itself stuck in it — not that it changed the leading professor's opinion about the global warming...
The Antarctic sea ice extent was not and is not projected to shrink in the near term. It was expected to expand as a result of the influx of fresh water from increasing land ice melt. As the planet continues to warm it will reach a point where the ice extent will start shrinking again (as the 0C starts pushing further south), but that isn't projected to happen until later this century.
If you're going to troll, at least try to do a decent job.
1. Al Gore is not now, nor has ever been, a climate scientist.
2. His remarks were purely speculative and had absolutely zero scientific support. There is not a single peer-reviewed research paper anywhere that makes such a claim.
3. The AR4 and AR5 model ensembles show an ice free summers in the arctic around the middle of this century.
4. The article is talking about ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, which has absolutely nothing to do with the ARCTIC SEA ICE.
Climate model ensembles have consistently predicted an overall increase in ANTARCTIC SEA ICE in the near term as a result of increased freshwater runoff from the continent. The decrease in salinity allows for ice to form at higher temperatures, thus expanding the sea ice extent.
All models are wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect model outside of trivial classroom models e.g. spherical cow. Modeling fluid dynamics for aerodynamic lift, structural integrity models for bridges and buildings, etc . all have errors. They don't account for all variables and it is impossible to do so.
Science isn't built on models. Models are built on science. As with any other branch of science models are used to help get a better understanding of the phenomena being studied. Models are TOOLS that are built out of the results of science.
As to GCM's in particular, there is plenty of information out there describing the models, their error bounds, what they account for, what they don't, so on and so forth. For a layman's summary the IPCC does a fairly decent job describing the models, what they're used for, and accuracy.
An explanation why this article is nonsense:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
WUWT is one of the absolute worst sites you can go to for any kind of "scientific analysis". They wouldn't make it through a first year statistical analysis course, let alone any sort of rigorous review process.
Darwin wins. Again.