But the long term effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is not known. It's not as simple as CO2 x 2 = +4 degrees. There are dozens of feedback systems in the environment and none of them are fully understood. All of the climate models currently use the water cycle (cloud formation) as a positive feedback mechanism, assuming that as temperature rises, the water cycle will cause it to become even warmer.
This is *critically* important, because the water cycle represents 98% of the driving power of atmospheric temperature, while the total human CO2 contribution represents less than 0.26%.
The problem is, more and more evidence is mounting that the water cycle is a negative feedback mechanism and that, as CO2 increases temperature, the water cycle will reduce it.
In the Carboniferous period, the Earth's CO2 was in the range of 7000 ppm, and there were times that they bordered on an ice age, up to 12 degrees colder than current average temperatures. If the water cycle was a positive feedback mechanism, than the 7000 ppm of CO2 should have driven the earth into a run-away greenhouse. Instead it was one of the most lush, life-friendly times in the Earth's history.
And the idea that rapid change is always disastrous is also a joke. 6000 years ago the northern part of Africa went from lush farmland to dry desert. Was it devastating to those people living in that area? Probably. But that change also brought warmer weather to Europe and made the Roman Empire possible and all of European history.
We forget how common climate change is. In the 11th century there were 117 vineyards in England, with grapes growing around the city of London. 50 years later, after the end of the Medieval Optimum (which lasted 600 years) there were none. In fact the crop yields in Germany plummeted after 1100 and would not recover until modern planting methods in the 1800s raised yields.
The greatest still-existing sign of this is the "orangerias" in Berlin. These were built in the late 1600's because the new "Little Ice Age" was damaging all the beautiful groves of Orange trees in Berlin. Yes, Oranges in Berlin. Just like in Florida. That was the climate just 400 years ago. Guess what, it changed.
You say we must go "All out" because of the possibility of climate change. I'll tell you that it's the stupidest thing to do. Kyoto calls for protocols that will cost modern nations 50 trillion dollars over the life of the treaty, while stunting, starving, and punishing developing nations. Millions will suffer, millions will die, billions will be miserable. And if Kyoto were enforced, with every provision met, and every number matched, then we would delay the CO2 level that would be reached on January 1, 2100 all the way to October 16, 2100. Fifty Trillion Dollars for 288 days.
Now, if we put 50 trillion dollars into research for fusion, cold fusion, ZPE, or any of a dozen other theoretical clean energy methods, we'd all have Ronco Mr. Fusions powering our cell phones by 2100. Instead, under Kytoto, all this money would be used trying to scrub 9% of the CO2 out of 250 year old power generation methods. You talk about gambling with billions of lives as if "Day After Tomorrow" was a scientific documentary instead of the tremendous load of bull-droppings that it was. What if the temperature went up 2 degrees in Europe? What if Canada became the new "Breadbasket of the World"? What if "Oranges from Ohio" was the new slogan for orange juice? How does this hurt anyone? What if the Sahel once again became rain-forest instead of desert?
Kyoto isn't "gambling" with lives, it's a flat out guarantee to impoverish every industrialized nation on the planet, and that means every developing nation can forget about aid, and food imports and everything else they need. Kyoto is a *guarantee* that millions will die.
Thinking with your heart is great, thinking with your brain is better.
Actually, most climatology textbooks will tell you that 90% of the climate is based on the temperature of the oceans. Dig deep enough and they'll tell you that the deep ocean thermal transport runs on a 1000 year cycle, so that the heat of the ocean today is based on the input from 1000 years ago. This would mean that if we got rid of all technology today, that the change in temperature would occur in 3005.
Tell me again why I should listen to even one climatologist when they talk out of both sides of their mouth?
If Kyoto was enacted, full-force, today, we would delay the rise in temperature in the year 2100 by 280 days. At a cost of 50 Trillion dollars.
Can you imagine the huge grants that are coming in to Mann and his group from every environmental group (Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc.) that wants to show that Global Warming (now renamed Global Climate Change since there *is* no solid proof of "Anthropogenic Warming") is a reality.
You see, those groups know that proving GCC would get them contributions up the yin-yang and they'd be rolling in dough.
Now Mann (and realclmate.org) are the originators of the massively flawed "Hockey Stick" graph. This graph purports to show Anthropogenic Warming, but is so flawed (errors in the algorithm and the data have been found and proven) that even the GCC crowd is shying away from it.
But, of course, because I don't believe in their formula, and would rather take the work of a statistical mathmatician over the math skills of a paleo-climatologist who refuses to release the source code of his test, I'll be called every name in the book, including, apparently, "Slashdot Troll".
Take those military budgets and put them to practical humanitarian and real uses like educating the ignorant, protecting the weak, ridding the world of superstition and animal prejudice, etc.
And your neighbors will invade you and kill you.
Right now Iraqis and Americans are dying because of one of those "superstitions" you want to get rid of. Those same people strapping explosives to their 12 year old children would be more than willing to stick a knife in your chest while you talked about "humanitarian uses."
Welcome to the real world. No matter how enlightened you may think you are, there is someone on the planet that hates your guts and will kill you without a second thought. That's why we spend money on the military and border patrols and police, not because we're a bunch of barbaric warmongers, but because a large part of the rest of the world is.
The copy that's on the web (yes, I know where it is, no I won't tell you) is a direct copy from a work print. Thus, it's not a "crummy handheld in a theater". So it's more than likely that Lucas is going to be really peeved about this.
Considering that it has the time-code on the bottom, I'd imagine it's uniquely coded so that Lucas knows exactly who leaked it.
And no, I haven't downloaded it, although my eleven year old will probably try and "whine" his way into it.
They say in the article that this is a "video of a wide-screen monitor". In other words, the Cell processor ran this video to a big LCD display, and someone filmed it with a camera. Then the film of that display was played back at the demo.
This isn't that uncommon, in order to hide the fact that the ball of "wire-spaghetti" sitting on the bench below the monitor is the prototype system. It might also hide the liquid nitrogen pump they were using to cool it...
In other words, they wanted to hide something, which could be as innocuous as a messy lab environment.
How about those green scotch pads from 3M. (You know, like the stuff on the scrubby sponges, but without the sponge.) I bought a pack of twenty at Sam's club for 2 bucks, and you can get two or four filters out of each one.
But the business farms rely on the government subsidies, while most of the family farms see them as a nice bonus, but nothing big.
Fifty years ago, Wisconsin was "America's Dairyland" with over 50% of all dairy products in the U.S. coming from within the borders of Wisconsin. Then in 1954, they passed something called the "Dairy Farm Subsidy Bill".
You see, a lot of people were upset that they couldn't start dairy farms, because the cheap milk from Wisconsin would always undercut them. Wisconsin farmers were well-established and had already paid all the infrastructure costs. These new farmers were having to pay all their start-up costs to cover the difference and their milk was far more expensive.
So, the Feds stepped in and created a subsidy. Now, you received a check from the government for each gallon of milk you produced based on your distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Well, like any government program, the 1954 subsidy is still with us 51 years later, and still pays based on distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. But now, all the farmers have paid off their equipment and there's no "uneven playing field."
What has it led to? Well, the Wisconsin farmers have been begging to have the subsidy removed for the last three decades. But it never makes it through the congress. Why? Because there are huge corporations lobbying the congress to keep it. They need to have it, because their entire business model is built around it.
In Wisconsin, it takes about 1/2 an acre to graze a dairy cow. That means you can put 80 head on a 40 acre lot. That's great land use. In Wisconsin, irrigation is almost unheard of. Wisconsin in naturally green and lush in summer. Crops flourish, and ruminanats can feed without problems.
And yet, 50 years later, "America's Dairyland" accounts for about 15% of all dairy products in America. Where is the new home of Dairy? What possible green oasis could be better than Wisconsin.
Give up? Not surprising, since that "green oasis" is the deserts of California. With water stolen from the Colorado river they have taken poor soil and awful growing conditions and managed to create a situation where each dairy cow requires 8 acres of grazing, all of which must be irrigated. Each cow also requires water to be pumped in to feed it. Barns have to have air conditioning to keep the cows from overheating, and the milk requires extra processing and massive refrigeration.
Which means, every gallon of milk is produced at a loss. That's right, every gallon of milk made in California costs the corporation money. And I do mean corporation, since 90% of the dairy in California is produced by corporations with 10,000 head herds.
So, if they're losing money on every gallon, how do they stay in business? Simple, they are 2,000 miles from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. That represents about a $2.50 subsidy for every gallon.
You, yes you the taxpayer, are paying corporations to build farms in the middle of a desert that naturally sees less than 10 inches of rain a year, in a state with no natural lakes, and that needs to pump in water from up to 800 miles away.
Sounds stupid, doesn't it?
It's not the farmers who formed these corporations, and the corporations could not exist without government subsidies. Without government sticking it's fingers into farming, there would be no corporate "big-business" farmers.
In fact, I can't think of one "corporate model" farm in Wisconsin that lasted more than a few years. Corporations, by their nature, must answer to shareholders. Farmers, on the other hand, answer to the land. The concept is self limiting. No corporation can maintain the land for long, and thus they go out of business. Farmers maintain it for generations.
And despite the claim, "They'll just buy more land," you need to realize that there *isn't* any more land. You can't just grab farm land like candy. 99% of it is owned and tended. Why do you think they try to create farms in t
Jefferson lived in a different time, where freeing his slaves might not have been the best thing for them. Had they been freed, it is likely they would have faced a society that shunned them. They would have been unable to get jobs or earn money, and starvation and destitution would have been their most likely reward.
But consider finding a copy of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson goes on a two paragraph rant about the evils of slavery and calling for the aboltion of the practice. The Continental Congress cut those two paragraphs almost immediately.
And, despite the other reply to your message, Jefferson did not free all of his slaves. That was George Washington, who freed them all in his will. (Some will argue that he didn't, that some of his slaves remained slaves. Those, however, were "Dowry Slaves" that belonged to his wife's family and upon his death, the ownership reverted to his wife's family. Thus, he had no ownership rights and couldn't free them.)
Jefferson wrote in one of his letters to John Adams that he "freed the slaves that he could", consisting largely of the fact that he freed Sally Hemmings and her entire family (8 slaves). I believe (if memory serves) that he freed only some 25 slaves in his lifetime.
Jefferson was also in debt by over $100,000 at the time of his death, so his beloved Monticello and his slaves (and most of his property) were auctioned off to pay his substantial debts. (Equivalent to about $23,000,000 in 2005 terms.)
Jefferson is arguably the most eloquent and forward-looking of all the founding fathers, and his absense at the Constitutional Convention still has repercussions to this day. Consider that we would not have the Bill of Rights, if Jefferson hadn't rushed back from France (where he was the ambassador) upon seeing a draft of the Constitution that John Adams sent him. He was so furious that there was no enumeration of the rights of man that he risked a month long sea voyage with his children just to come back to America and demand its inclusion.
However. To get back on topic, I have sincere doubts that Jefferson would approve of his name being used as an excuse for bare breasts and cursing to be transmitted to the masses. He was, above all, a man of decorum, and more than a little chauvanistic. He once wrote to Abigail Adams that, "The delicate sex has no place in the world of politics, and their entry into it would be degrading to both."
I think he would be shocked as to the degradation of our culture, and especially at the lack of understanding and concern that most people have for their own government.
I believe it was Bobcat Goldthwait who said, "Almost everyone can sing the theme song to Giligan's Island, but how many people can recite the Bill of Rights?"
Look, we're willing to research what our children watch and make informed decisions about what is appropriate for our children to watch. Wahhh! Mean old Conservatives!
My, what scintillating reparte' you have used to cast aspersions upon my intellect. Verily I bow before your superior intellect and rapier wit.
I figure, if you're going to live in a fantasy world, I might as well fuel your fantasy of having a blinding intellect. You've definitely proven that you are too blind to open your eyes.
Don't bother replying to this, because, like you, I won't bother reading it.
Sigh, from the "you guys" comment, it's obvious that you didn't take the time to actually read my post. I could tell you that I've run McKitrick and McIntyre's algortithm, I could tell you that I have a hundred results with everything from red noise to sine waves as the input and that Mann's equation continually produces "hockey sticks" on all of them.
I could publish code and graphs and raw data, but you would choose not to read them or pay attention, just as you failed to read my previous message.
I could tell you how I have reverse engineered the http://climateprediction.net/ source code to see how their model worked and found it woefully inadequate for even the simplest of models.
I could tell you all these things, but you wouldn't read them, just as you failed to read my previous post. For you, the conclusion is already there and messy facts must be ignored to support the conclusion. Like most Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates, you have made your cause a religion, rather than a Science. Mann is your gospel and no amount of proofs will change your mind.
Nice try. I've spent twenty years in the industry. No, the "algorithm is not enough" because how can I possibly know that they coded it correctly. And while I can grab other tools to perform this analysis, it's exactly McKitrick and McIntyre's point that using those tools does not produce the "Hockey Stick".
As for me being an open source advocate, it just goes to show how little you know me since I have released *nothing* in the open source domain.
Maybe you'd like to check my resume before making assumptions about my coding skills.
Excuse me, but how would you know what's involved in Mann's analysis? The whole point of TFA was that Mann refuses to publish his source code. You can point at McKitrick and McIntyre all day and yell "bad science", but you can also download and run their source code and try it yourself.
Which is exactly what you cannot do with Mann et.al.'s work. You must accept a priori that his work is correct, something that every peer reviewer should have rejected out of hand. I know if I were reviewing any work that used a computer model and I couldn't look at the computer model's source code and data, I'd reject the results immediately. Period. I don't care if it showed global warming was a total myth. Heck, I wouldn't care if it proved the sky was blue. No code, no approval. The fact that Mann's work was accepted without this level of transparency is a bigger "tell" against all of the current Anthropogenic Global Warming hoopla than anything else I can think of.
Why refuse to publish your code unless you have something to hide?
As one programmer pointed out, "I can prove global warming is increasing the temperature by 0.1 degrees centigrade per decade. I'll just write a computer program where T=Y * 0.01, and graph T. Then I'll publish the results."
When Mann refuses to publish his source code, it engenders the exact same level of confidence.
So, now someone's reputation is all that's important to their scientific work? Better throw out relativity because that was written by a lousy patent clerk.
You do know that Mann writes this website, right? You do realize that the source of your argument (http://www.realclimate.org/) is a shill for Mann and his cronies?
Second of all, there was a flaw in the original algorithm that was pointed out by McIntyre and McKitrick before they even got to the bad data being put into the equation.
And, to top it off, Mann's equation always produces hockey-stick graphs, even with randomly distributed data.
Don't point at Mann's own site as a defense of Mann.
Except that 99% of the greenhouse gasses from a coal plant are in the form of CO2, whereas 90%+ of the gasses from a hydro plant are released in the form of methane, which has an effect equivalent to 21 times as much CO2.
So, the hydro plant releases three times the carbon, and it does it in a form that's effect is 21 times more powerful than CO2 on the environment.
Once again, the "filth-belching" coal plant is the cleaner of the two, even if we take into account the fact that the vegetation sequestered the carbon from atmospheric CO2, it's returning methane to the atmosphere which will have a worse effect on the atmosphere in general.
Sorry, but hydro is not "infinitely renewable" as it is really just an expression of solar energy. Riverbeds move, climate changes, and reservoirs fill with sediment. Second, we have already dammed something like 50% of all the available waterways for power to produce something like 7% of all the needed energy on the planet. What are we going to do to get to 100%? Additionally, damming rivers is devastating to the downstream environment. 200 years ago the Colorado River drained into the sea of Baja, now it just dries up somewhere in Arizona...
And finally, hydro power is not clean!Severalstudies have shown that the average hydro plant produces more environmental destruction and greenhouse gasses than a similar (in power production) coal plant. So your "clean" energy source is worse for the environment than a filth-belching coal plant. Congratulations.
Looking at ice core temperatures over the last 400,000 years there are several significant temperature cycles. Would like to see an explanation of those cycles.
Well, by definition, given the rise of civilation in the current inter-glacial period of 10,000 years, we can rule out one factor. Man.
The earth has been going through vast temperature cycles from the Medieval Optimum (when orange groves blossomed in Berlin) to the last 10 glacial periods where the North American continent was buried under two miles of ice. In all of those cases we can rule out fossil fuels. Your line about this being the ideal climate is misleading. Europe of the early middle ages was a far nicer place to live, with Berlin being like the Florida coast, and England knowing only sunshine and a few brief snow-fluries in the dead of winter. When the vikings landed in Greenland, they didn't name it that because of all the glaciers...
So, if we know it's not humans burning fossil fuels, what does that leave?
The only answer is natural processes. The largest factor on the environment is the sun. Consider that we could take *all* the CO2 out of the atmosphere and experience only a 1-2 degree centigrade cooling trend. However, remove 1% of the sunlight, and the earth cools by 3-4 degrees centigrade.
The earth's orbit precesses, the axis tumbles 23 degrees every 30,000 years, and the orbit of earth fluctuates on a similar timescale. Several studies have linked nearly all temperature changes in the history of mankind to solar activity during the same period, and there is no other explanation during the previous 390,000 years of climate cycles. By your own argument, you have ruled out man.
You have also fallen prey to the "Hydrogen myth" that a switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen will make the world clean. Like all those who follow this myth, you don't grasp the basic concept of the hydrogen economy, namely, that Hydrogen is just a really efficient "battery". We must use all the power we get out of the hydrogen and more (second law of thermodynamics) to generate the hydrogen in the first place. That power must come from other sources, such as fossil fuels or nuclear power.
CO2 scrubbers are no picnic either. CO2 is scrubbed using LiOH (Lithium hydroxide), which then forms lithium carbonate, water, and oxygen. (if I remember the sequence off the top of my head). So, what is the problem? Well, if we mined every pound of lithium on the planet, we might get a years worth of CO2 out of the environment, and then we're left with millions of tons of lithium carbonate. If we electro-chemically reduce it back to Lithium Hydroxide for re-use, we release, you guessed it, CO2. So we'd be trading greenhouse gases for toxic waste. Doesn't seem like a good trade-off.
There's that understanding non-conservative view-point that never, ever, paints people with a broad sterotypical brush, as opposed to us bigoted, red-necked, bible-thumping, gun-toting conservative tree-killers.
Besides that, you've confused coservative with Fundamentalist Christian. The two are not synonymous.
Has it ever occured to you that I might be a conservative that does not believe the Earth is 5983 years old and was created on September the 1st at 9:00 AM?
Has it ever occurred to you that a conservative such as myself has concluded that evolution is a fact, and that the creationist story is exactly that, a story?
Has it ever occurred to you that a well-educated, college graduate with a degree in chemistry, physics, math, and computer science might look at the current "evidence" of anthropogenic global warming and find it laughable?
Has it ever occured to you that I can look at the full data set and see that the temperature swings of the climate are at best *partly* related to CO2 concentration, and 95% plus correlated to solar activity?
Does it ever bother you that even climatologists have admitted that a 0.1% increase in solar output would have the same effect as doubling atmospheric CO2 concentration? Further, that the ACRIMM satellites have shown a steady 0.05% increase/decade in exactly that solar output level for the last three decades?
Does it bother you that despite CO2 levels increasing linearly since 1900, we have a 30 year period of overall climate cooling from 1950-1980? During the same period, solar output was the lowest it's been in the modern era.
Does it bother you to know that the very study cited in the original article used data from models that were driven using a "Slab" model of the ocean that is woefully incomplete, and to make up for it, they inject actual measurements into the model to drive it? Do you realize that this means the models are simply returning the same data that was put into them, namely the very same measurement data they were then checked against? Does it surprise you that there is a close correlation?
Do you ever consider that many "good" things for the environment are misguided? Did you know it costs more in resources and money to recycle paper then to grow new trees and manufacture new paper? Did you also know that this is true for practically all the items we currently recycle with the exception of aluminum? Do you realize that the U.S. Paper industry sequesters over 20 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year? Recycling paper is, therefore, increasing CO2 emissions.
Did you know that, despite your prejudice, most conservatives are in favor of doing things that are truly good for the environment? For example, forest burns put millions of tons of carbon back into the atmosphere, while turning old, dead trees into lumber sequesters upwards of 20 million tons of carbon each year in the United States. Despite this, environmentalists see the cutting of *any* tree as damaging to the environment.
You do realize that the "Red States" are mostly agricultural? No one who has to work the soil every day is in favor of damaging it. The same people who pulled the "R" lever a few months ago are the ones who put food on the table and spend their lives working outdoors every day, growing more plants then you'll plant in a lifetime. They want clean water, and good soil more than you can imagine.
Did you ever consider that conservatives know they must breathe the air and drink the water as well as liberals? Do you really think that corporations would dump as much toxic waste into the environment as they could if that darned EPA guy would just turn his back? Did you know that Ted Turner is the biggest polluter in Montana?
Everybody wants clean water, right? I mean what's with Bush being against cutting down arsenic in the water supply? Well, consider that the cuts would have saved 1 life every 10 years in an area the size of Phoenix. In the meantime, the increa
"That damn patent clerk Einstein sent us a paper claiming that Isaac Newton got it all wrong. What a crackpot! Doesn't he know science is only done by scientists!"
Science, at least real science, is all done by the one guy who disagrees with everyone else.
Please prove that you can read beyond a 5th grade level by checking your claims before posting. Fact: 2004 was the 4th warmest year on record, 1998 is the warmest, 2002 second, and 2003 third. Seems rather interesting that the trend is down, exactly the same trend as solar output. (1998 was the strongest ElNino year in recorded history and is considered spurious, even by climatologists.)
So, research your claims, your intellect can only benefit...
Slashdot Mirror
But the long term effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is not known. It's not as simple as CO2 x 2 = +4 degrees. There are dozens of feedback systems in the environment and none of them are fully understood. All of the climate models currently use the water cycle (cloud formation) as a positive feedback mechanism, assuming that as temperature rises, the water cycle will cause it to become even warmer.
This is *critically* important, because the water cycle represents 98% of the driving power of atmospheric temperature, while the total human CO2 contribution represents less than 0.26%.
The problem is, more and more evidence is mounting that the water cycle is a negative feedback mechanism and that, as CO2 increases temperature, the water cycle will reduce it.
In the Carboniferous period, the Earth's CO2 was in the range of 7000 ppm, and there were times that they bordered on an ice age, up to 12 degrees colder than current average temperatures. If the water cycle was a positive feedback mechanism, than the 7000 ppm of CO2 should have driven the earth into a run-away greenhouse. Instead it was one of the most lush, life-friendly times in the Earth's history.
And the idea that rapid change is always disastrous is also a joke. 6000 years ago the northern part of Africa went from lush farmland to dry desert. Was it devastating to those people living in that area? Probably. But that change also brought warmer weather to Europe and made the Roman Empire possible and all of European history.
We forget how common climate change is. In the 11th century there were 117 vineyards in England, with grapes growing around the city of London. 50 years later, after the end of the Medieval Optimum (which lasted 600 years) there were none. In fact the crop yields in Germany plummeted after 1100 and would not recover until modern planting methods in the 1800s raised yields.
The greatest still-existing sign of this is the "orangerias" in Berlin. These were built in the late 1600's because the new "Little Ice Age" was damaging all the beautiful groves of Orange trees in Berlin. Yes, Oranges in Berlin. Just like in Florida. That was the climate just 400 years ago. Guess what, it changed.
You say we must go "All out" because of the possibility of climate change. I'll tell you that it's the stupidest thing to do. Kyoto calls for protocols that will cost modern nations 50 trillion dollars over the life of the treaty, while stunting, starving, and punishing developing nations. Millions will suffer, millions will die, billions will be miserable. And if Kyoto were enforced, with every provision met, and every number matched, then we would delay the CO2 level that would be reached on January 1, 2100 all the way to October 16, 2100. Fifty Trillion Dollars for 288 days.
Now, if we put 50 trillion dollars into research for fusion, cold fusion, ZPE, or any of a dozen other theoretical clean energy methods, we'd all have Ronco Mr. Fusions powering our cell phones by 2100. Instead, under Kytoto, all this money would be used trying to scrub 9% of the CO2 out of 250 year old power generation methods. You talk about gambling with billions of lives as if "Day After Tomorrow" was a scientific documentary instead of the tremendous load of bull-droppings that it was. What if the temperature went up 2 degrees in Europe? What if Canada became the new "Breadbasket of the World"? What if "Oranges from Ohio" was the new slogan for orange juice? How does this hurt anyone? What if the Sahel once again became rain-forest instead of desert?
Kyoto isn't "gambling" with lives, it's a flat out guarantee to impoverish every industrialized nation on the planet, and that means every developing nation can forget about aid, and food imports and everything else they need. Kyoto is a *guarantee* that millions will die.
Thinking with your heart is great, thinking with your brain is better.
Actually, most climatology textbooks will tell you that 90% of the climate is based on the temperature of the oceans. Dig deep enough and they'll tell you that the deep ocean thermal transport runs on a 1000 year cycle, so that the heat of the ocean today is based on the input from 1000 years ago. This would mean that if we got rid of all technology today, that the change in temperature would occur in 3005.
Tell me again why I should listen to even one climatologist when they talk out of both sides of their mouth?
If Kyoto was enacted, full-force, today, we would delay the rise in temperature in the year 2100 by 280 days. At a cost of 50 Trillion dollars.
Anyone volunteering?
Can you imagine the huge grants that are coming in to Mann and his group from every environmental group (Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc.) that wants to show that Global Warming (now renamed Global Climate Change since there *is* no solid proof of "Anthropogenic Warming") is a reality.
You see, those groups know that proving GCC would get them contributions up the yin-yang and they'd be rolling in dough.
Now Mann (and realclmate.org) are the originators of the massively flawed "Hockey Stick" graph. This graph purports to show Anthropogenic Warming, but is so flawed (errors in the algorithm and the data have been found and proven) that even the GCC crowd is shying away from it.
But, of course, because I don't believe in their formula, and would rather take the work of a statistical mathmatician over the math skills of a paleo-climatologist who refuses to release the source code of his test, I'll be called every name in the book, including, apparently, "Slashdot Troll".
But I didn't call the site "Biased".
Take those military budgets and put them to practical humanitarian and real uses like educating the ignorant, protecting the weak, ridding the world of superstition and animal prejudice, etc.
And your neighbors will invade you and kill you.
Right now Iraqis and Americans are dying because of one of those "superstitions" you want to get rid of. Those same people strapping explosives to their 12 year old children would be more than willing to stick a knife in your chest while you talked about "humanitarian uses."
Welcome to the real world. No matter how enlightened you may think you are, there is someone on the planet that hates your guts and will kill you without a second thought. That's why we spend money on the military and border patrols and police, not because we're a bunch of barbaric warmongers, but because a large part of the rest of the world is.
The copy that's on the web (yes, I know where it is, no I won't tell you) is a direct copy from a work print. Thus, it's not a "crummy handheld in a theater". So it's more than likely that Lucas is going to be really peeved about this.
Considering that it has the time-code on the bottom, I'd imagine it's uniquely coded so that Lucas knows exactly who leaked it.
And no, I haven't downloaded it, although my eleven year old will probably try and "whine" his way into it.
That's called the power button.
They say in the article that this is a "video of a wide-screen monitor". In other words, the Cell processor ran this video to a big LCD display, and someone filmed it with a camera. Then the film of that display was played back at the demo.
This isn't that uncommon, in order to hide the fact that the ball of "wire-spaghetti" sitting on the bench below the monitor is the prototype system. It might also hide the liquid nitrogen pump they were using to cool it...
In other words, they wanted to hide something, which could be as innocuous as a messy lab environment.
How about those green scotch pads from 3M. (You know, like the stuff on the scrubby sponges, but without the sponge.) I bought a pack of twenty at Sam's club for 2 bucks, and you can get two or four filters out of each one.
But the business farms rely on the government subsidies, while most of the family farms see them as a nice bonus, but nothing big.
Fifty years ago, Wisconsin was "America's Dairyland" with over 50% of all dairy products in the U.S. coming from within the borders of Wisconsin. Then in 1954, they passed something called the "Dairy Farm Subsidy Bill".
You see, a lot of people were upset that they couldn't start dairy farms, because the cheap milk from Wisconsin would always undercut them. Wisconsin farmers were well-established and had already paid all the infrastructure costs. These new farmers were having to pay all their start-up costs to cover the difference and their milk was far more expensive.
So, the Feds stepped in and created a subsidy. Now, you received a check from the government for each gallon of milk you produced based on your distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Well, like any government program, the 1954 subsidy is still with us 51 years later, and still pays based on distance from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. But now, all the farmers have paid off their equipment and there's no "uneven playing field."
What has it led to? Well, the Wisconsin farmers have been begging to have the subsidy removed for the last three decades. But it never makes it through the congress. Why? Because there are huge corporations lobbying the congress to keep it. They need to have it, because their entire business model is built around it.
In Wisconsin, it takes about 1/2 an acre to graze a dairy cow. That means you can put 80 head on a 40 acre lot. That's great land use. In Wisconsin, irrigation is almost unheard of. Wisconsin in naturally green and lush in summer. Crops flourish, and ruminanats can feed without problems.
And yet, 50 years later, "America's Dairyland" accounts for about 15% of all dairy products in America. Where is the new home of Dairy? What possible green oasis could be better than Wisconsin.
Give up? Not surprising, since that "green oasis" is the deserts of California. With water stolen from the Colorado river they have taken poor soil and awful growing conditions and managed to create a situation where each dairy cow requires 8 acres of grazing, all of which must be irrigated. Each cow also requires water to be pumped in to feed it. Barns have to have air conditioning to keep the cows from overheating, and the milk requires extra processing and massive refrigeration.
Which means, every gallon of milk is produced at a loss. That's right, every gallon of milk made in California costs the corporation money. And I do mean corporation, since 90% of the dairy in California is produced by corporations with 10,000 head herds.
So, if they're losing money on every gallon, how do they stay in business? Simple, they are 2,000 miles from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. That represents about a $2.50 subsidy for every gallon.
You, yes you the taxpayer, are paying corporations to build farms in the middle of a desert that naturally sees less than 10 inches of rain a year, in a state with no natural lakes, and that needs to pump in water from up to 800 miles away.
Sounds stupid, doesn't it?
It's not the farmers who formed these corporations, and the corporations could not exist without government subsidies. Without government sticking it's fingers into farming, there would be no corporate "big-business" farmers.
In fact, I can't think of one "corporate model" farm in Wisconsin that lasted more than a few years. Corporations, by their nature, must answer to shareholders. Farmers, on the other hand, answer to the land. The concept is self limiting. No corporation can maintain the land for long, and thus they go out of business. Farmers maintain it for generations.
And despite the claim, "They'll just buy more land," you need to realize that there *isn't* any more land. You can't just grab farm land like candy. 99% of it is owned and tended. Why do you think they try to create farms in t
Jefferson lived in a different time, where freeing his slaves might not have been the best thing for them. Had they been freed, it is likely they would have faced a society that shunned them. They would have been unable to get jobs or earn money, and starvation and destitution would have been their most likely reward.
But consider finding a copy of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson goes on a two paragraph rant about the evils of slavery and calling for the aboltion of the practice. The Continental Congress cut those two paragraphs almost immediately.
And, despite the other reply to your message, Jefferson did not free all of his slaves. That was George Washington, who freed them all in his will. (Some will argue that he didn't, that some of his slaves remained slaves. Those, however, were "Dowry Slaves" that belonged to his wife's family and upon his death, the ownership reverted to his wife's family. Thus, he had no ownership rights and couldn't free them.)
Jefferson wrote in one of his letters to John Adams that he "freed the slaves that he could", consisting largely of the fact that he freed Sally Hemmings and her entire family (8 slaves). I believe (if memory serves) that he freed only some 25 slaves in his lifetime.
Jefferson was also in debt by over $100,000 at the time of his death, so his beloved Monticello and his slaves (and most of his property) were auctioned off to pay his substantial debts. (Equivalent to about $23,000,000 in 2005 terms.)
Jefferson is arguably the most eloquent and forward-looking of all the founding fathers, and his absense at the Constitutional Convention still has repercussions to this day. Consider that we would not have the Bill of Rights, if Jefferson hadn't rushed back from France (where he was the ambassador) upon seeing a draft of the Constitution that John Adams sent him. He was so furious that there was no enumeration of the rights of man that he risked a month long sea voyage with his children just to come back to America and demand its inclusion.
However. To get back on topic, I have sincere doubts that Jefferson would approve of his name being used as an excuse for bare breasts and cursing to be transmitted to the masses. He was, above all, a man of decorum, and more than a little chauvanistic. He once wrote to Abigail Adams that, "The delicate sex has no place in the world of politics, and their entry into it would be degrading to both."
I think he would be shocked as to the degradation of our culture, and especially at the lack of understanding and concern that most people have for their own government.
I believe it was Bobcat Goldthwait who said, "Almost everyone can sing the theme song to Giligan's Island, but how many people can recite the Bill of Rights?"
Look, we're willing to research what our children watch and make informed decisions about what is appropriate for our children to watch. Wahhh! Mean old Conservatives!
Conservatives don't need this "technology". We already know how to change a channel when we want to.
...then this morning my manager decided to replace the foundation when I was finishing putting on the shingles.
My, what scintillating reparte' you have used to cast aspersions upon my intellect. Verily I bow before your superior intellect and rapier wit.
I figure, if you're going to live in a fantasy world, I might as well fuel your fantasy of having a blinding intellect. You've definitely proven that you are too blind to open your eyes.
Don't bother replying to this, because, like you, I won't bother reading it.
Sigh, from the "you guys" comment, it's obvious that you didn't take the time to actually read my post. I could tell you that I've run McKitrick and McIntyre's algortithm, I could tell you that I have a hundred results with everything from red noise to sine waves as the input and that Mann's equation continually produces "hockey sticks" on all of them. I could publish code and graphs and raw data, but you would choose not to read them or pay attention, just as you failed to read my previous message.
I could tell you how I have reverse engineered the http://climateprediction.net/ source code to see how their model worked and found it woefully inadequate for even the simplest of models.
I could tell you all these things, but you wouldn't read them, just as you failed to read my previous post. For you, the conclusion is already there and messy facts must be ignored to support the conclusion. Like most Anthropogenic Global Warming advocates, you have made your cause a religion, rather than a Science. Mann is your gospel and no amount of proofs will change your mind.
Feel free to save the world from Dihydrogen Monoxide while you're at it.
Nice try. I've spent twenty years in the industry. No, the "algorithm is not enough" because how can I possibly know that they coded it correctly. And while I can grab other tools to perform this analysis, it's exactly McKitrick and McIntyre's point that using those tools does not produce the "Hockey Stick".
As for me being an open source advocate, it just goes to show how little you know me since I have released *nothing* in the open source domain.
Maybe you'd like to check my resume before making assumptions about my coding skills.
Now go away before you make me lose karma.
Excuse me, but how would you know what's involved in Mann's analysis? The whole point of TFA was that Mann refuses to publish his source code. You can point at McKitrick and McIntyre all day and yell "bad science", but you can also download and run their source code and try it yourself.
Which is exactly what you cannot do with Mann et.al.'s work. You must accept a priori that his work is correct, something that every peer reviewer should have rejected out of hand. I know if I were reviewing any work that used a computer model and I couldn't look at the computer model's source code and data, I'd reject the results immediately. Period. I don't care if it showed global warming was a total myth. Heck, I wouldn't care if it proved the sky was blue. No code, no approval. The fact that Mann's work was accepted without this level of transparency is a bigger "tell" against all of the current Anthropogenic Global Warming hoopla than anything else I can think of.
Why refuse to publish your code unless you have something to hide?
As one programmer pointed out, "I can prove global warming is increasing the temperature by 0.1 degrees centigrade per decade. I'll just write a computer program where T=Y * 0.01, and graph T. Then I'll publish the results."
When Mann refuses to publish his source code, it engenders the exact same level of confidence.
So, now someone's reputation is all that's important to their scientific work? Better throw out relativity because that was written by a lousy patent clerk.
You do know that Mann writes this website, right? You do realize that the source of your argument (http://www.realclimate.org/) is a shill for Mann and his cronies?
Second of all, there was a flaw in the original algorithm that was pointed out by McIntyre and McKitrick before they even got to the bad data being put into the equation.
And, to top it off, Mann's equation always produces hockey-stick graphs, even with randomly distributed data.
Don't point at Mann's own site as a defense of Mann.
Except that 99% of the greenhouse gasses from a coal plant are in the form of CO2, whereas 90%+ of the gasses from a hydro plant are released in the form of methane, which has an effect equivalent to 21 times as much CO2.
So, the hydro plant releases three times the carbon, and it does it in a form that's effect is 21 times more powerful than CO2 on the environment.
Once again, the "filth-belching" coal plant is the cleaner of the two, even if we take into account the fact that the vegetation sequestered the carbon from atmospheric CO2, it's returning methane to the atmosphere which will have a worse effect on the atmosphere in general.
Hydro; a clean, infinitely renewable resouce.
Sorry, but hydro is not "infinitely renewable" as it is really just an expression of solar energy. Riverbeds move, climate changes, and reservoirs fill with sediment. Second, we have already dammed something like 50% of all the available waterways for power to produce something like 7% of all the needed energy on the planet. What are we going to do to get to 100%? Additionally, damming rivers is devastating to the downstream environment. 200 years ago the Colorado River drained into the sea of Baja, now it just dries up somewhere in Arizona...
And finally, hydro power is not clean! Several studies have shown that the average hydro plant produces more environmental destruction and greenhouse gasses than a similar (in power production) coal plant. So your "clean" energy source is worse for the environment than a filth-belching coal plant. Congratulations.
Me, I'd rather have a nuke plant...
Looking at ice core temperatures over the last 400,000 years there are several significant temperature cycles. Would like to see an explanation of those cycles.
Well, by definition, given the rise of civilation in the current inter-glacial period of 10,000 years, we can rule out one factor. Man.
The earth has been going through vast temperature cycles from the Medieval Optimum (when orange groves blossomed in Berlin) to the last 10 glacial periods where the North American continent was buried under two miles of ice. In all of those cases we can rule out fossil fuels. Your line about this being the ideal climate is misleading. Europe of the early middle ages was a far nicer place to live, with Berlin being like the Florida coast, and England knowing only sunshine and a few brief snow-fluries in the dead of winter. When the vikings landed in Greenland, they didn't name it that because of all the glaciers...
So, if we know it's not humans burning fossil fuels, what does that leave?
The only answer is natural processes. The largest factor on the environment is the sun. Consider that we could take *all* the CO2 out of the atmosphere and experience only a 1-2 degree centigrade cooling trend. However, remove 1% of the sunlight, and the earth cools by 3-4 degrees centigrade.
The earth's orbit precesses, the axis tumbles 23 degrees every 30,000 years, and the orbit of earth fluctuates on a similar timescale. Several studies have linked nearly all temperature changes in the history of mankind to solar activity during the same period, and there is no other explanation during the previous 390,000 years of climate cycles. By your own argument, you have ruled out man.
You have also fallen prey to the "Hydrogen myth" that a switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen will make the world clean. Like all those who follow this myth, you don't grasp the basic concept of the hydrogen economy, namely, that Hydrogen is just a really efficient "battery". We must use all the power we get out of the hydrogen and more (second law of thermodynamics) to generate the hydrogen in the first place. That power must come from other sources, such as fossil fuels or nuclear power.
CO2 scrubbers are no picnic either. CO2 is scrubbed using LiOH (Lithium hydroxide), which then forms lithium carbonate, water, and oxygen. (if I remember the sequence off the top of my head). So, what is the problem? Well, if we mined every pound of lithium on the planet, we might get a years worth of CO2 out of the environment, and then we're left with millions of tons of lithium carbonate. If we electro-chemically reduce it back to Lithium Hydroxide for re-use, we release, you guessed it, CO2. So we'd be trading greenhouse gases for toxic waste. Doesn't seem like a good trade-off.
There's that understanding non-conservative view-point that never, ever, paints people with a broad sterotypical brush, as opposed to us bigoted, red-necked, bible-thumping, gun-toting conservative tree-killers.
Besides that, you've confused coservative with Fundamentalist Christian. The two are not synonymous.
Has it ever occured to you that I might be a conservative that does not believe the Earth is 5983 years old and was created on September the 1st at 9:00 AM?
Has it ever occurred to you that a conservative such as myself has concluded that evolution is a fact, and that the creationist story is exactly that, a story?
Has it ever occurred to you that a well-educated, college graduate with a degree in chemistry, physics, math, and computer science might look at the current "evidence" of anthropogenic global warming and find it laughable?
Has it ever occured to you that I can look at the full data set and see that the temperature swings of the climate are at best *partly* related to CO2 concentration, and 95% plus correlated to solar activity?
Does it ever bother you that even climatologists have admitted that a 0.1% increase in solar output would have the same effect as doubling atmospheric CO2 concentration? Further, that the ACRIMM satellites have shown a steady 0.05% increase/decade in exactly that solar output level for the last three decades?
Does it bother you that despite CO2 levels increasing linearly since 1900, we have a 30 year period of overall climate cooling from 1950-1980? During the same period, solar output was the lowest it's been in the modern era.
Does it bother you to know that the very study cited in the original article used data from models that were driven using a "Slab" model of the ocean that is woefully incomplete, and to make up for it, they inject actual measurements into the model to drive it? Do you realize that this means the models are simply returning the same data that was put into them, namely the very same measurement data they were then checked against? Does it surprise you that there is a close correlation?
Do you ever consider that many "good" things for the environment are misguided? Did you know it costs more in resources and money to recycle paper then to grow new trees and manufacture new paper? Did you also know that this is true for practically all the items we currently recycle with the exception of aluminum? Do you realize that the U.S. Paper industry sequesters over 20 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year? Recycling paper is, therefore, increasing CO2 emissions.
Did you know that, despite your prejudice, most conservatives are in favor of doing things that are truly good for the environment? For example, forest burns put millions of tons of carbon back into the atmosphere, while turning old, dead trees into lumber sequesters upwards of 20 million tons of carbon each year in the United States. Despite this, environmentalists see the cutting of *any* tree as damaging to the environment.
You do realize that the "Red States" are mostly agricultural? No one who has to work the soil every day is in favor of damaging it. The same people who pulled the "R" lever a few months ago are the ones who put food on the table and spend their lives working outdoors every day, growing more plants then you'll plant in a lifetime. They want clean water, and good soil more than you can imagine.
Did you ever consider that conservatives know they must breathe the air and drink the water as well as liberals? Do you really think that corporations would dump as much toxic waste into the environment as they could if that darned EPA guy would just turn his back? Did you know that Ted Turner is the biggest polluter in Montana?
Everybody wants clean water, right? I mean what's with Bush being against cutting down arsenic in the water supply? Well, consider that the cuts would have saved 1 life every 10 years in an area the size of Phoenix. In the meantime, the increa
"That damn patent clerk Einstein sent us a paper claiming that Isaac Newton got it all wrong. What a crackpot! Doesn't he know science is only done by scientists!"
Science, at least real science, is all done by the one guy who disagrees with everyone else.
Please prove that you can read beyond a 5th grade level by checking your claims before posting. Fact: 2004 was the 4th warmest year on record, 1998 is the warmest, 2002 second, and 2003 third. Seems rather interesting that the trend is down, exactly the same trend as solar output. (1998 was the strongest ElNino year in recorded history and is considered spurious, even by climatologists.)
So, research your claims, your intellect can only benefit...