By We haven’t heard much from the global warming clergy since the ClimateGate scandal and the latest CO2 data will probably keep them in hiding for now:
The U.S. Department of Energy has just published its estimates of global carbon dioxide emissions for the year 2010, concluding emissions rose by 6% from 2009 to 2010. This constitutes the largest rise yet recorded and means global emissions are rising faster than any of the scenarios advanced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 report. Global warming activists are claiming the 2010 rise proves global warming is even worse than previously feared, but exactly the opposite is the case.
The new emissions data support the arguments of skeptics asserting carbon dioxide emissions do not impact global temperatures as much as IPCC computer models predict. In light of the 2010 data, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by fully a third since the year 2001, yet global temperatures have not risen during the past decade. Global warming activists argue that carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary factor in global temperature changes, yet global temperatures show no change despite a 33% increase in global carbon dioxide emissions. The fact that global temperatures are not rising despite such a significant increase in carbon dioxide emissions provides validation of skeptical arguments, not a cause for heightened alarm. [Forbes]
You can read more at the link.
6:24 pm on November 12th, 2011 1
Let’s say the above argument is true and there has been no increase in the global temps since 1998. In 1998 there occurred the biggest, hottest oceanic El Nino on record AND the sun was in a hot phase. The Earth’s temp spiked to a record. Since that time and a few years later we have come so close to that temp that they are tied.
However, it is important to realize that when we reached these ties in temperature the ocean was in a cooling phase and the sun was in a cooling phase.
That is the sun and oceans were making us cooler and CO2 was making us hotter. So even with this cooling we tied the record several time.
There is a huge amount of heat building up to tie these historical temperature records. The only thing that has increased is the CO2 concentration and that provides the extra heat … not by being a generator of heat … just a big blanket keeping heat in the earth’s atmosphere.
It will be very interesting in a few years when both the sun and El Nino will be at a maximum to see whether this historical record will be broken. I predict it will be shattered with as big a spike in heat as 1998 was over the years before.
6:32 pm on November 12th, 2011 2
Do the scientist account for heat that is absorbed in the heat exchange process for all the reported melted ice recntly?
9:09 pm on November 12th, 2011 3
Yup, nothing much. Except when a major skeptic reversed his opinion a couple weeks ago, saying his own data confirmed findings by the majority of the scientific community.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/climate-skeptics-perform-independent-analysis-finally-convinced-earth-is-getting-warmer.ars
2:56 am on November 13th, 2011 4
This is patently false. Methane is widely believed to be a major contributor to global climate change, perhaps even more than CO2 because, although it makes up less than CO2, it has 21 times the effect per mass.
And if Forbes gets that wrong, one wonders what else they got wrong in their analysis.
3:29 am on November 13th, 2011 5
Besides, temperatures went up this year. It’s warm enough to walk outside with just T-shirt on some days, and we’re well into November. Back home (my home is on the coast of the North Atlantic Ocean), my friends and family can’t believe they are getting +25C weather in late October. One of my friends in Ontario told me it was still warm enough back there for his family to go for a dip in his outdoor pool in late October (something he’d normally stop doing in late August).
4:34 am on November 13th, 2011 6
All of you who know the difference between climate and weather, please step forward to voice your valid opinion on Global Warming.
Not so fast, there, Teadrinker.
Everyone does realize the difference between the maximum and minimum mean global temperatures from 1860 to now is…
…POINT eight degrees Celsius.
You did all catch that, didn’t you?
That doesn’t exactly translate to an alarming and permanent global trend for November swimming weather.
Sure the graphs all display centuries on the X axis and .1 degree increments on the Y axis… or it would look like a flat line… which wouldn’t stir up the emotions that promote carbon trading schemes.
There are some serious problems in the world that negatively affect the population in huge ways… from economic chaos to overpopulation to energy availability to water supply to truly toxic pollution to emerging resistant diseases (which could take care of the rest)…
…and the amount of money, attention, and effort put into Global Warming alarmism detracts from real problems without helping those currently in need… or the coming generations who will face the same-but-amplified problems…
…but it sure does make its biggest proponents important and wealthy… allowing them to live a lifestyle which IN NO WAY reflects any belief in any real harm coming from Global Warming.
And the little people at the bottom who buy into it all rank alongside OT 1 Scientologists, starry-eyed Amway peddlers, and guys who think “but MY bargirl is different”.
You people are suckers.
And, until you address the actions of those promoting the Global Warming agenda, you will be treated with the same respect as suckers.
5:23 am on November 13th, 2011 7
The temperature where I am is a full 50 degrees colder than it was just 5 months ago! Global warming, maby in another 7 months!
Thanks for the great news GIK
6:27 am on November 13th, 2011 8
Kill all the cows and termites and half the worlds people population. WE MUST SAVE THE PLANET !!!!! Do it NOW or it will be too late !!!!!
I blame Obama —- and Political Correctness of course.
7:44 am on November 13th, 2011 9
There’s a cult that is teaching this made by a Vietnamese lady She calls for people to stop eating meat.
We must be kind to animals… errr… doesn’t mention that you’d have to kill all those cattle.
8:30 am on November 13th, 2011 10
200 North Koreans stuck in Libya because regime WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TO RETURN
8:32 am on November 13th, 2011 11
Oops, thought that was the open thread…
10:19 am on November 13th, 2011 12
Well, instead of killing the cows, we could start by no longer feeding cows things they don’t naturally eat. Like corn, cement, etc., which their bodies cannot properly digest, which require antibiotics (thus making our best defense against killer bacteria gradually ineffective through overuse) and produce far more methane gas than they otherwise would.
Grass-fed cows is the way to go.
10:23 am on November 13th, 2011 13
In many (but not all) ways, it’s the opposite. The solutions to many of the “problems” causing global warming go hand in hand with solutions that would reduce pollution overall and the detrimental side of the human footprint (e.g., returning factory farmed meat to a natural diet instead of one that has adverse health effects).
1:11 pm on November 13th, 2011 14
My temperature dropped today. Around 3 this afternoon, it was 45 now it’s 34. That is a drop of 11 degrees – and proves there is no Global Warming!
I consider there to be a direct link between the sale of coats in the months of September and October and the drop in temperature in November. Every year they sell coats the temperature drops.
Wait, maybe the cause for the drop in temperature is directly related to the harvesting of dent-corn. When they harvest the dent corn, the temperature drops a few weeks later.
Both these could equally be the cause of the cold weather.
1:55 pm on November 13th, 2011 15
Chickenhead#6: There is demonstrable evidence of periods of cooling and heating of the earths surface. Ice ages followed by periods of heating. The economies of the world-in particular successful Capitalist countries depend upon fossil fuels. As you are well aware of the enemies of these countries are hell bent on destroying capitalism, ergo their efforts to perpetuate the myth that humans are destroying the planet. Unfortunately the”Environmental Whackos” are able to convince otherwise normal clear thinking, functional people they are on to something. Amazing. Then again enough of
the mind numb robots elected a guy that did not possess an
iota of qualifications to be the President of the best Country
on the planet. Hopefully that mistake will be reversed next Nov. Sadly, the hoax of mankind being responsible for climate
changes will linger on. Love your comments! Thanks
5:39 pm on November 13th, 2011 16
“Then again enough of
the mind numb robots elected a guy that did not possess an
iota of qualifications to be the President of the best Country
on the planet.”
I agree, although we have a prime minister in Canada, not a president.
Food for your thoughts: climate change denial is a purely American thing, like creative design.
5:56 pm on November 13th, 2011 17
#6,
Oh, please. Are we affecting the climate? The evidence is there. If you’re going to pump C02 in the air, it’s bound to have negative effects. Is it the only factor at play? Of course not. I was writing here about the cyclical nature of deep ocean currents (roughly peaks every 75 years, peaked roughly 20 years ago) and how it affects atmospheric levels of C02 before the concept even occured to you.
Carbon offsets are a scam and a means for people who live in North America (biggest polluter overall) to feel less guilt about their lifestyles without really doing anything which affects it (Woohoo, I took the bus to go to the movies (where I gorged myself on popcorn and a jumbo pop), so I save X amount of carbon…What about walking 2km to get a bucket of water?) But, global warming deniars, as a general rule, are no better because their denial is aimed at justifying continuing polluting.
6:44 pm on November 13th, 2011 18
This stops all AGW arguments cold,
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3146&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
About 1000 AD the world was hotter then it is now, since then it’s been steadily cooling as we’re in an interglacial period. Recently that cooling slowed down, flat lined and is slowly reversing. Before then it was hottest at approx 1700 BC before it started getting colder again. Before 10000 BC we were in a fcking ice age with global average temps being WAY under what they are now. There was even a period when Antarctica was not under ice *GASP* the dinosaurs must of been driving SUV’s and melting the arctic ice. Obviously they died because of DGW (Dinosaur caused Global Warming).
You can clearly see that the world’s average temperatures goes through cycles of up and down, rise and fall. This cycle has been going on for millions of years, without humans being involved. Our tiny contribution to green house gas’s won’t even register in mother nature’s thermometer. We can talk all we want about CO2, the dominate greenhouse gas is H2O vapor otherwise known as clouds. It has been demonstrated that clouds form a negative feedback loop not a positive one. The more water vapor you have (%97+ greenhouse effect) the more high atmosphere cloud cover you get which serves to reflect solar radiation (sunlight) back into space and thus less reach’s the surface to heat up the planet. It actually balance’s itself out strangely enough.
The AGW theory’s of fireball earth have been mostly debunked, you can only “alter” data for so long until non-believers start to do their own studies. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the world is not warmer, not even close. According to the 2007 IPCC models we should be 3C+ hotter right now, it should already be “too late” as by this time we’re into a irreversible CO2 positive feedback loop. Their theory holds that once CO2 levels reach this high the world will keep getting hotter and hotter with no way to slow it down. Of course that hasn’t happened, we’re not burning up and Al’Gore is comfortable in his Florida beachfront house, you know the place that was supposed to be flooded already.
6:49 pm on November 13th, 2011 19
Ohh and guys, being warmer is a GOOD thing. Historically all life on this planet has done better when it’s hot, humid with a CO2 rich atmosphere. During the hottest period when CO2 levels where more then double what they are now, the earth enjoyed an explosion of biodiversity that has never been seen since. The world could stand to get a good 2~3C warmer, would increase food production and animal reproduction.
Going the other direction has an extremely negative effect for life on this planet. As you get colder things stop growing and eventually die. The last big Ice Age wiped out most of the plant and animal life on this planet. Long winters and cool summers means death to planets and therefor the animal food chains that depend on them. Fear the cold not the warmth.
8:22 pm on November 13th, 2011 20
Yeah, being warmer is wonderful. Unless, y’know, you’re living in a coastal area. Goodbye, Tuvalu! Not to mention global warming is predicted to cause harsher weather patterns.
World temperature’s only gone up 0.8 C in the last hundred years, sure. Okay, sea levels may only rise by 20 to 60 cm. Pretty small, right? Except that means massive land loss.
Here, have some Wikipedia. This is what’s predicted to happen from a “small” change: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
But, hey. I’m sure the vast majority of the scientific community (y’know, the guys who actually know what they’re talking about) is in on the conspiracy. That must be it. But oh no! They didn’t account for the armchair scientists with no formal training! The arrogant conspirators will fall!
Seriously, I’m curious: do you guys have any scientific training whatsoever?
8:48 pm on November 13th, 2011 21
Anyone else notice the Warmers NEVER address the big-boy questions?
…like why do the biggest peddlers of global warming not live like they really believe in global warming… or why past higher temperature global climates/higher CO2 levels didn’t end the world… or why warming is even a bad thing.
Etc.
Suckers.
Teadrinker and Glans contantly vomit up talking points and half-truths… but never really say anything concrete… while ignoring valid questions and avoiding logical observations.
As with most Warmers, actual discussion with them is like trying to tell the spaz kid there is no Santa Claus.
9:26 pm on November 13th, 2011 22
I certainly didn’t link to a summary of why global warming is bad in post 20. Nope. Never addressed it. And there definitely isn’t any sort of green industry serving people trying to live like they believe in global warming.
Major extinction events sure don’t correlate to significant swings in the climate. Certainly not the Cretaceous-Tertiary, Permian-Triassic, or Ordovician-Silurian.
And there’s no way anyone’s noted recent past effects of global warming. Oh, wait, they totally did. http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
Come on, really? There’s not delving into the deepest annals of scientific literature, and then there’s not bothering with five minutes on Google to see if maybe, just maybe, the points you say haven’t been addressed actually have.
But, hey. Apparently we’re just vomiting up talking points and half-truths without saying anything concrete. Whereas the science to back up your claims is… oh, wait. Where is it?
9:40 pm on November 13th, 2011 23
Running out of a freshwater supply due to Himalayan glaciers melting and freakish weather disrupting major food production areas will get our attention.
10:45 pm on November 13th, 2011 24
Joe… your comment was painful at every level.
“Yeah, being warmer is wonderful. Unless, y’know, you’re living in a coastal area. Goodbye, Tuvalu!”
Goodbye, Tavalu. Hello Canada, Siberia, and the Northern Passage… a fine trade, actually… assuming your fear-driven worst-case scenario is true.
“Not to mention global warming is predicted to cause harsher weather patterns.”
…yes… predicted by those pushing Global Warming and all the benefits (to them) that come with it.
Reality has NOT matched the predictions at all… the more intellectually honest Warmers agree that there has been no change in extreme weather… just changes in population density and media dissemination.
“World temperature’s only gone up 0.8 C in the last hundred years, sure. Okay, sea levels may only rise by 20 to 60 cm. Pretty small, right? Except that means massive land loss.”
Your Wikipedia link shows the sea level rising 25 cm since the mid 1800s… not exactly the end of the world you claim the next 25cm will be.
What’s wrong with Warmers? Regardless of what their own “evidence” clearly shows, the End Of World is still neigh.
The reality is that any sea level rise will happen over decades… and people adapt quickly. The world is full of ghost towns and full of new cities… and nobody ever notices at the timescales involved…
…and it is always economically more sound to move the population than solve (the probably unsolvable) problem.
“But, hey. I’m sure the vast majority of the scientific community (y’know, the guys who actually know what they’re talking about) is in on the conspiracy.
The world is FULL of “conspiracies” of convenience and shared values by people who “know what they are talking about”… and global warming is where the money currently is.
The same type of “conspiracy” proved the existence of Iraqi WMDs… the financial wisdom of sub-prime loans… the sound accounting of Enron… the safety of asbestos, cigarettes, leaded gasoline, and Ford Pintos… etc., etc., etc.
It even insured Europeans believed the sun revolved around the earth for hundreds of years.
These, and COUNTLESS other examples, are “conspiracies” where hundreds or thousands of people knew the truth… or could reason it out… but chose not to for reasons ranging from apathy to job security.
And, in cases where it promoted their other ideological or financial agendas, they knowingly suppressed the truth and promoted untruths… both personally and institutionally.
Global Warming is just another one of these “conspiracies” in which everybody involved in promoting it gets a piece of the pie to keep it going… trying to draw more attention to themselves with increasingly outrageous claims… which are seldom (never?) backed up with reality… sometimes resulting in retractions when the rest of the community believes they have dangerously gone too far into the territory of the unbelievable which risks the entire scam.
“Seriously, I’m curious: do you guys have any scientific training whatsoever?”
Yes.
…which is why it is impossible to be alarmed over Global Warming based on the very unscientific alarmist outcomes being pushed on the public by an obviously agenda-driven movement…
…THAT DOES NOT ACT LIKE THEY BELIEVE THEIR OWN STORY.
Sucker.
11:47 pm on November 13th, 2011 25
http://w3.newsmax.com/a/mar10/
Al Gore Shocked by ‘The Great Cool-Down’
Is global warming over?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/10/19/how-to-make-money-off-of-global-warming-fears/
12:04 am on November 14th, 2011 26
Like how the warmers pointedly avoided that link that shows the past global temperatures and how we are actually in a cold period right now. They immediately assume that more CO2 = out of control temperature / weather and then go on to argue the results of that. Of course it’s already been demonstrated that more CO2 does ~not~ lead to out of control warming, it barely changes anything. The alarmists got all ya’ll out of whack, did you ask at any point in time what the main greenhouse gas is and what is the distribution? I wasn’t kidding when I said 97% H2O vapor. The remaining 3% is CO2 and Methane / others.
The whole AGW theory was that increasing CO2 would cause a positive feedback loop where more H2O causes even more H2O to get into the atmosphere. They based this theory on how lower atmospheric cloud formations tend to keep heat in better and this vaporize more water from the ocean. What they didn’t study was the difference between upper and lower atmosphere cloud formations. While lower atmospheric formations do indeed keep heat in and cause the temperature to go up, it’s been demonstrated that upper atmosphere formations do the exact opposite by reflecting sunlight and actually cool the planet. Thus as you start to vaporize more H2O from the ocean and cloud cover goes up it enters into a negative feedback loop that prevents he run-away super scenario that was theorized.
But this is all an aside, the leftists do not care about the physics or science involved. They only care about forcing change onto people and redistributing the worlds wealth. They have created this as an “environment” issue and using it to bludgeon people into changing their life style to whatever the leftist thinks is right. If it wasn’t for this they would create some new scare to try to get money and have a hand in world governments policy. Do people seriously think driving electric cars (powered by coal) and drinking latte’s is going to reduce the worlds energy (and thus CO2) needs? It wont’ even scratch it. No to accomplish the amount of CO2 cuts needed you’d have to commit genocide to half the worlds population, no bones about it. You’d then have to force the majority of the remaining half into the stone age. Of course the leftists desire to be the choosers of the slain, it’s perfectly fine if ~other~ people suffer and die provided it’s not them or their family. Worst form of hypocrisy, the kind where the antagonist actually thinks their superior because of their hypocrisy.
You want to “do your part” for CO2 / world hunger / environmental preservation / reduction of the human population? Get a gun put a bullet it in, put it to your head and pull the trigger. There you just reduced the human population by one, and if you can get enough people to volunteer to do this (leftists don’t like to start wars) then you can accomplish all your environmental goals. If you don’t like guns then use a kitchen knife or a rope, a little messy but it’ll get the job done. If you don’t want to do this, if your desire to continue living is too strong to allow you to sacrifice yourself for the “greater good”. If you come up with various excuses to continue breathing, then welcome to being like the rest of the human population that you so despise. The policy’s the leftists pursue would destroy civilization as we know it, they would result in a sort of “clean” genocide where billions die to lack of power / food (transportation makes lots of CO2) / disease and basic human necessities. They desire to shut down all the nuclear / coal / gas power plants upon which the overwhelming majority of the world relies on. They would replace them with plants that are 18% efficient over their lifespan (produces an average of 18% of rated power) and that require more surface area then is available in the entire world.
So yeah, they would rather kill someone ~else~ with disease / hunger / exposure then kill themselves with a bullet. Cowardly along with being a hypocrite.
12:46 am on November 14th, 2011 27
“There was even a period when Antarctica was not under ice *GASP*”
Dude, that’s when Earth wasn’t tilted (theory is that the axis shifted after a huge meteorite struck Earth…You know, like the one which is believed to have caused dinosaurs to become extinct) and Antarctica was further north than it is now.
12:49 am on November 14th, 2011 28
#19,
You’re missing a huge part of the equation…pollution. Do you really think excavating and burning oil is environmentally sound?
12:53 am on November 14th, 2011 29
“Do people seriously think driving electric cars (powered by coal) and drinking latte’s is going to reduce the worlds energy (and thus CO2) needs?”
Two words for you: solar energy. While you’re politicians (dinosaurs) are arguing about, well, nonsense, the Chinese are cornering the market of solar energy cells.
1:16 am on November 14th, 2011 30
Teadrinker,
You do realize how few watts can be collected from sunlight and how many watts are in a horsepower, right?
Solar has its use… running electronics, computers, LED lighting, etc… and should be encouraged.
The power requirements for a car are orders of magnitude higher.
1:18 am on November 14th, 2011 31
@29,
Not even close, off by a factor of 100. And I already talked about that, you were just too blinded by your faith to listen. I said there isn’t enough surface area on the planet to provide via Solar nor wind. If you covered every square km of land mass with a solar panel you would have enough to power the USA in 2005. This is under the assumption that we kill off the rest of the worlds population so that the only people alive and needing power are in the USA. Are you advocating mass genocide to get the land to build your solar panels? Thought you leftists were against conquest and all that.
Here is a good presentation detailing wind power and the actual numbers. You won’t read it but then that’s your bad.
http://www.slideshare.net/JohnDroz/energy-presentationkey-presentation
Only viable “clean” power production is nuclear. One nuke plant replaces 10 ~ 100 coal fired plants and produces less radioactivity then those plants. You did know that uranium is inside coal right? It’s burnt and the uranium particles are released into the atmosphere as uranium oxide that winds up back on the surface.
“You’re missing a huge part of the equation…pollution. Do you really think excavating and burning oil is environmentally sound?”
Nope I hate Oil, but it’s better then Coal and Wood. And … solar / wind doesn’t replace Oil. This shows you little you actually know about power production and that your just repeating talking points from TV. You have two different types of power (actually three but that’s a bit deep), base load and peak load are the ones we need to talk about here. Oil / Coal / Nuclear provide base load which is power that is ~ALWAYS~ provided 24/7/365. Its the power that must be generated every second of every day, without base load you get brownouts. Peak load is power that is only generated during peak usage times, it’s only needed a fraction of the time and only to match what base load / load following don’t provide. Don’t have peak load and you get black outs. Oil / Gas and some coal plants are used for peak load power. Wind / Solar can provide neither of those, it’s not 24/7 and thus can’t be base load, and it’s unpredictable / uncontrollable and thus can’t provide peak load. I know your about to say “battery’s”, which would demonstrate you have little knowledge of how power storage works. You can only store power for a limited amount of time using super capacitors (battery’s are too weak for industrial power plants). Also as you use that power you need to be able to replenish it on demand. Its the on demand part that wind / solar fail, you can’t predict exactly when your going to be able to replenish it and thus are forced to over-provision to ensure you don’t get black outs during peak periods. You basically get plants that are down 99%+ of the time just so you can have power for that 1%. Solar has 18% average power production of plate value. Meaning a 100kw solar plant will only generate an average of 18kw of power so your forced to build six of them at 600kw plate value to produce that 100kw you needed. The average power production is primarily driven by day / night cycles and cloud cover not the efficiency of energy conversion so even a perfect 100% unobtanium solar cell wouldn’t produce over 33% plate value.
And … less then 1% of electricity in the USA is oil generated, that’s as of July 2011. Most is Coal, then Gas and Nuke, then Hydro and “renewables” then oil. Oil is only used for peak load, for that short time when you need more power then base + following can produce. It’s far more common to be used for industrial transportation, something that electric can’t even touch. You won’t be seeing electric 18 wheelers, 10t fork lifts, or cargo carriers anytime in the next five decades.
Get back once you actually know what your talking about, rather then what you see on TV.
1:29 am on November 14th, 2011 32
And why are you still posting TD? Don’t you believe in your own faith? Shouldn’t you go reduce the human population by one? You do believe in what your saying right? What you are asking for is people to die, how can you ask another to die for your cause when you aren’t willing to lead by example.
Or do you think your like Al’Gore, you can be as wasteful as you want as long as you pay money to someone to “offset” it.
1:50 am on November 14th, 2011 33
Something else before I step off my soapbox. Proponents of the “green energy” group actually don’t want cheap plentiful energy to be made available. If tomorrow they discovered “blue energy” *wink*, this amazing source that was 1/100 the current cost yet had zero environmental / health impacts the leftists would rage and riot against it. The reason is simple, human quality of life is based on the availability of energy. The more plentiful energy is the high QoL the average human has. Thus cheap plentiful energy would mean a direct increase in the QoL of all nations in the world. Meaning more playstations, more cars, more clothes, more happy meals, more computers, more games, more sports, more of everything that your average leftist rails again. We would have more lights and a bigger population, more of everything. And this runs counter to the idealized romanticized third world lifestyle that the leftist desires for everyone ~other~ then themselves. Living in tune with nature means digging a hole to take a sh!t in and dieing of an infected cut in your arm. Living in a green unpolluted world means living in a mud hut / tree and having half your children die before their teenagers. It means average life expectancy of 30~40 instead of 70+. It means bathing once every week. It means suffering in the cold of the winter, starving and dieing of exposure or malnutrition. It means wars as each tribe of people fight the nearest ones for land and resources. Ultimately it means erasing over 1000 years of human progress, most notable the past 200 years.
2:13 am on November 14th, 2011 34
Wait .. something TD said doesn’t seem right.
@27
“Dude, that’s when Earth wasn’t tilted (theory is that the axis shifted after a huge meteorite struck Earth…You know, like the one which is believed to have caused dinosaurs to become extinct) and Antarctica was further north than it is now.”
Holy Jesus batman, WTF are you smoking? Seriously is this your limit on scientific knowledge and base physics understanding? You seriously think a large extraterrestrial impact shifted the ~PLANETS~ axis?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysmic_pole_shift_hypothesis
Do you realize how massive the earth is? Due to laws of conservation of momentum and fluid dynamics, the amount of kinetic energy required to cause a pole shift is … wow .. astronomical literally. That much kinetic energy impacted into this planet would have three distinct and immediate effects. First being the completely annihilation of the planets atmosphere as it’s vaporized into space. Second being the completely shattering of the planets crust, we’re talking stuff like the scenes from the Movie 2012. Entire continents would be blown apart and into space, even a big possibility the planet would crack due to the inner parts being liquid and not solid. Third being the complete and abrupt annihilation of all life. At best we’d look like the surface of mars, at worst there wouldn’t be a planet.
And even assuming that the planet didn’t crack or the atmosphere didn’t vaporize or that large amounts of surface didn’t get ejected into space, the torque produced from such a kinetic event would rip the planet apart. The planet would be lifeless.
Now onto the real reason the planet’s axis seems to change over time. The earth isn’t circular nor is it’s orbit an even oval. We actually have a small spin on our orbit and it’s slowly changing at a rate of 1 degree per million years or so. This change is largely responsible for the cyclic climate, no two years have the same energy input from the sun.
Not only that, but the Sun itself is orbiting the super massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. The rotation period is approx 250 million earth years. Other stars in the galaxy are also rotating, some faster then others. We’re just now beginning to understand how utterly complex galactic motion can be. Gravity is a weak force, but it’s constantly present over immense distances. Even now the sun and all the planets are experiencing an incredibly minor gravitational tug from the center of the galaxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
TD the idea that you honestly believe in a dooms day scenario is utterly unfathomable. You’re here trying to tell ME about clean power / environmental change / planetary climate and yet you have zero grasp of basic high school physics. How much other sh!t do you have stuffed into your brain that your blindly believe because you “saw it on TV” or “read it on the intarwebz”.
2:23 am on November 14th, 2011 35
Just for you TD, someone who did the math on exactly what would be required to change the planets axis.
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4334/could-life-survive-a-pole-shift-caused-by-an-asteroid-collision
“Let’s begin by choosing coordinates. Let the orbit of the earth define the x-y plane. Assume that just before the collision the earth’s orbital axis is pointing in the x-direction, that is (1,0,0). I’ll assume that the earth absorbs the asteroid, and that after the collision the axis has been changed to (sin(27),0,cos(27)) where 27 is the degree measure of the earth’s axis currently. So the relative change in angular momentum for the earth is
(1,0,0)−(sin(27),0,cos(27))=(0.55,0,−.89)
which is a vector of length 1.05 and so the angular momentum of the asteroid has to be 1.05 times the angular momentum of the earth.
Make the approximation that the earth is a sphere of constant density. Then its angular momentum is given by 0.4MeωR2e where Me,Re are the mass and radius of the earth and ω is its angular rate of rotation. We have
Me=6×1024kgRe=6.4×106m,ω=2π/(24hours)=2π/(86400sec).
I’m using sloppy approximations here; the earth is not constant density, I’m not using the sidereal day, etc. This gives 7×1033kgm2/s as the approximate angular momentum contributed by the asteroid.
The formula for angular momentum is mass x velocity x radius. This is maximum when the radius is maximum; for an asteroid hitting the earth this happens when the radius is equal to the earth’s radius, i.e. 6.4×106m. Dividing the asteroid’s angular momentum by this give its linear momentum:
Pa=7×1033/6.4×106=1027kgm/s
The reason a relatively small asteroid can wipe out all life on earth is due to the kinetic energy it carries. Upon collision, the kinetic energy is converted to heat. If the asteroid is large and fast enough, the heat will increase the temperature of the atmosphere enough to boil off the oceans and even vaporize the salt deposits left over.
Since kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity while momentum is only proportional to velocity, we will assume that our asteroid is moving as slowly as possible. The escape velocity of the earth is 11 km per second; to achieve a slower velocity an asteroid would have to be very lucky. So in calculating the kinetic energy of the asteroid, we’ll assume a very conservative speed of 5 km/sec.
Putting 1027=5000m we find the mass of the asteroid as 2×1023 kilograms. Assuming a specific density of 5, or 5000 kg per cubic meter, this gives a radius for the asteroid of 2000 kilometers or a diameter of 5000 km. This is far more than enough to destroy all life on the planet.
The asteroid’s kinetic energy is
0.5×2×1023×(5000)2=2.5×1030 Joules
=6×1014 megatons.
In other words, the collision would result in the release of kinetic energy equal to 600 million million hydrogen bombs going off, each with an equivalent energy of one million tons of high explosives. The earth’s surface area is 500 million square kilometers or 500 million million square meters. So the energy release is equivalent to having a 1 megaton bomb going off on each square meter of the earth’s surface. And since the vaporized rock from the blast is lighter than rock, this vapor will condense on the surface and apply its heat to the surface.
For a video of a 500 km asteroid hitting the earth (1/1000 of the volume necessary to change the earth’s axis) see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiZU42sn6w
”
So the absolutely slowest possible impact would still wipe out all life, vaporize all atmosphere and water, eject large land mass’s into space, and destroy the planet.
As he said, the equivalent of having a 1 megaton nuke going off on every square meter of the earth’s surface.
2:50 am on November 14th, 2011 36
What’s sad is those backing the agenda of the uber elite do not realize they too would be left to die on the floor of their mud hut, after they helped (laughing jet setter) AlGore and friends achieve their quest.
No matter how many carbon credits they bought.
Nice job Someotherguy. All forms of blind faith should be drug out, kicking and screaming, into the light and bashed with facts. Warming is just another religion.
3:57 am on November 14th, 2011 37
Someotherguy,
Allow me to rock your world: I agree with you 100%. On nuclear power. It’s easily the safest, least polluting form of generation available, and the anti-nuke crowd drives me nuts. I do agree with them that old Gen II designs need to be shut down, but they need to be replaced with safer modern designs. Coal and oil, though, are awful in terms of safety.
I’m going to set aside AGW for the simple fact that I don’t have the time to devote to writing walls of text. Obviously none of us are going to budge there, and the topics already been well covered by more qualified people.
Let’s look at it from a different angle. Much of the green movement focuses on alternative energy and improved efficiency. Wind and solar may not be perfect, sure, but they’re a hell of a lot safer than coal and oil. And there’s something to be said for reducing dependence on foreign oil. But I agree that nuclear should be the baseline.
Better efficiency is a good thing from an economic standpoint. LEED buildings may cost more initially, but they save quite a bit in lifecycle costs. Getting manufacturers to reduce standby drain on electronics is fairly cheap and greatly boosts power savings, thus reducing the need for more plants. Reusing materials is often cheaper, plus we don’t need to pull more out of the ground; save it for later.
You don’t believe in AGW. Alright. But do you believe that we shouldn’t take steps to reduce pollution? Regardless of whether or not it’s causing global warming, it causes plenty of nasties in the here and now. I wouldn’t want to live in Beijing or Mumbai; I’d probably hack up a lung.
So, here’s my question: what are your complaints?
7:00 am on November 14th, 2011 38
Chickenhead, Someotherguy: Great in depth analysis. I learned
a lot from you guys. Your comments are going into my archives
for future reference. Once in awhile I bump into the pointy
headed, plastic banana, good time rock & roller type “Dudes”
and will be prepared to lock horns on this subject. I know my
efforts will not change any of their minds but I feel an
obligation to try.
9:06 am on November 14th, 2011 39
ChickenHead and Someotherguy, that was some great reading material. Helped spend he time between classes in a constructive manner. I’ll look into it more deeply when I get home.
1:30 pm on November 14th, 2011 40
“Obviously none of us are going to budge”
People budge all the time.
The reason nobody is budging here is because, as is typical, Warmers NEVER address the questions Skeptics ask.
Instead of relying on tired excuses like, “you aren’t a scientist” or repeating the same exaggerated talking points we are constantly barraged with from the dumbed-down pop-science media, how about answering common sense questions.
The first one is…
In this age of Skype, why are climate summits held in exotic locations with private jets, limousines, world-class food, and absolutely no effort to reduce any type of carbon footprint… yet the result is always a panicked lecture from the attendees that the world is about to end and everybody needs to Do Something… mostly involving transfers of wealth from the end-consumer.
In any other situation, would this behavior not indicate a scam?
A follow-up question might be…
The world has been cooler and the world has been warmer. What makes Warmers believe we are somehow currently living EXACTLY in the perfect narrow band of acceptable global temperature?
…especially when the two warmer periods in history brought about tremendous development for the areas which were warmest.
Generally, Warmers simply ignore these kinds of difficult and unanswerable questions… as I notice not a single point I made was addressed by any of the Warmers here.
Instead of a de facto admission of having no idea what you are talking about by answering with silence, you still have another chance to give honest answer to my honest questions.
But, before answering, be aware that many here are hard to bullshyt.
4:33 pm on November 14th, 2011 41
Ha! My setting the subject aside is a matter of me having better things to do with my time than arguing on the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s easy to predict the flow. I say something, you counter. You say something, I counter. Ad infinitum, with neither of us budging. The thought alone is tiring enough, let alone actually spending hours going back and forth.
Dumbed-down pop science media? There are more than a few professional-level articles in well-respected journals. Come on, you can’t seriously be claiming there are no detailed scientific studies. Regardless of whether or not you agree with them.
As far as fancy climate summits with world leaders? Well, that’s because they won’t do anything without exotic locations and fancy food. But again, there are more than a few researcher conferences held in mundane locations with mundane food (if any) and scientists taking the bus in. Not to mention the amount of collaboration that does happen over the internet.
Who says anything about living in the perfect band? The general consensus within the scientific community (agree or not, it *is* the general consensus) is that global warming will have severe consequences and that humans are contributing. Reducing emissions will help to minimize the effect. The world may still suck, sure, but it’ll suck less.
I’m assuming that one of the warmer periods in history you’re referring to is the Medieval Climactic Anomaly. First, it’s still not well understood whether that was worldwide, or to what extent warming actually occurred. Sure, it helped the Vikings colonize Greenland. It also caused droughts elsewhere. More warmer isn’t necessarily more gooder.
And yeah, I think “you aren’t a scientist” is a pretty reasonable objection. Again, the vast majority of scientists in the field agree that AGW is occurring. By disagreeing, you’re saying that you know better than their decades of training and experience, plus billions of dollars in experimental data. You can disagree, sure, but it’s a tall order to say a layman can understand extraordinarily complex climate models better than people who spend their lives on them.
And really, at one point or another your objections have been addressed by actual scientists who know what they’re talking about. Before saying they *never* address the questions deniers ask, you might check and see whether that’s actually the case. Hell, I’ve personally answered some of your questions. They might be short, simplified explanations, and you might disagree, but don’t claim your points get totally ignored.
Oh, and as for why neither of us are budging? Among other things, the argumentative theory of reasoning, the trust gap, and confirmation bias.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19468_5-logical-fallacies-that-make-you-wrong-more-than-you-think.html
Did I just link to Cracked? Yeah, I just linked to Cracked. Bam. You know you’ve observed those in arguing with other people. None of us are so special as to be totally immune. Not me, not you.
But, again, I have better things to do with my time than argue on a small (but great, which I think we can all agree on) site on the internet. Or even on a big forum on the internet. Or, hell, on the internet in general. Regardless of the side, or of the dispute. It’s like getting into an argument with some of the Occupy Wall Street crazies. Or a bunch of monkeys. There are no winners, and in the end we all come out covered in poo.
8:15 pm on November 14th, 2011 42
@41,
Science is NOT settles by “consensus”, its not a democracy. Science is settled by empirical proof backed by theory and experimental data. It’s independent of political interests, its transparent and it’s skeptical by default. The core part of being a scientist is being skeptical of ~EVERYTHING~. To demonstrate.
There was a consensus and the worlds scientists were positive that the earth was at the center of the universe and the sun rotated around the earth. Until a single man, Galileo proposed otherwise, he was heckled, attacked, ostracized and harassed by the political powers of the time, even had his life threatened. Ultimately he was correct, the worlds consensus science was wrong.
There was a consensus of the worlds scientists that Newton’s laws of physics were immutable and explained everything. They were absolutely positive that the science was settles on motion, gravity and energy. Until a German physicist dared to disagree and come up with his own unified theory of space and time. He supporters were ostracized, how could a single ~German~ scientist dare to dispute what the great minds of the world agreed upon. That scientist’s name was Einstein and his theory of spare and time become the cornerstone of our current understanding of the universe. And while Newton’s physics are a “close enough” approximation for motion, they are not sufficient to describe gravity and space time at very large and very small dimensions.
And now here we are again, a great political interest in “global warming” involving trillions of USD and world shifting power. This interest has backed tons of “consensus science” with lots of money. Anyone who disputes this is attacked and ostracized. Sound familiar?
I once believed in AGW, that’s why I can sit here and call you and everyone else out on exactly whats going on. Once I saw the sheer amount of effort being spent on suppressing other people’s views and results, the amount of money they were trying to get people to spend, and the amount of world change they were trying to legislate, that is when I got suspicious. Started doing my own investigating with my limited understanding of physics. Absolutely NOTHING the AGW theory says was making sense, the planet doesn’t work the way they were thinking it does. We do NOT have a delicate climate that somehow needs to be protected. Quite the opposite, mother nature is a cold icy bitch who doesn’t care about you, your loved ones or your children. The beautiful winter wolf would gladly eat your 2yr old alive. The absolute last thing we can change is the weather.
It’s not about budging, moving or any such nonsense. It’s about using rational critical thinking skills, the things that separate you from apes. When Al’Gore buys beachfront property in Florida and has a mansion that use’s more electricity empty then a suburb, then goes on TV and tells us we have to sacrifice and live “responsibly”, that’s when I doubt what he’s saying. It’s when the worlds “climate leaders” take private jets, ride in limousines and stay at five star resort hotels with every expense and amenity paid for, then complain that we all need to “do our part” and “sacrifice” for their “greater good”, that is when I doubt their motive. Their trying to sell you something plain and simple. Their telling you to sacrifice but they have no intention of doing the same. They want you to live in squalor while they live in opulent luxury. And you call them Heroes?
Anyhow to your questions.
I’m actually an environmental conservationist. I grew up in the northern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Maine. I love lakes, streams, forests and wild nature. I want my future children to enjoy the same things I did as a child. A want their children to also do the same. I want to reduce pollution as much as possible, I even recycle.
I’m also a rational being and know you can’t have everything. Oil sucks but we’re not using it for electricity, we’re using it for industrial transportation. To “reduce” Oil consumption we’d have to reduce industrial transportation, basically go back to a local economy only lifestyle. This would destroy our economy as business’s couldn’t sell their products to a wide market, and you couldn’t drive to your job. The USA is sitting on the worlds largest Oil supply, something the people here probably have no idea about. Also we can create Oil, or rather hydrocarbon fuels from water and carbon if need be. It’s not cheap but we can do it. Hydrocarbon fuels are used because their energy density is significantly higher then any other alternative (other then nuclear). Battery tech is no where near as good, LiH has a very real physical limit to the amount of energy it can store, its not enough to replace hydrocarbons. All other current options require the mining of rare earth metals from China, the process to get those materials absolutely destroys the environment. So if your driving a car with an advanced battery, then your actually responsible for the destruction of the environment, just in China safely hidden away.
Now that car, it needs electricity now, we need cheap electricity. We’re using dirty radioactive coal for the lions share of energy needs. It’s cheap and most importantly, it’s already been approved decades ago. The leftists, the EXACT same people arguing for AGW, refuse to allow nuke plants to be built, their defeating their own argument. Instead they try to bandy “alternatives”, really just Solar and Wind.
Which brings me to the greatest scam on the planet, the new Solar and Wind industry. Their taking money from the governments of the world hand over fist, and producing next to nothing out of it. Did you know that the cement required for ONE wind turbine produces 250,000 pounds of CO2? Did you know that the “efficient” solar panels for plants require lots of rare earth metals, gotten by strip mining in China. Building one big solar plant is more environmentally destructive then building a single nuke plant. The environmental destruction is just kept safely away from us in another country, China doesn’t allow people to photograph the strip mining. Now lets get to the power density of those “renewable” plants. Solar / Wind have approximately the same average of 18% plate value, some regions favor one of the other but you get 18% either way. Thus you need to build 6x as many “renewable” plants then conventional plants. One nuke replaces 10~100 coal plants, it takes several km worth of wind / solar to replace a single coal plant. When you look at it from a land usage point of view, you realize that there simply isn’t enough land in the world to use solar / wind. In all honestly the only two alternatives to nukes are geothermal and hydrothermal. Hydrothermal is actually the power of 5x nuke plants on average, but requires that you destroy a coral reef and build a deep ocean geothermal plant (taking heat from the super steam vents on the oceans floor). Of course all those solar / wind plants would require the destruction of the local ecosystems around them. You can’t have environmentally friendly ~AND~ high energy production without going nuclear. And then you have to reprocess the waste, or find a mountain to store it in (reprocessing is better).
As for the “every little bit helps” argument, bullshit. Why waste resources in persueing environmentally unfriendly, industrially unproven and economically inefficient alternatives. Take those resources and invest them into better infrastructure, more research, more education, more reprocessing. Take that money going to wind / solar and build nukes with it, would get 100x the value on the dollar. Throw a few more billion into fusion research, and not the jobs / career program that the ITER / Tokamak has become (another demonstration on what happens when politicians take over science). A viable fusion solution would immediately end all energy problems for mankind, FOREVER. I’m talking spaceships and flying cars, technology that we already have yet lack a viable compact power source for.
I could go on and on about the things you could do with that money other then throw it into the pockets of Al’Gore. Did you know that right before he made the propaganda film “An Inconvenient Truth” he deeply invested into carbon markets and “alternate” energy consulting firms. The movie was nothing more then a carefully disguised and well executed product ad. That man man made tens of millions off the proceeds from his firms.
Putting it plainly, AGW supporters are ignorant fools. Your either ignorant because you lack the capacity to think for yourself, or your simply too lazy to make the attempt. Instead you (the royal you) just spout off whatever you heard on TV or read on the internet with no actual brain power put into it. No self study, no research, no careful deliberating with yourself over who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. Seriously the guys got caught red handed lying and working to stifle dissenters (Climate Gate), caught manipulating data points then “losing” the data and code and thus preventing any independent confirmation of the numbers and methods. Really how dumb can you get.
8:54 pm on November 14th, 2011 43
Now to debunk all that “melting ice” / “running out of fresh water” bullshit that is about to come.
People like to run their mouths about the West Antarctic ice shelf melting and how its the end of the world because waters will rise / ect.. and so forth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet
The WAIS is only 10% of the Ice mass of Antarctica. Also it’s resting on bedrock that is under the ocean, a large percent of the ice mass of the WAIS is partially buoyant, meaning it’s already been counted in the mass of the ocean.
Now lets talk about the OTHER Ice Sheet, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). Data is sketchy as the AGW’s have done a pretty good job on suppressing it, but it’s actually been gaining Ice Mass not losing it. The EAIS is shrinking in size but gaining in density, basically retreating back while getting thicker in the center.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/27/antarctic-ice-a-global-warming-snow-job/
What’s been happening is simple, as water is evaporated off the ocean due to 0.2c increase in water temperature its created atmospheric humidity, then it immediately condenses into snow and falls back down. Considering the EAIS is several times larger then the WAIS it ends up getting the lions share of the displaced water. In the end, ice ~mass~ (not size but actual amount) has stayed the same. The ocean’s water level is not rising, Al’Gore’s beachfront house is not in danger of flooding.
Now the arctic is a bit different, ohh NOES THE POLAR BEARS! The ice mass of the northern arctic is just floating glaciers, and yes they are shrinking (conveniently other glaciers are getting bigger across the world). Thing is, their already buoyant, their mass has already been counted by the worlds ocean level. You could melt the entire northern circle and it wouldn’t raise the water level 0.1 inch.
Which goes to highlight something everyone has missed. The earth is not a sphere, it doesn’t have isometrically equal distribution of mass, water or land. Magically dropping 1000 kg of water into the ocean will not cause the all the water on the planet to rise by the same amount, some parts will rise more then others. Gravity along with the torque of the worlds rotation cause’s the ocean to be higher in some places then others. In fact the water level and distribution across the world is constantly changing, land is now dry that used to be under water and places under water used to be dry land. This process happens slowly over the course of hundreds and thousands of years, but it does happen. We aren’t causing it, we’re just finally able to accurately observe it. Just because we can observe something, doesn’t mean that humans are somehow causing it.
9:43 pm on November 14th, 2011 44
Something I forgot to mention above, 90% of the worlds ice and 80% of it’s fresh water exist in the Antarctic, not the Arctic. And considering most of Antarctic is the EAIS, it’s a very safe bet that the worlds fresh water supply isn’t going to change. And when was the last time someone offered you a bottle of fresh water “from Antarctica”? Our real fresh water supply is from mountains and natural springs, basically underground lakes.
Really people, get away from the hysterical leftists and actually look at a map of Antarctica. You see that mountain range in the west, that’s the border of the WAIS and EAIS. Nearly all the research stations and monitoring stations are on the western peninsula. See that ginormous land mass, bigger then North America, that is the EAIS. The ice shelf that’s gaining ice mass. Kinda puts all those doomsday reports into perspective.
9:59 pm on November 14th, 2011 45
And some references for the above statements.
Peer reviewed research published in science magazine. Shows that EAIS growth more then makes up for the loss on the WAIS.
Published Online May 19 2005
Science 24 June 2005:
Vol. 308 no. 5730 pp. 1898-1901
DOI: 10.1126/science.1110662
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5730/1898.abstract
Newspaper article showing the clashing of pro-AGW marketers vs SCAR (The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research). These are the people responsible for compiling and chronicling all the research being done down there.
http://www.news.com.au/antarctic-ice-is-growing-not-melting-away/story-0-1225700043191
Newspaper was published in 2009, four years after the science article was published. Demonstrates that the leftists DO NOT CARE about actual science, they don’t even bother doing research, just make whatever claims they want and pay someone to publish it after the fact. They’ll take a small isolated case and extrapolate it to represent the entire world, even if there is research refuting their extrapolated data.
10:30 pm on November 14th, 2011 46
“Royal you”? Intriguing.
Ahem. Anyways. Certainly I agree, science isn’t by consensus. But for every Galileo or Einstein, there are hundreds or thousands of crackpots who have been rightfully laughed out of the scientific community. I’m not comparing deniers to crackpots, but in this case the majority of the scientific community has responded with “your hypothesis doesn’t match the data”.
I looked up the article you linked to in #43. It notes that its findings are consistent with the IPCC’s predictions.
In fact, let’s take a look at part of the IPCC’s 2007 executive summary: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html
(The whole report, if you prefer, is here: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf)
It pretty well covers many of the expected effects of global warming. And again, it takes what you’ve noted into account. That’s their job. In fact, the report itself covers a lot of what you’ve talked about.
I know you’re probably going to bring something up criticizing the IPCC, so I’ll go ahead and start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
On the whole, it’s being criticized for being too conservative in its estimates of damage. Oh, and here’s the InterAcademy Council’s review: http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report/Climate%20Change%20Assessments,%20Review%20of%20the%20Processes%20&%20Procedures%20of%20the%20IPCC.pdf
If you’re going to talk about CO2 emissions from power generation, by the way, you need to look at lifecycle emissions. Take a look at Table 8 (p. 2950) of this report: you’ll see wind ranks way down there. http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf
I think you’ll like this. It’s the report I show to the anti-nuke crowd: deaths per terawatt-hour. Morbid, but important. Take a look at Diagram 3 (p. 7). http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/strona_konferencja_EAE-2001/15%20-%20Polenp~1.pdf
For lifecycle costs, see Table 1 (p. 3) of the EIA’s paper. Coal isn’t actually all that much cheaper than wind. Gas is cheaper, granted. Capital costs for nukes are high in part due to poorly designed regulations. http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/2016levelized_costs_aeo2011.pdf
(The whole report, if you’re interested: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2011).pdf)
No, oil isn’t going away any time soon. Certainly not. If nothing else, the installed capital base is massive. But it *is* possible to reduce usage. Capital needs to be replaced; that’s where improved efficiency requirements come into play. Or gas taxes to take a more economic approach and encourage consumers to demand higher efficiency. Take the revenue and put that into energy research. (Politics, I know, I know.)
Don’t get me started on China’s monopoly on rare earth metals. That’s problematic from more than an environmental standpoint. But there *is* research into technologies that don’t require them. Many of the major electronics companies started boosting those programs once China decided to curtail supply.
For reference, by the way, one of my undergraduate degrees is in mechanical engineering. Scientific research and critical thinking are kind of important there. (Going for my master’s in international relations with concentrations in international economics, international law, and conflict management, though… oy. Not on the school side, but studying all the politicking the world runs on.)
… and it’s 12:30 at night. Yeesh. Interesting and educational (depending) as it may be, this is one of the reasons I hate arguing on the internet. I’m off to bed.
10:32 pm on November 14th, 2011 47
And the knock out punch.
Open Letter to the UN Secretary General, signed by 100 accomplished and noticed scientists in fields from geology to physics.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/un-signatories.html
“Dec. 13, 2007
Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction
It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.
The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.
Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:
Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.
The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.
Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.
In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see IPCC Working Group Schedule) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.
The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.
The current UN focus on “fighting climate change,” as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.
Yours faithfully,”
10:33 pm on November 14th, 2011 48
And, for the record, can we stop lumping all leftists (or rightists, for that matter) together? There are plenty of anti-science asshats on both side.
10:36 pm on November 14th, 2011 49
Nope, because the leftists as a group seem to ALL support AGW. I haven’t meet a leftist yet who didn’t subscribe to AGW like it was their religion. They seem to cling to it like it represents everything they hate about the political right. This is further enhanced by the fact that most scientists are conservative by nature. Doesn’t mean their “rightists” but the concepts of rationality often conflict with the liberal mindset.
10:37 pm on November 14th, 2011 50
GI your filter got my list of signatories. Can you please unearth it from the spam filter.
10:52 pm on November 14th, 2011 51
The letter’s in the link. Posting a big list of names when I can click the link is just wasting pixels.
Post #45, “the leftists DO NOT CARE about actual science”. Because, y’know, everyone on the left hates science. Really? Do I even need to get started with the list of people on the right who are unscientific? Scientific reasoning isn’t a partisan thing.
As for the open letter (post #47) itself, let’s put that in perspective:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf
The proportion of climatologists who believe human activity is a factor in global warming is close to 90%, and significantly higher than that in active publishers. Again, these are people whose job is to keep up with the literature. I would imagine most of them have read the open letter and were unconvinced.
10:52 pm on November 14th, 2011 52
Also, 12:52. Really, bed. Goodnight.
10:53 pm on November 14th, 2011 53
And here you go, the REAL start of AGW.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
“It’s hard to nail down exactly when the sky started falling, but certainly the work of Michael Mann provided its first global exposure. Michael Mann, a paleoclimatologist ( one who attempts to interpret the past climate through certain Paleolithic records, such as ice core samples, sea bed sediments, coral heads, and tree ring growth ), submitted a paper to Nature magazine in 1998 which, unfortunately, was not subjected to peer review before publication. In it, he offered what has now become known as the famous “hockey stick” chart, showing the earth’s temperature having been relatively constant for the past thousand years before suddenly skyrocketing upward at the dawn of the 20th century. His interpretation was that man’s production of CO2 in the modern age was obviously responsible for the sudden increase. It turned out to be one of the biggest scientific blunders of all time.
Look carefully at the chart above, which is the famous “hockey stick” chart. Note the horizontal scale is in years, stretching from the year 1000 to the near present time. The vertical scale is in degrees Centigrade, and note carefully that it is graded in increments of 1/10 of a degree. That means the wiggly blue section in the middle is actually only varying up and down by about a half of a degree. The baseline, as noted, is set at the average of the recorded temperatures from 1961 to 1990. Also note that only the red portion represents actual measured temperatures – the rest is based on the assumption that one can interpret past temperatures from examining ancient tree rings or ice core samples from centuries-old ice locked in glaciers. This is, at best, a marriage of apples and oranges – the handle being somewhat of an educated guess, and the blade being based on actual measurements using thermometric recording devices. Sort of like pairing the skull of a human with the jawbone of an orangutan. And finally, note that the chart is for the northern hemisphere only. This chart, unfortunately, became the foundation for the first report of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), which in turn provided the summary information and recommendations to the world’s governments. The Anthropogenic Global Warming panic was off to a rocketing start.
However, some folks noticed a couple of significant and fairly well accepted climatological history facts to be conspicuously missing. The first was the well-documented “Medieval Warm Period” where temperatures, at least in Europe as mentioned in our introduction, were significantly higher. The second was the “Little Ice Age”, a period in which the temperatures dropped so low the Thames River in London froze over.
How could this be an accurate record of the last millennium?
Let’s pause and mention that the data above is not “raw” data. Dr. Mann actually used about 70-80 data sets, and in each set he applied a mathematical analysis known as a principle component analysis ( PCA ) which seeks to extract principal, or significant component information from a widely varying set of raw data.”
Now Mann refused to give up the exact data he used nor the modeling he used for it. Someone else had to reverse engineer it. And thus..
“Along comes Steve McIntyre, a Canadian analyst, who spends two years of his own personal time reverse-engineering Dr. Mann’s PCA program. McIntyre subjects Mann’s PCA program to a “Monte Carlo” analysis – which inserts random data sets into the function – and discovered that no matter what data he fed it, the result was always the same. The arm of the “hockey stick” ( paleo-record ) always came out straight. In Dr. Mann’s case, the rising temperature of the Medieval Warm Period and the expected trough of the Little Ice Age had been completely erased. The hockey stick was broken. Fini. Kaput. We may never know whether Mann’s work was deliberately contrived to fit some personal environmental agenda, or just a colossal mathematical blunder.”
Basically no matter WHAT you did, Mann’s model always reported fireball earth scenario. You could put in -10c input temperatures and you still got the earth burning up and all of us dieing off. Either Mann did it on purpose, or he allowed his zealotry to override his rational and forgot to check his math. Also the publication was NOT peer reviewed, the only person who looked at it was Mann’s personal friend, the editor of Nature.
Now is where the “conspiracy” starts to emerge, and I do hate conspiracy stories. When the findings from the model were submitted to the source publication, they refused to publish it. First claiming “too long” then “too much math”. That’s right a publication dedicated to scientists and physicists saying “too much math”. The person doing the rejection was Mann’s personal friend, the editor.
“McIntyre submitted his work to Nature Magazine – since they were responsible for publishing Mann’s flawed research without peer review in the first place, but they reportedly rejected it, saying it was “too long”. He then shortened it to 500 words, and re-submitted it, but again it was rejected, this time saying it was “too mathematical” or words to that effect. Heaven forbid any publication calling itself an “International Weekly Journal of Science” from actually publishing any science that hinged on mathematics. Let’s all push a yard stick into the snow, measure the snow depth, call ourselves “climate scientists”, and get published in Nature. In the end, McIntyre turned to the internet and its true freedom of the press, and today he is known to every serious climate scientist on the planet as the man who broke the hockey stick.”
Further analysis of Mann’s model turned up “a validation skill not significantly different from zero”. Basically the data had between -0.9% to +0.9% chance of validating Mann’s research. It’s the scientific equivalent of saying bullshit.
“The National Academy of Sciences has found Mann’s graph to have “a validation skill not significantly different from zero” – i.e., the graph was useless. Note the corrected version, below, in which neither today’s temperatures nor the rate of warming are particularly unusual compared to the historical record. Thus, even the “global warming” of the 20th century was not even remotely a cause for the slightest alarm. It was all “much to do about nothing”.”
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
You can see what happens when you put correct data into Mann’s research. You get a graph that says the exact opposite of what AGWers say. That we are NOT warmer then the past.
Lots more graphs here, things the AGWers can’t explain and like to conveniently forget to mention and leave out of their research.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/search/label/graphs
Things from the average temperature of the ocean to the worlds temperature for the past millenia. Mann’s research focused on a VERY small geographic area, this is what was used for the 2007 IPCC report that started the entire craze.
10:59 pm on November 14th, 2011 54
@50,
That is because their ENTIRE field of study is based on AGW. Without AGW then they lose their jobs and grant money. Not only this, but the entire “climatologist” field is incredibly young with the sole focus on researching “global warming”. Other science fields consider it a pseudo-science, akin to sociology and political science. Basically it’s a science without empirical methods or hard fasts, it deals in emotions.
This is why I call you guys idiots, your blindly following people who are out to take your money. Your entire faith is based on ONE man who either had an agenda or horribly screwed up his math. What resulted afterward was the political left using it as a money making and power brokering scheme.
The reason for the signatories is to shove in your face that these are world renown physicists, geologists and biologists. With the chief signer being.
A. Zichichi, PhD, President of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva, Switzerland; Emeritus Professor of Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, Italy
It also shows that the “science is settled” and “there is a scientific consensus” is completely and utter bullshit.
11:09 pm on November 14th, 2011 55
@50,
And anyone on here can tell you, I’m no friends with the right wing nuts. Nor am I friends with the left wing nuts. In the end, their both just different flavors of the same thing, extreme activism.
I have moderate centrist views, chief amongst them being that each person needs to go find out things for themselves. Instead you sheep just bunch together and believe anything your Shepard tells you, both left and right.
I’ve posted immense amounts of data, arguments and facts that are so rock solid that their left out or blatantly ignored. You can’t argue with the EAIS growing vs shrinking, yet you AGWers still scream about “ocean levels rising” and “ice melting”. What kind of deranged fucked up mindset do you have to have to keep believing the Antarctic ice is melting when it’s been proven to not be. What kind of deranged fucked up mindset do you have to have to believe the world is hotter now then 1000 years ago when it’s been demonstrated that the MWP existed and prior to that the LIA. Do you guys seriously believe that the MWP / LIA didn’t exist? Do you believe that the world hasn’t been going from hot -> cold -> hot -> cold for millions of years, unaided by humans. And that our incredibly small contribution has somehow completely altered this?
Or really … that somehow a giant meteor not only killed the dinosaurs but changed the planets axis of rotation (killing dinosaurs is possible, changing the rotation … not likely).
In 50 years their gonna look back during this time the same way they did the Pitdown man of the 1912.
“This was the amazing discovery of a skull and jawbone in which was quickly named the Piltdown Man and which all the world’s archaeologists immediately accepted as a hitherto unknown form of early human. It appears no one bothered to examine it closely, assuming that other scientists had thoroughly investigated and vetted it. The hoax wasn’t uncovered until 1953, when it was learned that the skull was that of a modern man and the jaw that of an orangutan. Seems no one had ever bothered to take a really close look at the artifact.”
11:10 pm on November 14th, 2011 56
Dammit. This is why I don’t argue on the internet.
One last link, since I’m sure I’ll wake up to more posts. http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
It’s a personal site, sure, but it has responses to a number of points you’ve already raised. And while it may be a personal site, the author is in the field. I’d ask that you check your points against that site first. I’ve already put far too much time into this.
11:19 pm on November 14th, 2011 57
(That “dammit”, by the way, was in response to it being 1:10 AM. I hadn’t refreshed the page to see post #52 yet.)
I’ll post (later — not tonight) some data on funding for many of the denying scientists. The money argument cuts both ways.
11:21 pm on November 14th, 2011 58
@54,
Simply put, you don’t like your ideas being challenged or dis proven.
I know that site, it’s BLATANTLY bullshit. I mean like half the stuff on there is guilty of the exact same thing you see in the rest of AGW theory. It’s cherry picking one thing, then expounding on that one thing in an attempt to form a bigger argument by making assumptions that aren’t always true.
Example, Ice Melting vs AGW,
The AGW counter argument to Antarctica not actually melting is, wait for it.
“Antarctic ice growing isn’t incompatible with AGW theory, it might even support it”
Wait … hold the phone … If the ice melts then it supports AGW theory, if the ice freezes then it supports AGW theory. If the world gets hotter then it supports AGW theory, if the world gets colder then it supports AGW theory.
If we have more hurricanes in a particular year, then it supports AGW. If we have less hurricanes in a particular year, yep it supports AGW. If we have more earthquakes, gotta be AGW, less earthquakes, definitely AGW.
Or need I mention the British climate office predicting a warm ice-free winter of 2010, yet it was one of the harshest winters on record. In actuality the weather office predicted a harsh winter but the climate office told them to change their predictions because they weren’t in line with AGW theory.
Yeah that’s the people you want me to believe in. Change the record because it doesn’t agree with what we say, even if it’s proven otherwise.
Now go off huffing and puffing and pissed off. None of your arguments hold water because their not YOUR arguments. You didn’t rationally walk through the information, you didn’t spend years following the actual research (this has been a hobby of mine since 2007 when I read Mann’s report and thought WTF is this). No you hear some TV program supported by your political party, go read some more propaganda on the internet, then convince yourself it’s a righteous crusade. Your instructed to valiantly fight for your crusade and to turn a blind eye to their heathen ideas. Your a sheep, pure and simple.
11:25 pm on November 14th, 2011 59
@55,
Yep money is ALWAYS involved. This is why I ONLY trust my own judgement and rationale. Just because someone says something doesn’t mean I believe them, argument by authority is a logic fallacy. I base my mind on data and actual research, and I mean real research that doesn’t involved manipulated data. I’m one of those freaks that actually looks for error bars and data sets / models. Most if not all of the pro-AGW “research” are just reports where people took Mann’s modified data sets (he say’s he lost the originals) and recompile them and call it a study. Even the Finnish scientists, the guys who did the research that Mann used for his data, claim that Mann manipulated that tree ring information. He took their data and threw out the sets that didn’t agree with his theory on AGW.
Of course your not reading any of this, just the first three lines and posting your own info.
11:33 pm on November 14th, 2011 60
No. Simply put, I’ve already spent hours on this. I’m tired, and I have better things to do.
Are you saying your arguments are YOUR arguments? Nobody else thought them up? Hell, why does that even matter?
Heh, political party. I’m fiercely independent — I think both the Republicans and Democrats are (generally) jackasses. Though I’d probably vote for Huntsman if he somehow managed to get the nomination.
I’m not going off huffing and puffing and pissed off. I’m going off because it’s 1:30 in the morning and I need to get some sleep if I’m going to function tomorrow. *This* is why I avoid arguing on the internet. Because it always translates to spending huge amounts of time not sleeping.
11:35 pm on November 14th, 2011 61
#31,
Never heard of technological advancement? Larger windmills, more efficient solar panels? Oh, right. That argument is only valid when talking about the internal combustion engine.
#35,
Pshaw…The article you cut and pasted takes for granted that the collision took place when there was life on earth (Why? I don’t know. Does your source have some kind of religious bias?). In fact, the consensus is that the collision(s) took place before Earth had its current shape, at a time when proto-planets (large masses of matter) were colliding to form the planets as they exist now.
Oh, and continental drift, buddy. It’s been going on for billions of years, and it still going on now.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/antarctica/ideas/gondwana2.html
“Science is NOT settles by “consensus”, its not a democracy. Science is settled by empirical proof backed by theory and experimental data.”
Or so says the layperson with a chip on his shoulder…
Do you even know what a theory is? When scientists reach a consensus, it means that the majority agrees on a theory. Has anybody ever proven that you can’t travel faster than the speed of light? No, and yet the consensus is that it is. See what I’m getting at? You argument is a disingenuous one.
11:44 pm on November 14th, 2011 62
In the end none of the back and forth matters. It’s been demonstrated in more ways then need be that the current theory of AFW is false. According to Mann’s numbers the Oceans should of already risen well past the point of destroying coastline cities. We should ALREADY be well into the “fireball earth” scenario, but we’re not. Thus empirical evidence demonstrated the the current AGW theory is incorrect and it needs revising.
But that’s the thing isn’t it, there is NO single source of the AGW theory. Now that Mann’s been publicly debunked, there isn’t a single unified theory of exactly how AGW is working. No models currently exist that can predict weather more then a few days out, nor can forecast weather more then a month or two out. Without empirical data to construct a concrete hypothesis and thus have a target to do experiments against you don’t actually have a theory.
What we have now is a political movement / cause. Lots of things were being attached to the “AGW” bandwagon, lots of people were getting grants for their research by claiming it was for “AGW”. At some point in time you gotta pull back and objectively look at evidence to determine a course. I’m seeing environmentalists becoming involved in AGW, that’s wrong plain and simple. You do NOT mix activism and scientific studies / experiments.
One of the core concepts of scientific study is known as fallibility. Basically it means that anything postulated must have a way to invalidate it. You can’t call something science that doesn’t have a method to validate and test it against. Newton’s work on gravity required that he test objects falling to earth, an object not falling to earth would of invalidated his theory on gravity. Same with every scientist in the world, everything must have a test to disprove it. Otherwise it’s known as a pseudo-science. So what is the AGW’s fallibility study? What empirical test can be conducted to disprove AGW?
I’ll make an example, current string theory. String theory is currently classified as a pseudo science because there is no way to test for it. Without particle accelerators the size of solar systems we have no way to actually see if the theory is true or not. So even though it may be true, it can’t be called a hard science.
11:56 pm on November 14th, 2011 63
@59,
You’ve already been discredited, save face and walk away.
Numbers done were assuming perfect efficiency dumb ass, basically solar panels and wind turbines made of unobtanium. Current panels / turbines are FAR worse then what was theorized.
Umm did you read the fucking math? The planet gets DESTROYED, as in becomes part of the local asteroid belt. And for some reason it doesn’t, then it becomes unable to sustain life ~ever~. No atmosphere, no water, not much land mass, no hot core, no molten subsurface, no magnetic field.
Your a dumb ass because you failed to actually read what was presented. That math was done as conservatively as possible, it used an asteroid moving at 5km/s to get the lowest possible impact energy. Asteroids do not travel the universe at 5km/s, they move at 100+km/s. An actual asteroid hitting the earth what had enough energy and mass to actually move the planets axis would of just blown the planet apart. As I said, but you didn’t read, best case is the planet becomes like mars, worst is that there isn’t a planet. That theory was discredited almost instantly.
Scientists do NOT go to a consensus, they don’t agree, that’s the whole purpose of science. Einsteins theory’s state that the speed of light is the absolute speed of motion in the universe. Nothing yet done has been able to disprove this, YET there are still scientists to this day studying and attempting to disprove it and find a way to go super-luminal. Recently they found out that the speed of light is not absolute, a shocking finding that change’s most of astrophysics. Turns out dense gravity fields can distort the speed of light such that it’s lower. Certain types of particles are barely effected by gravity and thus are not effected by the dense gravity field. Turns out that in a dense gravity field neutrino’s can travel faster then light. So any light traveling near stars would not only be bent, but also slowed and distorted.
That is but one example of something far more concrete then AGW being revised.
If someone ever argues “scientific consensus” then their bull shitting you.
11:57 pm on November 14th, 2011 64
Comment stuck in filters again.
12:21 am on November 15th, 2011 65
Anyhow, this isn’t for TD / Joe. Its for the readers who might need more information to arm themselves against further AGW bullsh!t.
I’ve provided lots of hard info that pretty much refutes the entire AGW hypothesis that man made CO2 is making the world warmer and will lead to an out of control positive feedback loop that destroys the planet.
I’ve debunked the “ice is melting and we’re all gonna die” crap.
I’ve even demonstrated where the founder of AGW, Mann, completely screwed up his math. Whether on purpose or through incompetence. And then the further attempts to censor McIntyre from publishing the findings that Mann messed up his math.
If someone already has given their soul to Jesus *cough* I mean Mann *cough cough* I mean AGW, then there is nothing you can say to them to change their mind. It’s like arguing the historical existence of Jesus or the factual probability of Mary’s virgin birth, you can use logic and reason all day, but that never wins against faith.
All the pro-AGW folks need to do is show me factual evidence that man made CO2 is causing the earth to fry. And when I say show your going to have to meet the same stringent requirements that all science goes by (pseudo-science is excepted from this), hard data backed by empirical analysis with fallibility. Heck something as simple as error-bars and validation probability would go greatly towards the cause.
You know, you guys would be far more believable if there wasn’t this rush to take money “or else”. If the whole issue was open to discourse or rational debate that would help even more. This blind method of attacking all doubters with religious zeal discredits you more then you know. After all, the last time a bible thumper ran up to you and DEMANDED that you submit to JESUS so that JESUS would SAVE you, how did you respond?
5:01 am on November 15th, 2011 66
I declare *SOMEOTHERGUY* the WINNER!! Logic dictates this. I also like the “Jesus-Knife, in the ribs” at the end.
6:32 am on November 15th, 2011 67
SOMEOTHERGUY#61: Brilliant summation. I can’t imagine how
anyone can not read your simple, easy to understand logic backed up by what we know to be fact based historical discoveries and not come to the conclusions you have laid out. It is like a biography I saw on Ted Bundy. His mother up to the end when he was fried proclaimed the was not guilty. She was not dumb. An educated person that was in denial and refused to accept the ton of proof laid out in front of her to prove he was guilty. A Readers Digest article I read had an article titled “The death of Common Sense” and gave examples of how dopey we are getting in spite of all the info we have at our disposal.
7:39 am on November 15th, 2011 68
Someotherguy: let’s try this. Do you agree that greenhouse gasses (including CO2) in general cause a greenhouse effect?
8:01 am on November 15th, 2011 69
Nevermind. Finally having read through the entire op-ed linked in #53, I can see that site disputes the mechanism for CO2 causing a greenhouse effect. So the disagreement, then, is on a fundamental level.
8:18 am on November 15th, 2011 70
I’m going to go ahead and assume one source is going to be Gerlich and Tscheuschner, who follow the same line of thinking as that op-ed. Their article: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4
There have, unsurprisingly, been a number of articles disputing their findings, stating the physics they use is incorrect. Here’s a few:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.4324v1.pdf
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/upload/2010/05/halpern_etal_2010.pdf
(And, of course, there’s the requisite back-and-forth with G&T then disputing that science, and the other scientists disputing that, etc.)
So, in other words, it boils down to who one sides with in that argument. Would you agree with that assessment?
8:31 am on November 15th, 2011 71
#66,
You’re being too logical for him.
8:34 am on November 15th, 2011 72
#63,
You can sugar coat BS, it still tastes like BS. Once again, explain to me why this whole global warming denial phenomenon is American only? I classify it in the same trash bin as creative design…politically motivated American BS.
9:23 am on November 15th, 2011 73
Someotherguy,
Tell ya what. I *really* don’t have the time to continue debating this. I’m going to suggest you go to slashdot.org. It’s a popular website with the general science/tech community, and there are plenty of people familiar with the literature. I suggest you pose this to the community there.
… and, in the process of writing this, I notice that this week’s poll question is exactly what we’re debating. Please, head over there and post your argument; I’m sure you’ll find plenty of people willing to discuss it with you.
http://slashdot.org/poll/2272/what-is-your-position-on-climate-change
10:57 am on November 15th, 2011 74
With my sincere admiration, almost total agreement, and deep respect, Someotherguy put the knife in deep and repeatedly.
It seems cruel to step in and twist it.
Teadrinker…
…even though you have NEVER addressed ANY point/question I have ever presented on Global Warming, I will address one of yours.
“Once again, explain to me why this whole global warming denial phenomenon is American only?”
You know all those other countries?
The ones that constantly follow America and resentfully-but-eagerly gobble up the crumbs that America drops… and continually have their hands out for American generosity while burning with an internal jealous rage at America’s dysfunctional and carefree lifestyle that somehow still manages to be the leader in global contribution to everything from science to military to culture… especially when these countries proudly do everything by their theoretical/ideological playbooks and STILL come in a distant second place…
Or how about those other, other countries… with third-world conditions and angry populations… hateful… not at their own perpetual chain of never-ending failures at every level… but at others’ success… and, as working hard or smart or together is culturally out of the question, there is nothing left that can be done to improve their own situation which doesn’t involve taking things that others worked hard or smart for… even demanding that it is their “right”.
So.
Six and three quarter billion people are looking at how to get a piece of the American Pie… and, throughout American history, there has been an endless number of schemes to do so.
Global Warming is the current scheme… backed up by a few “Americans” who put personal political or financial gain ahead of patriotism or nationalism.
Many Americas consciously or subconsciously recognize this, resent it, and resist it… much like (wrongly) the metric system has been resisted or soccer (rightly) has been resisted.
It is the American way to do it the American Way… and it has worked out better for the whole world than any other way in history…
…and there are a whole bunch of stealth bombers, cruise missiles, and carrier groups that keep it that way, if y’all really want to push the issue, funksticks.
None-the-less…
If China becomes the global economic power some predict and America is pushed to the sidelines, you will see America, and Americans, quickly switch sides and be, at every level, a firm supporter of Global Warming Alarmism in an attempt to contain China’s productivity and global influence…
…just like other nations are doing to America now regardless of what is right or wrong or true or false.
Personally, institutionally, nationally, and with populations, there is an established behavior which shows, given the choice of (a) shared misery or (b) average conditions for oneself while the other guy gets ahead, the choice is almost always shared misery.
The whole Global Warming movement is a transparent demonstration of this and other well-known phenomena such as limousine liberalism, elitism, aspired inclusivity (1), etc.
So that’s the deal.
In the end, if you REALLY want to talk about Global Warming Alarmism as if it is a dangerous fact, America’s productivity to carbon emission ratio is so much greater than a bunch of wood fire-cooking, slash-and-burning, CO2 exhaling third-world peasants that a perfectly good case can be made that they should all be executed to make way for more productive Americans and Europeans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GHG_intensity_2000.svg
I might add that there have already been complaints by the “international community” (2) that greenhouse gas emission per GDP is “unfair” as it allows successfully growing economies to post favorable numbers based on cuts in emissions but still have larger absolute emissions due to increased productivity…
…because, to the perpetually unsuccessful, success should be punished…
…the professional peasant/leftist/under-achiever/dependent way.
So.
That’s the way it is.
PLEASE argue with me.
(1) aspired inclusivity – the desire to replace a small, meaningless, and unaccomplished life with a larger and seemingly important issue, message, or movement by attaching oneself to that cause and attempting to wield its power and credibility as one’s own… religions, cults, network marketing, militant homosexuals, feminists, white supremacists, afro-centrists, cosplay Jedi Knights and Trekkies, global warmers, etc., fall into this category.
(2) international community – (a) countries that do what is in their best interest rather than what is right, just, correct, or fair… but appeal to contrived emotions and speak of high ideals and grand values when trying to get their way. (b) all the crappy little countries that will never get out of the per-industrial age unless someone gives it to them… and will likely quickly squander that if someone does. Endless references upon request.
4:00 pm on November 15th, 2011 75
That was absolutely beautiful ChickenHead. A work of art. I’m going to print it out and put it in a frame on my wall.
This entire thread is going on hard copy. Just beautiful.
5:08 pm on November 15th, 2011 76
#74,
In other words, your explanation is jingoistic BS…Yeah, way th’ go, old buddy.
12:26 am on November 16th, 2011 77
Calling something “jingoistic BS” does not make it so…
…nor does address anything.
Typical.
5:26 am on November 16th, 2011 78
#77,
If it quacks like a duck…
8:16 am on November 16th, 2011 79
It works like this…
When one disagrees with something, to be taken seriously, one has to state the points one disagrees with, explain why one disagrees with them using clear reasoning and/or the presentation of facts, and then one has to propose an alternative explanation which fits the situation.
This is even more the case when one brags about all the advanced degrees one has… as many smart and educated people understand that getting an actual advanced degree in a solid subject from a respectable university requires the above skills… possibly to the point where they are applied by habit.
Now, as you requested, I explained why I believe “this whole global warming denial phenomenon is American only”. I did not explain why… as to many people, the reasons are quite evident once the situation is explained.
None-the-less, you certainly may disagree… but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to explain why you believe my interpretation to be mistaken.
A claim of “jingoistic BS”, ironically delivered in a single line of jingoistic BS, simply strengthens my position… as you appear to be intellectually incapable of refuting my writing… or it is simply the most reasonable interpretation of the facts and you cannot argue against reality.
This is the problem with leftists, warmers, and many other groups who base a lot of reasonable ideas off of completely incorrect fundamental concepts.
They respond to intellectual challenge with generalization, then emotion, then blanket condemnation, then silence… but they never really respond in any meaningful way.
Face it. Global Warming Alarmism is a myth… as you have helped to demonstrate through a complete lack of even trying to prove otherwise.
Suckers.
4:30 pm on November 16th, 2011 80
ChickenHead, my admiration for your logic only grows.
7:29 pm on November 16th, 2011 81
I second Retired GI’s “emotions”. It sure is a treat to see you
land those great knock out punches to the a-holes. Interesting
how they continue to embarrass themselves time after time
with the their nonsensical retorts. They have no idea how much
they are out classed. Chickenhead, you are certainly in my
opinion a key reason to keep up with ROKDrop. No dull moments
when you chime in.
8:39 pm on November 16th, 2011 82
#79,
“as you appear to be intellectually incapable of refuting my writing”
You assume much. I was underwhelmed by your argument, and so I answered accordingly.
PS. Go ahead, keep wasting all the time you want coming up with witty replies over the internet, trying to argue with me what will come of this world long after we’ve left it, because in the end I come out the winner because I instead chose to get work done on one of the articles I’m working on. So, tell me, who’s smarter?
PPS. Food for your thought: You’re not arguing against the conventionalism of Global Warming Theory, you’re arguing for an alternate definition, for a new convention. That makes you an hypocrite.
6:32 am on November 17th, 2011 83
Teadrinker: Enough already with the incoherent diatribe. You
have gone from amusing to irritating.
6:42 am on November 17th, 2011 84
#83,
Incoherent? Is conventionalism too big of a word for you?
7:41 am on November 17th, 2011 85
#84: Is the word DIATRIBE too small for you!
4:08 pm on November 17th, 2011 86
85,
How about irony? Clearly the word and the concept are foreign to you?
7:15 pm on November 17th, 2011 87
“(1) aspired inclusivity – the desire to replace a small, meaningless, and unaccomplished life with a larger and seemingly important issue, message, or movement by attaching oneself to that cause and attempting to wield its power and credibility as one’s own… religions, cults, network marketing, militant homosexuals, feminists, white supremacists, afro-centrists, cosplay Jedi Knights and Trekkies, global warmers, etc., fall into this category.”
This pretty much explains every activist on the planet. Especially the ones from middle class first world family’s. Their lives would be incredibly dull and meaningless without some great crusade or cause to attach themselves to. They found one with AGW, just like the people in the 70′s found one in AGC (Global Cooling). My mother was a hippie during that time and was involved in the exact same crusade, stop all industry and live as one with nature otherwise we’re gonna cause the earth to freeze. It didn’t catch on nearly as well as AGW due to lack of global internet and distributed media. Looks like the liberals learned from their mistakes since then.
Anyhow, what we’re seeing now is a phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Basically states that people are not rational thinking beings but instead cling to their ideals and beliefs even in the face of logic and reason. They will make excuse’s for every fallacy or logic hole in whatever they believe in while refusing to give the same to their perceived enemies. It leads to cognitive bias and confirmation bias, both are self reinforcing behaviors.
Another interesting psychological phenomenon to look into is illusory correlation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation
It’s the tendency for people to confuse correlation with causation. It also happens to be the source for many racial stereotypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
“The cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy can be expressed as follows:
A occurs in correlation with B.
Therefore, A causes B.
In this type of logical fallacy, one makes a premature conclusion about causality after observing only a correlation between two or more factors. Generally, if one factor (A) is observed to only be correlated with another factor (B), it is sometimes taken for granted that A is causing B even when no evidence supports it. This is a logical fallacy because there are at least five possibilities:
A may be the cause of B.
B may be the cause of A.
some unknown third factor C may actually be the cause of both A and B.
there may be a combination of the above three relationships. For example, B may be the cause of A at the same time as A is the cause of B (contradicting that the only relationship between A and B is that A causes B). This describes a self-reinforcing system.
the “relationship” is a coincidence or so complex or indirect that it is more effectively called a coincidence (i.e. two events occurring at the same time that have no direct relationship to each other besides the fact that they are occurring at the same time). A larger sample size helps to reduce the chance of a coincidence, unless there is a systematic error in the experiment.
In other words, there can be no conclusion made regarding the existence or the direction of a cause and effect relationship only from the fact that A and B are correlated. Determining whether there is an actual cause and effect relationship requires further investigation, even when the relationship between A and B is statistically significant, a large effect size is observed, or a large part of the variance is explained.”
This pretty much sums up the entire AGW theory. They incorrectly implied causation of a minor warming period with the correlation of mankind’s increased industrial activity without looking into alternative causes or complex interactions. This was the exact same thing that happened to Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), more commonly known as “cold fusion”. They actually did have some science but got so wrapped up in what they ~thought~ they were doing that they didn’t look close enough and ended up getting their carriers ruined. Current AGW proponents don’t want to go down that path and are doing everything in their power to keep at least the semblance of being right.
5:57 pm on November 18th, 2011 88
@87, I had a Jehovah Witness come by on sat morning. He showed me a drawing of a man working in the field and a sweet little girl bringing him some water.
He then asked me, “would that be so bad?”. I then asked him if he had ever bailed hay. He said that he hadn’t. I told him that the little drawing he had showed me looked more like Hell to me than Heaven. That if he knew anything about working in the sun bent over at the waist, he would never show that to any farmer ever again.
He was really put off by my pictures of Buddist statues on the wall and a bit bothered by the M4 (civilian version) that I was cleaning as he spoke.
He didn’t come back.
7:22 pm on November 18th, 2011 89
88. There’s only room for 144,000 of them up there bailing hay. I don’t understand why they want more competition.
7:45 pm on February 7th, 2012 90
THIS IS FALSE (KINDA) heat that is absorbed in the heat exchange process for all the reported melted ice recntly?
9:05 pm on February 7th, 2012 91
Was that a question? A statement? A sentence?
Global Warming Alarmism attracts stupid like unaccounted-for tax dollars attracts Good Neighbors.
9:11 pm on February 7th, 2012 92
91. LOL. Wut?
9:15 pm on February 7th, 2012 93
#91
I think it was an attempt to answer my question @2, even though it’s not in the form of an answer.