Based on my measurement of ambient light levels outside the last few hours, I'm pretty sure the Sun's never coming back.
Don't worry, the great sky serpent will eventually vomit the Sun forth again.
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Not here. We have had a series of record breaking cold years (until this year). You can look up the Polar Vortex, never has the state been that cold.Global warming is done, has been for decades, now that the globe is cooling in spite of CO2 levels.....Last year was the hottest year ever recorded... and broke the previous record by the largest margin ever recorded.
Global cooling? Delusional.
While certain areas did have record levels of cold, counting that as global cooling is only possible when you ignore the rest of the planet and year.
Even with the Polar Vortex factored in the average rate of temperature for the WHOLE of 2015 factored for the entire planet still kicks that year as the hottest one since tracking began.
While I can't speak to any where else in the world as I don't live there long enough to notice. I do live here. And here the summers were also unusually cool. We used to get weeks of massive heat and humidity in the summers... during the polar vortex cycle it was days of it instead. We are currently in the El Nino cycle that has changed the winter to warmer and probably means warmer summer is on the way. These things are cyclic. You do realize you are advertising your lack of objectivity when you START from the coldest time you remember (this blizzard of 78) and then claim the world is getting hotter... hmmm... the same crime those who are against these global warming claims are accused of. Seems pretty obvious both sides love to bend the truth now isn't it.
While I can't speak to any where else in the world as I don't live there long enough to notice. I do live here. And here the summers were also unusually cool. We used to get weeks of massive heat and humidity in the summers... during the polar vortex cycle it was days of it instead. We are currently in the El Nino cycle that has changed the winter to warmer and probably means warmer summer is on the way. These things are cyclic. You do realize you are advertising your lack of objectivity when you START from the coldest time you remember (this blizzard of 78) and then claim the world is getting hotter... hmmm... the same crime those who are against these global warming claims are accused of. Seems pretty obvious both sides love to bend the truth now isn't it.
Thing is.. observations of one local area are ancedotal. Climate analsysis involves parsing LARGE nunbers of data points, removing obvious errors from stattistic deviant readings and looking at the globe as a whole rather than a collection of observations such as yours.
Looked at in total, the conclusion from the data is inescapable. 2015 was a bloody hot year for the planet.
Of course... unlike others I wasn't trying to claim ANY global impact what so ever. I am just pointing out the WHOLE Earth isn't getting hotter. Some places actually got colder during this period.
I wonder what the actual unaltered data is. The problem with altering data EVEN to supposedly make it more accurate is that you are at the mercy of the people altering the data. One corrupt climate scientist can alter a LOT of data. And those he sides with get stuck defending his work or looking like frauds. PEOPLE are flawed. I suspect people like us will never know the whole real truth.
The best we can do is accept what we hear with a grain of salt and do our best to make the planet better for everyone.
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I wonder what the actual unaltered data is. The problem with altering data EVEN to supposedly make it more accurate is that you are at the mercy of the people altering the data. One corrupt climate scientist can alter a LOT of data. And those he sides with get stuck defending his work or looking like frauds. PEOPLE are flawed. I suspect people like us will never know the whole real truth.
The best we can do is accept what we hear with a grain of salt and do our best to make the planet better for everyone.
Oi!
There are multiple data sets maintained by completely different organizations using completely different methodologies... and the differences between them are tiny. Ditto the numerous temperature series based on proxy data. Even the people who have insisted that 'global warming is all a fraud' get nearly identical results.
So no... subscribing to ridiculous conspiracy theories is not 'the best we can do'. The Earth is not flat. The Sun does not orbit it. Climate scientists have not secretly been running the world for the past 200 years.
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I wonder what the actual unaltered data is. The problem with altering data EVEN to supposedly make it more accurate is that you are at the mercy of the people altering the data. One corrupt climate scientist can alter a LOT of data. And those he sides with get stuck defending his work or looking like frauds. PEOPLE are flawed. I suspect people like us will never know the whole real truth.
The best we can do is accept what we hear with a grain of salt and do our best to make the planet better for everyone.
Oi!
There are multiple data sets maintained by completely different organizations using completely different methodologies... and the differences between them are tiny. Ditto the numerous temperature series based on proxy data. Even the people who have insisted that 'global warming is all a fraud' get nearly identical results.
So no... subscribing to ridiculous conspiracy theories is not 'the best we can do'. The Earth is not flat. The Sun does not orbit it. Climate scientists have not secretly been running the world for the past 200 years.
Wow. Look at that impressive line of straw men you created there. I think you are your own worst enemy with that statement.
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Maybe you should look up the meaning of strawman before using the term. He didn't invent any position you didn't already take.
Really?! Find me my quote where I claim the earth is flat, or the the sun orbits it, or even that there is a group of climate scientists running the world! I can give you a hint, those positions are made up and I certainly never subscribed to them.
We have ALL heard the claims by some scientists claiming the numbers show the world is cooling. I don't believe them either. The world seems WAY more complex than a set of numbers can ever show. Trying to claim the differences between the world is cooling numbers and the world is warming numbers is insignificant is either silly or is proof that the margin of error is bigger than either side.
And yes he is his own worst enemy; both because those enemy straw men were planted by him AND because using such rhetoric only strengthens the resolve of people arguing against him.
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While I can't speak to any where else in the world as I don't live there long enough to notice. I do live here. And here the summers were also unusually cool. We used to get weeks of massive heat and humidity in the summers... during the polar vortex cycle it was days of it instead. We are currently in the El Nino cycle that has changed the winter to warmer and probably means warmer summer is on the way. These things are cyclic. You do realize you are advertising your lack of objectivity when you START from the coldest time you remember (this blizzard of 78) and then claim the world is getting hotter... hmmm... the same crime those who are against these global warming claims are accused of. Seems pretty obvious both sides love to bend the truth now isn't it.
I pointed out it was anecdotal, as in just my observations. As in not scientific.
Although credit for being the first person to impugn my objectivity for establishing a starting point. Clearly my parents conception timing of me was part of the climate change propaganda effort.
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I wonder what the actual unaltered data is. The problem with altering data EVEN to supposedly make it more accurate is that you are at the mercy of the people altering the data. One corrupt climate scientist can alter a LOT of data. And those he sides with get stuck defending his work or looking like frauds. PEOPLE are flawed. I suspect people like us will never know the whole real truth.
The best we can do is accept what we hear with a grain of salt and do our best to make the planet better for everyone.
Do you say the same things about people on the other side of the debate? Such as the oil/coal companies who make orders of magnitude more profits than climate scientists.
If you're looking for a conspiracy, wouldn't you first look at who is making the most money?
Well, there's the strawman conspiracy theory.The only reason we keep getting these hottest whatever's is because the "scientists" keep modifying the old records to make scientific adjustments to the data sets.
It is unlikely a true climate record even exists any longer.
Well, as the grass grows, it would sequester carbon as long as the straw didn't burn or biodegrade. But to have a noticeable effect on the climate, you're gonna have to find someone to build a whole heck of a lot of strawmen. ;)
Yes the anti-global warming people toss BS as well. I am a declared middle grounder.
I like the middle ground best:
"Don't panic. Do your best to clean up your environment without destroying yourself or the economy."
We can measure efficiency directly in terms of (for example) dollars/kWh. We don't need a supercomputer climate model to do that for us.
"Dollars/kWh" isn't an efficiency measure, but a price. As a reductio if the US dollar climbs another 10% next week on fears of war with Russia, does that mean that the energy efficiency of Europe and China got substantially worse?
The climate model, by contrast will help us answer questions like "inches of rain/acre" which in turns into "tons of wheat/acre" for cropland fertility, which in turn will help answer questions like whether not we're going to be looking at widespread famine due to drought.
... and that's a question that needs to be answered for national security reasons. Especially since it may actually tie in to the likelihood of war with Russia.
ignoring all the ancillary costs of fracking and fossil fuel use in general. You can't have a valid dollars/kWh if you aren't taking into account the full costs.
Wait, what? You want to calculate the full costs, including the expected costs of externalities such as changes to the climate and their effect on cropland yields.... but you want to do it without doing climate modeling?
Yes the anti-global warming people toss BS as well. I am a declared middle grounder.
I like the middle ground best:
"Don't panic. Do your best to clean up your environment without destroying yourself or the economy."Well, given that's the basic position of the IPCC and most mainstream scientific and environmental groups, I'd say you're in good company. Except if you actually think the evidence for global warming isn't good and we might be cooling instead, then I don't see why you'd think cleaning up carbon matters at all.
The middle ground isn't always the smartest place to be. In some cases it doesn't really make any sense.
But once people pick a side they ignore any information that doesn't agree with their position. I prefer not to make that mistake and consider everything on a case by case basis.
Why would I bother looking up the NASA scientist that made the claim when I don't believe him enough to promote it?
Full costs as in what we already know (or can get good estimates of) currently.ignoring all the ancillary costs of fracking and fossil fuel use in general. You can't have a valid dollars/kWh if you aren't taking into account the full costs.Wait, what? You want to calculate the full costs, including the expected costs of externalities such as changes to the climate and their effect on cropland yields.... but you want to do it without doing climate modeling?
So you want to formalize and ossify our current level of semi-ignorance.
Nice try yourself.
If you want to look him up yourself feel free, he published his findings in a science magazine probably sometime back in the early 2000s. I think I was reading mostly Omni at the time so that is a good place to start looking.
Meh, I'll happily side with the Australian government on this one.
Seriously? I don't know if you're just completely oblivious to what they actually say, or if you're deliberately twisting it.
You're implying we shouldn't focus on making more climate models because they're so inaccurate.
Australia is saying we shouldn't focus on making more climate models because those we already have are so accurate.
Whether or not that's a good stance is a different thing, but Australia is saying literally the opposite of what you're saying re:usefulness of climate models.
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Really?! Find me my quote where I claim the earth is flat, or the the sun orbits it, or even that there is a group of climate scientists running the world! I can give you a hint, those positions are made up and I certainly never subscribed to them.
Nor did I claim you had. Rather, my intent was to demonstrate why 'there is so much dispute that we just cannot know' is wrongheaded thinking. There will always be a few who push ridiculous conspiracy theories that fly in the face of overwhelming evidence. Treating these as valid possibilities is absurd and detrimental.
Trying to claim the differences between the world is cooling numbers and the world is warming numbers is insignificant is either silly or is proof that the margin of error is bigger than either side.
So far as I am aware, there aren't any "the world is cooling numbers". The claim is too ridiculous to get to the stage of having actual numerical support. A handful of scientists like Muller and Spencer have disputed global warming, but then also produced temperature series nearly identical to the existing ones. Certainly they all show warming, not cooling.
It's not the money spent on them that worries me. It's the misdirected brain-power. The top climate modelers are genius smart. Put that genius on a task that has some hope of producing useful results. Please :)
I don't think this will happen. Yes, they're smart people, but you're talking about moving them to an entirely different discipline. Some of the background knowledge will be useful, but you're going to have to send them back to school and retrain them to do other things.
Plus, then it drains out the brain power we have in this discipline, which is still useful.
Many of your points are only true (like claiming we're past the "too late" point) if our models are correct. So, you can't have it both ways, saying the models are crap when it suits you, then using the information from them to back you up.
If you want to argue for increased funding to science and engineering schools to train more people up in these other disciplines that we need, I'm all for that. I just don't consider it mutually exclusive to the climate research, which we're still going to need and continue to measure and model what's happening.
Even if we get down to 1900 levels, we don't know for sure how long the problem will persist, or how bad it will get, for sure. We can make estimates, but as we get further on in years, we will have new data, which will improve our models and make better predictions. We can make a prediction for 2050 now, but as we get closer to 2050, our predictions for that years will get more accurate. Those models, and their predictions, will be useful. They will be useful for informing decisions made in other disciplines.
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Yes the anti-global warming people toss BS as well. I am a declared middle grounder.
I like the middle ground best:
"Don't panic. Do your best to clean up your environment without destroying yourself or the economy."
So, one of the things that comes up constantly in deniers, is claims about the motives of scientist who are saying global warming is real. The problem I have with this, is the motives are irrelevant. All you have to do is show that their science is wrong. Show that their science is wrong, and then we can wonder at what their motives are for why they did it.
Instead, it's being done backwards. People put forward theories about their motives in an attempt to imply that they therefore did something wrong, but no evidence that the science is actually wrong.
If you really were listening to the evidence of the science, you wouldn't hold the position you're holding. Instead, you're focusing on what people's motives are, instead of actually looking at the science.
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Yes the anti-global warming people toss BS as well. I am a declared middle grounder.The middle ground isn't always the smartest place to be. In some cases it doesn't really make any sense.
"That's the wrong way dear. We need to go RIGHT."
The husband pauses a moment in dread, knowing what is to come next, but steels himself and lays out his case as best he can. "But sweetheart, the sign says Prosperity one mile to the left... and I remember we went that way last time and it worked out... and... if you look over there you can actually SEE Grandma's house... oh, and look! There's Grandma on the porch... she's waving to us! Just a few more seconds going LEFT and we're there."
The wife shakes her head in annoyance at her husband's gullibility, "Dear, don't be so naive. That sign was obviously tampered with, you only THINK you remember going left because you have been brainwashed by the mainstream media, and that old woman is clearly an impostor trying to trick us into going the wrong way as part of a government plot to collect higher gasoline taxes! Don't you dare go left. We need to go RIGHT!"
The self-important teenager in the back seat rolls her eyes and declares, "You are both such extremists! Obviously, we need to find a compromise solution. We should go STRAIGHT."
Finally, the dismissive little brother speaks up, "It doesn't really matter what we do. We'll just have wasted time and effort and the results will be the same. We should just sit here and wait for the rotation of the Earth to bring Grandma's house to US."
The 'middle ground' between reality and insanity is always just another form of insanity.
This is based on a question I asked in a thread since locked that I didn't get a chance to see what the responses were. I am not trying to be inflammatory with this question I am just very curious about it.
While the world(and specifically the internet) is filled with conspiracy theories about all sorts of subjects the subject that has struck me as just exceptionally odd is the controversy around climate change, specifically human influenced climate change.
Climate change is a well researched and understood subject, and while many of the particulars are still being learned and debated the fact that it is happening and is influenced by human beings is pretty well established, the science is in, as it were.
And yet a wide host of conspiracy theories surrounded it, the most common being that the whole thing is being faked by the scientific community for some unspecified purpose.
To me this is just striking me as just so strange, I think mostly because I don't understand what people's investment in it being a lie is.
Why would scientists fake this? What is the underlying fear or motivation in believing a conspiracy theory like this? To me it is like if a huge number of people believed the periodic table of elements was a giant lie and had to be passionately condemned for the filthy deception it was.
Like, what? What the heck is happening right now?
Treating climate change like it exists would cut into profit margins for just about everything, for manufacturing, transportation, and power generation would be hit the hardest by the need to keep it in check. It's just good business sense to act like the scientists are loonies, and damn the consequences.
Treating climate change like it exists would cut into profit margins for just about everything, for manufacturing, transportation, and power generation would be hit the hardest by the need to keep it in check. It's just good business sense to act like the scientists are loonies, and damn the consequences.
While this is true, there is an exception. If your business IS climate change mitigation, you want to believe it exists, and is worse than suspected. And well, an untapped market is big bucks for the first people to tap it....
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While this is true, there is an exception. If your business IS climate change mitigation, you want to believe it exists, and is worse than suspected. And well, an untapped market is big bucks for the first people to tap it....
Treating climate change like it exists would cut into profit margins for just about everything, for manufacturing, transportation, and power generation would be hit the hardest by the need to keep it in check. It's just good business sense to act like the scientists are loonies, and damn the consequences.
You think that climate change mitigation is "big bucks"?
From 2002-2008 a grand total of $96 billion of private capital was invested into green energy companies. Now, a lot of those investments did not really pay out.
Meanwhile, from 2004-2008, ExxonMobil made over $217 billion in profit. Again, that's just ONE oil and gas company. There are about 2-3 other companies of similar size and a couple more about half the size. And that's just the big players in the private industry side of this stuff.
So, let's say you're a scientist, looking for an easy pay day. 90% of scientists are going after a slice of that $96 billion, while 10% are going after that $217 billion. If you were in it just for the money, which group would you go after? The smaller pie with more competition, or the bigger pie with less competition?
Convince me that a greedy conman is going to go for the smaller payout where there's more competition.
It's a b!*&@&~# argument that doesn't stand up to a single piece of evidence. Yet it keeps getting repeated, constantly, that green energy is big bucks and that's why climate scientists support it. Bull f$+&ing s++!. If that motive were true, the scientists would follow the money, but they don't.
Ah, but in the beginning, Irontruth, was ExxonMobil big? No. Everything starts small. In 50 years, will climate mitigation be big business? I can't tell you. Compared to BP, ExxonMobil, and such now, you're absolutely right. It's not. Maybe if those companies move into that arena, they'll be the big payday down the road. Maybe some other companies will. It's a long-term question for the futurists to work out.