# Conservative Argument on Climate Change



## Flatbedford (Sep 27, 2012)

This is more what I think conservatism _should_ be. 
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpoli...s-argue-a-conservative-take-on-climate-change

I wonder if it will catch on.


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## btuser (Sep 27, 2012)

Good Gawd man! You can't LEVEL WITH THE PEOPLE

You might as well start telling them that a $4 coffee drink with 2000 calories costs 3x as much as a gym membership. What happens to GDP (greed's destruction of pecunium) when people start realizing what things really costs?


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## Slow1 (Sep 30, 2012)

I can see this discussion quickly deteriorating into the ash can...  but having heard the article when it aired on NPR I too found it thought provoking.

Although I can accept the theory of including the "true cost" of a given product, anyone who has taken a graduate level cost accounting course will easily understand that establishing this is no easy matter.  Sure, you can easily come up with any number of objective measures of cost that each sound reasonable and balanced, but which one is "THE right" one?  The answer is that it all depends on the objective of the exercise - i.e. what it is you wish to prove/account for or do with the final numbers.  This is where the social or political agendas come in - anyone with decent research and accounting skills can in fact likely come up with a cost allocation that supports most conclusions that they desire.  What do you want to look better? Coal or Natural Gas?  You can come up with a way of justifying it.  Even solar costs can be increased once you consider impact of the energy required to manufacture the panels (and waste produced in that process) over the duty cycle and then the disposal costs (environmental etc).

Just about the only environmental argument that cannot be disputed is conservation - if we simply use less of whatever resource (energy or materials) as a greater society then the impact on the environment is going to be less.  Even those non-global warming folks should be able to agree to this.  Sadly even though there seems to be some improvement here the concept really hasn't gotten into the core of our society - we still seem to delight in purchasing consumable products that are designed to be replaced rather than repaired simply due to lower initial cost of acquisition.  Anyone have any idea what the % of out of warranty TV repair is these days? I'll bet it is in the single digits.  How many folks actually wash dishes/cups/utensils after a group gathering vs buying plastic/paper and tossing it?  I know we rationalize all this easily enough, but is really is a society attitude that has developed - our economy even seems to rely on it.

Back to the main point though - it does come down to cost.  As was said in the article folks will "act in their own enlightened self interest" - i.e. take the less expensive option.  However, our policy makers tend to do the same and as such put exceptions into their rules base to protect their voting blocks which then prevents much of the balance in the policy side of these proposals.  The exceptions would likely put so many holes into it that the shift would not be noticed except by those to whom the tax actually applied.


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## Dune (Sep 30, 2012)

I wonder how many other decent moderate GOPs were driven out by the TP  insanity?


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## begreen (Sep 30, 2012)

Their positions are not all odd. They propose eliminating all energy subsidies, full accountability for all the costs of energy production including environmental and health costs, and reduced taxation on energy growth with a shift toward taxing polution, in particular carbon emissions. These are not totally unreasonable goals and have support across the aisle. Face it, if we are to get something done, we all need to find common ground that allows progress while doing the least harm.

Gridlock and stalemate is another option, but not without its own set of consequences.


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## begreen (Oct 12, 2012)

Not sure I agree with that assessment. Gates is a pretty serious philanthropist. He's dumping his wealth into some excellent world projects.


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## blades (Oct 12, 2012)

Sorry I have an extreme problem with the whole carbon tax credit scheme.  And you might as well anti up and face the simple fact that no matter what you apply to a company it is just added  in to the cost to the consumer. Who is forever on the short end of the stick.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 16, 2012)

First you have to prove that carbon is a threat.


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## jharkin (Oct 16, 2012)

Thomas,

For someone so obviously into alternative and renewable energy its odd that you would be in the AGW denier camp.  Surely you must be aware of the IPCC reports and the general consensus that the vast majority of climate scientists worldwide have endorsed CO2 forced greenhouse effect as the best fit model to the changes we are seeing.

Sadly, by even responding I probably just bought this thread a ticket to the 'can.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 16, 2012)

I'm a scientist.  There's no such thing as "consensus" in science.  The foremost precept of science is eternal skepticism.  So any scientist who puts faith in a political philosophy dressed as science is not a scientist.  I've read the IPCC reports and found that none of the climate science indicates anthropogenic global warming.  Only flawed computer models with carefully chosen inputs make that claim, and the politicians run with it to promote bigger government and fewer individual freedoms.  There is zero evidence that CO2 represents a threat either to the planet or to humanity.


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## jharkin (Oct 16, 2012)

Ok then, lets have some fun with this. If the ice caps are suddenly melting, we are setting year after year of record temps, extreme weather, all exactly at the time when humanity is pumping millions of years of buried carbon into the air (all that fossil carbon that was previously sequestered in an age when the earth was so warm the poles where tropical)

If its not related - what IS the cause of the effects we are witnessing in your view? 7 billion of us would like to know, so we can fix it.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 16, 2012)

Is climate changing?  Yes, of course, climate always changes.  It's been doing so for billions of years, long before humans were around.  Looking at historical trends, including Milankovic cycles, we are at the peak of an interglacial warming, and we are more likely than not to descend into another ice age within a few generations.  Talk of global warming is preposterous.  Could we go another few fractions of a degree higher yet?  Maybe.  Depends on the strength of the coming sun spot cycles.  But catastrophic warming we will never have.  And given that we've had no warming trend for the past 16 years, I'm thinking the warming has probably stopped for good.  Truthfully, I really wish humans could have such an impact on climate.  We may find that useful as we start to cool drastically.  But, unfortunately, we don't.  The greenhouse effect doesn't work that way.  It's a logarithmic relationship between the concentration of a gas and its absorbance.  Even if we pumped twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as all of humanity produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution til today, it would have a negligible effect.  I.e. a degree or two.  That is no threat to our existence and it would be little help to stop cooling caused by natural cycles.  Moreover, the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates from our oceans, which creates greater high-albedo cloud cover, which causes cooling.  We are very lucky to have so many buffers built into our climate which tends to prevent wild swings in temperature.  Otherwise the place would be quite inhospitable.  But these buffers and the natural cycles which can overcome them are way, way more powerful than anything humans can do.  We are not statistically significant to our planet.  We're just noise.  No more powerful than ants.  To believe otherwise is pure hubris.


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## woodgeek (Oct 16, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> I'm a scientist.
> 
> There is zero evidence that CO2 represents a threat either to the planet or to humanity.


 
Ok.  Do you buy the following premises....not about climate or weather...

(1) Human activity emits a net positive amount of CO2 that can be estimated
(2) The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over the last 50 (or more) years.
(3) The amount of increase of CO2 in the air is less than the estimated cumulative release by human activity (typical estimates are ~30-50%)
(4) The measured pH of ocean surface water has fallen over the last few decades, by an amount consistent with equilibrium with higher atmospheric CO2.
(5) Under a business as usual projection, the amount of CO2 released by humans will likely continue, and probably expand.
(6) Some ocean creatures are unable to live or reproduce at pH's only somewhat less than the current value.

Just want to see where you see the disconnect.


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## woodgeek (Oct 16, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Moreover, the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates from our oceans, which creates greater high-albedo cloud cover, which causes cooling. We are very lucky to have so many buffers built into our climate which tends to prevent wild swings in temperature. Otherwise the place would be quite inhospitable. But these buffers and the natural cycles which can overcome them are way, way more powerful than anything humans can do. We are not statistically significant to our planet. We're just noise. No more powerful than ants. To believe otherwise is pure hubris.


 
Are you familiar with the recent model projections that claim the opposite i.e. the land warms up faster (years) than the ocean (millenia) causing higher evaporation and less rainfall over the land? Suggests that a warmer planet would indeed be a wet jungle with high agricultural potential (as seen in the fossil record), but only centuries after the 'forcing' has occurred. In the interim it is a global dust bowl.


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## jeffoc (Oct 16, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Is climate changing? Yes, of course, climate always changes. It's been doing so for billions of years, long before humans were around. Looking at historical trends, including Milankovic cycles, we are at the peak of an interglacial warming, and we are more likely than not to descend into another ice age within a few generations. Talk of global warming is preposterous. Could we go another few fractions of a degree higher yet? Maybe. Depends on the strength of the coming sun spot cycles. But catastrophic warming we will never have. And given that we've had no warming trend for the past 16 years, I'm thinking the warming has probably stopped for good. Truthfully, I really wish humans could have such an impact on climate. We may find that useful as we start to cool drastically. But, unfortunately, we don't. The greenhouse effect doesn't work that way. It's a logarithmic relationship between the concentration of a gas and its absorbance. Even if we pumped twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as all of humanity produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution til today, it would have a negligible effect. I.e. a degree or two. That is no threat to our existence and it would be little help to stop cooling caused by natural cycles. Moreover, the hotter it gets, the more water evaporates from our oceans, which creates greater high-albedo cloud cover, which causes cooling. We are very lucky to have so many buffers built into our climate which tends to prevent wild swings in temperature. Otherwise the place would be quite inhospitable. But these buffers and the natural cycles which can overcome them are way, way more powerful than anything humans can do. We are not statistically significant to our planet. We're just noise. No more powerful than ants. To believe otherwise is pure hubris.


 

There is so much wrong in this it makes my head hurt.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 16, 2012)

As to why I'm so "into alternative and renewable energy", it has little to do with climate change, although I do wish to be prepared for either warming or cooling, not that I think my "carbon footprint" has anything to do with it.  My motivations are manifold.  I believe peak oil and the wars for remaining oil have the potential to cause severe supply disruptions in not only fuel but everything that depends on fuel.  Our whole economy is based on a just-in-time delivery by truck model.  We can't go five days without trucks moving goods before people start severely suffering from shortages of all kinds of necessities.  Adding punitive energy taxes and carbon caps to the mix only makes this worse.  We also have an aging electrical grid created by government mandate and subsidy which isn't being properly maintained because the costs of doing so exceed the revenue permitted by government price caps on electric utilities.  We've now experienced several large regional blackouts which were a complete surprise to those who oversee the grid.  This will get even worse as we continually increase our electricity demands on the back of government suppressed prices.  We don't know how precious of a resource we have because of price fixing, so people over-use it.  Then there's the threat of terrorism, storms, and economic conditions impacting the availability of fuel and grid power.  On top of that, government is getting ever more intrusive with their warrantless spying.  With the new agenda to get "smart grid" controls into every home, the infringement on your freedom and privacy goes far beyond the electric company deciding when you can or can't watch TV or wash your clothes or what temperature your thermostat should be set to.  

Those are all clear and present threats which should encourage everyone to be better prepared and to buffer themselves from reliance on the grid and the on-demand economy.  But the overarching threat that poses the most severe danger and is growing more likely (even inevitable) every day is the potential for a global currency collapse as central banks around the world have turned to printing money at ever-increasing rates to support their failed socialist models.  The Federal Reserve last month publicly declared a policy to print $40 billion per month ad infinitum (and it will surely exceed that figure as inflation gets out of control).  The ECB, BoE, BoJ, and others are on a similar course.  History has shown that this inevitably will result in hyperinflation.  But this time will be worse than any other in the past because it will occur in the reserve currency of the world and all major competitors for that title simultaneously.  Historically, people in countries with hyperinflating currencies could just use a neighboring currency.  In the 20th century, most hyperinflating countries turned to the U.S. Dollar as a stable alternative.  But what is the alternative this time?  Probably gold and silver, but a whole new economy of re-monetizing precious metals will have to develop before that gets widespread.  In the meantime, we'll be dumped back into a barter and self-sufficiency economy which virtually nobody is prepared for.  So you can expect major supply chains to shut down entirely.  Electric will be spotty at best.  Same with water.  Food delivery will probably fall to government emergency measures.  Heating fuel likewise.  Most people will probably have to evacuate to FEMA camps in order to survive on government rations.  And if the government response to Hurricane Katrina was any indication, the conditions there won't be enviable.  Think this can't happen?  Most people naturally believe that horrific things can't happen to them.  But they do all the time, even to "good" people.  My wife lived through hyperinflation in Poland in 1990-1992 and told me all about it.  The government is currently preparing for a "mass casualty event".  Do some research.  It's scary, but it's scarier to be unprepared for it.

Beyond all that though, assuming that humanity manages to solve all of those issues without American consumers missing a single reality television show episode, it's about building a better life.  It's about being independently wealthy without needing millions of dollars.  Inflation is certainly going to get much worse no matter what, but even if it doesn't get totally out of hand (as in hyperinflation or even the late '70s levels), even 3-5% inflation can really strain your personal lifestyle if your income doesn't keep up with it.  At 5% inflation, prices double in 14 years.  Double.  This is especially a problem for the elderly on fixed incomes, but also for those who just can't get a raise, or whose raises don't match inflation.  Or for the unemployed, who may receive some assistance, but that also doesn't keep up with inflation.  If your income doesn't double in 14 years to match 5% inflation, then your living standards must necessarily decrease as a result.  And if you're already pinching pennies, that might mean that you lose your house and other cherished assets.  So being off-the-grid and self-sufficient eliminates many of the threats related to inflation and all of the stress related to it.  If your production is not denominated in Federal Reserve Notes, then the value of FRNs is immaterial to your well-being.  Your solar panels don't produce FRNs, they produce electricity.  Your woodlot doesn't produce FRNs, it produces BTUs of heat.  Your garden doesn't produce FRNs, it produces nutritious food.  So if your standards of living are maintained locally by your own capital assets, then inflation has no bearing on you.  Supply and demand have no bearing on you.  Income and sales taxes have no bearing on you.  This gives you an amazing feeling of freedom and relief from the stresses of the rat race.  You can work at will instead of paycheck to paycheck.  You can take as much time off as you please and maybe even retire indefinitely if you like.  In other words, it gives you real independence.

A side-effect from that is that my carbon footprint is almost zero, or maybe negative if you deduct the fossil fuels I would be using as an average American.  I.e. I could sell carbon credits under such a trading scheme.  If you naively believe in anthropogenic global warming, my lifestyle is very attractive to you.  And that's fine.  But don't try to sell me on it to save the planet.  If you want to sell conservatives on alternative energy, sell them on the points I made above.  Any one of them should be sufficient to pique their interest and any two will probably convince them to go in that direction.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 16, 2012)

Models are mostly worthless.  Garbage in, garbage out.  This should be obvious by now since none of the climate models have been remotely accurate to date.  They certainly didn't predict a 16 year hiatus in the warming trend.  As a software engineer who has to produce reports from a huge database, I'm well aware that you can make the same data seem to say very different things depending on how you ask for it.  The more data you have, the easier it is to do.  It's truthful but misleading to use true data to imply something false, especially if you include projections into the future.  So if you try to tell me that a model postulates something which is obviously false based on current data, I won't be convinced.  Dr. Roy Spencer, Ph.D, former NASA climatologist, observed, "I found from the CERES data a strongly negative SW_ [short wave]_ feedback during 2002-2007.  When added to the LW_ [long wave]_ feedback, this resulted in a total (SW+LW) feedback that is *strongly negative*_ [i.e. the hotter it gets the more incident light is reflected]_"  He further complained, "Is my work published?  No... at least not yet... although I have tried.  Apparently it disagrees too much with the IPCC party line to be readily acceptable.  My finding of negative SW feedback of around 5 W m-2 K-1 from real radiation budget data (the CERES instrument on Aqua) is apparently inadmissible as evidence.  In contrast, Dessler et al.’s finding of positive LW feedback of 2 W m-2 K-1 inferred from the AIRS instrument is admissible."  So you really have to be more discerning about what you believe.  The IPCC is a political organization pushing a particular agenda -- bigger government and more control.  All of their findings are obviously going to be slanted toward that end.


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## btuser (Oct 16, 2012)

So, if we put garbage into the atmosphere, are we going to get garbage out of it?


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## jeffoc (Oct 16, 2012)

Climate change refers to global changing weather patterns. Not just warming.
You can pick and choose any single or group of models you want. But you have to ignore huge mountains of data to claim that it doesn't exist.


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## jharkin (Oct 16, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> There is so much wrong in this it makes my head hurt.


 
Amen. Thomas must choose to wilfully ignore the visual evidence of a nearly ice free arctic we had this summer.














Nope, no warming there.  The arctic just melted because it felt like it....



It saddens me that these attitudes are running our congress right now and will likely doom my children to live thought the worst yet to come.


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## woodgeek (Oct 16, 2012)

There have always been doomers.  But this time is different.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 17, 2012)

So you can't argue about atmosphere, so you instead turn to sea ice?  Typical diversionary tactic.  Next you're going to talk about acid rain, or income inequality, or El Nino.  The question is if carbon is a threat.  If you can't prove that carbon is a threat, then you have no business trying to limit it.  It's really very simple.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 17, 2012)

Oh, I missed this one somehow before!



woodgeek said:


> Ok. Do you buy the following premises....not about climate or weather...
> 
> (1) Human activity emits a net positive amount of CO2 that can be estimated
> (2) The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over the last 50 (or more) years.
> ...


 
I'm not sure about the reliability of the pH info you point to, but in theory, I agree with all six points to an extent.  But, without harping over differences, this has nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming.  The question is if CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming.  Which it doesn't.  Or at least not a significant amount.  But I wouldn't be concerned we're going to kill all the life in the ocean either.  Mother Nature will go on long after humans are extinct.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 17, 2012)

Remember that all of the fossil fuels we burn were once living organisms fixing carbon from the atmosphere.  The Earth flourished with MUCH higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than we have currently.  Sometimes, those period were colder than our present one, sometimes (rarely) warmer.  The fish did just fine.


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> So you can't argue about atmosphere, so you instead turn to sea ice? Typical diversionary tactic. Next you're going to talk about acid rain, or income inequality, or El Nino. The question is if carbon is a threat. If you can't prove that carbon is a threat, then you have no business trying to limit it. It's really very simple.


 
No, sorry. You are the one reading straight out of the big-oil denier handbook.  Atmospheric warming has caused the continual melting of arctic sea ice. I'm showing you visual evidence that you CANNOT ignore - unless you want to claim that NASA is faking the satellite photos.

You really are a scientist? really?  whats your degree in, is it climate science? Do you somehow know more than thousands of climate researchers?


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Remember that all of the fossil fuels we burn were once living organisms fixing carbon from the atmosphere. The Earth flourished with MUCH higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than we have currently. Sometimes, those period were colder than our present one, sometimes (rarely) warmer. The fish did just fine.


 
The earth did, but humans did not. During the Permian when most of this carbon was deposited the earth was much warmer than today, mostly desert and tropical which insects as large as birds flying about. It was not an earth that humans in our present evolution would do well on, much of our existing agriculture would fail or have to move.

The problem that people who think "warm is good" ignore is that life adapts when these changes happen over millions of years, but right now we are forcing millions of years of change in a century. Thats why the arctic is melting, species are going extinct at record rates, every year brings record floods, drought and other natural disasters  worldwide.


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Oh, I missed this one somehow before!
> 
> I'm not sure about the reliability of the pH info you point to, but in theory, I agree with all six points to an extent. But, without harping over differences, this has nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming. The question is if CO2 in the atmosphere causes global warming. Which it doesn't. Or at least not a significant amount. But I wouldn't be concerned we're going to kill all the life in the ocean either. Mother Nature will go on long after humans are extinct.


 
They are absolutely connected. The Ocean is the largest moderator of airborne CO2, the point woodgeek was making that you are skirting around is that the level of airborne CO2 doesnt match human emissions because the rest was absorbed in the Ocean. That absorption creates carbonic acid and leads to increasing Ocean acidification. Its the main reason the Great Barrier reef is dying off, among other things.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 17, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Atmospheric warming has caused the continual melting of arctic sea ice.


 
How did you come up with that conclusion?


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 17, 2012)

jharkin said:


> The earth did, but humans did not. During the Permian when most of this carbon was deposited the earth was much warmer than today, mostly desert and tropical which insects as large as birds flying about. It was not an earth that humans in our present evolution would do well on, much of our existing agriculture would fail or have to move.
> 
> The problem that people who think "warm is good" ignore is that life adapts when these changes happen over millions of years, but right now we are forcing millions of years of change in a century. Thats why the arctic is melting, species are going extinct at record rates, every year brings record floods, drought and other natural disasters worldwide.


 

Pure alarmism.  We haven't had a warming trend in 16 years.  Yes, life does adapt, and humans are adaptable.  Warm is good.  If we could farm Canada, that would be amazing for humanity.  I'm much more fearful of cooling than warming.  Way more people die from cold than from heat and a significant cooling trend would certainly destroy most of our farming, with little room to move it.



jharkin said:


> They are absolutely connected. The Ocean is the largest moderator of airborne CO2, the point woodgeek was making that you are skirting around is that the level of airborne CO2 doesnt match human emissions because the rest was absorbed in the Ocean. That absorption creates carbonic acid and leads to increasing Ocean acidification. Its the main reason the Great Barrier reef is dying off, among other things.


 
Wow do you jump to a lot of unsubstantiated conclusions.   Really, human produced CO2 has caused the Great Barrier reef to die off?  I'd love to see your evidence of that!  But regardless, this is not speaking to anthropogenic global warming.  It's a red herring.


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## Flatbedford (Oct 17, 2012)

...And if it got warm enough we could all run with the dinosaurs again!


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## jeffoc (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> How did you come up with that conclusion?


 I don't believe that he/she came to that conclusion on his or her own, but thousands of researches and decades of work came to that conclusion.


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## jeffoc (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Pure alarmism. We haven't had a warming trend in 16 years. Yes, life does adapt, and humans are adaptable. Warm is good. If we could farm Canada, that would be amazing for humanity. I'm much more fearful of cooling than warming. Way more people die from cold than from heat and a significant cooling trend would certainly destroy most of our farming, with little room to move it.
> 
> 16 years is a drop in the bucket. but more importantly, warm is not good.
> 
> ...


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## woodgeek (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas,

Climate is a complex phenomenon, and I have no hope of trying to argue you out of your position. I find the current models to be compelling, but that is that.

Actually, I was responding to your assertion that CO2 was not harming life on earth. If you believe in anthrogenic ocean acidification, (a much simpler process than climate) and saw some studies of sea life sensitivity to acid, then maybe you can worry about CO2.

The 'warm is good' question you discuss really hinges on rainfall....and as I mentioned earlier current models suggest CO2 results in a warmer earth that is far drier than currently until the ocean temp catches up a couple centuries later....

take a deep breath, go read these, and then go short 2050 wheat futures....
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/10/terrifying-drought-projections.html
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/01/another-terrifying-drought-paper.html

technically, all of the (net) rainfall we get on land starts as water on the surface of the ocean.  IF we bias the land temp a little warmer than the ocean (at any temp of both) then precipitation over land falls.  Not a matter of vapor pressure....just less drive on the hydrological cycle (over land).


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## Gary_602z (Oct 17, 2012)

Flatbedford said:


> ...And if it got warm enough we could all run with the dinosaurs again!


I can remember stories of my Great- Great - Grandfather actually catching them and training them to ride, or pull a plow!

Gary


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Pure alarmism. We haven't had a warming trend in 16 years. Yes, life does adapt, and humans are adaptable. Warm is good. If we could farm Canada, that would be amazing for humanity. I'm much more fearful of cooling than warming. Way more people die from cold than from heat and a significant cooling trend would certainly destroy most of our farming, with little room to move it.
> 
> 
> 
> Wow do you jump to a lot of unsubstantiated conclusions. Really, human produced CO2 has caused the Great Barrier reef to die off? I'd love to see your evidence of that! But regardless, this is not speaking to anthropogenic global warming. It's a red herring.


 

I'm about done with this discussion.  I could post 1000 links supporting what myself, woodgeek, and others are saying but you will just claim its false because it doesn't fit your worldview.


If you were not aware of the Barrier reef dieoff thats already begun I suggest you start following international news a bit closer.  Its not new. There is a lot of publish research linking it to increasing ocean acidification which is also linked to human CO2 emissions through much research.

Oh, and by the way, I think the Canadians would be interested to learn that they cant farm there


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## TMonter (Oct 17, 2012)

jharkin said:


> The earth did, but humans did not. During the Permian when most of this carbon was deposited the earth was much warmer than today, mostly desert and tropical which insects as large as birds flying about. It was not an earth that humans in our present evolution would do well on, much of our existing agriculture would fail or have to move.
> 
> The problem that people who think "warm is good" ignore is that life adapts when these changes happen over millions of years, but right now we are forcing millions of years of change in a century. Thats why the arctic is melting, species are going extinct at record rates, every year brings record floods, drought and other natural disasters worldwide.


 
Not true. The last Ice Age was a mere 15,000 years ago not millions of years ago.


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Pure alarmism. We haven't had a warming trend in 16 years.


 

Forgot to address this one.  Unfortunately what you are trying to do is very transparent.  I can see you recently read the denialist article in the tabloid Daily Mail from 3 days ago claiming such. The thing is, that pet theory has been around for a long time. And this latest incarnation has already been debunked here. Its easy to cherry pick the record hot year of 1998, and then compare it to incomplete data for 2012 and say - "lookie no warming"  But if you look at these 2 years in context of the rest of the record the overall trend is obvious.


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## jharkin (Oct 17, 2012)

TMonter said:


> Not true. The last Ice Age was a mere 15,000 years ago not millions of years ago.


 
Alright you caught me. So we are compressing thousands of years of change into a century, not millions.


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## TMonter (Oct 17, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Alright you caught me. So we are compressing thousands of years of change into a century, not millions.


 
Hardly:

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Loehle-2007.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Goni-2004.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Rolland-2009.html


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## begreen (Oct 17, 2012)

One problem with regional studies is that regional trends don't always reflect the planetary temp trend as a whole.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 18, 2012)

You people want to have it both ways all the time... this period or that is too short to make any statistical difference, but look, if you choose just the right points it looks like it warmed a fraction of a degree.  Sorry but "global climate change theory" or whatever you want to call it is pure bunk.  I asked you to prove a single point, and you can't do so.  You say, look at all of these people smarter than me saying this stuff.  Sorry, not convincing.  For every PhD you bring saying the earth is about to boil, I can bring 10 saying that guy's a moron.  And then you want to turn around and say it makes no difference what those people say.  Why, because "it doesn't fit your worldview".  Sorry, but I don't have a worldview like you guys do.  I have science.  I have skepticism.  Either prove what you claim or go bark up another tree.  I wasn't born yesterday; I've been evaluating these claims for two decades.  It's politically-driven alarmism, and you've bought it hook, line, and sinker.  What you have is a faith-based position.  Not a person on this planet can prove that humans cause climate change, because we don't.  Physics doesn't work that way.  We also don't cause ocean pH changes (other than on a very, very local level).  The carbon cycle is unfathomably massive.  Underwater volcanism is millions of times more energetic and effusive than humans.  Changes in solar output is billions of times more powerful than humans.  Changes you see in the oceans and climate are caused by factors completely out of our control.  We can no more influence climate than we can plate tectonics.  You'd be more convincing if you told me that fleas built the Brooklyn Bridge.


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## save$ (Oct 18, 2012)

The earth is alway in a state of change,  why in hell anyone wants to take credit for being more powerful than the forces in the earth is way beyond my comprehension.   Greed driven.  Has  lead to political and financial changes, but that is about it.


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## TMonter (Oct 18, 2012)

begreen said:


> One problem with regional studies is that regional trends don't always reflect the planetary temp trend as a whole.


 
Except for...

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Zabenskie-2007.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Patterson-1998.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Lund-2006.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/von-Gunten-2009.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Axford-2009.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Kalugin-2007.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Zhang-2008.html

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/Wilson-1979.html

The fact it pretty much covers the whole globe.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas,

I think you are being more than a little unfair here. I am not trying to argue anything from the historical mean temperature curve--low statistical power and iffy signal to noise, superimposed on a fluctuating background from natural fluctuations. IF that were the only argument, then there would be no argument. (In fact, reducing the science of global warming to the fitting of such data is IMO a denier tactic---sorry TM)

All of 'us' are not arguing that our folks are smarter....I link stuff cuz I think you might want to read something or drill through to the primary material, I am assuming you can digest, understand and judge the primary material.

The actual argument is one that contains many things that, when you want to, you 'take off the table', so that they can't be used in the argument.

1.
For example, models. Model building is a key component of the scientific method. Simple systems need only simple models (F=ma, Beers Law), and those get taught in schools and make some people excited because a few simple formulae capture some process nicely. However, the world also has more complex systems (the earths climate, weather, the human body responding to a pharmaceutical) that humans have a vested interest in understanding (i.e. millions of lives hang in the balance). So researchers in science and engineering don't sit around just marveling at the simplicity of E=mc2 or the second law of thermodynamics, they are trying to cobble together that basic understanding to build GPS networks, better drugs, or an understanding of how the earth works and will behave in the future. This may be distasteful to someone turned on by the coolness of the formulae when they were in school, but models are where the rubber meets the road. And in modern science and engineering these models are all mucho complicated. And computerized. And they work. Better and with more detail every year.

When you put all models aside from the discussion, and say 'garbage in garbage out' you are making a deeply anti-scientific statement (that reads a bit naive to me personally). Frankly I can't see how you describe yourself as a scientist and not believe that model building is possible.

2.
AS for the whole 'the earth is big and we are ants', I asked you to discuss the numbers. The question here is not different than balancing your checkbook. The carbon cycle has large natural flows that are (presumably) nearly in balance on the century scale, and human CO2 is a modest perturbation to that cycle, but one whose effect is additive over decades. It seems you DO agree that the higher CO2 in the air (direct measurement record) is anthropogenic. So we are ants that can increase the concentration of a significant and enduring (~few century lifetime) greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by more than 50%. Since the simple radiative balance would suggest the whole earth would be frozen without greenhouse gases, we should prob be concerned enough about this to pay some interested folks to build us a model... So this is the other thing you set aside when it suits you...someone has tried to add up the cumulative release of CO2 by humans over the last century, to tote up one column of the checkbook, and you are going to wave them away with a 'the earth is huge and we are ants' argument, after saying you did agree with the numbers!

3.
And the cherry on top is you invoking models when it suits you--cherry picking. You mention the Milankovich climate cycles. Now there is a plenty complicated model, many of whose parameters are just guesses based not on physics but on (climate) data fitting. For example, the correlation between CH4 and temp, which causes which? Has to be built in to get the model to fit. IOW, those models are not as rigorous as those to model current climate, because we can go out and measure the parameters and fluxes of the current model directly (with geologists and satellites). BUT, you cite those models as evidence that global warming is not human made. In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years. That is, folks had built a kinda funky model that fits all the weird twists and turns in the earths climate through all the many ice ages, for the last 200,000 years, and it worked AWESOME at describing all the data except for the last 2000 years (1% of the record). And the only thing that happened in that period was Homo Sap started to burn down forests and till and plant stuff on continental scales and burn fossil fuels. And Mr Hansen is now hounded day and night as a hoaxer.

So, 1-2-3 you are clearly making an argument, but is it certainly not a scientific one.


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## jharkin (Oct 18, 2012)

You know what Thomas, I am NOT a scientist. I never claimed to be one. I am a mechanical engineer by degree. So I know that I am no expert on climate.

But what I can do is read, and all the literature I read, all the statements by the IPCC, the NOAA, NASA, most national governments, etc are overwhelmingly in agreement that CO2 forced climate change is the best theory we have to fit the data. Surveys of the scientific literature have demonstrated that the vast majority of published studies agree.

i.e. (working backward from most recent)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf html
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/06/scientists-convinced-of-climate.html
http://journalistsresource.org/stud.../structure-scientific-opinion-climate-change/
http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full.pdf

I figure that thousands of people who went to school for this and study this day in and day out know better than 'little ol me...

Frankly the thought that a bunch of unrelated scientists scattered all over the world, most living on grant money, would create a worldwide conspiracy to fake this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. As opposed to the dissenters, many of whom are baked by the FF industry that stands to loose billions. hmmmmmm



So please, lets see your credentials, what qualifies you to discredit the science as bunk on an internet forum with no links to backup your statement other than an "i told you so"


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## maple1 (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> If we could farm Canada, that would be amazing for humanity.


 
What the heck does that mean?


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

It means that in some AGW deniers' fantasy, their plan B (if they were wrong) is to simply move north. I am sure that all the lichen covered rocks north of the artic circle and alpine forests and peat bogs to the south will magically turn into fertile black loam suitable for the intensive production of corn and soybeans, offsetting any decreased production in the lower 48 and canada due to, for instance, the model predicted 'permanent drought'. If not, we can always move our midwest topsoil north. No problem.

Disclaimer: My grandparents were potato farmers in Newfoundland.


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## TMonter (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Thomas,
> 
> I think you are being more than a little unfair here. I am not trying to argue anything from the historical mean temperature curve--low statistical power and iffy signal to noise, superimposed on a fluctuating background from natural fluctuations. IF that were the only argument, then there would be no argument. (In fact, reducing the science of global warming to the fitting of such data is IMO a denier tactic---sorry TM)
> 
> ...


 
1) Models have to mesh with reality. They have to be repeatable and you have to be able to put in subsequent years data and get accurate results in order to prove the model works. Current climate models don't do this.

2) The carbon cycle is not well understood and even the IPCC admits this. The carbon sinks for the earth and how carbon cycles through the process is not well understood.

3) The "striking departure" isn't so striking:  http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/VOSTOK-DOMECIceCoreCompare_Stewart2009.pdf


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

TMonter said:


> 1) Models have to mesh with reality. They have to be repeatable and you have to be able to put in subsequent years data and get accurate results in order to prove the model works. Current climate models don't do this.
> 
> 2) The carbon cycle is not well understood and even the IPCC admits this. The carbon sinks for the earth and how carbon cycles through the process is not well understood.
> 
> 3) The "striking departure" isn't so striking: http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/VOSTOK-DOMECIceCoreCompare_Stewart2009.pdf


 
With all due respect.....I do not understand any of your responses.


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## TMonter (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> With all due respect.....I do not understand any of your responses.


 
May I suggest you reread yours and then mine again. They are quite clear.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

Ok, perhaps I will be more specific....

(1) The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe.  You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only.  That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations.  They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years.  That sort of thing.  This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last.  IOW, your requirement is not well posed.

(2) I don't read the IPCC report, and I agree the assumptions of the climate cycle on millenia timescales are not nailed down.  But I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years.  This implies an unusual and hard to explain event--consistent with anthropogenic source.  Your bland statement of 'not well understood' masks what we do know versus what we don't know re how unusual the recent past is.

(3) Your poster looks like a single data point record not matching someones particular expectations over a finite time interval that is much shorter than the Mil. cycles.  How that is relevant to the climate modeling over the longer span, aggegating records form many sites eludes me.  In fact, I said that recent (<2000 yr) history has been anomalous, and your poster says something vaguely similar.  How is that a refutation??


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## TMonter (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Ok, perhaps I will be more specific....
> 
> (1) The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe. You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only. That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations. They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years. That sort of thing. This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last. IOW, your requirement is not well posed.
> 
> ...


 
1) So you admit the models are meaningless to tell us what is actually happening. Especially when the confidence intervals they use are huge and have been extremely poor predictors of what is going on. Such a model does not distinguish between actual predicted events and anomalies of meteorology like the heat wave in Europe a few year ago.

For a model to be valid it has to offer repeatable results with new data. Like I said current models do not.

2) While we may be a major contributor to CO2 (we might not as well) rising CO2 levels does necessarily not mean higher temperatures. In fact the current science can only model  a few of the forcing variables in climate well one of them is CO2 which is why it's such a huge topic.

3) The poster was nothing of the sort.

http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/VOSTOK-DOMECIceCoreCompare_Stewart2009.pdf

It shows dramatic temperature shifts in contrary to your claim: "In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years."

Obviously that isn't the case. The data shows a even more dramatic shift within the last 200,000 year period and cyclical changes very similar that what is happening today. In fact when you look at the current temperature record we are experiencing a very long stable period compared to the past with most of it taking place before industrialization which busts the anthropomorphic CO2 claim being the driver.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> I am not trying to argue anything from the historical mean temperature curve--low statistical power and iffy signal to noise, superimposed on a fluctuating background from natural fluctuations. IF that were the only argument, then there would be no argument.


 
That actually sounds like a pretty fair description, and I agree, it is no argument.



woodgeek said:


> All of 'us' are not arguing that our folks are smarter....I link stuff cuz I think you might want to read something or drill through to the primary material, I am assuming you can digest, understand and judge the primary material.


 
Actually, it basically always boils down to that.  I can contest every last published paper, and you (I'm generalizing here to the typical believer) will say, well I'll take the word of so-and-so over you.



woodgeek said:


> For example, models. Model building is a key component of the scientific method. Simple systems need only simple models (F=ma, Beers Law), and those get taught in schools and make some people excited because a few simple formulae capture some process nicely. However, the world also has more complex systems (the earths climate, weather, the human body responding to a pharmaceutical) that humans have a vested interest in understanding (i.e. millions of lives hang in the balance). So researchers in science and engineering don't sit around just marveling at the simplicity of E=mc2 or the second law of thermodynamics, they are trying to cobble together that basic understanding to build GPS networks, better drugs, or an understanding of how the earth works and will behave in the future. This may be distasteful to someone turned on by the coolness of the formulae when they were in school, but models are where the rubber meets the road. And in modern science and engineering these models are all mucho complicated. And computerized. And they work. Better and with more detail every year.


 
I'll agree with all of that up until the "and they work" part.  In fact, they usually don't work.  And that's why we use them, to make predictions and then learn from them when the predictions fail.  What you CAN'T do in science is make a model and then say, look our model says this and that, therefore we have to immediately take away everyone's individual rights and impose a top-down tyranny on everyone.  Sorry, that's pure malicious fallacy.  Garbage in, garbage out is absolutely the appropriate philosophy to take in regard to models and is the only way they can be used scientifically.



woodgeek said:


> AS for the whole 'the earth is big and we are ants', I asked you to discuss the numbers. The question here is not different than balancing your checkbook. The carbon cycle has large natural flows that are (presumably) nearly in balance on the century scale, and human CO2 is a modest perturbation to that cycle, but one whose effect is additive over decades. It seems you DO agree that the higher CO2 in the air (direct measurement record) is anthropogenic. So we are ants that can increase the concentration of a significant and enduring (~few century lifetime) greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by more than 50%. Since the simple radiative balance would suggest the whole earth would be frozen without greenhouse gases, we should prob be concerned enough about this to pay some interested folks to build us a model... So this is the other thing you set aside when it suits you...someone has tried to add up the cumulative release of CO2 by humans over the last century, to tote up one column of the checkbook, and you are going to wave them away with a 'the earth is huge and we are ants' argument, after saying you did agree with the numbers!


 
Well your presumption is wrong.  There is no "balance on the century scale" and humans aren't a blip.  Everything is always in flux and there are massive buffers all around.  The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule compared to that contained in the biosphere, the ground, and the oceans.  You want to talk numbers, well good luck ascertaining those numbers, because they're beyond anything we can reliably estimate.  But what I do know is that the amount of carbon contained in all of the fossil fuels on the planet aren't but a drop in the bucket.  How do I know that?  Because removing them from the oceans, biosphere, and atmosphere over millions of years didn't cause the world to implode or the cycles to cease.  And humans will never, ever in all our existence burn all of the fossil fuels because probably only 20% of them are even accessible in remotely economic quantities.  

Do I think that the higher CO2 in the air is directly anthropogenic?  Only a tiny fraction.  The vast majority of it is caused by the dissolution of carbon from the oceans caused by solar and volcanic warming.  Whatever humans add is easily absorbed by the system and would be little different if we didn't exist.  How do I know that?  Because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have virtually no correlation to human industrial activity.  The fact that the modern human era happens to coincide with a period of warming is not a surprise at all, and to attribute warming to humans is to look at the correlation from the wrong causal direction.  All major periods of human advance have occurred during warm cycles.  And all major civilization collapses tend to occur during cold cycles.  If you want to attribute the current warm cycle to industrialization, then you have to explain how it started in the 1600s instead of the late 1700s.  And how the Vikings or the Holy Roman Empire caused the last one.  And the Hellenistic Greeks the one before that.  And this cycle, you'd have to explain how carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere march steadily in the same trajectory despite periods of depression and rapid industrialization not likewise being so determinate.

You want numbers?  The sun bathes the Earth's surface in more energy in a single hour (175,000,000 megawatts) than the entire human race consumes in almost 13,000 years of present consumption rates of all kinds of energy including nuclear, fossil fuel, alternative energy, etc.  The energy in the wind flowing around the Earth for one hour represents 200 times more energy than the entire human race consumes in an entire year.  The scale of the Earth's climate is orders of magnitude greater than what humans have any hope of influencing.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> You mention the Milankovich climate cycles. Now there is a plenty complicated model, many of whose parameters are just guesses based not on physics but on (climate) data fitting. For example, the correlation between CH4 and temp, which causes which?


 
I mentioned Milankovic cycles not as a model, but as a recognition that there are many processes influencing Earth's climate well outside of a human-scale "balance".  These include the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit, which cause 21k year, 26k year, 41k year, and other cycles, variously dampening and reinforcing each other, along with sun spot cycles and other solar cycles, plus ocean current cycles, glaciation cycles, etc.  There is no reliable model that incorporates all of these.  But it causes cyclical warming and cooling of the climate without humans having any part in it.  There is no "balance" in a static sense.  There are only kinetic balances, constantly changing, and constantly causing changes.  Again, if you think humans caused the current warm cycle, then you must describe how the Mycenaean Greeks caused the one in 1600-1200 BC.



woodgeek said:


> In fact, much of the early evidence (e.g. from Hansen) for AGW came from the striking departure of the earths climate in the modern period (last couple thousand years) from the record prevailing for the previous 200,000 years. That is, folks had built a kinda funky model that fits all the weird twists and turns in the earths climate through all the many ice ages, for the last 200,000 years, and it worked AWESOME at describing all the data except for the last 2000 years (1% of the record). And the only thing that happened in that period was Homo Sap started to burn down forests and till and plant stuff on continental scales and burn fossil fuels. And Mr Hansen is now hounded day and night as a hoaxer.


 
Actually, our current warm period is no departure at all from what we have seen cyclically since the end of the last ice age.  Mr. Hansen is understandably seen as a hoaxer because he is, whether through malice or incompetence, I'm not sure which.  But the hockey stick was preposterous nonsense.



jharkin said:


> You know what Thomas, I am NOT a scientist. I never claimed to be one. I am a mechanical engineer by degree. So I know that I am no expert on climate.


 

You don't have to be an expert on climate to be able to apply scientific skepticism.




jharkin said:


> But what I can do is read, and all the literature I read, all the statements by the IPCC, the NOAA, NASA, most national governments, etc are overwhelmingly in agreement that CO2 forced climate change is the best theory we have to fit the data. Surveys of the scientific literature have demonstrated that the vast majority of published studies agree.


 
So, contrary to Woodgeek's assertion above, you're saying that you choose to believe certain people who are smarter than you, and who you presume to be smarter than me, on faith rather than fact?



jharkin said:


> I figure that thousands of people who went to school for this and study this day in and day out know better than 'little ol me...


 
That might indeed be true.  But what about the tens of thousands of scientists just in the United States alone who have found this to be a bunch of hooey?  Oh, you haven't heard about them?  Maybe because you only listen to your government and mainstream media who have a vested interest in controlling you through the global warming narrative?



jharkin said:


> Frankly the thought that a bunch of unrelated scientists scattered all over the world,* most living on grant money*, would create a worldwide conspiracy to fake this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. As opposed to the dissenters, many of whom are baked by the FF industry that stands to loose billions. hmmmmmm


 
LOL!  The hypocrisy or just plain naivete of that statement is laughable.



jharkin said:


> So please, lets see your credentials, what qualifies you to discredit the science as bunk on an internet forum with no links to backup your statement other than an "i told you so"


 
I don't need to convince you that I'm smarter than you or any particular scientist.  I simply have to ask for proof of a positive claim, and if it's not provided, then my skepticism is valid and you have zero grounds for imposing your political beliefs on me.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> But I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> The models I am talking about don't work the way you describe. You provide basic inputs and they provide a (regionally resolved) prediction of the weather on a statistical basis only. That is, a frequency distribution for average temps or rainfall, means and std deviations. They say that now there is a 1% chance of a 'century severity' drought, but with 2050 predicted CO2, that sort of drought will happen in 30% of years. That sort of thing. This sort of modl cannot tell us what happens next year or last. IOW, your requirement is not well posed.


 
To understand what's going on here, this is the most striking piece of evidence, straight from the The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report:

"The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993).  They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9° C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model.  *It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parameterization for another*, thereby approximately replicating the overall intermodel range of sensitivities."

In other words, "garbage in, garbage out".  The entire political argument extends not from an actual empirical relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature then, but from wild guestimates about how water vapor, clouds, and other processes feed back on a very minor temperature increase.  If those guestimates were even remotely true, simple seasonal fluctuations would cause catastrophic warmings and coolings, which we obviously don't see in reality.  The truth is that our oceans, clouds, biosphere, and other systems all act, in aggregate, as buffers to _prevent_ wild swings in climate, not to amplify them.  The IPCC ignores all negative feedbacks and overestimates positive feedbacks in order to create models that have nothing to do with reality but which promote their political agenda.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

TMonter said:


> 1) So you admit the models are meaningless to tell us what is actually happening. Especially when the confidence intervals they use are huge and have been extremely poor predictors of what is going on. Such a model does not distinguish between actual predicted events and anomalies of meteorology like the heat wave in Europe a few year ago.
> 
> For a model to be valid it has to offer repeatable results with new data. Like I said current models do not.
> 
> ...


 
1) Um.  No.  Since weather fluctuates according to a frequency distribution, our ability to predict weather or validate models is subject to statistics.  The 20th century record is too short to reach a statistically compelling conclusion, and what you are asking for is like asking the theory of probability to predict the result of a coin toss.  IF the question is 'is this coin loaded or 50-50?' then that can be answered unambiguously if you do a couple hundred flips.  The climate models are like this, unambiguously telling you of the prob of certain weather outcomes becomes more or less likely, not able to tell you anything about next year.

2) Did I say anything about warming. Why are you bringing that up?

3) Still not getting it.  Sorry.

You seem to be making less sense than Thomas.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


>


Thank you for checking...and confirming my claim.  We are now at ~391.

Edit: Those other big swings by 100 ppms look like they took >5000 yrs.  The number has just increased by 100 ppm in the last century.  That is 50X faster than anything here, and leaves us 100 ppm above any value in this record.  Kinda belies your 'the earth is always fluctuating and our inputs are smal compared to that.'  The numbers matter.

And remember....the models suggest that such rapid changes may create 'dustbowl' drought conditions b/c the ocean temps take a couple centuries to catch up.  You won't find an example of that in the fossil record, b/c such rapid change has never happened before in the period for which we have such data as above.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> To understand what's going on here, this is the most striking piece of evidence, straight from the The IPCC's 4th Assessment Report:
> 
> "The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993). They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9° C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model. *It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parameterization for another*, thereby approximately replicating the overall intermodel range of sensitivities."
> 
> In other words, "garbage in, garbage out". The entire political argument extends not from an actual empirical relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature then, but from wild guestimates about how water vapor, clouds, and other processes feed back on a very minor temperature increase. If those guestimates were even remotely true, simple seasonal fluctuations would cause catastrophic warmings and coolings, which we obviously don't see in reality. The truth is that our oceans, clouds, biosphere, and other systems all act, in aggregate, as buffers to _prevent_ wild swings in climate, not to amplify them. The IPCC ignores all negative feedbacks and overestimates positive feedbacks in order to create models that have nothing to do with reality but which promote their political agenda.


 
To build a working model, you have to try different things, and see which one works best. Perhaps there has been some advancement since 1993?


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## jharkin (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> So, contrary to Woodgeek's assertion above, you're saying that you choose to believe certain people who are smarter than you, and who you presume to be smarter than me, on faith rather than fact?


 
I'm not woodgeek. I'll let him speak for his positions. Im just telling you that Im not a climate schientist and dont claim to be one.



> That might indeed be true. But what about the tens of thousands of scientists just in the United States alone who have found this to be a bunch of hooey? Oh, you haven't heard about them? Maybe because you only listen to your government and mainstream media who have a vested interest in controlling you through the global warming narrative?


 
Wow, you had to dig back to a petition started in 1998 to come up with this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

I especially love that when Scientific Americal randomly contacted 30 "signers" , 4 didn't exist and of the rest only 11 admitted to agreement with the petition - only 1 being an actual climate researcher.

Keep trying buddy.




> LOL! The hypocrisy or just plain naivete of that statement is laughable.


 
Im no scientist, but I know a lot of people who are. MOst of them go from research grant to reasearch grant to fund their work, and most of them are taking home less than minimum wage when oyu factor in the hours they work. Not getting rich, which is hte typical claim of climate deniers - that its a conspiracy of scientists trying to get rich on public money.

On the other hand prominent denier such as our friend Mr. Junk Science Steve Milloy are often connected to big oil, companies that stand to loose billions if we really take serious action to slow down carbon emissions.

Follow the money.




> I don't need to convince you that I'm smarter than you or any particular scientist. I simply have to ask for proof of a positive claim, and if it's not provided, then my skepticism is valid and you have zero grounds for imposing your political beliefs on me.


 
You claimed to be a scientist. Most of your arguments are "its not true because I said so" Sorry that only works with my 2 year old.

I'm asking you to back up that claim with qualifications.


Ill go first.
Im an engineer.
BS-ME. RPI class of '99

No climate training whatsoever, and I never claimed any.


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## TMonter (Oct 18, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> 1) Um. No. Since weather fluctuates according to a frequency distribution, our ability to predict weather or validate models is subject to statistics. The 20th century record is too short to reach a statistically compelling conclusion, and what you are asking for is like asking the theory of probability to predict the result of a coin toss. IF the question is 'is this coin loaded or 50-50?' then that can be answered unambiguously if you do a couple hundred flips. The climate models are like this, unambiguously telling you of the prob of certain weather outcomes becomes more or less likely, not able to tell you anything about next year.


 
In other words, current models are not scientifically accurate and are useless in predicting future climate changes.



> 2) Did I say anything about warming. Why are you bringing that up?


 
Because ultimately that is where the topic ends.




> 3) Still not getting it. Sorry.
> 
> You seem to be making less sense than Thomas.


 

If you can't understand a clear chart on past changes in temperature how can you claim to make any reasonable conclusion based on examining anything? There was no "striking departure" in modern times from how the climate reacted in the past.


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## jharkin (Oct 18, 2012)

Actually, This one bears emphasis with regard to your "petition"



> In 2001, _Scientific American_ reported:
> *“*​Scientific American took *a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories* claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, *11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher*, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, *three did not remember any such petition, one had died*, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.[24]


 
*^* "Skepticism About Skeptics (sidebar of Climate of Uncertainty)". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 2006-08-23., October 2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
​


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

TMonter said:


> In other words, current models are not scientifically accurate and are useless in predicting future climate changes.


 
Um. No. Systems having random behavior (which is most of the interesting ones) can only be understood using statistical inference. The models being constructed have the power to tell us about trends in average weather and extreme weather in the future. If you don't buy statistical inference, then how can you understand any of the literature?



TMonter said:


> Because ultimately that is where the topic ends.


 
Um. No. We can analyze and discuss the different assumptions that lead to a conclusion separately. I conceded that the 20th century record is too short to say anything compelling about climate change in my very first post in this thread. This is obvious to the layman that looks at the graph. Sure there is a wiggle upwards at the end, but there are enough wiggles that ones gut instinct is that you wouldn't bet the farm that the line couldn't wiggle down next year or for the next 10. And that lay intuition is right on...we are all wired to do statistical inference whether we know it or not.

The fact is that deniers have tried to pretend that all of climate change science hinges on interpreting that one plot, and it simply doesn't. You insisting on moving the topic back to that one useless plot seems like denier behaviour.



TMonter said:


> If you can't understand a clear chart on past changes in temperature how can you claim to make any reasonable conclusion based on examining anything? There was no "striking departure" in modern times from how the climate reacted in the past.


 
Um. No. I was talking about the comparison of a two curves, one a global data record assembled from ice cores, tree rings and other sources from around the world, like the ones Thomas kindly plotted above, and a (dodgy) model that tries to fit that data using a goodly number of made up parameters. And it fit really well until about 2000 yrs ago. IIRC there was a methane deviation around when the (ancient) folks in asia started cultivating rice, and a big dip in CO2 when the european forest regrew after the black death. That sort of thing. And BTW that was where the hockey stick got started.

You are plotting two different kinds of curves from a single site. Seems irrelevant to me.


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## woodgeek (Oct 18, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> That actually sounds like a pretty fair description, and I agree, it is no argument.


 
I like it when we agree.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Actually, it basically always boils down to that. I can contest every last published paper, and you (I'm generalizing here to the typical believer) will say, well I'll take the word of so-and-so over you.


 
Put me down as 'atypical'.



Thomas Anderson said:


> I'll agree with all of that up until the "and they work" part. In fact, they usually don't work. And that's why we use them, to make predictions and then learn from them when the predictions fail. What you CAN'T do in science is make a model and then say, look our model says this and that, therefore we have to immediately take away everyone's individual rights and impose a top-down tyranny on everyone. Sorry, that's pure malicious fallacy. Garbage in, garbage out is absolutely the appropriate philosophy to take in regard to models and is the only way they can be used scientifically.


 
The AGW believers are gonna get ya.  I am actually more worried about the future tyranny that would result when the climate SHTF. But I am enough of a technooptimist to think we wont get there.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Well your presumption is wrong. There is no "balance on the century scale" and humans aren't a blip. Everything is always in flux and there are massive buffers all around. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is miniscule compared to that contained in the biosphere, the ground, and the oceans. You want to talk numbers, well good luck ascertaining those numbers, because they're beyond anything we can reliably estimate. But what I do know is that the amount of carbon contained in all of the fossil fuels on the planet aren't but a drop in the bucket. How do I know that? Because removing them from the oceans, biosphere, and atmosphere over millions of years didn't cause the world to implode or the cycles to cease. And humans will never, ever in all our existence burn all of the fossil fuels because probably only 20% of them are even accessible in remotely economic quantities.
> 
> Do I think that the higher CO2 in the air is directly anthropogenic? Only a tiny fraction. The vast majority of it is caused by the dissolution of carbon from the oceans caused by solar and volcanic warming. Whatever humans add is easily absorbed by the system and would be little different if we didn't exist. How do I know that? Because carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have virtually no correlation to human industrial activity. The fact that the modern human era happens to coincide with a period of warming is not a surprise at all, and to attribute warming to humans is to look at the correlation from the wrong causal direction. All major periods of human advance have occurred during warm cycles. And all major civilization collapses tend to occur during cold cycles. If you want to attribute the current warm cycle to industrialization, then you have to explain how it started in the 1600s instead of the late 1700s. And how the Vikings or the Holy Roman Empire caused the last one. And the Hellenistic Greeks the one before that. And this cycle, you'd have to explain how carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere march steadily in the same trajectory despite periods of depression and rapid industrialization not likewise being so determinate.


 
You work this stuff out on your own Thomas? The industrial release stuff is easy peasy....countries keep records of fuel use over decades, and the emissions are ~2x the rate of increase in the atmosphere, the rest goes into your buffers. A nice accelerating linear trend both for the new CO2 appearing and the estimated release. Small errors on both...and the confounding fluctuations (as in the temp records) are way smaller. You can even see features related to the 1970s oil crisis, the great recession and China's recent economic expansion. All in the CO2 over Hawaii. Heck, now they can visualize the plume of excess CO2 coming from industrial regions, spreading over thousands of miles.

But you are def right that there is a lot of other carbon out there....a lot of it in soil. And how it moves when we repurpose land is not well understood at all. IOW, when we cut down a forest and plant a farm, the net CO2 input to the atmosphere may be really different from that from burning the wood. And for all I know it might be negative....it all depends on the soil. But the long records on CH4, CO2 and temp do appear to show features when global agriculture or other land use takes a big step up or down. Not iron clad, but your statements about buffers speaks to plausibility.

And volcanoes....yeah volcanoes. Generally not nice consistent releasers. A few really big fast squirts, not the linear trend we see.



Thomas Anderson said:


> You want numbers? The sun bathes the Earth's surface in more energy in a single hour (175,000,000 megawatts) than the entire human race consumes in almost 13,000 years of present consumption rates of all kinds of energy including nuclear, fossil fuel, alternative energy, etc. The energy in the wind flowing around the Earth for one hour represents 200 times more energy than the entire human race consumes in an entire year. The scale of the Earth's climate is orders of magnitude greater than what humans have any hope of influencing.


 
So, I know you are hung up on Beers law being logarithmic, but why can't the CO2 from burning a pound of wood, hanging out in the atmosphere for a couple centuries, add a LOT more BTUs to the earths surfaces than it did when you burned the wood in your mancave? Yeah, we don't have the power to heat the earth with 'human power', but if we crank up greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere we can tweak the average temp of the earth by a amount that can be estimated.

IOW, with global warming we are leveraging that big solar number...the little human energy consumption IS irrelevant.


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## woodgeek (Oct 19, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


>


 
Now, I am no alarmist, but the data you provide does give cause to be worried. Keep in mind that the 100 ppm swings in CO2 and the temperature changes (black curve) are highly correlated. Correlated, not causally linked, but let's run with it for a minute. Let's say that the temps were caused by the CO2 'forcing' directly. Well 100 ppm CO2 is the difference between the depths of an ice age with a mile thick glacier sitting on manhattan and the NYC we have today. And we have decided as a species to do an 'experiment' that consists of adding another 100 ppm on top of the recent maximal CO2. Looking at this record, our first guess would be that that would change the earth's climate by roughly the same amount as it changed between the last ice age and the present, only in the hotter direction. Does anyone know what that would look like? Will I still be able to grow corn in Iowa, or will the corn belt look like the Sahara?

So, back to the OP, is the heart of conservatism to be cautious? To weigh the risks of things before jumping in? Is the data above (with the fact that there is an unplotted spike to 391 not shown at the end) reason enough to have some scientists build/run some models? I'm thinking, uh-huh. Please.

From the plot above, 100 ppm CO2 looks like it would 'cause' 8°C global warming (that is the factor you have to multiply one curve by to get it to lie over the other curve). Now, since we have already put 100 ppm into the atmosphere, then this would predict that when the earth catches up (it can take a while) the earth would be 8°C warmer even if we stopped burning FF today. And 8°C gives us a Sahara Earth, based only on the CO2 we have already added! IF you bought the 8°C/100ppm CO2 number (implied by Thomas' plot), you would be a serious climate doomer. You could go have a beer with Al Gore.

As Thomas points out there are lots of reason's to think that the 8°C/100 ppm number is too big. Remember those ice age glaciers....positive feedback...white ice reflects the sun into space amplifying the temp change and the depth of the ice age. Not relevant for a warming swing (given how little ice there is on the current earth). The good news is that the folks looking over models have been duking it out at scientific conferences and in the journals for a couple decades now trying to figure out with more confidence what kinda number we can expect. The good news is that they are settling on a number much closer to 2°C rather than 8. Of course, some folks say it is 1, some say it is 3 or 4, nobody thinks it is 8 (except maybe Al). So, if we stopped burning FF today (not gonna happen), 1 implies no bigs (just the occasional drought year like 2012) and 4 implies we will be halfway to global sahara. 2 is somewhere in between...if we acted now.

Of course, we aren't acting on global warming (yet). On a business as usual projection, we will prob add ANOTHER 100 ppm in the next 50 years. IOW, Homo Sap is gonna double down on its current global warming bet. IF the big number is the lowball estimate 1, then again we get a world a good bit warmer than today's, with a lot of dead forests and extinct animals, but we still have a biosphere and (adapted) agriculture--but that is the lowest of the low end projection. IF the 4 guys are right, then 200 ppm added will give us Sahara world. And the best guess 2°C/100 ppm would predict a 4°C warming by the end of the century. Look at the chart again. The difference between today and an ice age is -8°C. The best estimate of scientists working on the problem for 20 years now is that 2100 would be +4°C versus todays weather. And remember that is a conservative estimate: a basic guess based on the correlation in the chart would suggest a whopping +16°C rise! IOW, for all the $$ we paid the scientists, they told us the problem is only ~25% as bad as was thought in 1980. Doesn't sound like a conspiracy of alarmists to me.


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## jharkin (Oct 19, 2012)

Woodgeek, you guys are now into details that are beyond me.... However I thought I had read though that the already observed arctic melting is actually proceeding faster than even the worst case models predicted?  (On pace to be ice free in the summer as early as 2020 now, vs. a predicted worst case of 2050)

Would not that indicate that your extreme scenarios are not impossible?


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## woodgeek (Oct 19, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Woodgeek, you guys are now into details that are beyond me.... However I thought I had read though that the already observed arctic melting is actually proceeding faster than even the worst case models predicted? (On pace to be ice free in the summer as early as 2020 now, vs. a predicted worst case of 2050)
> 
> Would not that indicate that your extreme scenarios are not impossible?


 
Excellent question. I would describe the current best estimate for global warming to be plenty extreme....solidly apocalyptic by 2100. But it IS 4x less severe than we used to think. 

So the model uncertainty is still larger than you would want....but both the low end and high end estimated are plenty unacceptable.

As for the ice....yeah...its ahead of projections, but I honestly don't know how much that affects the global model/picture for warming. IMO, it is 'small potatoes' compared to desertifying the rest of the earth.


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## jharkin (Oct 19, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> As for the ice....yeah...its ahead of projections, but I honestly don't know how much that affects the global model/picture for warming. IMO, it is 'small potatoes' compared to desertifying the rest of the earth.


 
Again, I get out of my depth when you guys get to the calculations... but my understanding based on published articles was:

-Arctic melt has no effect on sea level because its floating ice   (thought the Greenland melt and antarctic melt does )

- Arctic melt decreases the albedo of the pole, significantly increasing the amount of retained heat from the sun in the summer (self reinforcing feedback loop), putting a lot more energy (heat, moisture) into the atmosphere and accelerating the wild summer weather fluctuations (drought to torrential rain and hurricanes) we have seen in the Northern hemisphere.

Am I understanding correctly?


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## woodgeek (Oct 19, 2012)

I've read the same things. But I think there is a 'forest for the trees' thing. Ice melting is a positive feedback, but the pole is a region, the effects of the feedback are regional (and may extend to NE and Northern Europe, noone knows yet). But in the bigger, global picture (according to current estimates) negative feedbacks are dominant and negate maybe 75% of the direct effects from anthropgenic CO2. The bad news is that under the business as usual scenario, even that 0.25 residual global effect is catastrophic.

And if you live in the polar regions, positive feedbacks will give you an esp dramatic effect. Like an ice free ocean this early in the game.


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## woodgeek (Oct 19, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Again, I get out of my depth when you guys get to the calculations...


 
Not really that hard to get the math.....the BIG unknown is how much warming as a function of how much added CO2? Blue skying it, you could imagine all sorts of complications like thresholds, tipping points, non-linear functions....but the most likely thing is that there is something like a linear (or even slower than linear) global effect (with regional deviations from that global average effect). If you hypothesize a linear response, one's first wild guess would be to look at the historical record, and figure out in that record how much CO2 corresponds to how much warming...that is 8-10°C/100ppm CO2. That is, when the world had 100 ppm more CO2, it was typically 8-10°C warmer on a global average basis (i.e. in Thomas' data, look at the two scales). 20-30 years ago, there were plenty of folks worried that the effect could be that large via such reasoning, which was the motivation for a lot of model building (and early alarmism).

The 'good news' is that modern models are coming closer to 2°C/100ppm (with a wide uncertainty range), with significant time lags in the response. The predictions of these models are consistent with the (rather slight) global warming observed to date....but the models are not believed because they correspond to the 20th century record (which has poor signal to noise). Rather, IMO, the observed weak upturn is believed because it is consistent with the models, which are validated by other means.

The bad news is that the same models also predict not just that Chicago will have winter temps like Atlanta in 2100 (doesn't sound so bad), but also that much of the earth including the lower 48 will be too arid for existing large scale agriculture. And many tropical regions will become hotter and more arid than any existing desert, and thus rendered effectively lifeless (except for humans with reliable A/C). And >1 billion mostly poor people are currently living in the latter locations.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 19, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Thank you for checking...and confirming my claim.


 
Actually, it proves you wrong.  You said, "I think that atmospheric CO2 historically has not changed 50% in 100 years anytime in the last 200000 years," when in fact it has changed as rapidly in the more distant past as it has in the recent past.  If you want to attribute the current change to humans, then how do you explain the previous ones?  Moreover, it is obvious that CO2 changes, while correlated, FOLLOW, not precede temperature changes.  This is due entirely to ocean solubility.  CO2 does not cause temperature to increase in any significant manner because it is saturated already.  CO2 concentrations have been as high as 7,000 ppm in the past (almost 20x higher than current), and the Earth did not boil.  

Also, comparing ice core data to current air sampling is not fool-proof, so looking at past fluctuations may be very attenuated compared to current sampling.  Maybe it has actually fluctuated by hundreds of ppm over very short periods regularly in the past, even more so than they already indicate (which is already very volatile), but ice cores don't capture it.  Plant stomata data show much more volatility of CO2 levels over the last thousand years than the ice cores do.  CO2 levels have often exceeded 300 ppm, including a 120 ppm increase from the late 1100s through mid 1300s.  So simply comparing Mauna Loa air sampling to ice cores and concluding that we're in a suddenly vicious up-trend never before seen is naive, especially in light of the massive hockey stick errors already shown.

The fact of the matter is that temperatures began rising some 250 years before CO2 levels started rising during the present warm cycle.  That is not an indication that CO2 concentrations are causing warming, it is an indication that warming (a trend started pre-industrial times) is causing the dissolution of CO2 from the oceans.



woodgeek said:


> And remember....the models suggest that such rapid changes may create 'dustbowl' drought conditions b/c the ocean temps take a couple centuries to catch up. You won't find an example of that in the fossil record, b/c such rapid change has never happened before in the period for which we have such data as above.


 
Remember, those models are crap.  We know right now by actual sampling that that claim is bullshit.  Warmer temperatures cause more clouds and more rain, right now.  I quoted a NASA climatologist earlier in this thread in that regard.  Droughts are caused by cooler temperatures which prevent as much ocean evaporation.  Warming causes more clouds and rain.



woodgeek said:


> To build a working model, you have to try different things, and see which one works best. Perhaps there has been some advancement since 1993?


 
Nope, because the original hypothesis failed, so any future models built on that same hypothesis will also fail.  And have.  



jharkin said:


> Actually, This one bears emphasis with regard to your "petition".


 
Again, I have no desire to play the game of which scientists are smarter.  But I could play it all day.  UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D environmental physical chemist has decried that warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in the history... When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists."  So keep telling yourself that all of the scientists who have helped compile IPCC documents all come to the same conclusion as the politicians who write the executive summaries for policy makers.



woodgeek said:


> I conceded that the 20th century record is too short to say anything compelling about climate change in my very first post in this thread. This is obvious to the layman that looks at the graph. Sure there is a wiggle upwards at the end, but there are enough wiggles that ones gut instinct is that you wouldn't bet the farm that the line couldn't wiggle down next year or for the next 10. And that lay intuition is right on...we are all wired to do statistical inference whether we know it or not.


 
And yet all of your arguments stem from the idea that we're looking at something unusual in all of history.



woodgeek said:


> The fact is that deniers have tried to pretend that all of climate change science hinges on interpreting that one plot, and it simply doesn't. You insisting on moving the topic back to that one useless plot seems like denier behaviour.


 
Actually, _*skeptics*_ don't have to pretend anything.  They must merely poke holes in the true believers' false contentions.



woodgeek said:


> I am actually more worried about the future tyranny that would result when the climate SHTF. But I am enough of a technooptimist to think we wont get there.


 
Especially if there's no rational path to get us to anthropogenic climate SHTF.  Now natural climate SHTF is another thing altogether, and I really wish society would overcome their normalcy bias and realize that things can change very drastically very fast through no doing of our own.  In fact, long periods of stability are very, very rare.  As I mentioned previously, most civilization collapses throughout history have coincided in rapid downturns in temperature and upticks in geological activity.  Both of which we seem on the verge of experiencing.



woodgeek said:


> You work this stuff out on your own Thomas? The industrial release stuff is easy peasy....countries keep records of fuel use over decades, and the emissions are ~2x the rate of increase in the atmosphere, the rest goes into your buffers. A nice accelerating linear trend both for the new CO2 appearing and the estimated release. Small errors on both...and the confounding fluctuations (as in the temp records) are way smaller. You can even see features related to the 1970s oil crisis, the great recession and China's recent economic expansion. All in the CO2 over Hawaii. Heck, now they can visualize the plume of excess CO2 coming from industrial regions, spreading over thousands of miles.


 
There you go confusing correlation and causation again.  Check the temperature record first, then see how CO2 responds.  You can't just cherry pick a few instances where temperature-driven CO2 changes happened to correlate with human events, Nostradamus.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 19, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> But you are def right that there is a lot of other carbon out there....a lot of it in soil. And how it moves when we repurpose land is not well understood at all. IOW, when we cut down a forest and plant a farm, the net CO2 input to the atmosphere may be really different from that from burning the wood. And for all I know it might be negative....it all depends on the soil. But the long records on CH4, CO2 and temp do appear to show features when global agriculture or other land use takes a big step up or down. Not iron clad, but your statements about buffers speaks to plausibility.


 
Or when we do nothing at all or regardless of what we do. Humans are NOT the driving factor in ANY of this.



woodgeek said:


> And volcanoes....yeah volcanoes. Generally not nice consistent releasers. A few really big fast squirts, not the linear trend we see.


 
Actually, volcanism is relatively continuous. Maybe not on human time scales (i.e. years or decades can pass between individual eruptions from a single site), but geologically and climatologically, volcanism is relatively smooth in its output and has been increasing exponentially of late. What do you think causes El Ninos?



woodgeek said:


> So, I know you are hung up on Beers law being logarithmic, but why can't the CO2 from burning a pound of wood, hanging out in the atmosphere for a couple centuries, add a LOT more BTUs to the earths surfaces than it did when you burned the wood in your mancave? Yeah, we don't have the power to heat the earth with 'human power', but if we crank up greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere we can tweak the average temp of the earth by a amount that can be estimated.
> 
> IOW, with global warming we are leveraging that big solar number...the little human energy consumption IS irrelevant.


 

Yeah, I'm hung up on real, scientifically established physical laws. You make it sound like somehow that should take a back seat to your pseudo-science? Absorbance of energy in a gas IS VERIFIABLY a logarithmic function of its concentration. And that's why it doesn't add a bunch more BTUs. Moreover, even if it did, then it would increase the albedo of the Earth via increased evaporation, which would reduce insolation, thereby nullifying any added greenhouse effect.



woodgeek said:


> Correlated, not causally linked, but let's run with it for a minute. Let's say that the temps were caused by the CO2 'forcing' directly. Well 100 ppm CO2 is the difference between the depths of an ice age with a mile thick glacier sitting on manhattan and the NYC we have today. And we have decided as a species to do an 'experiment' that consists of adding another 100 ppm on top of the recent maximal CO2. Looking at this record, our first guess would be that that would change the earth's climate by roughly the same amount as it changed between the last ice age and the present, only in the hotter direction. Does anyone know what that would look like? Will I still be able to grow corn in Iowa, or will the corn belt look like the Sahara?


 
Everything but the first four words of that are pure fantasy. CO2 cannot physically do what you think it can, the correlation runs the opposite of what you suppose it does, CO2 concentrations have varied by thousands of ppms without any major life-threatening changes.



woodgeek said:


> So, back to the OP, is the heart of conservatism to be cautious? To weigh the risks of things before jumping in? Is the data above (with the fact that there is an unplotted spike to 391 not shown at the end) reason enough to have some scientists build/run some models? I'm thinking, uh-huh. Please.


 
To be cautious is to not buy every pseudo-scientific hypothesis that anyone comes up with, especially those which have been disconfirmed by actual measurements. Now you're free to go run whatever models you want, but nobody else is compelled to care. It's called freedom of religion.



woodgeek said:


> From the plot above, 100 ppm CO2 looks like it would 'cause' 8°C global warming (that is the factor you have to multiply one curve by to get it to lie over the other curve). Now, since we have already put 100 ppm into the atmosphere, then this would predict that when the earth catches up (it can take a while) the earth would be 8°C warmer even if we stopped burning FF today. And 8°C gives us a Sahara Earth, based only on the CO2 we have already added! IF you bought the 8°C/100ppm CO2 number (implied by Thomas' plot), you would be a serious climate doomer. You could go have a beer with Al Gore.


 
Nothing of the sort is implied. Again, you're inferring causation where there is none. If you use the IPCC's numbers, a _doubling_ of CO2 would add an additional 4 Wm^2 to the radiative forcing, or about 1.2°C. We haven't seen even one doubling of CO2 levels let alone another one. Moreover, the IPCC number is itself suspect, but even if we go with it, it would require a quadrupling of CO2 to raise the temperature by 2.4°C.



woodgeek said:


> 1 implies no bigs (just the occasional drought year like 2012) and 4 implies we will be halfway to global sahara. 2 is somewhere in between...if we acted now.


 
No matter what we do, we won't impact climate. And a 1°C increase would not cause droughts, it would cause a slight increase in floods perhaps, but more than anything it would just be generally a little bit wetter. I don't know why you keep insisting that warming causes drought. It doesn't. Cooling causes drought.



woodgeek said:


> Of course, we aren't acting on global warming (yet). On a business as usual projection, we will prob add ANOTHER 100 ppm in the next 50 years. IOW, Homo Sap is gonna double down on its current global warming bet. IF the big number is the lowball estimate 1, then again we get a world a good bit warmer than today's, with a lot of dead forests and extinct animals, but we still have a biosphere and (adapted) agriculture--but that is the lowest of the low end projection. IF the 4 guys are right, then 200 ppm added will give us Sahara world. And the best guess 2°C/100 ppm would predict a 4°C warming by the end of the century. Look at the chart again. The difference between today and an ice age is -8°C. The best estimate of scientists working on the problem for 20 years now is that 2100 would be +4°C versus todays weather. And remember that is a conservative estimate: a basic guess based on the correlation in the chart would suggest a whopping +16°C rise! IOW, for all the $$ we paid the scientists, they told us the problem is only ~25% as bad as was thought in 1980. Doesn't sound like a conspiracy of alarmists to me.


 
There is so much wrong with this paragraph that it makes my head hurt. Firstly, no matter what we "add", it's mostly or entirely absorbed by buffers. If total atmospheric concentrations (due to natural warming causing dissolution from the oceans) increased 100 ppm, that would NOT be a "doubling", it would be an increase of about 33%. Assuming the IPCC number is accurate, that would contribute less than half a degree to warming. Of course you would only see that if we experienced natural warming to cause the CO2 increase, so overall temperature would be higher by well more than half a degree. But not from anything we did. It would have little impact on forests and extinctions. Biological organisms are resilient. There are extinctions every year having nothing to do with humans, but from being out-competed by other organisms. Agriculture would barely need to adapt to a one degree change. An ice age would need a pretty big adaptation, but remember that ice ages mostly only significantly affect temperate regions. We would still have farming in tropical and sub-tropical regions. A warming of 8 degrees would be far better than a cooling of 8 degrees though. Unfortunately, the latter is more likely. You should ignore any predictions anyone makes about the climate further than one week out. You are definitely in the extreme alarmist camp.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 19, 2012)

Here's an article that goes into more depth on
*CO2: Ice Cores vs. Plant Stomata*


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## jharkin (Oct 19, 2012)

Thomas I think I have your MO figured out....

First you make claims based on nothing but " I told you so"

Then we ask for evidence...

Which is answered with a condescending remark like "go use your GoogleFu" or "Thousands of scientists say so" or "I am a scientist, I know "

Then when enough of us push you you dig up some link to something that's vaguely related to your case, but often far out of date. I notice that when I Google a few terms I usually find what you posted as the top link... often something very old - like that 1998 phony petition you found, or the article on healthcare in china from 15 years ago that we found you just plagiarized word for word out of Wikipedia in an ash can thread.

Then with only 5 more minutes of Google searching I usually find out if its legit or - more often -  bunk.

If it does turn out to be bunk and I call you on it you just ignore and change the subject.


This is getting old.


BTW, Im still waiting for you to explain your claimed "scientific credentials" or enlighten us on why they cant farm in Canada.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 19, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Thomas I think I have your MO figured out....


 
Apparently you don't understand science or the burden of proof or logic.  I'm not the one making a positive claim here.  And how old a disconfirmation is of a claim is irrelevant.  Either present proof of your claim, or keep your religion to yourself.  Some "scientist" (who BTW is funded by a government grant) said so is not proof.


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## begreen (Oct 19, 2012)

Listening to both sides of the argument here it sounds like one side is saying need more data and the other is saying we have enough. Regardless, why play a crapshoot with exceptionally slow moving systems just to prove a point? That's the Exxon approach because they are making a ton of bucks with the current plan.

The only changeable variable here is human behavior and activity. Seems like a hell of a gamble to play chicken with nature and just deny that there is a possibility that the current trend is manmade. We can create new economies removed from fossil based energy, but we do not have it in our power to reverse earth scale systems quickly if we have made the wrong assumptions.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 20, 2012)

begreen said:


> Listening to both sides of the argument here it sounds like one side is saying need more data and the other is saying we have enough. Regardless, why play a crapshoot with exceptionally slow moving systems just to prove a point? That's the Exxon approach because they are making a ton of bucks with the current plan.
> 
> The only changeable variable here is human behavior and activity. Seems like a hell of a gamble to play chicken with nature and just deny that there is a possibility that the current trend is manmade. We can create new economies removed from fossil based energy, but we do not have it in our power to reverse earth scale systems quickly if we have made the wrong assumptions.


 
Sounds like a Pascal's wager to me.  Since I'm not a Catholic, that gambit obviously hasn't worked so far, but bravo trying to use that which has been used to defend other religions.  Because truly, that's what anthropogenic global warming is, a religion.  That's what you call a belief which depends only on the fear of probabilities rooted in ignorance.  To paraphrase Richard Dawkins in response to Pascal's wager... _suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that AGW exists.  Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on it not existing, than if you bet on it existing and therefore squander your precious resources capping your carbon, eating only vegetables, protesting oil drillers, etc._  Just imagine if we entertained every little superstition and pseudo-science!  We'd spend our days jumping over cracks in the sidewalk, spinning three times, throwing salt over our shoulders, knocking on wood, saying Hail Mary, wearing charms and magnets, attending a different church, mosque, or synagogue every day of the week!  No thank you, I value truth and reason, and therefore I'll remain skeptical of your silly claims until you provide proof.


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## begreen (Oct 20, 2012)

Just imagine for a minute, that this assumption is wrong. I haven't made any claims. I am just questioning the arrogance of assumptions.


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## Nickolai (Oct 20, 2012)

I am no scientist and do not hold a degree, but...
My one question: Since when did we start trusting the weatherman? All of a sudden we base the end of man on what an extremely small margin of science dictates? Regardless of how well they're funded and politically backed, I think the whole premise is ridiculous.
Remember, this is coming from the same people that can't accurately predict what's going to happen on Tuesday, yet we've been convinced that man is the scourge of the planet and every day we drive, smoke, breathe and crap we're contributing to a fiery of hell on our own expense.  Either way, I'm packing my raincoat, fleece sweater, mukluks a spare t-shirt and sunscreen. 10 years in the army will learn you that.
100 or so years of tracking weather doesn't unlock the key to the earths climate, make all the models you want, I'll bet my next pay check on you being full of it, but I do know there are a ton of people that are filthy rich because of all of this shenanigans, and the average middle class Joe doesn't seem to be reaping the benefits as per usual. Only change is now we're paying more for CFL bulbs, fuel, dual flushing toilets, electronics recycling, tire disposal oh and some corporations are supposedly paying a C02 emission tax...I emit C02 also, when should we start taxing that?
F Al Gore and the weather man


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## woodgeek (Oct 20, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Sounds like a Pascal's wager to me. Since I'm not a Catholic, that gambit obviously hasn't worked so far, but bravo trying to use that which has been used to defend other religions. Because truly, that's what anthropogenic global warming is, a religion. That's what you call a belief which depends only on the fear of probabilities rooted in ignorance. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins in response to Pascal's wager... _suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that AGW exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on it not existing, than if you bet on it existing and therefore squander your precious resources capping your carbon, eating only vegetables, protesting oil drillers, etc._ Just imagine if we entertained every little superstition and pseudo-science! We'd spend our days jumping over cracks in the sidewalk, spinning three times, throwing salt over our shoulders, knocking on wood, saying Hail Mary, wearing charms and magnets, attending a different church, mosque, or synagogue every day of the week! No thank you, I value truth and reason, and therefore I'll remain skeptical of your silly claims until you provide proof.


 
I think we have hit the nail on the head.

You seem convinced that if AGW turns out to be true, and the majority were convinced of this, then sweeping policy changes would be enacted that would destroy our quality of life and/or way of life. This not only makes you resistant to the AGW concept, but feeds a skepticism based on the idea that AGW is being promulgated by those political forces that would use it as a smokescreen for a concerted effort to take away your land, your resources and your money.

Do you believe that? Its ok with me if you do. I can't prove that isn't/won't happen, so I won't try. It is not a scientific problem.
Not trying to bait you....here, I'll tell you what I would think and fear policy-wise....

I **think** you can make a list of mitigation strategies, things that reduce the carbon intensity of the economy, like higher energy efficiency in our homes or cars. Things like your wind turbine, your superinsulation or begreen's solar panels. And then you can take that list of ideas and rank them in order of cost per amount of CO2 reduction. And what you find is that there are dozens of things on the top of the list that are "negative cost", that is they pay for themselves in a pretty short time. And that if you add up the things that are **negative cost** today, and implemented them, you would not only save a lot of folks money, but you would create jobs in the trades and big business, and result in a leaner US economy that was more resilient and energy independent, and which would be very much less carbon intensive. And technology being what it is, by the time we rolled out all those strategies, we would have discovered a number of new negative cost strategies, and we could do those.  And so on.

Only we in the US are not pursuing even these negative cost options in an organized way. Every single one of these ideas has become a political football. Every single one of them has a crowd of folks talking about how they are not really negative cost. Wind credits, cash for caulkers, CFL light bulbs, cash for clunkers, solar rebates, CAFE standards, EV rebates, all are imperfect govt programs whose backers believe them to be effectively **negative cost** to society when everything is toted up. No different that one of us spending money to save money by buying a woodstove or minisplit after we have crunched the numbers. And every single one of these programs is being fought tooth and nail in Congress. So of course the current 'frame' in the US is now so far to the right that the very idea that the US govt could pursue such strategies (even if everyone agreed they were beneficial) is now itself debatable! Not the government's job! They'll mess it up! No picking winners and losers! Let the market take care of it!

Let's not go there. We've been there already in the Can.

So what I want is these positive ends, and I don't want to fight about the means. You have implemented a lot of low carbon strategies for resilience. I get your motivations. You are also, clearly, a positive advocate for others changing their lives in similar ways. We are both approaching the same ends, for different reasons, but we are actually allies in the real world of energy and advocacy, if not the political world.

My **fear** is that AGW deniers, as a group, discourage the sort of positive changes we have both advocated and promulgated by example. Maybe I'm wrong, but I am afraid that the politicking around all these negative cost energy programs has actually hindered not only the govt programs (duh), but also discouraged free enterprise investment, and many DIY folks from considering all their technology options. So if all the folks who killed 'cash for caulkers' were saying 'well of course airsealing is a good thing' and organizing volunteer efforts to airseal poor widows' victorian houses on the weekends through their churches...I would say "Hell yeah". But I don't see that. I see politicians laughing at the idea that it is something everyone should do...and waving tire gauges at political conventions. 

So, Thomas, how do we best advocate for folks in the real world to live more like you, me, Jeremy and Begreen? Back to the OP, how do we sell it to the 'right'?


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## jharkin (Oct 20, 2012)

Woodgeek, you make the point far better than I could. It seems to me that if worst case projections of AGW are right, and we do nothing - as a species we may face extinction.

Conversely if we do make changes but AGW isnt reality we end up spending a lot of money and implementing a more diverse and resilient energy policy (important anyway to deal with Peak Oil, which I believe Thomas has stated he is a believer in).

Pretty obvious choice.


Not to mention the "follow the money" aspect.... Who has the most to gain or loose?  PHD reasearchers working 100 hour weeks in a lab going from grant to grant struggling to pay off student loans? Or the big oil companies that stand to loose billions and trillions if we break the stranglehold of oil on our economy. Like the "spice" in Herberts fictional universe... _the oil must flow_....


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## jharkin (Oct 20, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Apparently you don't understand science or the burden of proof or logic. I'm not the one making a positive claim here. And how old a disconfirmation is of a claim is irrelevant. Either present proof of your claim, or keep your religion to yourself. Some "scientist" (who BTW is funded by a government grant) said so is not proof.


 
Why don't you try to actually answer the direct questions I asked you rather than flinging insults?


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## semipro (Oct 20, 2012)

The way my simple mind sees it:
Humans have quickly released massive amounts of carbon to the atmosphere that were naturally sequestered in the earth over millions of years.
Its conceivable that this might impact our very complex environment.
If our activities are impacting our climate, we,humans are probably not going to like the change. Established ecosystems won't benefit from it much either.
Even if it is part of a naturally occurring cycle, why exacerbate the problem? Maybe this change was due in 20,000 years anyway. That's a long time for humans, nothing in geological time.
The things that need to be done to address this problem, whether we're 100% certain its occurring or not, are things we need to do anyway to ensure the sustainability of life as we humans like it.

Final thought: If we'd have applied the same scientific/political rigor to our decision to decrease the use of halogenated hydrocarbons worldwide (e.g. Freon) we'd have a hell of a lot more UV making its way to the surface now.


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## woodgeek (Oct 20, 2012)

Nickolai said:


> I am no scientist and do not hold a degree, but...
> My one question: Since when did we start trusting the weatherman? All of a sudden we base the end of man on what an extremely small margin of science dictates? Regardless of how well they're funded and politically backed, I think the whole premise is ridiculous.
> Remember, this is coming from the same people that can't accurately predict what's going to happen on Tuesday, yet we've been convinced that man is the scourge of the planet and every day we drive, smoke, breathe and crap we're contributing to a fiery of hell on our own expense. Either way, I'm packing my raincoat, fleece sweater, mukluks a spare t-shirt and sunscreen. 10 years in the army will learn you that.
> 100 or so years of tracking weather doesn't unlock the key to the earths climate, make all the models you want, I'll bet my next pay check on you being full of it, but I do know there are a ton of people that are filthy rich because of all of this shenanigans, and the average middle class Joe doesn't seem to be reaping the benefits as per usual. Only change is now we're paying more for CFL bulbs, fuel, dual flushing toilets, electronics recycling, tire disposal oh and some corporations are supposedly paying a C02 emission tax...I emit C02 also, when should we start taxing that?
> F Al Gore and the weather man


 
Fun fact 1: The earth is a big rock floating in space in the sunshine. We can look at little rocks in space, asteroids, and take their temp by thermography, just like my IR gun, or an IR camera. A simple pattern emerges: blacker ones are hotter, whiter ones are cooler, closer to the sun hotter, further ones are cooler, etc. If you plug the earth into that pattern (its distance and average 'color') it should be cooold. In fact, about 0°F, on average. In reality, the average temp of the earth is ~60°F.

Fun fact 2: Geologists have found evidence for something called 'Snowball Earth', sort of a super ice age where we don't just have glaciers on land, but the entire ocean freezes over all the way to the equator! Of course, this was a billion years ago, but they find fossil evidence that the big snowball happened several times, and each time lasted for millions of years. Crazy.

These fun facts make sense because of the greenhouse effect. Gases in the atmosphere of the earth block IR from leaving, keeping the earth warm. And it is not a small effect. It is a 60°F effect, globally. If you take away the greenhouse effect, the earth would freeze over solid, and this sort of thing has actually happened multiple times in the past.

Now, there are multiple greenhouse gases, but CO2 is a major one of them. Over all of recorded ancient history, the CO2 in the air has been ~290 ppm and not changed much. All the CO2 emitted by human activity since the industrial revolution has bumped that up by 100 ppm to 390, or about 35%.

So, if the greenhouse effect heats the earth by +60°F, and we crank up one of the major gases by 35%, do you expect the earth might heat up a little? I would, it's actually common sense. The question is how much and how fast. The answer from 20 years of calculating....maybe 3°F and several decades. Not crazy, crank one major gas up by 35%, and the greenhouse effect goes from +60°F to +63°F, or a 4% increase. That is what the weathermen are saying.

And +3°F is def not the end of the world. It is prob enough to turn some regions that are almost deserts into deserts, or kill off some tree species near the edge of their range, and maybe some pest species don't get killed by a hard freeze, and their range expands. So, there are costs. It will def suck for some folks.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. CO2 is going up by 2 ppm per year, and accelerating. So if the world population and economy keep bumping along, we are on track to add as much CO2 as we have in all history in the next 30-40 years (depending on growth). And then we are talking 5°F and bigger impacts. And then there could be another 100 ppm in the next 20-30 years after that and even more impacts. That is the current trajectory....enough CO2 by 2100 to boost temps not by the current 1-2°F relative to 1950, but more like 10°F.

Of course, 2100 is a long way away. The good news is that most of that worrisome carbon is still in the ground, and that there are lots of ways that we can reduce current CO2 emissions AND save money. Which ones you do will depend on your situation, your pocketbook and (maybe) your politics. Why don't you try some?


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## jharkin (Oct 20, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Of course, 2100 is a long way away.


 
Not really. Unless medical science falls backward its not inconceivable my children might live to see it, and any grandchildren I have almost certainly will.  Its for them that I get so passionate about this.


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## woodgeek (Oct 20, 2012)

jharkin said:


> It seems to me that if worst case projections of AGW are right, and we do nothing - as a species we may face extinction.


 
Actually, I don't agree with the extinction part at all. I think we are a pretty effing smart, resiliant and durable species. When the last crumb of food is being fought over on this planet, it will be two homo saps (or whatever we become) fighting or maybe a grudgematch between a human, a rat and a cockroach.

When my little girls were afraid of the dark I told them: "There is exactly one kind of creature that nothing on this planet will mess with, that when the bear in the woods or the shark in the sea sees one, they go the other way....and you're one of them."

I think when the sad history of our current AGW epoch is written, it will look a lot more like the tobacco wars in the 1960s. The science of AGW now is more mature than those studies that said 'cigarettes cause cancer' were in 1962. And like the outcome of the tobacco wars from 50 years ago (we still have smokers and it was never made illegal), we will still be burning FF in 2062 and it will not be illegal (but they may be heavily taxed).

Fun fact 3: The Jetsons aired in 1962, and was set in 2062. We are half way there. Feels about right to me. I always wondered why they built all those malls, factories and apt blocks way up in the sky? Now we can know the answer: global warming


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## woodgeek (Oct 20, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Not really. Unless medical science falls backward its not inconceivable my children might live to see it, and any grandchildren I have almost certainly will. Its for them that I get so passionate about this.


 
Irrespective of the outcome of this election, there are 21 more elections before 2100.


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## jharkin (Oct 20, 2012)

Sure the extinction comment was sensational.  I was just saying that for effect, but I do believe that if we got your 10F warming we probably wouldn't be able to maintain anything close to the current 7 billion.

Either way I think I really should give this thread a rest before I say something obnoxious enough the mods kick me.


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## woodgeek (Oct 20, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Sure the extinction comment was sensational. I was just saying that for effect, but I do believe that if we got your 10F warming we probably wouldn't be able to maintain anything close to the current 7 billion.


 
Given no other choice but starvation, people would happily eat 'food' synthesized in a factory/fermenter with no agricultural input. Such technology has been around for a long time, and we could in principle feed >10 billion that way, with a way lower eco-footprint than current agriculture. But we don't want to, so we don't.


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## Frozen Canuck (Oct 23, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> If we could farm Canada, that would be amazing for humanity.
> 
> 
> Not quite sure how to break this to you but ........ farming has been going on north of 49 for about the same length of time that it has south of 49.
> ...


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 23, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> You seem convinced that if AGW turns out to be true, and the majority were convinced of this, then sweeping policy changes would be enacted that would destroy our quality of life and/or way of life. This not only makes you resistant to the AGW concept, but feeds a skepticism based on the idea that AGW is being promulgated by those political forces that would use it as a smokescreen for a concerted effort to take away your land, your resources and your money.


 
There's no personal agenda here.  I live off the grid with a zero or negative "carbon footprint", so the impact to me personally from most idiotic environmentalist political solutions is negligible, other than the fact that imposing socialism under a false pretext will severely damage the efficiency of our economy and our civil liberties.  I'm skeptical of ALL claims, period.  That's what it means to be a scientist.  To purposely inflict damage (psychological, economic, and physical) upon people based on a lie is unjust and inhumane.  And I stand against it both on scientific grounds and humanitarian grounds.  But let's not conflate them.  The discussion here isn't how this or that scenario would effect people, but rather whether or not AGW is true or false.  Arguing from consequences instead of veracity is the typical theist move once they've lost the argument.



woodgeek said:


> I **think** you can make a list of mitigation strategies, things that reduce the carbon intensity of the economy, like higher energy efficiency in our homes or cars. Things like your wind turbine, your superinsulation or begreen's solar panels. And then you can take that list of ideas and rank them in order of cost per amount of CO2 reduction. And what you find is that there are dozens of things on the top of the list that are "negative cost", that is they pay for themselves in a pretty short time. And that if you add up the things that are **negative cost** today, and implemented them, you would not only save a lot of folks money, but you would create jobs in the trades and big business, and result in a leaner US economy that was more resilient and energy independent, and which would be very much less carbon intensive. And technology being what it is, by the time we rolled out all those strategies, we would have discovered a number of new negative cost strategies, and we could do those. And so on.


 
I'm not interested in playing central planner.  Neither you nor I nor anyone else is smart enough to do so.  If people want to save money or what have you by installing particular capital improvements, that must be left up to their individual decision.



woodgeek said:


> Only we in the US are not pursuing even these negative cost options in an organized way. Every single one of these ideas has become a political football. Every single one of them has a crowd of folks talking about how they are not really negative cost. Wind credits, cash for caulkers, CFL light bulbs, cash for clunkers, solar rebates, CAFE standards, EV rebates, all are imperfect govt programs whose backers believe them to be effectively **negative cost** to society when everything is toted up. No different that one of us spending money to save money by buying a woodstove or minisplit after we have crunched the numbers. And every single one of these programs is being fought tooth and nail in Congress. So of course the current 'frame' in the US is now so far to the right that the very idea that the US govt could pursue such strategies (even if everyone agreed they were beneficial) is now itself debatable! Not the government's job! They'll mess it up! No picking winners and losers! Let the market take care of it!


 
In case you hadn't noticed, the entire socialized world is collapsing under debt, regulations, and monetization.



woodgeek said:


> So what I want is these positive ends, and I don't want to fight about the means. You have implemented a lot of low carbon strategies for resilience. I get your motivations. You are also, clearly, a positive advocate for others changing their lives in similar ways. We are both approaching the same ends, for different reasons, but we are actually allies in the real world of energy and advocacy, if not the political world.


 
I'm for convincing people how to change voluntarily in their own best interests, not for imposing anything on anyone from the top down.



woodgeek said:


> My **fear** is that AGW deniers, as a group, discourage the sort of positive changes we have both advocated and promulgated by example. Maybe I'm wrong, but I am afraid that the politicking around all these negative cost energy programs has actually hindered not only the govt programs (duh), but also discouraged free enterprise investment, and many DIY folks from considering all their technology options. So if all the folks who killed 'cash for caulkers' were saying 'well of course airsealing is a good thing' and organizing volunteer efforts to airseal poor widows' victorian houses on the weekends through their churches...I would say "Hell yeah". But I don't see that. I see politicians laughing at the idea that it is something everyone should do...and waving tire gauges at political conventions.


 
On the contrary, it is the AGW believers who pervert the entire name of science and who set back those who want real, positive change.  So long as this remains a political movement advocating socialism, most will never take you seriously.  There are very good social and economic reasons for wanting to get off of foreign oil, diversify our energy sources, become more self-sufficient, etc., but government can never be the vehicle to achieve it.  And lying to people certainly will never help you convince them.



woodgeek said:


> So, Thomas, how do we best advocate for folks in the real world to live more like you, me, Jeremy and Begreen? Back to the OP, how do we sell it to the 'right'?


 
I already told you how to sell it to conservatives in my second post on this thread.  You preferred arguing with me instead of following up on that.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 23, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> So, if the greenhouse effect heats the earth by +60°F, and we crank up one of the major gases by 35%, do you expect the earth might heat up a little? I would, it's actually common sense.


 
Actually, it's not.  If you're laying in bed with 3 wool blankets, 2 down comforters, a flannel sheet, and long johns on, what do you think adding another wool blanket will do to your body temperature?  If you said "little to nothing", you'd be right.  Pointing out that you'd be cold if you were naked is not an argument otherwise.


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## woodgeek (Oct 23, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> I already told you how to sell it to conservatives in my second post on this thread. You preferred arguing with me instead of following up on that.


 
I can't seem to find that....can you reproduce it?  I'd be happy to move back to the OP.



woodgeek said:


> So, if the greenhouse effect heats the earth by +60°F, and we crank up one of the major gases by 35%, do you expect the earth might heat up a little? I would, it's actually common sense. The question is how much and how fast. The answer from 20 years of calculating....maybe 3°F and several decades. Not crazy, crank one major gas up by 35%, and the greenhouse effect goes from +60°F to +63°F, or a 4% increase.


 


Thomas Anderson said:


> Actually, it's not. If you're laying in bed with 3 wool blankets, 2 down comforters, a flannel sheet, and long johns on, what do you think adding another wool blanket will do to your body temperature? If you said "little to nothing", you'd be right. Pointing out that you'd be cold if you were naked is not an argument otherwise.


 
Not saying anything unreasonable here.  I think the plausibility of AGW in these terms is pretty clear.  Making a significant perturbation to a 60°F effect can cause a small temp increase.  For a hearth.com example, if your big woodstove is cruising along heating your house to 70°F when its 10°F outside, and you decide to bake some cookies, might the temp in your house bump up a couple degrees after a couple hours?


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> I can't seem to find that....can you reproduce it? I'd be happy to move back to the OP.


 
Ok, maybe it was my 4th post in this thread.  #16



woodgeek said:


> Not saying anything unreasonable here. I think the plausibility of AGW in these terms is pretty clear. Making a significant perturbation to a 60°F effect can cause a small temp increase. For a hearth.com example, if your big woodstove is cruising along heating your house to 70°F when its 10°F outside, and you decide to bake some cookies, might the temp in your house bump up a couple degrees after a couple hours?


 

Not the same thing at all.  Your example is like adding more volcanism to the greenhouse effect, which is in fact one of the main drivers of climate change.  Volcanism along with solar cycles and Earth orbit are the primary factors in climate.

For a hearth.com example of the greenhouse effect, if your big woodstove is cruising along heating your house to 70°F when its 10°F outside, and you have R-40 closed-cell spray foam insulation in your house, might adding R-1 of additional insulation bump up your temperature a couple of degrees after a couple hours?  No, it won't.  But if you had R-1 insulation in your house and you added R-1 additional, then, yes it would.  That's because insulation follows a logarithmic curve, not a linear curve.  Showing that the original R-40 retained 60°F of heat does not mean that an additional R-1 will retain another 1.5°F.  In reality, the very first R-1 retained probably 20°F or more, the next R-1 15°F, the next R-1 10°F, the next R-1 5°F, and so on.  The conductance through your wall is the inverse of the R-value.  R-1 = 1 BTU/sqft-°F-h.  R-2 = 0.5 BTU/sqft-°F-h, which is twice as much R-value but only a 50% improvement.  R-3 = 0.33 BTU/sqft-°F-h, which is three times as much "R", but only a 2/3 improvement over R-1.  By the time you get to R-40, you have 0.025 BTU/sqft-°F-h conductance.  If you bump it up to R-41, you'll only improve to 0.0244 BTU/sqft-°F-h.  So the very first R-1 blocked an almost indefinite amount of heat loss to just 1 BTU, the second R-1 blocked half a BTU additional, but the 41st R-1 only blocked 0.0006 BTU more than the 40th.  So you would not be able to measure any additional heat inside your home as a result of that extra insulation.  It would be far too tiny an increment to notice.  Statistically, it would be noise.







That's how Earth's greenhouse effect works.  H2O is the primary greenhouse gas and gives Earth its greatest R-value.  CO2 comes next and fills all the gaps in H2O.  Together, along with a few minor greenhouse gases, these are like R-100 insulation.  Even doubling the CO2 from current levels would hardly make any difference in the total heat retained.


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## jeffoc (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Sounds like a Pascal's wager to me. Since I'm not a Catholic, that gambit obviously hasn't worked so far, but bravo trying to use that which has been used to defend other religions. Because truly, that's what anthropogenic global warming is, a religion. That's what you call a belief which depends only on the fear of probabilities rooted in ignorance. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins in response to Pascal's wager... _suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that AGW exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on it not existing, than if you bet on it existing and therefore squander your precious resources capping your carbon, eating only vegetables, protesting oil drillers, etc._ Just imagine if we entertained every little superstition and pseudo-science! We'd spend our days jumping over cracks in the sidewalk, spinning three times, throwing salt over our shoulders, knocking on wood, saying Hail Mary, wearing charms and magnets, attending a different church, mosque, or synagogue every day of the week! No thank you, I value truth and reason, and therefore I'll remain skeptical of your silly claims until you provide proof.


 

Ugh, such an attitude. Ignore the proof and screw the future gerations.
I'll drive my SUV eating Mickey D's lighting my cigarette (that doesn't cause any health problems, the tabacco company says so, it must be the truth) with my disposable lighter, laughing at the Prius driving, tin foil hat alarmists.

It just makes me sad.


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## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Just watched a program on PBS last night (yea lefty BS-whatever) very interesting, the thing is at what point does common sense come into play, I know some dont like common sense but it has always worked for me. Dumping all the crap we are into the atmosphere has no effect what so ever?


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## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Now Now oldspark, dont you know, common sense is a left wing socialist conspiracy to punish corporate America and take away our god given right to pillage the planet!!

To be honest I gave up on this one guys. The discussion here is going straight thought the climate skeptics handbook line by line:

There is no proof
Carbon is natural
XXX scientists disagree
The satellite data shows a cooling period if you look at 1998 and 2012
warm weather is good- we can farm Canada 
The climate changed before but life continued
What about volcanoes?
CO2 is caused by, not causes warming
Incremental CO2 doesn't matter
Its all about water vapor
Its all sun cycles

and on and on. Its also funny how as you walk through the list some arguments get you backed into a corner then we bring up a new argument that contradicts earlier positions.

All just to justify unregulated pollution and more profits for Exxon and BP


If we stay on script I think the next arguments in the list will be urban heat islands, the little ice age ending and the medieval warm period.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jharkin said:


> The discussion here is going straight thought the climate skeptics handbook line by line


 
And yet, having heard the actual scientific facts before, you're still a true believer? Common sense or blind faith? You're following the typical theist handbook. I could just as easily be arguing with a Christian about the existence of God. I often win those arguments too. Even when they gang up on me and seem unrelenting, I check back months or years later and find that some of them are atheists (or some equivalent but less stigmatized moniker). Likewise, I may not convince a holier-than-thou adherent like you since you're not making any rational arguments and apparently not absorbing mine, there are dozens reading this who take my points and jump off the AGW bandwagon, which is why there are fewer and fewer faithful every year...


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jharkin said:


> All just to justify unregulated pollution and more profits for Exxon and BP


 
Firstly, why on Earth would I be trying to justify pollution or profits for a company I don't own?  Secondly, what makes you think that I favor gasoline as a fuel?  And thirdly, who is really profiting off of gasoline?





Again, you're going through the typical true believer's handbook and making zero sense.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> I could just as easily be arguing with a Christian about the existence of God. I often win those arguments too.


 
If you think its actually possible to "win" an argument over an item of faith I suggest you look up the definition of faith.



> you're not making any rational arguments and apparently not absorbing mine,


 
I've read yours, disagree, and presented evidence backing up my position. Its my right to do so. I have asked you to explain some of your positions - like the "farming in Canada" line or provide your scientific credentials, but you ignore.



> there are dozens reading this who take my points and jump off the AGW bandwagon, which is why there are fewer and fewer faithful every year...


 
Wow, did I bruise your ego????




>


 

Hmm, It only took me a whopping 30 seconds to read their front page and see they actually state that only republicans dont generally believe in human cause but people of all parties believe its happening and is a serious problem



http://www.people-press.org/2012/10/15/more-say-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/



Keep trying, this thread is becoming a great source of entertainment.


----------



## Grisu (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Firstly, why on Earth would I be trying to justify pollution or profits for a company I don't own? Secondly, what makes you think that I favor gasoline as a fuel? And thirdly, who is really profiting off of gasoline?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
I do not know where you get that image from but it is nonsense. First, as shown it would already be wrong as it compares profit with revenue. Those two are not the same. Second, the Exxon number forgets the earnings made through producing, refining and selling the crude oil. I cite:"Exxon alone made more than $41 billion (in profit in 2011). By contrast, the federal gas tax generated $24 billion in revenue for the Highway Trust Fund in 2011." http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/03/wsj-op-ed-uses-debunked-exxon-talking-point-to/189117
With record profits during the last years we certainly do not need to pity the "poor" oil companies.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Right Mouse- > view image.

You can see the source for it is http://www.allamericanblogger.com/  , which is a right wing blog just like the site he used for a bunch of his other pieces of evidence from http://wattsupwiththat.com/


----------



## woodgeek (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> And yet, having heard the actual scientific facts before, you're still a true believer? Common sense or blind faith? You're following the typical theist handbook. I could just as easily be arguing with a Christian about the existence of God. I often win those arguments too. Even when they gang up on me and seem unrelenting, I check back months or years later and find that some of them are atheists (or some equivalent but less stigmatized moniker). Likewise, I may not convince a holier-than-thou adherent like you since you're not making any rational arguments and apparently not absorbing mine, there are dozens reading this who take my points and jump off the AGW bandwagon, which is why there are fewer and fewer faithful every year...


 
Cool.  If you're a hard-core atheist, at least we agree on something!

Seriously, do let me know when you have 'won' an 'argument'.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Cool. If you're a hard-core atheist, at least we agree on something!
> 
> Seriously, do let me know when you have 'won' an 'argument'.


 
Doing it right now.


----------



## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Doing it right now.


 My my someone thinks a lot of themselves, stating you are winning is not the same as winning.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

Grisu said:


> I do not know where you get that image from but it is nonsense. First, as shown it would already be wrong as it compares profit with revenue. Those two are not the same. Second, the Exxon number forgets the earnings made through producing, refining and selling the crude oil. I cite:"Exxon alone made more than $41 billion (in profit in 2011). By contrast, the federal gas tax generated $24 billion in revenue for the Highway Trust Fund in 2011." http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/08/03/wsj-op-ed-uses-debunked-exxon-talking-point-to/189117
> With record profits during the last years we certainly do not need to pity the "poor" oil companies.


 
Somehow you equate "federal gas tax" with "state gas tax".  That's your first error.  Reading mediamatters or the WSJ op-ed is your next error.  Confusing taxes with anything but profit is your third error.  Other than showing your disdain for ethical commerce and your propensity for racking up logical errors, your post has no coherent purpose.


----------



## Grisu (Oct 24, 2012)

1. The revenue in state gas tax was 37 billion in 2009 (http://www.gaspricewatch.com/web_gas_taxes.php) still just barely even with the profits of one major oil company.

2. If you cannot refute the date you rather refute the source? 

3. Since those revenues are used to build the infrastructure that support our car addiction they are earnings not profits. Profits would go to investors which you do not have in a government.

What please is "ethical commerce" and why do I show disdain for it?


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

oldspark said:


> My my someone thinks a lot of themselves, stating you are winning is not the same as winning.


 
Do you know how I know I'm winning?  A bunch of trolls jumped on the thread trying to push my relevant, fact-filled posts out of view and throw the whole thread into the can.  You wouldn't want people to actually be influenced by truth, would you?  Typical true believer tactics.  Instead of making a rational argument, you post a bunch of useless insults in order to stain the whole affair.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

Grisu said:


> Profits would go to investors which you do not have in a government.


 
LOL!  Do you truly believe that?  How naive!



Grisu said:


> What please is "ethical commerce" and why do I show disdain for it?


 
Ethical commerce is when a willing buyer and a willing seller come to a mutually voluntary arrangement to trade goods or services.  What is unethical is using force of government to coerce people to do things against their will.  You disdain ethical commerce and promote unethical government force.


----------



## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Do you know how I know I'm winning? A bunch of trolls jumped on the thread trying to push my relevant, fact-filled posts out of view and throw the whole thread into the can. You wouldn't want people to actually be influenced by truth, would you? Typical true believer tactics. Instead of making a rational argument, you post a bunch of useless insults in order to stain the whole affair.


 I'm insulting you, not sure about that, I do not think you are winning the argument is all I am saying have heard it all before on both sides, like I said common sense tells me other wise.


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## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Here's what the clowns from Yale think.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/global-warming-real-has-consequences-part-i


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## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Do you know how I know I'm winning? A bunch of trolls jumped on the thread trying to push my relevant, fact-filled posts out of view and throw the whole thread into the can. You wouldn't want people to actually be influenced by truth, would you? Typical true believer tactics. Instead of making a rational argument, you post a bunch of useless insults in order to stain the whole affair.


 
A few comments back you stated that you where positive your positions in this thread have pushed many people out of the AGW camp.

Im still waiting for just ONE of these converts them to come on here and state so.

crickets.....


Or maybe you could answer the question we asked the n-th time for the background on your statement about no "farming in Canada." among others....

crickets....


----------



## woodgeek (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Do you know how I know I'm winning? A bunch of trolls jumped on the thread trying to push my relevant, fact-filled posts out of view and throw the whole thread into the can. You wouldn't want people to actually be influenced by truth, would you? Typical true believer tactics. Instead of making a rational argument, you post a bunch of useless insults in order to stain the whole affair.


 
This troll is very sorry for his incredible trolly trolliness. I have learned my lesson. Now, back to your regularly scheduled confirmation bias.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Somehow you equate "federal gas tax" with "state gas tax". That's your first error. Reading mediamatters or the WSJ op-ed is your next error. Confusing taxes with anything but profit is your third error. Other than showing your disdain for ethical commerce and your propensity for racking up logical errors, your post has no coherent purpose.


 

Id say it was the other way around. Earlier in the thread you stated that AGW believe was a conspiracy created to let government and big business control us. But if you follow the money its obvious that today there is far more at stake for fossil fuel companies to LOOSE a lot of money if we move away from FF than there is for anyone to make any money on renewables quite yet.  So the idea that anyone is giong to become wealthy and powerful faking climate research just to make a case for getting off oil is just silly.

That was the point I was trying to make when I stated that AGW denialism is in the vested interest of those trying to protect fossil fuel profits. There is simply no case to be made for any kind of personal gain to be made from AGW research.

(If you want to get rich doing scientific research you go into biomed and work for a pharma developing the next viagra.  Not climatology.)


Apparently you cant refute that so instead you drum up some phony statistic trying to prove that gas taxes are a government conspiracy to control us through fossil fuels.


I'm confused - which is it? Is the AGW/anti-fossil fuel camp a government conspiracy or is it the fossil fuel camp is a government tax conspiracy ??

There are more twists in this thread than a bad mystery novel....


----------



## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

They have backed off on their funding from the 40%( did not look good) but that's what Exxon had invested in the anti globing warming campaign at one time.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

I suppose the Roman Catholic Church had no vested interest in promoting the flat-Earth, geocentric theories against the evil profit-making telescope makers, right?  What has Exxon got to do with anything?  There's nobody from Exxon here.  We're trying to discuss facts, not assign blame and ulterior motives.  If you think that carbon is a threat, then prove it.  Otherwise, all you've got is your faith in a religion.  And that's OK, you can have a religious faith in AGW if you like.  But you're fooling yourself if you think it's anything other than that and you certainly have no basis for forcing others into your belief.  I will no more pray to your God than any other.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> This troll is very sorry for his incredible trolly trolliness. I have learned my lesson. Now, back to your regularly scheduled confirmation bias.


 
Woodgeek, you've actually been one of the few trying to make a case rather than preach a gospel.  Where we left off before all the trolls jumped in was my comparison of global warming to insulation in your home.  Do you have a rebuttal to that?


----------



## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Prove to me that its not man made, there is all sorts of information, charts and BS for both sides, any thing you posted has not proven its not man made.


----------



## oldspark (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Woodgeek, you've actually been one of the few trying to make a case rather than preach a gospel. Where we left off before all the trolls jumped in was my comparison of global warming to insulation in your home. Do you have a rebuttal to that?


So sorry to have wasted your time (and mine), by the way I hope you are right, not for me but for my grandkids.


----------



## jeffoc (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Do you know how I know I'm winning? A bunch of trolls jumped on the thread trying to push my relevant, fact-filled posts out of view and throw the whole thread into the can. You wouldn't want people to actually be influenced by truth, would you? Typical true believer tactics. Instead of making a rational argument, you post a bunch of useless insults in order to stain the whole affair.


 
I had sworn off posting because I've seen your type before, I have a BS in environmental science, although I left the field a few years ago, but was enjoying some of the other points that were being made so I've kept reading. Reading and catching up today, I've seen you get more and more rude and dismissive of people. Usually everyone on here is very polite.

So you post on a public forum and complain and call people names when they respond to you! You have got to be kidding me.
The crap you have posted as fact is either out of date or sketchy at best. Do you have any idea how much more precise equipment is since 1998?

The fact that you ask for definative proof or dismiss the theory shows me that you really don't understand the way science works.

I too, would love to hear from one person that you have "converted" as you put it.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> I had sworn off posting because I've seen your type before, I have a BS in environmental science, although I left the field a few years ago, but was enjoying some of the other points that were being made so I've kept reading. Reading and catching up today, I've seen you get more and more rude and dismissive of people. Usually everyone on here is very polite.
> 
> So you post on a public forum and complain and call people names when they respond to you! You have got to be kidding me.
> The crap you have posted as fact is either out of date or sketchy at best. Do you have any idea how much more precise equipment is since 1998?
> ...


 
What a perfect specimen of a troll post.  I'm quite informed about how science works, and it starts with universal skepticism and requiring proof of every positive claim.  If you don't have any, then what you're saying is that your claim is an unsubstantiated hypothesis.


----------



## begreen (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Firstly, why on Earth would I be trying to justify pollution or profits for a company I don't own? Secondly, what makes you think that I favor gasoline as a fuel? And thirdly, who is really profiting off of gasoline?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
This is cherry picking stats from an unstated source and is off by a few hundred percent. Often libertarians like to use this exaggeration to make a point. The actual stated profit by Exxon is 7.4 cents, however that completely ignores the much bigger profits on crude oil sales.

http://www.factcheck.org/2011/05/playing-politics-with-gasoline-prices/

Also, without govt. investment in roads, bridges and infrastructure, oil companies wouldn't be making diddly on gasoline.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> I too, would love to hear from one person that you have "converted" as you put it.


 
Deprogrammed would be a better term.  Don't imagine for a second that they would subject themselves to your scorn.  It also generally takes awhile before they realize they've been deprogrammed.  You don't just go from diehard adherent to enlightened skeptic overnight.  You mull things over and in time find that you no longer believe.  Quite a few of my social media friends are previous opponents who were brainwashed into silly cults like AGW, socialism, Scientology, neoconservatism, Christianity, etc.  They didn't even realize they were being deprogrammed.  I've done a lot of that in the Tea Party as well, deprogramming neoconservatives who one day wake up and find that they're now libertarians (and always were but for a few brainwashed ideas put in their heads).  But you have to be willing to even listen, and many are not.  Those who live in a self-imposed echo chamber cannot be reached.  Cults like AGW are the polar opposite of science, but they like to use the term to support themselves like scientologists or creationists do.  Real scientists are inherently skeptical and easily deprogrammed through rational argument.  I have some optimism for Woodgeek; most of the others in here, not so much.


----------



## jeffoc (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> What a perfect specimen of a troll post. I'm quite informed about how science works, and it starts with universal skepticism and requiring proof of every positive claim. If you don't have any, then what you're saying is that your claim is an unsubstantiated hypothesis.


 
*Definition of SCIENTIFIC METHOD*

*:* principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Truly, in science nothing can ever be proven 100%. That is either 101 or more than likely high school.

Asking for proof that climate change is caused by humans while ignoring all the information that has been presented is about as far from _your own _definition as I think you can get.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> *Definition of SCIENTIFIC METHOD*
> 
> *:* principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
> 
> ...


 
Congrats on your Google-foo.  I'm not going to teach a Philosophy of Science course on this thread.  Suffice it to say though that science starts way before application of the scientific method.  I'm attaching a 9-page document that does a pretty decent job at introducing the basic essentials.  Maybe you'll surprise me and actually read it.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

begreen said:


> This is cherry picking stats from an unstated source and is off by a few hundred percent. Often libertarians like to use this exaggeration to make a point. The actual stated profit by Exxon is 7.4 cents, however that completely ignores the much bigger profits on crude oil sales.


 
If truly you think that Exxon or anyone else is making such a magnificent profit, you need merely invest in some shares to disabuse you of that falsehood.  But again, whether a company makes profits has nothing to do with carbon in the atmosphere being either dangerous or benign.



begreen said:


> Also, without govt. investment in roads, bridges and infrastructure, oil companies wouldn't be making diddly on gasoline.


 
If only government could be prevented from making such "investments" (which are often paid for via property taxes, not gasoline taxes), maybe we would solve something.  But the fact that government creates things unnecessarily is no excuse of them to then steal to pay for it.  Make no mistake, that pilfered capital is pure profit to cronies, whether they ostensibly provide something of "value" in return or not.  But this begs the question -- if it's not Exxon building the "roads, bridges, and infrastructure", then why are you blaming them for advocating for fossil fuels?  It seems to me that government is the one advocating for it.  They reap the most profits and also build our dependency on it!  Exxon merely provides a product which anyone is free to buy or pass on.  Only government forces you at gun point to fund roads you may not want.  This still has nothing to do with whether or not CO2 is a threat, but at least if you're going to go off on a red herring, assign blame rationally.


----------



## jeffoc (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Congrats on your Google-foo. I'm not going to teach a Philosophy of Science course on this thread. Suffice it to say though that science starts way before application of the scientific method. I'm attaching a 9-page document that does a pretty decent job at introducing the basic essentials. Maybe you'll surprise me and actually read it.


 
Actually the scientific method is the start of science. Skimmed it just because. Extremely basic and not a source that I would go to.


Thomas Anderson said:


> Deprogrammed would be a better term. Don't imagine for a second that they would subject themselves to your scorn. It also generally takes awhile before they realize they've been deprogrammed. You don't just go from diehard adherent to enlightened skeptic overnight. You mull things over and in time find that you no longer believe. Quite a few of my social media friends are previous opponents who were brainwashed into silly cults like AGW, socialism, Scientology, neoconservatism, Christianity, etc. They didn't even realize they were being deprogrammed. I've done a lot of that in the Tea Party as well, deprogramming neoconservatives who one day wake up and find that they're now libertarians (and always were but for a few brainwashed ideas put in their heads). But you have to be willing to even listen, and many are not. Those who live in a self-imposed echo chamber cannot be reached. Cults like AGW are the polar opposite of science, but they like to use the term to support themselves like scientologists or creationists do. Real scientists are inherently skeptical and easily deprogrammed through rational argument. I have some optimism for Woodgeek; most of the others in here, not so much.


 

This just creeps me out so much that this time for real I am done.


----------



## begreen (Oct 24, 2012)

Off topic. The graph presented to bolster your argument represented a falsehood. As for investments, I think our own BrotherBart has done fairly well with their stock over the years. But again, that is off topic.

You seem to be arguing with yourself or some phantom voice. I haven't said anything about blaming Exxon for fossil fuels.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> The fact that you ask for definative proof or dismiss the theory shows me that you really don't understand the way science works.


 
The entire objective of the skeptic community is to only throw out enough partial info to cast doubt. In fact its the #1 strategy promulgated in the climate skeptics handbook (Its actually a real book, distributed online) is to always frame the argument that its the climate science communities responsibilty to show definitive proof.

They know that all they have to do is plant a small seed of doubt... just enough to prevent a consensus for real large scale action... and they win.

And then we all loose.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> Actually the scientific method is the start of science. Skimmed it just because. Extremely basic and not a source that I would go to.


 
Figured you wouldn't want to actually learn how to think scientifically.



jeffoc said:


> This just creeps me out so much that this time for real I am done.


 
Please let it be so.



jharkin said:


> The entire objective of the skeptic community is to only throw out enough partial info to cast doubt. In fact its the #1 strategy promulgated in the climate skeptics handbook (Its actually a real book, distributed online) is to always frame the argument that its the climate science communities responsibilty to show definitive proof.
> 
> They know that all they have to do is plant a small seed of doubt... just enough to prevent a consensus for real large scale action... and they win.
> 
> And then we all loose.


 
Sure, if you consider NOT being taken down a massively destructive path for no good reason a loss.  I've never seen said book, but it sounds like maybe you should read it, along with the previously attached document which actually describes how to practice science and critical thinking.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Sure, if you consider NOT being taken down a massively destructive path for no good reason a loss.


 

Let make the argument the way you do. YOU prove to us diversifying away from finite fossil fuels that are going to run out eventually no matter what, to a more varied mix of energy sources that are more sustainable is massively destructive to anything but oil company profit.

Prove IT.


----------



## jharkin (Oct 24, 2012)

jeffoc said:


> This just creeps me out so much that this time for real I am done.


 
+1.  He's not winning any friends calling Christianity a cult either....


----------



## btuser (Oct 24, 2012)

jharkin said:


> The entire objective of the skeptic community is to only throw out enough partial info to cast doubt. In fact its the #1 strategy promulgated in the climate skeptics handbook (Its actually a real book, distributed online) is to always frame the argument that its the climate science communities responsibilty to show definitive proof.
> 
> They know that all they have to do is plant a small seed of doubt... just enough to prevent a consensus for real large scale action... and they win.
> 
> And then we all loose.


It works with Intelligent Design.


----------



## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

jharkin said:


> Let make the argument the way you do. YOU prove to us diversifying away from finite fossil fuels that are going to run out eventually no matter what, to a more varied mix of energy sources that are more sustainable is massively destructive to anything but oil company profit.


 
I never made such a claim.  I'm obviously all for diversifying away from fossil fuels.  What's massively destructive is socialism, protectionism, curtailing individual freedom, huge bureaucracies, cronyism, and nearly everything else that AGW believers advocate as a political solution to their fabled problem.  I can prove any and all of those things, but this is hardly the place.  If you want to talk about those things, let's start a new thread.



jharkin said:


> +1. He's not winning any friends calling Christianity a cult either....


 
I'm not trying to win friends, I'm trying to establish reliable knowledge.  You're not helping your case by clinging to Christianity either.


----------



## woodgeek (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> Woodgeek, you've actually been one of the few trying to make a case rather than preach a gospel. Where we left off before all the trolls jumped in was my comparison of global warming to insulation in your home. Do you have a rebuttal to that?


 
rebuttals to rebuttals to rebuttals can be tedious. I am basically saying that I think its common sense and reasonable that a 35% increase to CO2 **might** lead to a 5% increase in the total greenhouse effect (the current best estimate). IOW, the math is not 'crazy', based on tons of unknown figures or lots of assumptions about tipping points or hypothetical positive feedbacks, etc.

You seem to be saying that that does not makes sense, because CO2 has no effect (0%) on temp. IOW, 35%x0% = 0, QED.

Frankly, I don't think your replies, in either words or numerical examples actually address my point. I am saying the 5% << 35%, consistent with CO2 being responsible for ~1//7th of the total greenhouse effect (most of the rest being water), when all the feedbacks and non-linearities to Beer's law are taken into account. You have responded that water is a much bigger driver (we agree), that the greenhouse effect is sub-linear due to beer's law (I also agree), that CO2 actually comes from volcanoes (huh?). It seems you are listing a bunch of reasons that the temp effect should be much less than 35%, and I am saying scientists are predicting it to be 5%, due to many of the effects you list. But then you say that it is actually 0% because of those effects and demand I rebut your 'argument'. yeah.

And the only reason anyone would care about that teeny-tiny non-apocalyptic 5% effect (due to current CO2) on global temperature is b/c according to current rate of release, it becomes a 10-15% effect (6-10°F) by 2100, and any modern climate model predicts a rather doomy global dust-bowl at THAT point.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Deprogrammed would be a better term.  ..... Real scientists are inherently skeptical and easily deprogrammed through rational argument. I have some optimism for Woodgeek; most of the others in here, not so much.


 
Y'know Thomas, you're starting to really make a lot of sense!


----------



## btuser (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> I never made such a claim. I'm obviously all for diversifying away from fossil fuels. What's massively destructive is socialism, protectionism, curtailing individual freedom, huge bureaucracies, cronyism, and nearly everything else that AGW believers advocate as a political solution to their fabled problem. I can prove any and all of those things, but this is hardly the place. If you want to talk about those things, let's start a new thread.


 
 Is it fake because the science is flawed, or because you need it to be wrong?


----------



## woodgeek (Oct 24, 2012)

Here we go back to post #16....before all those trolls derailed things 



Thomas Anderson said:


> As to why I'm so "into alternative and renewable energy", it has little to do with climate change, although I do wish to be prepared for either warming or cooling, not that I think my "carbon footprint" has anything to do with it. My motivations are manifold. I believe peak oil and the wars for remaining oil have the potential to cause severe supply disruptions in not only fuel but everything that depends on fuel. Our whole economy is based on a just-in-time delivery by truck model. We can't go five days without trucks moving goods before people start severely suffering from shortages of all kinds of necessities. Adding punitive energy taxes and carbon caps to the mix only makes this worse. We also have an aging electrical grid created by government mandate and subsidy which isn't being properly maintained because the costs of doing so exceed the revenue permitted by government price caps on electric utilities. We've now experienced several large regional blackouts which were a complete surprise to those who oversee the grid. This will get even worse as we continually increase our electricity demands on the back of government suppressed prices. We don't know how precious of a resource we have because of price fixing, so people over-use it. Then there's the threat of terrorism, storms, and economic conditions impacting the availability of fuel and grid power. On top of that, government is getting ever more intrusive with their warrantless spying. With the new agenda to get "smart grid" controls into every home, the infringement on your freedom and privacy goes far beyond the electric company deciding when you can or can't watch TV or wash your clothes or what temperature your thermostat should be set to.
> 
> Those are all clear and present threats which should encourage everyone to be better prepared and to buffer themselves from reliance on the grid and the on-demand economy. But the overarching threat that poses the most severe danger and is growing more likely (even inevitable) every day is the potential for a global currency collapse as central banks around the world have turned to printing money at ever-increasing rates to support their failed socialist models. The Federal Reserve last month publicly declared a policy to print $40 billion per month ad infinitum (and it will surely exceed that figure as inflation gets out of control). The ECB, BoE, BoJ, and others are on a similar course. History has shown that this inevitably will result in hyperinflation. But this time will be worse than any other in the past because it will occur in the reserve currency of the world and all major competitors for that title simultaneously. Historically, people in countries with hyperinflating currencies could just use a neighboring currency. In the 20th century, most hyperinflating countries turned to the U.S. Dollar as a stable alternative. But what is the alternative this time? Probably gold and silver, but a whole new economy of re-monetizing precious metals will have to develop before that gets widespread. In the meantime, we'll be dumped back into a barter and self-sufficiency economy which virtually nobody is prepared for. So you can expect major supply chains to shut down entirely. Electric will be spotty at best. Same with water. Food delivery will probably fall to government emergency measures. Heating fuel likewise. Most people will probably have to evacuate to FEMA camps in order to survive on government rations. And if the government response to Hurricane Katrina was any indication, the conditions there won't be enviable. Think this can't happen? Most people naturally believe that horrific things can't happen to them. But they do all the time, even to "good" people. My wife lived through hyperinflation in Poland in 1990-1992 and told me all about it. The government is currently preparing for a "mass casualty event". Do some research. It's scary, but it's scarier to be unprepared for it.


 
Okay. I've been reading this stuff for many years. And I'm over it. It's soooo 2008. The goal of the thread is to develop a strategy for addressing AGW that is palatable to the right. This answer is doom them until they doom in their pants and go build a doomstead. Unless they live in NYC, then they can kiss their azz goodbye.

Even as a AGW cultist, however, I do have to concede that the (likely permanent) higher price of oil provides an invisible hand pushing a lot of AGW mitigation strategies without the need for any govt central planning. Whale oil used to be really expensive too.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Beyond all that though, assuming that humanity manages to solve all of those issues without American consumers missing a single reality television show episode, it's about building a better life. It's about being independently wealthy without needing millions of dollars. Inflation is certainly going to get much worse no matter what, but even if it doesn't get totally out of hand (as in hyperinflation or even the late '70s levels), even 3-5% inflation can really strain your personal lifestyle if your income doesn't keep up with it. At 5% inflation, prices double in 14 years. Double. This is especially a problem for the elderly on fixed incomes, but also for those who just can't get a raise, or whose raises don't match inflation. Or for the unemployed, who may receive some assistance, but that also doesn't keep up with inflation. If your income doesn't double in 14 years to match 5% inflation, then your living standards must necessarily decrease as a result. And if you're already pinching pennies, that might mean that you lose your house and other cherished assets. So being off-the-grid and self-sufficient eliminates many of the threats related to inflation and all of the stress related to it. If your production is not denominated in Federal Reserve Notes, then the value of FRNs is immaterial to your well-being. Your solar panels don't produce FRNs, they produce electricity. Your woodlot doesn't produce FRNs, it produces BTUs of heat. Your garden doesn't produce FRNs, it produces nutritious food. So if your standards of living are maintained locally by your own capital assets, then inflation has no bearing on you. Supply and demand have no bearing on you. Income and sales taxes have no bearing on you. This gives you an amazing feeling of freedom and relief from the stresses of the rat race. You can work at will instead of paycheck to paycheck. You can take as much time off as you please and maybe even retire indefinitely if you like. In other words, it gives you real independence.


 
Ok, Go off-grid as an inflation hedge. Seems compatible with a lot of folks that pick PV (on and off-grid).

As a lefty, I would prefer a strong social safety net (e.g. one keyed to inflation), but OT, I suppose this will sell better with your average Rand-ian.



Thomas Anderson said:


> A side-effect from that is that my carbon footprint is almost zero, or maybe negative if you deduct the fossil fuels I would be using as an average American. I.e. I could sell carbon credits under such a trading scheme. If you naively believe in anthropogenic global warming, my lifestyle is very attractive to you. And that's fine. But don't try to sell me on it to save the planet. If you want to sell conservatives on alternative energy, sell them on the points I made above. Any one of them should be sufficient to pique their interest and any two will probably convince them to go in that direction.


 
As a recovering doomer, I would love to see #'s on their population, and what fraction are taking your approach versus buying MREs from Glenn Beck. I honestly don't know.


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## woodgeek (Oct 24, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> What has Exxon got to do with anything? There's nobody from Exxon here. We're trying to discuss facts, not assign blame and ulterior motives.


 
By coincidence, I know a lot of scientists who worked at Exxon for years (before they shut down their awesome basic research campus), and a couple who still work there at a high level. Where to start...

Exxon threw one of these guys a retirement banquet a few years back, and flew folks in from all over the world. As geeks, most of them gave talks at a day-long conference (fun). At the end, the suits locked the doors, and gave us their speech about how AGW was all a bunch of hooey. The piper must be paid....but he doesn't have to be listened to. We all just talked amongst ourselves and ignored the guy. Trolls!

One older guy talked about this awesome new product (a synthetic engine oil additive) that he developed for Exxon back in the 80s, and that he worked out that it would provide something like a 30+% annual return on investment. The suits chose not to develop the product (but sold the patent to someone else for cash). They explained to him--direct quote--that Exxon's core business was drilling holes in the ground and sucking money out, and that a 30% annual ROI was simply not on their radar. Ah. The 80s. The billion dollar research campus...a tax write-off.

I was reminiscing with a current big scientist they have there last year, and he explained to me that the mgmt attitude there came down to money. Kind of a fiduciary 'might makes right'. The mgmt would believe whatever a wealthy person told them (about market conditions, etc) because their wealth prooved that they knew what was going on. Scientists (like me) w/o billions in offshore accounts, well, how would you ever know if I was for real? I could be like totally wrong. IOW, it was the most craven thing I had ever heard (and I have heard a lot) and my 'friend' was a true believer of this BS, and was just trying to help me out by explaining the divine order of the universe (and that I was at the bottom of it).

At a conference, I saw a really smart, 25 yo grad student give a talk. His topic...chemical methods for pulling CO2 out of the air. He did a great job, didn't pretend it was going to be commercially viable....just a kid describing the work he was doing in school, earning a whopping $20k/year to do it. A couple minutes in a passel of petroleum suits cruise in, and **start heckling him** at a scientific conference. Not asking questions...guffawing and 'oh right'ing and picking on his clothes and throwing pop-corn (ok I made the last one up). And wouldn't let anyone else ask him questions at the end....talked over them. And then they marched out after making the world just a little bit safer for big oil.

Sterotypes sometimes contain a germ of truth....and oil execs are always azzhats.


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## btuser (Oct 24, 2012)

There's a good chance that fossil fuels are going to be the cheapest choice for a long time, probably longer than matters.


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## Thomas Anderson (Oct 24, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> rebuttals to rebuttals to rebuttals can be tedious. I am basically saying that I think its common sense and reasonable that a 35% increase to CO2 **might** lead to a 5% increase in the total greenhouse effect (the current best estimate). IOW, the math is not 'crazy', based on tons of unknown figures or lots of assumptions about tipping points or hypothetical positive feedbacks, etc.
> 
> You seem to be saying that that does not makes sense, because CO2 has no effect (0%) on temp. IOW, 35%x0% = 0, QED.


 
The point of a rebuttal is to discover how far apart we still are.  If you don't have one, then it indicates a point of understanding.  That's the whole goal of argument, to converge on a mutual understanding.  I'm not saying that CO2 has zero effect, but that incrementally increasing it has asymptotically near zero effect.  That's the nature of a logarithmic equation.



woodgeek said:


> Frankly, I don't think your replies, in either words or numerical examples actually address my point. I am saying the 5% << 35%, consistent with CO2 being responsible for ~1//7th of the total greenhouse effect (most of the rest being water), when all the feedbacks and non-linearities to Beer's law are taken into account. You have responded that water is a much bigger driver (we agree), that the greenhouse effect is sub-linear due to beer's law (I also agree), that CO2 actually comes from volcanoes (huh?). It seems you are listing a bunch of reasons that the temp effect should be much less than 35%, and I am saying scientists are predicting it to be 5%, due to many of the effects you list. But then you say that it is actually 0% because of those effects and demand I rebut your 'argument'. yeah.


 
Just because CO2 is responsible for 1/7th of the greenhouse effect does not mean that adding additional CO2 would cause any additional warming.  That was the point of my home insulation example.  If you have R-40 insulation, you're blocking/retaining tens or hundreds of BTUs per sqft per hour.  It may represent 100% of your total insulation effect.  But if you add an additional R-40 (i.e. double it), you're only blocking/retaining an additional 0.0125 BTU, or a fraction of a fraction of a percent additional.  That's what it means to be non-linear.  5% temperature increase from doubling CO2 is absolutely absurd.  That would only be true if we had virtually no CO2 in our atmosphere to begin with.  But we do.  The IPCC has said that it's currently saturated.

I didn't say anything about CO2 coming from volcanoes.  I said that volcanoes add heat to the atmosphere (and the oceans).  Increased volcanism under the arctic is the main reason that the sea ice volume has changed.  Volcanism in the south Pacific is responsible for El Nino.



woodgeek said:


> And the only reason anyone would care about that teeny-tiny non-apocalyptic 5% effect (due to current CO2) on global temperature is b/c according to current rate of release, it becomes a 10-15% effect (6-10°F) by 2100, and any modern climate model predicts a rather doomy global dust-bowl at THAT point.


 
That's simply not mathematically possible.  It's a logarithmic function.  There is no 5% let alone 10-15% available.  Virtually all of the heat that can be retained by CO2 already is.  It's like R-40 insulation.



woodgeek said:


> Okay. I've been reading this stuff for many years. And I'm over it. It's soooo 2008. The goal of the thread is to develop a strategy for addressing AGW that is palatable to the right. This answer is doom them until they doom in their pants and go build a doomstead. Unless they live in NYC, then they can kiss their azz goodbye.


 
Global warming doom hypotheses won't ever work because they're not credible.  But there are plenty of other risks out there that are credible.  I'm not sure what you mean when you say you're over it.



woodgeek said:


> Even as a AGW cultist, however, I do have to concede that the (likely permanent) higher price of oil provides an invisible hand pushing a lot of AGW mitigation strategies without the need for any govt central planning. Whale oil used to be really expensive too.


 
The solution to high prices is high prices, as they say.



woodgeek said:


> Ok, Go off-grid as an inflation hedge. Seems compatible with a lot of folks that pick PV (on and off-grid).
> 
> As a lefty, I would prefer a strong social safety net (e.g. one keyed to inflation), but OT, I suppose this will sell better with your average Rand-ian.


 
Inflation is caused by government (central bank).  One of the primary reasons why government favors inflation is so that they can screw people out of promised benefits.  So how could you possibly institute a government-run safety net which protects you from inflation?  The only way to protect yourself from inflation is by insulating yourself from the government monetary and fiscal system as much as possible.  That's why you become self-sufficient in regards to things like electricity.



woodgeek said:


> Sterotypes sometimes contain a germ of truth....and oil execs are always azzhats.


 

Exxon will make money no matter what happens.  If there were a germ of truth to AGW, they would dominate the carbon credit market.  They have nothing to gain by obscuring the truth.  The truth is that fossil fuels have been the greatest boon to mankind in the history of the world.  They support our current standards of living.  Nobody is in a rush to replace them, and as such, companies like Exxon will continue making money by supplying them.  But whenever the sentiment in the market changes, so will companies like Exxon.  Just because they laugh at people's silly ideas doesn't make them wrong.  Nor does it make them evil.


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## woodgeek (Oct 25, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> The point of a rebuttal is to discover how far apart we still are. If you don't have one, then it indicates a point of understanding. That's the whole goal of argument, to converge on a mutual understanding. I'm not saying that CO2 has zero effect, but that incrementally increasing it has asymptotically near zero effect. That's the nature of a logarithmic equation.
> 
> That's simply not mathematically possible. It's a logarithmic function. There is no 5% let alone 10-15% available. Virtually all of the heat that can be retained by CO2 already is. It's like R-40 insulation.


 
You seem to be forgetting basic calculus here. (1) Most non-linear functions can be approximated as a linear function over a small range. Even though Beers law is logarithmic, small perturbations to gas conc can have a linear effect. (2) logarithmic functions (unlike the reciprocal relation in your insulation example) do not have an 'asymptote'.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Just because CO2 is responsible for 1/7th of the greenhouse effect does not mean that adding additional CO2 would cause any additional warming. That was the point of my home insulation example. If you have R-40 insulation, you're blocking/retaining tens or hundreds of BTUs per sqft per hour. It may represent 100% of your total insulation effect. But if you add an additional R-40 (i.e. double it), you're only blocking/retaining an additional 0.0125 BTU, or a fraction of a fraction of a percent additional. That's what it means to be non-linear. 5% temperature increase from doubling CO2 is absolutely absurd. That would only be true if we had virtually no CO2 in our atmosphere to begin with. But we do. The IPCC has said that it's currently saturated.


 
I get that you understand the math of R-value. But the diminishing returns of a log function (to small changes) and a reciprocal function (to large changes) are different formulae. You can't use one function as an example of how a different one works. And the sub-linearity due to the Taylor expansion of the logarithm is already in the 1/7th figure. You can't decide that it has to be applied afterward. Since I don't read the IPCC stuff, give me the quote where they say CO2 is saturated, and we will see if they mean what you say here...



Thomas Anderson said:


> I didn't say anything about CO2 coming from volcanoes. I said that volcanoes add heat to the atmosphere (and the oceans). Increased volcanism under the arctic is the main reason that the sea ice volume has changed. Volcanism in the south Pacific is responsible for El Nino.


 
Data?? The Ocean is deep, and the energy flows in the ocean currents are much larger than those from volcanoes....how does that work??



Thomas Anderson said:


> Global warming doom hypotheses won't ever work because they're not credible. But there are plenty of other risks out there that are credible. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you're over it.


 
I mean that after countless hours chasing down sources of information....have personally concluded that peak oil doom is a big ball of politically motivated BS. Kinda like the way you feel about AGW, except I think the papers on the latter are quite compelling.



Thomas Anderson said:


> The solution to high prices is high prices, as they say.


 
I thought they said the solution was 'substitution'. Worked for whale oil.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Inflation is caused by government (central bank). One of the primary reasons why government favors inflation is so that they can screw people out of promised benefits. So how could you possibly institute a government-run safety net which protects you from inflation? The only way to protect yourself from inflation is by insulating yourself from the government monetary and fiscal system as much as possible. That's why you become self-sufficient in regards to things like electricity.


 
I am paying the same amount per kWh now as I did in 1989, $0.15 (nominal dollars, suburban Philly versus Chicago). Wow. And it is a few % of my income. I do not fear being crushed by kWh inflation.

I suspect we agree about an (unstated, bipartisan) goal of the US govt to (mildly) debase the dollar, which has a number of positive and negative effects. I think they would like to deflate the existing debt, and don't give a fig about deflating future commitments. But since no real inflation has occurred (yet) they are actually just stimulating the private economy and financial system (with buckets of debt), while preventing US manufacturing exports from getting killed by a too-strong dollar (driven by a global flight to safety).  But this is really OT, and done by several threads in the Can.



Thomas Anderson said:


> Exxon will make money no matter what happens. If there were a germ of truth to AGW, they would dominate the carbon credit market. They have nothing to gain by obscuring the truth. The truth is that fossil fuels have been the greatest boon to mankind in the history of the world. They support our current standards of living. Nobody is in a rush to replace them, and as such, companies like Exxon will continue making money by supplying them. But whenever the sentiment in the market changes, so will companies like Exxon. Just because they laugh at people's silly ideas doesn't make them wrong. Nor does it make them evil.


 
Indeed. They will make money until they don't. I wouldn't bet against them. I'm just saying that their mgmt 'process' is not a scientific one, and they their exec seem much more like 'american psycho's than any of the wall streeters I have ever met.


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## Ehouse (Oct 25, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> You see to be forgetting basic math here. (1) Most non-linear functions can be approximated as a linear function over a small range. Even though Beers law is logarithmic, small perturbations to gas conc can have a linear effect. (2) logarithmic functions (unlike the reciprocal relation in your insulation example) do not have an 'asymptote'.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 

Quick question; Does the difference in the delta T between your home and it's ambiant surroundings vs. the earth and it's ambiant surroundings, have a bearing on the effects of insulation?  Carry on.

Ehouse


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## jharkin (Oct 25, 2012)

Thomas Anderson said:


> You're not helping your case by clinging to Christianity either.


 
You don't know ANYTHING about me or what my personal beliefs are. I'd respond the same if you spewed your hatred at Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc  as well.


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## woodgeek (Oct 25, 2012)

Ehouse said:


> Quick question; Does the difference in the delta T between your home and it's ambiant surroundings vs. the earth and it's ambiant surroundings, have a bearing on the effects of insulation? Carry on.
> 
> Ehouse


 
?  I don't understand the question?


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## Ehouse (Oct 25, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> ? I don't understand the question?


 

Well, If my house is at 60* and outside it is 20*, adding insulation after a certain point doesn't do much, if our concern is comfort.  However, if I'm worried about water pipes in an outside wall freezing, a little extra might save the day.   If the earth's average temp. is 60*,  and the temp. in ambient space is ( I have no idea, supply data please.),  does this larger (assumed) temp. diff. affect the point of diminishing returns for added insulation?  If the answer is yes, and to a significant degree, the comparison of my house and the earth in terms of benefit, (or detriment) is misleading eh?

Ehouse


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## woodgeek (Oct 25, 2012)

Ehouse said:


> Well, If my house is at 60* and outside it is 20*, adding insulation after a certain point doesn't do much, if our concern is comfort. However, if I'm worried about water pipes in an outside wall freezing, a little extra might save the day. If the earth's average temp. is 60*, and the temp. in ambient space is ( I have no idea, supply data please.), does this larger (assumed) temp. diff. affect the point of diminishing returns for added insulation? If the answer is yes, and to a significant degree, the comparison of my house and the earth in terms of benefit, (or detriment) is misleading eh?
> 
> Ehouse


 
Ok. I think I understand. The diminishing returns of insulation are economic. IF you doubled the insulation on your house (neglecting air leaks) you could heat your house by twice the amount with the same BTUs. No diminishing return...its linear. But you don't heat your house twice as much, you decide to heat to the same temp, and use half as much energy. Kinda like mpg on a car. Imagine you drive an SUV doing 25 mpg, switch it for a prius doing 50 mpg and save, say $2000 a year on gas. Someone gives you a car that gets infinity mpg (!), and you dump the prius. Do you save an infinite amount? No, you only save the remaining amount you are spending, another $2000 a year.

As for the earth, the average temp of the earth is 60°F. IF the earth had no greenhouse effect (but was still the same 'color') it would have a temperature of 0°F. The existence of the greenhouse effect is not being debated. Folks discovered it and worked out these basic numbers more than a century ago. If you plug in all the visible and IR properties of these gases, and the amount of them, you can calculate (as like a first year grad student homework problem) that the greenhouse effect should be ~60°F. Same math describes the (measured) temps of the other planets and the asteroids. Nothing to debate here.

Three major greenhouse gases (H2O, CO2 and CH4) together warm the earth by a large amount, 60°F, which, like the fact the earth is round or spinning, is not obvious to our human senses. The math above says that H2O is the biggest contributor, and CH4 is pretty weak. CO2 is Jan Brady in the middle.

Calculating how much warming adding 35% more CO2 (as of currently in 2012) causes is actually tricky. One way to get started is to say something like like if CO2 drives one third of the greenhouse effect, and we add 35% more, then we should increase the greenhouse effect by something like 33%*35%, or 12% or 7°F!! But that would be too simplistic. Instead, you can go back to the (still a homework problem) math calculation that spat out the 60°F number in the first place, and ask it what it thinks should happen, it predicts something like 8%=4-5°F because of the sort of diminishing returns of the logarithm function that Thomas mentions. So anyone who can do calculus can predict that increasing CO2 by 35% using textbook physics should warm the earth by 4-5°F.

Hey, did you notice the earth getting warmer by 5°F? No? that's because it didn't. IF you look at the record, its maybe 1.5-2°F warmer in the last decade relative to the 1950s, and typically, decade-long global average temps can jump around ±1°F. So, WTF? Is all that math (that nails the temps of all the planets and asteroids too) wrong?

Of course not....the model assumes the earth's color and the amount of H2O stay the same....do/will they? Now THAT is a much harder problem, and you need computer models that are not unlike those that try to predict the weather. Now those models do a lousy job predicting the weather in 7 days, but they do a great job of telling you average temps on different days of the year (which is what we want to answer our question). When the answer gets spit out of the computer....good news. Increased cloud cover makes the effect smaller (making the earth 'whiter' and cooler). That kinda scary sounding 5°F number is only.....drumroll please.....3°F. Oh, and the model says the earth takes a couple decades to catch up. Put it all together and the omputer says that we should be 2°F warmer now, and if we stop all CO2 emissions today, may 3°F by 2030. Now THAT jibes with the data.

So the problem is not to explain where the piddly 2±1°F global warming we have now came from....hell, that could just be random fluctuations--let's argue about statistics, not. The problem is that basic physics predicts that we should already have more like 5°F warming...and it hasn't happened. The climate models show that the natural stabilizing influences in the earth climate reduce the effect to something consistent with what we have seen.

The bad news is that while we were lucky that way (nice earth), the same model says the anticipated 21st century CO2 emissions will break the climate.


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## GaryGary (Oct 25, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Ok. I think I understand. The diminishing returns of insulation are economic. IF you doubled the insulation on your house (neglecting air leaks) you could heat your house by twice the amount with the same BTUs. No diminishing return...its linear. But you don't heat your house twice as much, you decide to heat to the same temp, and use half as much energy. Kinda like mpg on a car. Imagine you drive an SUV doing 25 mpg, switch it for a prius doing 50 mpg and save, say $2000 a year on gas. Someone gives you a car that gets infinity mpg (!), and you dump the prius. Do you save an infinite amount? No, you only save the remaining amount you are spending, another $2000 a year.
> 
> As for the earth, the average temp of the earth is 60°F. IF the earth had no greenhouse effect (but was still the same 'color') it would have a temperature of 0°F. The existence of the greenhouse effect is not being debated. Folks discovered it and worked out these basic numbers more than a century ago. If you plug in all the visible and IR properties of these gases, and the amount of them, you can calculate (as like a first year grad student homework problem) that the greenhouse effect should be ~60°F. Same math describes the (measured) temps of the other planets and the asteroids. Nothing to debate here.
> 
> ...


 
Wood,

It looks like you have spent some time looking into climate change issues.

A couple climate change related questions/issues that have been troubling me -- maybe you could give your take on them?

1) The tipping point idea that Jim Hansen and others have been describing.  Basically the idea that modest changes in one of the climate forcing functions (like CO2 above about 400 ppm) can start feedback mechanisms (eg less ice to reflect solar, methane from tundra etc.) that end up resulting in climate and sea level changes that are well in excess of of what the original CO2 increase would generate on its own, and that would be beyond our ability to control.
They appear to have found evidence in the ice core record that supports these kinds of episodes in the past.
I believe that the IPCC predictions do not include these tipping point effects(?), so the end climate picture could be significantly worse then their predictions?


2) The idea that the standard calculations and models have assumptions and tolerances that could make things better or worse than the nominal predictions.   A lot of people like to focus on the positive side of this saying that the outcomes may not be as bad as the predictions, but what about the negative side -- what if errors in assumptions are such as to make the actual outcomes worse than the predictions?  I believe that the cheif scientist of NREL (I may have that title wrong) has said that if you change some of the underlying modeling assumptions by modest amounts, the end effect is large -- especially in terms of sea level change.  


These are bothersome to me in that you always like to at least be prepared for the worst case outcome, and if there is truth to either of these areas, it seems to me we are far short of being prepared?  Maybe we are far short of being prepared even without these potential added effects?

Gary


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## begreen (Oct 25, 2012)

jharkin said:


> You don't know ANYTHING about me or what my personal beliefs are. I'd respond the same if you spewed your hatred at Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc as well.


 
Agreed. Let's keep the personal attacks and religion completely out of this thread or it'll be canned shortly.


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## woodgeek (Oct 25, 2012)

GaryGary said:


> Wood,
> 
> It looks like you have spent some time looking into climate change issues.
> 
> ...


 
I am far from an expert, but I understand (and have taught) the basic physical principles involved.

It is my understanding that the direct temperature 'forcing' is well understood and larger than observed,
and the feedback effects are less well understood (and climate records are not really that useful b/c of the
unique nature/speed of our current 'experiment'), but are, overall, generally accepted to be negative.  This
reconciles the small warming from the data and the large predictions of simple physical models. 

That what I said earlier.

To me, that is a good place to say stop and engage 'skeptics' who think that the basic phenomenon is implausible, and
based solely on poorly understood feedback effects from climate models.  In fact, if simple physical models (that are not
debatable really) were correct, we'd already be up the creek.  The warming we see, far from being implausible or
needing to be explained, is actually smaller than we would have estimated by physical 'laws'.

Back to your question....clearly ice is a positive feedback.  Again, I am not an expert on the finer points, but I think
when the ice is gone, the positive feedback is maxed out....ice can cause an oscillation between a cold and a hot
state (like an ice age or an interglacial state) but it isn't clear how it superheats our current climate further.

So, I'm basically gonna cop out on your question....there is a lot of hype in the press about permafrost and methane
and tipping points and I am going to wait for all that to be a bit better settled.  But I think the scientific community
and press may be confusing the public with all this new, less well cooked science....

Imagine if in 1972, there were a flurry of press releases about how smoking was even more likely to kill you b/c
it also caused obesity, made you a bad driver, caused pneumonia, etc.  But all of those articles ended up with 'but of
course this needs to be confirmed in future study'.  And in all that noise, the already well demonstrated fact that
it causes lung cancer got lost, and then the cig companies started poking holes in all the new studies, often
correctly, by showing that smoking doesn't make you fat.  The result would be an unholy mess.  But smokers
would still get lung cancer.

So, you can put me down as a non-skeptic/non-alarmist for the present (i.e. I am skeptical of the latest science
of tipping points, but try to be open minded)  but non-skeptical/alarmist for the prognosis on 2100.

Pushing my smoking analogy further....you're a doctor and a 22 yo smoker comes to you and has been smoking heavily
for 5 years.  You have to tell him that if he quits now he has a much lower risk of getting lung cancer than if he
keeps smoking for 20 more years.  The good news is that if he quits now his chance of cancer is low (but still not
zero).  But he also has to get that the risks of continuing (after a long time) are very high.

But if he doesn't believe that cigs cause cancer...can you convince him to quit because it smells, or he might
burn his house down accidentally?  IF you throw too many reasons at him, does he start to tune out??


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## semipro (Oct 25, 2012)

Gary comment/question on sea level change brought to mind something related...

Sea level change impact on shorelines has turned out to be much higher than predicted because:
1) Subsidence from groundwater pumping was not considered (something likely to accelerate as things get hotter).
2) Decreases in flow of the Gulf Stream, thought a result of global warming, have resulted in a decrease in the "swell" that occurs in the Sargasso sea. 

one source:  http://www.popularmechanics.com/sci...ks-sea-level-is-rising-faster-than-the-worlds 

The British Isles will be an interesting place when the Gulf Stream stops flowing
Things are much more complex that we humans will ever understand.
We're playing with fire and very likely to get burned.


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## woodgeek (Oct 26, 2012)

Bad news Thomas.....you need to argue faster. The number of AGW believers is going back up, now at 54%.

http://environment.yale.edu/climate/news/Climate-Beliefs-September-2012/

Any day now, an angry mob of bureaucrats will be at your door to.....pat you on the back and offer you tax breaks for having a low carbon footprint.

And I need to watch this Frontline on AGW deniers:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/


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## jharkin (Oct 26, 2012)

Wood, Im impressed you still have the energy to try...........


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## btuser (Oct 26, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> Bad news Thomas.....you need to argue faster. The number of AGW believers is going back up, now at 54%.
> 
> http://environment.yale.edu/climate/news/Climate-Beliefs-September-2012/
> 
> ...


 
If the republicans weren't successful in co-opting the tea party movement the AGW deniers certainly were successful.  They're tied at the hip, because you can't be a libertarian and accept that global warming is a problem for us in the near future.   You HAVE to say no, you HAVE to deny it or you're a liberal intent on adding more government to our lives.


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## woodgeek (Oct 26, 2012)

I'm sure President Romney will bring the Tea Partiers back into the fold with his inaply named 'War on Climate'.


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## btuser (Oct 26, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> I'm sure President Romney will bring the Tea Partiers back into the fold with his inaply named 'War on Climate'.


Now yer talking!  I've a been without a good war for a couple of months now.  Nothing protects freedom like defense spending and tax breaks to the super rich.

I'm sure the queen of England will be glad to hear her coal mines are back in vogue.


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## semipro (Oct 26, 2012)

woodgeek said:


> And I need to watch this Frontline on AGW deniers:
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/


 
I saw this last night...very sobering. 
As one very conservative Republican SC politician who had been "removed" from his office by voters because he espoused a belief in climate change stated (and I paraphrase based on my recollection):

"98 doctors tell you that you need to treat your child or its going to die and 2 tell you to wait and do more tests... which way are you going to decide?"

I would add to his comment to take into consideration that the 2 dissenting doctors stand to benefit financially if you don't treat your child.


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## oldspark (Oct 26, 2012)

That was a good program, of course the nay sayers hacked it to death.


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## begreen (Oct 26, 2012)

Follow the money. I did for the links provided earlier by TMonter. The "scientist" providing the numbers is on Exxon's payroll. The numbers may be legit or may be cherrypicked to prove a point, but the source is suspicious.


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## Nickolai (Oct 27, 2012)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647

I think this was a good watch. 

However, this thread has become a bad read. 

Good work on either side, I'm tired now.


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## begreen (Oct 29, 2012)

Agreed, I will close it up on a funny note.


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