because it's not 95% certain that AGW is happening.

this is akin to saying that a meteor is going to hit the earth but that we haven't even found the meteor and everywhere we are told the meteor is, it isn't

[Edited on September 7, 2011 at 7:51 PM. Reason : ]

9/7/2011 7:50:01 PM

Meanwhile, as the meteor caves in your thick skull, you passionately argue that meteors are impossible

9/7/2011 7:56:35 PM

Quote :

"because it's not 95% certain that AGW is happening."

Doesn't matter. What is the certainty that it will happen?

9/7/2011 8:21:23 PM

Has poor aaronburro been able to decipher the mysterious lettering of KRDU, KJNX, KIGX, KBUY, KHNZ, KGSO, KCLT yet?

***Cough cough ICAO cough cough***

Hey aaron if you still don't know let me give you a big hint with a picture of the plane you would most likely travel on:

9/7/2011 8:35:59 PM

He'll just claim that it's irrelevant simply because he fails to see the point. He's good at throwing a lot of garbage into the fray and then expects someone to hold his hand so that he can understand it.

9/7/2011 8:59:43 PM

Quote :

"Has poor aaronburro been able to decipher the mysterious lettering of KRDU, KJNX, KIGX, KBUY, KHNZ, KGSO, KCLT yet?"

has anyone been able to say what the point in referencing those was? exactly.

^ look, I'm still asking you what is the relevance of "go to weather station X". what's the point? Am I going to walk into some magic aura around them and then see the light? is that what happens? Is there some glowing circle I need to step in? Or are you going to explain what the fuck you were trying to get at? Based on your previous history, I'm gonna bet you won't

9/7/2011 10:20:52 PM

In other news the Swedish government can no longer let the US science effort use their ice breaker Oden down in Antarctica because it's service is needed back up north due to all the ice disrupting their shipping. It it's place we're borrowing some Russian company's ice breaker.

It strikes me as quite odd that the US fleet doesn't include a ship with ice breaking capacity. We didn't order a replacement after decommissioning our last one probably b/c we thought we'd be ice free soon, like the IPCC has been telling us.

[Edited on September 8, 2011 at 8:27 AM. Reason : still looking for those sigs]

9/8/2011 8:27:08 AM

the us has icebreakers

9/8/2011 9:43:35 AM

Then we do we rely on other countries to access our bases in Antarctica?

9/8/2011 9:45:58 AM

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/927.full

one's being decommissioned, one's in dry dock for repairs, and the third will be in the arctic

(it's still shitty that we can't lease the oden, but your statement that we don't have an icebreaker was false)

9/8/2011 9:55:33 AM

I always thought it seemed like ice breaker ships would be really bad for the Earth since it'd be disrupting the ice in those places. I mean, sure it freezes back but not as good. How do I know that the shrinking ice at the north pole wasn't due to the Russians chopping it up with ships?

9/8/2011 9:58:17 AM

Off topic...why do some folks feel the in incessant need to post analogies? Are you not able to make your points effectively without. Them?

9/8/2011 9:59:12 AM

^^^roberta, quit trying to use facts, silly.

9/8/2011 10:07:19 AM

heard a dumb bitch on NPR today talking about how we're having "hurricanes hit places they've never hit before". I almost wrecked

9/8/2011 6:48:20 PM

^ok but there has been record flooding in several states this year as well as tornadoes hitting places they rarely hit and long lived strong tornadoes hitting places they almost never hit. Also the fact that we've had like 10 different billion dollar disasters already

9/8/2011 8:34:20 PM

Quote :

"ok but there has been record flooding in several states this year"

weather.

Quote :

"as well as tornadoes hitting places they rarely hit "

such as... alabama? where they often hit. weather

Quote :

"and long lived strong tornadoes hitting places they almost never hit."

weather.

9/8/2011 10:41:57 PM

Quote :

"Off topic...why do some folks feel the in incessant need to post analogies? Are you not able to make your points effectively without. Them? "

Because it can often aid understanding? The whole point is to try and establish some familiar or common ground upon which to base the explanation or demonstration

9/8/2011 10:45:02 PM

^ i agree

9/8/2011 10:48:37 PM

yes weather. A dramatic increase in extreme weather occurrences. Record means never before.

9/8/2011 10:54:27 PM

only, it's NOT a dramatic increase. that's why it's weather

9/8/2011 11:00:35 PM

We really don't understand the world we live in all that well. A certain word that we've always used might have gray areas. There are probably cases where weather meets large time-scale climate cycles.

For example, El Nino.

9/8/2011 11:01:22 PM

^^^^^agreed. It also helps civility.

Quote :

"I always thought it seemed like ice breaker ships would be really bad for the Earth since it'd be disrupting the ice in those places. I mean, sure it freezes back but not as good. How do I know that the shrinking ice at the north pole wasn't due to the Russians chopping it up with ships?"

Agreed. I can't help but think that to a degree it hurts the ice's thickness. Don't forget about all the submarines cruising under the ice churning up the water. Naturally in the grand scheme I'm not sure this is a noticeable effect however as with every passing year we study the Arctic more and more intensively. As such we'll unavoidably be interacting and effecting it in some way as well.

9/8/2011 11:14:23 PM

well, true, i doubt it will matter.

I suspect the issue will be similar to the direct heat from combustion. Yes, the fact that humans use like 14 TW on average means that the Earth's temperature rises, but you can do the calculation to find it be like 0.001 degree in the worst thinking circumstances.

9/9/2011 12:24:04 AM

Quote :

"only, it's NOT a dramatic increase. that's why it's weather"

its not weather when it happens for a decade

9/9/2011 5:42:05 AM

Quote :

" Because it can often aid understanding? "

My point exactly. If you need it to help aid someone understanding, you haven't effectively communicated your point in the first place. Far, far too often on this site I see people deliver an analogy and then the debate is about the analogy; many times with people understanding the actual point that was made and arguing that the analogy offered isn't exactly the same thing. It doesn't get much more fail than that.

[Edited on September 9, 2011 at 6:55 AM. Reason : .]

9/9/2011 6:55:20 AM

Quote :

"If you need it to help aid someone understanding, you haven't effectively communicated your point in the first place"

Time to rewrite the best science and math textbooks

9/9/2011 7:36:50 AM

Not the ones I used. Perhaps you've just revealed your lack of a solid scientific foundation behind most everything you post.

9/9/2011 9:16:56 AM

in spite of the popular misconception about this, the ball-on-a-sheet analogy isn't really a part of any credible courses on general relativity.

9/9/2011 9:21:22 AM

Quote :

"its not weather when it happens for a decade"

we've had tornadoes and hurricanes that lasted a decade? really? this decade hasn't seen any statistically significant increase in any extreme weather activity that doesn't follow already know weather pattens. If you've got ANY proof to show otherwise, then present it. Saying a hurricane hit NY isn't proof.

9/9/2011 2:49:44 PM

welp, looks like that highly righteous and correct Michael Mann is fighting to prevent FOIA requests from being followed. why? because he says so.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/06/mann-hires-attorneys-to-halt-foia-document-production/#more-46715

and then the Dressler response to the recent Spencer and Braswell 2011 paper has been greased through the wheels of the vaunted "peer review process" in a matter of weeks. yep, nothing shady there. and how did Science treat critiques of the original Dressler paper? They've sat on the paper for months.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/02/science-has-been-sitting-on-his-critique-of-dessler%e2%80%99s-paper-for-months/

an interesting read about how legitimate the "reviews" that "cleared" Mann and his cronies really were
http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/02/nsf-on-jones-email-destruction-enterprise/#more-14508
Among the interesting findings: the inquiry committee performed the investigation, something that is generally frowned upon.

9/9/2011 5:25:10 PM

Global warmists don't care about the environment. They crave governmental control over CO2 which is a perfect proxy for every human action in our modern society.

9/13/2011 1:16:38 PM

Yep, that's it. I'm sure the Bilderbergs or the Trilateral Commission are behind it too. Chemtrails!

9/13/2011 1:19:06 PM

It's not a conspiracy so much as an instinctual response to a free market society.

9/13/2011 1:38:25 PM

What in the hell does that mean?

9/13/2011 2:00:04 PM

I think you know what the fuck it means.

9/13/2011 2:41:32 PM

Quote :

"Global warmists don't care about the environment. They crave governmental control over CO2 which is a perfect proxy for every human action in our modern society."

Preaching to the choir here. You would think that cleaning up and eliminating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch would be a more noble purpose and better use of funds. But no, instead we should spend trillions to lower our quality of life and try to lower the earth's average temperature by less than one degree Celsius.

9/14/2011 2:35:02 PM

Quote :

"It's not a conspiracy so much as an instinctual response to a free market society. "

Wouldn't a free market society seek to price the externalities of energy production?

Quote :

"But no, instead we should spend trillions to lower our quality of life and try to lower the earth's average temperature by less than one degree Celsius. "

People said the same thing about the Clean Air Act, but we still grew and our quality of life arguably got better -- in more ways than just our wallets

Analysis that shows the benefits from the CAA exceeded the costs by a margin of 4 to 1:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eerm.nsf/vwRepNumLookup/EE-0295A?OpenDocument


but more to the point
http://www.edf.org/climate/cost-cutting-carbon-pennies-day
a round-up of five analyses (the EIA, the Research Triangle Institute, Harvard, MIT, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories) on cap and trade showed that:

Quote :

"A business-as-usual approach, continuing with today's policies, puts the U.S. economy on a path to reach $26 trillion in January 2030. With a cap on the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, the economy will reach the same level two to seven months later."

cost is way overblown IMO

9/14/2011 3:35:56 PM

The Clean Air Act (without its newer proclivities towards carbon), cleaning up the great plastic garbage patch, preserving the rain forests... These are true environmental causes.

To be honest, I'm pretty surprised at how easily the environmental lobby allowed itself to be co-opted by a bunch of bitter commies.

You hardly ever hear about real environmentalism anymore. One day, global warmist ideology will be completely discredited, and the environmentalists will look around and realize that not only were they tilting at windmills, but while they were doing so, the rainforests were decimated, the streams and rivers filled with nitrogen, and the sea was turned into a toxic sludge.

And on that day, I shall smile wryly.

9/14/2011 3:50:06 PM

Quote :

"You hardly ever hear about real environmentalism anymore."

<-----

9/14/2011 4:26:56 PM

Quote :

"The Clean Air Act (without its newer proclivities towards carbon), "

I don't understand the difference. If carbon went through the same procedures as the other compounds in the CAA then why would you exclude it?

Quote :

"cleaning up the great plastic garbage patch"

Its interesting people keep bringing this up. I've heard people argue, pretty successfully, that we actually know more about climate change (from a science standpoint) than the pacific garbage patch. It's never been surveyed, we arent totally sure how its affecting marine life. Regardless, there is no way you would be able to remove the plastic from the ocean at the rate it is added unless you either banned the use of plastic for some uses (omg communism) or spent a huge sum of money.

Quote :

"preserving the rain forests"

Probably the easiest way to do this is to price carbon or have carbon offsets, etc

Quote :

"co-opted by a bunch of bitter commies"

again, whats "communist" about wanting a product's price to include all of its externalities?

Quote :

"You hardly ever hear about real environmentalism anymore"

what about the sustainable ag/slow food movement --thats exploding. There are a lot of other examples, maybe you should look for other news sources?

[Edited on September 14, 2011 at 4:42 PM. Reason : spelling and shit]

9/14/2011 4:40:44 PM

Quote :

"Wouldn't a free market society seek to price the externalities of energy production?"

if it so chose. but doing it through the gov't is hardly an example of the "free market".

Quote :

"If carbon went through the same procedures as the other compounds in the CAA then why would you exclude it?"

If it actually went through those same procedures and at the same levels, then wed have to shut down almost every hospital, school, power plant, factory, and McDonald's in the entire US in order to comply with it.

Quote :

"Probably the easiest way to do this is to price carbon or have carbon offsets, etc"

not really. there was an interesting NPR program about this kind of a thing a couple weeks ago. Sustainable forestry, while it does reduce emissions, is far more effective at saving forests than simple bullshit carbon offsets.

Quote :

"again, whats "communist" about wanting a product's price to include all of its externalities?"

again, when you have the government mandating it.

9/14/2011 6:39:10 PM

TerdFerguson, you do realize that the original author of the CAA is on the record as saying it was never intended for CO2? The CAA was never written to give the gov't carte blanche to regulate whatever the fuck they want in the air? Given that CO2 is a natural byproduct of all creatures on the earth it is ridiculous to lump CO2 in there with nitrogen compounds and sulfur compounds that cause direct damage to the environment and all living creatures.

[Edited on September 15, 2011 at 9:34 AM. Reason : k]

[Edited on September 15, 2011 at 9:34 AM. Reason : fricking name]

9/15/2011 9:32:47 AM

I'd be interested in reading where the "original author" said that just because I'm curious.

The reality is it doesn't matter. The Supreme Court found that the EPA could use the CAA to regulate greenhouse gases in Massachusetts v. EPA. Case closed. The CAA is pretty broad, thats why its been so successful.

Quote :

"Given that CO2 is a natural byproduct of all creatures on the earth it is ridiculous to lump CO2 in there with nitrogen compounds and sulfur compounds that cause direct damage to the environment and all living creatures. "

Most living creatures also excrete nitrogen and sulfur compounds. Theres a shit load of NH4 in urine and a little bit of H2S in farts. If you look at certain bacteria, they release massive amounts of H2S.

These types of compounds really only become contaminants when there is too much of them -- The excess compounds unbalance the ecosystem.

9/15/2011 10:14:06 AM

Quote :

"The Supreme Court found that the EPA could use the CAA to regulate greenhouse gases in Massachusetts v. EPA."

has the SC found that the CAA's specific limits being ignored was also allowed? I'm asking honestly, here

9/15/2011 6:52:13 PM

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, what specific limits?

9/16/2011 9:26:33 AM

I think he's talking about the EPA "tailoring" the CAA which by most accounts is not legal. Without the "tailoring" being done literally almost every building/company in the country would have to have their CO2 emissions regulated.

9/16/2011 9:48:13 AM

I have no idea of the legality of this within the CAA, do you have a link?, but its pretty much how its always been done as far as I know. As an example look at mercury from industrial and commercial boilers. Mercury has been limited in big coal-fired plants for a while (30 years maybe?), the EPA was set to issue new rules for smaller boilers (in schools, factories, hospitals etc) this year, after discussing them for like 10 years. It should be noted that the EPA caved to pressure and has delayed indefinitely the new rules (possibly illegally)

Most regulations issued by the EPA come in phases, they slowly include more sources and strengthen the regulations. They usually start with the biggest, and best able to comply first and then start catching smaller emitters down the road. It helps ease the burden on businesses and allows for innovation. I imagine they would do the same with CO2, a slowly lowering cap in a cap and trade scheme, or slowly increasing tax on CO2 -- if there was any real political will to do anything (check the news the EPA is dragging its feet again).

9/16/2011 10:17:41 AM

The economic affects of dealing with global warming have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether or not that warming is occurring.

It doesn't matter if the solution would be to cut off everyone's left hand. The consequences of dealing with a problem are completely irrelevant to whether or not the problem is real.

Also, why is it so hard to believe liberals just want to protect the environment and not turn the Earth into Venus mk II ? Why come up with this silly cartoon-villain narrative where liberals get hard-on's from micromanaging your life? It's like the inverse of Captain Planet, where the villains pollute entirely out of an irrational desire to fuck up nature.

[Edited on September 16, 2011 at 10:27 AM. Reason : .]

9/16/2011 10:25:52 AM

Quote :

"Not the ones I used. Perhaps you've just revealed your lack of a solid scientific foundation behind most everything you post."

If you've ever thought of electrons as either a wave or a particle you are learning/understanding by analogy

I find it hard to believe that your EE textbooks never used geometric analogies in their explanations of anything given the commonplace usage of complex numbers

Nevermind your field was mostly conceptualized using water-concepts lol

[Edited on September 16, 2011 at 10:37 AM. Reason : .]

9/16/2011 10:30:14 AM

Quote :

"check the news the EPA is dragging its feet again"

I thought it was Obama caving to pressure b/c of the job killing nature of the regulations rather than the EPA itself having any issues with the proposed regulations.

^^if that were true then there are more tangible and more easily done projects that could have a greater impact on the well being of the environment.

9/16/2011 10:56:30 AM