- Mar 14, 2011
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i`m not fixing anything until you quit wasting valuable time on this posting nonsense, when you could become part of the solution!!
i`m not fixing anything until you quit wasting valuable time on this posting nonsense, when you could become part of the solution!!
The experts can be wrong, we all know this. The history of science is replete with examples. However, we (and we includes our scientists) indisputably stand on the shoulders of our predecessors. We know more now than we ever did before in most areas. People claim that we've lost some stuff, sure, OK, maybe/probably, but show me! If you can't show me I'm not impressed.It is worth noting, however, that mother nature doesn't care at all what anyone's opinion is. Or which side might win a debate over climate change. The climate will change based on the factors that matter to mother nature. Given this, I think it makes sense for humankind to err on the conservative side by identifying and minimizing our own contributions to climate change just in case those climate change experts are somewhat right.
I pretty much in agreement with all of this, except for the experts part. Nassim Taleb has pretty much laid out how this has gone wrong in many cases.
One example of this might be Fukushima. Not purposely trying to single them out. I'm sure they had some terrifically smart experts doing all the statistics, but you can imagine a precocious junior high student asking, but what if it did flood. Taleb can really rub people the wrong way. It is said that he always talks like he is the smartest guy in the room and usually is.
I think we can all agree that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is probably a bad thing. Don't mess with mother nature.
I don't know who your "we" is that have not seen massive climate change. The ice age was only 15K years ago. It has been warming ever since. We can no longer walk to Russia and the French can't walk to England. I am not sure why folks think there was no such thing as climate change until 1950.
I pretty much in agreement with all of this, except for the experts part. Nassim Taleb has pretty much laid out how this has gone wrong in many cases.
One example of this might be Fukushima. Not purposely trying to single them out. I'm sure they had some terrifically smart experts doing all the statistics, but you can imagine a precocious junior high student asking, but what if it did flood. Taleb can really rub people the wrong way. It is said that he always talks like he is the smartest guy in the room and usually is.
Conversely, the attempt to individualize all problems and reduce them all to individual lifestyle-choices is a common trick of those with power who don't want anything to change. With most problems they have to be dealt with collectively and politically.
The irony being that Taleb's strongest arguments would be about economists - and economists are over-represented among climate-change deniers, perhaps because they think all sciences are as weak as their own.
Yes, my sense is that we agree on more points than we disagree. I must admit, however, that a smile crossed my face when you brought in Nassim Taleb as an expert on experts.Not that I necessarily disagree with his focus on the importance of being prepared for random, low probability events.
FWIW, the Fukushima plants were built with what "experts" thought was adequate protection against tsunamis. Unfortunately, the possible size of the earthquakes predicted and the resulting height of the tsunamis were revised upward after the plant was built. The "experts" were certainly proven wrong in this case, but not because they overlooked something that would have been obvious to a high school student at that time.
Anyone can be wrong, even the experts. That said, IMHO we as a society should recognize that the judgments of experts provide a much better basis for decision making than the uninformed opinions of non-experts.
I'm fine with thermodynamics, greenhouse gasses, the whole gospel.
While people are free to have opinions they shouldn’t be surprised to receive angry push back when they are disputing easily observable evidence or arguing inherently unscientific opinion as if it was science.I really find it humorous. It's like the old movies, if a puritan doesn't tow the line 100%, there are crowds screaming blasphemer.
Great! However your post is coming across as someone who has an issue with the scientific consensus.Never said climate isn't changing. Never said man isn't playing a part.
I don't see how he could be responsible for 100+ percent............ of anything.
It is not needed to prove what’s happening today. Direct measurement and basic physics is enough to prove what’s going on.Saying that what happened in the past is irrelevant is rarely true.
Of course. It’s science so it’s falsifiable. But here’s the thing, to prove it false the competing hypothesis must be better supported, make better predictions, and better describe all the evidence. Otherwise it loses. This is the high bar the “Climate Skeptic” community routinely fails to clear.I do have one question. Is there any possible way I could prove the analysis you provided to be false?
We'll be long dead by that point. The closest estimates regarding coal alone I could find are as follows:IMO I don’t see this problem getting better until there is no more fossil fuels left to be burned.
I don't understand why you keep responding to things I didn't say. I never disparaged the conclusions. I never claimed that climate change wasn't a real condition. I never questioned the science. I stated that I haven't been able to find an in depth layman's explanation.
This is the second defensive response from you, over words I never said, why?
[/I]Except it’s not gospel. It’s science and it seems you may have an issue with it.
While people are free to have opinions they shouldn’t be surprised to receive angry push back when they are disputing easily observable evidence or arguing inherently unscientific opinion as if it was science.
To quote Issac Asimov:
”There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Great! However your post is coming across as someone who has an issue with the scientific consensus.
Well let me clear that up.
For planets without atmospheres the simplest way to predict their temperatures is use the Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody equation and some simply geometry to give the amount of energy (S ave) each planet receives. Then backsolving for the predicted (Tp) gives a very good estimate of the temperature.
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For a planet with no atmosphere like Mercury predicted temperature is pretty accurate compared to the observed temperature (Tp vs Tobs).
For the Earth however it’s off by ~ 33C due to the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere. If you want to argue the bulk of the greenhouse effect is natural this would be the place because most of that 33C + has been there since Earth has an atmosphere.
However what I’m talking about when I say 100+% is the 100+% of the warming since the 1950’s. Why 100+%? Because the natural forcings have been neutral to slightly cooling. It is the extra 1C so far on top of the natural amount of greenhouse warming.
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It is not needed to prove what’s happening today. Direct measurement and basic physics is enough to prove what’s going on.
The past does help to confirm and understand our findings though. Comparing current climate change to past climate change highlights how past climate change starts with long term changes in Earths orbit and tilt.
Although a decent example from the past was the Siberian Traps and the Great Die Off. The evidence suggests vulcanism burned through sediment and coal deposits releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases and quickly causing climate change that resulted in the worst extinction event.
http://news.mit.edu/2015/siberian-traps-end-permian-extinction-0916
Of course. It’s science so it’s falsifiable. But here’s the thing, to prove it false the competing hypothesis must be better supported, make better predictions, and better describe all the evidence. Otherwise it loses. This is the high bar the “Climate Skeptic” community routinely fails to clear.
Since climate change is based off of already proven physics and mountains of evidence there’s not much chance of proving it wildly wrong. But there’s a Nobel prize in there if you do.
What we need is a good virus to get rid of some people.
Appreciate the info, but I already know all that part.
What I was specifically looking for a while back was related to CO2 concentrations vs heat gain. Taking the atmosphere as a whole, CO2 mass has increased some twenty thousands of one percent. More than doubled, but still tiny when expressed as a percentage of the whole. I was wondering what the linear relationship is between CO2 concentrations and heat retention expressed as BTU's. I never figured that out as other interactions screw all the numbers up. I don't have the math to make sense of it.
Asking any questions about those relationships triggers a lot of people and they start shouting "denier". That pretty much ends any discussion on the topic. One fellow over in the cesspool was very helpful. I think it was Patrayus? He sent me several very informative links, though none of them had the specific information I was looking for.
Citation on this? I believe you brought it up earlier in the thread, but if there's any actual truth behind it, then an atmosphere of 70% co2 would be entirely uninhabitable. Venus' atmosphere is 96.5% and is several hundred degrees on the surface. The only time when 70% co2 would have even been possible on earth would have been exceedingly early in its development, back when it was basically a raging ball of fire and debris the size of moons were still finding things to crash into in our solar system.So if you believe that raising the CO2 level from .04% to .05% will change the whole ballgame, even given that levels have been as high as 70% that's fine by me.
Citation? CO2 has historically played a huge role in global temperatures. The hottest time period in earth's history was the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, co2 levels were estimated to be as high as 2000ppm. Temps rose 9-14Fc during that timeframe to an avg of around 73F, well above today's avg of ~60F. Plants exploded during that time period, which resulted in an incredible amount of co2 sequestration, followed by a cooling period. It's pretty cut and dry.caused by something other than carbon emissions.
You need to start analyzing this closer, without blinders on. Note our pre-industrial CO2 ppm (280), note how much coal, oil, and gas we've burned (billions of tons), note how much the co2 ppm level has risen to (~410ppm), note how much the current global average temperature has increased (~1.8c), and note the effects that has caused. Now extrapolate, including feedback loops (look up methane sources in permafrost, loss of ice, and ocean acidification for some fun reading), delayed reactions from release -> effects, and estimate what our planet will be like in another 100 years.I have absolutely have no problem with your climate analysis, but I cannot buy into the fact that now that trumps all of the forces that have controlled our climate for millions of years. Unfortunately, I do not see a way to prove or disprove it
The thing is that things certainly can change by over 100 percent...I guess I should clarify. 100 plus percent of anything is somewhat humorous. Reminds me of a buddy who told me his body fat was 130%.
But if you look at the data over thousands, millions of years, there always have been what only can be called giants swings in temperature relative to what we see in a lifetime, all of it, in fact 130% of it![]()
Citation on this? I believe you brought it up earlier in the thread, but if there's any actual truth behind it, then an atmosphere of 70% co2 would be entirely uninhabitable. Venus' atmosphere is 96.5% and is several hundred degrees on the surface. The only time when 70% co2 would have even been possible on earth would have been exceedingly early in its development, back when it was basically a raging ball of fire and debris the size of moons were still finding things to crash into in our solar system.
Citation? CO2 has historically played a huge role in global temperatures. The hottest time period in earth's history was the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, co2 levels were estimated to be as high as 2000ppm. Temps rose 9-14Fc during that timeframe to an avg of around 73F, well above today's avg of ~60F. Plants exploded during that time period, which resulted in an incredible amount of co2 sequestration, followed by a cooling period. It's pretty cut and dry.
You need to start analyzing this closer, without blinders on. Note our pre-industrial CO2 ppm (280), note how much coal, oil, and gas we've burned (billions of tons), note how much the co2 ppm level has risen to (~410ppm), note how much the current global average temperature has increased (~1.8c), and note the effects that has caused. Now extrapolate, including feedback loops (look up methane sources in permafrost, loss of ice, and ocean acidification for some fun reading), delayed reactions from release -> effects, and estimate what our planet will be like in another 100 years.
You're going to need something other than a youtube video as a citation. Show me a research paper of this 70% claim.The 70% is new data per the youtube posted earlier. Probably fair to say it was much much higher than .04%
Pretty much general consensus that carbon emissions as normally understood, started with the industrial revolution. CO2 undoubtedly plays a huge part, but not from burning fossil fuels before we started burning fossil fuels.
Remember the book the population bomb? Extrapolated us to having one square foot per individual. Fun in a sense, but not true science.
Ok, let's see that data in a graph.
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It seems your declaration isn't supported by data. Find another place on the graph before the industrial revolution that matches in both magnitude and slope.
I'm not hung up on anything, I'm curious. Sometimes I wonder about the why's of something and go looking for information. I learned that those questions can't be asked here, as they are almost universally met with hostility. I would have thought the exact opposite would be true.I'm not sure why you are hung up on percentages of the total as that's not relevant in any way.
As an example, there is atmospheric cyanide albeit in less than deadly amounts. Let's increase it to the same percent as CO2 as it is, around 400ppm. That's a trivial amount, being exactly the same as carbon dioxide and therefore harmless.
Two questions
Is that dangerous
and
why or why not? I don't need the details of what metabolic pathways, but the obvious instead.
Note, this isn't considering the cascade of events, but a starting point at the most basic level.
I'm not hung up on anything, I'm curious. Sometimes I wonder about the why's of something and go looking for information. I learned that those questions can't be asked here, as they are almost universally met with hostility. I would have thought the exact opposite would be true.
I guess I should clarify. 100 plus percent of anything is somewhat humorous. Reminds me of a buddy who told me his body fat was 130%.
My understanding of science is not a version of the truth that one must hold sacrosanct unless you have an alternate theory to put forth. Just looking at the transition from Newton to Einstein, it was Newton's theory that was put forth and tested, challenged. It worked very well for hundreds of years and brought us much of what we have now, but eventually the holes became glaring even though all the challenging actually improved his model. It is all punching holes, looking for ways to further refine the model.
Almost immediately after the introduction of relativity, it was tested and proven by the famous eclipse experiment. Einstein was all in favor of it. It can be said that his model did not throw out Newton's equations, just refined them, in a really major way.
So science, in my view, is not trying to discredit anyone. A theory can never be proven right, it just can be tested and tested to see where it might be wrong and things can be improved for all.
So I am all for science and critical thinking, 100%. I think the problem is twofold with climate science today. It does not lend itself well to testing and people are resistant to having their truth questioned. If this were not the case, climate scientists would be out there telling the skeptics, here is how you prove me wrong, bring it on. Sort of like Einstein.
So if you believe that raising the CO2 level from .04% to .05% will change the whole ballgame, even given that levels have been as high as 70% that's fine by me.
But if you look at the data over thousands, millions of years, there always have been what only can be called giants swings in temperature relative to what we see in a lifetime, all of it, in fact 130% of it, caused by something other than carbon emissions. I cannot deny the data. They are most likely to occur again, just like their will be a hurricane again, even though we have not seen one in 20 years.
I have absolutely have no problem with your climate analysis, but I cannot buy into the fact that now that trumps all of the forces that have controlled our climate for millions of years. Unfortunately, I do not see a way to prove or disprove it
The temperature swing for the real ice age dwarfs that of the little ice age. Have you not looked at the graph?