Page 13 of 72
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:32 pm
by Malcolm
I read this. Then I went here because I couldn't believe anything so stupid could exist.
End result: I learned something new today.
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 10:33 am
by GORDON
Psychos.
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 1:47 pm
by Malcolm
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:02 pm
by GORDON
Hmm.
Read a book a long time ago called "Red Mars" about how Mars got colonized.... very, VERY painful read. The hippies were killing people left and right and getting away with it.
ANYWAY.... in that story things went to hell on Earth when a volcano under Antarctica caused a huge portion of the ice on that continent to melt off into the ocean and literally overnight raised sea levels several feet all over the planet.
So.
You know. Whatever.
Terrible series of books... I got through the second, could not start the 3rd. I hope they all died.
Edited By GORDON on 1402423367
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:37 pm
by TPRJones
Clearly all the coal we've burned has caused an increase in continental drift, which is what makes volcanoes.
Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:50 pm
by GORDON
TPRJones wrote:
Clearly all the coal we've burned has caused an increase in continental drift, which is what makes volcanoes.
According to the hippies the coal we burn is warming the atmosphere which melts the glaciers which causes the crust of the earth to not be compressed under all that weight which causes more earthquakes and volcanoes. They have an excuse for any argument. I have even seen them explain away the rising temps on other planets and shit in order to explain that changes in solar weather do not affect Earth.
Can not win.
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 1:47 pm
by Malcolm
British dude says White House Science Adviser is full of shit. The thing that he's wrong about...
A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold experienced by the United States is a pattern we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues.
Actually, no.
Climate change is unlikely to lead to more days of extreme cold, similar to those that gripped the USA in a deep freeze last winter ... [Recent changes in the Arctic climate have] actually reduced the risk of cold extremes across large swathes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Edited By Malcolm on 1403027247
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 1:49 pm
by GORDON
I'm still waiting for all the increased hurricane activity they promised.
Well, less so since I moved away from the ocean.
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:14 pm
by Leisher
Wasn't this the first year since Katrina that they backed off their annual "run for the hills" claims and said it'd be a mild year for hurricanes?
After 2011, I remember hearing about how we'd all better get used to insane levels of tornado activity, because that's the new norm.
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:14 pm
by GORDON
Yeah, I just like to remind these people of their past bad predictions based on their shitty climate models they they always claim are perfect.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 1:33 am
by GORDON
So let's pretend that someone comes up with an absolutely perfect Earth climate model. This thing can predict every degree of temperature change and every drop of rain without flaw, accurate forwards and backwards 10k years in each direction.... meaning, it can predict the past perfectly, and predicts the day-to day stuff, and for a couple years has never been wrong.
It says that there is going to be a massive ice age in exactly 10 years. Mile thick glaciers as far south as Missouri. The model shows that reducing the current CO2 output into the atmosphere by 75% will actually stop it.
Nothing would change, right? I mean, China aint going to turn off their coal plants, thousands of ocean liners aren't going to stop transporting goods, volcanoes aren't going to stop erupting, methane isn't going to stop being released in the bermuda triangle, and Americans need to get to work. Absolutely nothing would change.
Whether that is true or not goes into determining whether people should be getting upset about MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING. I am just getting tired of the conversation. Every little new observation gets a "because of manmade global warming" suffix. If nothing would change, then people need to just shut the fuck up about it because it doesn't matter anyway.
Edited By GORDON on 1403501683
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:28 am
by Malcolm
Absolutely nothing would change.
First off, how does one get a mile thick glacier in under 10 years? Second off, yes it would.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:30 am
by TPRJones
GORDON wrote:The model shows that reducing the current CO2 output into the atmosphere by 75% will actually stop it.
That's backwards. We'd need to increase output to fend off an ice age. But, ignoring that:
Nothing would change, right?
Mostly correct. Some small percentage of the people would reduce their output, but they probably already are ecologically friendly anyway because they are so inclined. The majority of people will let someone else cut back instead of themselves. The smartest fraction of humanity will invest in companies that make snow shoes and parkas.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:32 am
by GORDON
Are you asking me to lay out the logic that the hypothetical magical earth climate simulation stated would happen in this fictional scenario?
- edit - asked of Malcolm.
Y'all need to stop questioning the infallible earth climate model. Take it as a given that it exists and that's what it said. Dammit.
Edited By GORDON on 1403534023
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:55 am
by Malcolm
GORDON wrote:Are you asking me to lay out the logic that the hypothetical magical earth climate simulation stated would happen in this fictional scenario?
- edit - asked of Malcolm.
Y'all need to stop questioning the infallible earth climate model. Take it as a given that it exists and that's what it said. Dammit.
If you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a mile-thick glacier was going to make it as far as the Ozarks in under a decade, I guaran-goddamn-tee people would take notice. There are a fuckload of other countries in those latitudes.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:42 am
by GORDON
Ok, notice has been taken. Then what?
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:00 pm
by Malcolm
GORDON wrote:Ok, notice has been taken. Then what?
Then everyone will drop loads upon loads of cash into every alternative energy source available at the time, regardless of how efficient it is. It will be slow and expensive at first. After the tech gets out in front of enough people with enough incentive to improve it, you'd have realistic prospects in about a decade. I don't think you could roll out new power systems to the entirety of India, China, and various other "on the cusp" countries in that time, though. Perhaps a decade's a bit too short. Three or four, maybe.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:07 pm
by TPRJones
Then everyone will drop loads upon loads of cash into every alternative energy source available at the time, regardless of how efficient it is.
Bah. Everyone will encourage everyone else to drop loads of cash. Many will make a token donation, but very few will really give their all. Most people in the face of even a certain bad future will still fail to really respond if it feels theoretical. Actual wide-spread action wouldn't start to be seriously considered in the US until the ice sheet was at least close to Toronto.
Even then most people will worry more about how their own family will personally survive the ice age than about how to stop it altogether.
Edited By TPRJones on 1403539756
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:16 pm
by GORDON
Yeah but.
1. According to Al Gore it is already just about too late. As he is speaking for this mighty "consensus" of climate scientists, he may as well be their official ambassador to us stupid people.
2. I have said before that there isn't some magic bullet waiting to be discovered. There is nothing that is going to be invented in the next 10 years that is going to make a difference in energy production that we don't know about right now, aside from some "Mule" type event (Foundation series... something so unpredictable that it screws up everything). But that aint gonna happen. We aren't going to suddenly have power plants based on a captured quantum singularity.
So, assuming we are beyond A's "point of no return," and we will be glaciated in 10 years, what's gonna change?
But I'll play: In your scenario, all kinds of money gets put into new technologies.
1. WHat money? I assume all these countries are going to cripple their economies immediately turning off the petrol taps. No more internal combustion engines, no one going to work, no one getting the crops out of the fields, no one taking more food to Walmart. On day 10 of your grand plan your countries are tearing themselves apart with hunger riots.
WHich, fuck, pretty much solves the problem. 90% population die-off would do the trick.
Brilliant, Malcolm.
Now... does anyone have any plans that doesn't require 90% of humanity in the western world to die?
Keep in mind: my original question is whether or not this issue is even worth arguing about. Individual people will never change anything no matter how smug or snarky they are, and nothing will ever be done on a large scale before glaciers are crossing the Ohio River Valley.
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:23 pm
by Malcolm
What's the point of you asking what'll happen if every simulation your run in your brain ends with "we're fucked?"