Political angst?thibodeaux wrote:So...how exactly do we measure global warming?
Vote YES on Global Warming.
GORDON wrote:So it's like the belief in a supreme being... we need to just take it on faith.
I've already called environmentalism a religion for a long time, so this just supports that.
this what? I was serious.
Well, half-serious. How would you prove anything? How would you attempt to disprove anything?
Edited By TheCatt on 1178575464
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Worst article on emissions by developing countries ev4r.
So China's emissions have fallen since the early 80's? I doubt it. Especially given that their economy is three times more energy intensive than the U.S. Thus, each unit of GDP they create takes 3x more energy than in the U.S., and given their growth....
And Russia's only doing well because their economy has collapsed.
Developing nations that are fast industrializing, such as China and India, have braked their rising greenhouse gas emissions by more than the total cuts demanded of rich nations by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.
...
"China is already doing a lot," said Hu Tao, of China's State Environmental Protection Administration.
He said China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming by limiting the population to 1.3 billion against a projected 1.6 billion without the policy.
Russia, for instance, has apparently done most among Kyoto nations with a 32 percent fall in emissions between 1990, a year before the Soviet Union fell apart, and 2004.
So China's emissions have fallen since the early 80's? I doubt it. Especially given that their economy is three times more energy intensive than the U.S. Thus, each unit of GDP they create takes 3x more energy than in the U.S., and given their growth....
And Russia's only doing well because their economy has collapsed.
It's not me, it's someone else.
I think he's saying that China has done well compared to the projections, in the sense that if they'd not starting doing the one-child thing they'd be 23% worse than they are now because they'd have 23% more people than they do now. Which isn't necessarily the case, and even if it is it has nothing to do with trying to conform to the Kyoto treaty. Unless he's implying that the reason for the one-child policy was specifically so that they could conform to Kyoto, which is silly.
And yeah, economic collapse has the side effect of reducing carbon output, but it also causes plenty of famine and death in many cases. This is a useful policy to follow only if you believe humanity is a disease that should be eradicated from the face of the planet.
'Tis a very silly article indeed.
Personally, though, this is the part I consider to be the most stupid:
So, what does China's one-child per couple policy have to do with decreasing the sunspot activity and solar storms, then? I mean it's been proven that the temperature of the earth changes in inverse lockstep with solar activity (as measured on a change-over-years basis), so whatever you think of cause and effect somehow the one-child policy will need to descrease sunspot activity - at least as an indirect side-effect if not in the causal chain - in order to have the effect of "braking global warming".
Maybe the extra babies are being thrown into the sun?
Edited By TPRJones on 1178577887
And yeah, economic collapse has the side effect of reducing carbon output, but it also causes plenty of famine and death in many cases. This is a useful policy to follow only if you believe humanity is a disease that should be eradicated from the face of the planet.
'Tis a very silly article indeed.
Personally, though, this is the part I consider to be the most stupid:
He said China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming...
So, what does China's one-child per couple policy have to do with decreasing the sunspot activity and solar storms, then? I mean it's been proven that the temperature of the earth changes in inverse lockstep with solar activity (as measured on a change-over-years basis), so whatever you think of cause and effect somehow the one-child policy will need to descrease sunspot activity - at least as an indirect side-effect if not in the causal chain - in order to have the effect of "braking global warming".
Maybe the extra babies are being thrown into the sun?
Edited By TPRJones on 1178577887
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TPRJones wrote: Personally, though, this is the part I consider to be the most stupid:
He said China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming...
So, what does China's one-child per couple policy have to do with decreasing the sunspot activity and solar storms, then? I mean it's been proven that the temperature of the earth changes in inverse lockstep with solar activity (as measured on a change-over-years basis), so whatever you think of cause and effect somehow the one-child policy will need to descrease sunspot activity - at least as an indirect side-effect if not in the causal chain - in order to have the effect of "braking global warming".
Maybe the extra babies are being thrown into the sun?
The guy who did that research doesn't think you understand him correctly.
Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
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"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
Edited By TheCatt on 1178578388
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thibodeaux
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I assume that we're talking about the same thing. There is some number that represents something about the world's temperature. If it's increasing over time, that's global warming.TheCatt wrote:How do we measure that it's not happening?thibodeaux wrote:So...how exactly do we measure global warming?
So...what's that number? How's it calculated? Do we know anything about past local maxima and minima? How do we know what the ideal value of that number is?
I've wondered the same thing, Thib. What's the magic number? Based on what? And this magic average... does it matter if the temps at the equator go up and the temps at the poles go down as long as the average stays the same?
And how much was the average rainfall in inches for earth last year?
And how much was the average rainfall in inches for earth last year?
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
TheCatt wrote:Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.
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"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."
Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.
And then he ignores the fact that a higher particulate count in the atmosphere is reflecting more sun, too.
There was a thread about that here, some time in the past.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
TheCatt wrote:The guy who did that research doesn't think you understand him correctly.
Sorry, wrong source. His work hasn't been very strong when it comes to greenhouse gasses, he sort of throws those in as an "of course those are a factor, too" instead of doing any real science. I've mostly been following the work of Baliunas, once considered brilliant but now roundly criticised as a crackpot because she has shown strong evidence that <s>the earth is round</s> CO2 is more likely to be a product of global warming than a cause.
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You're listening to a woman?TPRJones wrote:Sorry, wrong source. His work hasn't been very strong when it comes to greenhouse gasses, he sort of throws those in as an "of course those are a factor, too" instead of doing any real science. I've mostly been following the work of Baliunas, once considered brilliant but now roundly criticised as a crackpot because she has shown strong evidence that <s>the earth is round</s> CO2 is more likely to be a product of global warming than a cause.TheCatt wrote:The guy who did that research doesn't think you understand him correctly.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Oh, and if I read thiscorrectly, your definition of inverse needs help too.
When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling from which the earth has been recovering since 1890.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Yes, you are correct, I got it backwards. More sunspots => more solar wind => less cosmic rays => less cloud formation => more heat not reflected back to space and less percipitation cycled through the ecology.
As to "proven" I will admit - this one time - that yes nothing has been proven. Neither side of the global warming debate has enough actual science to back up their viewpoint with any real certainty yet, nor will they for at least another 50 years. The evidence for solar activity driving the earth's temperature (indirectly through the cloud formation mechanism) is strenghtening, and it's seems that it could likely account for such a large percentage of the temperature fluctuations that the effect of greenhouse gasses are lost as statistical noise. It helps explain the last 50 years of CO2 levels and temperature variations to a more accurate degree than the man-made model provides. The evidence for the solar-driven model is so far more compelling than the man-made global warming stance, and the ocean absorption and emission of atmospheric CO2 also helps explain why CO2 levels in the atmosphere are apparently linked to solar activity, which you just can't do with a man-made global warming theory. But no, it's not proven. However the tools used in the global warming debate are supposition, assumption, and hyperbole, and as an internet extremist whacko these are the tools I feel compelled to use in response. But that's the last time I'll admit to any of that.
Anyway, as I was saying, it's been proven that global warming is a myth initiated by the left to compound their social power and geometrically increase governmental intrusion into our lives (not to mention the billions of dollars in leftist taxes and spending that go along with it, of course).
As to "proven" I will admit - this one time - that yes nothing has been proven. Neither side of the global warming debate has enough actual science to back up their viewpoint with any real certainty yet, nor will they for at least another 50 years. The evidence for solar activity driving the earth's temperature (indirectly through the cloud formation mechanism) is strenghtening, and it's seems that it could likely account for such a large percentage of the temperature fluctuations that the effect of greenhouse gasses are lost as statistical noise. It helps explain the last 50 years of CO2 levels and temperature variations to a more accurate degree than the man-made model provides. The evidence for the solar-driven model is so far more compelling than the man-made global warming stance, and the ocean absorption and emission of atmospheric CO2 also helps explain why CO2 levels in the atmosphere are apparently linked to solar activity, which you just can't do with a man-made global warming theory. But no, it's not proven. However the tools used in the global warming debate are supposition, assumption, and hyperbole, and as an internet extremist whacko these are the tools I feel compelled to use in response. But that's the last time I'll admit to any of that.
Anyway, as I was saying, it's been proven that global warming is a myth initiated by the left to compound their social power and geometrically increase governmental intrusion into our lives (not to mention the billions of dollars in leftist taxes and spending that go along with it, of course).
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TPRJones wrote:Anyway, as I was saying, it's been proven that global warming is a myth initiated by the left to compound their social power and geometrically increase governmental intrusion into our lives (not to mention the billions of dollars in leftist taxes and spending that go along with it, of course).
Well, OK then.
And I haven't "drunk the koolaid" nor believe that global warming is necessarily manmade, but I'd like people to find out what impacts emissions do have and what could be done.
And I'd really like to fuck over all oil producing countries and do everything with electricity from nuclear, solar, and coal. Or, at least enough that we didn't have to import oil.
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thibodeaux
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I'd like to see us move away from oil, too. And we will but we've got two major technological hurdles to get over first:
1) Power Storage - We've got to figure out a better way to store power than the current battery technologies. It's just not anywhere efficient enough to do the job to allow for battery-driven motorized ground and air transport. Until we can make a quantum leap forward in power storage technology, we'll be stuck with using chemical-based storage mediums. Alternately if we could figure out how to use electricity to make oil (or a similarly efficient chemical energy storage medium) that would do the trick, too.
2) Fusion - Fision is okay, but it's a bit messy and unstable to serve as a primary source for all our electricity. If we can crack the fusion problem, then we'll have nearly unlimited energy to fill up those new batteries in part 1 and the main by-product is helium. Say, I wonder if you could use measurements of atmospheric helium as a potential indicator of the presence of advanced civilizations? But I digress.
We're just not there tech-wise to be able to move off of oil. But we will be within a few more decades (a century at the outside, but I'm betting it'll be closer to 50 years or less). And we'll also learn how to clean up the mess we make in the meantime while we get there. But if we retard the scientific advancement process too much in the interest of worrying about things that may or may not be a real problem because too many other people drink the kool-aid, we'll take that much longer to get there and make that much more of a mess. *sigh*
Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist for modern times. All the pessimism is aggrevating, when all I see is a bright future when we start to be able to do anything we set our minds too. Everyone else just sees us all being dead.
1) Power Storage - We've got to figure out a better way to store power than the current battery technologies. It's just not anywhere efficient enough to do the job to allow for battery-driven motorized ground and air transport. Until we can make a quantum leap forward in power storage technology, we'll be stuck with using chemical-based storage mediums. Alternately if we could figure out how to use electricity to make oil (or a similarly efficient chemical energy storage medium) that would do the trick, too.
2) Fusion - Fision is okay, but it's a bit messy and unstable to serve as a primary source for all our electricity. If we can crack the fusion problem, then we'll have nearly unlimited energy to fill up those new batteries in part 1 and the main by-product is helium. Say, I wonder if you could use measurements of atmospheric helium as a potential indicator of the presence of advanced civilizations? But I digress.
We're just not there tech-wise to be able to move off of oil. But we will be within a few more decades (a century at the outside, but I'm betting it'll be closer to 50 years or less). And we'll also learn how to clean up the mess we make in the meantime while we get there. But if we retard the scientific advancement process too much in the interest of worrying about things that may or may not be a real problem because too many other people drink the kool-aid, we'll take that much longer to get there and make that much more of a mess. *sigh*
Maybe I'm just too much of an optimist for modern times. All the pessimism is aggrevating, when all I see is a bright future when we start to be able to do anything we set our minds too. Everyone else just sees us all being dead.
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While I rarely say things I don't have at least some basis for or agreement with (with the exception of sarcasm or irony, of course), you gotta realize that about 1/3 of the things I say and do are - to one degree or another - a form of performance art. I am, to a certain extent, my own parody of myself.TheCatt wrote:
Well, OK then.
Of course I'm also always right, but often too far ahead of my time to be taken seriously. :p
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"My side" isn't required to provide any evidence to back up its theories.TPRJones wrote:Neither side of the global warming debate has enough actual science to back up their viewpoint with any real certainty yet, nor will they for at least another 50 years.
"My side" isn't making any theories.
"My side" is requiring the other side to back up their theories, which they can't do. "My side" is more afraid of the actions of the other side than it is of global climate change.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."