Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Grizzly on November 24, 2011, 10:03:19 am
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This is how Forbes describes it (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/).
This is the actual e-mail:
From looking at Climate Audit every few days, these people are not doing what I would call academic research. Also from looking they will not stop with the data, but will continue to ask for the original unadjusted data (which we don’t have) and then move onto the software used to produce the gridded datasets (the ones we do release). CRU is considered by the climate community as a data centre, but we don’t have any resources to undertake this work. Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data. We are currently trying to do some more work with other datasets, which will get released (as gridded datasets) through the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC). This will involve more than just station temperature data. Perhaps we should consider setting up something like this agreement below [1]http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/surface/met-nerc_agreement.html I just want these orchestrated requests to stop. I also don’t want to give away years of hard effort within CRU. Many of the agreements were made in the late 1980s and early 1990s and I don’t have copies to hand. I also don’t want to waste my time looking for them. Even if I were to find them all, it is likely that the people we dealt with are no longer in the same positions. These requests over the last 2.5 years have wasted much time for me, others in CRU and for Dave and Michael.
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Apparently, having the validity of the data confirmed by an independent study by a former climate skeptic (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071) isn't enough for some people. :rolleyes:
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feed the hippies to the polar bears, problem solved!
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feed the hippies science deniers to the polar bears, problem solved!
FTFY
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I wish this "global warming" actually started showing in Poland. If anything, the winters are colder than before. And I hate cold, common cold, snow on the driveway, ice on a driveway, ice on the sidewalks and that snow-salt-sand thing that's lies everywhere in the city. Not to mention snowstorms, hailstorms, glaze, cold wind and snow-and-rain storms. And I also hate freezing when waiting for a tram or bus, on a cold, metal bench (or standing, I don't know what's worse). The only thing good about winter are Xmas and winter holidays.[winter rant]
I'd be glad if there were no sub-zero temperatures in here through the whole year. A perfect place for me would be where temperatures are always double-digit, and on the plus side.
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How come I only hear stuff about global warming during winter?
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1: why the **** are they still calling it global warming. one of the worst things science can do is mis-name something.
2: why do people seem to think the environment is supposed to be static? it never was, dinosaurs wouldn't be able to breathe our air, for example. if a species is incapable of adapting to the environment, then it should serve evolution by going extinct. it doesn't matter if were the ones changing the climate. algae, and plants did that long ago, and they didnt have hippie cults protesting the change. were reaping the benefits of that. if anyone is denying science its the people who think that we should use our technology to lock down a fixed climate cycle, stopping the iterative process of evolution and climate. if we make out environment unsurvivable then we will serve evolution by going extinct, earning us a species wide darwin award? dont you just want that award? i think it would be easier to just lob nukes at each other, but due to lack of madness in the current political theater i dont think thats gonna happen any time soon
feed the hippies science deniers to the polar bears, problem solved!
FTFY
i can care less about the environment. my long term plans would **** it up anyway. i was thinking more about the hippy problem. hippies dont care about actual science. they protest things without actual doing any real reserch. they ***** about the climate and try to make the government automagically solve the problem for them. i see hippies polute, waste resources, and carry out guilt-reduction instead of actually adopting pro-climate behaviors. stop the hippies before its too late! nuke the hippies!!!
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Apparently, having the validity of the data confirmed by an independent study by a former climate skeptic (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071) isn't enough for some people. :rolleyes:
You think those "scientists" were going to be willing to accept evidence that contradicts their hypothesis? That's not how science works! Science works by coming up with an idea you personally like and then refusing to listen to anything that contradicts you!
......oh wait a second, it's early in the morning and I wrote science when I meant to write "being an arsehole"
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Well, overall it IS global warming, but climate change is the better term for people to understand, since their climate may not necessarily become warmer.
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"climate change" is just as bad a term, this would imply that climate is not supposed to change. global warming is fuzzy and oversimplifies the issue. i still think we will hit the carbon wall before we cause any irreversible damage.
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Very unlikely when you consider how multiplicative most warming factors are.
Realistically, without some major catastrophe that destroys our ability to produce green house effectors and impact environments as prolifically as we are currently I don't see us fixing it in time.
I'm not talking about a situation like Venus, but enough of a situation that the life style that we westerners have right now? - it's not sustainable, infinite alternate power or otherwise.
Bulldozing our way through the problem with tech is more likely than fixing it by emission reductions right now imo.
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we could just nuke the ice caps
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why the **** are they still calling it global warming. one of the worst things science can do is mis-name something.
I dunno, for describing the basic physical principles at work I think it's an OK term. If you increase greenhouse gas concentrations in a planets atmosphere (and if the atmosphere is transparent to shortwave radiation) then the global surface equilibrium temperature increases. Without its greenhouse atmosphere, Earth's equilibrium temperature would be a frigid 255K (-18°C).
Of course when discussing the details of what happens to our climate given the current situation, things are much more complex -- hence why we started using the term 'climate change', which as you point out still leaves room for misinterpretation.
What would you prefer to name it?
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"energy retention" maybe?
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Sounds like something you'd take Carbon-Lax to cure. :p
I'd suggest renaming it to Human Stupidity. It works perfectly as a name. "In recent news the governments of the world have agreed to a series of measures that experts say will do very little to curb Human Stupidity" Even better it works for the so-called sceptics too by making their naive pronouncements seem as ridiculous as they actually are. "I don't believe in Human Stupidity, I think the change in the word's temperature is linked to sunspots" :p
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I would name it "Climate Destabilization." Really brings the human element to light.
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Sounds like something you'd take Carbon-Lax to cure. :p
I'd suggest renaming it to Human Stupidity. It works perfectly as a name. "In recent news the governments of the world have agreed to a series of measures that experts say will do very little to curb Human Stupidity" Even better it works for the so-called sceptics too by making their naive pronouncements seem as ridiculous as they actually are. "I don't believe in Human Stupidity, I think the change in the word's temperature is linked to sunspots" :p
"Human Stupidity is good for the plants and will make the earth a more comfortable place!"
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I would name it "Climate Destabilization." Really brings the human element to light.
Depends what you mean by "destabilization"; climate changes caused by, for example, a supervolcanic eruption or a large meteor impact would be "destabilization" in a way (and as far as I know :p those cannot be caused by humans at our current level of technology).
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Well, it's not like it isn't accepted that volcanic eruptions contribute to the "Global Warming" or whatever you want to name it.
And in fact, scientists I know about agree that the climate is indeed warming up and changing, but it's perfectly natural. It's just that the people are listening to those backed by big corporations, for which the whole issue is just another way to make money. The same corporations make sure that people know and care about it.
We had an Ice Age relatively recently. After it, the climate started warming up. That process is simply not finished yet, climate will be getting warmer just like it did after every other Ice Age.
Still, it's a problem. One we can't remedy with stupid limits on CO2 emission (which only ruin the economy because of how much they cost). What we have to do is to strengthen the existing dams and build new ones to prevent the sea from flooding places that are below it's level and near the coast, as it's one of the most dangerous side-effects of the warming. Sea level will continue to rise, as it did last time we've had an Ice Age. Once, it was possible to walk from Russia to Alaska. Nobody is complaining about not being able to do that anymore (and there some people who are most likely quite happy about that). Sea level had risen since then, and will continue to do so. We need to adapt, not change the nature. Not yet, at least.
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Well, it's not like it isn't accepted that volcanic eruptions contribute to the "Global Warming" or whatever you want to name it.
Contribute as in having the exact opposite effect?
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Contribute, as in emit a lot of various gases which increase the effect. On the other hand, the dust could also prevent light from reaching Earth and thus cooling it down. It all depends on the type of eruption. I'm not a volcanologist, so I can't say for sure what the general balance is (though I've heard it's in favor of warming).
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I believe you may have heard incorrectly.
Although volcanic eruptions do emit CO2, they also emit copious SO2 and aerosols, which have a more strongly negative radiative forcing. So, the net forcing is negative, and this lasts for a few years. One of the best examples of this is the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0306aopin.html), one of the largest eruptions in recent history, which cooled the earth's surface by about 0.3°C.
It is also worth noting that although this cools the surface, it has a heating effect on the atmosphere higher up. The same eruption heated the stratosphere by about 2 to 3°C. The reason for this is just radiative physics -- the volcanic aerosols reflect the sun's shortwave radiation and thus prevent it from reaching the ground, so the ground cools. However, they also strongly absorb the longwave radiation, and thus the stratosphere heats up. Essentially, this is the greenhouse effect operating in reverse.
And in fact, scientists I know about agree that the climate is indeed warming up and changing, but it's perfectly natural.
Really? Which scientists? If it is not human activity causing the majority of the current warming trend, then what do they propose is causing it? How do they explain the good correlation between the observed temperature record, the post-industrial CO2 record, and theory?
One we can't remedy with stupid limits on CO2 emission (which only ruin the economy because of how much they cost).
Even if we put climate change aside, acting to prevent the further acidification of the world's oceans is stupid in your opinion?
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One we can't remedy with stupid limits on CO2 emission (which only ruin the economy because of how much they cost).
Even if we put climate change aside, acting to prevent the further acidification of the world's oceans is stupid in your opinion?
You're assuming that those limits work as intended. Countries, which can't stay under the limits won't reduce their emissions, they'll just pay more.
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What would you prefer to name it?
"climate modification" would probably be the best thing i can think of. this implies the changes to climate not caused by natural phenomena. you have a baseline "natural" climate cycle, upon which we are imposing a "modification" (either incidental or intentional). we know scientifically that the climate will change on its own without any tampering, so calling it climate change will cause confusion. especially those that say that the earth goes through cycles and iterative processes that effect the climate, which is for the most part a correct understanding of how "natural" climate works. these people assume climate change is a "natural" phenomena and are correct in doing so. the people who deny climate change are using scientific knowledge to come to that conclusion and i find it disturbing that the greenies call these people dumb for doing so. if anyone is dumb its the science types that misnamed the phenomena in the first place without forethought for how the words would inevitably get twisted in the political theater.
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One we can't remedy with stupid limits on CO2 emission (which only ruin the economy because of how much they cost).
Even if we put climate change aside, acting to prevent the further acidification of the world's oceans is stupid in your opinion?
You're assuming that those limits work as intended. Countries, which can't stay under the limits won't reduce their emissions, they'll just pay more.
I'm assuming that a cap-and-trade system is the most economically viable method of giving countries an incentive to reduce emissions. If there's a better method to achieve that goal I'd be interested in hearing it. :)
Alternatively, we could just focus on adaptation as per Dragon's suggestion. I agree with him that adaptation is a smart and perhaps eventually necessary idea, but if we don't do anything to curb GHG emissions then the problems we would face could go way beyond "rising sea levels". Hence why I mentioned increasing ocean acidification, which is not a cheap fix nor something we could easily adapt to if it were to get out of hand.
Furthermore, one could argue that adaptation alone would end up being far more expensive than trying to reduce emissions now.
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...wait, what? Am I really not banned after all?
Well my 2 gold doubloons here is that mitigation is generally estimated to cost at least 4% of world GDP, the price for which you could feed and educate every person in poverty several times over.
The cost of dealing with the problem microeconomically through regulatory approaches is quite high and it makes a lot more sense to deal with the problems as they come, at least until there's affordable alternatives to fossil fuels.
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I believe you may have heard incorrectly.
Thanks for clearing this up then. The place where I read that could have had outdated or inaccurate info (or be biased, unfortunately).
And in fact, scientists I know about agree that the climate is indeed warming up and changing, but it's perfectly natural.
Really? Which scientists? If it is not human activity causing the majority of the current warming trend, then what do they propose is causing it? How do they explain the good correlation between the observed temperature record, the post-industrial CO2 record, and theory?
Well, the correlation between temperature and the presence of certain gases (CO2 and Methane, mostly) in atmosphere is correct. What is doubtful is that the increase of the CO2 amount has been caused by humans. Sources proposed include: tropical forests (their balance for CO2 production is either near 0 or positive, due to intensive rotting that's going on in there), volcanoes (though it's been said that their "warming balance" is actually negative, it's doubtless that they produce both CO2 and Methane) and swamps (a lot of Methane and CO2 production). IIRC, somebody also blamed algae (but I'm not sure of that one).
As for names, I can't name any of the scientists who made this theory right now (I've just got back from a trip to the shooting range and my first time on a 12-gauge. It was fun. :)), I'm pretty certain that I once read it in either "Life and Knowledge" or "World of Science" (titles translated from Polish). They're both quite respected newspapers.
One we can't remedy with stupid limits on CO2 emission (which only ruin the economy because of how much they cost).
Even if we put climate change aside, acting to prevent the further acidification of the world's oceans is stupid in your opinion?
You're assuming that those limits work as intended. Countries, which can't stay under the limits won't reduce their emissions, they'll just pay more.
That's why I said they're stupid. They're ruining countries that can't afford them. Surely, we should make sure our factories don't poison every living thing around them. But many countries don't have a way to reduce CO2 emission, simply because they're too poor and are unable to implement cleaner technologies. Closing the factories and power plants that produce too much CO2 causes their employees to lose work and in places where the factory was an only workplace, they end up impoverished and/or turning to crime. Attempting to force poor countries to implement technologies they can't afford isn't really a good idea. There is, of course, have an alternative of buying limits from the countries that have an excess of them (rely mostly on nuclear plants, for instance). But that way, they don't reduce anything and instead of gathering money for eventual upgrades, they end up spending it to buy limits that'd allow them to keep their emissions as they are.
My concept is that for the time being, we shouldn't focus on CO2 at all. This should eventually be handled, but there's still time for that. What should be done is promoting nuclear or solar power, which could simply make old coal plants obsolete (and we could get to other industries later). Another source, transport, should solve itself if the fuel prices will continue to act as they do (read: rise to criminally high levels).
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What is doubtful is that the increase of the CO2 amount has been caused by humans.
Actually, as far as AGW goes, this is the least doubtful thing of all. Human activities are responsible for essentially all of the recent (since the dawn of the industrial age) CO2 increase. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/)
What should be done is promoting nuclear or solar power, which could simply make old coal plants obsolete (and we could get to other industries later). Another source, transport, should solve itself if the fuel prices will continue to act as they do (read: rise to criminally high levels).
I agree completely, but how would we best promote nuclear/solar over coal besides a cap-and-trade system?
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I agree completely, but how would we best promote nuclear/solar over coal besides a cap-and-trade system?
France is doing it now (heavily promoting nuclear) - while Germany wants to quit nuclear altogether. European Politics gonna be interesting.
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I agree completely, but how would we best promote nuclear/solar over coal besides a cap-and-trade system?
easy. we just take the decision out of the hands of the political morons who don't know **** about nuclear power and are just afraid of the n-word.
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easy. we just take the decision out of the hands of the political morons who don't know **** about nuclear power and are just afraid of the n-word.
What?
What the heck does that mean?
Pronuclear jihad? Nuclear engineers of the world unite to seize the means of power generation?
As for the suggestion at hand (doing nothing about gasoline emissions and pushing nuclear), I agree, although solar is very uneconomical. Going nuke would be fairly simple if the political will was there. It's just a matter of allowing public utilities and contractors to phase out coal and start breaking ground for more cleaner, (usually) cheaper (or at least with greenfield costs spread out over a greater period of time) nuclear plant designs instead of coal ones. It's really a matter of how long it takes to convince people that nuclear power is far from the most polluting power source. Construction of solar cells pollutes/kills people quite a bit as well.
If economic considerations and not Captain Planet fans were taken into account in constructing the power grid since 1970, nuclear energy would be far more common today than it is.
Cap and trade is not necessarily going to deal with the problem if ideological objections to nuclear power remain.
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If economic considerations and not Captain Planet fans were taken into account in constructing the power grid since 1970, nuclear energy would be far more common today than it is.
Perhaps, but Uranium is also an expandable resource. Eventually it is going to run out. Investing in renawbles is in the long, long run, the only option.
(Or hydrogen plants)
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Well then, would nuclear (fission) be a good interim option until we can get either fusion or efficient renewable power going?
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Well then, would nuclear (fission) be a good interim option until we can get either fusion or efficient renewable power going?
Yes. Unfortunately, We have two sides in the dutch political spectrum on this issue: One side that thinks that renewables are not worth it, and one side that things that Nuclear is terrible.
The result: Powerplants running on coal :(.
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Also, the Dalai Lama says that nuclear power is a good thing (http://neutroneconomy.blogspot.com/2011/11/nuclear-and-moral-case-for-energy.html).
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...wait, what? Am I really not banned after all?
You are now. You've been warned about using an alt-nick before.
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What is doubtful is that the increase of the CO2 amount has been caused by humans.
Actually, as far as AGW goes, this is the least doubtful thing of all. Human activities are responsible for essentially all of the recent (since the dawn of the industrial age) CO2 increase. (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/06/how-much-of-the-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/)
This sounds interesting, but in the article I've read they had shown a chart of CO2 (or was it another gas, maybe methane?) changes over the last few million years, and IIRC, it clearly showed that humans don't have much to do with that. I really have to find this article.
I agree completely, but how would we best promote nuclear/solar over coal besides a cap-and-trade system?
For instance, by making nuclear plants more accessible and convincing the people that nuclear plant=/=nuclear bomb. While Uranium is expandable, there's still enough of it to support human power requirements for long enough for us to invent and start building fusion plants. Near the equator, heater-type solar plants could be built (America is considering this, IIRC). Also, efforts should be made to make local solar batteries and heaters an accessible option. Still, nuclear power is the way to go, first fission and then most likely fusion.
There's one more thing that should be looked into. If humans really do produce most of the CO2 increase in the last years, then we should also look into things that could easily produce less CO2 than they do now. For instance, in Krakow, there's a lot of old houses with coal powered stoves. Every winter, these are a nuisance (CO2 is hardly the only thing that comes out of them, especially that people tend to also use them to burn trash...). Their users are frequently too poor to afford anything else. If electric power could be cheaper and government could, for instance, pay them to switch to electric heaters (and convince them to throw their trash into special containers for recycling), this could greatly reduce their CO2 emissions. I don't know in how many places this is the case, but people should be encouraged to abandon outdated technology that frequently produces a lot of pollution.
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If economic considerations and not Captain Planet fans were taken into account in constructing the power grid since 1970, nuclear energy would be far more common today than it is.
Perhaps, but Uranium is also an expandable resource. Eventually it is going to run out. Investing in renawbles is in the long, long run, the only option.
(Or hydrogen plants)
liquid fluoride thorium reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor) ftw!
also people need to stop worrying about nukes. you love them and they love you back. everyone seems to be going with small scale nuclear arsenals as a deterrent, and we dont have the global firepower of the cold war at our disposal anymore, which is quite sad. so long as we have enough nukes to glass a small dictatorship which also has nukes, we will be quite ok.
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This sounds interesting, but in the article I've read they had shown a chart of CO2 (or was it another gas, maybe methane?) changes over the last few million years, and IIRC, it clearly showed that humans don't have much to do with that. I really have to find this article.
It was probably CO2. And yes, it is true that the earth's CO2 concentrations have changed and presumably will continue to change due to natural causes. The most significant driver of these are semi-regular fluctuations in the earth's orbit and obliquity (the Milankovitch cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch cycles)). CO2 concentrations respond to those temperature changes, (the amount of CO2 the ocean can absorb is a function of temperature, for example), as does temperature respond to changes in CO2 (the well-known greenhouse effect). This video lecture (http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml) goes into the subject in more detail, very highly recommended.
But, so what? You suggest that just because nature can do it means we can't do it ourselves? Evolution occurs naturally and has happened naturally for billions of years, therefore we can't do artificial selection?
Take another look at the info I'd provided, and better yet check the sources they cite. There's an obvious and measurable anthropic release of CO2, there is an obvious and measurable increase in CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere, the two correlate extremely well with one another, and with the research I provided earlier there are no natural mechanisms at work that can explain the current trend. There is no reasonable doubt that we are responsible for the post-industrial CO2 increase.
(Honestly I'm astounded that people argue this, a decade ago the big argument was that yeah, we're adding CO2, but either the global temperature isn't rising or CO2 doesn't have the effect that scientists claim it does.) :P
Besides, the issue isn't just the change so much as the rate of change.
This, too. A cursory glance at the CO2 record will show that the natural shifts take a fairly long time to occur, much longer than the current rise.
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Besides, the issue isn't just the change so much as the rate of change.
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Captain planet? Ahah, that was funny!
But back at the OP, some of those e-mails are nasty ****. And while the common spin is to say that they should be read "in context", many of them are actually pretty worse in context.
This second wave of e-mails revealed many things. The first I took note is that even the peers of Michael Mann thought his paleontological work was pure rubbish. That was new to me. Also, that they were worried that sceptics would see the famous "spaghetti graph", and took its complete lack of consistency between the various reconstructions to dismiss them all as invalid. And that the "cause" was apparently very very important for the scientific studies...
Many many pearls in there. You have to have some escathological taste for it ;). This evening I read this small piece by Matt Ridley about one specific e-mail, which has little about the science per se, and all about nastiness in various levels:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/importance-context
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I have to ask, why was there a second "batch"? these were all taken by the same guy from the same source, why not drop everything in one go?
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Cause that way he can be a wanker every time there is an important conference or meeting on climate change.
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but the idea is to get this incriminating evidence out there so that this fraud can be stopped right? so that means that this guy has had all these smoking guns and just... held onto them for a few years? but he is trying to get the truth out? but he didn't?
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They're not actually smoking guns for actual fraud though.
They're just /enough/ out of contextual statements to make people doubt or turn them against the scientists who are trying to deal with a world they have no expertise on (The Media, and the Public in general).
If he released /everything/ I suspect you would find that if you followed the contextual thread through all of these dodgey emails, there is little-to-no malice and no evil conspiracy in them.
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but the idea is to get this incriminating evidence out there so that this fraud can be stopped right? so that means that this guy has had all these smoking guns and just... held onto them for a few years? but he is trying to get the truth out? but he didn't?
Don't try to understand the mind of anyone who at this stage denies climate change. It's a trip into amazing spaghetti logic. :p
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Exactly. It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that these emails have been leaked strategically to generate pretend controversy at opportune times for climate change denialists. Unfortunately, it's exactly those sub-50% brain individuals that are being targeted by this fabricated controversy, and are therefore likely to believe it.
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One interesting thing about nuclear power is that it can quite easily power very large earth moving equipment like this for example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_777) as well as commercial ships. Both of these kinds of machinery use vast quantities of diesel and using nuclear instead would certainly help to reduce fossil fuel usage.
There's one more thing that should be looked into. If humans really do produce most of the CO2 increase in the last years, then we should also look into things that could easily produce less CO2 than they do now. For instance, in Krakow, there's a lot of old houses with coal powered stoves. Every winter, these are a nuisance (CO2 is hardly the only thing that comes out of them, especially that people tend to also use them to burn trash...). Their users are frequently too poor to afford anything else. If electric power could be cheaper and government could, for instance, pay them to switch to electric heaters (and convince them to throw their trash into special containers for recycling), this could greatly reduce their CO2 emissions. I don't know in how many places this is the case, but people should be encouraged to abandon outdated technology that frequently produces a lot of pollution.
On the note of electricity prices, it's worth considering that the Danish who went with heavily subsidized wind power now have the highest electricity prices in Europe by far, while the nuclear powered French have the lowest. The UK also fell into this trap, and prices are going through the roof, at least according to this. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/8642659/British-jobs-gone-with-the-wind.html)
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One interesting thing about nuclear power is that it can quite easily power very large earth moving equipment like this for example as well as commercial ships. Both of these kinds of machinery use vast quantities of diesel and using nuclear instead would certainly help to reduce fossil fuel usage.
It's one thing to put nuclear reactors on military vessels, quite another to put them on civilian moving stuff. Why? Because of training. I would not want to trust a nuclear reactor in the hands of a person hired for the lowest possible wage, on a ship in the hands of a shipping company run by managers who are only interested in getting the best return on investment.
Same goes for large earth movers. By the way, the thing you linked to? That's way too small to be comfortably fitted with a nuclear power plant, and even if it were? It would still be horrifyingly unsafe. There's a reason why nuclear-powered trains haven't caught on, you know.
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I wouldn't exactly want the sort of cargo ships that have been regularly falling prey to Somalian pirates getting outfitted with nuclear material, either.
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It's one thing to put nuclear reactors on military vessels, quite another to put them on civilian moving stuff. Why? Because of training. I would not want to trust a nuclear reactor in the hands of a person hired for the lowest possible wage, on a ship in the hands of a shipping company run by managers who are only interested in getting the best return on investment.
So why not take sensible precautions like demand regular inspections? A modern modular reactor is completely sealed and is a fully automated unit. I some how dont see a superfreighter running on sails, leaving us with little options in the post fossil fuel age.
Same goes for large earth movers. By the way, the thing you linked to? That's way too small to be comfortably fitted with a nuclear power plant, and even if it were?
Sorry but this is flat wrong, you dont need something with gigawatts of output to run it, a smaller modular reactor would do the job just fine. Nuclear has proven it can be scaled down to this level. For the optimal result it would need to be customized to a certain extent, but it can be done.
and even if it were? It would still be horrifyingly unsafe. There's a reason why nuclear-powered trains haven't caught on, you know.
So you're saying it is completely impossible to have a containment vessel sturdy enough to survive falling off a short cliff? The reason nuclear powered vehicles hasn't caught on has far more to do with fear mongering, cheap oil prices and the political effort to deligitimize nuclear power than real engineering challenges or realistic safety concerns.
I wouldn't exactly want the sort of cargo ships that have been regularly falling prey to Somalian pirates getting outfitted with nuclear material, either.
There's multiple solutions to this problem: Q-ship approach which would be mount 3 or 4 machine guns on the sides of the ship; Arm the crew; the convoy system; or just stabalize somalia. Simple stuff.
EDIT: Quote fail
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One interesting thing about nuclear power is that it can quite easily power very large earth moving equipment like this for example as well as commercial ships. Both of these kinds of machinery use vast quantities of diesel and using nuclear instead would certainly help to reduce fossil fuel usage.
It's one thing to put nuclear reactors on military vessels, quite another to put them on civilian moving stuff. Why? Because of training. I would not want to trust a nuclear reactor in the hands of a person hired for the lowest possible wage, on a ship in the hands of a shipping company run by managers who are only interested in getting the best return on investment.
Same goes for large earth movers. By the way, the thing you linked to? That's way too small to be comfortably fitted with a nuclear power plant, and even if it were? It would still be horrifyingly unsafe. There's a reason why nuclear-powered trains haven't caught on, you know.
having seen the way the military handles their nuclear ships, i have no fear of private companies running them worse. it's not going to be profitable to let your reactor fall apart, and they know that. the government on the other hand has no issues with just throwing more money at it because they didn't do it right the first time, or the crew doesn't give a damn and breaks something.
Same goes for large earth movers. By the way, the thing you linked to? That's way too small to be comfortably fitted with a nuclear power plant, and even if it were?
Sorry but this is flat wrong, you dont need something with gigawatts of output to run it, a smaller modular reactor would do the job just fine. Nuclear has proven it can be scaled down to this level. For the optimal result it would need to be customized to a certain extent, but it can be done.
i don't think nuclear power scales as well as you think it does. it's not a question of power output, of course you can always run less. it's a question of physical size. there is a LOT of hardware required to make a nuclear reactor work. you need the vessel, pumps, control elements, turbines, piping, steam generators, shielding... shall i go on? the tiny little 1MW reactor at NCSU still takes up an entire building. i'm sure it CAN be made on such a level, but doing so would be rather pointless as it negates the driving advantage of nuclear power; economics. nuclear power is cheap because it generates a ****ton of energy 24/7 for a year and a half. scaling that down to a truck throws that out the window. even on ships the advantage dwindles.
and even if it were? It would still be horrifyingly unsafe. There's a reason why nuclear-powered trains haven't caught on, you know.
So you're saying it is completely impossible to have a containment vessel sturdy enough to survive falling off a short cliff? The reason nuclear powered vehicles hasn't caught on has far more to do with fear mongering, cheap oil prices and the political effort to deligitimize nuclear power than real engineering challenges or realistic safety concerns.
yes, actually. the vessel itself may be fine, but you're damn sure not going to make an entire reactor plant that could survive a train wreck. spilling your coolant all over the place is definitely not something you want to let happen. and then you've got the additional problem of no way to cool the core, because whatever your backup fill system was also got taken out by the crash.
and there is also the HUGE problem of shielding. probably the biggest problem with nuclear powered vehicles. if you don't want to kill the driver, you need a LOT of it. and it's heavy. trains wouldn't be that much of a problem by having the reactor car shielded and unmanned, but the only other land vehicle you're going to get is a slow-moving, long-range mobile bunker.
I wouldn't exactly want the sort of cargo ships that have been regularly falling prey to Somalian pirates getting outfitted with nuclear material, either.[/quotes]
There's multiple solutions to this problem: Q-ship approach which would be mount 3 or 4 machine guns on the sides of the ship; Arm the crew; the convoy system; or just stabalize somalia. Simple stuff.
i'm with you on this. not an obstacle. i'm all for arming the crews, nuclear boat or not. that and there's really not a lot a pirate could do with it even if they got it. make some idle threats is really all i can think of. besides, i'm pretty sure there already ARE nuclear-powered supertankers. if not now, there at least were before. i've seen a model of one someplace.
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It's one thing to put nuclear reactors on military vessels, quite another to put them on civilian moving stuff. Why? Because of training. I would not want to trust a nuclear reactor in the hands of a person hired for the lowest possible wage, on a ship in the hands of a shipping company run by managers who are only interested in getting the best return on investment.
Merchant marine pay is actually fairly good. (It has to be, otherwise you'd never get anyone out there for months at a time.) Even if you include a bump and mandatory training, for something like a supertanker a nuclear reactor would almost certainly be a net savings in cost, and it would be difficult for the reactor to not be well-protected against accidents.
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1. The military has a rather good safety record when it comes to operating nuclear reactors.
2. Yes, in international shipping, corners will be cut. Oh, and convincing shipping companies to replace their fleets, or have a portion of their fleet in drydock for engine replacement, will not make them happy.
3. You said I some how dont see a superfreighter running on sails, leaving us with little options in the post fossil fuel age.
To that I respond with this (http://www.skysails.info/english/). A little supplementary sail that can help move freighters along.
4. So you're saying it is completely impossible to have a containment vessel sturdy enough to survive falling off a short cliff? The reason nuclear powered vehicles hasn't caught on has far more to do with fear mongering, cheap oil prices and the political effort to deligitimize nuclear power than real engineering challenges or realistic safety concerns.
No, not at all. Thanks for misinterpreting my point and ranting about antinuclear conspiracies. My point is, why try to make a small nuclear plant and try to power small stuff with it, when you can build big power plants, and use the power generated in them to charge batteries, or run hydrogen extractors for fuel cells? Way I see it, small power plants just aren't as efficient as the big ones, while bringing with them an entire host of engineering problems. Wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and more efficient to skip all those issues?
It's one thing to put nuclear reactors on military vessels, quite another to put them on civilian moving stuff. Why? Because of training. I would not want to trust a nuclear reactor in the hands of a person hired for the lowest possible wage, on a ship in the hands of a shipping company run by managers who are only interested in getting the best return on investment.
Merchant marine pay is actually fairly good. (It has to be, otherwise you'd never get anyone out there for months at a time.) Even if you include a bump and mandatory training, for something like a supertanker a nuclear reactor would almost certainly be a net savings in cost, and it would be difficult for the reactor to not be well-protected against accidents.
A fair point.
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i really dont want to trust nuclear power to operate civilian vehicles directly. though id like to see something like battery ships that charge their cells while in port off a power grid running primarily on nuclear power. things like electric trains already exist and are proven technology. you could also add induction or direct contact chargers to roadways to charge electric cars on the go. regardless we need a lot of nuclear, and not old skool light water reactors either.
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2. Yes, in international shipping, corners will be cut. Oh, and convincing shipping companies to replace their fleets, or have a portion of their fleet in drydock for engine replacement, will not make them happy.
I wouldn't have to do anything of the sort, soaring fossil fuel prices will do that for me.
To that I respond with this. A little supplementary sail that can help move freighters along.
That is disingenuous to the point. For one thing that is supplementary, but to suggest we should take the back to the future approach and go with wind ignores the reasons we stopped using it in the first place for anything other than recreation, namely low energy density and unreliability.
No, not at all. Thanks for misinterpreting my point and ranting about antinuclear conspiracies.
Conspiracies? There was a major anti riot action in your own country two days ago (http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-25/news/30441579_1_gorleben-nuclear-waste-shipment) over this. You call that a conspiracy? In America there are groups like Greenpeace or the Sierra Club that go around the country scaring people (http://connect.sierraclub.org/app/render/go.aspx?g=7e8b57a6-406b-454c-bbb2-26c79dbe853d&xsl=tp_SocialObjects_ObjectType_SIERRA_CLUB_ONLINE_COMMUNITIES_TEAM_PUBLIC.xslt&id=7E8B57A6-406B-454C-BBB2-26C79DBE853D&cons_id=&ts=1322611504&signature=77f20c14b2dc6ecb4812c74e364696fe) with information that has been debunked over and over. Anti-nuclearism is a very real ideology, yes an ideology, because it has everything to do with an inability to seriously confront criticism (http://depletedcranium.com/greenpeace-nuclear-blog-disables-comments/) and nothing to do with science. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p10G-6ikPKw) It's politics, plain and simple. To give some idea as to why exactly the evironmentalist policies are bad, read this. (http://depletedcranium.com/greenpeace-seven-steps-to-renewable-energy-future-why-they-are-dead-wrong/)
My point is, why try to make a small nuclear plant and try to power small stuff with it, when you can build big power plants, and use the power generated in them to charge batteries, or run hydrogen extractors for fuel cells? Way I see it, small power plants just aren't as efficient as the big ones, while bringing with them an entire host of engineering problems. Wouldn't it be easier, cheaper, and more efficient to skip all those issues?
No, it would certainly not be cheaper and it would be dramatically less efficient. A vehicle like the one posted requires several megawatts of power, meaning your batteries would be huge. It is reasonable to expect battery energy density to increase ten fold in the coming decade and the slow charging problem will be elminated, there are still some very serious problems with batteries wearing out and needing to be replaced wholesale. To power the space station for the whopping 35 minutes it is in earth's shadow it takes several tons of batteries and all of them need to be replaced every 6 years. It would be significantly less expensive to ship the reactor module back to the factory, exchange its fuel rods, and ship it back to the site than it would be to put in new batteries, by a large margin. Hydrogen has very serious, very fundemental problems (http://www.car-groups.com/post/49296/Hydrogen_fuel_still_a_massive,_dangerous_pipe-dream.html) that will not likely be resolved, and even if they were somehow, by that time there would still be a better alternative.
i don't think nuclear power scales as well as you think it does. it's not a question of power output, of course you can always run less. it's a question of physical size. there is a LOT of hardware required to make a nuclear reactor work. you need the vessel, pumps, control elements, turbines, piping, steam generators, shielding... shall i go on?
No need to go on, read about this suitcase sized reactor instead. (http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-colonies-powered-by-mini-nuclear-reactors-110830.html)
the tiny little 1MW reactor at NCSU still takes up an entire building.
Apples and oranges. You might as well be comparing a jet engine to your car engine, they have completely different requirements and applications.
nuclear power is cheap because it generates a ****ton of energy 24/7 for a year and a half. scaling that down to a truck throws that out the window. even on ships the advantage dwindles.
Firstly, it would go a lot longer than that between fueling cycles. Navy ships can go a decade or so, and it is not unreasonable to assume a civilian version could do the same. Secondly, in the coming decades fossil fuel prices will skyrocket. The advantage will become even more appearent than it already is.
and there is also the HUGE problem of shielding. probably the biggest problem with nuclear powered vehicles. if you don't want to kill the driver, you need a LOT of it. and it's heavy. trains wouldn't be that much of a problem by having the reactor car shielded and unmanned, but the only other land vehicle you're going to get is a slow-moving, long-range mobile bunker.
That earthmover I linked to earlier is the size of your average suburban house, and the excavators are often as big or bigger, and the quantities of fuel they use is huge (except the Bagger which is electric, but still uses a lot). That's the scale I'm talking about, not a little compact sedan.
i'm with you on this. not an obstacle. i'm all for arming the crews, nuclear boat or not. that and there's really not a lot a pirate could do with it even if they got it. make some idle threats is really all i can think of. besides, i'm pretty sure there already ARE nuclear-powered supertankers. if not now, there at least were before. i've seen a model of one someplace.
There was exactly one freighter that was nuclear powered, but it didnt work out because it was a traditional cargo vessel and back then container vessels were taking over the market. Also oil prices 50 years ago, when it was in service, were far less expensive than today.
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i read somewhere that an old skool pressurized water reactor needs a containment building about 400 times the volume of the reactor vessel, so it wont explode if the core breaches. while you could probably make a reactor smaller it would need to be a completely different kind of reactor, like a molten salt reactor. its ironic that the only reactors the hippies let us run are the least efficient, most polluting, most dangerous designs out there. again, the solution is killing hippies!
i thought about a power plant where people are burned alive to boil water to spin turbines, simultaneously producing power and reducing demand for power.
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Produces too much CO2. :p
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Produces too much CO2. :p
only initially. after awhile there will be smaller power demand, and the plant can be throttled back.
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:bump:
A team of climate modellers recently set out to quantify just how much of the recent warming is/was caused by human activities, and published (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1327.html) their results yesterday.
According to their research it's about 75%. (http://www.nature.com/news/three-quarters-of-climate-change-is-man-made-1.9538#)
Their findings, which are strikingly similar to results produced by other attribution methods, provide an alternative line of evidence that greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, are by far the main culprit of recent global warming. The massive increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times would, in fact, have caused substantially more surface warming were it not for the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols such as black carbon, they report.
We find that since the mid-twentieth century, greenhouse gases contributed 0.85 °C of warming (5–95% uncertainty: 0.6–1.1 °C), about half of which was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols, with a total observed change in global temperature of about 0.56 °C.
Changes in solar radiation — a hypothesis for global warming proffered by many climate sceptics — contributed no more than around 0.07 °C to the recent warming