Global Cooling

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:20 pm

Is he wrong about the environment because he slept around? Is that it?

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:27 pm

Politics 101

Don't get caught fucking strangers if you are preachy about not fucking strangers.
Don't get caught ________ if you are preachy about not _________.

Fill in appropriate word
drinking
gambling
taking bribes
playing bingo
destroying the constitution
denial of due process
spying on citizens
treason
and so on

littleflower · Post by **littleflower** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:41 pm

Ugly Dougly wrote:Is he wrong about the environment because he slept around? Is that it?

no, he's wrong about the environment because of the slicked back, badly made-up televangelist look he has these days. NO ONE with that look can EVER be trusted!

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:38 pm

Meteorologists on Tuesday morning recorded the lowest ever October temperature in Germany, as the mercury dipped to a chilly -24.3 degrees Celsius in Bavariaâ€™s Berchtesgaden national park.

That is "lowest ever" temperature recorded in Germany as in lowest ever recorded in October ... ever. Not just the lowest for the date, but for any date in October.

Considering that the thermometer was invented roughly 300 years ago and reasonably accurate thermometers have been around for about 200 years, that is even colder than recorded toward the end of the Little Ice Age.

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:19 pm

dr.placebo wrote:Ah yes, of course, how could I have been so stupid? It's all a vast conspiracy of the EPA, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, the UN, Al Gore, and a swarm of Hollywood actors. They are out to get us to give up our SUV's, renounce our God-given right to trash the air and water, and to take away our personal weapons of mass destruction for the preservation of our homes.

USA! USA! USA!

you ran into Geeky, a pro-pro-pro nuke guy that's all doc. Head in sand weird stats from the planet Krypton, I don't know where the guy digs up the stuff....

look here:

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 1:00 pm

Looks like ocean heat content is right back about where it was in 2003 when GISS issued it warming projection. It just isn't happening. There is no observed evidence that CO2 has had an iota of impact on global climate and a pile of evidence that what we have seen since about 1976 is consistent with normal natural cyclical activity that is not unprecedented in either magnitude or rate. In fact, climate since the Little Ice Age has STILL not recovered to the temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period.

dr.placebo · Post by **dr.placebo** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:22 pm

Why is the short-term trend different from the projection?

Noise. The system is complex, is driven by a lot of factors, and has exhibited variations of similar or greater magnitude several times during the past few hundred years. It is possible that the recent solar sunspot decrease is responsible for much of the variation (not proven, but not unreasonable).

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 4:24 pm

I read somewhere, that, all the inner planets are getting warmer........
can't remember where, I read it, though.........

anyone know about this?

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:07 am

I don't know that any changes in the temperatures of Mercury, Venus and Mars cannot be accounted for in changes in measuring capability. I could be wrong, but I can hardly say that we've had direct measurements of any of htem. Okay, Mars, but very localized.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:11 am

perhaps......I wish someone much smarter than I would chime in, for sure, on this..........

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:54 am

Radical Self Reliance, honey

Okay, most of us are simply not able to put in the kind of energy into climate science that will really make it make sense, so that's a bit facetious. But I do think that most of us can find some way of analyzing things to get some sort of worthwhile conclusions from them. I finally got to the point where I asked my father about the idea of their being some sort of deliberate conspiracy to make-up "global warming" for personal gain. And he just thought it was ridiculous in the sense that he thought it would be impossible to get the number of people to agree to keep it a secret to agree to keep it a secret. And I thought about that a while and started building on it--how would you ever get graduate students, who, after all would have to be in on the data cooking or somehow completely buffaloed on it, not to spill the beans.
It's not too big a jump for me to sit there and think about how indirect the methods of temperature estimation had to have been 100 years ago, and into my childhood when I was little miss astronomy jr., to say that we simply haven't really had the data reliably measured ever. And even if we have that now, we haven't had it long enough to understand long term trends. So you do have tools, and it would be nice if we had the sort of discourse that would allow you to post your conclusions and your reasoning and get more used to it here on eplaya. I fear we don't.

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:59 am

Ice core samples go back for some period and they are still working at it.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Featur ... _IceCores/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

dr.placebo · Post by **dr.placebo** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 1:22 pm

Systematic and reasonably accurate measurements and recording of temperature probably only goes back a few hundred years, with the accuracy decreasing with the amount of time past. Global measurements really only started in the late 1800's.

However, we use quite a variety of proxies to estimate climate. Ice cores, sediments, tree rings, fossils, isotope percentages, and a lot of other effects can give us information. They may be rough, and not that reliable unless most of them line up, but they do give use a lot of clues about the past climate.

And the idea that there is a conspiracy of climatologists to promote global warming is not especially credible. How is it being done? Is it a cult? Are they being paid off? (cue the laughing scientist, please)

And no, I'm not a climatologist, but I understand enough to be able to make some sense out of the data. The spike in the CO2 level is unprecedented in the past 400K years, and it is due to human activity, mostly burning fossil fuels. To assert that this is harmless is wishful thinking.

The CO2 spike is especially dangerous because in the historical sense it is so sudden. Although the natural world copes with sudden change it most often does so by having a population and species crash. And it might well be our species on the endangered list.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 2:15 pm

yeah, I don't think the warming part is made up.......as you all say, it's to hard to keep secret. My issue is with blame and effects......I think a lot of the info there is guessing.....sure, knowledgable guessing, by really smart people, but, I've seen them be very wrong, too............

I did, however, have an epiphany last night;

I realized, that, yes, global warming is occuring.
Yes, we humans are an infection on the earth.
And, if you look at our time here, especially since having enough influence to pollute things on a fairly large scale, it's a very short period, related to the age of the earth.

so, I decided, that, warming is just the "fever" starting............

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:22 pm

dr.placebo wrote: And the idea that there is a conspiracy of climatologists to promote global warming is not especially credible. How is it being done? Is it a cult? Are they being paid off? (cue the laughing scientist, please)

True. But it seems to be out there as a meme, and it allows people to turn their back on the issue, so I feel the need to debunk it from time to time.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:23 pm

ygmir wrote:My issue is with blame and effects......I think a lot of the info there is guessing.....sure, knowledgable guessing, by really smart people, but, I've seen them be very wrong, too............

I don't know. Getting hung up on blame is just stupid. Deck chairs/Titanic stupid. From either side. IMHO.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:45 pm

theCryptofishist wrote:
ygmir wrote:My issue is with blame and effects......I think a lot of the info there is guessing.....sure, knowledgable guessing, by really smart people, but, I've seen them be very wrong, too............
I don't know. Getting hung up on blame is just stupid. Deck chairs/Titanic stupid. From either side. IMHO.

I'm with you......quit pointing fingers and just get to it.........

This lady I was talking to, was "crowing" about buying a Prius.......said, smugly:
"Oh, I'm doing my part by driving a hybrid", and, almost gave a harrumph afterwards, to emphasize her celebrity........

in conversation, it comes out she traded in a two year old car for it, has a ski boat, jet skis, loves to go for "road trips" in her motorhome, heats with electricity.....on and on......

but, yeah, she sat there smugly criticizing others for how they live, or the choices they make........

I could only giggle to myself, not wanting to be overtly rude by laughing at her..........

Those, are the folks that frustrate me...........

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:46 pm

Yeah, I can see that. I've never seen a comparison between how much energy is in the car you already had (by which I mean, energy to get ore and other raw materials, energy to make the damn thing, energy to ship it and sell it) and the energy you'd save by buying a hybrid. And how long it takes.

I don't know if people never knew how to think or if we've all been dumbed down by advertising (there I go with the blame again, I guess) and simply can't reason ourselves out of a wet paper bag, much less a potentially very dangerous anthropogenic global crisis. We got ourselves into this, it's up to us to get ourselves out. Or things get really scary.

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:17 pm

There are charts for this.
The payback for resources and cost$ is different.
The more you drive per year the faster the payback or break even point.

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:24 pm

Edmunds says 5.5 years to break even on the aspen hybrid vs the standard one.
This is compared to a new car only.

Longer for other cars.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:26 pm

I'd bet the "payback" or break even point, is, longer than the car will last......considering all it takes to make it, etc, as well as the toxins in the batteries, etc, to dispose of.

If it were close, I bet it'd be in their advertising..........

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:27 pm

gyre wrote:Edmunds says 5.5 years to break even on the aspen hybrid vs the standard one.
This is compared to a new car only.

Longer for other cars.

yeah, and that's new vs new.....

as you say, longer for others, I bet a decent used car is much longer.....and, I doubt the hybrid will last that long without batteries or major replacement stuff..........

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:44 pm

It's really hard to justify a new vehicle over a used one, especially in terms of waste and resources.
And you don't need a hybrid to get high mileage.

But hybrids are much harder to quantify than a normal car.
The tech is meaningless on the highway, but can be a real advantage in stop and go.
People keeping them in electric mode and recharging have set impressive results.
The real advantage is in using a much smaller engine than would be adequate and using the additional power for acceleration.
And motors can be used to have 4 wheel drive in a two wheel drive gas chassis.
I have only seen this done on exotics, but it could be out there.
And it allows for easy differential power control too.

The prius is a very conservative design, so not that efficient.
The battery is lightly stressed, so it may last forever, but it won't work as well.

for more detail, check the hypermiling forums.

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2783

Deb Prothero · Post by **Deb Prothero** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:11 pm

I'm amazed at how we make decisions with respect to transportation as a society, I mean. I support and encourage public transit but in the rural and small towns, a car is required to get to work.

Last year my 1999 Golf (at 197,000 km) had a catastrophic mechanical failure of the turbocharger. The mechanic's advice was to get rid of the car rather than invest in a new turbocharger. There was nothing else wrong with the vehicle and I was reticent to scrap it.

So I drove my camper (a little Toyota) for a couple weeks while I thought about what I wanted to do. As it happened someone else had a rear end collision and the mechanic called me to see if I wanted him to go look at the engine. Turned out to be a perfect match with no damage and only 144,000 km) on it.

The cost was $3700 (CDN) to buy and install that engine. I decided that was what I was going to do.

Ever since I've had nothing but weird looks when I tell that story. People think I was crazy not to buy new. Part of my justification is that I'm getting 41 mpg and it will be another ten years before anyone else makes a vehicle even close to that mileage.

The car is the perfect size for my needs and in otherwise excellent condition. I had bought it used in 2001 for $16,000. and now by investing another $4000, I'm hoping to get another ten years. Why do people think I'm stupid for making that decision???

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:42 pm

Most of the proposals you will see are made by urban people who think like urban people and have no concept of having to drive 40 miles to the nearest market, 50 miles to the doctor and 70 miles to work.

They want to make cars more expensive but the impact on the rural poor escapes them. Notwithstanding that the REASONS they want to do this are bogus to begin with.

Now I am all for conserving stuff and sustainable living. I am NOT about telling my neighbor how they must live. The problem with this whole ball of crap is that they have convinced a lot of people who sincerely want to do right by their community and future generations that there is a problem that doesn't really exist. There is not one shred of evidence that CO2 has in any measurable way impacted global climate. Time after time the "peer reviewed studies" have, after the data and methods have been reviled, been shown to be bogus.

I know it is late but this deserves a serious and careful read:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed ... ra-science

It pretty much sums up the great hoax that has been perpetrated on people to convince them that there is a problem in order to get them to willingly part with their cash and freedom to allow those of a certain political agenda to "manage" things in a more central fashion.

It is a total load of crap. In fact, we are in more danger right now from cooling than from warming. Cooling means dry, means drought, means shorter growing seasons, means less food. Throw in a good sized volcanic eruption about now of the size of Pinatubo or larger and we would be in a world of hurt.

We have people starving now, despite our efforts to save them to death. If we were to have a 25% or 50% reduction in crop yields across the Northern Plains of the US, Canada, and the Eastern European Steppes, we would have some serious problems on this planet.

And we can mitigate pretty much 70 to 80 percent of our carbon emissions, if the problem was REALLY about carbon emissions with the technology at hand and we could recycle nuclear fuel so we don't need Yucca Mountain. But it isn't really about CO2 emissions at all. It is about making you afraid of CO2 emissions so that you will willingly go along with someone's plan.

The US could cut its CO2 emissions tomorrow by 100% and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. China and India and Brazil continue to grow theirs. We aren't the largest emitter anymore. China is sucking the oil out of Iraq as fast as it can be discovered. If people want to protest something, maybe they should do so in China. Good luck with that.

But read that article from Australia. It really is worth reading.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:53 pm

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... lear-waste

Excellent article that I believe every single American should read.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:11 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... anies.html

"Copenhagen targets are 'delusional'"

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:29 am

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/d ... evel-rise/

Sea levels in the Maldives were higher in the 1970's than they are today.

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:31 am

Mass transit in the usa needs to at least match effectiveness of the forties before they advocate it as a substitute for anything.
The only innovation so far has been bike racks.
Not too impressive.

Bob Carter
"He said the role of peer review in scientific literature was overstressed, and whether or not a scientist had been funded by the fossil fuel industry was irrelevant to the validity of research. 'I don't think it is the point whether or not you are paid by the coal or petroleum industry,' said Professor Carter. 'I will address the evidence.'"

http://www.desmogblog.com/rm-bob-carter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Carter

gyre · Post by **gyre** » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:51 am

geekster wrote:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/d ... evel-rise/

Sea levels in the Maldives were higher in the 1970's than they are today.

This sounds like science until he starts talking about conspiracy, but can't provide any information past the accusation.
Since that's the most spectacular information, a tad odd, and redundant.
Might be true, but overall, not science.
Maybe this is taken from a more thorough paper?