Mal4Prez nails the climate change debate... by kpo

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Actually, I have much more important things to do...

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:27 AM

DREAMTROVE

Nick

I'm not sure that I get this, but it came across as incredibly dickish, given the context. Hell, it looks dickish in any event, but I know you knew that I meant the cancer research I was interrupting to discuss climate with Mal, and was getting back to because of her impending imminent death. I don't know that you wanted to give the impression of being the world's biggest dick, but this is the second time you've done it.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:50 AM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Nick

I'm not sure that I get this, but it came across as incredibly dickish, given the context. Hell, it looks dickish in any event, but I know you knew that I meant the cancer research I was interrupting to discuss climate with Mal, and was getting back to because of her impending imminent death. I don't know that you wanted to give the impression of being the world's biggest dick, but this is the second time you've done it.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

You say that you don't want to debate, yet you post paragraph after paragraph doing just that. You say that you have ripped up the theory of Global Warming, which is now more aptly called Climate Change, but do not have time write an article yet you are here trying to rip it up.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 9:15 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
I'm I the only one that finds it funny that DT will argue against pretty hard science of climate change but then expect people to listen to him about a drinking water contamination conspiracy?

You most definitely are not.

What buckshot are you being hit with, Byte? I'm sure it's just that, or at least I hope it is. As far as

Quote:
"BP -- along with ConocoPhillips and Shell Oil Co. -- are members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of businesses and environmental groups that back an economy-wide cap to slow, stop and reverse greenhouse gas emissions." So yes, we'd expect them to argue for a cap.

I wonder about that "coalition"...I'm guessing the "businesses" aren't oil and gas... Although, given it was 2009, as you noted, I could see how they'd be part of a coalition if for no other reason than to moderate the coalition's actions. Once people got serious about it, if there were any oil or gas companies in the coalition, betcha they're not NOW!

Quote:
What I really don't get is that at the same time you had people on the right going off about the rapture and on the left going off about catastrophic runaway GW that would turn the Earth into Venus... and neither one of them could see that what they were peddling was the exact same thing: completely bogus end of the world panic.

That you equate the two, DT, makes me laugh. Loudly. One has some--even if you refuse to acknowledge "lots of" science behind it, the other is pure chicanery and ignorance.

Nick,

Quote:
So I'd have to say that I haven't blown him or anything, but we're passing acquaintances.

I love it.

Quote:
If you could shred climate change (what it is called now) you would not be talking to us here but you would preparing you peer reviewed article.

Also excellent.

I, too, usually don't bother with DT's

unless he directs something specifically at me. Even then it's usually only something laughable and not worth addressing. I long ago gave up on DT and accepted that he's talking through his hat at least 50% of the time, making it sound like what he theorizes is accepted fact and refusing to provide backup.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 10:23 AM

DREAMTROVE

Good grief. I'm stunned. Someone bring back Kaneman.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 10:50 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
OK, if my post starts a thread, I get to define a rule: it shall not be taken over by back and forths with he who posts the same long ago refuted shit with absolutely no supporting facts or links. You all know what I mean.

Fair enough. I'll refrain from my usual afternoon pasttime of "kick the teabagger".

As for the OP, I agree - you nailed it. I might just steal it and post it elsewhere.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 2:43 PM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Good grief. I'm stunned. Someone bring back Kaneman.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

I don't see how that'll help your posts make more sense.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Friday, October 7, 2011 6:31 AM

What on earth...

DT posted his MATH. Talking through his hat? TEABAGGER? This is mischaracterizing quite a bit of this discussion.

Just because someone disagrees with you does NOT mean they can't make valid points.

Nick, just like all of us, DT can get caught up in long arguments involving long series of posts and not necessarily want to be. The fact that he did and does is not a valid logical counterpoint, pointing it out as an attack on his credibility is an ad hominem.

I note that insulting language, like calling someone a dirty word, is not an ad hominem, as the insults would have to comprise a portion of the subject and the argument and points being made. As such, DT asking you all not to dismiss him - though I admit in an insulting way - is not an ad hominem.

Making arguments from authority and attacking whether someone has expertise is not a valid counterpoint.

All of you who talk about the amount of evidence that contradicts DT, either post it or, if you're certain of your positions, the evidence, and so on, don't bother arguing with him. But this mockery is unnecessary.

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Friday, October 7, 2011 7:53 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
DT asking you all not to dismiss him - though I admit in an insulting way - is not an ad hominem.

Is that what he's doing? I doubt it, I think it's clearly as snark...pretty obviously aimed at me. To compare me to Kane is deeply offensive to me, given Kane posts filth and obscenities of the most personal nature, and I was his main target for a long time. I've NEVER, EVER posted anything like what Kane does, so to compare me to him is about as low as one can get.

DT and I've been around and around on this one; a lot of what he posts I find so far out in left field as to be, in my estimation, crazy. He offers things which he indicates clearly are "accepted facts", which they are not. I tried to reason with him, many times, and in the end pretty much gave up and pass over most of his posts unless they're directed at me specifically. It took me a very long time to give up, but in the end I did.

He has said more than once that he comes here to "learn". But I've yet to see him indicate anyone has taught him anything (I may have missed something, admittedly); for the most part he "lectures" and his style is such that it seems like he is indicating the rest of us are idiots. I find that off-putting, so I avoid addressing him the majority of the time.

You can lecture if you wish, but the fact is that we're all fully aware that if you come to RWED, you do so at your own peril. Lord knows I and others have been the butt of Raptor and Wulf and others' nastiness, so while I can't speak for anyone else, taking ME to task, given the material I posted, is pretty unnecessary. If you're addressing your remarks to someone else, that's a different matter.

The reason I don't bother with the climate change issue much anymore is that we've been over it so many times before and proven our points, only to come back and find the same claims made again and again. It's a personal matter, in my estimation; neither those who believe the climate is changing and that man has had a hand in it and those who believe it's a scam will never change their minds, so why should I waste my time yet AGAIN posting what I posted before several times? There are better issues to pay attention to.

I just took the dogs to sulky Crissy Field and then let them play on the beach. Coming back, I took a second to read one of the placards they have there. It was documenting the ocean's rise over time and what it's expected to rise in future "because of global warming", which made me smile. I'm thoroughly convinced that, just like smoking, those with vested interest in keeping things the way they are have worked long and hard to make people doubt climate change, and have been quite successful. It saddens me, but I'm not getting into it yet again, knowing nothing will change.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Friday, October 7, 2011 8:10 AM

Quote:
Is that what he's doing?

Take a look in the context, where his insulting language starts to appear. It's just after he's started to be dismissed by various members, and he does ask to not be dismissed... Though yes, using the term "dick" or similar in the exact same paragraph where he's asking is really not likely to make someone listen to that request. But then, I think we all fall into that trap now and then.

It's when he continued to be dismissed - en mass even - that he mentioned kaneman.

While I see that he escalated the confrontation, another indication he wasn't really using his words all that well, at the same time there was some initial, though not as offensive disrespect he was reacting to.

It can be difficult to see what causes a fight while actively involved in it. Both left and right wing on this board sometimes go after each other with little provocation, sometimes starting right from the headline of a thread. Perhaps DT's initial posts seemed to fall into that category of attacking the basis of the thread/headline/initial poster, though initially I think he WAS just trying to debate some specific points. Certainly he was less offensive at the beginning than say some of the other right wing poster's you mentioned and their knee-jerk response, and considering he actually DOES think that there is a human contribution to climate change, and that this was misunderstood from the beginning, I don't think he deserved the response here that he got.

I don't believe either side is the aggressor more often then the other, I just think I'm being useful by point out to people what sets other people off. Perhaps I'm not.

Huskies! :)

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Friday, October 7, 2011 8:34 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Well, I just reread the thread from top to bottom (skipping over DT's incredibly long posts). I don't see anyone saying anything to him like him calling Mal4 a "dick" (repeatedly), so I don't see how others are the ones you are blaming. It's all a moot point, as now I see DT's cracks at Mal4 prior to his crack about Kane, so perhaps that wasn't aimed directly at me.

However, we've been here before insofar as DT saying he hasn't got time to go into this or that, then overwhelming the board with incredibly long posts trying to make the very points he said he didn't have time for. Throwing "imminent death" in is truly rude; none of us use our private lives (that I'm aware of) to say we can't discuss something, we just don't discuss it, and it comes across to me at least like "I'm dealing with something terribly important, you're arguing something stupid; I'm not going to deal with you", as if we're being insensitive to his (sister, I belive?)'s cancer. It's very DT, so I'm guessing (perhaps subconsciously) that's what he intended.

Lastly, given Mal4 has a Ph.D. in geophysics and DT seems to have opinions about almost everything and writes as if he is the only one with the definitive answers yet I don't know what his actual education is in, I think I'll go with Mal4.

For some reason this issue of climate change has appeared to be a bugaboo with DT; every time he marches in and states "definitively" that man-made (I would say "man-enhanced) climate change has been debunked. That's his OPINION, and he's welcome to it, but to all but insist that we accept his word and that it's been debunked (which it has not, at all) is high-handed, and calling people dicks for disagreeing with him makes him the rude one, in my opinion. Enough alreadym for me at least.

P.S. While re-reading I came across where I'd said we'd not live long enough, then corrected it to I wouldn't. I wasn't saying we wouldn't live long enough to see effects, obviously we already do, I meant to say I wouldn't live long enough to see the matter SETTLED once and for all. In my opinion, by the time enough people accept that we need to change things before we completely destroy our world, it will be too late to reverse those effects. Just wanted to clarify that.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Friday, October 7, 2011 8:47 AM

I see I'm not useful. All right then.

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Friday, October 7, 2011 9:20 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"DT and I've been around and around on this one ..."

... as I have been over bacterial evolution (specifically antibiotic resistance), among other topics. He claims for example that carbapenem-resistant bacteria are a result of recent genetic manipulation at Bagram Air Force Base, DESPITE the fact that that >particular< antibiotic resistance factor gene was discovered years before in India, that that particular patient at Bagram was from India where that resistance factor was found, and despite that fact that bacteria developing antibiotic resistance in general has been a scientific observation literally since penicillin was discovered, and has been well documented and well studied for many antibiotics over 40 years. It seems that in some areas DT claims expertise, but lacks true knowledge.

I think DT is, in technical terms, a 'crank'. One of those people who show up in town hall meetings to complain about the color red; or who, as I have from time to time had the misfortune to deal with, call up local scientists to complain about - oh - vapor trails for example - as a method of mind control.

That whole trope about the 'crazy genius' who nobody would listen to who was 'right' after all - most of the time you can leave 'genius' and 'right' out of the equation. In many instances, I think DT kinda' fits that description.

Not that I think DT is a bad person. I suspect he has had some severe problem that has skewed his perspective. He is someone I wish well. It's just that I find his postings to be less than informative. He makes too many claims, cites too little information, and addresses no objections with actual data.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Friday, October 7, 2011 11:09 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Yeah, I've about had it here for today, too, Byte. I bet we've both got more pleasant things to do with our day; let's go do 'em!

Kiki, while I agree with a lot of what you've said, I don't see DT as a crank. For me, we each think differently, and some of those differences clash. I'm big on "it's my opinion" and such caveats and don't like being told something is accepted fact (which pushes my "I don't like anyone else saying what I think" trigger); obviously DT isn't. He apparently feels he is better educated on most subjects than the rest of us; I don't. Yes, I feel a lot of the conclusions he comes to are pretty weird, but I don't think he's a crank so much as has an unfortunate way of putting things and seems to have some difficulty accepting that others might know as much as he, but on the opposite side of the discussion.

Hey, we all have our quirks; gawd knows I've got plenty of 'em!

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Friday, October 7, 2011 11:45 AM

I think that post is fair, considering that you're on the opposite side of the debate as DT, and that both sides of any debate might think that the opposing conclusions are strange and don't make sense.

I like that you made that statement. And yes, let's both go do something empowering, like hang out with our animals or get some fresh air.

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Friday, October 7, 2011 12:17 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Niki, Byte

"... I'm big on "it's my opinion ..."
"... both sides of any debate might think that the opposing conclusions are strange and don't make sense."

Except reality doesn't care about opinions and conclusions. It moves forward of its own accord. Our thoughts - chaff before a storm. Those who truly understand reality best, are the best prepared for the real world that is already upon us.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Friday, October 7, 2011 12:57 PM

MAL4PREZ

I enjoy how DT asks me if I've ever "met geology", and when it turns out that I might have he calls *me* elitist. That's just silly, especially given how far out his supposed close relationship with said topic is.

Cause here's the thing Byte: science is not opinion. DT can talk convection all he wants, doesn't make his intuitive beliefs at all sensible.

Let's review. (ETA: pardon my edits for clarification. I shouldn't post science without having a reread first So I'm fixing some wording a bit.)

Thermal energy (heat) is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in a medium. Kinetic energy is energy of motion. So "heat" is all about whether the molecules in the material are "jiggling" slow or fast. There are three main ways that thermal energy can be transferred:

1. Radiation: vibrating charged particles are the source of EM waves. The EM wave propagates until it encounters other particles that resonate with the wave's particular frequency, then the wave and its energy are absorbed. The is how the sun's energy reaches Earth.

2. Conduction: the kinetic energy of the particles is transferred through physical collisions. ie: hot, high energy particles of hot air outside a wall collide with molecules in the wall, transferring kinetic energy. The particles in the wall collide with each other until molecules on the inside surface of the wall collide with air in the room. Then the people inside turn up the AC and wish they had better insulation in their walls.

3. Convection: heat is transferred through the actual movement of material. For example: some idiot opens the window on a cold windy day and low energy molecules from outside move in. Or a pocket of hot water in the bottom of a pan moves up, carrying its internal energy with it.

DT would have us believe that the free movement of water inside the Earth is responsible for the Earth's climate, more so than heat transfer from the sun's radiation. There are many, oh so many obvious WRONGS to point out here that I can't believe I actually have to do it.

First: you know that big swing in temperature that hits a peak and trough at around 2 pm and 2 am? Yeah, that's from radiation. Please, show me a place where geothermal effects are more powerful than that.

Second: you know that 12 month cycle that hits a peak and trough in roughly July and January? Ditto.

Third: convection requires free motion of the hot/cold material. If fluids were able to move freely in the Earth's crust, how come we have all those trapped fluids? Aquifers, oil reservoirs, gas reservoirs. Why would oil companies need to frak to get the fluids out if they were free to move and convect? Yeah, that's right. Fluids have limited movement inside solid rock.

Fourth: How much of the crust even has any kind of fluid in it? The Moho (look it up DT, unless your best friend geology is sitting next to you whispering in your ear) is about 40 km down. There sure as hell isn't any liquid water below that, and yet the source of the Earth's internal heat is far far below the crust. So how is that water convecting the heat up so effectivly?

Oh right. You must have gotten your science from watching The Core...

ETA a fifth: DT could make a point by showing evidence of variations in the Earth's internal heat that fit the Earth's past climate cycles. Note that he does no such thing.

Meanwhile, Earth's orbital cycles = the Milankovitch cylces - fit the ice age pattern quite well.

Don't believe me. Believe the evidence.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, October 7, 2011 1:06 PM

MAL4PREZ

Kiki - I finally remembered to bring the pertinent book home. It'll take me a little to boil things down and give you actual numbers.

In essence: Ruddiman estimates the amount of CO2 and CH4 that would be needed to explain the anomalies in the figures I posted above. Then he does some estimates. It's actually an interesting read, tracking human development and how various crops spread.

CO2: land clearing for agriculture started about 8000 years ago. It meant lots of trees down - CO2 released in the burning, and less CO2 processed with the trees gone. He uses the area of the cleared land to calculate the amount of CO2 released, and finds that it can explain the anomaly.

CH4: methane comes from rotting plants, right? Rice paddies started about 5000 years ago, about when CH4 deviated from the natural cycle. He does some rough calcs to show that the size of rice paddies in Asia could explain the amount of CH4 in the anomaly.

I will try to give you numbers, but it'll take some thought to make it clear and concise. He spends several chapters presenting his evidence, with much detail and many references related to the human/agriculture development.

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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Friday, October 7, 2011 3:24 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm a little pressed for time - just finished a major project which pretty much consumed my life for the last 3 months, and in about a week I have to go back east. Sigh. I like having a job, I even like my job, I just wish I could take a vacation some time this year. I have to say, it all used to be easier when I was younger. Anyway, when I get back it may just be easier for me to get the book(s). Could you do me a BIG favor? Could you PM me the title(s) you found most informative? I'd appreciate it, and in my email they will be in an easy to find, secure place.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Friday, October 7, 2011 4:11 PM

FREMDFIRMA

The technical details of this go way over my head, but once again I will state quite frankly that I feel the whole bloody lot of you are overcomplicating a simple situation.

Don't pollute your living space.

Really, is that so damn hard a concept for anyone to master ?
Does it really require all this hullabaloo ?

Maybe it's just me, but I figure that's yanno...
Obvious ?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Friday, October 7, 2011 4:53 PM

Quote:
science is not opinion

Science is, however, competing ideas and data sets, and I still think people are misunderstanding that DT DOES in fact think that GW exists and people contribute to it.

He just doesn't think people are the primary factor, though one of our actions - slash and burn deforestation - might be.

Quote:
Don't pollute your living space.

I believe I speak for everyone when I say everyone agrees.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 4:26 AM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Science is, however, competing ideas and data sets, and I still think people are misunderstanding that DT DOES in fact think that GW exists and people contribute to it.

He just doesn't think people are the primary factor, though one of our actions - slash and burn deforestation - might be.

It is not an issue of what he thinks, but that fact that how he is trying to back it up does not pan out. Nor do his attacks against the competing ideas.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 5:27 AM

Quote:
but that fact that how he is trying to back it up does not pan out.

Partially. His point about geothermal heat being the primary contribution to air temperature was incorrect, and both Mal4Prez and I corrected him. However, the numbers he's presented about the amount of CO2 in the air, the biomass, and sequestered in carbonate are verifiable (though not concrete). If you mean HOW he's presented them, then yes, he hasn't endeared himself to any of you.

The question here, given the measurements of the amount of CO2 and the sources and sinks, is if DT proposes a valid model for the behaviour of that CO2, the effect on climate, and humanity's role in that, or if anything is overlooked/missing that might then lean more towards humanity having a bigger impact.

While I do believe there is climate change, and humans are driving it, I don't think there is an accepted model yet for how it is acting. That's why I'm willing to listen to alternative models, so long as I think that the logic or basis behind those models raises any valid points. Challenges only build and refine the models we do have. A better understanding of what is happening will give us a better end decision.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 5:35 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Quote:
science is not opinion

Science is, however, competing ideas and data sets, and I still think people are misunderstanding that DT DOES in fact think that GW exists and people contribute to it.

He just doesn't think people are the primary factor, though one of our actions - slash and burn deforestation - might be.

Quote:
Don't pollute your living space.

I believe I speak for everyone when I say everyone agrees.

Byte, here's the thing, here's where the disagreement comes from:

If you have a particular chemical in the air in a room that's survivable at 1ppm, but not at 100ppm, and you introduce 99ppm of it into the air, it's a bit ridiculous to try to claim that you had no part in the deaths of the people in that room.

In other words, it doesn't matter HOW the GW is being helped along by human actions; it matters THAT it's being helped along by human actions. Even if we only contribute 1% to the GW, if that 1% makes the difference between reaching the tipping point or not, then we're the last straw.

Arguing that deforestation is worse than industrial output is like arguing that burning to death is better than choking to death. Neither is optimal, because you're still dead at the end of either event. And it's giving us a false choice: You can either worry about pollution, or you can worry about deforestation. What, I can't worry about more than one thing at a time? I can't work for two solutions?

[NOTE: I'm not arguing with you, Byte - I'm trying to show where I think people have an issue with DT's argument.]

BTW, if people aren't a primary factor, but their actions are, then people ARE a primary factor, at least until you get them to stop said actions!

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 10:14 AM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Quote:
but that fact that how he is trying to back it up does not pan out.

Partially. His point about geothermal heat being the primary contribution to air temperature was incorrect, and both Mal4Prez and I corrected him. However, the numbers he's presented about the amount of CO2 in the air, the biomass, and sequestered in carbonate are verifiable (though not concrete). If you mean HOW he's presented them, then yes, he hasn't endeared himself to any of you.

The question here, given the measurements of the amount of CO2 and the sources and sinks, is if DT proposes a valid model for the behaviour of that CO2, the effect on climate, and humanity's role in that, or if anything is overlooked/missing that might then lean more towards humanity having a bigger impact.

While I do believe there is climate change, and humans are driving it, I don't think there is an accepted model yet for how it is acting. That's why I'm willing to listen to alternative models, so long as I think that the logic or basis behind those models raises any valid points. Challenges only build and refine the models we do have. A better understanding of what is happening will give us a better end decision.

DT thinking is pretty sound, the thing is he misses some important facts along the way. Examples...

Quote:
One milliliter of TCE in your water can kill you. Doesn't it bother you that the president's energy plan currently calls for pouring a million gallons of it into your water supply?

One milliliter in how much water? Yes if you ingest one milliliter of Trichloroethylene in a day, or a few you will be bad off. Of course at those levels you will be able to smell and taste it. Not to mention that fact that the franking does not pour millions of gallons of anything into any water supply.

Quote:
The co2 consumption of photosynthesis is 2,000 times the total human industrial production. The reason co2 is rising is that we cut the consumption through environmental destruction.

The second part of this makes sense, the first part does not take into account that that along with Human industrial production you also have natural CO2 production.

Quote:
Any theory involving climate should first know what the fuck it is and how it works. The median temperature of the earth is drawn to a geothermal mean, as per the gradient, by means of convection.

One, convection only happens in liquid or gas mediums. Second, the geothermal mean has little to do with surface temperatures. He does have a point that forested area tend to be cooler and part of that is that there is more water to absorb energy in evaporation. He seems to miss that the oceans would also have this affect and at much larger levels.

The biggest thing he does is to assume that Climate Scientists have not thought about the things he has brought up and considered them. Hell in one place he even questions the greenhouse effect.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:04 PM

Good points on those. I only really have one that I want to talk about.

Quote:
One milliliter of TCE in your water can kill you. Doesn't it bother you that the president's energy plan currently calls for pouring a million gallons of it into your water supply?

One milliliter in how much water? Yes if you ingest one milliliter of Trichloroethylene in a day, or a few you will be bad off. Of course at those levels you will be able to smell and taste it. Not to mention that fact that the franking does not pour millions of gallons of anything into any water supply.

I think this one is actually a pretty major concern.

The nytimes predicts that one well can in fact produce about a million gallons of wastewater.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html

"With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself."

Then you have to be concerned about how you're using that wastewater, such as some counties calling it "brine" and using it to de-ice roads. That puts the wastewater right back in the groundwater, the surface aquifers even, not just stuff deep down that doesn't effect anything (and when you fracture those layers, I'm not sure that's true anymore). And then not all the waste water you put down in a well comes back up.

It's true that the water in places is being set on fire because of the methane being released from the pockets, but that suggests a fairly significant contamination, that surely can't be good to drink... Or breathe, in the case of infiltration.

Quote:
There were more than 493,000 active natural-gas wells in the United States in 2009, almost double the number in 1990. Around 90 percent have used hydrofracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling industry.

Nationwide that's predicted the industry will double that number of wells in the next two decades.

1 million total wells. Millionish gallons of waste water.

Times together, that's a trillion or more gallons of wastewater being produced, that we have a poor idea how it's being disposed of. One percent of the waste water is some nasty toxic chemicals. Think evap ponds, think loopholes with sewage plants, this stuff appears to be largely being put right back into the ecosystem.

I don't think this is a crank, at all. Calling it a war might be a bit much because I'm not sure the industry is meaning to destroy the drinking water, but I think it's very serious, and I think that could be an end result.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:11 PM

Thank you, Byte. You're awesome! Good info there, and something that definitely bears thought.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:26 PM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
I don't think this is a crank, at all. Calling it a war might be a bit much because I'm not sure the industry is meaning to destroy the drinking water, but I think it's very serious, and I think that could be an end result.

It is not crank at all. What is crank is claiming it is a conspiracy. Or ignoring that volatile organic chemicals, such as TCE are not that hard to remove from water. Or claiming that waste water treatment is just dilution.

DT has some good thoughts, he just jumps to far in his conclusions and has gaps in the knowledge that forms the base of his arguments.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:36 PM

Quote:
Or ignoring that volatile organic chemicals, such as TCE are not that hard to remove from water.

Actually, that really kind of depends on the horizontal and vertical extent of the spill, and the initial contamination. TCE is a DNAPL, it sinks, but also soluble and able to be mobilized with disturbance by most common forms of clean up.

For a surface spill clean up that IS easy. But say you have degreasing operations that have occurred on an air force base for about a decade, then they switched to a different chemical and started being more careful, but serious TCE impacts exist in downgradient neighborhoods across near an entire city almost forty years later. Or, say you have a dry cleaner from the 1900s that kept several wastewater separator vaults around (about five), and buried them, and concentrations in those vault were about 50% product. You have a continuous leak from the vault over near a century, and contamination all the way down from ten feet to about 100 feet. Even a combined injection of surfactant and microbes has not been sufficient to clean up the mess, and obviously excavation to the furthermost depths is not really feasible.

These are situations I have encountered in the field.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:43 PM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Quote:
Or ignoring that volatile organic chemicals, such as TCE are not that hard to remove from water.

Actually, that really kind of depends on the horizontal and vertical extent of the spill, and the initial contamination. TCE is a DNAPL, it sinks, but also soluble and able to be mobilized with disturbance by most common forms of clean up.

For a surface spill clean up that IS easy. But say you have degreasing operations that have occurred on an air force base for about a decade, then they switched to a different chemical and started being more careful, but serious TCE impacts exist in downgradient neighborhoods across near an entire city almost forty years later. Or, say you have a dry cleaner from the 1900s that kept several wastewater separator vaults around (about five), and buried them, and concentrations in those vault were about 50% product. You have a continuous leak from the vault over near a century, and contamination all the way down about 100 feet. Even a combined injection of surfactant and microbes has not been sufficient to clean up the mess.

These are situations I have encountered in the field.

I meant removal from water supplies at the water treatment plants themselves. Sorry for not making that clear.

I inspect a handful of water plants that have forced draft, or pack tower aeration systems to strip volatiles now.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 2:56 PM

Oh. Then yes, that would be easy. There might be other chemicals involved that aren't so easy to remove though, nytimes does mention something about that.

Depending on the source of the cancer rates that DT is seeing, it seems we might be talking sufficient contamination in situ, from waste water never removed from groundwater. Not only does the TCE plume we're seeing from the air force base have a similar cancer rate, and we know that's TCE, but we know that methane isn't carcinogenic.

Even if it isn't TCE, we know something in the groundwater in DT's town is, and the entire town has been fighting some fracking spills that happened a few years back.

There's this guy I work with, he's been over in Vernal, the town with the big fracking operation in Utah, only over there they're trying to get oil shale instead. He's seen giant tanks by the drill pads, one I remember he said he noticed was labeled xylene.

There's some in the industry who say they've come up with some new lubricant for the fracking wells... Petroleum jelly. I believe you can see the issue I have with this, if they're already using petroleum products to frack with, and also the implications for some of the yield they've been reporting.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 4:56 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
What on earth...

DT posted his MATH. Talking through his hat? TEABAGGER? This is mischaracterizing quite a bit of this discussion.

Just because someone disagrees with you does NOT mean they can't make valid points.

Nick, just like all of us, DT can get caught up in long arguments involving long series of posts and not necessarily want to be. The fact that he did and does is not a valid logical counterpoint, pointing it out as an attack on his credibility is an ad hominem.

I note that insulting language, like calling someone a dirty word, is not an ad hominem, as the insults would have to comprise a portion of the subject and the argument and points being made. As such, DT asking you all not to dismiss him - though I admit in an insulting way - is not an ad hominem.

Making arguments from authority and attacking whether someone has expertise is not a valid counterpoint.

All of you who talk about the amount of evidence that contradicts DT, either post it or, if you're certain of your positions, the evidence, and so on, don't bother arguing with him. But this mockery is unnecessary.

I think the problem arises when DT, who kind of claims to be the expert on everything as far as I can see, comes up with a posters real expertise. It's kind of frustrating if it is 'your area' to see it distorted by a sloppy use of fact. Now I'm not weighing in on the climate debate, only that I read it and don't completely understand it. If most independant scientists believe that it is a credible argument, I'm going to have to believe them, not having the intellectual tools to debate with them on this one. It seems clear to me that dissent on this issue has come from those who have the most to lose economically and who are incredibly powerful conglomerate of corporations, media and government.

I've had arguments with DT before that have frustrated the hell out of me because its clear that on a lot of things he isn't that well informed and yet he argues as an expert. Doing a few quick googles does not constitute expertise, yet he rarely concedes that he might not know everything. I found it frustrating when its been about stuff that I have done a lot of reading on, and he posts a couple of photos as his winning argument and its a completely looney argument that he is trying to prove.

I think the problem lies in how he communicates. I do get he is throwing around a few far fetched theories, stuff that he has thought might be possible or could have some truth. I have no problem with that, but they often fly in the face of evidence which he won't concede. Science is wrong, except for his own science.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 5:47 PM

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Oh. Then yes, that would be easy. There might be other chemicals involved that aren't so easy to remove though, nytimes does mention something about that.

Depending on the source of the cancer rates that DT is seeing, it seems we might be talking sufficient contamination in situ, from waste water never removed from groundwater. Not only does the TCE plume we're seeing from the air force base have a similar cancer rate, and we know that's TCE, but we know that methane isn't carcinogenic.

Even if it isn't TCE, we know something in the groundwater in DT's town is, and the entire town has been fighting some fracking spills that happened a few years back.

There's this guy I work with, he's been over in Vernal, the town with the big fracking operation in Utah, only over there they're trying to get oil shale instead. He's seen giant tanks by the drill pads, one I remember he said he noticed was labeled xylene.

There's some in the industry who say they've come up with some new lubricant for the fracking wells... Petroleum jelly. I believe you can see the issue I have with this, if they're already using petroleum products to frack with, and also the implications for some of the yield they've been reporting.

Oh, don't get me wrong I do see a lot of problems with fracking. I fully expect to see more and more solid evidence come back that it is causing problems. I hope when they do the EPA is in a position to put a stop to it, or tighten the regulations to mitigate the problems. You know as well as I do that it going to take a huge amount of data before people will listen and move.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 6:19 PM

Nick, I agree. :)

Magons, I think believing that you can't compete with those scientists on an intellectual level is selling yourself short. Science isn't really about who has the most credentials, but rather who has the best conclusions for the data and best predictions.

Maybe you might have the best ideas.

Of course, maybe my believing that is a big reason why most of my family kinda wants to slap me.

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 6:36 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

see below

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 8:35 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I think the problem is WHAT he communicates.

He makes totally bogus statements and posts irrelevant and highly selective bits and pieces. Here are just a few of the MANY bogus things he posted that a quick trip through google would have uncovered, if he had bothered to make it.

"But the fractional change in co2, which is not caused by industrial emissions, is not having a deleterious effect on the planet."

By simple math, the global CO2 levels have gone up at least 25% in 55 years. As to the cause, global oil consumption alone (not counting natural gas or coal) for ALL uses (including our beloved cars - there's no need to only count 'industrial' emissions) has quadrupled over the same timeframe.

"Correlation doesn't prove causality."

But you are nowhere without an event followed by another event. And the FACT is that CO2 absorbs infrared - heat - and keeps it from being re-emitted into space. It literally traps heat. Let me repeat - that is a FACT. The increased CO2 is causing increased heat to be trapped.

"There's not really a strong historical correlation, in spite of those charts."

Because, frankly, other things happen, like plate shifts, the effects of vegetation, or major asteroid impacts or volcanism both of which put earth under a cloud of particulates.

The Ordovician cooling:
"By integrating rock magnetism evidence and the glacial deposit data, paleontologists have proposed a cause for this glaciation. When Gondwana passed over the north pole in the Ordovician, global climatic cooling occurred to such a degree that there was global large-scale continental resulting in widespread glaciation."

The carboniferous cooling:
"... this reflection of biospheric activity back upon itself, the activity of global photosynthesis depleting its own primary resource, atmospheric and oceanic CO2, converting that CO2 into the vast, carboniferous accumulations of deceased organic matter that became the fossil fuels."

The Jurassic cooling:
"For the first time, two long-term anomalies in δ18O are identified during the Toarcian and the Late Jurassic, in conjunction with intensive volcanism in large igneous provinces. These results support a strong influence of repeated volcanic pulses on the modulation of pCO2, temperatures, and polar ice cap volumes over protracted period ..."

Whether you agree with these cites, clearly, other things that drive global temperature can and have happened.

"Why doe the world mean temperature hug close to geothermal?"

This is a nonsensical question. There IS no 'geothermal mean'. It varies depending at what depth and where you are. Try looking it up - you will not find anything under google which even mentions that there is such a thing, let alone provides a definition, or - the holy grail (and just as non-existent) - cites a temperature.

"Not only does human industry not produce enough carbon to create the effect ..."

See 25% increase and quadruple the petroleum use in 55 years, above.

"Okay, what if we are producing 10 times as much as our norm per our biomass?"

Why 10X? Why not look at actual figures? Like this one, where baseline rates set at zero go up to over 9000 mmtons in a mere 250 years:

"GW crowds says the world average is 10 times ..."

Really? Cites PLEASE.

"There is probably no longer enough carbon floating about in our ecosystem to see a big kick back to the thousands, thanks to the sequestering of sea shells ..."

Well, according to these estimates, you're wrong. By simple ratio, if 1000gt for atmospheric CO2 is ~400ppm, then releasing the 8000gt of fossil fuel into the atmosphere results in an additional 3200ppm CO2, for a total of 3600ppm CO2.

"Temperature of the Northern Hemisphere over the last 2000 years ..."

Other estimates - not so much what you cite:

But why restrict yourself to the northern hemisphere when you can look at the whole planet ...

Like I said, these are just a few of the quick and dirty look-ups to check his assumptions, which, as is plain to see, are bogus.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Saturday, October 8, 2011 8:49 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Nick, I agree. :)

Magons, I think believing that you can't compete with those scientists on an intellectual level is selling yourself short. Science isn't really about who has the most credentials, but rather who has the best conclusions for the data and best predictions.

Maybe you might have the best ideas.

Of course, maybe my believing that is a big reason why most of my family kinda wants to slap me.

Oh you can have the best ideas, but you have to be able to back them up. Most people can't be the expert on everything, in fact most of us have little more than some ideas. There is a whole host of knowledge that I'll probably never have more than a glimmer of understanding of, and I can never expect to have the same knowledge and understanding as someone who has devoted their life to learning in that field.

Some things come easier than others. For example, I have a good understanding of history, English language, psychological theories, communication and conflict theories. I know a bit about art and neurology from reading and past studies. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to a lot of stuff about science, just never developed the building blocks.

I'd never argue neuroscience with a neuroscientist. I just couldn't. I could ask some questions, but I'd have to concede it is their expertise and not mine. I might not even have the language to be able to speak about it the same way that they, having studied and practised it for however many years would have.

To not recognise expertise is really downright disrespectful. Doesn't mean you can't question things, or you may have a gift for certain kinds of thinking even though you have no formal qualifications, but you need to recognise the limits to your own knowledge.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 4:18 AM

Strange, I don't see it as disrespectful at all. Rather, I see it as necessary. A person can recognize the limits of their knowledge, but that doesn't mean accepting expertise above all other considerations. Experts can be wrong. I've forgotten more of my education probably than I ever even learned. Whenever I'm asking questions or arguing, I'm thinking back through the very limits of my memory capacity, and I'm a person who has trouble remembering a conversation I had not five minutes ago.

I might use scenarios I've encountered as example arguments, but I have never on this board brought up my job or my credentials like it would win me any kind of points.

This one time, I was arguing on the main board against someone's self-proclaimed Firefly characterization, storytelling, and plot expertise. He was the writer of a popular fanfic series, and he kept USING that as a justification for why he was right.

Or, not that we would, but what if Mal4Prez and I were to start arguing about whose expertise was more applicable, or who had more years of education (her), or who does the harder science and math (also probably her).

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 4:42 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Ahhh, Byte, and here I thought you were going to do something life-affirming and get out of this silly thread. Not silly in that it doesn't have pertinent points and facts, but silly in that it's a non-starter; I don't think anyone can PROVE either side completely or will convince anyone on the other side.

As for me, I find a very strong argument in

Quote:
It seems clear to me that dissent on this issue has come from those who have the most to lose economically and who are incredibly powerful conglomerate of corporations, media and government.

I don't see the people who say there IS a problem with climate change and that we are contributing to it to the point of danger as having the money, influence or power to compete in this arena, especially given mankind's instinctive wanting not to change things drastically and the fact that if we took it seriously, we'd have to change a LOT that we find convenient and comfortable now. That and the fact that there is a large body of the scientific community which believes it. I don't take scientists at their word, but when a LOT of them say the same thing, I start wondering if they might be right.

I also don't see them as having nearly the motivation to fake it as I do the monied interests. If we go all the way back to Mal4's original statement and weigh the motivation between those with a HUGE interest in keeping things how they are (and continuing to drill more and more) and those who believe it's a danger and that things desperately need to change, the suspicion falls on those for whom profit drives all, who (like far too many) think in short-term gain and will do/buy/say whatever is necessary to keep those profits high.

It's just like fracking and so many other things; where there's profit, money is always spent to "yell the loudest". I suppose I'm somewhat like DT in that I think "man-ENHANCED" changes are affecting us; I don't understand enough to "know" climate change is man-MADE. I just believe they're far more enhanced by our activities than he does, and have less invested in proving my point.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 4:48 AM

Quote:
Ahhh, Byte, and here I thought you were going to do something life-affirming and get out of this silly thread.

I did for the rest of that day...

I agree with your post, though I think it's also important to recognize that any monied interest worth their solvency has a number of contingency plans in play just in case something that would otherwise be less than advantageous for them comes up. And that people might be using science for less than nice agendas as well, such as globalization and world government and petty rivalries.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:10 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Good; I'm glad you got away from the toxicity of this place for a time. We took the dogs to the Divide; my back is so bad I can't walk very far (or do much of anything else), but at least they got out. Today I HAVE to get them out sulkying somehow, they need the exercise and the house needs the peace!

As for monied interests, yes, I recognize that. I also know that, via much effort, we are turning the tobacco interests to diversifying, as well as fighting back, and if climate change were accepted by enough people, I think those profitting from our screwing up the planet would hopefully do the same and jump on the alternative-energy bandwagon. If it became accepted, I'd like to believe they'd see the writing on the wall and do so as well.

I don't believe in some of the things you do, and I think petty rivalry could only have a VERY small effect, if there weren't money behind it (not grants, etc., but money to "find" the "facts" negating it).

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:11 AM

Quote:
Posted by DT:

What I really don't get is that at the same time you had people on the right going off about the rapture and on the left going off about catastrophic runaway GW that would turn the Earth into Venus... and neither one of them could see that what they were peddling was the exact same thing: completely bogus end of the world panic.

If you don't get it, would you stop doing it? After all, you're the guy who posits that if Obama is elected in 2012, there won't be a 2016 election, and then posts scary pictures to "prove" your point. Just sayin'.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:

Good; I'm glad you got away from the toxicity of this place for a time. We took the dogs to the Divide; my back is so bad I can't walk very far (or do much of anything else), but at least they got out. Today I HAVE to get them out sulkying somehow, they need the exercise and the house needs the peace!

Sorry to hear about your back; I know how that goes - mine's fine most of the time (well, there hasn't been a day without pain since 1982, but I'm used to it for the most part), but once in a while it slips, and I'm ruined until I can get it worked out. Relax, feel better, take it easy. See a chiropractor if you can.

I'll be taking the dog out today, IN THE RAIN! It's actually been raining here, pretty much nonstop since yesterday morning. First significan rain we've had in over a year. Haven't seen any rainfall totals, but everything helps. Shit, if nothing else it'll knock some of the dust and ashes off things! If you see a middle-aged man dancing, badly, in the rain in south Austin, don't be alarmed. :)

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:52 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Holy shit!

RAIN IN TEXAS! Finally!

Every little bit helps, so I'm sure you won't mind if I celebrate "for" "with" you! We're supposed to get some tomorrow--the first one last week lasted several days, and since then, "Winter" has arrived; colder at night, colder in the morning, and we only get to the 70s.

Back is scaring me. Time to go back to the neurologist, 'cuz it's not going away; I'm all but living in my back brace, and that's a first. Depression, which hasn't left yet either, isn't helping; yesterday I went to bed at 2pm, got up at 7 to feed the animals, back to bed at 10 and slept until after 6 this morning. And now I'm so sleepy I could go back and do it all over again...at 8:30 am! Sux. But I GOTTA get them out somehow today, so I'll stay awake at least long enough to do that.

Go dance in the rain, man, I'm so happy for you!!!

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 5:05 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Strange, I don't see it as disrespectful at all. Rather, I see it as necessary. A person can recognize the limits of their knowledge, but that doesn't mean accepting expertise above all other considerations. Experts can be wrong. I've forgotten more of my education probably than I ever even learned. Whenever I'm asking questions or arguing, I'm thinking back through the very limits of my memory capacity, and I'm a person who has trouble remembering a conversation I had not five minutes ago.

I might use scenarios I've encountered as example arguments, but I have never on this board brought up my job or my credentials like it would win me any kind of points.

This one time, I was arguing on the main board against someone's self-proclaimed Firefly characterization, storytelling, and plot expertise. He was the writer of a popular fanfic series, and he kept USING that as a justification for why he was right.

Or, not that we would, but what if Mal4Prez and I were to start arguing about whose expertise was more applicable, or who had more years of education (her), or who does the harder science and math (also probably her).

I guess I was referring to this in a more broad sort of way. I'm not saying take someone's creditentials on this board, I'm talking about knowledge in general. I see the internet as a double edged sword when it comes to knowledge. You can certainly find out stuff on the Internet, although a good dose of it is probably rubbish. People might think they know more, but I'm not sure that they are more knowledgable. It is different googling a whole load of stuff to reading and studying it year in year out.

You can certainly question experts, they can indeed be wrong, but normally unless it is an area in which you consider yourself highly skilled or knowledgable, you'd probably get a second expert opinion. If I thought my mechanic was leading me astray, I'd see another mechanic. We live in a society where skills and knowledge are highly specialised. It would be nigh on impossible for someone to be highly skilled/knowledgable in IT, medicine, history, mathematics, psychology, construction, engineering, mechanics, plumbing..... Even within those categories there are further specialisations. You wouldn't expect someone to be in charge on engineering a bridge or a high rise if they's looked up a bit of stuff on the net. Nor would you have brain surgery performed by someone who had a read abit about it once or twice.

Expertise is needed for a whole range of things, and yet somehow it is considered elitist to defer to expertise. That is why the climate debate is so frakked. If climate experts are saying there is manmade climate change happening, then why should be believe the journalists and largely non scientifically trained commentators who are screaming dissent? You'd have to prove that there was a world wide conspiracy amongst the scientific community to fake data and for what purpose?

What you don't need to be a scientist to work out is that we are shitting up our backyards. Have you ever been somewhere in the world that is truly pristine and beuatiful and then gone back 15 years later and found it polluted, exploited, rubbished? I have. It happens here all the time. Heartbreaking, unless of course someone campaigns to preserve beauty and wilderness, habitat destruction, saving animals from extinction, overfishing, over exploitation of resources, it will continue to happen. And all the way you have to fight the interests of business, corporations, capitalism, call it what you will, who turns a blind eye to destruction and exploitation because there is a shit load of money still waiting to be made.

And in summary, I give you one of my favourite places in the world that I have just visited (and is protected)

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:11 PM

Tasmania, that would be amazing. Of course, to an American, Australia itself seems remote and exotic.

Quote:
Expertise is needed for a whole range of things, and yet somehow it is considered elitist to defer to expertise.

Sure, I'll agree expertise is important, but there's different ways people wear it, and some ways they wear it are more objectionable than others. Rather like how you feel DT who is not an expert wears what he thinks, some experts seem to think it's enough just to BE an expert. No elaboration, no justification, just "I'm an expert."

I have no problem talking to someone who wants to treat me like a human being, and provides backup information/data and their logic for why they've reached their conclusions. I'm even likely to listen. I don't listen if being an expert is all someone has to contribute. What a person has to say is as important as how they got that information.

And if some experts I talk to seem to be incompetent, like the heart doctors I saw who couldn't figure out I had precordial catch syndrome (especially when a previous doctor suggested it as a possibility), then I can't be expected to respect them.

Quote:
What you don't need to be a scientist to work out is that we are shitting up our backyards.

Agree.

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:25 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Frem's right, this shouldn't be so difficult.

Fracking is crap/luh suh.

DT a chara, I find it tiresome when you always reference the 5th grade education thing, because weren't you homeschooled the rest of the way, got a GED or something similar and then you went to college. So the fifth grade statement isn't accurate and it distracts people, well it distracts me, from your points.

I tend to think that DreamTrove makes sense on this topic and on fracking, though I don't think that its a huge conspiracy to destroy the world. But I do think its a conspiracy to make money no matter what happens. Anyways I understand where he's coming from on this and it makes sense to me as an observer. I have no scientific background except that I like nature and science shows on PBS and the Discovery channel. I like learning about animals and volcanoes and sometimes outer space. I don't know if that's where the average American is with science or if they're all more knowledgable on it than I. I do know though that the only I passed physics in high school was by riding the coattails of my groupmates, I'm pretty good at coattail riding in scholastic situations.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:32 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"I know more than you because I have an official looking signed paper in some field."

Maybe PhD programs ain't what they used to be, but people with official looking signed papers tend to know a lot more than the casual bystander to a topic (as long as those papers come from a legitimate institution).

And FWIW it's extremely difficult to have a 'scientific' discussion on this board. First of all, IMO 95% of any topic is learning the language - whether it is specialized terms for specialized information, or mathematical formulas, or both. If you don't speak the same language, it's hard to discuss the topic. The alternative is for the person with the knowledge to literally try and teach all the necessary background - but that isn't going to happen here.

Another problem is that using academic papers as references is something I'm not sure is allowed. I may personally purchase the e-version of a paper, but am I allowed to post it? So what gets referenced are extremely shallow google references, which I think no one should find legitimately convincing. In this instance, the only thing they're good for is to indicate you're not just completely fabricating a line of bullshit.

Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?

Yeah, me neither....

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:46 PM

I think DT gets annoyed with people who seem to be saying that emissions are the ENTIRE problem, while he sees deforestation as the major problem. But what neither of the groups who are accepting of climate change seem to be willing to concede, is that it's ALL PART OF THE PROBLEM.

I swear, it's going to drive me to violence one day, this constant attitude of "There's only ONE solution: MINE!" There ISN'T just one solution. There's lots and lots and lots of solutions, each of them tiny.

People seem to look at the overall problem and either (a) despair and give up, figuring it's too much for them, or (b) focus in on that one thing that they can change in their own lives, and proselytize that this will be the whole solution, and the ONLY workable solution. I've got news for ya, people: Big problems don't have single solutions.

Instead of looking at the problem as a single source and a single solution, let's start looking at the Big Picture a bit more. A problem like climate change isn't a straight-arrow problem, where you can draw an arrow on a straight line from problem to solution. It's more like a grid. Picture a grid, 10 squares by 10:

Each of those squares holds a tiny piece of the puzzle, one piece of the solution to the problem. Each of them, in essence, holds one percent of the answer.

Of course, really big problems exist in more than two dimensions, and are more complex than a simple grid. Picture a matrix, 10 x 10 x 10 - the grid above, but 10 squares deep as well. Now each cell represents 0.1% of the answer.

You can't do a thousand things to solve climate change all by yourself. But we can each do several things every day, and be a tiny part of a larger solution.

Do we have to ban cars outright? No. Do we have to ban logging overnight? Of course not. We have to start cutting back; we have to start weaning ourselves off these things. And as we do more of them, we find there is actually less to do. That grid that started off at 10x10 becomes, in the second level, 9x9, then 8x8, and so on, until we work our way down to the final piece. In three dimensions, it would look like a four-sided arrowhead pointing to the answer, a "targeted matrix" if you will.

Of course, this matrix is purely imaginary, a thought exercise to help get your head around the idea of what solution systems would look like, and it would really exist in four dimensions, not three, since time is always a factor.

But we can do this. Things that seemed odd to me all those years ago when I started doing them are now completely normal, and forces of habit. That makes it easier to keep doing more and more things that will reduce my carbon footprint, because I can keep doing what I've been doing, out of habit, and I can concentrate my energy on adding new things to my old habits. And so can you.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:52 PM