Climate-gate

[Billy T]

@Billy T, there is no need for snide remarks. ...

I was not being snide - only noting as post was address to me, that you trying to "sell" me on the merits of hemp after I said I was joining the hemp band wagon. I also noted the point it grows most any where and needs less water than most plants do grow - certainly virtures. I like to point out sugar cane is a grass - easy to grow, but hemp is a weed - hard to keep it from growing!

But as far as making contribution to reducing global warming it must be able to displace oil as transport fuel, when it forms the basis for methanol. That requires to more virtues:
(1) The process of making methanol must have positive ERE,
(2) It must cost less/ mile to drive car with it than with gasoline.

Sugar cane based alcohol passes these tests. (1) With and ERE of nearly 10 & (2) when oil cost more than about $75/ barrel.

I have not researched how hemp becomes methanol, but bet it requires breaking down of the cellulose - very hard to do and not yet economically competitive with gasoline. A lot of people are working on that. There are two basic approaches: enzymatic and thermal (destructive distillation without oxygen) - both expensive in energy input and dollars, and with problems. Wild strains get into the enzymatic vats and only small fraction of the destructive products are desired molecules - many "tars" etc.

AFAIK only one significant pilot plant scale batch of cellulosic alcohol has been made (from wood chips) enzymatically - but I stopped following the field several years ago. That batch was sold to Brazil's PetroBras, as they had a big PR event and wanted to drive a few cars a few miles on "second generation" (cellulosic) alcohol, but their efforts at making it were falling way behind schedule or failing.

Also I have frequently noted that crushed sugar cane is already at the location of the alcohol plant - zero cost to collect it in the field, so if any 2nd generation plant based fuel can compete economically, it will be sugar cane, now burnt for distillation heat with the excess making electric power.

 

[Aqueous Id]

So why do people allow themselves to be 'alarmed' by those who apparently lack a basic grasp of statistics?

Because after that latter bunch dropped out / flunked out and got recruited to work for the RNC, FAUX and the media outlets, and as pseudoscience writers for all the sites you post when you're not posting comics, they influenced a lot of bad public policy decisions. And who are they? Let's see:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/no_warming_for_19_years

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/...ace-and-16-26-years-at-the-lower-troposphere/

McKitrick, R. (2014) HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series. Open Journal of Statistics, 4, 527-535. doi: 10.4236/ojs.2014.47050. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2014.47050

So let's see if we can summarize. In order for the global temperatures to fall or level off:

(1) The reader and writer of the claim must drop out / flunk out of school, at about the 7th grade level.

(2) To determine the year a person dropped out, refer to the comics they post instead of intelligent discussion.

Or go to school, learn something, and discover what happens when the atmospheric concentration of CO[sub]2[/sub] doubles.

:shrug:

Man. you folks are going to crash hard when the kids in school today grow up and start calling you ignorant fools.

 

[Billy T]

Many reading here know that the more rapid warming of the arctic is lowering the angular momentum around the N. Pole of the jet stream so its wanders N & S now have larger amplitude. (I told how my Atlanta GA son-in-law, like 70,000 or so others got stuck in ice storm last winter - spent day and half getting home - many cars with drivers not use to iced road blocked them or ran out of gas) Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxFYCyM8A4&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs
I learned (became conscious of) the obvious: That when big cold air mass dips down to Gulf of Mexico, a big warm air mass moves closer to the North Pole. - This further reduces the thermal gradient that drives the jet stream - one more strong positive feed back in an very, very non-linear system, which the IPCC analysis with a linear model!

Except for him pointing out the obvious, not much new or interesting at that link.

 

[Aqueous Id]

The question was
"So why do people allow themselves to be 'alarmed' ... "

You won't find an answer to that in arithmetic, pillow cases, fruit jars, dog barks, ice cream sundays, nor supposed discussions about climate.

People "allow themselves to be alarmed" because they need or want this emotional state, and that falls within the discipline of psychology.

People were alarmed by Love Canal in the era when NOAA was created. By then the evidence of rising CO[sub]2[/sub] was about 15 years old and the first report to the White House on the consequences of anthropogenic GHGs was about 10 years old.

Public alarm over Love Canal has shifted to concern over AGW because the canal was taken care of, but AGHGs continue to rise. The alarm people express is their fear that mean, ignorant people have been waging an ideological war, winning the hearts of 7th grade dropouts, getting elected, and obstructing policies aimed at cleaning up the rest of the mess the Industrial Age left us.

Speaking of psychology, we could do a pathology check list against comparing climate change to ice cream sundaes (you're not American, or just a spelling blooper?). It falls under the "glib / lack of empathy" marker.

Indeed, psychopathy is at the root of the ideological war started by the Right Wing in a desperate move to shift ridicule away from the Bushies. Psychopathy accounts for the lies, propaganda and pandering to ignorance of the less educated voters by the climate denialists. Psychopathy accounts for the incentives paid out by Big Business to convince their naive electorate that science is broken.

You wouldn't even need a course in Psychology to recognize this. But I do recommend that every college require as core courses toward any Bachelor degree one course in Climate Science and one in Psychology. That will at least open doors for students in later generations to combat psychopathy as it affects climate policy formulation. Unless a miracle occurs and the electorate suddenly realizes the Right Wing has been lying to them.

But we're not holding our breath.

Every experiment has variables which must needs be accounted for, even those that are mostly observational.
Do you honestly believe that all variables have been accounted for in a balanced and unbiased (scientific) manner?

That's too vague to answer.

Do you honestly believe that increasing AGHGs will not raise average surface temperatures?

 

[sculptor]

Of course not. But the question is, if their[there] are observable detrimental changes (we do have lots of data) is it better to be alarmed and concerned and if we have reason to suspect that these changes may have something to do with human activity, than to just "wait and see"?

as/re global warming: We do indeed have lots of data, some of which suggest agw, some of which suggests other causal factors like the recent grand solar maximum, in climate change.

There remains little doubt that human activity significantly effects the biom. One example would be the health of coral reefs. It has been claimed that warming oceans were destroying coral reefs. Further study around the line islands seems to indicate that the most damage is done by harvesting the top predators, allowing the mid-level predators to increase in numbers, and then consume the algae eaters, and then, it is the algae which destroys the reefs.

The problem of focus arises. If one is alarmed, that one tends to narrow one's focus on a part of, or potential cause of, the observed changes, ignoring others. The observational science is compromised by acute subjectivity. Objectivity is something that should never be tossed aside lightly.
So, no, it is not better to succumb to alarm.

"Concerned" with objectivity is always a good choice.

 

[iceaura]

as/re global warming: We do indeed have lots of data, some of which suggest agw, some of which suggests other causal factors like the recent grand solar maximum, in climate change.

None of the data suggests that the recent - now past - solar max is the major cause of the continuing trend of rising average temperatures and heat content of the biosphere. None of it.

The problem of focus arises

Agreed. So why are you focusing on chaff and bullshit from known propaganda sources, so many years after their media campaign to corrupt American politics has been repeatedly and thoroughly exposed?

 

[sculptor]

None of the data suggests that the recent - now past - solar max is the major cause of the continuing trend of rising average temperatures and heat content of the biosphere. None of it.
...

None of it?
Seriously?
lol

..............................
Perhaps, the error derives from seeking only one causal factor when there are many potential contributors.

 

[Billy T]

as/re global warming: We do indeed have lots of data, some of which suggest agw, some of which suggests other causal factors like the recent grand solar maximum, in climate change. ...

Nonsense - Don't get your "facts" from Right wing business men with oil investments. BTW: Did I guess corrently where your "fact" came from? If not what was the basis?

Temperature going up, while Total Solar Intensity has been going down.

 

[billvon]

"Concerned" with objectivity is always a good choice.

Agreed. Which is why the more objective scientists agree that our climate is changing, and that it is due primarily to anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases.

 

[sculptor]

Agreed. Which is why the more objective scientists agree that our climate is changing, and that it is due primarily to anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases.

I agree with the former, not with the latter. We simply do not have enough objective data to come to that conclusion.
I suspect that much bias comes from the Robert Dickinson nonsense from 1975.

It seems silly to assume that there has not been an anthropogenic component.
Referencing experimental models, it is definitely one of the variables.

Many more variables have become known, as well as feedback mechanisms which were either dismissed or poorly understood.
One simple observation would be looking into the feedback mechanism offered by trees. The trees are consuming CO2 like a starving guest at a feast. Trees exhale much H2O as well as O, ... H2O is a potent greenhouse gas.
Where then lies the balance of the effect of trees on climate change?

The point being, we simply have not enough understanding to choose sides in this fight.
And adopting a positional bias pertaining to the known variables has it's own problems.

Meanwhile, I went carbon neutral then negative over 20 years ago by planting trees--------whose effect on global warming remains in doubt.

 

[billvon]

I agree with the former, not with the latter. We simply do not have enough objective data to come to that conclusion.

Well, 97% of climate scientists disagree with you.

It seems silly to assume that there has not been an anthropogenic component.
Referencing experimental models, it is definitely one of the variables.

Agreed. And it is the primary variable - it accounts for between 1.6 and 2.4 watts (per square meter) of the forcing in our climate, which is sufficient to explain all the warming we have seen. No other postulated natural source comes close to this forcing.

Many more variables have become known, as well as feedback mechanisms which were either dismissed or poorly understood.

Also agreed. We do not understand all the positive feedback mechanisms which might make it worse, nor all the negative feedback mechanisms that might ameliorate it. We might see an unexpected formation of high altitude clouds during the day which would reduce warming in the future, or we might see a "clathrate gun" positive feedback event that would increase warming. Both are unlikely.

However, we do understand that primary driving force, which is anthropogenic release of gases.

One simple observation would be looking into the feedback mechanism offered by trees. The trees are consuming CO2 like a starving guest at a feast.

Right. And the biosphere as a whole (including trees) are managing to absorb about half of our additional CO2 releases. Thus a lesson there is that if we reduced our emissions by 50% we would see a greater reduction in CO2 contributions to the atmosphere. Unfortunately:

1) at our current emission rates trees (and all CO2-absorbing life) is simply overwhelmed
2) we are cutting our forests as fast as we can
3) the results of climate change are also killing off our forests.

Thus we would be foolish to rely on CO2 absorption in the future, since we are reducing that ability.

Trees exhale much H2O as well as O, ... H2O is a potent greenhouse gas.

Yes - but compared to the water released by the oceans through evaporation, it is insignificant.

The point being, we simply have not enough understanding to choose sides in this fight.

There is no "fight." There is simply science, and science now understands a lot about AGW.

And adopting a positional bias pertaining to the known variables has it's own problems.

Agreed. And people who see it as a fight will always form an emotional attachment to the issue, and become upset/alarmed when their side is "losing."

Meanwhile, I went carbon neutral then negative over 20 years ago by planting trees

Great. I've done something similar through a large solar array.

 

[Aqueous Id]

We simply do not have enough objective data to come to that conclusion.
I suspect that much bias comes from the Robert Dickinson nonsense from 1975.

Huh? Not a chance. All of the preliminary data for AGW was collected by 1900, with the incontrovertible evidence collected by 1958.

It seems silly to assume that there has not been an anthropogenic component.

Yes, AGW is a fact.

Referencing experimental models, it is definitely one of the variables.

You are omitting the original evidence attesting to AGW, beginning with testing and measurement by Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, Callendar, Revelle and Keeling.
This evidence has nothing to do with what you seem to imply is a mistake doing multivariate calculations. But as long as you ignore the evidence, you will succeed in convincing yourself (or others if that's your real game) that the Right Wing is not lying.

Many more variables have become known, as well as feedback mechanisms which were either dismissed or poorly understood.

No other "variables" alter the presence of ACO[sub]2[/sub] and its inconvenient physical property: the absorption of heat when exposed to sunlight. Try as you may to sweep it under the rug, children all across the world are learning this in school today, and someday they will express their indignation about the mean stupidity of the policy makers of the present era which refuses to face this critical fact. And your posts represent that mentality of denial and perhaps even perpetuate it. (You wish, don't you.)

One simple observation would be looking into the feedback mechanism offered by trees.

That's elementary. It's one of the areas of research by NOAA/NASA/IPCC etc.

The trees are consuming CO2 like a starving guest at a feast. Trees exhale much H2O as well as O, ... H2O is a potent greenhouse gas.

That argues against you. If it's a feedback loop, then human produced carbon in the feedforward path is greatly amplified by the gain in the feedback path. If you need the systems theory explanation for this, we can go there. Suffice it to say it acts like a huge amplifier of a relatively small signal. Now do you get it? Only trace variations in CO[sub]2[/sub] cause huge energy increases at the Earth's surface -- with or with the feedback. But with feedback, it's much worse.

Where then lies the balance of the effect of trees on climate change?

It's in the labs where all of the experts are telling you to come look at the scales.

The point being, we simply have not enough understanding to choose sides in this fight.

Who's this "we"? Not the kids sitting in Earth Science classes today. Not the universities. Not NOAA, NASA and related agencies. Not IPCC and the dozens of professional organizations represented there. Who does that leave? FAUX News et al. And your point is?

:shrug:

And adopting a positional bias pertaining to the known variables has it's own problems.

Then stop doing that.

Meanwhile, I went carbon neutral then negative over 20 years ago by planting trees--------whose effect on global warming remains in doubt.

Yes and 50 years ago it was a movement also. But if you want to continue to carry the torch for the environment then you have to stop reading industrial propaganda as your source material. Not that I believe that the persona you project here is authentic.

 

[iceaura]

None of it?
Seriously?

None of it. Seriously. That's why you haven't posted any. Your graphs do not indicate what you seem to think they indicate, and your "analysis" of the data is actively misled (or misleading) rather than merely wrong.

The point being, we simply have not enough understanding to choose sides in this fight.

Speak for yourself. Your understanding might improve if you quit focusing on the corrupt and agenda motivated output of hired shills and known liars, and paid better attention to honest research and analysis.

You would post less like this, then:

One simple observation would be looking into the feedback mechanism offered by trees. The trees are consuming CO2 like a starving guest at a feast. Trees exhale much H2O as well as O, ... H2O is a potent greenhouse gas.
Where then lies the balance of the effect of trees on climate change?

The net effect of a certain amount of water gas compared with a certain amount of carbon dioxide gas has been researched and analyzed up the wazoo. It's one of the central issues. So is the role of vegetative growth in the greenhouse gas boosting of recent years, and especially the net local results of local gas exchange and/or metabolism by trees and grass. This "balance" you pretend to inquire about is much studied and well established. Why are you unfamiliar with it? And why, if you are that blatantly ignorant of the major research efforts in this matter, are you unaware of your ignorance?

 

[Photizo]

Well, 97% of climate scientists disagree with you.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/global-warming-the-97-fallacy/15069#.VAYCufldUQo

 

[Photizo]

Not the kids sitting in Earth Science classes today. Not the universities. Not NOAA, NASA and related agencies. Not IPCC and the dozens of professional organizations represented there. Who does that leave?

That leaves people who still think for themselves and remain skeptical due on the one hand to an understanding of human nature and, on the other, to the credibility of those groups (especially the IPCC) i.e. They are all tied to/dependent upon the government in one form or another. Unrestrained government is an insatiable parasite whose sole purpose becomes self preservation at the expense of the host. When you understand this, you understand the relationship of AGW to the voracious appetite of the parasite. It is an attempt on the part of the parasite to 'feed' and groom the host that it might all the more willingly serve/comply with its schemes, nothing more.

 

[Trippy]

That leaves people who still think for themselves and remain skeptical due on the one hand to an understanding of human nature and, on the other, to the credibility of those groups (especially the IPCC) i.e. They are all tied to/dependent upon the government in one form or another. Unrestrained government is an insatiable parasite whose sole purpose becomes self preservation at the expense of the host. When you understand this, you understand the relationship of AGW to the voracious appetite of the parasite. It is an attempt on the part of the parasite to 'feed' and groom the host that it might all the more willingly serve/comply with its schemes, nothing more.

Or, as an alternative, you could try looking into the basis of the predictions - the same physics that predicts how your car behaves when it drives over a bump or through a pot-hole.

 

[iceaura]

That leaves people who still think for themselves and remain skeptical due on the one hand to an understanding of human nature and, on the other, to the credibility of those groups (especially the IPCC) i.e.

The poster of links to Breitbart is instructing us in the matter of credibility.

What does your understanding of human nature tell you about the Koch brothers's support of any person or cause whatsoever that will help them avoid paying taxes to the US government?

 

[billvon]

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/global-warming-the-97-fallacy/15069#.VAYCufldUQo

Like I said 97% of climate scientists disagree with both you and SPIKED-ONLINE. I can think of three separate studies that demonstrated this, and that will be true no matter how many sensationalist SPIKED articles people write.

2004: Study by Oreskes - no scientists disagreed with the consensus.
2009: Doran & Zimmerman - 97% consensus
2010: Anderegg - 97% consensus
2013: Cook - 97% consensus

 

[billvon]

That leaves people who still think for themselves and remain skeptical due on the one hand to an understanding of human nature and, on the other, to the credibility of those groups (especially the IPCC) i.e. They are all tied to/dependent upon the government in one form or another.

And denier groups get their funding directly from oil and coal companies.
You cannot teach a man something when his job depends on him not learning.

 

[Aqueous Id]

That [not being educated] leaves people who still think for themselves and remain skeptical due on the one hand to an understanding of human nature

So you never went to college either. Congratulations (I guess).

and, on the other, to the credibility of those groups (especially the IPCC)

Well now I understand why it's necessary for you people to perpetuate the "fake moon landing" myth. By trashing NASA, you can convince your kids that the satellite evidence for global warming is just one big conspiracy. Wehehell, isn't that special?

i.e. They are all tied to/dependent upon the government in one form or another.

Did you mean Government :mufc: OMG the Big Nasties !! Dead set on crippling poor innocent little Fossil Fuel Companies. :bawl: Oh, the humanity!

Of course if you had stayed in school, you might have read that AGW was discovered without government involvement. Certainly not the US government !! Again: Fourier (French, 1924), Tyndall (Irish, ca 1860), Arrhenius (Swedish, ca 1900), Callendar (British, 1938) inspired one another. The first possible US government operative who influenced climate science would be someone like Roger Revelle (1957), but only because he was a Naval officer -- but: we have to scratch him from the Government conspiracy list, since he co-authored his paper explaining that the ocean would not absorb any more CO[sub]2[/sub] with the assistance of an Austrian colleague. That leaves American Charles David Keeling, who created the first CO[sub]2[/sub] monitoring stations, and discovered in 1958 that CO[sub]2[/sub] levels were rising. But he was a civilian. I guess you could argue that the Government sponsored his work, but only to pay for his instruments and the first building at Mauna Loa. But wait: Eisenhower was president. So are you claiming that the Republican Party invented Global Warming. Oh wait. For a moment I forgot that you never bothered to study any of this. My bad.

Unrestrained government is an insatiable parasite

It's called laissez-faire. If you hadn't dropped out, you would probably either remember it or at least read up a little and then it would come back to you.

whose sole purpose becomes self preservation at the expense of the host.

Oh so now you're pretending to be an anarchist. Go south (or probably that's where you are). Then you can join the secessionist movement. I hear the T Baggers are having their next convention at the Alamo. Viva El Hermano Mayor, dude. And y'all remember to lock and load as fast as you can.

When you understand this, you understand the relationship of AGW to the voracious appetite of the parasite.

Which Big Business are you referring to? Texaco could fly its flag at the Alamo and sort of fit in with the decor, if not for the Hispanic population looking on, checking up as to where you guys stand on immigration. Oh I get it: that's why you hate them !! They nationalized oil south of the Rio Grande, didn't they. /headslap/ Duh !!

It is an attempt on the part of the parasite to 'feed' and groom the host that it might all the more willingly serve/comply with its schemes, nothing more.

But you, your lying propaganda fabricators / climate "gate" scandal manufacturers / Anti-science denialists are "the good guys". Because, after all, you are looking out for those poor wildcatters that are standing in the unemployment lines--the economic stimulus that comes from going to war over access to drilling and oil markets, and of course all those jobs for the soldiers and then then the medics that take care of them when some of their body parts come home on a different flight. But yeah, damn that IRS, created through Constitutional Amendment by 2/3 of Congress and 75% of the state legislatures. Damn taxation WITH OR WITHOUT representation. There oughtta be a law !! Yeah, the dropouts got this figured out for sure. No wonder so many of them are sick to death worrying about the fate poor victimized oil companies.

Of course the parasite is the fuel itself. It's the cheapest source of energy available -- which puts your buddies in a bit of a quagmire. If they jack up the prices too high, the bottom will fall out of the market as everybody will switch to cheaper alternate energy sources.

But thanks for clarifying what a person learns when they do their continuing education program by watching FAUX News. They'll become irrelevant pretty soon anyway, as they age and are replaced by people who actually learned just enough government, history and science to understand the trap you fell into, and how to avoid it themselves. But rest assured. After you guys are long gone (do they have Republican burial grounds? They should. I mean they think of themselves as a separate nation . . . under God and all) the next generation will have the decency to put up windmills on your graves, as a sort of atonement for your crimes. Karma, and all . . .

As for the graphs: it was barely covered by the time you guys dropped out, so they must be immensely difficult to follow. But not to fear: there are plenty of experts all around the world who understand them perfectly well.

So step away from the vehicle, and put your hands behind your back. You're under arrest for impersonating an educated person. I mean y'all. Imbéciles.

:roflmao: