The environment thread

[NorthSideSox72]

So where are the posts challenging any of you on this?

 

When you or SS posts some global warming piece, very rarely, if ever, do I see anyone challenging the veracity of the GW or CC concept. I may pop in here to ask some questions because I legitimately do find the topic fascinating, and I don't really believe the ALARMIST! viewpoint is very fruitful, but it's not like the folks among us on the right are in here debating whether these concepts exist.

This is mostly true, but there are actually a few people who have posted in here before who really don't think AGW exists.

 

[StrangeSox]

The WSJ seems to me, anyways, to be challenging just exactly what to do about the problem. Again, to me, this is a legitimate question.

 

That terrible editorial was about how it's not even a problem and how scientists are in it for the grant money. It was not a philosophical (libertarian) opposition to doing something at all or opposition to certain proposals based on economic analysis. It was pure denialism.

[StrangeSox]

Have you been able to accurately predict the speed at which climate change or global warming or agw has affected the polar ice caps and rising water levels?

 

Not exactly ice caps and water levels but something demonstrating the accuracy of climate models.

 

[iamshack]

Not exactly ice caps and water levels but something demonstrating the accuracy of climate models.

 

Very interesting. Thanks.

[StrangeSox]

It's fun watching the IPCC predictions all pretty much hit the measured temps dead-on.

 

And that's why its so frustrating to see things like the WSJ editorial, where the same zombie arguments crop up again and again.

[southsider2k5]

lol. I think someone learned a new expression today!

[StrangeSox]

I'm pretty sure I used it a few days ago in this thread!

[Balta1701]

The phrase is undead! NOOOOOO!

[Balta1701]

You are being intentionally obtuse here. You know damn well that global climate is a system so huge, and effecte by so many things, that you can really only look at the few biggest influences, and study for a general effect.

This was bugging me, and now the person I'm supposed to help is unavailable, so why not an essay on this.

 

Yes, there are effectively an infinite number of variables that can alter the global climate system. However, there is 1 big thing we can do...and that is evaluate what the current trends are in the global climate system.

 

The main way this is done is by something called a "Principle component analysis". Basically, looking for patterns in complicated data and trying to see which variables actually matter and how much. When you perform one of these on the temperature records we have, you get a set of components representing: 1. an average global temperature, 2. The El-Nino Southern Oscillation, 3., a long term exponential temperature increase, and 4. A nothern/southern hemisphere pattern of variable intensity. Those components cover a huge fraction of the variance in the system.

 

Beyond that, you can then test via a set of statistical techniques whether adding another variable actually improves the predictive capacity of any model you've come up with. To this point, the answer is no. There may be local phenomena (things like the slowing down of the gulf stream and cooling in Europe/Russia), but if they are directly correlated to 1 of those previous variables, then you're not improving the calculation by adding anything.

 

So yes, you can hypothesize any number of variables that impact the global climate. However, at present, there is no significant evidence that any of them matter. They are either strongly correlated with those for PC's, or they are effectively negligible.

 

Thus, to first order, we can test whether there are things effecting our temperature record that would require us to understand another variable. Right now the answer is no.

 

That leaves the 2nd question...what are the causes of those 4 components? Well, the first is the existence of an atmosphere, which is nice so that the earth isn't a block of ice. The 2nd, the ENSO, that's related to wind driven patterns of ocean circulation. The third, a long term temperature increase, that's the "Global climate change" signal. The 4th, which is weaker, strongly correlates to pollution emissions in the industrialized nations in the northern hemisphere.

 

So, if you want to hypothesize a variable that is impacting climate on a large scale, you need that variable to correlate strongly with one of those components. Effectively, you need something that has skyrocketed the last 50 years on an exponential trend, exactly like CO2 has done (except with a 20 year delay), and a mechanism by which that impacts the climate.

 

Without those 2 things, a proposed climatic variable can't be considered significant.

 

So yes, we can only look at the biggest influences, but that's not because of the complexity...that's because we can actively test whether there are other influences that need to be understood. If there aren't, then we start looking for things that correlate with the measurements we do have. One doesn't just get to assert that things are too complicated to understand when we have fairly standard tests for how complicated things are, and standards by which we can evaluate correlations.

 

Thus, if someone is going to assert that there are other influences in the climate system that aren't well understood, the immediate challenge is what those influences are and how they would improve our understanding of the dominant trends in the system (which is what I keep asking for here when it is asserted that the climate system is too complicated to understand).

 

If a variable can be presented that is correlated with changes that we do observe, and we can perform tests to try to understand the mechanisms, then everyone will start listening, but there is no such other variable/influence out there. Many, things like cloud formation, cosmic rays, magnetic field variations have been tested already. We've got a very large fraction of the variation understood, and every other proposed variable so far either damps itself out when considered over a few years or is strongly coupled to one of the other actual causes.

[StrangeSox]

And those people are clearly morons, preying on an ignorant public. But yet again, you are attempting to say that because some responses to AGW are garbage, that must mean ALL of them are. I disagree.

 

This is a few days old now, but the recently leaked Heartland documents really do confirm the widespread agenda of deliberate lies and misinformation. When one group is completely dedicated not to science, understanding, investigation and exploration but only to their own ideology, you can't have an honest, public debate about this issue.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012...P=ILCNETTXT3487

 

 

[NorthSideSox72]

This is a few days old now, but the recently leaked Heartland documents really do confirm the widespread agenda of deliberate lies and misinformation. When one group is completely dedicated not to science, understanding, investigation and exploration but only to their own ideology, you can't have an honest, public debate about this issue.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012...P=ILCNETTXT3487

I have no doubt there is widespread lying and manipulation among those in denial of climate change. But that still does not mean every argument against AGW is invalid. Just as I said before.

 

[StrangeSox]

[Balta1701]

Well, it'll have been a year tomorrow, so it's a good lookback time. It really is amazing how familiar the story here is. People for political and monetary reasons push hard to develop something that isn't safe or isn't understood, but could possibly be safe if over-regulated. But, every time an inspection finds something wrong or risky or thinks of a new issue, it isn't treated as something that needs to be fixed, it's treated as an attack on the industry itself. So, less regulation winds up being the obvious solution, because it's the only way to have the industry move forward. And then, something goes wrong.

Mr. Fujiwara, who used to design reactors, said he clashed with supervisors over an audit he conducted in March 2009 at the Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido. Mr. Fujiwara said he refused to approve a routine test by the plant’s operator, Hokkaido Electric Power, saying the test was flawed.

 

A week later, he said he was summoned by his boss, who ordered him to “correct” his written report to indicate that the test had been done properly. After Mr. Fujiwara refused, his employment contract was not renewed.

 

“They told me my job was just to approve reactors, not to raise doubts about them,” said Mr. Fujiwara, 62, who is now suing the safety organization to get rehired. In a written response to questions from The New York Times, the agency said it could not comment while the court case was under way.

Watching a Frontline report I DVR'd on this disaster right now. Already found it amazing that in order to restore power to the monitoring equipment on the day of the disaster, they had to tie together a bunch of car batteries scavenged from whatever vehicles had survived.

[StrangeSox]

Inhofe invokes Genesis as proof that AGW is a hoax:

"Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that 'as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,' my point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

 

 

[kapkomet]

Inhofe invokes Genesis as proof that AGW is a hoax:

Yup, keep up the posting ass-hate-ry.

[StrangeSox]

Yup, keep up the posting ass-hate-ry.

Well it was a remarkably stupid thing to say

[Balta1701]

Not a new figure but I haven't seen it before, and I liked it.

 

[Balta1701]

Its' not yet at the international crisis level, but there's a drilling rig leak brewing in the North Sea that is getting worse with time. Already being called the worst rig issue in that area in a decade.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Drill, baby drill!

[Balta1701]

Just spectacular "Maps of the wind over the U.S."

[Balta1701]

Really, this is how we want this country to run?

Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction -- but they won't be able to share it with their patients. A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will "gag" doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.

 

...

Pennsylvania law states that companies must disclose the identity and amount of any chemicals used in fracking fluids to any health professional that requests that information in order to diagnosis or treat a patient that may have been exposed to a hazardous chemical. But the provision in the new bill requires those health professionals to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not disclose that information to anyone else -- not even the person they're trying to treat.

[StrangeSox]

All it takes is one anonymous leak, though. If I were a doctor in PA, I'd be requesting that information from every company while looking up the mailing addresses of the editors of every major newspaper in the state.

[Balta1701]

All it takes is one anonymous leak, though. If I were a doctor in PA, I'd be requesting that information from every company while looking up the mailing addresses of the editors of every major newspaper in the state.

I mean, I can research the stuff on my own too...but the idea that a doctor can't tell their own patient information that they research...Ugh.

[StrangeSox]

In the parade of horribles of recent state legislation, this one rates pretty low.

[Balta1701]

Some actually interesting bee-killing updates.

In the past months, three separate studies—two of them just out in the prestigious journal Science—have added to a substantial body of literature linking widespread use of neonicotinoids to CCD. The latest research will renew pressure on the EPA to reconsider its registration of Bayer's products. The EPA green-lighted Bayer's products based largely on a study funded by the chemical giant itself—which was later discredited by the EPA's own scientists, as this leaked memo shows.

 

When seeds are treated with neonics, the pesticides get absorbed by the plant's vascular system and then "expressed" in the pollen and nectar, where they attack the nervous systems of insects. Bayer targeted its treatments at the most prolific US crop—corn—and since the late 1990s, corn farmers have been blanketing millions of acres of farmland with neonic-treated seeds.

 

And it's not just corn. In addition to the vast corn crop mentioned above, Bayer's neonics have worked their way into substantial portions of the soy, wheat, cotton, sorghum, and peanut seed markets. In 2010, according to research by the Pesticide Action Network of North America, at least 142 million total acres were planted in neonic-treated seeds—a trend that will continue if not increase in the 2012 growing season. That represents a landmass equal to the footprints of California and Washington State.

 

But even that's not all. As I showed in this January post, Bayer's neonics are also common in home-garden and landscaping products.

 

The ubiquitous pesticides appear to affect bees in two ways: in big lethal doses that occur at the time of seed planting, when neonic-infused dust wafts around in growing areas; and in tiny doses that happen when bees bring neonic-infused pollen into hives, which don't kill them immediately but appears to damage their immune systems and homing abilities.