The environment thread

[StrangeSox]

Scientists and advocates and political leaders get together in summits/conferences etc for the same reason that businesses still spend a lot of money to fly people to meetings/conferences etc.--face-to-face interaction is still something different than video conferencing.

 

Al Gore having a big house or flying in a jet has zero impact on the validity of AGW science and its impact on mankind. I don't know why anyone thinks that's any sort of argument at all.

[Jenksismyhero]

Scientists and advocates and political leaders get together in summits/conferences etc for the same reason that businesses still spend a lot of money to fly people to meetings/conferences etc.--face-to-face interaction is still something different than video conferencing.

 

Al Gore having a big house or flying in a jet has zero impact on the validity of AGW science and its impact on mankind. I don't know why anyone thinks that's any sort of argument at all.

 

Because asking people to change their daily habits when you don't and you are in fact 100 times worse than an average individual isn't very consistent?

 

 

[Balta1701]

Scientists and advocates and political leaders get together in summits/conferences etc for the same reason that businesses still spend a lot of money to fly people to meetings/conferences etc.--face-to-face interaction is still something different than video conferencing.

 

Al Gore having a big house or flying in a jet has zero impact on the validity of AGW science and its impact on mankind. I don't know why anyone thinks that's any sort of argument at all.

And I still get packed in with lots of them in coach. You should see what the flights are like to AGU, half the people on flights will be carrying poster tubes. It's remarkable.

[StrangeSox]

Because asking people to change their daily habits when you don't and you are in fact 100 times worse than an average individual isn't very consistent?

Flying to global summits isn't a daily habit, but it's not the individual's day-to-day activities that drive it, it's industrial output.

 

And hypocrisy is still not a valid refutation. Scientists gathering for a global summit isn't a counter-point that disproves AGW. A guy smoking 2 packs a day telling you "don't smoke, it'll kill ya" doesn't suddenly make cigarettes less cancerous.

[iamshack]

This has been my life for the last several months and will continue to be for the next year or more.

 

Thought some of you might find it interesting.

[StrangeSox]

There's more chemicals than originally thought in the Freedom leak.

 

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401210072

WV's response to a huge chemical leak that poisoned the drinking water of 300,000 of its residents: weaken chemical safety laws

 

A year after a toxic leak contaminated drinking water for 300,000 residents, West Virginia lawmakers are considering a series of proposals that would weaken a new chemical tank safety law, remove stronger pollution protections for streams across the state, and protect the coal industry from enforcement actions over violations of water quality standards.

 

Members of a coalition of citizen groups called the West Virginia Safe Water Roundtable held a news conference Monday at the Capitol to draw attention to their concerns and to urge lawmakers not to roll back the state’s clean water laws.

 

On Tuesday, one broad bill backed by the West Virginia Coal Association is up for passage in the Senate, and efforts to attach industry-backed amendments to a Department of Environmental Protection rules bill are expected in a House committee.

[cabiness42]

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will not affect global warming. I know that for a fact because the ad at the top of this page said so.

[StrangeSox]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-commen...od-most-popular

 

Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA’s earth-science budget. “Earth science, of course, includes climate science,” Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is also on the committee, noted. (Smith said that the White House’s NASA budget request favored the earth sciences “at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration.”) Johnson tried to get the cuts eliminated from the bill, but her proposed amendment was rejected. Defunding NASA’s earth-science program takes willed ignorance one giant leap further. It means that not only will climate studies be ignored; some potentially useful data won’t even be collected.

 

The vote brought howls of protest from NASA itself and from wider earth-science circles. The agency’s administrator, Charles Bolden, issued a statement saying that the bill “guts our Earth science program and threatens to set back generations worth of progress in better understanding our changing climate.” In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia and the former president of the American Meteorological Association, said that he could not sleep after hearing about the vote. “None of us has a ‘vacation planet’ we can go to for the weekend, so I argue that NASA’s mission to study planet Earth should be a ‘no-brainer,’ ” he wrote.

 

The vote on the NASA bill came just a week after the same House committee approved major funding cuts to the National Science Foundation’s geosciences program, as well as cuts to Department of Energy programs that support research into new energy sources. As Michael Hiltzik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, noted, the committee is “living down to our worst expectations.”

Edited May 8, 2015 by StrangeSox

[LDF]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-commen...od-most-popular

 

good info

 

great reading, many thanks

[NorthSideSox72]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-commen...od-most-popular

General lesson across the entire political spectrum... if your "side" on an issue is actively looking to have less or as little information as possible on that topic, that should tell you you're on the wrong side.

 

Seriously, who thinks the best approach to ANY policy is to ignore all data on the topic? How ignorant is that?

 

You want to argue against what it means, that makes sense to me even if I disagree. You want to question the validity of the science, well, I think that often is just an avoidance technique, but at least you're willing to look at the information at all. You want to say maybe we shouldn't be spending tons of money we don't have to chase the problem, I definitely get that. You want to point out reasons why the picture may not be as clear as science is making it, please, fire away.

 

But to just stick your fingers in your ears and say LALALA I DON'T HEAR ANTYHING? Sorry, but you are an ignoramus and should be ashamed of yourself.

 

[Balta1701]

General lesson across the entire political spectrum... if your "side" on an issue is actively looking to have less or as little information as possible on that topic, that should tell you you're on the wrong side.

 

Seriously, who thinks the best approach to ANY policy is to ignore all data on the topic? How ignorant is that?

 

You want to argue against what it means, that makes sense to me even if I disagree. You want to question the validity of the science, well, I think that often is just an avoidance technique, but at least you're willing to look at the information at all. You want to say maybe we shouldn't be spending tons of money we don't have to chase the problem, I definitely get that. You want to point out reasons why the picture may not be as clear as science is making it, please, fire away.

 

But to just stick your fingers in your ears and say LALALA I DON'T HEAR ANTYHING? Sorry, but you are an ignoramus and should be ashamed of yourself.

The good news is that we haven't had any major earthquakes around the world recently that had large, international emergency responses so we're certain there's no other use for satellite data.

[Balta1701]

If you're up for one long-form science-related article this summer, make it this Slate piece on GMOs.

[greg775]

I'd link to it if I could find it, but there is a report that the sun will be in an inoperable stage in about 20 years and it will be winter all the time, so cold that rivers will freeze. There will be no baseball; there will be no football; life as we know it will end with such cold temps.

 

Look, it's pretty obvious we people of this earth are ruining our own planet and that will be our ultimate demise (as well as the possibility of some nut lobbing a nuke at us and other countries). It's time to make the environment No. 1 priority with economy 1.a.

Edited July 15, 2015 by greg775

[LittleHurt05]

I'd link to it if I could find it, but there is a report that the sun will be in an inoperable stage in about 20 years and it will be winter all the time, so cold that rivers will freeze. There will be no baseball; there will be no football; life as we know it will end with such cold temps.

 

Look, it's pretty obvious we people of this earth are ruining our own planet and that will be our ultimate demise (as well as the possibility of some nut lobbing a nuke at us and other countries). It's time to make the environment No. 1 priority with economy 1.a.

 

[Balta1701]

I'd link to it if I could find it, but there is a report that the sun will be in an inoperable stage in about 20 years and it will be winter all the time, so cold that rivers will freeze. There will be no baseball; there will be no football; life as we know it will end with such cold temps.

 

Look, it's pretty obvious we people of this earth are ruining our own planet and that will be our ultimate demise (as well as the possibility of some nut lobbing a nuke at us and other countries). It's time to make the environment No. 1 priority with economy 1.a.

FWIW, the report was completely, utterly wrong in a number of ways and that interpretation is 100% wrong. 60% drop in sunspots =

 

Here's a full description of how that report went wrong, if you want the details. This was, FWIW, actually written by a geologist.

[greg775]

FWIW, the report was completely, utterly wrong in a number of ways and that interpretation is 100% wrong. 60% drop in sunspots =

 

Here's a full description of how that report went wrong, if you want the details. This was, FWIW, actually written by a geologist.

Awesome. Thanks for posting. No ice age is coming after all which is good news after such reports a few days ago.

[Y2HH]

 

Wait what?

 

Someone thought our sun was going to die in TWENTY years?

 

LOL.

 

The White Frost is coming...

Edited July 15, 2015 by Y2HH

[bigruss]

Wait what?

 

Someone thought our sun was going to die in TWENTY years?

 

LOL.

 

Winter is coming...

Fixed, come on!

[Y2HH]

Fixed, come on!

 

I'm not a fan of GoT...I much prefer the White Frost from the Witcher.

[EvilMonkey]

I'd link to it if I could find it, but there is a report that the sun will be in an inoperable stage in about 20 years and it will be winter all the time, so cold that rivers will freeze. There will be no baseball; there will be no football; life as we know it will end with such cold temps.

 

Look, it's pretty obvious we people of this earth are ruining our own planet and that will be our ultimate demise (as well as the possibility of some nut lobbing a nuke at us and other countries). It's time to make the environment No. 1 priority with economy 1.a.

Greg, first it didn't say the sun was gonna die, just be at a low point in its heat that comes to us. It didn't say it would get so cold life would end. PLus, your second paragraph there seems to imply that the sun being 'inoperable' is somehow mans fault? WTF are you smoking sometime? If the SUN is changing temps, no amount of AC or coal burning is the cause.

[greg775]

Greg, first it didn't say the sun was gonna die, just be at a low point in its heat that comes to us. It didn't say it would get so cold life would end. PLus, your second paragraph there seems to imply that the sun being 'inoperable' is somehow mans fault? WTF are you smoking sometime? If the SUN is changing temps, no amount of AC or coal burning is the cause.

 

The article I read said it'd be so cold rivers would freeze immediately and no human life could survive the bitter cold. Glad it's not true.

[Heads22]

The article I read said it'd be so cold rivers would freeze immediately and no human life could survive the bitter cold. Glad it's not true.

 

.....don't you think that it'd be a bigger deal?

[EvilMonkey]

The article I read said it'd be so cold rivers would freeze immediately and no human life could survive the bitter cold. Glad it's not true.

That's how all the global warming, I mean climate change, proponents talk. WHile it is possible NYC may be under water in 100 years, it doesn't have the same urgency as saying NYC UNDERWATER BEFORE THE DECADE IS OVER IF YOU DON'T ACT NOW! It did say that you would have a lot of waterways that normally dont' freeze get some ice cover, but nothing as dire as you first saw.

[Balta1701]

That's how all the global warming, I mean climate change, proponents talk. WHile it is possible NYC may be under water in 100 years, it doesn't have the same urgency as saying NYC UNDERWATER BEFORE THE DECADE IS OVER IF YOU DON'T ACT NOW! It did say that you would have a lot of waterways that normally dont' freeze get some ice cover, but nothing as dire as you first saw.

The sad things?

 

1. The people pushing that "Ice age coming" article were mostly climate change deniers, because they're the ones who want you to believe that the sun is a bigger influence on climate than what's happening to the atmosphere. The people who know the climate science all sighed loudly and said "really, I have to f***ing deal with this again?"

2. "Climate Change" was a term popularized by a Republican pollster. It's actually more accurate, IMO, than Global Warming (Since some areas of the planet do actually get colder) but anyway.

3. We're already feeling the effects of climate change in a number of powerful ways that are costing people and governments a whole lot of money.

[EvilMonkey]

The sad things?

 

1. The people pushing that "Ice age coming" article were mostly climate change deniers, because they're the ones who want you to believe that the sun is a bigger influence on climate than what's happening to the atmosphere. The people who know the climate science all sighed loudly and said "really, I have to f***ing deal with this again?"

2. "Climate Change" was a term popularized by a Republican pollster. It's actually more accurate, IMO, than Global Warming (Since some areas of the planet do actually get colder) but anyway.

3. We're already feeling the effects of climate change in a number of powerful ways that are costing people and governments a whole lot of money.

If you want people to take you (not you personally) seriously:

 

1) stop the hyperbole. The world isn't going to be underwater next year. tell the truth. When you lie, outrageously, it makes you look bad.

 

2) Act like you believe what you say. Stop driving when you don't have to, stop flying when you don't have to. You don't need people flying private jets to exotic locations to scheme how you can get more money out of the US and say its because of 'climate change'. Teleconference anyone?

 

3) If everyone isn't going to do it (China, Russia, Indoa, etc.), just the US screwing up their economy isn't going to solve anything. Except screwing up the US economy.

 

4) Stop falsifying data. There may be truth to the data, but messing it up to make it seem more extreme makes you look like liars. Also stop cherry-picking data. Present it all. Make you models open for people to see how you get there instead of just saying 'trust us'. because nobody does.