Topic: This should give FirstAscent a stroke... - page 2. (Read 7367 times)

I would also add to that:

- A reduction in urban and suburban sprawl. Sprawl increases barriers disallowing species to relocate due to changing temperatures, which creates extinctions, which reduces ecosystem services.

- Increased city agriculture, hydroponics, garden roofs,, etc. to reduce reliance on crops which could go bad due to increasing droughts.

- Improved efficiency within urban areas, attempt to use urban planning to push the limits here. By doing so, get more people walking, better public transit, less suburban sprawl, etc.

It seems that 70 plus percent of the members within this forum hold your "wait and see (too late!), consensus doesn't matter (it does), quote all the quack sites (brainwashing), there is no consensus (false), it's the sun (debunked), melting icebergs won't raise the sea level (irrelevant as if there were no glacial calving), fail to see the lies (Oregon Petition, Frederick Seitz), do not understand the general science at all (why don't you pick up a book on ice ages, or something, for god sakes), don't acknowledge ice albedo feedback loops (more failure on your part), fail to realize the potential damages (changing precipitation patterns, extinctions from inability for species to relocate when they hit barriers), and the Earth will heal (sure, but it's now that counts)" attitude.  

Yes, some of the rebuning reactors are pretty neat looking, but I'm a bit more enamored of the sealed pebble-bed idea, so you can drop 40-100Mw wherever you need it and no servicing is required for 40 years. (IIRC on the numbers)

Gamification is a huge tool, as we move from a society where labor was king, to one where capital is king (robot workers support humanity type scenario) I really think that more and more people will be concerned with play than work, the "Game of Life" might have a whole new meaning.


I would use the word heuristic, indicator is ok I suppose. Wouldn't you agree that if we have substantive predictions from the models that are easy to understand that the layperson need no longer rely on such heuristics? Real science doesn't rely on credibility beyond that the data is not fraudulent, since it predicts things.

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Apparently "indicator" has a jargon use that I'm not familiar with. Heuristic is a bit more specific than I was looking for and it tends to mean that the decider performed some physical investigation or measurement themselves. In this case they are polling those who have done the measurements (or who have polled those who have done the measurements) in order to get a level of confidence and make a decision.

That would require the layman to be able to comprehend the models with a level of detail that is not generally taught. This is not an "appeal to authority" because we are trusting an aggregate group of folks in competition with each other, not a single source. Unfortunately the predictions and results of global warming are not "the sky will turn green at 5PM on tuesday" clear, so we are going to have experts both predicting, and measuring their (and their competitions) predictions. We simply don't have the ability to perceive globally on an individual basis, so taking an aggregate opinion is pretty important.


OK, but the point was, this method is for analyzing 100% stochastic systems, not deterministic ones, it has been misapplied. I also have some doubts about that second sentence, on the surface it seems unlikely that you can factor in the massive influences we understand on the climate and still be stuck at 50/50. I don't need to know the initial point, exact impact angle, or velocity for a baseball to know that if it is hit it will likely go forward, but there is a small chance it might go backwards or straight up.

Most of these are great ideas. I especially like the first one. For nuclear power, have you looked into LFTR? It even eats old waste as fuel.

I would use the word heuristic, indicator is ok I suppose. Wouldn't you agree that if we have substantive predictions from the models that are easy to understand that the layperson need no longer rely on such heuristics? Real science doesn't rely on credibility beyond that the data is not fraudulent, since it predicts things.



This is confused. The actual direction of a 100% stochastic process is 50/50. The actual direction of a deterministic process is obviously not 50/50. However, when there are various unknown initial parameters and relationships between parameters it is 50/50 from the perspective of the investigator.

That is a big responsibility so I would not be able to make snap decisions, but here are some short-list actions.

-Make sure that everyone knows that they DO have an impact on the environment and provide tools to self-determine your impact. Gamification of personal reductions with prizes/awards for those that are willing to go above and beyond. (PoC (Proof of Conservation?)
-Reduce emissions where possible, I like a market based approach similar to cap and trade, but it's not perfect. Removing the perception of political bias and preventing off shoring of entire industries is critical a global scale.
-Reduce incident radiation where possible, multiple technologies available including sulfur injection and mirror arrays, but most of them require such large numbers to be effective that multiple will have to be used in parallel to have a large enough impact very soon. (this would also reduce the chances of a "runaway" effect that we cannot correct for, if the sulfur injection estimates are off we can re-position the mirrors to compensate (and maybe even help with storm control as well))
-Encourage non-fuel use of petroleum and ban/limit feed-stock biodiesel while incentivising landfill owners, ranchers and others to capture and convert what they can.
-Encourage older buildings to be updated and reduce emissions by 40%
-Encourage local efforts for green streets and homes
-Fast-track a Mars mission with a goal of 1000 permanent inhabitants by 2045 and over 1 million by 2070.
-Mandate a highly functional transit system in every major city, and encourage folks to live closer to work (I actually like this one for fostering communities as well)
-Require the full lifecycle impact of a new vehicle technology be within 90% of state of the art, shipping battery packs for a new Prius around the  world a couple times might not be the best plan, some manufacturing should be better distributed to reduce this (hard drives, other tech that has built a single global center that produces more than 60-70% of world consumption.
-Enact distance-based tariffs on food that could be obtained locally at a slightly higher price. (exceptions of you get products from point A to B by sailing or other low/zero emissions method)
-Significant expansion of Solar, Wind, Hydro, and Nuclear power (and finally get around to doing something with the waste on the last one)
-accelerate deployment of hydrogen power for cases where electric is not going to work.
-require carbon sink rigs be used to offset a significant portion of (then current) production.

A lot of this is happening already, at least at the research level, just without the urgency that I would feel it important to insist on. I've encountered other ideas, but these are the ones that came to the top of my mind. I think I hit all the major areas, but I was just going off the top of my head.

I'm going to ask you the same thing I did FA, and he ignored:
You have just been elected world dictator, and presented with irrefutable evidence that not only is global warming happening, but it is happening through human action.

What do you do to fix it?

You also consistently ignore every point that could prove you wrong.

Done.

FYI, you called me an idiot last week, I'm returning the favor with a lot more detail.

Oh maybe you really should put me on ignore since you are continuing to insult me. I have no problem with reading your insults, I just won't respond to them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13gene.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

We are getting a LOT closer than you think, I have a friend who used her own immune system to kill (metastasized) pancreatic cancer that would have been fatal 20 years ago.

Climate science is not new, we've been doing "real science" for decades. Same with gravitation, solar astronomy, thermodynamics, and a other disciplines that can give us a very good approximation of the answers, even if we don't understand all the details. All by itself the cherry-picking of 8 out of 100 orbital bodies should allow you to see the deception that is being attempted, there are a lot more examples.

Expecting politics to push science in the right direction is like expecting a pig to push the button on it's own bolt gun. Science generally FORCES our leaders to change by prooving that they are wrong (and in a democracy, getting enough constituents riled up,) but with the current crop of ideologues that refuse to give an inch on any point of dogma (no matter how much evidence is presented) we will be a long time waiting for some of them to come around.

I think you are either a troll or an idiot who cannot pay attention to the current state of the art and is willing to talk out of your ass to avoid being wrong. That is why I'm close putting you back on ignore, and people always threaten it because you act like a big fucking troll or an absolute idiot much of the time as your "deep yellow" link shows. If you have not figured it out by now, I most likely can't help, but I gave it a shot. Up until this conversation I had thought that this was a moderators troll-shill account, now I'm not sure, it might be the other option.

I said it earlier, this is not about "belief" it is about "scientific consensus" take a look at the literature and the VAST majority of it will fall in one direction, take a good hard look and the anti-science and pseudo-science stuff will start to look ridiculous and sometimes borderline delusional.

What it is always with threatening ignore with you people when you disagree on something I typed?

Maybe cancer wasn't the best example, my impression is that besides threating the symptoms and removing the affected areas of the body (which doesn't always work) there is not much we can do.
In the medieval ages they had treatments for "fever" too if I may bring up another analogy... But a cure NFW!

Really? Cancer? You are going to use a disease that we have been battling for years and have made good progress on (>1.6% reduction in mortality every year since 1979 in the US) and actually understand a lot of things about? Childhood Leukemia has an 80% cure rate with low remission, and non-melanoma skin cancers are not even counted in most cancer incidence statistics anymore since they are easily cured on 2-3 million people every year.

I don't know WTF you mean by "real research" but I'm pretty sure that thousands of folks would give you a beat-down for discounting their lifelong contributions.

We understand a lot more about the universe than you seem to realize, maybe you should step outside of Plato's cave sometimes.

I guess I was wrong about taking you off of ignore. You and Bill O'Riley can go back to scratching your heads about why the tides happen.

Exactly.

IMO we simply don't know enough about our planet and the universe to draw a conclusion such as global warming is caused by us or not. I think we cannot know it the same way as we cannot know how to cure cancer.
There isn't enough research (By that I mean real research not throwing publications at each other in order to "prove" ones point of view.)

But there won't be any real research as long as it is a political issue. This is just how the society works, sadly.

We care about scientific consensus because it is an indicator that the layman can use to determine if a scientist is in the mainstream of his field or a whackjob on the fringe (or in another field entirely.) Even if they can't agree on all the particulars, many folks have been predicting additional melting, and some have not. Those that have not have been moved out of the consensus view over time and are now on the fringe, but in the 80's it was not as certain and they were part of the consensus that said "we don't know what it will look like in 30 years" until they started getting a better picture. Additionally we are never going to have 1 "perfect climate model" so running multiple models and combining the results is another type of consensus that might have been intended.

Unfortunately some folks refuse to believe that their pet theory could be wrong, and think that 98% of the scientists must have an agenda to destroy it. These folks a) do not understand scientific consensus and b) are fooling themselves if they think that thousands of academics CAN get along well enough for a conspiracy work, and not leak like a sieve.

Predicting the direction of something is 50/50 in a random-walk model, when did you prove this earlier? In a model with causation you generally can predict the direction and magnitude with some level of certainty (and you should be able to generate some error bars as well.)

Thanks for the link BTW, good one, it looks like some of the models have been updated more than others, I'm seeing a lot of concern that the IPCC might rely more heavily on the ones that are not predicting an ice-free arctic anytime soon, we'll have to see when the report comes out. Given the size and makeup of the body it actually is fairly conservative, even if some folks would have you think otherwise.

Yeah, showing a 30 year graph when a season is 40 years long is not exactly the best idea. I'm sure most statisticians would freak out pretty badly when they realize you don't even have 1 complete sample, let alone enough to draw conclusions from.

If the planets were consistent this would be a boring universe. There really is no reason they SHOULD be consistent unless there really IS a warming effect from the SUN or other system-wide influence. It should also fall off by the square of the distance and have a lesser impact (ignoring albedo and a lot of other stuff, granted, but square laws add up over millions of miles) and be something that is consistent across all the planets, not just 8 of 100. There is also the minor detail of REDUCED solar output as the sun is going through a cooling trend ATM.

Calling these explanations "excuses" implies that you don't believe them, is that the case?

This sounds absurd to me. Who cares about consensus. The models predict something, we see if it occurs. Predicting the direction of something is 50/50 a priori. Is this the paper you are referring to?:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/models-are-improving-but-can-they-catch-up.html

You're right. They didn't predict that the Arctic ice would melt as fast as it is. But they have been consistently predicting it with an increasing consensus for forty or so years. Myrkul of course likes to pull one of his deniers' memes from his ass about how they were predicting a coming ice age in the '70s, but that's just the deniers picking up on the fact that there was a paper or two published by a few scientists back then, totally ignoring the fact that many more scientists were on board with global warming.

I actually like statistics, its just almost no scientist receives proper training (me included) but then still feel that they are qualified to use stats and draw conclusions from their results.

Yes I've seen that too.

There are bunch of excuses for other planets in there too, all of them different. Not really that consistent.

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics," eh?