Thread: First oil, then warming, now ..cooling?

  1. #16
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom View Post
    In all admittance, the only real change I've noticed in the weather is the fact that it's been fluctuating greater than I've ever remembered. In New York it's been going from 12F one day to 60F the next. I don't remember any deltas that great in my life.
    Seconded. I believe that this is the real problem. For all the stupid observations made in this thread, (sorry) it doesn't really matter if the winters stay cold or the summers stay hot. If you want my anecdote, Michigan almost beat the all-time record for annual snowfall in late November-December. As normal as that may seem, normally we aren't close to it until late January. What scares me more than what the television and everyone in this thread seems to be focusing on is the end of seasons. It's hardly scientific either, but I remember celebrating my sister's birthdays in April a few years ago and it would be snowing out. It wasn't even normal then before the mass hysteria.

    And a couple years ago it got really warm like it was supposed to when spring starts, but then it got cold, and nearly frosted over the plants again. We had freezing rain I think. Though they have a different expectation for winter, it happened in California too, and that made citrus expensive. The seasons should be like clockwork and they haven't lately here.
    Last edited by whiteflags; 12-29-2008 at 07:35 AM.

  2. #17
    the hat of redundancy hat nvoigt's Avatar
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    25 years ago, people in Germany panicked over "waldsterben". All the woods will die in about 25-30 years because of acidic rain. Yeah. Like hell. As an allergic person, I'd like to know where this "waldsterben" is that they kinda promised? Those green stuff is still happily procreating in public. Damn it.
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  3. #18
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    I think it's a problem that people think things stop being problems when they aren't reported on the news. Doesn't mean I'll believe what they say, but if you have to scare people to get them to pick up their trash or care about the environment, then maybe we need to revisit our priorities, and drop political leanings while we're at it.

  4. #19
    Why am I a programmer? shoutatchickens's Avatar
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    As long as I can remember the weather in Alabama has always been rediculously bad at being cold one day and hot the next. This past week it was in the teens at the beginning of the week and in the 70s by christmas. That's how it's always been here, but it seems that when something becomes an issue you hear about on the news you just process that temperature change differently in your mind. It could be that weather hasn't changed much at all, it's just our interpretation has changed because of the warnings we hear in the news.

    Which I guess is a downside of how information is passed in this day and time. It's kind of like a giant exagerated version of a rumor. It starts out as, "Jim got a new cow" and winds up being "Jim is leaving his wife for a younger woman!" Or some such nonsense ^_^

  5. #20
    Dr Dipshi++ mike_g's Avatar
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    25 years ago, people in Germany panicked over "waldsterben". All the woods will die in about 25-30 years because of acidic rain. Yeah. Like hell. As an allergic person, I'd like to know where this "waldsterben" is that they kinda promised? Those green stuff is still happily procreating in public. Damn it.
    Yeah, that prompted germany and other EU countires to stop using coal as its main source of power. This has greatly reduced the acidity in the rain compared to what it was in the 80s. While claiming that all trees would be dead by now sounds like scaremongering, there is no better way to get stupid people to do something than to fill them full of fear. Anyway, that was an avoidable problem; same as that other problem with CFCs, we just stopped producing them and the problem went away. With CO2 the situation is different because we cant stop creating it.
    Last edited by mike_g; 12-29-2008 at 09:23 AM.

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    Climate changes should be measured by the span of decades, not a year or two.

  7. #22
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Climate changes should be measured by the span of decades, not a year or two.
    Precisely. And this is why all these 'theories' should never be taken as fact prior to substantial scientific proof.

    2 cool years does not a climate trend create. I would even say 30 years does not a climate trend create. Hundreds of years might produce a climate trend. So in essence we do not have enough factually recorded data about our own climate to make dire or non-dire predictions. This is a problem of theory being fact long before the theory is proven.

    Let's hope we don't continue to make laws based on unproven theories that could have huge economic impacts. Lesson learned. I seriously doubt it. The climate religion is in too much of a full swing to just die out.

    My post, BTW, is a complete sattire of the common 'theories' being flung around about our planet.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 12-29-2008 at 11:21 AM.

  8. #23
    Why am I a programmer? shoutatchickens's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    Precisely. And this is why all these 'theories' should never be taken as fact prior to substantial scientific proof.

    2 cool years does not a climate trend create. I would even say 30 years does not a climate trend create. Hundreds of years might produce a climate trend. So in essence we do not have enough factually recorded data about our own climate to make dire or non-dire predictions. This is a problem of theory being fact long before the theory is proven.

    Let's hope we don't continue to make laws based on unproven theories that could have huge economic impacts. Lesson learned. I seriously doubt it. The climate religion is in too much of a full swing to just die out.

    My post, BTW, is a complete sattire of the common 'theories' being flung around about our planet.
    Agreed!

    We won't have to worry about any of this since 2012 is only 3 years away ^_^

  9. #24
    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    Honestly the only problem I had with the Kyoto treaty was that China could pollute as much as it wanted. I don't see a problem with a coordinated effort to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. The so called "huge economic impacts" are probably the costs to fuel trucks and other transportation that have engines with better gas mileage. Cry me a river.

    >> We won't have to worry about any of this since 2012 is only 3 years away
    The world does not end so conveniently.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    And this is why all these 'theories' should never be taken as fact prior to substantial scientific proof.
    Satirical indeed. It only takes a theory this hard to disprove for people to think it a fact. Add a pinch of fear and you're on your way to make a lot of money.

  11. #26
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom View Post
    In all admittance, the only real change I've noticed in the weather is the fact that it's been fluctuating greater than I've ever remembered. In New York it's been going from 12F one day to 60F the next. I don't remember any deltas that great in my life.
    Larger diversions and generally chaotic behavior are something you'd expect in a highly nonlinear system when you start dumping more and more energy into it.
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

  12. #27
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Larger diversions and generally chaotic behavior are something you'd expect in a highly nonlinear system when you start dumping more and more energy into it.
    Except when the medium absorbing the energy has become saturated to the point that the addition of energy results in an insignificant overall change. To attain the temperature changes stated by some you would almost have to pour in an infinite amount of heat into a substance that has scientifically been proven to have a logarithmic absorption rate. However some of the models suggested would mean that the medium (CO2) would have to have an exponential absorption rate.

    And we must agree like any other medium, gas, solid, etc. that CO2 must surely have a saturation point where it simply cannot absorb more heat which would mean that CO2 has a maximum finite and measurable amount of heat that it can trap or absorb. If we assume that CO2 can absorb an infinite amount of heat then I would love to see that equation worked out on paper.

    But overall I think most of us can see that a little information in the hands of the media is a dangerous thing indeed. They report before they research and they speak before they think. There is a huge void in the news right now of simple objective factual information. When the news begins to only report on 'what if' scenarios they have far surpassed their purpose.

    I also believe most of us can agree whether the climate is warming, cooling, dying, thriving, wet, dry, calm, stormy, etc., none of the outrageous claims or dire predictions made by any group regardless of position are warranted or even justified by scientific evidence. I can't wait until we get back to 'boring' science and move away from 'Hollywood' science because it's usually the closest to the truth.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 12-29-2008 at 06:04 PM.

  13. #28
    Officially An Architect brewbuck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    Except when the medium absorbing the energy has become saturated to the point that the addition of energy results in an insignificant overall change. To attain the temperature changes stated by some you would almost have to pour in an infinite amount of heat into a substance that has scientifically been proven to have a logarithmic absorption rate. However some of the models suggested would mean that the medium (CO2) would have to have an exponential absorption rate.
    I'm not sure where you're getting that info, nor even what the majority of your paragraph means, but for gasses at reasonable temperatures (such as in the atmosphere) the relationship between absorbed energy and temperature is linear.

    And we must agree like any other medium, gas, solid, etc. that CO2 must surely have a saturation point where it simply cannot absorb more heat which would mean that CO2 has a maximum finite and measurable amount of heat that it can trap or absorb. If we assume that CO2 can absorb an infinite amount of heat then I would love to see that equation worked out on paper.
    It has been worked out... The relationship is linear. At any rate, the concern isn't the amount of heat absorbed, but the overall temperature, which is easily seen to be rising on the graphs.
    Code:
    //try
    //{
    	if (a) do { f( b); } while(1);
    	else   do { f(!b); } while(1);
    //}

  14. #29
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    CO2 does not absorb the entire spectrum of IR and the IR radiated by the earth's surface is not solely in the CO2 absorption range. So adding energy in an area of the spectrum that CO2 does not absorb results in no net temperature gain since there is no net energy absorption gain. Just saying they are linear is a bit misleading. Perhaps linear in as much as the energy is in the absorption range but definitely not linear with respect to the bigger picture of total amount of energy absorbed. The temperature effects of atmospheric CO2 are logarithmic, not linear, and certainly not exponential.

    As well the earth does not radiate limitless amounts of energy and thus CO2 must compete with clouds and water vapor for available energy to absorb. There isn't an infinite energy budget and all the energy is not absorbed by one little gas. So the accumulation of one simple gas does not mean that we will have a net temperature gain since it does not absorb all the available energy in the first place. If one gas was increased AND all radiated energy was in the that gas's energy absorption range then you would have a completely linear absorption rate and a linear change in temperature. However that is simply not the case here. And I would be interested to see exactly how you find the absolute mean surface air temperature of the entire planet.

    But like I said I'm not for or against. I am on erring on the side of "let's know what we are doing before we pass expensive policies to fix a problem that either isn't fixable, isn't a problem, or isn't something we fully understand."

    I believe there are huge holes on both sides of the debate and that ultimately we just don't know yet. We know what we have observed but we don't fully know why we have observed it. By the time we figure out the why the observations will have changed. I'm not going to get into the smear tactics that have been employed by both sides. I'm merely stating that this is not a closed debate and you are not a moron if you do believe humans are causing it no more than if you don't believe humans are causing it. If you are saying the theories are facts and that the scientific debate is over on this then you are not very scientific.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 12-29-2008 at 11:49 PM.

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