In Case of Power Outage



  • During the big Snowpocalypse blizzard here in Washington, DC, the local CBS station had some helpful hints crawling along the bottom of the screen, including what to do if your power is out:

    Don't heat your home with cooking grills.
    Use multiple blankets to stay warm at night.
    Avoid opening your refrigerator to keep the food cold longer.
    A generator can power your television and converter box.

    Sound advice, but I think they missed their target audience.



  • @AlpineR said:

    CBS station helpful hints

    Avoid opening your refrigerator to keep the food cold longer.

    How hard is it to keep food cold during a blizzard?



  • Surely I'm not the only one that realizes that the messages were in case your power GOES out, not in case it IS out. They're hoping that you notice and remember the tips when and if the time comes.



  • @AlpineR said:

    A generator can power your television and converter box.

     

    I think they hit their intended audience spot-on.



  • @AlpineR said:

    Don't heat your home with cooking grills.
    Use multiple blankets to stay warm at night.

    Sound advice indeed. Right up there with "Don't cut your own head off with a power saw as this can lead to an advanced state of death".



  • @AlpineR said:

    During the big [b]Snowpocalypse II - The Wrath of Global Climate Change[/b] blizzard here in Washington, DC, the local CBS station had some helpful hints crawling along the bottom of the screen, including what to do if your power is out:

    FTFY



  • Global climate change? Since when is it abnormal for the northeast to get snow in February?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @rad131304 said:

    @AlpineR said:
    During the big Snowpocalypse II - The Wrath of Anthropomorphic Global Climate Change Warming blizzard here in Washington, DC, the local CBS station had some helpful hints crawling along the bottom of the screen, including what to do if your power is out:

    FTFY
    HTH, HAND.



  • @PJH said:

    @rad131304 said:
    @AlpineR said:
    During the big Snowpocalypse II - The Wrath of Anthropomorphic Anthropogenic Global Climate Change Warming blizzard here in Washington, DC, the local CBS station had some helpful hints crawling along the bottom of the screen, including what to do if your power is out:

    FTFY
    HTH, HAND.

    HTHY. HAND.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Bugger. At least I got the first three syllables right.



  • @renalexam said:

    Global climate change? Since when is it abnormal for the northeast to get snow in February?

    1) DC/VA are considered the mid-atlantic and not the northeast. 

    2) In recent years, almost 3 feet of snow (Regan National Airport recorded 32 inches of snowfall) in one winter is abnormal for DC/VA, let alone for the second time in one winter to have what the region would refer to as a "blizzard".

    3) i guess i needed to end that post with </sarcasm> or some other reference to point out that I was mocking that, amidst "global warming", we experienced two of the largest snowstorms in DC in the past 100 years in the same winter? </devil's advocate>



  • @rad131304 said:

    3) i guess i needed to end that post with </sarcasm> or some other reference to point out that I was mocking that, amidst "global warming", we experienced two of the largest snowstorms in DC in the past 100 years in the same winter? </devil's advocate>

    That's why the term "global warming" is sort of falling out of favor and being replaced by "climate change" these days.  Because of people who don't get it making statements like that.  Global warming is one of several related problems, and probably the most significant one, but it's not the only issue being caused by the destabilization of our climate cycles.



  • Anthropomorphic climate change? Climate change in the form of a man?

    I guess Vishnu had his share of avatars back in the day, but this is ridiculous!



  • @fennec said:

    Anthropomorphic climate change? Climate change in the form of a man?

    I guess Vishnu had his share of avatars back in the day, but this is ridiculous!

    Or maybe a Captain Planet villain?



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    That's why the term "global warming" is sort of falling out of favor and being replaced by "climate change" these days.  Because of people who don't get it making statements like that.  Global warming is one of several related problems, and probably the most significant one, but it's not the only issue being caused by the destabilization of our climate cycles.

    In other words "people caught on to the bullshit we were feeding them so we had to change names".

    See also: Philip Morris/Altria, Comcast/Xfinity, sExiChiK15/belgariontheking...



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    In other words "people caught on to the bullshit we were feeding them so we had to change names".
    Alternatively, “our attempt to oversimplify a massively complex issue to raise public awareness has backfired horribly”.



  • @snover said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    In other words "people caught on to the bullshit we were feeding them so we had to change names".
    Alternatively, “our attempt to oversimplify 30 years of research in a massively complex group of scientific disciplines that all contradict our issue to raise public awareness silence any skeptics has backfired horribly”.

     

    There, FTFY.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    That's why the term "global warming" is sort of falling out of favor and being replaced by "climate change" these days.  Because of people who don't get it making statements like that.  Global warming is one of several related problems, and probably the most significant one, but it's not the only issue being caused by the destabilization of our climate cycles.

    So, you missed the whole </devil's advocate> thing, huh ....



  • @Aaron said:

    @snover said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    In other words "people caught on to the bullshit we were feeding them so we had to change names".
    Alternatively, “our attempt to oversimplify 30 years of research in a massively complex group of scientific disciplines that all contradict our issue to raise public awareness silence any skeptics has backfired horribly”.

     

    There, FTFY.

     

    (Self-contradiction by editorial cartoon?)



  • @rad131304 said:

    So, you missed the whole </devil's advocate> thing, huh ....
     

    No, I saw it.  But apparently it was a bit ambiguous as to which side you were casting in the role of the devil.



  • @snover said:

    http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Editorial-Cartoons/G373,S81137

    LOL, yes, because reducing carbon dioxide output is going to make cleaner water and more livable cities.  And using crappier, more expensive energy sources will magically create new wealth and jobs.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    @rad131304 said:

    So, you missed the whole </devil's advocate> thing, huh ....
     

    No, I saw it.  But apparently it was a bit ambiguous as to which side you were casting in the role of the devil.

    So, I either don't believe in sarcasm, or I understand how an increase in AGT leads to changes in climate, including an increase in severe weather events (I wouldn't characterize this winter as colder than others - IMO, besides the snow, it's been relatively mild).



  • @rad131304 said:

    @Mason Wheeler said:

    @rad131304 said:

    So, you missed the whole </devil's advocate> thing, huh ....
     

    No, I saw it.  But apparently it was a bit ambiguous as to which side you were casting in the role of the devil.

    So, I either don't believe in sarcasm, or I understand how an increase in AGT leads to changes in climate, including an increase in severe weather events (I wouldn't characterize this winter as colder than others - IMO, besides the snow, it's been relatively mild).

     

    And it hasn't been particularly snowy everywhere.  Out here where I am, (Seattle,) we haven't had any snow at all.  Maybe one day with a particularly heavy frost, but aside from that it's been like one big extended autumn.

    Of course, last winter was just insane, but that one *does* seem to be cyclical.  They say we historically get heavy winters like that every 20 years or so, and the last one was in 1990.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    And it hasn't been particularly snowy everywhere
     

    Of course. Half the world is in summer! It has been heatwaving down here. Some parts have had temperatures in the 40s (°C) for weeks at a time. Plus the winter just gone was really mild: we had our hottest August day ever, for example.



  •  OH, and chat to the people in Vancouver, where they are trying to hold a Winter Olympic Games, in conditions more appropriate for Beach Volleyball than skating how this Global Warming thing is working out for them.



  • (I wouldn't characterize this winter as colder than others - IMO, besides the snow, it's been relatively mild).
    Anecdotal.

    And it hasn't been particularly snowy everywhere.  Out here where I am, (Seattle,) we haven't had any snow at all.  Maybe one day with a particularly heavy frost, but aside from that it's been like one big extended autumn.
    Anecdotal.

    It has been heatwaving down here. Some parts have had temperatures in the 40s (°C) for weeks at a time. Plus the winter just gone was really mild: we had our hottest August day ever, for example.
    Anecdotal.

    OH, and chat to the people in Vancouver, where they are trying to hold a Winter Olympic Games, in conditions more appropriate for Beach Volleyball than skating
    Anecdotal.

    1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.[1]
    2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.[2]
    3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.[3]

    Science!


  • :belt_onion:

    @snover said:

    The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.[1]
    I can play that game too, using the same data as you. Between 1918 and 1943, the average temperature rose from -0.50 °C to +0.15 °C. That's +0.26 °C per decade. We're better off now than in the interbellum. OTOH between 1940 and 1980, you would have thought we were heading for the next ice age. At least that's what I was taught in school. Luckely global warming kicked in just in time and saved us from the ice.

    What I'm saying: a statement like "temperatures have risen since the late 19th century" means nothing. The timespan is way too short. Unless you can show me the average temperatures starting from a few thousands years in the past, there is nothing we can correctly conclude.

     



  • @snover said:

    (I wouldn't characterize this winter as colder than others - IMO, besides the snow, it's been relatively mild).
    Anecdotal.

    And it hasn't been particularly snowy everywhere.  Out here where I am, (Seattle,) we haven't had any snow at all.  Maybe one day with a particularly heavy frost, but aside from that it's been like one big extended autumn.
    Anecdotal.

    It has been heatwaving down here. Some parts have had temperatures in the 40s (°C) for weeks at a time. Plus the winter just gone was really mild: we had our hottest August day ever, for example.
    Anecdotal.

    OH, and chat to the people in Vancouver, where they are trying to hold a Winter Olympic Games, in conditions more appropriate for Beach Volleyball than skating
    Anecdotal.

    1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.[1]
    2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.[2]
    3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.[3]

    Science!

    I can play the wikipedia game too ....

    The Little Ice Age by anthropology professor <FONT color=#002bb8>Brian Fagan</FONT> of the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells of the plight of European peasants during the 1300 to 1850 chill: <FONT color=#002bb8>famines</FONT>, <FONT color=#002bb8>hypothermia</FONT>, <FONT color=#ba0000>bread riots</FONT>, and the rise of despotic leaders brutalizing an increasingly dispirited peasantry. In the late 17th century, writes Fagan, agriculture had dropped off so dramatically that "Alpine villagers lived on bread made from ground nutshells mixed with barley and oat flour." <FONT color=#002bb8>Finland</FONT> lost perhaps a third of its population to starvation and disease.<FONT size=2><FONT color=#002bb8>[24]</FONT></FONT> Historian <FONT color=#ba0000>Wolfgang Behringer</FONT> has linked intensive <FONT color=#002bb8>witch-hunting</FONT> episodes in Europe to agricultural failures during the Little Ice Age.<FONT size=2><FONT color=#002bb8>[25]</FONT></FONT>

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

    So this "little ice age", which didn't end until the mid-19th century, might skew your results a little - just sayin.



  • @Mason Wheeler said:

    And it hasn't been particularly snowy everywhere.  Out here where I am, (Seattle,) we haven't had any snow at all.  Maybe one day with a particularly heavy frost, but aside from that it's been like one big extended autumn.
     

    And we can mock all of those wags who made fun of Seattle when it completely shut down in the snowstorm last year! Much like the east cost is completely shutting-down while we speak.

    Mock!



  • The great thing about claiming "climate change" as opposed to "cooling" (1970s) or "warming" (1990s) is that you can't be wrong.  The climate is always changing!

    In other words, "fuck if I know if it's getting warmer or cooler, but it's damn well gonna do something, so we'll just keep revising our model when it happens and claim that it'll work for the future if it worked for the past."

    Imagine a stream of random numbers coming from a "black box" random number generator, and you print out the first 100 results.  It's completely within the realm of possibility to come up with a non-trivial algorithm that will generate that exact sequence of 100 numbers.  Will it be right for the next 100?  Maybe, but the chances are infinitessimal that picked the exact same algorithm.

    Studying temporally-correlated data and developing a model that predicts the past does not mean it will predict the future.  You have to actually test the model against actual future data.  So far, every single AGW/Climate Change model has completely failed to predict anything of significance (except "the weather's gonna chaaaange, just you wait!").  Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."  I can make better predictions than that for the stock market.



  • @Aaron said:

    Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."  I can make better predictions than that for the stock market.
     

    Wow, that's just amazingly stupid and ignorant. 

    The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year.  Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.  You need to look at longer trends. Look at the past data, between 1900 and 1910 the temperature dropped steadily there too.  But, since 1900 to present, the average temperature overall is rising.  There isn't some smooth exponential or logarithmic curve that models the data.  Although, if I created one in Matlab for you, and it showed a steady increase (which it would), would you believe it then, or place it under Government conspiracy?




  • @amischiefr said:

    @Aaron said:

    Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."  I can make better predictions than that for the stock market.
     

    Wow, that's just amazingly stupid and ignorant. 

    The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year.  Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.  You need to look at longer trends. Look at the past data, between 1900 and 1910 the temperature dropped steadily there too.  But, since 1900 to present, the average temperature overall is rising.  There isn't some smooth exponential or logarithmic curve that models the data.  Although, if I created one in Matlab for you, and it showed a steady increase (which it would), would you believe it then, or place it under Government conspiracy?


    Clearly we should trust temperature measurements from 1880 to be both a representative sample and accurate to the tenth of a degree.



  • @amischiefr said:

    The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year.  Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.

    It proves nothing except that the predictions of more warming were wrong.  I wasn't using 10 years of data in an attempt to prove that global temperatures were permanently trending down.  Pretty big difference there bucko.

    You need to look at longer trends. Look at the past data, between 1900 and 1910 the temperature dropped steadily there too.  But, since 1900 to present, the average temperature overall is rising.

    Interesting that you say we need to look at longer trends and yet you stop at 1880 (which is what just about every other enviroweenie does).  Why stop there?  We do have data on this.  That is the 30 years of science I was referring to in my original reply.  As I mentioned rather explicitly above - geology, solar dynamics, and several other natural sciences have shown that there is a distinct solar cycle (1500 years) to global temperatures, and additional local minima and maxima caused by the earth itself (not the atmosphere you dummy, the core).  To speculate that mankind is even capable of seriously disturbing these cycles is pure folly. We are, in fact, in the warming cycle right now, and it stands to reason that will continue - for a while.

    The irony is that the cycle also leads to dramatic cooling (that's why it's a cycle, duh), so in another 500 years, if the human race is still around, the enviroweenies can then point to that as a sign of "destabilization" of the global temperatures.  Even though people who actually work in real sciences have known for a long time now that these cycles occur naturally.

    Check this out:

    Solar Activity Proxies

    Notice anything?  Yeah, that's us, in 2000.  The earth's been getting hotter because the sun's been getting really friggin' hot.  Whodathunkit?  Crazy eh!?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @amischiefr said:

    @Aaron said:

    Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."  I can make better predictions than that for the stock market.
     

    Wow, that's just amazingly stupid and ignorant. 

    The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year.  Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.  You need to look at longer trends. Look at the past data, between 1900 and 1910 the temperature dropped steadily there too.  But, since 1900 to present, the average temperature overall is rising.  There isn't some smooth exponential or logarithmic curve that models the data.  Although, if I created one in Matlab for you, and it showed a steady increase (which it would), would you believe it then, or place it under Government conspiracy?


    Clearly we should trust temperature measurements from 1880 to be both a representative sample and accurate precise to the tenth of a degree.

    FTFY - precision is the number of decimal places, accuracy is the width of the standard deviation .... 

    More importantly: clearly we should trust a graph of a data set that has been normalized by some measurement/calculation that has subsequently been removed thereby obfuscating the original scientific measurement that might have allowed us to readily agree or disagree with the author's conclusions. 



  • @Aaron said:

    @snover said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    In other words "people caught on to the bullshit we were feeding them so we had to change names".
    Alternatively, “our attempt to oversimplify 30 years of research in a massively complex group of scientific disciplines that all contradict our issue to raise public awareness silence any skeptics has backfired horribly”.

     

    There, FTFY.

     

    Morbs to Aaron. Aaron makes a brilliant move.. he shoots..  he SCORES!!!!  Aaron with a nifty goal and a great assist from Morbius. Whoa Nelly!



  • @AlpineR said:


    A generator can power your television and converter box.

    Sound advice, but I think they missed their target audience.

     

    The point of the original poster is this: the "advice" is self-serving.  That when you have a generator, of all the choices you have to provide power for,  the BEST thing to power is your TV and converter box, so that we (the TV station) can continue to get revenue.

     



  • @dogbrags said:

    so that we (the TV station) can continue to get revenue.

    You do realize that the TV station has no way of knowing if your TV is turned on, right? Or what channel you're tuned into. Also, they don't get revenue directly based on how many people are watching, they get revenue through advertising. Unless the entire station went down it's unlikely that an advertiser would pay less because a portion of the audience was without power.



  • @negativeview said:

    @dogbrags said:
    so that we (the TV station) can continue to get revenue.

    You do realize that the TV station has no way of knowing if your TV is turned on, right? Or what channel you're tuned into. Also, they don't get revenue directly based on how many people are watching, they get revenue through advertising. Unless the entire station went down it's unlikely that an advertiser would pay less because a portion of the audience was without power.

     

    Oh, get real.  Next, you'll be telling me that websites don't have a way ot tracking what pages you look at, or how long you .look at them.  (LOL)

    Seriously, do you really think a tv station would suggest that you plug in your RADIO?



  • With a webpage you contact a server and request for the data to be sent to just you.

    With TV the data is broadcast to everyone at all times and they sell you hardware to decode the signal. They have no way of knowing if your hardware is turned on, or what settings it is turned to. Now, with things like TiVO they may be getting some data back, but a "converter box" was specifically mentioned, and those are NOT smart. Every channel is being sent on the wire coming into your house at all times.

    No, they aren't likely to suggest that you turn on a radio. And yes, they should. But that would be admitting that you can get just as good information elsewhere, which might affect their revenue in the long term. But it's about four levels removed from directly affecting their bottom line. First, you'd have to have someone that only ever thought of TV to begin thinking of something else. Then they would have to do it. Then they would have to participate in a Neilsen rating. Then the advertisers would have to negotiate for a lower rate based on lower ratings.

    Wikipedia on Nielsen Ratings

    That's what the industry goes by, and what advertising rates are determined by. The only devices they have go in *select* homes. I've been asked to participate once in my life, it's not something that a random person is likely to have ever actually done, therefore their watching patterns don't (directly) affect anything. (No, I didn't do it).



  • @rad131304 said:

    FTFY - precision is the number of decimal places, accuracy is the width of the standard deviation .... 

    I originally wrote precise then changed it to accurate because I figured that was plainer English and I didn't want to start a statistics wankfest.

     

    @rad131304 said:

    More importantly: clearly we should trust a graph of a data set that has been normalized by some measurement/calculation that has subsequently been removed thereby obfuscating the original scientific measurement that might have allowed us to readily agree or disagree with the author's conclusions. 

    Agreed.  I have further reservations, too, like the samples themselves often being too small, the normalization done by people who stand to lose grant money if the numbers don't show warming, the fact that even if there is warming the causal link to CO2 is weak, the fact that even if man-made CO2 really is causing global "climate change" that it is bad planning to reduce carbon now at the cost of economic and technological growth--in 30 years we'd be much better positioned to massively reverse warming cheaply, etc..  The reason I didn't bring them up is because it's no longer a scientific debate, it's pure ideology.  The scientific pieces will continue to fall into place, the warming alarmists will continue to whine and as long as nations like the US, China and India actually care about economic growth no major policy is likely to be enacted.  People in the US are just too skeptical and distrustful of "scientists" who have been repeatedly shown to have no ethical problem with lying, manipulating data and attempting to stifle legitimate criticism.  So, let the idiots whine and pour their own money down the toilet on trendy, liberal-guilt-assauging "green" purchases.  Let the real science continue to develop.



  • @dogbrags said:

    Oh, get real.  Next, you'll be telling me that websites don't have a way ot tracking what pages you look at, or how long you .look at them.  (LOL)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @rad131304 said:

    FTFY - precision is the number of decimal places, accuracy is the width of the standard deviation .... 

    I originally wrote precise then changed it to accurate because I figured that was plainer English and I didn't want to start a statistics wankfest.

    And in this case, either one is probably equally correct.


  • Hate to be the only actual scientist posting about this kind of thing (a physicist), for those of you who can shut the fuck up for long enough to listen to what a scientist has to say...  But I can tell you (not that anyone ever listens) that no competent physicist I know takes anything (on either "side") of the global warming / climate change "debate" any more seriously than we take a crazy guy at the park.  There are no "sides" or "debate" (in the sense of what the media does) in properly done science.  There's only what the facts say. The only kind of debate that can exist are about things like "what's the best way to solve this problem" or "what's the best way to analyze the data" etc.

    Sadly, a lot of "climate science" is not done by good science thanks to a combination politics, hippy environmentalists with agendas, and top people being involved in more interesting fields. A lot of it is good, though, but you'll never hear about good stuff in the media.

    At any rate, the interesting (and scientific) questions to ask are not retarded first grader questions like the ones you hear in the media, but smart questions like "what is the difference in the fraction of energy absorbed by the atmosphere from an x% change in y compared to z?"  That is, the meaningful things to think about are how something well-defined changes compared to a reference strength--how much energy is absorbed from increasing CO2 by some amount compared to, say, a unit increase in solar energy, or albedo or something else.  In this way you understand the relative strengths of effects properly.

    You also want to ask questions about all the complicated feedbacks, since every parameter in your theory (a priori) depends on every other with the same relative strength (fucking learn what a priori means when a scientist uses it before bitching that this isn't true).  Then you have to do the kind of analysis similar to the one above to determine the actual relative strengths in feedbacks in your system.  This is very hard to do properly and isn't understood well.  The canonical example is how poorly clouds are modeled in these theories, but there are a ton more, such as how much bacteria in the environment can effect concentrations of various gasses in various ways (we don't even know within a few orders of magnitude how much of this kind of biomass there is, although IIRC we do know some subsets of it fairly well, etc.

    There are a bunch of other (a priori) very large systematic effects that are poorly understood, but my point isn't to try to enumerate them, but to point out that the theoretical background for predictions in climate science is very shaky. 

    Of course, there's nothing wrong with having crappy models, sometimes that's the best you can do.  But good science is when you say "these modes suck, let's tear them apart and find out how to fix its problems."  Bad science is when you claim your crappy model (or even your moderately good model) predicts anything that has to do with reality.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Agreed.  I have further reservations, too, like the samples themselves often being too small, the normalization done by people who stand to lose grant money if the numbers don't show warming

     There is fairly good evidence there is "warming" in the same kind of sense that "it's warmer in the afternoon than at night."  The question is not that there's recent warming, but what the warming means, what's its relative strength, what are well-defined quantities it effects which we can measure, what things does it effect in what ways and what directions, etc.

    the fact that even if there is warming the causal link to CO2 is weak

     It's almost nonexistent in the general sense.  It is known from experiments with boxes of gas in labs and with recently done theoretical calculations that the leading term in how CO2 concentration affects temperature is logarithmic in concentration.  However, this strongly disagrees with naive calculations you can make with historical data.  You can find periods in Earth's history where the CO2 concentration is ~10 times higher, but the temperature is about what it is now.  You can also find periods where the concentration is higher, but temperature is less, or concentration is lower and temperature is higher.  This indicates that there are other factors significantly more important than CO2 concentration that aren't well understood.  We can make guesses as to what these factors are but without a good theoretical model any guess like this is doomed to be very poor, and most likely deeply stupid.

    the fact that even if man-made CO2 really is causing global "climate change"

    The official review articles that are using the best theoretical models predict a warming caused by human CO2 of about (1 degree C +/- 1 degree C)/century (random error only, systematic errors largely unknown).  This is very tiny compared to the naive order one effects everything else should have (which, again, are poorly understood, and certainly have neither random nor systematic errors smaller than .1 C). So the real question is to better understand these systematic errors and other sources of errors and feedbacks, etc., to give us a useful metric to compare to which we presently lack.

    Overall, the picture in the media is analogous to the oversimplified depreciated "food chain" model where if you take out one link in the chain, the whole thing collapses, and everything on the planet dies (actual arguments used by environmentalists are like this). When the more correct model is the "food web" type approach where everything is interconnected, and eliminating one node causes a reorganization; some nodes are strongly sensitive to this reorganization, others basically don't know about it at all; the analogous question to ask in climate science is how changing this one node effects all the others, which is obviously a very hard question.  Of course, most of properly done science has understood this point for decades, and is not news to us...  However this is apparently news to some of the less-good climate scientists who get hilarious looks on their faces when you try to explain things like "equilibria" in real systems to them.

    that it is bad planning to reduce carbon now at the cost of economic and technological growth--in 30 years we'd be much better positioned to massively reverse warming cheaply, etc..

    I'm not an economist, so I can't speak for that; but I do know that typically the natural growth and replacement of technology is the only way things can happen, since real science isn't Hollywood science where someone gives an impassioned speech, and demands something MUST get done no matter how impossible it is!, and then there's a science montage, and it gets done just in the nick of time to make the plot progress.

    The reason I didn't bring them up is because it's no longer a scientific debate, it's pure ideology.  The scientific pieces will continue to fall into place, the warming alarmists will continue to whine [...]  People in the US are just too skeptical and distrustful of "scientists" who have been repeatedly shown to have no ethical problem with lying, manipulating data and attempting to stifle legitimate criticism.  So, let the idiots whine and pour their own money down the toilet on trendy, liberal-guilt-assauging "green" purchases.  Let the real science continue to develop.
     

    And people will continue to try to argue with the points I make with wikipedia because, that makes you an expert in science, right, not years of experience, or an understanding of how theories are constructed, or experiments are done... And you know, you don't NEED to be an expert to give your opinion, because everyone is allowed their opinion right?  And they can condescendingly quote come crackpot scientist who showed up on CNN because they don't know the difference between CNN and science.  And then we can all criticize my typos because if I don't have a degree in spelling how can I possibly have one in physics?

    Edit:

    Because I don't think I made it clear enough, the main point is that predictions are nonsense without a sound, well-understood theoretical model.  If you look at every scientific theory whose predictions are taken seriously, they all have a very sound, well-understood theoretical model.  No one in science takes ridiculous extrapolations, or data analysis in the total absence of theory seriously at all.  There is in fact no way to know if your data analysis is meaningful at all without at least some theoretical backing. The point is, right now, climate science lacks a good theoretical background and cannot be trusted for more than qualitative (or semi-quantitative) predictions.



  • @cfgauss said:

    Hate to be the only actual scientist posting about this kind of thing (a physicist), for those of you who can shut the fuck up for long enough to listen to what a scientist has to say...  But I can tell you (not that anyone ever listens) that no competent physicist I know takes anything (on either "side") of the global warming / climate change "debate" any more seriously than we take a crazy guy at the park.  There are no "sides" or "debate" (in the sense of what the media does) in properly done science.  There's only what the facts say. The only kind of debate that can exist are about things like "what's the best way to solve this problem" or "what's the best way to analyze the data" etc.

    Sadly, a lot of "climate science" is not done by good science thanks to a combination politics, hippy environmentalists with agendas, and top people being involved in more interesting fields. A lot of it is good, though, but you'll never hear about good stuff in the media.

    Whoa.  I think I agree with you, and I think you are sort of agreeing with me, although I'm high as fuck on cough syrup right now, so I may be confused.  Your angry rant basically hit on my major problems with climate science: it's often expressed as a simplistic dogma that is bent to serve the needs of policy (and politicians), instead of the other way around.  Also, it's a rather nascent discipline and some of it is going to be wrong.  I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert in climate science.  Nor am I saying that anthropogenic global warming isn't happening.  I just don't think there's convincing evidence that we are setting ourselves up for massive climate change by our continued production of carbon dioxide.  There are too many variables involved.

     

    It doesn't help that so much money has flooded the field in the last decade.  Nor that there are so many people who stand to make large amounts of money if the science is "settled" in one way or the other.  So many of the people I hear mouthing off about global warming are political hacks and "activists".  Even the people with PhDs sound like they are trying to sell something.  There's also the major jump from scientific finding to formal policy; just because something is scientifically valid, that doesn't mean it is good policy.  Obviously genetics is solid science, but eugenics is awful policy.  Policy requires trade-offs, compromise and flexibility.  It must work with human psychology and within the social dynamic.  Also, the sides must be clearly defined: we can reduce carbon output, but at the cost of technological and economic growth.  That growth is cumulative, so losing even a little bit every year will add up.  As I said before, it seems wiser to continue as we are now and work on solutions that can combat the problem 30 years down the road.  Simply curbing emissions is like slowing down from 80 to 40 to save gas; you'll save some gas, but you'll get to where you're going much later and there's a large opportunity cost there.  When it comes to economic impact, it won't be fun in the West, but it will really devastate developing nations.  Cap-and-trade doesn't solve this, though, because the continued advances made by the West are necessary for the growth of developing nations.  Capping the West slows technological and scientific progress there and it's not like developing nations can make up that loss with their carbon credits; they'll be using those just to catch up to the West.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @cfgauss said:

    Hate to be the only actual scientist posting about this kind of thing (a physicist)
    Argumentum ad verecundiam.



    You lost me right there. Regardless of what you have to say (and it looked a bit tfl:dr.)



  • @PJH said:

    Argumentum ad verecundiam.

    You lost me right there. Regardless of what you have to say (and it looked a bit tfl:dr.)
     

    Ad hominem & straw man in two short sentences.

    -1

    ====

    When I have some free time and the required mental fortitude, I'm just going to hunt data for a bit and put it all side by side.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    @PJH said:

    Argumentum ad verecundiam.



    You lost me right there. Regardless of what you have to say (and it looked a bit tfl:dr.)
     

    Ad hominem

    It was the "I'm a scientist, and you will listen to me" attitude in the opening sentence that rankled and put me off. Especially when the science actually mentioned wasn't climatology (relevant to the subject) but physics (not terribly relevant. Not totally irrelevant I admit, but not for claiming to be an expert on a different field.)



    Btw - are we playing fallacy trumps here? :D Does my ad verecundiam not trump ad hominem? :D



  •  as nauseum trumps everything, I think. :)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    ad nauseum trumps everything, I think. :)
    1++++++++; would repeat again.



  • @cfgauss said:

    Hate to be the only actual scientist first a$$hole who decided to brag about his degree before posting about this kind of thing (a physicist),

    FTFY

    I'd be willing to bet you aren't the only physicist, let alone scientist, who has posted in this thread.

    @cfgauss said:

    You can also find periods where the concentration is higher, but temperature is less, or concentration is lower and temperature is higher.  This indicates that there are other factors significantly more important than CO2 concentration that aren't well understood.

    Or that:

    1. CO2 levels primarily effect higher order derivatives
    2. temperature and CO2 concentrations are phase-linked but not phase-synced

    Who said the system had to be linear?


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