World class pedantic dickweedery

You are a fucking scientifically-illiterate idiot. This is the dumbest shit I have ever seen, straight up.

My dear, then pray tell me, why scientists who try to predict earthquakes don't really do science. After all, they can't very well do experiments now, can they?

Tell my why astronomers who try to predict sun flares don't really do science. They can't do experiments either, can they?

Or the guys who try to detect gravity waves. Under your definition, they're not doing science either because they can't very well create a Pulsar.

You don't need man-made experiments to do science. You create a hypothesis (with already existing data) and then, using that data and your hypothesis, you predict future events. Future events which, by the way, don't need to be created through experiments.

Or how exactly do you think our weather prediction capabilities have gotten so much better? They may not be perfect, but they're quite a bit more reliable than they used to be.

But you may proceed with the ad-hominem attacks. Just goes to show that there's no substance behind your words.

@morbiuswilters said:

CO²

That's what CO₂ looks like as it is ascending in the atmosphere.

Yes, that's all I wanted to add to this discussion.

Actually no, I want to add this: if "global warming" is what it's needed to get more investment in so-called clean energies, then I'm glad for it. I don't like breathing exhaust fumes.

PJH

@Rhywden said:

Or how exactly do you think our weather prediction capabilities have gotten so much better? They may not be perfect, but they're quite a bit more reliable than they used to be.

They're certainly better than their climate prediction capabilities.

@PJH said:

@Rhywden said:
Or how exactly do you think our weather prediction capabilities have gotten so much better? They may not be perfect, but they're quite a bit more reliable than they used to be.
They're certainly better than their climate prediction capabilities.

That's simply because climate is way more complicated. Not to mention that short-term predictions are usually more reliable than long-term predictions, especially in chaotic systems.

In a double pendulum, I can predict quite accurately what the next half-second will look like. After that, all bets are off ;)

boomzilla

@Rhywden said:

For that semi-colon thing we only have this argument of a reporter for the Daily Mail. Which is called the "Daily Fail" by a lot of people for a reason.

LOL. You couldn't be more wrong. It's an op-ed by Myles Allen. I'll grant you that the brackets thing is still second hand. But you're the failure here.

@Rhywden said:

We have just your opinion that this problem does not exist. There are quite a lot of scientists who disagree with you. What's your credentials in that area? My university background includes enough Physics lectures and seminars to have at least a grasp of the concepts involved. And I find it quite astounding to believe that we can't have an influence on Earth's climate. One only needs to have a look at what the Romans did to the Mediterranean.

And that was a pre-industrial society with a comparably low head count.

Yay. And somehow, you still believe that the Earth's climate has as much positive feedback that adding a tiny bit of a trace greenhouse gas will cause runaway warming once it puts more water vapor into the air? The only evidence for this is a bunch of computer models (which really are TRWTFs) that can't predict much of anything? I kinda hope stuff does warm up, because that's better than the alternative. We do a lot better in warm weather.

TDWTF123

@Rhywden said:

You don't need man-made experiments to do science. You create a hypothesis (with already existing data) and then, using that data and your hypothesis, you predict future events. Future events which, by the way, don't need to be created through experiments.

The key test of a theory is falsifiability. How might climate alarmism theory be falsified? What's that? It can't be? Oh look, proven to be pseudo-science.

boomzilla

@flabdablet said:

@morbiuswilters said:
Your argument should be based on evidence and reproducible results, not an appeal to authority.

Why? Point any of the resident trolls here to evidence and reproducible results and you summarily ignore them in favour of your own prejudices.

Except that there really aren't any of those in "Climate Science." Most of the stars of the show, in fact, go to great lengths to keep their data and methods secret so that no one can reproduce their results. They say things like, "Why should I give you my data when you're just going to try to prove me wrong?"

@flabdablet said:

Drawing a false equivalence between bullshit fake medicine and genuine climate science is exactly the kind of bad-faith non-argument I've come to expect here.

That's true, but then again, most climate science you hear about is bullshit.

@TDWTF123 said:

@Rhywden said:
You don't need man-made experiments to do science. You create a hypothesis (with already existing data) and then, using that data and your hypothesis, you predict future events. Future events which, by the way, don't need to be created through experiments.
The key test of a theory is falsifiability. How might climate alarmism theory be falsified? What's that? It can't be? Oh look, proven to be pseudo-science.

I'm a bit astounded at the wealth of confusion surrounding the scientific method here. Of course it can be falsified. The theories surrounding climate change make predictions. If those predictions don't come to pass then the theories have been falsified.

The problem, however, rests in that particular case when they have not been falsified.

@boomzilla said:

Yay. And somehow, you still believe that the Earth's climate has as much positive feedback that adding a tiny bit of a trace greenhouse gas will cause runaway warming once it puts more water vapor into the air? The only evidence for this is a bunch of computer models (which really are TRWTFs) that can't predict much of anything? I kinda hope stuff does warm up, because that's better than the alternative. We do a lot better in warm weather.

It's a chaotic system. And "runaway"? That's not what the models are about and I can recall absolutely no one suggesting that we get Venusian conditions (that's what a "runaway" process would cause).

And, no, we don't do better in "warm weather". Because you won't get a uniform increase of temperature (which would be bad enough for already warm regions). You'll instead increase volatility - more tornadoes, more blizzards, more extremes - that's the beauty of a chaotic system. Just because the average increases doesn't mean that the standard deviation will stay the same...

TDWTF123

@Rhywden said:

The theories surrounding climate change make predictions.

Name one. I think you'll find that there are no predictions involved, only projections.

@Rhywden said:

I can recall absolutely no one suggesting that we get Venusian conditions

James Hansen, among others. Nothing like ignoring the facts when they don't fit the narrative you want to portray.

@TDWTF123 said:

Name one. I think you'll find that there are no predictions involved, only projections.

You're honestly trying to tell me that this bit of sophistry makes all the difference in your mind? Seriously?

@TDWTF123 said:

James Hansen, among others. Nothing like ignoring the facts when they don't fit the narrative you want to portray.

That's a nice sentiment, there. You're accusing me of omniscience. I can't "ignore" what I don't recall, my dear.

Okay, so we have one guy who states that this may be possible. So what? I mean, it's not as if I couldn't present a line of people for the "other" side which make similar claims (just in the opposite). Case in point: My former Physics professor Gerhard Gerlich. Highly intelligent guy.
He wrote a paper where he disproved the Greenhouse Effect.

boomzilla

@Rhywden said:

It's a chaotic system. And "runaway"? That's not what the models are about and I can recall absolutely no one suggesting that we get Venusian conditions (that's what a "runaway" process would cause).

Hmm....I thought you knew physics and stuff. Venus is more the result of pressure, not a runaway greenhouse effect. The models are programmed to take small increases in carbon dioxide and pump water into the atmosphere, boosting the effect of CO2. OK, runaway is a bit hyperbolic, but then so are the models, which I believe have way too much positive feedback. The modelers themselves admit that there are some very major things that they do not have a clue about, namely, clouds. So instead of having clouds act chaotically, they assume the clouds contribute to warming.

So, the models don't pass the smell test to begin with, and their predictive power is shit. An honest scientist would admit that they are deeply flawed and not promote them as something to be relied upon for policy guidance.

@Rhywden said:

And, no, we don't do better in "warm weather".

This explains why things went well for civilization during the Roman Ice Age. Because what benefit could longer growing seasons possibly have for anybody anywhere.

@Rhywden said:

And, no, we don't do better in "warm weather". Because you won't get a uniform increase of temperature (which would be bad enough for already warm regions). Because you won't get a uniform increase of temperature (which would be bad enough for already warm regions). You'll instead increase volatility - more tornadoes, more blizzards, more extremes - that's the beauty of a chaotic system.

That's what some cranks are saying right now (more volatility, bigger storms). There's actually a lot of evidence that you'll get fewer storms (such as the fewer storms we've had recently). See, weather is based on differences in temperature, and the atmosphere trying to equalize. But if the poles and temperate regions are closer to the tropics, there's less energy transfer required to even things out.

The alarmists panicked, however, and tried to use some recent storms as evidence that things were getting worse. Of course, reporting and general media asshattery has gotten worse, so this all works to fool the typical low information type of person, or the sort of person looking to be fooled.

TDWTF123

@Rhywden said:

You're honestly trying to tell me that this bit of sophistry makes all the difference in your mind? Seriously?

Sophistry? Did you mean some other word there? And yes, the distinction is extremely important. Projections are not predictions at all. You really don't know the first thing about science or the scientific method, do you? This is GCSE stuff at most.
@Rhywden said:

Okay, so we have one guy who states that this may be possible. So what?

So you were clearly wrong, but can't just admit it. If you aren't aware of Hansen, you clearly haven't been following climate science at all. @Rhywden said:

I mean, it's not as if I couldn't present a line of people for the "other" side which make similar claims (just in the opposite).

Yes, but they're not making proposals to shut down the world and kill millions or billions of poor people. See the difference?

Y'know, I'm tired of this shit. It's a classic symptom of "It can't be true because I don't want it to be true."

We have limited ressources. And we have predictions that, besides those limited ressources, we also might have another problem with the climate coming up.

It reminds me of the guy who jumps from a skyscraper and thinks: "Okay, the first 100 meters went well, I don't see any problems for the rest of the way."

Don't bother replying - I won't read it. We'll see who is right - and I fear it won't be you.

boomzilla

@Rhywden said:

@TDWTF123 said:
Name one. I think you'll find that there are no predictions involved, only projections.

You're honestly trying to tell me that this bit of sophistry makes all the difference in your mind? Seriously?

This is funny. The people who came up with the ~~predictions~~ projections make damned sure you don't use the wrong word, because they don't want to be held accountable for bad predictions. That's bad for the grant gravy train. But they can weasel their way out of projections with a bit of...what's the word?...sophistry. If their projections look good, they can stand up and yell about how great they are. If not (and they haven't been, so far) they can do what they've done: "Well, this isn't statistically inconsistent with our projections. The projections are still within variability."

Although, they made statements like, "The warming could pause for up to 15 years under our theories. It would have to stop for longer than that before there might be a problem." Since it's been 16 years, they're trying to come up with something else. The best candidate right now is that the ocean ate their ~~homework~~ warming. Of course, there's a lot of room for heat in the ocean, but going this route exposes some other weak points, and forces them to deal with some natural forces (PDO, AMDO, ENSO) that the models cannot yet handle, and which may explain a lot of things without the need for CO₂.

boomzilla

@Rhywden said:

Y'know, I'm tired of this shit. It's a classic symptom of "It can't be true because I don't want it to be true."

Projection is a funny thing.

@Rhywden said:

We'll see who is right - and I fear it won't be you.

No, you hope it won't be me, because you're a misanthropic self hating jerk who wants to take out your guilt on poor people by eliminating any chances that they could have as nice a life as you have. Which, by the way, you don't seem to be too interested in giving up in order to prevent your doomsday scenario.

flabdablet

@morbiuswilters said:

@flabdablet said:
Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has de-sequestered enough fossil carbon to double the observed atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Bullshit.

My bad. We haven't managed 2x pre-industrial levels, only 1.4x. But we would have got away with it if it weren't for those meddling photosynths.

@morbiuswilters said:

Most atmospheric CO₂ comes from natural sources.

That's true. Only about 30% of it is currently ours. But we're working on it.

There's about 800 billion tons of atmospheric carbon, of which about 120 billion tons gets exchanged each year between the atmosphere and living things, and about 90 billion tons between the atmosphere and the ocean. We emit about 8 billion tons each year, mostly in the form of CO₂, of which about half is reabsorbed. So we're currently achieving only about 0.5% net annual growth in total atmospheric carbon. I'm sure we could do better if we only applied ourselves.

If you're working in tons of CO₂ rather than tons of carbon, multiply all those numbers by about three and a half (oxygen is heavy).

Volcanoes emit roughly 1% as much CO₂ as humanity, putting them roughly on par with the rate Morbs can pull uninformed opinion out of his ass.

flabdablet

@boomzilla said:

take out your guilt on poor people by eliminating any chances that they could have as nice a life as you have

Yeah, fuck those people. Keep them in their fuckin place. Make sure none of them ever gets a fuckin PV panel on their fuckin shack, or a job installin one on somebody else's, the fuckin undeservin boondoggle scam artists. Run the fuckin ocean up in their fuckin river delta farms, that'll show the fuckers. Fuck.

Ordinary people, I hate em. If only I had some way of findin out what the fuckers owe and makin em pay.

boomzilla

@flabdablet said:

@boomzilla said:
take out your guilt on poor people by eliminating any chances that they could have as nice a life as you have

Yeah, fuck those people. Keep them in their fuckin place. Make sure none of them ever gets a fuckin PV panel on their fuckin shack, or a job installin one on somebody else's, the fuckin undeservin boondoggle scam artists. Run the fuckin ocean up in their fuckin river delta farms, that'll show the fuckers. Fuck.

Ordinary people, I hate em. If only I had some way of findin out what the fuckers owe and makin em pay.

Did you have a point in there? It sounds like you're angry about something, but the incoherence and irrelevance makes it hard to figure out what.

fowkc

None of this matters.

The validity or otherwise of climate change predictions doesn't change the fact that we should be trying to reduce CO2 emissions anyway. Ocean acidification, habitat/species loss and other negative environmental effects are all either direcly or indirectly linked with burning fossil fuels for energy.

These things are real, demonstrable and potentially much worse than climate change.

boomzilla

@fowkc said:

None of this matters.

The validity or otherwise of climate change predictions doesn't change the fact that we should be trying to reduce CO2 emissions anyway. Ocean acidification, habitat/species loss
and other negative environmental effects are all either direcly or indirectly linked with burning fossil fuels for energy.

These things are real, demonstrable and potentially much worse than climate change.

The oceans are not acidifying. They are getting slightly less basic (and like everything else, marine chemistry is a lot more complicated than this single variable that so many zealots and ignoramuses are focused on). A lot of the worries about that are that creatures won't be able to make their shells in a more acidic environment. Of course, you have to ignore studies that show that these creatures actually do better when they have more carbon available to use to make their shells.

Habitat / species loss is real, and has been since there has been habitat and species, but anthropogenic climate change is waaaay down on the list of things actually causing this.

There are some bad effects of burning fossil fuels, though we have a pretty good handle on those now. And even with additional pollution prevention / controls, those fuels are still cheaper and / or preferable to the alternatives.

Please stop begging the question about CO₂. There are a lot of positive things about increased CO₂ in the atmosphere. I wish people like you would stop advocating to make the world a worse place.

flabdablet

@boomzilla said:

Of course, you have to ignore studies that show that these creatures actually do better when they have more carbon available to use to make their shells.

cite please

dhromed

@boomzilla said:

The oceans are not acidifying. They are getting slightly less basic

But that's exactly the same thing.

error

@boomzilla said:

There are a lot of positive things about increased CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Well, what are they?

boomzilla

@flabdablet said:

@boomzilla said:
Of course, you have to ignore studies that show that these creatures actually do better when they have more carbon available to use to make their shells.

cite please

Here you go.

mikeTheLiar

@dhromed said:

@boomzilla said:
The oceans are not acidifying. They are getting slightly less basic

But that's exactly the same thing.

Pedantic dickweedery at it's finest.

fowkc

My reply was badly worded. Loosely, my thinking on all this is:

We should stop being so dickish to the environment in general, for reasons that I hope are obvious.
A side-effect of this will probably be a reduction in atmospheric CO2.
I happen to believe that will be a good thing, but you may not. The important thing is number 1.

boomzilla

@dhromed said:

@boomzilla said:
The oceans are not acidifying. They are getting slightly less basic

But that's exactly the same thing.

Not really. I mean, if you define "acidifying" as simply lowering pH, then yes. But if it never actually becomes acidic, it's at best misleading and at worst completely wrong. The problem is mixing states (acid, base) with a change in pH.

If something goes from 2 meters below water to 1 meter below water, you don't say that it became more above water level. If a block of ice went from 50 below 0 to 10 below zero, you wouldn't say that it was melting, even though it got a lot closer to the melting point.

boomzilla

@joe.edwards said:

@boomzilla said:
There are a lot of positive things about increased CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Well, what are they?

Plants tend to grow better. This is huge. Note that greenhouse operators pay to pump in CO₂ for exactly this reason. Carbon is extremely important to all life, and making it more available makes life easier. The increased temperatures are a good thing, too. We die from cold a lot more frequently than from heat. The truth is that, geologically speaking, our levels of atmospheric CO₂ are pretty low.

boomzilla

@fowkc said:

My reply was badly worded. Loosely, my thinking on all this is:

We should stop being so dickish to the environment in general, for reasons that I hope are obvious.

A side-effect of this will probably be a reduction in atmospheric CO2.

I happen to believe that will be a good thing, but you may not. The important thing is number 1.

I agree with #1. I think #2 is mildly contradictory to #1, and I think that the best way to ensure #1 is to be as wealthy as possible. When people are worried about eating and keeping safe and warm, they will happily rape the environment to accomplish those things. When we have enough prosperity to accomplish those easily, we think a lot about making other things, like the environment, nicer.

Forcing immature and uneconomical energy technologies upon society in an unjustified panic is a good way to make us less able to deal with whatever happens in the future.

dhromed

@boomzilla said:

Not really. I mean, if you define "acidifying" as simply lowering pH, then yes. But if it never actually becomes acidic, it's at best misleading and at worst completely wrong. The problem is mixing states (acid, base) with a change in pH.

That's not my willy-nilly definition, that is the meaning of the term.

Blame the media, I guess? Any chemist will use "acidification" to mean "move away from base to acid", so one of 'em tells an interviewer about their study and use that word, and the interviewer with perhaps sub-par understanding of the field is like OMG ACID, and reproduces the word without a quick sentence on what it actually means.

@boomzilla said:

If something goes from 2 meters below water to 1 meter below water, you don't say that it became more above water level. If a block of ice went from 50 below 0 to 10 below zero, you wouldn't say that it was melting, even though it got a lot closer to the melting point.

No, of course I would not say those things. And I know you know that, so let's not do the metaphor dance.

dhromed

@boomzilla said:

they will happily rape the environment to accomplish those things.

Nature has this awful tendency to grow back, so you gotta keep on raping it while your village invents philosophy and ethics.

boomzilla

@dhromed said:

@boomzilla said:
Not really. I mean, if you define "acidifying" as simply lowering pH, then yes. But if it never actually becomes acidic, it's at best misleading and at worst completely wrong. The problem is mixing states (acid, base) with a change in pH.

That's not my willy-nilly definition, that is the meaning of the term.

I dunno...looking around, I tend to see things like, "to make or become acid; convert into an acid." Until you add the word ocean. So it really does seem like a rhetorical trick to make it sound worse than it actually is.

@dhromed said:

No, of course I would not say those things. And I know you know that, so let's not do the metaphor dance.

Yes, I knew that. But I think it highlights the difference in plain meaning and how a not quite right shorthand for "lowers pH" is really not quite right.

Mason_Wheeler

@boomzilla said:

There's actually a lot of evidence that you'll get fewer storms (such as the fewer storms we've had recently).

There's a few million people in New York who would like to have a word with you...

boomzilla

@Mason Wheeler said:

@boomzilla said:
There's actually a lot of evidence that you'll get fewer storms (such as the fewer storms we've had recently).

There's a few million people in New York who would like to have a word with you...

Would that word be, "Mason Wheeler really is as dumb as he seems?" Hmm...that's too many words. Just imagine Joe Biden saying that.

TDWTF123

@Mason Wheeler said:

There's a few million people in New York who would like to have a word with you...

Why? If you're talking about 'hurricane' Sandy, they should be having a word with their government about having totally failed to protect the area against a slightly worse than normal winter storm.

ACE is at an all-time low at the moment, and there's no basis whatsoever for the 'extreme weather' alarmism - it's purest woo.

boomzilla

@TDWTF123 said:

ACE is at an all-time low at the moment, and there's no basis whatsoever for the 'extreme weather' alarmism - it's purest woo.

+1. Not sure if it's truly an "all time low," but definitely low, at least for the limited time that it has been measured.

TDWTF123

@boomzilla said:

Not sure if it's truly an "all time low," but definitely low, at least for the limited time that it has been measured.

Actually, might have bene slightly confused there. ACE is low, but not as low as it was a couple of years ago. I was thinking of the record for longest time between landfalls of major (3+) hurricanes in the US. It's now up over 2600 days and counting.

Mason_Wheeler

@TDWTF123 said:

@Mason Wheeler said:
There's a few million people in New York who would like to have a word with you...
Why? If you're talking about 'hurricane' Sandy, they should be having a word with their government about having totally failed to protect the area against a slightly worse than normal winter storm.

"Slightly worse than normal winter storm?" That's not how a friend of mine (who actually lives in New York and had to be evacuated) described it. And more to the point, that's not how the people who classify hurricanes described it. (And just look at the name: Sandy. Major storms are decreasing... and yet last year's set of hurricanes got all the way up to S? I'm sure that's happened before, but off the top of my head I can't recall any examples.)

And you can hardly pin this one on poor government protections. That holds for New Orleans--though I have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would build and choose to live in a freaking coastal city located below sea level in known hurricane territory in the first place, and even more so about anyone dumb enough to try to rebuild and continue to live there after the inevitable ends up happening and proving to them what a bad idea it was--but New York is not "hurricane territory." It doesn't have dikes and whatnot for the same reason we don't have them here in Seattle: it's not a place where hurricanes happen. (Until we went and screwed up the weather patterns, that is. I wonder if I should knock on wood...)

TDWTF123

@Mason Wheeler said:

"Slightly worse than normal winter storm?" That's not how a friend of mine (who actually lives in New York and had to be evacuated) described it. And more to the point, that's not how the people who classify hurricanes described it.

It caused problems and required evacuation because NYC was so totally unprepared for a largish storm. That's all the storm people call it - it wasn't a hurricane by the time it made landfall. It was the kind of storm that the area expects to see on a decadal timescale, so yes, bad winter gale is about right.

@Mason Wheeler said:

(And just look at the name: Sandy. Major storms are decreasing... and yet last year's set of hurricanes got all the way up to S? I'm sure that's happened before, but off the top of my head I can't recall any examples.)

They changed the naming system a few years ago. 2002? 2004? Something like that. Now they name all the sub-tropical cyclonic storms in the same system, so we get much further through the alphabet every year. There were only 10 actual hurricanes, and only two major ones.

@Mason Wheeler said:

And you can hardly pin this one on poor government protections.

Of course you can. New Yorkers had built massively more valuable stuff in the areas that would be affected by a storm like this, but the government had done nothing to increase the storm protection for those areas. And having major tunnels flood is simply unacceptable in anyone's book.

@Mason Wheeler said:

That holds for New Orleans--though I have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would build and choose to live in a freaking coastal city located below sea level in known hurricane territory in the first place, and even more so about anyone dumb enough to try to rebuild and continue to live there after the inevitable ends up happening and proving to them what a bad idea it was

The levees needed really weren't expensive. No reason to worry, really - if the place was properly run, Katrina wouldn't have caused anything like as much damage.

@Mason Wheeler said:

New York is not "hurricane territory."

Yes, yes it is. Or at least, it is to the same extent Sandy was a hurricane. It expects fairly large storms fairly regularly.

@Mason Wheeler said:

It doesn't have dikes and whatnot

It does. Just nowhere near enough. And people actually built on a lot of what New York state has to protect it - the barrier islands.

If you actually check the figures, Sandy was not a particularly noteworthy storm. When not-particularly-noteworthy storms cause major damage, it's not the fault of the weather, but of the people who failed to prepare.

@Mason Wheeler said:

Until we went and screwed up the weather patterns, that is.

There is literally no evidence at all of any strange weather patterns. Those who claim any such thing is happening are either mistaken idiots, or flat-out wrong. You've been lied to.

boomzilla

@Mason Wheeler said:

"Slightly worse than normal winter storm?" That's not how a friend of mine (who actually lives in New York and had to be evacuated) described it.

That sounds very rigorous. I wouldn't have described it quite like that, either, but that's not the same as the claims you're making.

@Mason Wheeler said:

And more to the point, that's not how the people who classify hurricanes described it. (And just look at the name: Sandy. Major storms are decreasing... and yet last year's set of hurricanes got all the way up to S? I'm sure that's happened before, but off the top of my head I can't recall any examples.)

We're really good at finding hurricanes these days, and it doesn't depend on having friends in New York say anything about them. Note that these are just named storms. In the past, a lot of these things would have happened out at sea, and no one would ever have known about them.

@Mason Wheeler said:

And you can hardly pin this one on poor government protections. That holds for New Orleans

No, New Orleans is a whole 'nother level of governmental incompetence (and that's at the local and state level, where most of the preparedness and evacuation procedures lie).

@Mason Wheeler said:

but New York is not "hurricane territory."

They get them coming up the coast every so often. You probably think Nova Scotia isn't "hurricane territory" either.

@Mason Wheeler said:

Until we went and screwed up the weather patterns, that is.

How would you know? What do you know about weather patterns? You've already shown that you don't even understand weather in the last decade, let alone something on any grander scale. At least you've outdone Rhywden for dumbest poster in the thread (flabdablet made a run for it, but your persistence has paid off).

morbiuswilters

@Rhywden said:

You don't need man-made experiments to do science.

Nobody said "man-made experiments" but you. Natural experiments are still experiments and they're how hypotheses are verified in geology or astronomy or climate science. The difference being that the climate scientists haven't been able to actually predict anything of value yet.

morbiuswilters

@Zecc said:

@morbiuswilters said:
CO²
That's what CO₂ looks like as it is ascending in the atmosphere.

Fuck it, I knew somebody was going to get on my ass about that. I'm sleepy and type "sup" instead of "sub" and suddenly it's a Federal case.

@Zecc said:

...if "global warming" is what it's needed to get more investment in so-called clean energies, then I'm glad for it. I don't like breathing exhaust fumes.

They're so-called because they aren't clean. I'd much rather (indirectly) breathe exhaust fumes (which are CO, CO₂ and H₂O) than deal with millions of tons of battery waste each year. Not to mention that electric cars are so fucking useless they're only good for a single trip to the grocery store.

morbiuswilters

@Rhywden said:

That's simply because climate is way more complicated. Not to mention that short-term predictions are usually more reliable than long-term predictions, especially in chaotic systems.

In a double pendulum, I can predict quite accurately what the next half-second will look like. After that, all bets are off ;)

So basically your argument is "Yeah, it's nearly impossible to predict, but clearly they're still able to accurately predict it."

morbiuswilters

@boomzilla said:

Most of the stars of the show, in fact, go to great lengths to keep their data and methods secret so that no one can reproduce their results. They say things like, "Why should I give you my data when you're just going to try to prove me wrong?"

Can you imagine real scientists (and not these con men) acting like that? "Hey, Einstein, we're interested in this general theory of relativity, but we'd like some more information so we can look into it on our own." "Nein! You either accept my theory or you are gravity denialists! I will have Al Gore go on TV and compare you to racists." "What's an Al Gore?" "The body politic."

Mason_Wheeler

@morbiuswilters said:

@Zecc said:
...if "global warming" is what it's needed to get more investment in so-called clean energies, then I'm glad for it. I don't like breathing exhaust fumes.

They're so-called because they aren't clean. I'd much rather (indirectly) breathe exhaust fumes (which are CO, CO₂ and H₂O) than deal with millions of tons of battery waste each year. Not to mention that electric cars are so fucking useless they're only good for a single trip to the grocery store.

You destroy any and all credibility you might have had when you say something like that. We're programmers here. We're engineers. We understand the value, and the power, of iteration.

The original car looked like this:

and it was a huge step backwards, in many ways, over the horse and buggy. But we kept at it, and today the horse and buggy look laughably outdated. (And our cars don't look or perform anything like that one.)

What we have right now are first- and second-generation electric vehicles, some of which are already beating the pants off of gas-powered cars in many important performance metrics. In other areas, they're not so good. But when people disparage electric cars because of the areas where they don't hold up, they sound awful ignorant to those of us who understand engineering and iteration. The gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is the product of almost 130 years of iterative refinement, and freaking first-generation prototypes from Tesla are out-performing the best gas-powered cars on the road!

Imagine what electric vehicles will look like 130 years from now, if we continue researching the relevant technologies!

TDWTF123

@Mason Wheeler said:

@morbiuswilters said:
@Zecc said:
...if "global warming" is what it's needed to get more investment in so-called clean energies, then I'm glad for it. I don't like breathing exhaust fumes.

They're so-called because they aren't clean. I'd much rather (indirectly) breathe exhaust fumes (which are CO, CO₂ and H₂O) than deal with millions of tons of battery waste each year. Not to mention that electric cars are so fucking useless they're only good for a single trip to the grocery store.
You destroy any and all credibility you might have had when you say something like that. We're programmers here. We're engineers. We understand the value, and the power, of iteration.
The original car looked like this:

and it was a huge step backwards, in many ways, over the horse and buggy. But we kept at it, and today the horse and buggy look laughably outdated. (And our cars don't look or perform anything like that one.)
What we have right now are first- and second-generation electric vehicles, some of which are already beating the pants off of gas-powered cars in many important performance metrics. In other areas, they're not so good. But when people disparage electric cars because of the areas where they don't hold up, they sound awful ignorant to those of us who understand engineering and iteration. The gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is the product of almost 130 years of iterative refinement, and freaking first-generation prototypes from Tesla are out-performing the best gas-powered cars on the road!
Imagine what electric vehicles will look like 130 years from now, if we continue researching the relevant technologies!

I'm sure there's a name for that common logical fallacy, but I don't know what it is. It's equivalent to looking at the last guy in the Olympic 100m final and talking about how fast he runs. He's still last, precisely because, fast as he is, he's not as fast as others.

Other than that, you're completely ignorant of automotive history if you call current electric vehicles first-gen. But we knew that, given what you cited as the first car.

morbiuswilters

@flabdablet said:

My bad. We haven't managed 2x pre-industrial levels, only 1.4x.

Sweet Jesus, you have to be kidding me. People are actually using measurements of CO₂ from Mauna Loa as a baseline? You do realize it's sitting on top of an active volcano, right?

morbiuswilters

@Mason Wheeler said:

What we have right now are first- and second-generation electric vehicles, some of which are already beating the pants off of gas-powered cars in many important performance metrics. In other areas, they're not so good. But when people disparage electric cars because of the areas where they don't hold up, they sound awful ignorant to those of us who understand engineering and iteration. The gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is the product of almost 130 years of iterative refinement, and freaking first-generation prototypes from Tesla are out-performing the best gas-powered cars on the road!
Imagine what electric vehicles will look like 130 years from now, if we continue researching the relevant technologies!

Electric cars pre-date those with internal combustion engines. Now, ICEs have had much more engineering attention over the years, but it's not as if development of batteries or electric motors stopped. So, no, the electric cars we have nowadays are the result of significant engineer iteration, you fucking moron.

And how are Tesla cars "out-performing the best gas-powered cars on the road"? By acceleration? Sure, electric engines generate better torque from stop, and they have a better torque curve. They're also: 1) ludicrously expensive; 2) fail hard when it comes to refueling; 3) have a laughable range; 4) have horrific maintenance requirements; and 5) generate tons of toxic batteries.

No, your argument is basically "Hey, let's go back to the horse and carriage and see if we can't doll that baby up."

drurowin

@morbiuswilters said:

No, your argument is basically "Hey, let's go back to the horse and carriage and see if we can't doll that baby up."

Giant nuclear-powered horses that have wheels instead of legs.

TDWTF123

@morbiuswilters said:

@flabdablet said:
My bad. We haven't managed 2x pre-industrial levels, only 1.4x.

Sweet Jesus, you have to be kidding me. People are actually using measurements of CO₂ from Mauna Loa as a baseline? You do realize it's sitting on top of an active volcano, right?

No, that's fine. Mauna Loa is not the only measurement station, and the effects of the volcano are allowed-for. There's no real doubt atmospheric CO2 levels have risen.

Some people seem to find it implausible that we might have released enough CO2 to affect the amount in the air, but if you consider what sort of scale of programme you'd propose in order to do that deliberately, the answer might well be something of a similar scale to the amount of fossil-fuel burning we've done. Make no mistake, we're definitely releasing a lot of CO2. Whether that has any effect on climate/weather, whether positive or negative, is still unestablished.