Scientific Science
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@dkf said in Scientific Science:
@Rhywden said in Scientific Science:
@PleegWat said in Scientific Science:
Only wood which ends up in construction or furniture remains as bound carbon.
Again, that is an erroneous assumption. It won't stay there forever. It's usually freed up again after 10 to 50 years.
That's why I thought about deep buried charcoal. We've totally got the tech to do that, it's nice and stable, and it isn't going to go anywhere if the mine we put it at the bottom of collapses; it'll just quietly convert into might-as-well-be-coal.
Might as well use it to improve soil quality. Once it's in charcoal form, it isn't easily broken down by bacteria any more so it's stable for at least centuries.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@Rhywden said in Scientific Science:
We currently need a net-negative.
Speak for yourself.
The flat earth society likes it cozy warm?
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@Rhywden said in Scientific Science:
We currently need a net-negative.
Speak for yourself.
The flat earth society likes it cozy warm?
If you say so. But, yeah, beats an ice age. I guess that if you want to believe in catastrophic global warming against evidence, this seems like the right thread for it.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
Well, yeah, they keep adjusting past measurements down. Somehow I doubt that's what you meant, but I'll let you clarify.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
Well, yeah, they keep adjusting past measurements down. Somehow I doubt that's what you meant, but I'll let you clarify.
So by how much has the temperature decreased in the last 150 years? And how long until we arrive at an ice age?
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
Well, yeah, they keep adjusting past measurements down. Somehow I doubt that's what you meant, but I'll let you clarify.
So by how much has the temperature decreased in the last 150 years? And how long until we arrive at an ice age?
My understanding is that the decrease (for average global temperature) is a few negative degrees. I certainly have no idea when the next ice age will show up but it seems that based on geological history we're due any time now.
Is there a reason for these questions?
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
Well, yeah, they keep adjusting past measurements down. Somehow I doubt that's what you meant, but I'll let you clarify.
So by how much has the temperature decreased in the last 150 years? And how long until we arrive at an ice age?
My understanding is that the decrease (for average global temperature) is a few negative degrees.
So an increase?
I certainly have no idea when the next ice age will show up but it seems that based on geological history we're due any time now.
And despite that long trend you assume it's increasing instead of decreasing? What happened to "against evidence", then?
Is there a reason for these questions?
Just trying to figure out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
Well, yeah, they keep adjusting past measurements down. Somehow I doubt that's what you meant, but I'll let you clarify.
So by how much has the temperature decreased in the last 150 years? And how long until we arrive at an ice age?
My understanding is that the decrease (for average global temperature) is a few negative degrees.
So an increase?
Yes.
I certainly have no idea when the next ice age will show up but it seems that based on geological history we're due any time now.
And despite that long trend you assume it's increasing instead of decreasing? What happened to "against evidence", then?
What, indeed? I have no idea what you're talking about here. All I said was that being a bit warmer than now was better than an ice age. Is that really controversial?
Is there a reason for these questions?
Just trying to figure out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
It sounds like you're looking at the wrong hole is why I ask. My claim is that the evidence does not point to catastrophic warming, based on the predictions that climate science has made and then comparing that to how things have played out.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
you're looking at the wrong hole
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
What, indeed? I have no idea what you're talking about here. All I said was that being a bit warmer than now was better than an ice age. Is that really controversial?
Um, no. You started with not wanting to reduce the carbon footprint and thus keeping global warming going further instead of slowing it down.
I.e., given the options "warmer" and "even warmer", you picked "even warmer". "Ice age" is just a distraction you introduced afterwards. Could as well have argued we don't need to stop global warming because it's better than nuclear winter, for all it mattered.
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
What, indeed? I have no idea what you're talking about here. All I said was that being a bit warmer than now was better than an ice age. Is that really controversial?
Um, no. You started with not wanting to reduce the carbon footprint and thus keeping global warming going further instead of slowing it down.
I.e., given the options "warmer" and "even warmer", you picked "even warmer". "Ice age" is just a distraction you introduced afterwards. Could as well have argued we don't need to stop global warming because it's better than nuclear winter, for all it mattered.
It doesn't matter. For people like it's basically a religion now. And it's fun to make people over interpret statements like that to demonstrate that they don't really think about the difference between warming and catastrophic warming.
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@acrow said in Scientific Science:
Last I checked, the rain forests consume pretty much all oxygen they produce. Which means that their capacity to tie up carbon also approaches zero.
Excess oxygen comes from water. 100% of carbon dioxide goes into carbohydrates.
Underwater photosynthesis based on CO₂ and H₂S produces sulfur, not oxygen.
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
And how long until we arrive at an ice age?
Negative 2.58 million years
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
how deep the rabbit hole goes.
All the way to the balloon manufacturers.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
My understanding is that the decrease (for average global temperature) is a few negative degrees.
Where are you getting these things from, and why are you standing under them? They look rickety af.
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@topspin said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
against evidence
Yeah, we know that if you look at the Alternative Data, then temperatures are actually declining.
It's not the alternative data. It's the selected data. Totally different way of screwing up. Not that it's a reasonable basis for decision or anything. And I mean, if you had to recalibrate the same damn thermometers, year in year out, of course you'd introduce a false trend consistent with others doing the same task.
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@acrow said in Scientific Science:
Last I checked, the rain forests consume pretty much all oxygen they produce. Which means that their capacity to tie up carbon also approaches zero.
Local science magazine has an article (about fungi and bacteria, not CO₂ per se) that starts by saying:
Temperate forests bind 3.6±48 Gt CO₂ a year.
@kazitor said in Scientific Science:
Excess oxygen comes from water. 100% of carbon dioxide goes into carbohydrates.
Does it? Carbohydrates have molar ratio carbon:oxygen 1:1 (glucose is C₆H₁₂O₆), but carbon dioxide (CO₂) has 1:2, so some of that oxygen has to go elsewhere.
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@Bulb said in Scientific Science:
@kazitor said in Scientific Science:
Excess oxygen comes from water. 100% of carbon dioxide goes into carbohydrates.
Does it? Carbohydrates have molar ratio carbon:oxygen 1:1 (glucose is C₆H₁₂O₆), but carbon dioxide (CO₂) has 1:2, so some of that oxygen has to go elsewhere.
Or less pretty but more rigourous and accurate:
In fact carbon fixation has to source even more oxygen from water.
The glucose thing doesn’t actually happen – that comes about as a “cute” reversal of (simplified) respiration.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
All I said was that being a bit warmer than now was better than an ice age.
I disagree. I like it colder. Besides, cooling is more difficult than heating. Data centers would definitively prefer it a bit colder; cooling is a huge chunk of their energy consumption already (and the reason why attempts have been made at building large ones in cold regions). Most of our energy generation relies on a thermal gradient to turn heat into mechanical energy (and maybe then eventually into electrical energy). A lower ambient temperature makes that more efficient. Even stuff that doesn't rely on heat gradients (e.g., semi-conductor--based solar panels) tends to prefer lower ambient temperatures (e.g., again semi-conductor--based solar panels).
Also, I'm not sure why you're comparing a few degrees warming to an ice age. Those seem kinda different things. But YMMV, I guess.
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@Bulb said in Scientific Science:
@acrow said in Scientific Science:
Last I checked, the rain forests consume pretty much all oxygen they produce. Which means that their capacity to tie up carbon also approaches zero.
Local science magazine has an article (about fungi and bacteria, not CO₂ per se) that starts by saying:
Temperate forests bind 3.6±48 Gt CO₂ a year.
Sounds highly implausible.
26% of total land mass is forested, and temperate forests in turn are about 25% of that, giving us
148940000 km² × 0.26 × 0.25 = 9681100 km²So the absorption is supposed to be
3.6±48×10⁹ t / 9681100 km² = 372±4958 t/km².A mature, undamaged, temperate deciduous forest has some 190-380 t/ha of biomass (considering many forests are at least one of not mature and not undamaged, this can be considered an upper bound) or 19000-38000 t/km². Net primary biomass productivity of such a forest is about 1000 t/(km²a). If we assume the biomass to be equivalent to glucose, it's 40% carbon by weight while CO₂ is 27%, so producing 1000 t of biomass absorbs about 1000 × 0.4 / 0.27 ≈ 1500 t CO₂.
Their upper bound of 5330 t/(km²a) would mean the forest was more than three times more productive than a (healthy!) forest of this kind is on average, while the lower bound of -4586 t/(km²a) would mean an average, world-wide burning down (or complete decomposition) of at least 4586 / 0.4 × 0.27 / [19000,38000] = 8-16% of total biomass of those forests in a single year.
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@PleegWat said in Scientific Science:
Burning wood sourced from new production forests is carbon neutral by definition. But if 'old' forest is being clear-cut and not replanted then it is not.
Before humans took control, much of the forests burned down semi-regularly. Not all of them. But IIRC the larger forests of U.S. and Russia used to do so. These days that's mainly prevented by controlled burns. But before controlled burns and forestry, any lightning strike could trigger a large-scale fire.
So, what to count as "old"...
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@dkf said in Scientific Science:
@Rhywden said in Scientific Science:
@PleegWat said in Scientific Science:
Only wood which ends up in construction or furniture remains as bound carbon.
Again, that is an erroneous assumption. It won't stay there forever. It's usually freed up again after 10 to 50 years.
That's why I thought about deep buried charcoal. We've totally got the tech to do that, it's nice and stable, and it isn't going to go anywhere if the mine we put it at the bottom of collapses; it'll just quietly convert into might-as-well-be-coal.
Why burn it to charcoal first? As long as you bury deep enough to prevent worms from reaching it, that step seems unnecessary; it'll turn to coal and oil naturally.
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@cvi said in Scientific Science:
Also, I'm not sure why you're comparing a few degrees warming to an ice age.
That's a much more likely catastrophic change in warmth that we're likely to experience.
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@acrow said in Scientific Science:
Why burn it to charcoal first?
Denser. Might as well use the mine space efficiently. Also less likely to have methane emissions problems in the shorter term.
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@cvi said in Scientific Science:
I disagree. I like it colder. Besides, cooling is more difficult than heating. Data centers would definitively prefer it a bit colder; cooling is a huge chunk of their energy consumption already (and the reason why attempts have been made at building large ones in cold regions). Most of our energy generation relies on a thermal gradient to turn heat into mechanical energy (and maybe then eventually into electrical energy). A lower ambient temperature makes that more efficient. Even stuff that doesn't rely on heat gradients (e.g., semi-conductor--based solar panels) tends to prefer lower ambient temperatures (e.g., again semi-conductor--based solar panels).
Nah. I posted an article a while back going into this. Unfortunately, it only seems to have survived in the archives:
You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That's actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York -- the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from -- you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@cvi said in Scientific Science:
I disagree. I like it colder. Besides, cooling is more difficult than heating. Data centers would definitively prefer it a bit colder; cooling is a huge chunk of their energy consumption already (and the reason why attempts have been made at building large ones in cold regions). Most of our energy generation relies on a thermal gradient to turn heat into mechanical energy (and maybe then eventually into electrical energy). A lower ambient temperature makes that more efficient. Even stuff that doesn't rely on heat gradients (e.g., semi-conductor--based solar panels) tends to prefer lower ambient temperatures (e.g., again semi-conductor--based solar panels).
Nah. I posted an article a while back going into this. Unfortunately, it only seems to have survived in the archives:
You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That's actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York -- the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from -- you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.
More from the article:
And lo and behold, when we look, we discover that Washington has an average temperature of 88 degrees in July, while Berlin has an average temperature of ... 73 (yes, that is indeed 31 and 23 Celsius).
Lo and behold, when we actually check out weatherbase.com, it tells us averages for Washington DC in Jun/Jul/Aug are 75.2, 79.8 and 78.1respectively. Phoenix is at 90.8/94.8/93.6, not pushing 110 as in her diagram.
Yes, the US is warmer than most of Europe on average, but of course it looks better with Alternative Data.
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@LaoC Oh, so it's getting colder?
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@kazitor said in Scientific Science:
The glucose thing doesn’t actually happen
It does not happen in this cycle, but it does happen eventually because the cells end up containing mostly six (and five) carbon sugars (not necessarily glucose specifically, but other hexoses have the same atomic composition) and their polymers (starch). So the oxygen will get released somewhere eventually.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@cvi said in Scientific Science:
Also, I'm not sure why you're comparing a few degrees warming to an ice age.
That's a much more likely catastrophic change in warmth that we're likely to experience.
Ah, I see you're working your way forward through the research. Let me know when you get to Wegener.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@LaoC Oh, so it's getting colder?
Do you do this every winter?
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@Gribnit said in Scientific Science:
@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@LaoC Oh, so it's getting colder?
Do you do this every winter?
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@kazitor said in Scientific Science:
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@LaoC Oh, so it's getting colder?
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@dkf said in Scientific Science:
Also less likely to have methane emissions problems in the shorter term.
Sorry, beans for dinner last night.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
so it's getting colder?
We have loads of early spring flowers out. Mostly snowdrops and crocuses. I like crocuses.
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It's not news yet still a thread about it:
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@cvi said in Scientific Science:
Besides, cooling is more difficult than heating.
Yes. Posting a single inflammatory statement is enough to keep the hot for days. On the other hand, good luck getting people there to keep cool.
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@Zerosquare Ice bucket challenge, please?
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@BernieTheBernie said in Scientific Science:
@Zerosquare Ice bucket challenge, please?
for encouraging Satanic reverse-baptism.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
@cvi said in Scientific Science:
Also, I'm not sure why you're comparing a few degrees warming to an ice age.
That's a much more likely catastrophic change in warmth that we're likely to experience.
Factoring in your own estimated lifespan (and local thermal masses (...)) is cheating.
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Uh huh.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
Uh huh.
High efficiency hydrogen oxidation enzyme that is stable in storage and able to work with very low concentrations (but won't produce lots of energy then). Interesting. The enzyme production probably won't be a big problem; inserting genes into engineered bacteria is a fairly well known technique (and I don't think this produces toxic intermediates, which is the usual problem with that approach). The real question is how well it works at high hydrogen concentrations; any use in fuel cells will have much more H2 present than is normally in an equivalent volume of atmosphere in order to get the current up to useful levels.
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If there's anything worse than social science it's gotta be nutrition:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/
I think this applies to a lot of fields (all of them?), and is probably a big factor in the saying that science advances one death at a time:
Hu, the Harvard nutritionist, said that deciding what a study means requires looking beyond the numbers to what is already known about dietary science: “You need to interpret the data in the context of the rest of the literature.” Mozaffarian, Hu’s co-author, echoed this view. Still, he noted, “you’re raising a really, really important point, which is that when, as scientists, we find things that don’t fit our hypotheses, we shouldn’t just dismiss them. We should step back and say, ‘You know, could this actually be true?’ ”
A diet made for TDWTFers:
Then there is what might charitably be termed the “real-world evidence.” In 2017, the YouTuber Anthony Howard-Crow launched what Men’s Health called “a diet that would make the American Dietetic Association shit bricks”: 2,000 calories a day of ice cream plus 500 calories of protein supplements plus booze. After 100 days on the ice-cream diet, he’d lost 32 pounds and had better blood work than before he’d started pounding Irish-whiskey milkshakes. Still, the method is unlikely to take the slimming world by storm: Howard-Crow called his ice-cream bender “the most miserable dieting adventure I have ever embarked upon.”
Yeah, 500 calories of protein supplements sounds pretty awful.
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
If there's anything worse than social science
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@boomzilla said in Scientific Science:
when, as scientists, we find things that don’t fit our hypotheses, we shouldn’t just dismiss them. We should step back and say, ‘You know, could this actually be true?’ ”
That's kinda the definition of the scientific method. Or part of it, anyway.
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@HardwareGeek indeed. So it's kind of interesting, I thought, that this was highlighted in TFA.
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There is precedent for ice cream being involved in premature conclusions.
It was originally noted that there was a correlation between polio and ice cream consumption. So it was hypothesized that ice cream caused polio. But this was untrue. (Shocker, I know.)
But it was not a spurious correlation. Polio increased in wealthier areas, where ice cream consumption was higher.
Sanitation is better in wealthier areas. But this must be a spurious correlation! Sanitation tends to prevent disease right? But no, public sanitation really was causing an increase in polio rates. It turned out that those in areas with worse public sanitation were exposed to the polio virus when they were very young and developed an immunity to it, whereas those who lived in areas with better public sanitation were more likely to develop polio when they were finally exposed to it.