* Posts by BraveOak

26 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Aug 2010

Energy crisis over - for 250 years?

BraveOak
Megaphone

CO2 and Climate Change

As Kiwiiano points out this would have significant ramifications for climate. How much higher are CO2 levels going to get because of these additional reserves?

Peak oil/gas/coal is the last ditch hope to prevent catastrophic climate change by forcing us to reduce carbon emissions even if we are unable to do so voluntarily. If humans had access to infinite fossil fuels we'd happily push CO2 levels ever higher and higher, wiping out most life on land and in the oceans in the process. We'd just not see it without hindsight, like the proverbial frog in a slowly heating pan of water.

In many ways it would be good to just pretend this additional gas wasn't there and just act as if we were in such a situation.

Chinese man jailed for provoking nuke panic

BraveOak

hmm

In all seriousness having some kind of law in place to make the spreading of false information illegal, punishable by a fine perhaps, might be a good idea. It would make people think before they speak.

Of course people would balk at such an idea. Yet we already have such legal limits on free speach in the form of libel laws. As a consequence people have to be careful what they say about others in public. If such libel laws are necessary to a degree to protect people's reputations against false claims then why not a law against false claims in general?

It could just involve small fines like speeding, not a major crime, but it would factor in some element of justice against misinformation. Of course who determines what's true and what's misleading? Well that must already be being determined in libel cases. If it's good enough there...

Perhaps the law could be aimed at public pronouncements that are aimed at an audience over a certain limit, eg 10,000+. Would it therefore really affect anyone other than journalists and politicians and force them to be more careful about their facts and not to lie?

Engineer killed on Endeavour launch pad

BraveOak

no

you are thinking of Diversity, an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era

Republicans believe in 'climate change' but not 'global warming'

BraveOak

for laughs

for laughs people might want to google mememine69

BraveOak

not quite

Mercury is even closer to the Sun yet is far cooler than Venus

BraveOak

no

"an enormous percentage rise in bugger all is still bugger all (atmospheric CO2 is approx 390 ppm making it 0.039% of air, why don't you try a 100 percent increase of CO2 to 0.078% of air in your glass jar and see how little difference that makes)."

You can't just assume a doubling of concentration of something has no effect. By that logic a "bugger all" amount of plutonium would have no effect when ingested.

For a start you are wrong about the "bugger all" thing. 99.9% of gasses in the atmosphere have no greenhouse effect so CO2s effect is far larger than it's concentration in air would suggest (and in fact the "suggest" is a logical flaw you make to assume small quantities must have small effects)

The effect of doubling CO2 in this case is calculated to be about 3C warming. Now 3C warming above the current global temperature of 288K is only about a 1% temperature increase. You could say that a 1% increase in global temperature is bugger all.

In which case why deny that a bugger all increase in CO2 could cause a bugger all increase in temperature anyway?

And the crux is that the biosphere is very sensititive to bugger all changes in temperature. 3C might be 1% of global temperature, but we all know our planet occupies a tight range of habitability.

BraveOak

no

"If CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are absorbing heat in the atmosphere then it's not getting down to the surface, is it?"

The infrared is heading upward, not downward. CO2 absorbing it means it doesn't reach space, so the Earth sheds less energy

DDoS malware comes with self-destruct payload

BraveOak

a

lol wot?

Anonymous hack showed password re-use becoming endemic

BraveOak

My system

My passwords are based on a series of riddles which are encoded using a rotating alphabet based on the lunar calendar. I convert the encoded riddles into egyptian heiroglyphs and carve them upon small stones which I cast into a deep well.

No 'tipping point' for Arctic sea ice - latest science

BraveOak

titel

Just psuedoscience piffle in another form

"Even if you could show genuine -and not faked- fossil data that showed evolution was taking place, you could not prove monkeys turned into men!

ahahaha!"

Mid-Atlantic Ocean temperatures peaked in 1998

BraveOak

title

But it is denial if someone claims the manmade global warming is in anyway in doubt because of 20yrs of tree ring data

BraveOak

title

"It's a straight report from some oceanographers stating that they have seen a 0.15 degree cooling recently"

In a specific subset of the ocean which has no obvious relevance to global warming. It's not like the entire ocean has been warming in tandem - different regions cool and warm, but global warming means overall they are on average warming. And the oceans have warmed past 1998.

So why was *this* particular report chosen out of dozens of compariable science reports in the last week (many far more interesting and relevant)? That's the $1,000,000 question. And there really is only one answer isn't there?

The reason this article has been posted is because the author thinks, or hopes readers will think that it is saying something Not The IPCC about global warming. And we can see from the comments so far that plenty of people have interpreted it thusly. Even you when you "bet" that the researchers had previously attributed the warming to we-know-what but now aren't.

"For some reason you seem to have gone all warmist/defensive over this. What's the problem? "

As explained above. It's like if a creationist had posted an article about some geological feature being "younger than we thought". Everyone would know why they posted it and it wouldn't be because it was relevant in the way they thought.

BraveOak

title

Since when have glaciers, global temperature, CO2 levels and sea levels been politics? These things are measured to be changing.

"At best, we can say that we still don't know enough to make any determination whether humans are having a measurable impact on the climate of our planet."

We know for a fact that humans are having a measurable impact on the climate of our planet, simply because we've measured it. CO2 levels are now running at near 15 million year highs. We've measured the radiative changes induced by that. We have also measured ocean pH changes induced by the CO2 rise.

The uncertainty in the science merely prevents us from concluding the future extent of these ongoing changes will be safe. Until it can be proven safe, it's a threat. Simple as.

BraveOak

title

Your mistake is thinking cooling in one region goes against global warming.

If I point you at a region on Earth with a falling population will you interpret that as going against global population rise?

BraveOak

title

Well the world, and the oceans themselves, have warmed globally since 1998, so evidentally this particular subset of the oceans not warming doesn't really mean much at all. In fact subsets of cooling in small areas as the globe as a whole warms is quite normal, just as despite global population rise there are some places with falling population.

So this entire article doesn't make much sense. What's so special about "the parallel 24.5 degrees of latitude north of the equator running from the African coast to the Caribbean"? I mean it might be special if you were studying it, but it doesn't seem a relevant thing for the Register to report unless the Register is trying to falsely imply that this has relevance to the globe as a whole.

NASA taps Unisys for flight sim mission

BraveOak

title

As the article "Met confirms secret Gov forecast of Brass Monkey winter" has a disabled comments section and is clearly biased I rated it as "absolutely terrible"

US bumblebees in 'alarming' decline

BraveOak

d

there's cause and effect issues too. Like perhaps the wider prevailance of a virus or mite is not a cause of the collapse, but an an effect of the bees being weaker - the cause being something else.

I am suprised that it's not more straight forward to identify the cause if it's happening in many different countries if they have different pesticides, genetically modified crops, etc. But I don't really know what I am talking about so I am ignorant guessing.

Ford cars get draconian parental controls

BraveOak

t

It's not like 30 year olds, or even 40 year olds, have obtained perfection in the art of driving, or constraint behind the wheel. If there's a case for imposing speed caps on the cars of 17 year olds, there is a also case for imposing them on the cars of 40 year olds. Ie everyone.

BraveOak

t

who the hell is johnny? I dont see any mention of names in the article

Researchers: Arctic cooled to pre-industrial levels from 1950-1990

BraveOak

Nonsense2

"Prof. Jones recently admitted that over the last 15 or so years the warming has not been statistically significant."

It's significant at something just under 95%. Anyway the warming over the past 16 years is statistically significant (above 95%). So what's your excuse now? The expected longterm warming has happened.

"they have to assume that CO2 has substantial positive forcing on temperature, i.e. an amplification effect such that more CO2 causes an exponential increase in atmospheric temperature. There is no scientific evidence to support this theory."

Yes there is. It's not an assumption for a start, it's an outcome of how we understand the workings of the climate. At best you can argue that our understanding will turn out wrong. But you can't argue that our understanding is based on assumption, because that aint true.

BraveOak

solar/date corrections

"Yes they have, like in 10th century. But if your "never" is more like "never after 1980""

Dude, 1980 is in the 20th century not the 19th. I let it go once thinking it was a typo. Seriously it does throw me because I am not sure if you meant 1880 or meant to say 20th century.

"Also: You got it excatly wrong way. Solar minimum means less sun spots ie. _hotter Sun_. Sun spots are way cooler than rest of the surfaces, thus less radiation. Fits perfectly to the temperature curve and as activity has risen, has the temperature fallen and that anybody with eyes could see that in winter 2009-2010."

Solar minimums mean less sunlight reaching earth. 2009-2010 has seen some of the lowest levels of sunlight reaching Earth on record.

"Tell us why every object in Solar system is reaching record temperatures?"

They aren't.

BraveOak

takes time

"Very well put. A theory, _any theory_, is shot down with one counter-example while 10 million supporting "research papers" don't make it more believable it is alone. Darwin needed only one paper to prove himself right. If _you are right_ one paper is enough."

The problem is laypeople cannot spot whether a paper is valid and shoots down a theory or is invalid and fails. I raised my eye for example when you said "To me, this tree ring research proves that "global warming" isn't happening or it's not global"

Why is that? Have you read the paper or are relying on this article's interpretation?

Laypeople didn't realize Darwin or Einstein had caused a paradigm change. It was other experts who got it first and laypeople only latched on when they realized the new paradigm was enjoying significant acceptance by experts.

BraveOak

sun and ice

"Which was causing warming ("spring& summer") until 2008 or 2009 and now we are going back to normal in next 20 years. Anybody surprised?"

Solar output peaked in the 1950s, it's been about flat since then, recently it's declined somewhat significantly. There is especially a lack of correlation between sunspots and temperature over the past 30 years.

"in 1980 the ice age a was a real threat, according to _same climatologists_ than now"

No, back then climatologists didn't know whether humans would have a net cooling influence from sunlight-blocking pollution, or a net warming influence from greenhouse gases. Both possibilities were aired at the time. Since then climate science has advanced and understands more about greenhouse gases and aerosols and have realized the human greenhouse gas warming effect will be stronger than the aerosol cooling effect. This is a case of science progressing, not changing it's mind.

BraveOak

I disagree

"All the doomsayer climatology starts with the article of faith that the output of the sun has no effect whatsoever on temperature."

No it doesn't. The Earth absorbs about 240wm-2 sunlight. If solar output increases by 1% that number increases to 241.4wm-2. That's a big amount of additional energy. The problem however is the Sun's output doesn't change much from decade to decade.

"It continues that since CO2 is going up and temperatures are going up, the two must be connected."

It was predicted that co2 would cause warming before temperatures started going up.

BraveOak

that's wrong

"But _every climatologist_ vehemently denies that solar output increase of 2% _could possibly heat Earth like every other object in Solar system_."

Climatologists think a 2% increase in solar output would have the same effect as doubling co2,, so you are completely wrong.

BraveOak

Temperatures aren't

Temperatures aren't static or currently falling. The longterm trend, as expected, is rising.

There should be a mid-tropospheric hotspot, in the tropics but it's not clear whether measurements or models are wrong. Noone expects co2 to lead rather than follow temperature in ice cores. Both are compatible with warming from rising co2.