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2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

washingtonpost.com

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Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#201

Post by orf »

brc wrote: post #188
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amply and persistently debunked. See e.g. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seven-answers-to-c...

Which part? Are you saying the roman or medieval warm periods dont exist?

The "It was warm 1000 years ago, so climate change is a lie" bit. Choice quote from the link:

> "Even if the world were incontrovertibly warmer 1,000 years ago, it would not change the fact that the recent rapid rise in CO2 explains the current episode of warming more credibly than any natural factor does—and that no natural factor seems poised to offset further warming in the years ahead."

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#202

Post by brc »

galactical wrote: post #199
brc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see references to the IPCC here. Safely ignore those. The ipcc is a political organisation - it's in the title. It was setup specifically to find evidence for a set theory, not to study the problem. Plus the models that the IPCC uses to forecast disaster have been proven to have zero predictive power. I would continue to read books written by scientists on both sides of the argument, and ignore anything said by a…

I somewhat agree with this. The IPCC book looks like it's got all the information I'm looking for (maybe a little long for my level of interest), but it's from a non-objective organization so it could be as biased as the book I've got, just in the other direction.

Every book you read is biased one way or the other, because the issue has created pathways to power. Given that they are all biased, it's safe to ignore the ones created by governments, which can reap the most benefit.

The ipcc reports are two things - a bundling of scientific literature, and a policy statement. There is always a gap between the two, and the policy report comes out before the scientific statement, and is developed with the type of diplomatic horse trading that comes with any type of government report, only more so because it is international diplomacy.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#203

Post by mikeash »

einrealist wrote: post #151
ps4fanboy wrote: post #32

Nuclear Power, until those who care about the environment accept that the only clean at scale power solution for base load is nuclear power we will get no where. "Renewables" are great and should be in the mix but they are not an at scale solution. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/source... By going mostly electric for our transportation and nuclear for power generation we could really make a den…

Only if you agree, that you move into a unpopulated area, that the nuclear power plants are built in your garden, that everything is paid by you and you also take care of the waste. Thank you.

I'd be happy to live near a nuclear plant and waste disposal. Why not? It sure would beat living downwind of a coal power plant like many of us do now.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#204

Post by orf »

brc wrote: post #196
orf wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is beyond futile to wast percentage points of productivity growth futilely trying so change something which is not changeable. You sound like a climate change denier? There is most definitely a solution to pumping massive quantities of emissions into the air, and it involves not doing that. > fear of climate change are the major levers being used to increase the control by those in power Except as far as I can s…

What is a climate change denier? Someone who denies that the climate has and will change? Of course stopping all production will stop changing the makeup of the atmosphere as far as humans go. In the same way stopping people killing each other solves the murder problem. Most people are tryin to talk beyond a pat level of posturing. I'm not ready to throw all my devices and vehicles and climate control in landfill to…

> what is a climate change denier? Someone who denies that the climate has and will change?

Clearly in this context someone who denies the impact man is having on the climate.

> In this I am intellectually honest.

And monstrously short sighted. American, I assume?

> Of course stopping all production will stop changing the makeup of the atmosphere as far as humans go.

Who said anything about stopping all production? That's obviously not going to happen. What should happen is a rapid reduction in the emission of gasses like CO2 through whatever means necessary. If that means you can't buy more cheap crap from China, or have to actually think about your fuel consumption so you can't drive down the block to buy a burger that's been frozen and flown in from thousands of miles away then so be it.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#205

Post by pdkl95 »

nostromo wrote: post #48
ps4fanboy wrote: post #32

Nuclear Power, until those who care about the environment accept that the only clean at scale power solution for base load is nuclear power we will get no where. "Renewables" are great and should be in the mix but they are not an at scale solution. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/source... By going mostly electric for our transportation and nuclear for power generation we could really make a den…

Earth has a set amount of uranium that is destroyed when creating energy. Currently we have about 200 years of uranium available for economical extraction. But if we tried to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear, we would be out within a few decades. Then we'd need to move to other non-renewable materials (thorium?) or start mining astroids. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glob... And the min…

> 200 years of uranium

As other people have mentioned, that's known 235U.

We have enough domestic 232Th to satisfy our energy needs for a very long time. If we use breeder reactors that can utilize 238U, we also have sufficient availability for well-beyond any reasonably foreseeable future ("many millenia").

Besides, that gives us plenty of time to actually develop other methods of providing energy. Right now every day we fail to deploy nuclear is another day of coal/gas. Even if we used your silly figure of 200 years, it shouldn't take that long to develop a proper solar+batteries replacement (heck, we should have fusion before the 200 years is up).

> mining

There are rare earth mines that we aren't operating right now because it's too expensive to dispose of the Th. In any serious nuclear deployment, the fuel itself would be free (or nearly free).

> far fewer

Comparing U or Th mining to coal mining is silly when you only need to do over 2,000,000x more coal mining.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#206

Post by orf »

brc wrote: post #168
JupiterMoon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK produced significant coal until the early 1980s and the significant reduction in output then was for political rather than geological reasons.

Actually it was for economic reasons. The UK lost comparative advantage for coal production. The way they mine coal in the UK is positively archaic compared to monster open cut mines which out produce the UK deep pits by a wide margin.

> Actually it was for economic reasons.

Well, a bit of both. True it was not economically sound, but the NUM (coal miners union) had a lot of leverage. All coal power plants had to buy British coal for example, which in turn meant that the government had to capitulate to their demands or face a shutdown. Thatchers decision to shut the mines was incredibly unpopular and to this day large swathes of the north despise her (somewhat unduly), but in combination with a wave of privatization managed to break the union stranglehold. Without the Iron Lady taking that step the mines would have been open for far far longer.

Some of the mines she closed would actually be profitable now though, due to the rising cost of coal.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#207

Post by 13thLetter »

addicted wrote: post #131
ps4fanboy wrote: post #32

Nuclear Power, until those who care about the environment accept that the only clean at scale power solution for base load is nuclear power we will get no where. "Renewables" are great and should be in the mix but they are not an at scale solution. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/source... By going mostly electric for our transportation and nuclear for power generation we could really make a den…

We've had this discussion before, but nuclear is already more expensive than renewables, and getting more expensive. Renewables are getting cheaper. In addition, nuclear takes longer to setup, and the most feasible solutions being considered that are supposed to solve nuclear's current problems are all in the prototype stage at best.

This neglects how the great expense of nuclear and the long amount of time it takes to build is at least in part due to decades of anti-nuclear propaganda. There are certain activist groups who have created this problem and are now disingenuously pointing to the problem as if they had nothing to do with it.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#208

Post by mikeash »

jupiter90000 wrote: post #40

Is anyone aware if there is reliable data prior to say 1880? [1] Is there any possibility that large scale climate trends could be outside of the observed window of time available? For instance, some large scale natural state-shifting appears to occur on the order of hundreds of years (reference is about earthquakes, but maybe relevant?) [2]. Based on everything I've heard/read/etc about this, it seems unlikely that…

There are plenty of motivated agendas on both sides, for sure.

But if you strip that away by going back as close to the original sources as you can, to the scientists who gather the data and do the grunt work and make the best predictions they can, you'll find they overwhelmingly lead to one conclusion: the planet is warming and human activity is the major cause.

If you try to trace back the "skeptic" positions, it just sort of peters out. You'll find some articles and a little bit of data, but there's little rigor or corroboration.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#209

Post by 13thLetter »

einrealist wrote: post #151
ps4fanboy wrote: post #32

Nuclear Power, until those who care about the environment accept that the only clean at scale power solution for base load is nuclear power we will get no where. "Renewables" are great and should be in the mix but they are not an at scale solution. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/source... By going mostly electric for our transportation and nuclear for power generation we could really make a den…

Only if you agree, that you move into a unpopulated area, that the nuclear power plants are built in your garden, that everything is paid by you and you also take care of the waste. Thank you.

It is a well-known and fully solved problem of how to deal with nuclear waste. The reason it is not dealt with is purely political, at least in the United States: an anti-science Senator who was pandering to anti-science constituents in his state by killing the waste disposal site.

Re: 2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record

#210

Post by mikeash »

brc wrote: post #165
moultano wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people making these predictions do not have the power to extract taxes. The people who do have the power to extract taxes (Congress) are ignoring the predictions.

With respect, that simply is not true at all. People (activists and their politicians) are continually using the constant threat of disaster to try and gain power. Witness how many times have we heard a politician say 'we have (insert timeframe here) to save the planet'? The fact that the U.S. Congress has only done a little bit of tax and power extraction on the issue ignores the fact that most of the rest of the de…

The activists and politicians are irrelevant to this particular question. You have to look at the origin of the information, which is the climate scientists who gather this data and make predictions.

What's their motivation to make dire predictions? Sure, anyone with the slightest political awareness can see why politicians are motivated this way, but that doesn't matter to the question of "what is actually happening?" If you want to tell me that the climate change threat is made up, you need to tell me why all these climate scientists are either consistently wrong, or conspiring to hide the truth.

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