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Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

globalweirding.is

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Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#41

Post by [deleted] »

josho wrote: post #38
maxharris wrote: post #36

And what is the big picture? What is the effect on human beings? Fortunately, we have the data on this. In the last 80 years, global deaths caused by climate (droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, typhoons) have declined by 98%, all because people had cheap, reliable energy provided by fossil fuels. Source: http://www.emdat.be/advanced_search/index.html - click on "Natural," and add subgroups "Climatologi…

I don't appreciate your straw man attack. I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon fossil fuels outright. Instead what I hear from most people is a desire to increase research into alternative energy sources and evolve from fossil fuels to something new and better. Keep in mind this energy transition has occurred before, back in the 16th century. The UK used to depend on wood for its e…

[deleted]

Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#43

Post by gone35 »

evenwestvang wrote: post #22
dreadsword wrote: post #13

Dear god. Who is it that thinks these crazy visualizations add any kind of value to whatever message they're trying to communicate?

Hm, me for one. Would you care to elaborate on your exasperation?

(Not the parent but) If I may,

The key point is that communication is expensive[1]. And not just because bandwidth is physically expensive, or the opportunity costs of waiting about, or the usability nightmares that inevitably ensue; but also because decoding itself is mentally taxing. And every panache adds up to it. So it better be worth to the recipient.

So when you double-down like you did, Flash-era intros and all; and it turns out all there is to it is a sparse bunch of unnavigable, decontextualized[2], tweet-sized digests of a policymakers' digest; and on top you can't even turn the damn globe on your own to explore the simulation results yourself (arguably the sole reason to be using WebGL at all!); then... well, I hope you see why your site would be so exasperating.

[1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd...

[2] Pro tip: leaving uncertainty terms to the 'for climate nerds' section is borderline unethical.

Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#44

Post by [deleted] »

herge wrote: post #33
kermit666 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Wonder how much CO2 was emitted just to power the animations in the background :P

If you assume staying on the page for 15 minutes with an Mac Book power supply of 85w, it's about 0.05 kg to 11.3 kg depending on where in North America you are.

[deleted]

Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#45

Post by SapphireSun »

herge wrote: post #33
kermit666 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Wonder how much CO2 was emitted just to power the animations in the background :P

If you assume staying on the page for 15 minutes with an Mac Book power supply of 85w, it's about 0.05 kg to 11.3 kg depending on where in North America you are.

At 20 deg C, 1 atm, and using the high estimate of 11.3kg, PV = nRT, which is

V

    n = 11300 g / 44 g/mol = 256.82 mol
    R = 8.314 L kPa K−1 mol−1
    T = 293 K
    P = 101.3 kPA

 = (256.82 * 8.314 * 293 / 101.3) L

 = 6175.8 liters

 = 3087.9 uncapped coke bottles every 15 minutes (high estimate)
At the low estimate:

n = 50 / 44 = 1.13 mol

So:

V = 27.33 L

  = 13.7 uncapped coke bottles every 15 minutes (low estimate)
Where did you get the mass estimates from?

Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#47

Post by SapphireSun »

josho wrote: post #39
towelguy wrote: post #23

I don't really see what's wrong with the climate changing. It has happened before. People just want to mantain the status quo.

Yes, you are right. There is nothing wrong with climate change, it has happened before, it will happen again. The problem is the timescale of the change. In the past changes occurred over centuries, we are causing the change in decades. That timescale risks catastrophe. If you genuinely want to understand then I recommend reading Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen, or at least googling a few book reviews to g…

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-...

It may be worse than that... Those charts show higher levels of several greenhouse gases than has occurred in hundreds of thousands of years, not centuries.

Re: Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change

#48

Post by mrow84 »

josho wrote: post #38
maxharris wrote: post #36

And what is the big picture? What is the effect on human beings? Fortunately, we have the data on this. In the last 80 years, global deaths caused by climate (droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, typhoons) have declined by 98%, all because people had cheap, reliable energy provided by fossil fuels. Source: http://www.emdat.be/advanced_search/index.html - click on "Natural," and add subgroups "Climatologi…

I don't appreciate your straw man attack. I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon fossil fuels outright. Instead what I hear from most people is a desire to increase research into alternative energy sources and evolve from fossil fuels to something new and better. Keep in mind this energy transition has occurred before, back in the 16th century. The UK used to depend on wood for its e…

> Keep in mind this energy transition has occurred before, back in the 16th century. The UK used to depend on wood for its energy. The US led in adopting coal, which was used only marginally for thousands of years. Coal was dirty, it stank, required new technologies to collect and distribute, while wood was cheap and plentiful. As it turns out coal was fundamental to the industrial revolution, the US as a leader in coal developed new industries and led in industrialization and leap frogged Britain.

I realise it's tangential to the article, but where on earth did you learn your history of the industrial revolution [0]? Presumably in the USA?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

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