171–180 of 549 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any data on water vapor concentrations? I ask that because I have read that the contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect is perhaps two to four times greater than CO2.
A lot of this is answered in the IPCC reports, which have readable, short summaries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772353
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way On what basis, exactly? Would you be convinced if climate scientists critiqued your unit testing approach?
as i answered before, merely on a non-secular basis. Not all knowledge comes from science and experiments. There is so much knowledge in religious scriptures.
Indeed, the scripture I'm familiar with from a Christian heritage seems to imply the opposite.
Genesis 1:26 (ESV): Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Isaiah 24:5 (ESV): The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.
Jeremiah 2:7 (ESV): And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.
It would seem that even if one reasons from religious scriptures, "Man can defile that which God creates" is a pretty clear theme.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rise in CO2 is man made, as determined by the isotopes of carbon present in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels contain no C14, and the decrease in the ratio of C14 to C12 in the atmosphere since 1800 corresponds to the rise in fossil fuel consumption. Alternate hypotheses for the modified ratio of C14 to C12 would have to account for this.
... which would support my argument that the article misses the point. If the ratio of carbon isotopes is the damning evidence, then perhaps the article could have graphed it or at least mentioned it.
Now, is the temperature increase caused by the increase in CO2 - likely so since the correlation is so close. Have they exhaustively excluded other possible causes -- maybe, maybe not...?
Well correlation is not causation. is it y=f(x) or y=x(f)? aka is is warmer because of the higher greenhouse gases or is there more greenhouse gases because of the warmer climate (that could have been caused by things like leaving an ice age and approaching a warm period in Earth's life) Just to clarify, i support green technology and I think this is definitely the way to go but I don't like the unjustified crusade u…
So, where would you think the greenhouse gases came from?
Cool visualization. It's worth keeping in mind that the modeled data lines up with reality because it's supposed to. That's how you calibrate your model, by making sure it fits reality. The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future. As in, if you feed it data up to, say, 1990, will it correctly spit out 2015 temperatures that fit the reality of 2015, or will it s…
"The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future." That is the most common way to show the modeller is not shamelessly overfitting.:-| Another way, though, is less common but not vanishingly uncommon: the model may be so much simpler than the data it fits that overfitting is not a plausible explanation. (Roughly there are too many bits of entropy in the match to th…
This repeats some buried comments but I think it's worthwhile: I'm not a climate scientist, but in my experience the absolute most reliable, most time-efficient way to learn about climate change is the IPCC reports. I wonder if there is anything written in any other field that compares: http://www.ipcc.ch/ Specifically, if you are short on time, read the 'Summaries for Policymakers', written at the level and attentio…
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You do realize that you can be against taxing say, income and profits, but be for taxing carbon? I think quite a few economists would agree that you tax things that you want less of. A simplified carbon tax could be a boon to business.
Cool visualization. It's worth keeping in mind that the modeled data lines up with reality because it's supposed to. That's how you calibrate your model, by making sure it fits reality. The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future. As in, if you feed it data up to, say, 1990, will it correctly spit out 2015 temperatures that fit the reality of 2015, or will it s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. I'm saying that we should reduce emissions. What could possibly be bad about that? Its what I'm not saying that is important. I don't proclaim an answer nor an idealism, merely cautious scientific thought that suggests the methodology needs to be considered. In any other field the lack of rigorous proofs would be laughed off the table.
So you agree with the conclusion that we should cut emissions, but you object to... what? The wording?
We don't know the dynamics of the system. All we know is that for the data we have so far, the models work pretty well. We have no idea whether, in 200 years, these trends would lead to a 20 degree average temperature increase, a 0 degree increase or a 20 degree decrease by activating some unanticipated alternate environmental dynamic that plunges us into an ice age.
CO2 emissions as the cause of the recent temperature trend is plausible, and the results could be catastrophic, so I'm all for reducing emissions and taking every other practical measure we can to avoid the risk[1]. That's not the same as, "Anthropogenic global warming is settled science, deniers are morons, and if we don't do something now Earth in 100 years will be hell."
[1] I think the problem is, we can't agree as a society, or globally, how much we should do to mitigate it. We could spend lots of money directly, on solar power, nuclear power, electric car subsidies, etc. We could impose tremendous costs on CO2 emitting industries through regulation. But we can only speculate, based on a simplified economic model and assuming long-term accuracy of some environmental model, what the ultimate cost/benefit would be.
This repeats some buried comments but I think it's worthwhile: I'm not a climate scientist, but in my experience the absolute most reliable, most time-efficient way to learn about climate change is the IPCC reports. I wonder if there is anything written in any other field that compares: http://www.ipcc.ch/ Specifically, if you are short on time, read the 'Summaries for Policymakers', written at the level and attentio…
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The UN does not tax anyone. They are funded by governments, which are funded by taxes.
1) By your theory, there is a confict of interest for the UN as long as anyone involved pays taxes, which covers every issue on the planet (and some in orbit, on Mars, etc.).
2) One major tax-paying industry, which has exceptional influence in government, is oil and gas. If the UN has a conflict of interest in favor of an industry, one with a long track record, I don't think I can find a better example.