381–390 of 549 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can link to the raw data so that I can wget it I will take a look at it.
You aren't capable of interpreting it, as is no one individual which is rather the point you're missing.
Are you saying people can not understand this data?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The first four stages have always baffled me. Anyone who knows basic chemistry Well, there you go. A lot of people don't.
The baffling part about it is how someone can ignorantly argue correlations of basic chemistry when they don't know basic chemistry.
Programmers as a group are maybe a little bit worse about this than most other groups (except maybe physicists), because they view themselves as "systems people", and "everything is a system", therefore similar rules apply everywhere: software is buggy by nature, so scientific research must suffer from similar error rates, for example.
Helpful when reading this thread to keep in mind Michael Mann's six stages of climate change denial: 1. CO2 is not actually increasing. 2. Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming. 3. Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes. 4. Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued…
The first four stages have always baffled me. Anyone who knows basic chemistry understands how carbon dioxide interacts with infrared radiation. Combine that with the fact that human activity is releasing tens of billions of tons of CO2 every year, which does not magically disappear. In fact, it's quite measurable. The climate is complex, but the basic facts of the situation are incredibly simple and unavoidable. And…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Science once labeled gay as a mental disease. Science once said that neutrinos have no mass. Science once thought that the universe was the Milky Way only. "Virtual certainty" may not always be "settled science". I do think we should curtail pollution; regardless of the scientific certainty on man as primary cause of global warming.
> Science once labeled gay as a mental disease. No it didn't. > Science once said that neutrinos have no mass. No it didn't. > Science once thought that the universe was the Milky Way only. No it didn't. All of those are made up facts that bear no resemblance to reality. Science doesn't say or think things, it merely shows the current state of evidence for theories and when new evidence comes along, wrong theories ar…
When homosexuality was mental illness : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/26/970357/-When-homose...
Milky Way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debate_%28astronomy%29
Neutrinos: http://www.scienceclarified.com/dispute/Vol-2/Historic-Dispu...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Last time I checked, it's way cooler in a forest than standing in a parking lot. Perhaps you forgot to account for the shade and humidity? (As an aside, I believe forests generate heat, just like any biological system. The best it can be seen during spring, the snow patches around plants will melt sooner.)
Nope. From a thermodynamic analysis, the energy is either reflected, turned into heat, or used to do work. Forests use more for work than any static object. The only open question in my mind is how much so. You do raise the point of emitting water vapor which adds a lot to the complexity. Also the rotting biomass will produce a lot of heat. But the production of dirt is probably still a net use of the energy. Remembe…
They do, but the heat is byproduct of that conversion. From the 2nd law of thermodynamics there will always be some residual heat (probably quite a lot, efficiency is given by the ratio of absolute temperatures between the heater and cooler, which is quite low in plants). And don't forget that plants also burn sugars to feed their processes. As I said, you can see for yourself in early spring that plants do indeed generate more heat than surrounding dead objects, such as rocks.
In any case, forests have, I believe, lower albedo than deforested landscape, so deforestation should cool the planet if anything. And one of the big arguments for global warming is that we observe more warming during the night, during the winter, towards poles and stratospheric cooling, which is again indicative that the problem is outgoing radiation being recaptured rather than more incoming radiation being reflected.
This article only serves to stroke the ego of people who already believe that CO2 emissions cause global warming. It does nothing for people who already deny it. Evidence, no matter how strong doesn't serve to change the nature of a man. People would rather bend the logic and the evidence to fit their convenient perception of reality. Which brings me to the question: "What can change a nature of a man?" Imminent dang…
The three modes of persuasion and rhetoric identified by Aristotle are ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is an appeal to authority or credibility. Pathos is an appeal to emotions. Logos is an appeal to reason. I think we overvalue logos.
Only if we let the ends justify the means. If we consider them as ways to learn about the world, logos beats the other two hands down.
That being said, I am slowly turning into a Machiavellian pragmatist: what can I say that will get the results I want? Mayhap that would be the best approach to change peoples' minds. Some people would call it deceitfulness; others would call it diplomacy.
Helpful when reading this thread to keep in mind Michael Mann's six stages of climate change denial: 1. CO2 is not actually increasing. 2. Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming. 3. Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes. 4. Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued…
Though I wouldn't accept #5 and #6 exactly as phrased, it does seem like positive effects ought to be balanced against the negative, and the uncertainty of future technological developments ought to inform our current decision of how much to spend addressing climate change. Does that make me a climate change denier?
Well, that does not necessarily sound like something the author of the grandparent comment would disagree with, especially when you consider that the technological developments may not universally be regarded as solutions (e.g. geoengineering).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm sure you have the time, inclination and expertise to look over billions of data points and make your own conclusions.
If you can link to the raw data so that I can wget it I will take a look at it.
It's netcdf global monthly mean air temps. Pick some grid points and plot time series. Have fun.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I also question how we know the difference between nature/cycles and man-made pollution. It's a great question, one which has occupied many scientists. It has been addressed in detail in the scientific research. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772353 > The problem is that it's too political now. Remember that's a well-documented, established technique often used by people who want to obstruct things; cre…
It's become a politicized issue, and as such, the media has created a narrative of 2 sides and a "debate." Take the 97% and put it into a different context and it makes the situation seem absolutely ludicrous. If you had a sore stomach, and asked 2 groups of people to help you figure out why, would you trust the diagnosis from a group with 100 world-class doctors, surgeons, dieticians, etc... or 100 random people? Wh…
Not unless two of those 100 random individuals were Barry Marshall and Robin Warren and the stomach pain was due to a peptic ulcer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Barry_Marshall
"Marshall and Robin Warren showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid."
The point being that a reasonable belief long held by experts was shown to be false by careful scientific investigation. That said, I don't find this kind of meta-rhetoric helpful as it serves only to steer attention away from the pertinent matter at hand and to shut down discussion.