All About Natural Disasters

[Randall Flagg]

Glad to hear about your success. Good luck with the process. In 10 years, I would be interested to hear if your thinking has changed.

Thanks man. I hope you stick around here, and hope the team gives you a reason to. 

 

[JJFIVEOH]

What's MMGW?

 

 

I guessed "Man Made Global Warming"

 

Do I win a prize?

 

TBB is right. I hate when people abbreviate words when all it takes is a couple of seconds to type it out, and here I am doing the same thing.

 

You can slap me now. 

[inkman]

What's MMGW?

I'm going with mammoth mammaries gonna win but that's just me

TBB is right. I hate when people abbreviate words when all it takes is a couple of seconds to type it out, and here I am doing the same thing.

 

You can slap me now.

With mammoth mammaries of course

[korab rules]

Aside from the Bourbon, I like the Cigar and V8 deal, but stating we have nothing to show for it... is myopic at best...  Solar is taking off on a grand scale.  You should see the number of farm fields in central and western and central NY taken over by Solar Panels.  Not sure this is all good.  Also forget the Prius, I want a Tesla or that new electric Pickup Truck... http://workhorse.com/pickup/

 

. 

solar is taking off on a grand scale???  Where exactly are you talking about?  I live in central NY and drive all over NY on a regular basis.  Wind farms, yes, but solar farms taking over famrer's fields?  I'm afraid I'm not seeing it.  Even assuming that's true, the government paying people to put something up doesnt mean it is economically feasibly or has less environmental impact.  Nationwide, there are as many solar failures as successes, and it hasn't proven to be any more green than fossil fuels - those solar panels come from somewhere and end up somewhere when we are done with them.  The best thing that can be said about solar is that it is renewable.  Trust me, I wanted to like solar.  I hate NYSEG with a freaking passion, and researched the out of solar.  Even on a massive west facing roof with no tree shade at all, I couldn't make it work out even over a 20 year lifespan.  

 

Yes, yes. And no petroleum company has ever received billions in gub'ment subsidies or tax breaks.

 

Again, saying you don't care about what science tells us is a much different argument than saying it's just lies based on greed, which is ridiculous. I can at least respect you saying you just don't give a ######.

Of course big oil has.  But is there any question it is economically viable on it own? can you say the same for any green energy technology at present? 

I never said I don't care what science tells us.  I question what "science" wants us to believe.  Big difference

 

Ever breathed in motor fumes?

Think enough of that ###### pumped into the air isn't going to ###### you up?

Common sense.

 

Two-pack-a-day smokers probably blamed corrupt scientists and journalists too.

No one said exhaust isn't bad for you or the environment.  That doesn't mean "global warming" exists, or that we are causing it.  

 

As someone who considers himself of the Roosevelt Conservationist mindset, my opinion on Global Warming is that the things we're doing to try to mitigate it are things we should be doing anyway. We need clean air and water. We need our energy sources to pollute less. Anything we can do that is good for the fish and the birds is fine by me, and I don't give two craps about how it hurts any shareholders profits. There's more to living on this planet than capitalism. Spend a week in the Adirondacks and tell me the cost of global warming mitigation is too high. 

 

I'm all for clean air and clean water - but don't try to pass off manbearpig as the reason why we have to have it.   

[darksabre]

solar is taking off on a grand scale??? Where exactly are you talking about? I live in central NY and drive all over NY on a regular basis. Wind farms, yes, but solar farms taking over famrer's fields? I'm afraid I'm not seeing it. Even assuming that's true, the government paying people to put something up doesnt mean it is economically feasibly or has less environmental impact. Nationwide, there are as many solar failures as successes, and it hasn't proven to be any more green than fossil fuels - those solar panels come from somewhere and end up somewhere when we are done with them. The best thing that can be said about solar is that it is renewable. Trust me, I wanted to like solar. I hate NYSEG with a freaking passion, and researched the ###### out of solar. Even on a massive west facing roof with no tree shade at all, I couldn't make it work out even over a 20 year lifespan.

 

Of course big oil has. But is there any question it is economically viable on it own? can you say the same for any green energy technology at present?

I never said I don't care what science tells us. I question what "science" wants us to believe. Big difference

 

No one said exhaust isn't bad for you or the environment. That doesn't mean "global warming" exists, or that we are causing it.

 

 

I'm all for clean air and clean water - but don't try to pass off manbearpig as the reason why we have to have it.

I see you're not here to take things seriously. Good day.

[dudacek]

If you think exhaust is bad for the environment, why do you let your skepticism on global warming deflect you from supporting efforts to reducing emissions? It's a red herring.

Edited September 13, 2017 by dudacek

[korab rules]

I want to go back to Mattpie's meme to demonstrate some of the issues I have with what "science" is telling us we should believe.

 

First of all, WTF is earth's average temperature?  do we stick a thermometer in Detroit (which is obviously the earth a$$hole) in order to check it's temp?  however you come up with it, where did the data come from 25 years ago? 50 years ago?  100?  150?  anything more than that, where does the data come from? anything more than 50 years ago, the amount of data we had was incredibly limited in amount, geography and accuracy.  prior to 100 years ago, we are making somewhat educated guesses based on what - ice cores? the margin of error is huge.  So we are starting off with a data set that is unreliable, making all of our conclusions based on that data suspect as well.  Without reliable data, we lose the nuance in the data set - we lose the variability in the data set, so when we compare a 15 year period again a 20000 year period, but we have no nuance for 99.75% of that data set, we cant put that 15 years in perspective.

 

We next need to look at what the data we do have tends to show us, which is a great deal of variability in temperature over time.  it meanders up and down over the millenia.  A 30 year average temperature, from 1961-1990 is chosen as the temperature to which we are to compare historical temps.  why that period?  who knows.  Why only a 30 year period when we are talking about a period of 20000 years?  who knows.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with advancing the premise of the author.

 

When you look at the data, and assuming for the sake of argument it is accurate,  we are within a quarter of a degree or so of the average temps from 3000 to 8000 BC, then the temperature dipped over the the next 3500 years or so, then started to come back starting in around 1700 AD.

 

So my question is - natural variations in temperature just as the Egyptians saw during the height of their empire?  or natural variations in temperature.  I'm unwilling to say we are causing temperature shifts based on 15 years of data that I'm not sure I can trust in the first place. 

 

Sorry for the stream of consciousness, but I have to run.

I see you're not here to take things seriously. Good day.

Not taking it seriously?  why, because I question what I read?

If you think exhaust is bad for the environment, why do you let your skepticism on global warming deflect you from supporting efforts to reducing emissions? It's a red herring.

I think reducing emissions is a laudable goal, but not at any expense, especially when that "any expense" is demanded to prevent global warming

[Ogre]

I'm going with mammoth mammaries gonna win but that's just me

With mammoth mammaries of course

I caught this as I was catching up on things. I was mid-gulp and laughed beer right out of my nose.

 

You're not right, man. Apparently neither am I.

[SwampD]

So, you don't know what the earths average temp is,... you just know it's wrong.

[MattPie]

I want to go back to Mattpie's meme to demonstrate some of the issues I have with what "science" is telling us we should believe.

 

First of all, WTF is earth's average temperature?  do we stick a thermometer in Detroit (which is obviously the earth a$$hole) in order to check it's temp?  however you come up with it, where did the data come from 25 years ago? 50 years ago?  100?  150?  anything more than that, where does the data come from? anything more than 50 years ago, the amount of data we had was incredibly limited in amount, geography and accuracy.  prior to 100 years ago, we are making somewhat educated guesses based on what - ice cores? the margin of error is huge.  So we are starting off with a data set that is unreliable, making all of our conclusions based on that data suspect as well.  Without reliable data, we lose the nuance in the data set - we lose the variability in the data set, so when we compare a 15 year period again a 20000 year period, but we have no nuance for 99.75% of that data set, we cant put that 15 years in perspective.

 

We next need to look at what the data we do have tends to show us, which is a great deal of variability in temperature over time.  it meanders up and down over the millenia.  A 30 year average temperature, from 1961-1990 is chosen as the temperature to which we are to compare historical temps.  why that period?  who knows.  Why only a 30 year period when we are talking about a period of 20000 years?  who knows.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with advancing the premise of the author.

 

When you look at the data, and assuming for the sake of argument it is accurate,  we are within a quarter of a degree or so of the average temps from 3000 to 8000 BC, then the temperature dipped over the the next 3500 years or so, then started to come back starting in around 1700 AD.

 

So my question is - natural variations in temperature just as the Egyptians saw during the height of their empire?  or natural variations in temperature.  I'm unwilling to say we are causing temperature shifts based on 15 years of data that I'm not sure I can trust in the first place. 

Noted on the side of the "meme", are the studies that it's based on. There is criticism of the one study I looked at (Marcott), but as you say, you need to dig deeper to find out who is funding to figure that out.

http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004/Marcott_Global%20Temperature%20Reconstructed.pdf

 

I don't pretend to know all the details on how it works, but it's not unfeasible that science can look at how the ice freezes to determine what temperature it was at the time. And true, we're not that far off from the max in the past, but we've gone from slightly below average to max in 100 years. It could be a spike, it could be from burning millions of years worth of stored hydrocarbons in a century.

 

Is your primary rebuttal that "it's really hard to figure out so it must be wrong"?

[JJFIVEOH]

With mammoth mammaries of course

 

If that's a punishment, I'd love to see the reward. 

[drnkirishone]

If that's a punishment, I'd love to see the reward.

moderate mammaries

[korab rules]

So, you don't know what the earths average temp is,... you just know it's wrong.

 

No - my point is no one knows what the earth's temperature is - there isn't a temperature of a planet.  Temperature is point specific.  There are averages of temperatures, but how that is calculated isn't consistent within the scientific community, and cant be used to anaylze historical temperatures because that data just isn't available.  

 

Noted on the side of the "meme", are the studies that it's based on. There is criticism of the one study I looked at (Marcott), but as you say, you need to dig deeper to find out who is funding to figure that out.

http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004/Marcott_Global%20Temperature%20Reconstructed.pdf

 

I don't pretend to know all the details on how it works, but it's not unfeasible that science can look at how the ice freezes to determine what temperature it was at the time. And true, we're not that far off from the max in the past, but we've gone from slightly below average to max in 100 years. It could be a spike, it could be from burning millions of years worth of stored hydrocarbons in a century.

 

Is your primary rebuttal that "it's really hard to figure out so it must be wrong"?

No - that isn't my rebuttal at all.  One needs to drill down into these articles to see what is happening.  The article acknowledges problems with their data set.  They acknowledge their data set lacks nuance and variability, and involves averaging a small number of data points.  Their abstract includes the following:

 

"Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history." 

 

By reading the details of the article, we find that they are only looking at "global temperature"  for the last 1500 years, which coincides with the end of a long term cooling period with temperatures well below the mean of the last 20000 years.

 

It is only in the modern era - really the last 50 - 60 years that we have reliable data to act on.  We are now seeing and recording the great variability in weather that we were not able to record before.  Do you believe that variability in weather didn't exist before we were able to record it?  Without that data, how can we put the data we have now in context?  

 

This is why I struggle with the assumption that "global warming" even exists, much less that humans are causing it.  Small spikes in temperature aren't indicative of long term trends - they can be the natural variability that occurs in a data set.  If we had any data to compare it to, perhaps we could put current world temperatures in perspective.  

Edited September 14, 2017 by korab rules

[SwampD]

No - my point is no one knows what the earth's temperature is - there isn't a temperature of a planet.  Temperature is point specific.  There are averages of temperatures, but how that is calculated isn't consistent within the scientific community, and cant be used to anaylze historical temperatures because that data just isn't available.  

 

No - that isn't my rebuttal at all.  One needs to drill down into these articles to see what is happening.  The article acknowledges problems with their data set.  They acknowledge their data set lacks nuance and variability, and involves averaging a small number of data points.  Their abstract includes the following:

 

"Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history." 

 

By reading the details of the article, we find that they are only looking at "global temperature"  for the last 1500 years, which coincides with the end of a long term cooling period with temperatures well below the mean of the last 20000 years.

 

It is only in the modern era - really the last 50 - 60 years that we have reliable data to act on.  We are now seeing and recording the great variability in weather that we were not able to record before.  Do you believe that variability in weather didn't exist before we were able to record it?  Without that data, how can we put the data we have now in context?  

 

This is why I struggle with the assumption that "global warming" even exists, much less that humans are causing it.  Small spikes in temperature aren't indicative of long term trends - they can be the natural variability that occurs in a data set.  If we had any data to compare it to, perhaps we could put current world temperatures in perspective.  

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries/solar-system-temperatures

 

NASA thinks otherwise. I think I'll take their word for it.

[SabresFanInRochester]

All I can say is that when this topic started, I KNEW it was going to turn into a global warming argument. 

[biodork]

I'm gonna guess solar is a lot bigger share of the energy market in places with more consistent sun than cloud cover (i.e. Arizona / CA / CO / NM, not so much back East).  I have friends who installed solar panels on their roof out here and expect it'll only take them a few years before they've recovered their investment, but it would take a lot longer to break even in NY when it's overcast much of the winter months.

[SwampD]

I'm gonna guess solar is a lot bigger share of the energy market in places with more consistent sun than cloud cover (i.e. Arizona / CA / CO / NM, not so much back East).  I have friends who installed solar panels on their roof out here and expect it'll only take them a few years before they've recovered their investment, but it would take a lot longer to break even in NY when it's overcast much of the winter months.

My guitar player has solar panels on his house. His bill last month was $2.49 and he runs his AC all the time and has a full band setup with amps in his basement going all the time.

 

Every pole in NJ, if it is in the sun, has a panel on it.

 

Solar is taking off on a grand scale. And like I've said before. I don't see it as alternative energy. It's just the next energy we will exploit.

[biodork]

My guitar player has solar panels on his house. His bill last month was $2.49 and he runs his AC all the time and has a full band setup with amps in his basement going all the time.

 

Every pole in NJ, if it is in the sun, has a panel on it.

 

Solar is taking off on a grand scale. And like I've said before. I don't see it as alternative energy. It's just the next energy we will exploit.

That's impressive!

[korab rules]

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries/solar-system-temperatures

 

NASA thinks otherwise. I think I'll take their word for it.

OK - show me where we take the earth's temperature. I still think I'm right about detroit.  

[SwampD]

OK - show me where we take the earth's temperature. I still think I'm right about detroit.  

Again, you don't understand it so it can't be real.

 

I don't understand how my doctor measures my cholesterol, but when he tells me its high, I listen to him and change my diet.

[korab rules]

I'm gonna guess solar is a lot bigger share of the energy market in places with more consistent sun than cloud cover (i.e. Arizona / CA / CO / NM, not so much back East).  I have friends who installed solar panels on their roof out here and expect it'll only take them a few years before they've recovered their investment, but it would take a lot longer to break even in NY when it's overcast much of the winter months.

very true, regionally it can be more effective.

 

My guitar player has solar panels on his house. His bill last month was $2.49 and he runs his AC all the time and has a full band setup with amps in his basement going all the time.

 

Every pole in NJ, if it is in the sun, has a panel on it.

 

Solar is taking off on a grand scale. And like I've said before. I don't see it as alternative energy. It's just the next energy we will exploit.

How much did it cost to install, and what incentives was he offered to install it, and to keep it going?  Lets see his bill.  Anecdotes are great, but evidence is better.

 

I wanted to cut NYSEG off and explored solar.  I was approaching 30K to install a system.  Where do solar panels come from - the ether?  how much does it cost, and what is the environmental impact of manufacturing them?  what about their disposal?  Measuring the effectiveness of new technology isn't just about the numbers on your utility bill, especially when those numbers are affected by incentives.  

Edited September 14, 2017 by korab rules

[darksabre]

I'm gonna guess solar is a lot bigger share of the energy market in places with more consistent sun than cloud cover (i.e. Arizona / CA / CO / NM, not so much back East). I have friends who installed solar panels on their roof out here and expect it'll only take them a few years before they've recovered their investment, but it would take a lot longer to break even in NY when it's overcast much of the winter months.

Solar does quite well here in NY actually. The cooler temps allow the panels to be more efficient which helps offset some of the loss to weather variables. We really have more sun here in the winter than it feels. Plus we can manipulate how the system works so that you can have it produce more in the winter and less in the summer or vice versa depending on how you want to offset season to season.

[korab rules]

Again, you don't understand it so it can't be real.

 

I don't understand how my doctor measures my cholesterol, but when he tells me its high, I listen to him and change my diet.

are you being intentionally obtuse or do you really not understand that when people refer to the earths temperature they are referring to an average of data points, and that these same data points did not exist 100 years ago?

[biodork]

Solar does quite well here in NY actually. The cooler temps allow the panels to be more efficient which helps offset some of the loss to weather variables. We really have more sun here in the winter than it feels. Plus we can manipulate how the system works so that you can have it produce more in the winter and less in the summer or vice versa depending on how you want to offset season to season.

Interesting.  I remember seeing a ton of windmills driving out to Buffalo on 20A (I think?), but would not have guessed solar would enjoy more widespread adoption!

[SabresFanInRochester]

Again, you don't understand it so it can't be real.

 

I don't understand how my doctor measures my cholesterol, but when he tells me its high, I listen to him and change my diet.

In all fairness, your doctor measures your cholesterol in a very scientific manner. You can combine that data with other cholesterol numbers to come up with averages. That's great for present time. And I would not argue with a stat that shows my level of cholesterol versus someone from 20 years ago.

 

But to compare modern cholesterol levels to the cholesterol gathered from an Egyptian mummy, and make a scientific assertion that people today have higher cholesterol than 2000 years ago, based on that measurement, is giving too much credence to other variables and a small sample size. It might be true, but the cause and effect are whatever the author wants it to be.