Ben D » Sat Jan 25, 2014 7:56 pm wrote:
...Adios
Oh, that is cruel you evil fucker.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
driftglass
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Sunday Morning Comin' Down
H/T Tengrain for the story of the day:
Billy Nye Vs Gregory and Blackburn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z199u0ra1ZE
There is no "debate" here: there is one side that is right, and one side that is criminally, treasonously wrong and putting them on stage together and treating them as equally valid points of view only serves the interests of the deniers.
Unfortunately in this Universe access to our electronic public square is zealously guarded by millionaire meatpuppets like David Gregory, and so, on "Meet the Press" -- a show which has devoted, oh, let's say 11 seconds to climate change coverage in the last five years -- Exxon/Mobile Puppet Theater is what we get instead of actual news and actual debate.
However over in the Better Universe, the problem of David Gregory was dealt with years ago by the Department of Poetic Justice.
One day they just gave up trying to reason with him and duct taped him to a chair.
Then his ribs were broken. One at a time. With a ball-peen hammer. On camera.
And as each rib shattered the Department of Poetic Justice had a "Rib Breakage Denialist" on hand to argue the other side of the issue.
As Mr. Gregory shrieked in pain, the DPJ representative patiently explained how the downward pressure of hammers often does not result in rib-breakage at all so there goes all your fancy science out the window Mr. Smartypants!
As Mr. Gregory coughed up blood, the DPJ representative calmly countered that all of Mr. Gregory's so-called "pain" and "injury" might very well be something that he was making up (Perhaps for some of that sweet-sweet rib-breakage science grant money!)
As Mr. Gregory begged for it to stop, DPJ representative reminded everyone tsk-tsk-tskily of how reckless and irresponsible it would be to take action or pass laws based on one man's "hypothesis or theories or unproven science" about the breaking of ribs.
But that was over in the Better Universe.
Back here where we live I am quite confident that Mr. Gregory and everyone like him will continue to be allowed -- nay, encouraged -- to ply their trade and destroy any semblance of intelligent public discourse on behalf of their corporate owners for many, many years to come. And so this Sunday on American's premier public interest program, we were treated to Actual Republican Representative Marsha Blackburn oscillate between insisting that climate change is: --
1. Not real, so shut up!
2. Real, but inevitable and there isn't nuthin' nobody can do anyway.
3. Real but Beneficial because Carbon is Awesome!
-- all while never losing her big, excreted-human-carbon-waste-product-eating-grin.
Meanwhile, Chuckles the Clown begs Americans to please stop making the Right look stupid by "debating" this stuff. After all what fucking difference does it who's right and who's wrong as long NBC's sponsors don't catch any of the blame and the American taxpayer picks up the tab for making sure Chuckle's wine cellar isn't flooded:
MR. TODD: Well, it is-- 41 billion, I think that you get at this 41 billion-dollar weather events in 2013 around the world. 41 of them, that was an all-time record. And that is-- I think it’s not just Podesta that believes that. There are a lot of people that say okay, let’s not debate who’s right, manmade or is it just nature that’s happening. The fact of the matter, it’s happening. And I wonder if there’s too much-- you know, I know some environmentalists are frustrated with that portion of the debate. But maybe you steer away from it and say, it doesn’t matter. We have to tackle this infrastructure problem. You got to build different higher seawalls in some places. We’re going to have to figure out a different way to distribute water in California. The fact of the matter-- and the Federal government is going to have to pay for this.
GREGORY: Right.
MR. TODD: And pay for all these things. And so I wonder if everybody should say, you know what? Let’s table this debate. We know what’s happening. Table that part of the debate because when you do that, then it becomes this like clubbing each other with-- with-- with political argument that takes away from what we have to do.
...
There were plenty of other horrors at The Mouse Circus today, just as there are every Sunday, but this one I wanted to out of my head and onto a page before I started laughing a very scary laugh only to find that I could not stop until I set fire to my laptop and drop-kicked my teevee into the next county.
Around the horn:
Huffington Post: 'Meet The Press' Shows Us Exactly How Not To Cover Climate Change
Mother Jones: Watch Bill Nye Explain Climate Change to GOP Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn
Business Insider: Bill Nye 'The Science Guy' Debated A GOP Congresswoman On Climate Change, And It Was Surreal
And, of course, the inevitable dispatches from Dogpatch Mordor: Meet the Press to Host Climate Change Debate Featuring a Guy Who Played a Scientist on TV and Rep. Marsha Blackburn Smacks Around Bill Nye On Meet The Press
Ben D » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:34 pm wrote:Iamwhomiam » Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:07 am wrote:Sure they're looking for the missing heat.
It's being transferred to the oceans deeps. Which many are aware of.
No,,the idea of missing heat hiding in the deep ocean in unknown locations proposed by Trenberth is just that..a speculation, and to some, a fanciful one at that...no proof...other climate scientists are speculating that the cessation of warming is the result of a change in Sun activity, others again on the result of volcanic activity...no one really knows at this time. Surprise, surprise, the science is not settled! But what we can all agree on is that global warming has stalled for now, albeit at the high levels of the late 1990's.
The report said that while the rate of warming is slower in the 2000s than it was in the 1990s it doesn't negate the 150 years of observations that show the world is warming. The report also says that more the 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases lately has been absorbed into the oceans' deep water, which for a while slows surface warming but not the long-term trend.
There is enough evidence on the science to warrant action, said Sir Paul Nurse of the Royal Society.
"We've changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere; that's not a belief system. We know that beyond shadow of a doubt," Santer said. "We ignore this at our peril."
Ben D » Sun Jan 26, 2014 2:56 am wrote:To Mods...so long as members like Rory are allowed to go unchallenged on their continuous disregard for RI board rules..there is no point in my posting what I consider relevant research and information on the state of planetary climate that is of interest to many readers who visit this thread.
...Adios
UN report sees $1.45 tn global warming cost: media
11 hours ago
Global warming will reduce the world's crop production by up to two percent every decade and wreak $1.45 trillion of economic damage by the end of this century, according to a draft UN report, Japanese media said Friday.
The document is the second volume in a long-awaited trilogy by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel-winning group of scientists, which is set to be issued next month after a five-day meeting in Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
The trilogy is the IPCC's first great overview of the causes and effects of global warming, and options for dealing with it, since 2007.
According to the draft, if global temperatures rise by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit), the world's aggregated gross domestic production will fall by 0.2 to 2 percent, the mass circulation paper said.
That would translate into 15 trillion yen to 148 trillion yen ($147 billion to $1.45 trillion) in economic losses, calculated against the world's total GDP in 2012, it said.
The planet's crop production will decline by up to two percent every decade as rainfall patterns shift and droughts batter farmland, even as demand for food rises a projected 14 percent, it said.
Other effects from global warming include the loss of land to rising sea levels, forcing hundreds of millions of people to migrate from coastal areas, with the most vulnerable regions including East, South and Southeast Asia, it said.
Hereford cattle roam dirt-brown fields on a farm in California's Central Valley, on February 3, 2014, which would at this time o
Hereford cattle roam dirt-brown fields on a farm in California's Central Valley, on February 3, 2014, which would at this time of the year normally be covered in lush green grass
The draft report, which will be reviewed in the March 25-29 meeting in Yokohama, calls for mitigation measures to reduce the vulnerability of environments to climate change such as flood protection projects and research on the prevention of infectious diseases, it said.
In the first volume of the trilogy, the IPCC said it was more certain than ever that humans were the cause of global warming and predicted temperatures would rise another 0.3 to 4.8 degrees Celsius (0.5-8.6 degrees Fahrenheit) this century.
Heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising seas are among the threats that will intensify through warming, it said in in the report released in September in Stockholm.
Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN
BBC News 31 Mar 2014
The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned.
Scientists and officials meeting in Japan say the document is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impacts of climate change on the world.
Members of the UN's climate panel say it provides overwhelming evidence of the scale of these effects.
Natural systems now bear the brunt, but a growing impact on humans is feared.
Our health, homes, food and safety are all likely to be threatened by rising temperatures, the summary says.
cont - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26810559
Carbon Dioxide Levels Just Hit Their Highest Point In 800,000 Years
By Kiley Kroh on April 9, 2014 at 11:51 am
The concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that drives climate change, hit 402 parts per million this week — the highest level recorded in at least 800,000 years.
The recordings came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which marked another ominous milestone last May when the 400 ppm threshold was crossed for the first time in recorded history.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels spike every spring but this year the threshold was crossed in March, two months earlier than last year. In fact, it’s happening “at faster rates virtually every decade,” according to James Butler, Director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, a trend that “is consistent with rising fossil fuel emissions.”
400 ppm was long considered a very serious measurement but it isn’t the end — it’s just a marker on the road to ever-increasing carbon pollution levels, Butler explained in an interview on NOAA’s website. “It is a milestone, marking the fact that humans have caused carbon dioxide concentrations to rise 120 ppm since pre-industrial times, with over 90 percent of that in the past century alone. We don’t know where the tipping points are.”
When asked if the 400 ppm will be reached even earlier next year, Butler responded simply, “Yes. Every year going forward for a long time.”
While atmospheric CO2 levels never approached 400 ppm in the 800,000 years of detailed records scientists have, there is evidence that the last time the Earth experienced such high concentrations was actually several million years ago. Writing about the 400 ppm recording last year, climatologist Peter Gleick pointed to UCLA research “that suggested we would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels approaching today’s levels” and another article in the journal Paleoceanography “on paleoclimatic records that suggest CO2 concentrations (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) may have been around 400 ppm between 2 and 4.6 million years ago.”
But whether it’s 800,000 years ago or 15 million years ago, Gleick emphasizes that “the more important point to remember is that never in the history of the planet have humans altered the atmosphere as radically as we are doing so now.”
And this uncharted territory is something humans will have to navigate for quite some time because once its emitted, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere. In fact, Andrew Freedman explains, “a single molecule of carbon dioxide can remain aloft for hundreds of years, which means that the effects of today’s industrial activities will be felt for the next several centuries, if not thousands of years.”
slimmouse » Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:40 pm wrote:So we've had a 180 parts per million increase in CO2 emmissions over the last 54 years and this is going to send the climate out of control?
Or, to put this into another mathematical perspective, the evidently indisputable fact is that that we have had 0.000018% increase in CO2 (as a percentage of the entire atmosphere)
I fully appreciate that this is a whopping 50% increase.
Nonetheless Im having a hard time buying it
Because to me, thats a 50 percent increase in a Gas who 54 years ago apparently formed a total , constituent 0.0000 28 percent of our atmosphere..
Which actually equates to what?
Not very much.
Id definitely be interested however in the percentage increases in the amounts of microparticulate Aluminium, along with Barium and other goodies that are in there within the same period.
To say nothing of the percentage increase in radiation bombardment - You know, Fukishima, Cell Towers, Wi-Fi etc.
DrEvil » Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:30 am wrote:slimmouse » Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:40 pm wrote:So we've had a 180 parts per million increase in CO2 emmissions over the last 54 years and this is going to send the climate out of control?
Or, to put this into another mathematical perspective, the evidently indisputable fact is that that we have had 0.000018% increase in CO2 (as a percentage of the entire atmosphere)
I fully appreciate that this is a whopping 50% increase.
Nonetheless Im having a hard time buying it
Because to me, thats a 50 percent increase in a Gas who 54 years ago apparently formed a total , constituent 0.0000 28 percent of our atmosphere..
Which actually equates to what?
Not very much.
Funny, that's what the frog in the pot of boiling water said too!
slimmouse » Thu Apr 10, 2014 1:40 pm wrote:So we've had a 180 parts per million increase in CO2 emmissions over the last 54 years and this is going to send the climate out of control?
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