PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Little Joe on August 11, 2025, 09:14:48 AM
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Forecast to be a hurricane by Wednesday afternoon and a MAJOR hurricane by Saturday morning.
I hope she changes directions before she hits here.
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East, go more EAST, off into the Atlantic! Whatever you do don’t go into the Gulf.
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If it comes here we have so many mobility impaired and elderly in our neighborhood, it will get a little crazy.
Our care group started preparation first thing today, getting in supplies and calling to find out who has need transportation out to a shelter, or to a relative.
We did the hurricane shopping just a few hours ago and put in all the non perishables just in case.
We safe everyone. Hurricanes are no joke when the water is 85 degrees and higher.
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Forecast to be a hurricane by Wednesday afternoon and a MAJOR hurricane by Saturday morning.
I hope she changes directions before she hits here.
I hope so too - out into the Atlantic where she can't do much damage... and NOT up across Long Island either.
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If it comes here we have so many mobility impaired and elderly in our neighborhood, it will get a little crazy.
Our care group started preparation first thing today, getting in supplies and calling to find out who has need transportation out to a shelter, or to a relative.
We did the hurricane shopping just a few hours ago and put in all the non perishables just in case.
We safe everyone. Hurricanes are no joke when the water is 85 degrees and higher.
You on the Atlantic side? I'm on the Gulf.
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You on the Atlantic side? I'm on the Gulf.
If it comes thru the keys and into the gulf, it would risk the hurricane Charlie effect where it turns back and hammers the west coast and central Florida, again.
We were lucky to have a house generator because some of our friends were without power for weeks.
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If it comes thru the keys and into the gulf, it would risk the hurricane Charlie effect where it turns back and hammers the west coast and central Florida, again.
We were lucky to have a house generator because some of our friends were without power for weeks.
I will never live without a whole house generator again. A couple of hurricanes ago we were the only ones on the street with one and the power was out several days, the neighbors were all envious. Then, every one of them had one installed, now when the power goes out you hear generators all up and down the street. 🤣
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I will never live without a whole house generator again. A couple of hurricanes ago we were the only ones on the street with one and the power was out several days, the neighbors were all envious. Then, every one of them had one installed, now when the power goes out you hear generators all up and down the street. 🤣
Back in '04 and '05 we had FIVE hurricanes. I bought a standard 5,000 watt generator. I hated that thing because of the noise, but it allowed me to make coffee in the morning, run the microwave and keep the fridge cold.
A couple of years ago I bought a small portable "Predator" generator from Harbor freight. It's a knock-off of the Honda. I love that thing. You can stand over it and have a conversation while the coffee brews or the microwave heats up food. When not in use, it idles down to practically nothing, but throttles up when a load is placed on it. I can leave the refrigerator plugged in with the generator running. When the fridge is not running, the generator idles quietly. When the refrigerator compressor kicks in, the generator spins up, but it is still quiet.
It's not as good as a whole-house generator, but it gets us through the heat of a florid summer day. I sure hope I don't need it soon, but if I do, it powers most of my essentials.
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I sure hope I don't need it soon, but if I do, it powers most of my essentials.
I hope that for all of us.
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Go away hurricane! Lived in Ft Walton Beach, Biloxi, and now Alabama. I’ve seen enough of ‘em, and evacuated from a few of them. Not fun.
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It looks like we might dodge Erin, but . . .
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It looks like we might dodge Erin, but . . .
At this time of the year, there's always a next one... :(
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Climate change! Panic! Send government your money!
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Climate change! Panic! Send government your money!
I don't know if hurricanes are becoming more frequent or stronger or not.
If they are, I don't know if it is because of climate change (which is always happening)
or if it is a normal hurricane cycle.
But I do know that sending government more money is a waste.
And I do know that I am getting damned sick and tired of hurricane prep, evacuations and mostly post-hurricane-cleanup.
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According to Grok they are not more frequent but are getting stronger. The paths are about the same historically. The ocean water is getting warmer and the atmosphere is getting moister so the hurricanes are getting stronger faster. But this is all part of the normal climate cycle as we emerge from the latest ice age.
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According to Grok they are not more frequent but are getting stronger. The paths are about the same historically. The ocean water is getting warmer and the atmosphere is getting moister so the hurricanes are getting stronger faster. But this is all part of the normal climate cycle as we emerge from the latest ice age.
THIS THIS THIS.
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the claim is that the change is happening quicker than "normal"
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the claim is that the change is happening quicker than "normal"
What claim would that have been? And by whom?
My only claim was that I'm sick and tired of living in hurricane alley and having to prepare, evacuate and clean up several times a year.
I love living in Florida most of the time. I love our governor and our State politics. I keep thinking of moving, but I can't think of a better place to live (most of the time). Other places have fires and earth quakes and tornadoes and snow and ice and liberals.
But I still hate dealing with hurricanes. More so now that I did a couple decades ago when I was only in my 50s.
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What claim would that have been? And by whom?
My only claim was that I'm sick and tired of living in hurricane alley and having to prepare, evacuate and clean up several times a year.
I love living in Florida most of the time. I love our governor and our State politics. I keep thinking of moving, but I can't think of a better place to live (most of the time). Other places have fires and earth quakes and tornadoes and snow and ice and liberals.
But I still hate dealing with hurricanes. More so now that I did a couple decades ago when I was only in my 50s.
It seems "historical data" they use is only from the late 1800's. Really? A planet billions of years old and only using 150 years worth of data is supposed to prove a point?
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According to Grok they are not more frequent but are getting stronger. The paths are about the same historically. The ocean water is getting warmer and the atmosphere is getting moister so the hurricanes are getting stronger faster. But this is all part of the normal climate cycle as we emerge from the latest ice age.
I recall watching a Jeb Bush speech back about a drought Florida was experiencing and hearing him refer to 50 year weather periods / patterns and that Florida was about to enter a wetter than normal period. It wasn't long after that we got hit by the five 2004 hurricanes, after our area not getting hit by even one for over 80 years.
The Earth is fickle broad and doesn't;t care what algore and his band of lying grifters thinks.
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Just what is normal 8)
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What claim would that have been? And by whom?
Note that I didn't quote your post(s). I should have been clear that I was talking about the climate change zealots, over time changing (ironically) their tune. First it was global warming, then it was climate change, now it's the rate of change. When challenging some climate change zealots that I know, they will (grudgingly) acknowledge that the climate has always been changing, but but but it's changing faster than "it should".
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It seems "historical data" they use is only from the late 1800's. Really? A planet billions of years old and only using 150 years worth of data is supposed to prove a point?
That statement is a bit misleading. Even forgoing the typical response of "Not ALL studies" only use data from the 1800s, it should be obvious that this is done because nobody actually measured global temperatures prior to that.
But there are gazillions of studies that do attempt to chart global temperatures over eons.
Eg:
Note that this graph actually shows that the average earth temperature is at a historic low.
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According to Grok they are not more frequent but are getting stronger. The paths are about the same historically. The ocean water is getting warmer and the atmosphere is getting moister so the hurricanes are getting stronger faster. But this is all part of the normal climate cycle as we emerge from the latest ice age.
Not quite - the Holocene interglacial is over 10,000 years old now, and there have been warm periods and colder periods (like the LIA) embedded in it. We're long past the "emerging" phase.
We can't say for sure that the current warming isn't partly due to some multi-decadal or multi-century cycle that we don't fully understand yet. But given how much additional CO2 we're responsible for (about 50% over pre-industrial as of 2024) and the emerging consensus that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is somewhere around 3.2ºC per doubling of CO2 (plus or minus 0.7ºC), we can say with high confidence that we're a significant contributor.
Whether we're the MAIN contributor or not... the jury is still out. I think that claim has only medium confidence at this point.
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we can say with high confidence that we're a significant contributor.
No you can't.
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I really wish I had saved the reference... we're in a warming period embedded in a larger cooling period embedded in an even larger warming period embedded in an ever larger cooling period.
OK, we're in an interglacial period, and the Holocene started when the last little ice age ended 11,700 years ago. Yes, we're past the last emerging stage. However, we are still within the Quaternary Ice Age (started 2.6 million years ago). The next ice age should begin in about 50,000 years. Unless we delay it by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. We must do that for humanity's survival!
There is still some debate whether CO2 is a leading or lagging indicator of global temperature. That is, does heat make more CO2 or does CO2 make more heat?
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No you can't.
I agree. We can say that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. We can say that humans are making more CO2 now than they used to. But we can't say for sure that all of the increase in CO2 is due to human activity. We're constantly discovering more sources of CO2 outside of human activity that are major contributors.
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I really wish I had saved the reference... we're in a warming period embedded in a larger cooling period embedded in an even larger warming period embedded in an ever larger cooling period.
OK, we're in an interglacial period, and the Holocene started when the last little ice age ended 11,700 years ago. Yes, we're past the last emerging stage. However, we are still within the Quaternary Ice Age (started 2.6 million years ago). The next ice age should begin in about 50,000 years. Unless we delay it by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. We must do that for humanity's survival!
There is still some debate whether CO2 is a leading or lagging indicator of global temperature. That is, does heat make more CO2 or does CO2 make more heat?
It's generally recognized to be both. Higher temperatures lead to more outgassing of CO2 AND increased CO2 leads to higher temperatures. So CO2 can be both cause and effect - and obviously, there is the possibility of a positive feedback loop in there.
CO2 is NOT believed to be the main driver of the glacial/interglacial cycles during the Quaternary, the forcings there are believed to be mainly astronomical in origin (Milankovic cycles).
Agreed that we may miss the next glaciation if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. But 50,000 years is a long way off, and it's anyone's guess whether human civilization will last that long.
Also agreed that we are still in the Quaternary Ice Age. Personally, I reckon us to be in an interglacial in what will, on the scale of epochs, be indistinguishable from the other interglacials of the Pleistocene, though our GHG emissions may make it more intense and longer lasting. Essentially, the Pleistocene never ended. (That's a minority view, I admit.)
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No you can't.
Let me put it this way: if the current warming is ENTIRELY unrelated to the greenhouse effect, then we had better hope that whatever cycle we're in goes into a colder phase before the extra heat due to our emissions manifests in higher temperatures, because otherwise the effect will be additive.
It's remotely possible that the vast majority of that extra heat is still being held in the oceans and has yet to reveal itself through higher temperatures. The E in ECS means Equilibrium, and we don't have a good idea of how long it takes for the climate system to reach equilibrium after a change in GHG concentrations.
But that would only mean that we ain't seen nothing yet.
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Let me put it this way: if the current warming is ENTIRELY unrelated to the greenhouse effect, then we had better hope that whatever cycle we're in goes into a colder phase before the extra heat due to our emissions manifests in higher temperatures, because otherwise the effect will be additive.
It's remotely possible that the vast majority of that extra heat is still being held in the oceans and has yet to reveal itself through higher temperatures. The E in ECS means Equilibrium, and we don't have a good idea of how long it takes for the climate system to reach equilibrium after a change in GHG concentrations.
But that would only mean that we ain't seen nothing yet.
And anyone alive right now will never see any of this.
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I agree. We can say that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere. We can say that humans are making more CO2 now than they used to. But we can't say for sure that all of the increase in CO2 is due to human activity. We're constantly discovering more sources of CO2 outside of human activity that are major contributors.
That's partly correct. We can quantify the amount of CO2 that is of biological origin, though, because (oversimplified) the carbon 12 to carbon 13 isotope ratio is different in CO2 of geological vs biological origin. Organisms preferentially take up carbon 12. So yes, CO2 from animal respiration and forest fires contributes - but as i understand it, to a much smaller degree than burning the vast amounts of fossil fuels that we have been doing since the late 19th century.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-do-we-know-build-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-caused-humans (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-do-we-know-build-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-caused-humans)
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And anyone alive right now will never see any of this.
That all depends on what the "relaxation time" (time to equilibrium) turns out to be.
But that's very much a longshot hypothesis. It's far more plausible that we are already seeing at least some of the warming due to increased CO2 and other GHGs.
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That's partly correct. We can quantify the amount of CO2 that is of biological origin, though, because (oversimplified) the carbon 12 to carbon 13 isotope ratio is different in CO2 of geological vs biological origin. Organisms preferentially take up carbon 12. So yes, CO2 from animal respiration and forest fires contributes - but as i understand it, to a much smaller degree than burning the vast amounts of fossil fuels that we have been doing since the late 19th century.
Ah good point. I forgot about the different isotopes of carbon being emitted by different sources.
I'm certainly no expert, and you know what you're talking about... So we can separate CO2 coming from respiration / forest fires / coal and oil from a geological origin like volcanoes, hot springs, and other weird things. That's pretty cool. We may assume that geological origin is more or less constant while biological origin is increasing?
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Ah good point. I forgot about the different isotopes of carbon being emitted by different sources.
I'm certainly no expert, and you know what you're talking about... So we can separate CO2 coming from respiration / forest fires / coal and oil from a geological origin like volcanoes, hot springs, and other weird things. That's pretty cool. We may assume that geological origin is more or less constant while biological origin is increasing?
Except for random fluctuations in things like volcano activity, yes, that's my understanding
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And anyone alive right now will never see any of this.
I’d like to see ONE scientifically completed study
By that I m an a study done without a political /financial stake in the published results.
Minsters we have an unbroken record of faux claims and conclusions carefully couched so as to conclude a politically prearranged outcome.
If even one climate prediction had been accurate in the last fifty years I might not be as dismissive of all the bullshit.
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I’d like to see ONE scientifically completed study
By that I m an a study done without a political /financial stake in the published results.
Minsters we have an unbroken record of faux claims and conclusions carefully couched so as to conclude a politically prearranged outcome.
If even one climate prediction had been accurate in the last fifty years I might not be as dismissive of all the bullshit.
There have been MANY scientifically completed studies, including the study by Sherwood et al. that established strict confidence bounds (error bars, but with a little more detail than just plus or minus) on the ECS.
The climate system is so complex that to model it accurately has been beyond our capabilities, at least until (maybe) recently - I think it's so complex that what climate scientists are doing with their projections are still not much more precise than back of the envelope calculations would have been. So I take *all* specific climate projections with a large grain of salt. That grain will start to get smaller when I see those projections get better. But as rough estimates, the projections haven't been FALSE per se, they've just missed the mark.
That's not a reason to doubt that GHGs likely have already contributed to the current warming, or if not, then they will start to add on to it in short order. The basic physics isn't rocket science, it's been well understood for at least 50 years, and the possibility of GHG warming was already being theorized by Svante Arrhenius circa 1900 (I don't recall the exact date).
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One good reason to fight against climate change
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There have been MANY scientifically completed studies, including the study by Sherwood et al. that established strict confidence bounds (error bars, but with a little more detail than just plus or minus) on the ECS.
The climate system is so complex that to model it accurately has been beyond our capabilities, at least until (maybe) recently - I think it's so complex that what climate scientists are doing with their projections are still not much more precise than back of the envelope calculations would have been. So I take *all* specific climate projections with a large grain of salt. That grain will start to get smaller when I see those projections get better. But as rough estimates, the projections haven't been FALSE per se, they've just missed the mark.
That's not a reason to doubt that GHGs likely have already contributed to the current warming, or if not, then they will start to add on to it in short order. The basic physics isn't rocket science, it's been well understood for at least 50 years, and the possibility of GHG warming was already being theorized by Svante Arrhenius circa 1900 (I don't recall the exact date).
The whole foundation upon which scientific studies rests has been compromised in recent times. Ever since the universities went from 50/50 conservative/liberal to near 100% liberal, research fields and their published studies have suffered from liberal bias. You can’t trust “objective, peer reviewed” anymore.
Maybe that’s an unfair characterization but it’s like what the medical field did in 2020: They destroyed our trust. So there’s that.
Regardless, if man made climate change is real, and I do think man contributes, it’s just a question of how much, the issue is what, if anything, do we do about it?
Like it or not the world is dependent on fossil fuels. There’s no way to quickly change that. We just need to accept some global warming. The alternative is much worse. Even Elon Musk admits this, the guy who gets rich from “green” EVs.
Personally I think we have a much bigger problem that’s going to make MMCC a moot point.
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The whole foundation upon which scientific studies rests has been compromised in recent times. Ever since the universities went from 50/50 conservative/liberal to near 100% liberal, research fields and their published studies have suffered from liberal bias. You can’t trust “objective, peer reviewed” anymore.
Maybe that’s an unfair characterization but it’s like what the medical field did in 2020: They destroyed our trust. So there’s that.
Regardless, if man made climate change is real, and I do think man contributes, it’s just a question of how much, the issue is what, if anything, do we do about it?
Like it or not the world is dependent on fossil fuels. There’s no way to quickly change that. We just need to accept some global warming. The alternative is much worse. Even Elon Musk admits this, the guy who gets rich from “green” EVs.
Personally I think we have a much bigger problem that’s going to make MMCC a moot point.
I certainly understand the distrust. What Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann published undermined public confidence in climate science to a point where it's going to take more than solid science to restore it.
The way I see it we're between a rock and a hard place (I know I've said that before). You're absolutely right that we're dependent on fossil fuels. Hopelessly so - we don't have an economically viable alternative right now. We've let our nuclear plants fall into disuse and failed to build new ones, due to (imo unreasonable) mistrust in modern, "passive safety" reactors. Renewables are making great strides but there is still the intermittency problem (which might be on the verge of being solved, according to a 60 Minutes feature a few weeks back). But even so, our need for energy is only increasing, and there's only so much land we can afford to cover with solar panels. Offshore wind has promise but there are environmental concerns. Geothermal might ultimately make a big difference but we're nowhere near there yet.
So we're going to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. We're probably going to blow past 1.5ºC, if we haven't already, and I don't expect we'll be in a position to abandon fossil fuels before we pass 2ºC. What should we do? We should prepare for more of what we've been experiencing during the past 5 years, and expect it to happen more frequently. Adaptation. We have no other reasonable choice. To try to mitigate climate change by hurriedly abandoning fossil fuels is economic suicide. Even trying to force cutbacks in fossil fuel consumption by force of law is going to cause a significant increase in energy prices that will hurt the economy.
In the meantime we shouldn't *discourage* research into battery technology and improvements in solar panel efficiency. We should remove some of the regulatory burden for companies to build new nuclear plants. And yeah, it's a longshot, but we should keep funding fusion research, maybe even increase it a little.
Ultimately the solution depends on engineering innovation (probably more that than any fundamental advances in science) deregulation, and entrepreneurship to bring new technology to market to displace fossil fuels. I don't see that happening in my lifetime, but it is something to work towards.
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BTW, here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation we can all do, I think: estimate the ECS, assuming (just for the sake of argument) that ALL of the warming we've experienced since pre-industrial times is due to our CO2 emissions. The global mean temperature response to an increase in CO2 is logarithmic (that fact falls out of the calculation based on atmospheric physics and the absorption cross section for the two infrared wavelengths that CO2 absorbs at). So increasing the CO2 concentration by a given *factor* increases the GMT by a certain *amount*. So it's easy to come up with a formula for the GMT in terms of the ratio of present CO2 to pre-industrial levels, the increase in GMT today over pre-industrial, and the ECS. The ECS is the increase in GMT per *doubling* of CO2. So: if T0 is the pre-industrial GMT, T is the GMT today; C and C0 are corresponding atmospheric CO2 levels, and S (sensitivity) is the ECS, then
T = T0 + S * log base 2 (C/C0)
is the formula you want.
I used T - T0 = 1.4ºC and C/C0 = 1.5 (a 50% increase over pre-industrial) and got S = 2.4ºC per doubling of CO2.
For comparison, the Sherwood et al paper put the 66% confidence interval (CI) for the ECS as between 2.6ºC and 3.9ºC. This result is a little on the low end but it's quite consistent with their larger 95% CI that went down into the 1.something degrees C.
Of course, this doesn't come close to proving that the current warming is entirely caused by us - I have LOW confidence in that claim. But it says that the current warming is on the order of magnitude of what you'd expect to see about now, if we were the primary cause, based on the best current estimates of the ECS.
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I certainly understand the distrust. What Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann published undermined public confidence in climate science to a point where it's going to take more than solid science to restore it.
The way I see it we're between a rock and a hard place (I know I've said that before). You're absolutely right that we're dependent on fossil fuels. Hopelessly so - we don't have an economically viable alternative right now. We've let our nuclear plants fall into disuse and failed to build new ones, due to (imo unreasonable) mistrust in modern, "passive safety" reactors. Renewables are making great strides but there is still the intermittency problem (which might be on the verge of being solved, according to a 60 Minutes feature a few weeks back). But even so, our need for energy is only increasing, and there's only so much land we can afford to cover with solar panels. Offshore wind has promise but there are environmental concerns. Geothermal might ultimately make a big difference but we're nowhere near there yet.
So we're going to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. We're probably going to blow past 1.5ºC, if we haven't already, and I don't expect we'll be in a position to abandon fossil fuels before we pass 2ºC. What should we do? We should prepare for more of what we've been experiencing during the past 5 years, and expect it to happen more frequently. Adaptation. We have no other reasonable choice. To try to mitigate climate change by hurriedly abandoning fossil fuels is economic suicide. Even trying to force cutbacks in fossil fuel consumption by force of law is going to cause a significant increase in energy prices that will hurt the economy.
In the meantime we shouldn't *discourage* research into battery technology and improvements in solar panel efficiency. We should remove some of the regulatory burden for companies to build new nuclear plants. And yeah, it's a longshot, but we should keep funding fusion research, maybe even increase it a little.
Ultimately the solution depends on engineering innovation (probably more that than any fundamental advances in science) deregulation, and entrepreneurship to bring new technology to market to displace fossil fuels. I don't see that happening in my lifetime, but it is something to work towards.
I agree with all that, especially the nuclear part. I worked at a 4 unit nuclear startup: They killed 3 of them and ended up with only one coming online. The reason? Extreme cost runup due to extreme government regulation. Anti-nuke demonstrations were a factor at the time too. The same environmental wackos some of whom finally admit today that nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of electricity.
I have no problem with solar and wind but they should not be government subsidized. They need to sink or swim in a free market because, for example, there are absolute idiots who think for example solar panels work in the UK. You can just put them up anywhere! No, they work in certain geographic locations and not others. And they may do well on a home, but are an ecological disaster for laying all over open fields.
The windmills are a huge problem in terms of the fossil fuels needed to just build and maintain them, mine the materials and so forth. So yes, we are a LONG way from any reasonable sustainable energy source, other than nuclear which we really should be ramping up. AI is fixing to suck the hell out of our grid.
But, actually all of that is a distant second priority. I don’t even think any of it is necessary at all, because within the century we’re going to see an absolute crash in overall demand. There may be nothing left but AI.
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I agree with all that, especially the nuclear part. I worked at a 4 unit nuclear startup: They killed 3 of them and ended up with only one coming online. The reason? Extreme cost runup due to extreme government regulation. Anti-nuke demonstrations were a factor at the time too. The same environmental wackos some of whom finally admit today that nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of electricity.
I have no problem with solar and wind but they should not be government subsidized. They need to sink or swim in a free market because, for example, there are absolute idiots who think for example solar panels work in the UK. You can just put them up anywhere! No, they work in certain geographic locations and not others. And they may do well on a home, but are an ecological disaster for laying all over open fields.
The windmills are a huge problem in terms of the fossil fuels needed to just build and maintain them, mine the materials and so forth. So yes, we are a LONG way from any reasonable sustainable energy source, other than nuclear which we really should be ramping up. AI is fixing to suck the hell out of our grid.
But, actually all of that is a distant second priority. I don’t even think any of it is necessary at all, because within the century we’re going to see an absolute crash in overall demand. There may be nothing left but AI.
I was with you until your last paragraph, Rush. Do you really think AI is going to cause civilization to collapse? I'm hopeful that we won't be so stupid as to let that happen. If it does, it won't be via the sci-fi scenario of AI deciding to off us, but because it makes it too easy for humans to take advantage of other humans. One way I could see that happening is if we gave up the ability to tell reality from the convincing lies that AI can create - we'd end up in global war in addition to civil war inside many countries. That's why I support *some* regulation on AI - it HAS to be possible to tell an AI-generated product (photo, video, any format information is displayed in) from something that's not AI-generated, otherwise we're in big trouble.
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When I look at how liberals panic when anyone tries to get a handle on the budget, and how they whine when anyone tries to take away their EBT cards and "Free Stuff",
I think of the following quote.
This is what will bring us doom. When our nation collapses into bankruptcy, then countries like China, Russia and Iran will be in charge.
I hope all those stupid, young, liberal, man-hating women yelling "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" like what they get. Do they have any idea how women are treated over there?
I'm sure you all have read this before, but it bears repeating:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
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I was with you until your last paragraph, Rush. Do you really think AI is going to cause civilization to collapse? I'm hopeful that we won't be so stupid as to let that happen. If it does, it won't be via the sci-fi scenario of AI deciding to off us, but because it makes it too easy for humans to take advantage of other humans. One way I could see that happening is if we gave up the ability to tell reality from the convincing lies that AI can create - we'd end up in global war in addition to civil war inside many countries. That's why I support *some* regulation on AI - it HAS to be possible to tell an AI-generated product (photo, video, any format information is displayed in) from something that's not AI-generated, otherwise we're in big trouble.
Nope, not AI. We’re doing it to ourselves.
Although AI will certainly exacerbate the problem.
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Nope, not AI. We’re doing it to ourselves.
Although AI will certainly exacerbate the problem.
As far as I'm concerned, the only problem with lower fertility rates and population reductions (within limits) is that it will break the great Social Security Ponzi scheme.
As I see it, almost all of our problems are brought on by "TOO MANY PEOPLE".
Look what happens to big cities when they get big. Crime goes up. People become mean towards each other. People get jealous because others have more than them. Housing prices inflate. Huge corporations become the de-facto rulers of all that work for them. Pollution get's worse. Government gets bigger. Everything that is wrong is because of 'TOO MANY PEOPLE".
Smaller communities don't have those problems because people know each other. You don't usually hate the people you know (except for my MIL).
Phase out people's reliance on SS and then let the population settle down to a manageable level.
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As far as I'm concerned, the only problem with lower fertility rates and population reductions (within limits) is that it will break the great Social Security Ponzi scheme.
As I see it, almost all of our problems are brought on by "TOO MANY PEOPLE".
Look what happens to big cities when they get big. Crime goes up. People become mean towards each other. People get jealous because others have more than them. Housing prices inflate. Huge corporations become the de-facto rulers of all that work for them. Pollution get's worse. Government gets bigger. Everything that is wrong is because of 'TOO MANY PEOPLE".
Smaller communities don't have those problems because people know each other. You don't usually hate the people you know (except for my MIL).
Phase out people's reliance on SS and then let the population settle down to a manageable level.
Too many people in the cities, yes absolutely. Migration from small rural communities results in:
1. People tend to leave religion.
2. People have way fewer children.
3. People get mean, because you cannot bond with more than about 120 people. Beyond that, they’re strangers that you don’t care about.
Being in densely populated cities gives you the illusion there are too many people, but the cities eventually collapse under their own weight, and the countryside is emptying out as the fertile country folk move to the city, stop reproducing, the growth becomes more incoming migrants than new humans, and the total population declines.
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BTW, here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation we can all do, I think: estimate the ECS, assuming (just for the sake of argument) that ALL of the warming we've experienced since pre-industrial times is due to our CO2 emissions. The global mean temperature response to an increase in CO2 is logarithmic (that fact falls out of the calculation based on atmospheric physics and the absorption cross section for the two infrared wavelengths that CO2 absorbs at). So increasing the CO2 concentration by a given *factor* increases the GMT by a certain *amount*. So it's easy to come up with a formula for the GMT in terms of the ratio of present CO2 to pre-industrial levels, the increase in GMT today over pre-industrial, and the ECS. The ECS is the increase in GMT per *doubling* of CO2. So: if T0 is the pre-industrial GMT, T is the GMT today; C and C0 are corresponding atmospheric CO2 levels, and S (sensitivity) is the ECS, then
T = T0 + S * log base 2 (C/C0)
is the formula you want.
I used T - T0 = 1.4ºC and C/C0 = 1.5 (a 50% increase over pre-industrial) and got S = 2.4ºC per doubling of CO2.
For comparison, the Sherwood et al paper put the 66% confidence interval (CI) for the ECS as between 2.6ºC and 3.9ºC. This result is a little on the low end but it's quite consistent with their larger 95% CI that went down into the 1.something degrees C.
Of course, this doesn't come close to proving that the current warming is entirely caused by us - I have LOW confidence in that claim. But it says that the current warming is on the order of magnitude of what you'd expect to see about now, if we were the primary cause, based on the best current estimates of the ECS.
I’m not following that logic. If I grasped it, this is what you’re saying:
1. If all the increase in CO2 since the industrial age began were caused by man,
2. Then that amount of CO2 increase would raise the global temperature by x amount.
3. The global temperature has risen by x amount,
4. Therefore the CO2 increase is caused by man. Okay maybe only some of it.
Not following that logic. Seems circular.
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Nope, not AI. We’re doing it to ourselves.
Although AI will certainly exacerbate the problem.
Ah, gotcha. I'd forgotten about declining fertility rates. Yes, a potentially serious problem, but if anything, once the economy collapses from too few people to sustain it in its current form, we won't have the capability to develop and power data-hungry AI models. Our need for energy will decrease drastically, and with it, our GHG emissions. That's another climate mitigation scenario, but it's obviously not the optimal solution.
There are other scenarios that could lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it as well. Depending on how climate change affects the ability of local agriculture worldwide to sustain our still-increasing population, I still say a Malthusian crisis is still a possibility. Maybe the fertility crisis will happen first. Or maybe the fertility crisis isn't really a crisis at all but Nature's way of avoiding a Malthusian crisis, a kind of safety mechanism.
I guess the reason I'm less concerned about declining fertility is because it appears to be caused mainly by socioeconomic factors rather than biological ones. Women are tending to choose to delay motherhood and building a family in favor of lucrative careers. As long as there is no actual fertility decline (number of viable eggs, as well as viable sperm in maies) this seems like something that could be reversed via societal pressures even after global population has begun to decline - i.e. when the population growth rate goes negative around 2080 or so, according to your chart.
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I’m not following that logic. If I grasped it, this is what you’re saying:
1. If all the increase in CO2 since the industrial age began were caused by man,
2. Then that amount of CO2 increase would raise the global temperature by x amount.
3. The global temperature has risen by x amount,
4. Therefore the CO2 increase is caused by man. Okay maybe only some of it.
Not following that logic. Seems circular.
No, your step 4 is what I said that I'm *NOT* saying. I agree, that would be circular. This is just a sort of plausibility argument, as I said it doesn't PROVE anything. What we are seeing is close to what we would expect to see if (1) all of the current warming was due to increased CO2 and (2) we could neglect the time it takes added heat to manifest fully in warmer surface temperatures. The observed warming is *consistent* with the theoretical estimates. It could be due to other things, of course, or it could be multifactorial, with GHG warming as one important factor (that's my guess).
Scientists use this kind of reasoning all the time. They model a system using natural laws and compare the predictions to what is observed. If the predictions and the observations agree, within uncertainty limits, that result supports the model, but certainly doesn't prove it. More refined calculations could yield more precise predictions that disagree clearly with observations - so far that hasn't happened with climate science, though part of the problem is that the error bars in all of the estimates are quite wide.
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Peer reviewed has become politically examined for purity.
Pretending ne can place any faith in peer review is like pretending the scam civil vaccines were “safe” because a politically controlled department of health said so - and before you start whining - that is exactly what Mikey claimed, word for word, when demanded we all get vaccinated and stop worrying about the ‘science’ because the Delaware state vegetable said so.
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This might be the simplest way to present the argument: all the theoretical estimates for the ECS give values somewhere between 1ºC and about 4ºC per doubling of CO2. We know the amount by which we've increased CO2 over pre-industrial levels (remember those isotope ratios) - it's about 50% over pre-industrial right now, or 1.5 times greater. You can pick any value you want for the ECS near the middle of that range (say between 2ºC and 3ºC per CO2 doubling) and then use that formula to calculate the expected warming once the climate system has reached equilibrium. Whatever the ECS is, the formula says the warming once equilibrium is reached should be about 0.585 of the ECS in degrees C (log(1.5) / log(2) = 0.585). So if the ECS were 2ºC, you'd expect an equilibrium warming effect of about 1.16ºC. If it's closer to 3ºC per doubling, then the global mean temp would eventually settle at about 1.75ºC over what it would have been without the CO2 we've added, everything else being equal.
Even 1.16ºC represents significant warming - that's really the point. For MMGW to not be an issue, you would need an ECS well under 2ºC per doubling of CO2. That was the "lukewarmist" position btw - an ECS somewhere around or less than 1ºC per doubling - and the Sherwood et al result makes that possibility a lot less likely than before.
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Ah, gotcha. I'd forgotten about declining fertility rates. Yes, a potentially serious problem, but if anything, once the economy collapses from too few people to sustain it in its current form, we won't have the capability to develop and power data-hungry AI models. Our need for energy will decrease drastically, and with it, our GHG emissions. That's another climate mitigation scenario, but it's obviously not the optimal solution.
There are other scenarios that could lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it as well. Depending on how climate change affects the ability of local agriculture worldwide to sustain our still-increasing population, I still say a Malthusian crisis is still a possibility. Maybe the fertility crisis will happen first. Or maybe the fertility crisis isn't really a crisis at all but Nature's way of avoiding a Malthusian crisis, a kind of safety mechanism.
If climate change is in the warming direction, this is a boom for agriculture. For that matter, so is CO2.
There is a theory (Mousetopia) that it is indeed nature’s way of avoiding a Malthusian crisis, but if so, it evolved over a million years and does not account for modern industrialized food production. There is no chance of a literal Malthusian crisis, absent some catastrophic change like all the bees going away (which is thing to worry about). The problem isn’t food production, but it could well be supply chain disruption.
I guess the reason I'm less concerned about declining fertility is because it appears to be caused mainly by socioeconomic factors rather than biological ones. Women are tending to choose to delay motherhood and building a family in favor of lucrative careers. As long as there is no actual fertility decline (number of viable eggs, as well as viable sperm in maies) this seems like something that could be reversed via societal pressures even after global population has begun to decline - i.e. when the population growth rate goes negative around 2080 or so, according to your chart.
But there is actual fertility decline. Levels of testosterone and sperm have significantly declined in males, and rates of miscarriage and other pregnancy loss seem to be rising among women even controlling for age.
The socioeconomic factors are also large. Feminism has morphed from merely wanting the right to vote, or being allowed to major in engineering, to today’s extremely toxic feminism; teaching males from kindergarten that they aren’t needed, their natural drives (status seeking, competitiveness, ability to harness violence, their sex drive, and even their instinct to be protective of females) are “toxic”, and then being shamed and treated with contempt if they so much as whistle at a woman passing a construction site.
Add in the metoo publicity “OMG he touched my boob 30 years ago, we must ruin his life!” And the pedo hysteria - don’t dare cop a feel of your 16 year old girl friend, she’s under the age of consent. I’ve seen teen boys post on anonymous boards they’re actually worried they are a pedophile because they like girls their own age or a couple years younger, which is not only biologically normal, but mandated by our nature. But the constant drumbeating about pedo in the media has them questioning their own budding urges. There isn’t much discernment in the news: If you find a 15 year old girl attractive you’re a pedo, end of story. Nothing mentioned about whether you’re a a 70 year old male or a 17 year old male.
No wonder the young guys today are terrified to even look at a woman. Phones are everywhere and there is constant danger of some misstep being blasted all over the internet. Porn is pervasive, easy to get and far safer than trying to tap an actual female.
And I won’t even get into the economic difficulties of raising children these days.
Women still want a man, after they’re done frittering away their most fertile years on a career, but because of dating apps, they now have access way beyond their local community and hence can choose only the top 5%, vastly decreasing the portion of males who will ever reproduce.
And it cuts both ways. Men tend to prefer younger women. Women focus on career during youth and suddenly get baby hunger as they approach 40 but surprise! Not many men want to start families with an “elderly primigravida”.
We are facing not only a crisis of an aging population with the Social Security Ponzi scheme, the upcoming generations won’t even have children to advocate for them in old age. People will be single and alone with not only no children, but no nieces and nephews - the backup plan of times past for spinsters and bachelors and couples with infertility problems.
A bunch of family-less old people being cared for by immigrants. And when the population collapse hits the third world immigrants - and it’s coming for them too - they’ll face the same thing. It’s our species-wide problem.
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I’m not done. This species-wide suicide is deliberately driven by culturally erasing binary reproduction altogether and pushing it on the public from all the top institutions (media, corporate culture, government, and education). Teach the kids they can choose their gender! Use “they/them” pronouns with your newborn!
Sterilizing and mutilating youth, destroying their fertility before their brains are even fully formed.
Until the 2024 election plus Elon threw out Democratic censorship, even hinting this was a problem was verboten, in fact, we were required to actively support it, expanding the notion of “gay pride” to 64 different genders and having parades about it, ironically twerking sexually in front of little kids while the culture mercilessly punishes males for adult vanilla reproductive urges that might include fertile adolescents. Yet swinging your dick around in front of 3 year old girls in a lady’s room is “trans rights”.
Everybody is pedophile, unless you’re an S&M gay in full kink gear leering at little kids in the “family friendly” parade. But don’t dare be a Boy Scout counselor or a Catholic priest. Defacto pedos, all!
Culture has turned reality on its head. Species should strive to survive and reproduce but we are doing a great job of the opposite and running ourselves off a cliff. Maybe that’s programmed into our collective uber-minds, who knows?
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If one logically thinks about the democrat-communist-liberal-progressive-Marxist-leftist agenda, destruction of freedom, sexual molestation of children, removal of all forms of morality, absolute conformity of thought and deed, and rewriting of history to erase anything positive about America is their agenda.
The biggest lie the left ever told is that children can choose their gender.
The stupidest lie the left ever told was that men can get pregnant.
The worst offense ever perpetrated against normal people is the never ending demand to normalize abhorrent behaviors and punish anyone who disagrees.
The democrat-communist-marxist-liberal plantation is a slaver slave holder operation and the communist democrats use corrupt judges and prosecutors to enforce it.
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But there is actual fertility decline. Levels of testosterone and sperm have significantly declined in males, and rates of miscarriage and other pregnancy loss seem to be rising among women even controlling for age.
I would suggest that the declines miscarriages and other pregnancy loss is a localized decline. Historically, women would have many children in order to have at least some survive to adulthood. Medical advances have made having children late in life more viable, less dangerous, but still brings problems with the child as well as risk to the woman.
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If one logically thinks about the democrat-communist-liberal-progressive-Marxist-leftist agenda, destruction of freedom, sexual molestation of children, removal of all forms of morality, absolute conformity of thought and deed, and rewriting of history to erase anything positive about America is their agenda.
The biggest lie the left ever told is that children can choose their gender.
The stupidest lie the left ever told was that men can get pregnant.
The worst offense ever perpetrated against normal people is the never ending demand to normalize abhorrent behaviors and punish anyone who disagrees.
The democrat-communist-marxist-liberal plantation is a slaver slave holder operation and the communist democrats use corrupt judges and prosecutors to enforce it.
Speaking of communism, the Chinese were the authors of their own fate with the disastrous one child policy. They’ve realized their folly too late now and are desperately trying to reverse it. But surprise! Unintended consequences. Turns out when you force women to truncate their fertility, they turn to other means of fulfillment, like careers. Then when you try to shove them back into the home to spend their days changing diapers and wiping snotty noses they take exception. They’re making good money and besides, the cost of living is too high now to raise kids.
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Again, for the 600th time. Please tell me how much climate change is Natural, and how much is Man Made. Please!
You fucking can't. So take your taxes, appliance bans, EV subsidies, Green Energy, ICE vehicle restrictions, bans on fossil fuels, CO2 limits, Carbon Credits, etc., and shove them, you know where.
(Rant not meant for anyone here, just the Al Gore's of the world)
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Again, for the 600th time. Please tell me how much climate change is Natural, and how much is Man Made. Please!
You fucking can't. So take your taxes, appliance bans, EV subsidies, Green Energy, ICE vehicle restrictions, bans on fossil fuels, CO2 limits, Carbon Credits, etc., and shove them, you know where.
(Rant not meant for anyone here, just the Al Gore's of the world)
In the leftist liberal progressive communist world, only republican activity is evil. When algore and his ilk take their private jest and jumbo yachts out of a spin no lefty hypocrite mentions it. Only republicans are at fault which is how you know their entire mantra is a lie.
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I would suggest that the declines miscarriages and other pregnancy loss is a localized decline. Historically, women would have many children in order to have at least some survive to adulthood. Medical advances have made having children late in life more viable, less dangerous, but still brings problems with the child as well as risk to the woman.
True, however I’m referring to data just since 1990, well past the era of great danger to childbirth and infancy.
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Again, for the 600th time. Please tell me how much climate change is Natural, and how much is Man Made. Please!
You fucking can't. So take your taxes, appliance bans, EV subsidies, Green Energy, ICE vehicle restrictions, bans on fossil fuels, CO2 limits, Carbon Credits, etc., and shove them, you know where.
(Rant not meant for anyone here, just the Al Gore's of the world)
Also, do the math showing how much climate change has been abated (in terms of reducing the number of degrees of projected warming) by the trillions of dollars spent by taxpayers, businesses and consumers to fight “climate change”.
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Again, for the 600th time. Please tell me how much climate change is Natural, and how much is Man Made. Please!
You fucking can't. So take your taxes, appliance bans, EV subsidies, Green Energy, ICE vehicle restrictions, bans on fossil fuels, CO2 limits, Carbon Credits, etc., and shove them, you know where.
(Rant not meant for anyone here, just the Al Gore's of the world)
Even if you could, depending on other factors we only know approximately, it's a fool's errand to try to FORCE a weaning from fossil fuels. We are utterly dependent on them right now and we've backed ourselves into a corner where that's not going to change for the foreseeable future. The situation is akin to an alcoholic who is so addicted that he can't even sustain a gradual reduction in drinking. We have to accept that and work on adapting to the ongoing changes, and on thinking and engineering our way out of the current bind. Once we've done that, the market will take care of the problem.
The issue isn't only climate change, it's also that the global supply of oil is finite, though we don't have a solid idea of how much is left. Our current energy portfolio is not sustainable in the long term.
Rush, good points, I'll try to answer after work.
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Even if you could, depending on other factors we only know approximately, it's a fool's errand to try to FORCE a weaning from fossil fuels. We are utterly dependent on them right now and we've backed ourselves into a corner where that's not going to change for the foreseeable future. The situation is akin to an alcoholic who is so addicted that he can't even sustain a gradual reduction in drinking. We have to accept that and work on adapting to the ongoing changes, and on thinking and engineering our way out of the current bind. Once we've done that, the market will take care of the problem.
The issue isn't only climate change, it's also that the global supply of oil is finite, though we don't have a solid idea of how much is left. Our current energy portfolio is not sustainable in the long term.
Rush, good points, I'll try to answer after work.
I have to work too but I’ll just say there is growing evidence that oil might not be finite after all. Maybe it’s not decaying dinosaurs but actually produced continually by certain micro organisms.
As for backing ourselves into a corner with fossil fuels, the alternative would have been remaining pre-industrial, with much of the world still living in stone age subsistence conditions.
Not saying that’s good or bad, just that that was the alternative. There was never any possibility of going directly to “green renewable” energy, although ironically what first drove the expansion of modern civilization was the greenest energy of all, wind driven ships.
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Also, do the math showing how much climate change has been abated (in terms of reducing the number of degrees of projected warming) by the trillions of dollars spent by taxpayers, businesses and consumers to fight “climate change”.
They can't. There is no math they can do, because EVERYTHING is a variable. Everything. Try solving that equation.
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https://babylonbee.com/news/10-ways-babies-are-smarter-than-liberals
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They can't. There is no math they can do, because EVERYTHING is a variable. Everything. Try solving that equation.
Hence there is no true calibration.
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They can't. There is no math they can do, because EVERYTHING is a variable. Everything. Try solving that equation.
The very last thing lefties want is to be caught having to provide facts, which is why progressives constantly demand proof while offering exactly zero. Unless you want to lie and say phony politically massaged peer review studies are anything more than bullshit dressed up in big words.
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They can't. There is no math they can do, because EVERYTHING is a variable. Everything. Try solving that equation.
<faceplant>
Of course you can solve equations in which everything is a variable. It's called algebra. Of course to get actual answers (numbers) you have to measure enough of those variables to leave only as many unknowns left as you have equations.
The problem isn't that everything is a variable, it's the complexity of the system that include the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. You cannot model the entire Earth on the scale of molecules, you have to do it as a lattice of points or cells, so you lose precision right away. To make the computations tractable you also have to make simplifying assumptions that may or may not be true. The results typically have wide error bars, even so.
And yes, because of that, calibrations of proxies used to assess things like temperatures thousands of years ago have significant uncertainties. That's why Mann's hockey stick was deceptive, because it didn't make clear the uncertainty involved in joining temperature graphs based on two independent proxies.
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The system is hugely complex and in many cases chaotic. Most of the variables are unknown or poorly known. Or in some cases, very wrong. It's the scientific process to try to measure everything as accurately as possible, then come up with a model that tries to explain what happened (diagnostic analytics), what is happening (explanatory analytics), and what is going to happen (predictive analytics). Then there's prescriptive analytics that suggest what we should do to get a result. There's greenhouse gasses, the absorptive capacity of the oceans, the greening (and desertification) of land masses, ice melting and not melting, the variability of the sun, the shifting of the magnetic field, humans putting out various gasses and planet-forming, cow farts, and on and on.
It's a hugely dynamic, complex, poorly understood system. Things happen very slowly over millions of years, or very quickly over days and even hours. We can peek into what happened in the past, and maybe even measure what's going on now.
It's great to try to say "X then Y", submit your analysis, and see what happens. That's the scientific process. But when politics gets into the act with people screaming "But we don't want Y so we must change X", or saying that "we don't agree with your analysis so it must be suppressed", that's when we get into trouble. Especially when money is involved.
There are few things we know for sure. I think it boils down to: The climate is changing. It seems to be warming. Now: Is that good or bad? (It's both good AND bad.) Should we try to stop it from warming? Why or why not? CAN we stop it from warming? Can we stop the climate from changing? If we try to stop it from warming, what should we do? Is that thing we do good or bad? What are the direct and indirect consequences?
I suspect that there are no good answers to these questions. Our discussions here are good ones, and I think that we are all in violent agreement, although it doesn't seem so sometimes.
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every progressive that lectures people about the fake ass climate change nonsense is forwarding a political narrative, plain and simple.
There is no science involved when the outcome of studies are "adjusted" to fit the narrative, then defended as important research.
Slapping a 'peer reviewed' label over their tripe is supposed to make it kosher , but just humiliates actual scientistsbecause now no one believes them,
just like no one believes the pharmaceutical industrial complex.
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Because the communists who call themselves democrats can never be stupid enough, the new ‘existential’ threat to the earth is owning a dog.
I kid you not. The cow fart crowd now is focusing on dogs as the cause of climate change.
Now…
Now…
Now…
It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the islamist cult hates dogs…
No. Couldn’t be…
But then again…
There is nothing stupider than a politically partisan communist democrats use corrupt pretending to care about the planet…. So…
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/08/existential_climate_threat_dogs.html
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The system is hugely complex and in many cases chaotic. Most of the variables are unknown or poorly known. Or in some cases, very wrong. It's the scientific process to try to measure everything as accurately as possible, then come up with a model that tries to explain what happened (diagnostic analytics), what is happening (explanatory analytics), and what is going to happen (predictive analytics). Then there's prescriptive analytics that suggest what we should do to get a result. There's greenhouse gasses, the absorptive capacity of the oceans, the greening (and desertification) of land masses, ice melting and not melting, the variability of the sun, the shifting of the magnetic field, humans putting out various gasses and planet-forming, cow farts, and on and on.
It's a hugely dynamic, complex, poorly understood system. Things happen very slowly over millions of years, or very quickly over days and even hours. We can peek into what happened in the past, and maybe even measure what's going on now.
It's great to try to say "X then Y", submit your analysis, and see what happens. That's the scientific process. But when politics gets into the act with people screaming "But we don't want Y so we must change X", or saying that "we don't agree with your analysis so it must be suppressed", that's when we get into trouble. Especially when money is involved.
There are few things we know for sure. I think it boils down to: The climate is changing. It seems to be warming. Now: Is that good or bad? (It's both good AND bad.) Should we try to stop it from warming? Why or why not? CAN we stop it from warming? Can we stop the climate from changing? If we try to stop it from warming, what should we do? Is that thing we do good or bad? What are the direct and indirect consequences?
I suspect that there are no good answers to these questions. Our discussions here are good ones, and I think that we are all in violent agreement, although it doesn't seem so sometimes.
Good analysis. The one point I would question is whether the *climate* is chaotic. It's generally accepted that *weather* is chaotic, but climate refers to the average of weather over a region over timescales of years and decades rather than hours, days, or even months. When I was studying climate science more seriously 10 years ago, the paradigm was that climate is NOT chaotic and can be treated as an energy balance problem, albeit a very complex one.
In some ways it was thought that the simplest aspect of this was the energy balance that determines the average global temperature: the Sun delivers a certain amount of energy to the Earth that depends on its distance to the Sun, and the Earth also radiates a certain amount of energy that depends on its temperature. The balance between those two processes determines the temperature at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). The average global temperature at the surface is determined by the way the temperature changes with height, which is affected by many factors including the Greenhouse Effect. Among those factors is how much heat is being stored in the oceans as opposed to being released into the lower atmosphere - and that's one of the wildcards right now. But other factors include feedbacks like the ice-albedo feedback - the polar caps tend to reflect rather than absorb sunlight, and as they melt, more surface is exposed that is better able to absorb sunlight. Or the water vapor feedback - the warmer the surface layer, the more water evaporates from the oceans and the more water vapor the atmosphere can hold, but water vapor is also a GHG so it contributes to the warming of the surface layer. These are ALL wildcards that we still don't have a great handle on, as recent research makes clear.
The energy balances that determine which locations on Earth get warmer and which get colder with global warming, and how precipitation patterns change, is a much tougher modeling problem. 10 years ago the models really sucked, and I'm not sure that they've gotten much better since then.
Although there isn't universal agreement on what to do about it, I think we here are in pretty good agreement that trying to stop climate change by abandoning fossil fuels is not going to work until we have alternative sources available that market forces can sustain without government subsidies. And we're just not there yet, for better or for worse.
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But there is actual fertility decline. Levels of testosterone and sperm have significantly declined in males, and rates of miscarriage and other pregnancy loss seem to be rising among women even controlling for age.
Yes, I stand corrected on this. It seems this has been studied and is largely accepted now as a real phenomenon, though the factors causing the decline aren't well understood yet. Here is a freely available paper from last year on the subject. The author is a highly respect British/Australian biologist who specializes in human fertility.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11079147/#s12 (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11079147/#s12)
Add in the metoo publicity “OMG he touched my boob 30 years ago, we must ruin his life!” And the pedo hysteria - don’t dare cop a feel of your 16 year old girl friend, she’s under the age of consent. I’ve seen teen boys post on anonymous boards they’re actually worried they are a pedophile because they like girls their own age or a couple years younger, which is not only biologically normal, but mandated by our nature. But the constant drumbeating about pedo in the media has them questioning their own budding urges. There isn’t much discernment in the news: If you find a 15 year old girl attractive you’re a pedo, end of story. Nothing mentioned about whether you’re a a 70 year old male or a 17 year old male.
No wonder the young guys today are terrified to even look at a woman. Phones are everywhere and there is constant danger of some misstep being blasted all over the internet. Porn is pervasive, easy to get and far safer than trying to tap an actual female.
And I won’t even get into the economic difficulties of raising children these days.
Women still want a man, after they’re done frittering away their most fertile years on a career, but because of dating apps, they now have access way beyond their local community and hence can choose only the top 5%, vastly decreasing the portion of males who will ever reproduce.
And it cuts both ways. Men tend to prefer younger women. Women focus on career during youth and suddenly get baby hunger as they approach 40 but surprise! Not many men want to start families with an “elderly primigravida”.
We are facing not only a crisis of an aging population with the Social Security Ponzi scheme, the upcoming generations won’t even have children to advocate for them in old age. People will be single and alone with not only no children, but no nieces and nephews - the backup plan of times past for spinsters and bachelors and couples with infertility problems.
A bunch of family-less old people being cared for by immigrants. And when the population collapse hits the third world immigrants - and it’s coming for them too - they’ll face the same thing. It’s our species-wide problem.
Yeah, I agree pretty much with this analysis of the socio-cultural environment we're in now. But I'm still not convinced we'll see a population *collapse* per se - I think it's still possible, and maybe more likely, that we'll see a decline in numbers until the social pressures to sustain the population begin to rise, and until the environmental factors exerting downward pressure on human fecundity reduce as the smaller human population puts less and less in the way of toxins into the environment. I'm more concerned, at least short term, with the possibility of worldwide economic collapse as the systems that depend on population size (like our "beloved" entitlements) start to fail.
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Good analysis. The one point I would question is whether the *climate* is chaotic. It's generally accepted that *weather* is chaotic, but climate refers to the average of weather over a region over timescales of years and decades rather than hours, days, or even months. When I was studying climate science more seriously 10 years ago, the paradigm was that climate is NOT chaotic and can be treated as an energy balance problem, albeit a very complex one.
You're right. I don't know the right words. We have weather (A) and we have climate. Weather is short term and can be chaotic. I think climate (B) is longer term over hundreds and thousands of years. I think that can also be chaotic, but much less than weather. What is the term for something over hundreds of thousands or millions of years (C)? I agree that this is not chaotic but is a very complex system of energy balances.
We can change the weather (A). We would have to do something massive to change the climate (B). There's nothing we can do to change whatever (C) is.
Just thinking out loud...
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Good analysis. The one point I would question is whether the *climate* is chaotic. It's generally accepted that *weather* is chaotic, but climate refers to the average of weather over a region over timescales of years and decades rather than hours, days, or even months. When I was studying climate science more seriously 10 years ago, the paradigm was that climate is NOT chaotic and can be treated as an energy balance problem, albeit a very complex one.
In some ways it was thought that the simplest aspect of this was the energy balance that determines the average global temperature: the Sun delivers a certain amount of energy to the Earth that depends on its distance to the Sun, and the Earth also radiates a certain amount of energy that depends on its temperature. The balance between those two processes determines the temperature at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). The average global temperature at the surface is determined by the way the temperature changes with height, which is affected by many factors including the Greenhouse Effect. Among those factors is how much heat is being stored in the oceans as opposed to being released into the lower atmosphere - and that's one of the wildcards right now. But other factors include feedbacks like the ice-albedo feedback - the polar caps tend to reflect rather than absorb sunlight, and as they melt, more surface is exposed that is better able to absorb sunlight. Or the water vapor feedback - the warmer the surface layer, the more water evaporates from the oceans and the more water vapor the atmosphere can hold, but water vapor is also a GHG so it contributes to the warming of the surface layer. These are ALL wildcards that we still don't have a great handle on, as recent research makes clear.
The energy balances that determine which locations on Earth get warmer and which get colder with global warming, and how precipitation patterns change, is a much tougher modeling problem. 10 years ago the models really sucked, and I'm not sure that they've gotten much better since then.
Although there isn't universal agreement on what to do about it, I think we here are in pretty good agreement that trying to stop climate change by abandoning fossil fuels is not going to work until we have alternative sources available that market forces can sustain without government subsidies. And we're just not there yet, for better or for worse.
You're right. I don't know the right words. We have weather (A) and we have climate. Weather is short term and can be chaotic. I think climate (B) is longer term over hundreds and thousands of years. I think that can also be chaotic, but much less than weather. What is the term for something over hundreds of thousands or millions of years (C)? I agree that this is not chaotic but is a very complex system of energy balances.
We can change the weather (A). We would have to do something massive to change the climate (B). There's nothing we can do to change whatever (C) is.
Just thinking out loud...
Wrong. It is literally chaotic. The butterfly effect plus quantum uncertainty.
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The climate scientists who betrayed objective scientific research standards for their political agenda have created mistrust of the entire scientific process, damaging their own credibility. What if they’re right and we are on the brink of climate catastrophe?
The lying and duplicity of the medical establishment and government health agencies during Covid damaged public trust in these institutions. What if a real plague comes along with a 50% fatality, and the public ignores their warnings because of the trust betrayal over covid?
The censorship and lack of transparency about the 2020 election caused deep mistrust of the election system. What if Biden actually did legitimately win and elections are actually pretty secure?
What do these three scenarios all have in common? Left leaning authoritarian control of the narrative. Authoritarian control of the narrative leads to mistrust, which leads to catastrophe when the time comes they happen to be right.
I suspect in all these cases they knew, or should have known, they were wrong. Maybe some just couldn’t admit it to themselves, or had financial incentives or were pressured by the prevailing culture, and no doubt some sincerely believed they were right but that information needed to be censored “for our own good”.
Regardless, they all failed to consider the long term effect of destroying public trust. The best case scenario is someone will smack them down, like Trump pulling funding from universities and pushing to tighten up elections, and over time some trust can be reestablished. The worst case scenario is our free society will collapse. Without the trust of the public you are forced to resort to all-out authoritarianism, just like what’s happening in Australia.
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The climate scientists who betrayed objective scientific research standards for their political agenda have created mistrust of the entire scientific process, damaging their own credibility. What if they’re right and we are on the brink of climate catastrophe?
The lying and duplicity of the medical establishment and government health agencies during Covid damaged public trust in these institutions. What if a real plague comes along with a 50% fatality, and the public ignores their warnings because of the trust betrayal over covid?
The censorship and lack of transparency about the 2020 election caused deep mistrust of the election system. What if Biden actually did legitimately win and elections are actually pretty secure?
What do these three scenarios all have in common? Left leaning authoritarian control of the narrative. Authoritarian control of the narrative leads to mistrust, which leads to catastrophe when the time comes they happen to be right.
I suspect in all these cases they knew, or should have known, they were wrong. Maybe some just couldn’t admit it to themselves, or had financial incentives or were pressured by the prevailing culture, and no doubt some sincerely believed they were right but that information needed to be censored “for our own good”.
Regardless, they all failed to consider the long term effect of destroying public trust. The best case scenario is someone will smack them down, like Trump pulling funding from universities and pushing to tighten up elections, and over time some trust can be reestablished. The worst case scenario is our free society will collapse. Without the trust of the public you are forced to resort to all-out authoritarianism, just like what’s happening in Australia.
In the quest for power and control in their minds whatever it takes is acceptable.
For anyone wanting to go back and read about communism none of this is new, just repackaged. Today's progressive movement is just communism in a new wrappings.
Most students today and the past 30 years know little to nothing about the atrocities of communism. The progressives have hijacked the education system and have effectively edited out anything that doesn't fit their narrative.
This is why the likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Kamala Harris and now the communist running for NYC mayor are being accepted. There is a very real chance Mandami will be elected Mayor of NYC. The package looks attractive to low information types and the promise of free stuff and a promised coming Utopia is irresistible.
The communist were thrilled when they finally achieved their greatest quest with the 2020 election. They believed that this was the beginning of one party rule in America. We got to watch first hand how they got drunk on power. But they had some major flaws in their plan by using people who were dubious and underhanded but not very smart. These people believed their own bullshit and believed their own propaganda being spewed forth by the MSM. They totally underestimated the power of the internet and the free flow of information.
Today's democrat party is in total disarray and leaderless. But don't sit back and think this is the end, they will regroup and keep trying. Hyping climate change, DEI and other fantasies is all about fear and control.
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In the quest for power and control in their minds whatever it takes is acceptable.
For anyone wanting to go back and read about communism none of this is new, just repackaged. Today's progressive movement is just communism in a new wrappings.
Most students today and the past 30 years know little to nothing about the atrocities of communism. The progressives have hijacked the education system and have effectively edited out anything that doesn't fit their narrative.
This is why the likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Kamala Harris and now the communist running for NYC mayor are being accepted. There is a very real chance Mandami will be elected Mayor of NYC. The package looks attractive to low information types and the promise of free stuff and a promised coming Utopia is irresistible.
The communist were thrilled when they finally achieved their greatest quest with the 2020 election. They believed that this was the beginning of one party rule in America. We got to watch first hand how they got drunk on power. But they had some major flaws in their plan by using people who were dubious and underhanded but not very smart. These people believed their own bullshit and believed their own propaganda being spewed forth by the MSM. They totally underestimated the power of the internet and the free flow of information.
Today's democrat party is in total disarray and leaderless. But don't sit back and think this is the end, they will regroup and keep trying. Hyping climate change, DEI and other fantasies is all about fear and control.
The good thing about the internet is indeed defanging MSM and allowing free flow of information, especially since Elon bought Twitter. But even before that you could get around the censorship if you knew where to look.
But the downside is exactly what you said about today’s youth having no idea what communism is. Somewhere in this video, Rudyard talks about the lack of accurate reporting on foreign affairs and the absence of most of history from the internet. It’s all still in books, not digitized. Youth today have NO CLUE what caused WWI for example, much less the parallels between the context at that time and the context today wrt India and Pakistan, which he says is a pile of smoldering tinder which could touch off another global conflagration.
Imagine the importance of Trump stalling off that potential for now! Yet you hear nothing about it anywhere, not in MSM and as far as I’ve seen, virtually nothing anywhere online.
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Wrong. It is literally chaotic. The butterfly effect plus quantum uncertainty.
In the short term it is chaotic. In the medium and long term it is pretty non-chaotic. Not well understood and very complex, but not chaotic. Like smoke from a chimney. Right at the outlet it's highly chaotic. But in the long term, smoke goes up.
I never believed in the butterfly effect. Sounds cool, but over medium and long distances, I believe the effect is dampened out.
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In the short term it is chaotic. In the medium and long term it is pretty non-chaotic. Not well understood and very complex, but not chaotic. Like smoke from a chimney. Right at the outlet it's highly chaotic. But in the long term, smoke goes up.
I never believed in the butterfly effect. Sounds cool, but over medium and long distances, I believe the effect is dampened out.
I think it is the other way around. Easier to predict short term but harder to predict the farther into the future. Talking about average global temperature, not a very temporary localized condition such as the general behavior of smoke, but it is still impossible to predict exactly where any one particle of the smoke will end up.
Similarly we know the global temperature will rise when our sun becomes a red giant but good luck nailing the exact amount of degrees increase per which exact year, even if we had perfect formulas and initial conditions.
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https://babylonbee.com/news/10-ways-babies-are-smarter-than-liberals
#8 is not true for toddlers. :-[
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(https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/slr.jpg)
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I was talking to a relative that has lived near St Augustine for over 60 years. He told me that the average water line on the dock hasn’t changed in all that time.
So much for lying democrats.
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I was talking to a relative that has lived near St Augustine for over 60 years. He told me that the average water line on the dock hasn’t changed in all that time.
So much for lying democrats.
There are boat houses along the intercoastal that were built in the 20' and 30's. Waterline is still the same.
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but but but by the time people notice the water levels rising it'll be too late to do anything about it.
or so the story goes...
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Giving your money to government will stop the sea from rising.
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Giving your money to government will stop the sea from rising.
See it works! All our taxes have stopped it from rising! Give us more to keep it where it is!
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Giving your money to government will stop the sea from rising.
So will banning the use of fossil fuels.
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(https://i.imgur.com/YfbWMxI.png)