Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I hope you mean good as in interesting, not good as in haha ;)

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Wow. Conspiracy AND future telling.

I'll restrain myself to answering just a couple of points:

I would argue that adoption for capitalist reasons, by definition is the ultimate in adoption for practical reasons.

Eg., in the absense of govt or other forces, each person chose the best technology for themselves.

Of course, I suppose we *could* have put an incentive system in place for people to keep on using horse and buggies.

Well, since technological development is apparently only a matter of wishful thinking - please tell me when fusion warp drives will be invented.

Conspiracy nuts to the contrary - people that develop technology (you know, those nasty capitalists) choose the one that seems to have the best possiblity for success - eg., making money.

The general rule of thumb in VC circles is that something has to be *roughly* 10 times better than an entrenched technology to be worth the risk.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

The problem here is manifold.

- It has been shown in excruciating detail that 10 year variance renders any such small sample size to be irrelevant, for better or worse, to the trend as a whole.

- If there is something to this (and that is a big IF to just disregard completely), then we really don't have much more time than that to start impacting the system, due to its enormity, and inertia.

- By the time your 10 year test is done, the world will be either destabilizing over direct supply/demand issues for oil, or will be near that point anyways, due to rate of oil field depletion, and increasing world population needs.

- Combine these factors and you see if we wait 10 years, not only will we have little useful data (beyond studies of direct atmospheric interactions), but we will be forced to change our methods of operation anyways.


Ultimately the human race is going to have to come to grips with our dilemma - in most large scale systems, the need to act is generally more pressing than our ability to sit around and do studies, and pilot projects, and propaganda wars.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Jim-

Do you think the tipping point has not been reached yet? What do you think the tipping point is?

I've never disagreed that taking preventative and mitigative actions are a bad thing, but I'm curious to hear about what you think can be done (not should be done, CAN be done) on a global level, and how one determines the tipping point.

Clearly many proposed actions are nonstarters for the developing world.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/1...n-the-rebound/

And an interesting article about glaciers in Alaska...

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/200...ks-in-history/

And a discussion of 'hockey sticks'. Interesting to read the comments.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

We can hope that's a temporary anomaly. If the new solar cycle has started, which we have reason to suspect it may have, it should start warming up again soon. I sure hope so, anyway.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Why do you suppose the world doesn't destabilize over, say, platinum? Or paladium, or uranium? What is it specifically about oil that makes it so inherently destabilizing?

Secondly, while I do agree that a tipping point for total oil production has been reached, I don't agree with the concept of world population needs.

Demand for any commodity is elastic. As price goes up, other alternatives become more attractive. Spurring the development of other alternatives. Free market economy in action.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

your naivety is cute.

i'm sure nations suffering under things like Structural Adjustment Policy know all about capitalism and its practicality. they are also intimately familiar with its "best" choices of technology.

PS its not a conspiracy theory because it lacks any conspirators. Its a structure and systems theory that details how systems breed certain results.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

This has nothing to do with determinism, but technology is indeed not anything goes. There are almost always technological reasons that make one solution more practical than the other.
Why is your calculator driven by solar and not by oil?
Because it's far more handy.
And you can't just expect all technologies to advance at the same rate if you just throw funds at them.

Ok, I did.
From what I gather there was indeed some usage of electric cars, but that was (from my perspective) very impractical. The electric cars could drive about 100 miles and then had to be recharged for 8h.
With an oil based car - even if it has no better range - you just need to refuel for 2min and there you go again.
Combustion engines simply outdid electrical motors very quickly. Before that you had the competition.
Sure you can say electric cars had advantages, but from a buyers view these were mostly neglible compared to the disadvantages they had.
Where electricity works well there it has been adapted (for example suburban trains). Or look at military history - in WW2 Germany invested heavily into the development of electric submarines. But they still needed diesel engines to recharge. I'm pretty sure they didn't do that to remain dependent on oil.

I'm not saying that oil is the best thing, I'm actually in favor of using replenishing energy sources only, but there's no denying that oil is as of now still very useful and many problems have to be solved before we get away from it.

Why indeed?
Might well be that we run out of other resources if we don't calculate into the future. :p

We don't need a shortage of oil to have crashes. Now I don't want to know what happens when some big oil company announces that they can't deliver anymore and we still have a demand as high as today's.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I am yet to understand the fuss about electric cars, except for reasons of minimising localised air pollution.

Instead of burning petrol or LPG in a relatively simple engine to produce a lot of power and distance with quick and easy refueling, you are:
• burning coal (typically) in a power station remote from the vehicle
• generating electricity at probably 30-35% efficiency, except in the rare case of a combined cycle plant
• transmitting it through an expensive network where you will suffer further losses
• slowly charging a car battery which is expensive, likely hard to dispose of and with a relatively short life

If we were generating the electricity cleanly, if we had effective and economic carbon capture and storage at the power station, I would understand. As it is, with the exception of the benefits of regenerative braking, I have no idea why people want to use our highest grade of energy (electricity) for propulsion when a readily transportable and stored lower grade fuel of high energy density is available. Fundamentally we are just shifting where we burn our fossil fuels.

Any real gain needs to look at improved generation and reduced consumption. Consumption is technically the easiest to reduce (so many ways to use less energy), but that requires people to change how they behave, which is difficult and slow. I mean, why worry about new car technologies when we could make a huge differences just in our selection of conventional cars? From SUVs to small Japanese/korean vehicles there is a huge step change both in energy consumption and capital outlay. I forget the figures but methane production from cows is a huge greenhouse contributor – a cultural switch to meat from different animals (or the much tougher step to reduced meat consumption) would be highly effective if it could be done. The level of heating and cooling for inside climate control is likewise insane – in hot climate buildings are kept freezing cold and in cold climates they are ovens.. what level of benefit if every air temperature controller in the world was asked to do 2 degrees C less work? Would anyone really suffer for it? Miraculous scientific steps aren’t needed to drop our carbon footprint, but it’s so much easier to blame an oil company or a government for our problems than to change our behaviour.

On the energy generation side, coal power plants are the worst offender, and as they have a long life and are very unlikely to be mothballed within decades of being built we really need to focus on not building new coal plants. Unless carbon capture and sequestration proves itself to be effective, reliable and economic we really need to be pushing natural gas and nuclear as the best short to medium term alternates, with solar/wind/tidal etc in niche uses where applicable. They are not close to being able to be base-load energy providers.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

After a certain point, the demand for oil is elastic only in the sense that the groups that cannot afford it will die off. Oil is vital to nearly every aspect of modern society, and in particular to the industrialized agriculture that America uses to feed our population. Without at least a baseline amount of oil, the truck which delivers food to the grocery store does not arrive, and I have go Hinnom-style on my next door neighbors.

We have many trillions of dollars of infrastructure which can only use oil. And because everything currently relies on oil, any effort to upgrade this infrastructure will also require large amounts of oil. The scenario that people are worried about is that the free market doesn't start responding until oil is scarce and difficult to acquire, and at that point we don't have the energy resources to both maintain our society, acquire new oil, and upgrade our infrastructure.

This is one of the reasons why oil is different from platinum, paladium, or uranium. Society does not need constant inputs of these metals to function, and we can develop alternatives to these metals without needing large new stocks of these metals.

This is also why people want to see early development of alternatives to oil. When oil starts running low, we want oil to be in the same category as platinum, paladium, and uranium, i.e. something that is not hugely vital, and that we can continue to phase out without needing large new inputs.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I could be wrong, but I thought the attraction of electric cars was that the 30-35% efficiency you get in a power plant was still roughly twice the efficiency you get in an ICE; presumably transmission losses and losses in storage reduce that gain but I thought you still came out ahead. And at least then you're not strictly tied to oil, per se--if the U.S. built a hundred new nuclear plants you'd be in a nice position.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Except that one hundred years from now on the Skynet would be full of discussion about how the change from Oil to Nuclear was done from purely capitalistic, short-sighted point of view, and about the scarcity of radiactive fuel necessary for the plants, and further debates about whether there'll be a Nuclear Winter or not, and what to do if it does happen. :p

My stance: the climate chane is scary and I hope some smart guy comes up with a solution; while I'm not too optimistic about that I refuse to think what will happen if no one does nothing because that is too depressing; and I hope the local climate doesn't change too much, because I'd rather have real snow than slush, thank you very much.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

As promised, a reply addressing the article Licker linked:

I see several problems with the stuff in that article. Not about the sun cycles as such, I'll take his word at face value regarding the cycle lengths and on the cosmic radiation and cloud cover variation following that.

But the following things:

• The CO2 curves he says are of doubtful significance follow the sunspot cycles even if not at the same magnitude and curve shape, especially during the 1940s. At that point CO2 concentration increase from the 1800s is up roughly 10% and then starts to gain on the other curves. No mention of the IR trapping properties of CO2 anywhere, not addressed, though an increased sunspot cycle makes sense for the rest of it.
• Related to the above, there is no consideration whether there was an El Nino phenomenon in effect during the temperature spike in the early 1900s. IIRC, there has been research into the El Nino that indicated this would have been the case. It contributed significantly to the Dust Bowl phenomenon in the US and the droughts that followed the Great Depression. No mention at all.
• He then returns to the solar cycles and cosmic radiation argument and continues as if this was the only probable cause and the solar cycle graphics he has only show the 11 year cycles, which is a geologic eyeblink. Nothing to support the stuff about the longer cycles.
• The same research to El Nino I mention above (what I remember from a BBC TV documentary, so no links, sadly :( ) also talks about there being fairly strong evidence of El Nino effects causing certain events in the past that affected old human civilizations, for example the droughts that destroyed Ur in Babylonia and devastated some Meso- and South American civilizations. All of these events involved significant temperature increases due to strong El Nino effects (much stronger than the early 1990s).
• The section about water vapor being the most important greenhouse gas again neglects the fact that while some amount of greenhouse gases are necessary to maintain a habitable temperature and that water vapor is by volume the greatest one, it is nowhere near as effective at trapping infrared wavelengths as CO2 is. Much like methane is 20 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (but much shorter lived before it degrades to CO2), CO2 is more effective weight for weight. If the difference is similar, even modest CO2 increases would show increased temperatures.
• The part about temperature graphs following CO2 graphs and spiking: As temperature increases, sources of CO2 that have been unavailable become available. There is a staggering amount of methane trapped in the permafrost in Siberia and the Canadian north. As temperature rises, the permafrost melts. The methane is no longer frozen in place and is released into the atmosphere, where it shortly degrades to CO2. A cyclical repetition would see temperature rises melt existing permafrost, then glaciation causing permafrost again. This is a very plausible explanation for those portions of his graphs. I do not know what mechanisms later cause the CO2 concentration to decline, but that is not relevant here.
• The article bounces back and forth between time periods of tens of thousands and millions and even hundreds of millions of years and uses the same arguments throughout. In some sense this seems deliberately dishonest, though it could be an honest oversight. Hundreds of millions of years ago the continents were not where they are now. This means the sea currents were different as well and their different interactions could have resulted in a significantly warmer or colder period of time due to various climate mechanisms not related to CO2, so even higher concentrations could allow for ice ages. I touched on that way back in my first post, but not in as much detail, though I mentioned the effect of an equatorial warm current counteracting the cold Antarctic currents.

Those are the concerns and questions that I noticed on the first read-through and I'm certain I could get some more if I really went over it with a fine tooth comb. And that's outside my own professional field (computers) at that.

I am not saying that he is necessarily entirely wrong, but just based on that article, there are gaps in the solar radiation theory you can drive a tank division through. He makes the same mistake he accuses the CO2 crowd of making: He ignores a lot of other factors that have direct impact and then attributes the lot to his own theory. Or then that's a really dumbed down version of what he does.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Thank you for your reply edi, unfortunately I don't have time to discuss or clarify some of your misconceptions about the work (leaving for France in 4 hours...) but I will question one thing:

Clearly though, this is not the case, historically or currently.

Further you need to source your claim about CO2 having a greater greenhouse effect than water (unless this isn't your claim). It is generally accepted that water vapor has a greenhouse effect of 2-5x that of CO2. I'm talking about the entire picture, which takes into account both efficiency and total concentration.

So yes, CO2 for its concentration has a large effect, but its concentration is tiny compared to water, though likely more volatile, however, still not at anything near historic levels.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

As I said, for the same amount of water vapor vs CO2, CO2 is more efficient as a greenhouse gas. In the big picture water vapor is greater in overall effect. If you remove all other factors and increase CO2 amount, total heat goes up (assuming normal radiative transfer to space on the night side). This does not address all of the other possible, probable and confirmed mechanisms involved. It doesn't need to, because if those other mechanisms are responsible, they must be identified sufficiently that they can be countered.

Your article says there is no effect on temperature from CO2, therefore CO2 is irrelevant to global warming. I just pointed out a whole host of reasons why that reasoning is flawed at best. We know the properties of CO2, but we don't necessarily know all of the other mechanisms involved as well as we would like and they may very well have an effect beside CO2 that causes alterations. So CO2 is more fuel for the fire, just not the only fuel. But when you're fighting a blaze, as it were, you don't add more fuel to it.

The biggest problem overall is overpopulation, because it causes all sorts of other things that exacerbate other effects.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

In a vacuum adding more CO2 traps more heat. However, we all realize that there are a whole host of interdepandancies and feedback mechanisms that we do not fully understand (and some we likely are not even aware of yet).

I'm not disagreeing that we should seek to curb CO2 emissions (though for necessarily AGW reasons), I am pointing out that the science on this matter is not in fact concluded (this presuposes that science is ever truly concluded, but that's more of a philosophical debate).

But to look at this from another point (not one I agree with necessarily), if, even with emission curbs, because no one is seriously talking about zero emission, how do we actually reverse the growth of CO2 in the system?

This is why I asked jim about tipping points, and why it's important to consider the difference between mitigation and adaptation as policies, rather than elimination as the policy.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Edi's being extremely patient with you, licker.

He's not saying it, so I will. The way you're responding to him is impertinent.

You cite an article on a website affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute as if it's an unbiased source. Edi responds very carefully, with arguments directed to specific claims in that article. You then fail to respond to his substantive points and accuse him of unspecified "misconceptions." When he responds to that with a clarification, you make an end run around the substantive points *again* by falling back on hand-waving about the lack of a consensus.

Edi is clearly a more patient man than I.

I don't understand climate science -- I stopped responding to this thread because I realized I was out of my depth there -- but I do understand basically how arguments work (and standard tactics used to conceal when they're not working). If you want to be taken seriously, you're going to have to do better than this.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

No quibbles here. Those graphs interpolations look overly-convenient, too.

The data do raise real questions though (is El Nino or increased sun activity responsible for the temperature spike in the 1940, or are they related? Where does the CO2 go during cooling?). I'm not saying those questions can't be answered, just that if AGW advocates want to be taken seriously they should supply answers instead of attacking strawmen. (I don't even care if the answers supplied are *wrong*, at least there will be something concrete to address.)

In any case, thanks for your thoughts. You have supplied your answers.

Edit: another set of 'real questions' is raised in Monckton's article here http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newslet...0807/index.cfm. ("GCMs make unphysical assumptions.") Feel free to critique Hafemeister and Schwartz too.

-Max

P.S. Hafemeister and Schwartz do a better job than I had remembered at addressing the sunspot issue. By which I mean at least they acknowledge it exists.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Or perhaps he's not out of his depth as you admit to being.

Impertinent?

*chuckle*

Well when I have the time I will be happy to address his misconceptions, but as I said, I don't have the time right now to do it in detail, and so I'm not going to bother as I'm going to be away for 2 weeks anyway.

As to the article itself, perhaps people should be less concerned with the sources and more concerned with the actual data therein.

Tim Patterson is no oil company shill, do your own damn homework instead of just assuming everyone on the 'other side' is somehow a corrupt purveyor of lies.

Look at the other news I've posted about glaciers gaining mass and issues with the modeling of the famous hockey stick. Attack the data, not the source, though if you don't understand anything about climate science then I suppose you cannot attack the data, so while your opinion is certainly welcome, it's also rather meaningless no?

In anycase, I doubt edi needs anyones support to make his argument, if you agree with him good for you, even better if you actually can formulate technical reasons why you agree with him. This is part of the issue I have with the way the 'science' of AGW is presented. It is not done honestly by the IPCC, and most people are unable to access the real studies let alone have a background to interpret them.

So sure, we have to rely on scientists to make difficult things somewhat understandable, but that's not what we always get (with regard to the IPCC, its politicians, not scientists writing the summary report).

Anyway, I hope everyone has happy holidays and good travels (if you are traveling as I am).

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Thank you for all of the assumptions, and the cuss words. Object lessons taste like butterscotch.

I was taking issue with your method of arguing with Edi. The fact that that produced an death-rattle of insults and assumptions about my biases from you confirms my impression of your methods. When in doubt, yell louder and call names. The thing is, you sound like an angry ideologue, whereas Max, who I disagree with, actually sounds like he's trying to engage the issue.

Did you miss the fact that I *stopped* responding to the thread because I was afraid that I was arguing from bias, and didn't have time to "do my damn homework" as you so quaintly put it?

I responded now, because something came up that I *do* know something about -- reasoning and rhetoric -- and you kindly backed me up on it by responding with such delicious fervor to my critique.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I look forward to seeing the reply in two weeks then.

You posted these where? I just went through the entire thread and these links you suuposedly posted were nowhere to be found. MaxWilson may have posted them, but if he did, don't claim credit for somebody else's posts.

If you really have any articles that can point to solid evidence of glacial mass increase in the past ten years, I would like to see it. Globally glaciers have been shrinking for the past 30 years.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Yeah, well. :) Maybe we won't always disagree. Edi's response has given me some new directions to take my homework. (I realized that I need to be as critical of my own skepticism as I wish AGW advocates would be of their theories, which probably means asking my so-called "hard questions" on realclimate.org forums instead of just wishing that AGW advocates would magically address them on their own--maybe the questions *are* well-known and well-answered.) I may be wrong, I frequently am, and when I am I like to think I can change my mind.

-Max

P.S. Obviously what I'll really be hoping for is that someone on realclimate.org will say, "Oh yeah, that's called XYZZY in the literature. A good starting place is FredBob's 2001 paper on it." That's infinitely better than someone's ad hoc response on a forum, but at the same time it's unfair to expect AGW advocates outside the field itself to be able to point out papers like that.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Post #255. I quoted it in my post #256, but I didn't originate the links.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Globally glaciers have been shrinking for the past 200 years...

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Sorry for that link, I cannot vouch for it's authenticity as I haven't looked at it, but it seems to link to quite a few studies which you may find interesting.

And again, stop insulting me. Look at post #255.

Tichy-

Seriously this isn't some debate camp, its a freaking internet forum. And what cuss words did I use anyway? Or assumptions?

For what it's worth I'm not even arguing with Edi, though some people here seem to think that any kind of disagreement or posing of questions must be an argument. Honestly, the tone I respond in is the tone I receive, and I have been nothing other than polite towards Edi as that is the same tone he uses (mostly...).

But now I really must be going, my ride called 5 minutes ago telling me his is running 5 minutes late...

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Have a nice trip. I hope your weather is nicer than ours in Washington--my building at work is like a ghost town because of snow on the roads and there's a five-city-bus-pileup on the corner. (Apparently a new one would come along its route every few minutes and be unable to avoid the ones that were already there.)

Let's hear it for local cooling. :)

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Ok, I'm sorry if my annoyance with licker may have derailed the discussion...and I'll admit to taking some pleasure in prodding him once I realized it produced such entertaining responses.

But, licker, are you saying that no one involved in a discussion on an internet forum should be held to minimal standards of reasoning, or be called out when he or she violates them? If so, that's great, but no one needs to take anything you say on this forum seriously after that.

One thing that I like about the Dom3 forum is that this game seems to select for smart people who like to argue about things.

But debating and arguing are different. Debate is about trying to defeat your opponent; it's basically a sport. An argument is an attempt to show that an opinion is correct, with the expectation that others will carefully look at the reasons you offer for your opinion, and cry foul when it appears you are appealing to debaters' tricks instead of offering reasons in good faith.

I apologize if you thought I was using "argument" in the colloquial sense of an angry exchange.

Oh, and, enjoy your trip!

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I do believe that we've been teetering close to it for some time now. As advanced as our science is, however, we can only estimate oil reserves in various regions, we can never gauge them. Sometimes they run low faster than we expected, sometimes they last longer than we expected, sometimes we drill and get nothing, and sometimes oil spurts up in someone's yard. :p

Honestly, I think that at a certain point, we can no longer look at the "world supply" as a whole entity with any sort of global responsibility. The problem that we are having now, and will increasingly experience, is that we are pushing closer and closer to our theoretical production limits, and demand is increasing much more quickly than development of new refineries.

I learned a long time ago, that often you cannot even rely on your best friends for help, at times. But what we are doing now, in regards to oil manufacture, is relying on our enemies for help. Besides that, a developing Russia is consuming more and more of their oil output, while China's industry continues to expand at breakneck speeds, and the US has a hard time cutting down on usage even when prices double to consumers.

This is the problem, as I see it. As the Admiral pointed out, the problem is not whether or not we are at the "tipping point" -now-, but whether or not we can have an adequate solution to the problem, by the time we reach it. It's rather impossible to say how much longer we can hold out, but it does seem that we are increasingly approaching the limit, and full saturation of demand vs supply. If we have 10 more years of oil market stability (generous? conservative? who knows?!), and it will likely take 10 years of concerted effort to move our society beyond total reliance on oil, then that means that we needed to start today, to avoid serious turmoil 10 years from now.

Now, all things being fair, I would project that critical point to come somewhere in the next 8-15 years most likely. If you would like, later I might take some time and dig up oil consumption figures, drilling estimates, etc, and refine that - but without collecting notes, or recording citations, that is the window I've seen implied indirectly by much of the data that I've come across over the last several years. And bear in mind, that 8-15 year estimate would -only- be if the world remains relatively stable in general. If Venezuela suddenly shuts its borders and stops exporting oil, for example, it could cause massive economic instability.


Also, I feel it is worth pointing out - any conversion will necessarily take some time, and not be a complete conversion immediately. There is nothing saying that we cannot implement massive scale solar+wind+etc that mostly services the south, and remain oil dependent for power in the north for a few more years. If we did manage to cut our oil consumption by 40-50% in the next decade (NOT going to happen under current plans), it would give us a lot more breathing room to hammer the rest out in an effective manner.

Also bear in mind that current PV cell costs are relative to smaller scale manufacturing efficiencies, and use of new materials. If we were to base our energy supply on solar, it would only make sense to put a lot of resources and effort into developing largely automated, on site, materials reclamation PV cell fabrication facilities. That is to say, that the amount of energy required to dismantle and recreate a solar panel is entirely insignificant to the total output over the lifespan of the panel. So there is no reason not use a fraction of that energy, to minimize the needed upkeep and replacement costs inherent in the system. With a bit of creative redesigning, it's likely that any particular material in existing top-output solar designs that is not easily recyclable, could be replaced to make the system more efficient in the long term. Even if efficiency of the panels went down 10%, or even say 20%, it would still be worth it if 100% of the material involved could be recycled, and that recycling process become largely automated.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Sorry, licker. I had managed to miss those links.

The news article on the Alaskan glaciers was interesting. I also took a look at the Ice Age Now website and I was less than impressed. So I did some digging on the reliability of that source, and came up with this. A further look on the biography, claims and accomplishments of Mr. Felix expose him as a complete fraud who doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Try again, licker.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

How is Mr. Felix's biography relevant to the quality of the sources he links to? I say this as someone who was likewise unimpressed with the signal/noise ratio on Ice Age Now, but argumentum ad hominem is beside the point. (All licker said was that it links to some interesting studies--although I found mostly only news stories.)

Not that your link to the guardian story wasn't interesting in its own right as a story of journalistic carelessness and/or malfeasance.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

'Die off' is a bit melodramatic. We just absorbed a tripling spike in the price of oil, and as far as I know, no deaths have occured because of it.

In point of fact, you are quite incorrect about society needing constant inputs of these metals. These metals are essential to hydrocarbon cracking, to computers, to Grignard reagents.

Yes, the scale of need is smaller - but that has to do with price. which was sort of my point. As oil increases price its relative importance will diminish.

It is critical now, because it was easily exploitable.

We continue to try to exploit oil, because even at its current prices, it is *less* of an lifestyle change than the alternatives.

Do you remember when liberal meant
 

Being generous with your *own* money?

There is absolutely nothing preventing global warming advocates from getting off their high horses and buying solar panels, buying a prius, etc.

In fact, I really think that those are the minimum qualifications before they attempt to inflict those lifestyle choices *involuntarily* on the rest of us. Put your money where your mouth is.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Hmmm.. First, I think all of these claims are hocum. I believe that CH4 is more like 50x than CO2 - and I have never heard this comment that Ch4 'degrades' into CO2. Especially in short periods of time.

Burn it, combust it .. sure.

And the claim that CO2 is more effective weight for weight is purely wrong.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

I think the claim that CO2 is more effective weight for weight was against water vapor not methane.

According to Wikipedia (Not an authoritative source, I know, but usually reliable on basic stuff), methane has 25 times the impact of the same amount of CO2 over 100 years. This appears to be a common way of measuring the effects of emissions. It is much stronger initially, which is probably where your 50x comes from, but oxidizes in the atmosphere into CO2 and Water with a half life of 7 years

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Good comments, thejeff - but when some here suggest that the problem has to be solved in 10 years - you can't use the 100 year weighted average.

As an emergency measure, the most bang for the buck effect would be for methane reductions.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

No, I'll stand by my original statement. A die off would be an accurate description of what would happen to America if we could not procure a baseline amount of oil. This time around, please note that I am using a qualifier in my sentence. I am not saying that we will all die if we have to reduce our oil usage by 5%.

You do raise several interesting points in your response though. The price of oil did recently triple, due to minor variations in supply and demand. This is a good illustration of how inelastic the demand for oil is. If there were readily available alternatives, people would use them rather than paying through the nose for oil. Another interesting point is how no one died over the recent price increases. While I apologize in advance for mixing my flamewars, there is certainly an argument to be made that the primary reason America is in the Middle East, and has been for the last N decades, is to secure our access to oil. Many people have died because of oil prices, and to secure access to oil.

Again, I would say that there are critical differences between the metals that you list and oil. As an example, if we were to completely run out of Paladium, it would indeed interfere with the production of new computers. However, since we did not burn the old Paladium, it could be recycled from older computers to create new ones. Also, because the computers that we have will continue to play Dominions 3 without us pouring more Paladium into them, there would not be any immediate disruptions to my turn schedule. Running out of Paladium would certainly cause large problems in some segments of society, but it would not prevent us from developing and implementing solutions to those problems.

I agree that as the price of oil increases, the free market will act to develop alternatives. Again though, the worry is that the free market will begin to act too late. As Barak Obama put it, we need to stop hiring the mercenaries of cheap oil, and start investing in the Claws of Cocytos of alternative power for when the Tartarian Cyclops of peak oil teleports onto our capital.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Man that's a lot of quote.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

[ontopic]

Heh. Measuring by the Elemental Royalty, 4 path levels is basically what it takes to be a god of that element. I therefore find it curious that so many Tartarian Cyclopses have 4E. There's basically a whole pantheon of Cyclopses that you yank out of Tartarus to serve your needs. You should name the first one "DeadHades," the next one "DeadPolyphemus," the one after that "DeadCronus," etc.

Tartarians should be treated with more respect: they're not just faceless pawns like flagellants, they're ancient dead gods in their own right!

[/ontopic]

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

It's relevant in the sense that when his numbers were checked, they all turned out to be bogus. When Mr. Felix's other work is examined, it turns out to be anti-evolution conspiracy crap that has no basis in real science at all. The man is a fraud, as simple as that. He has demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that has been independently verified. This means that if he does make some statement about something related to science as being fact, there is no obligation on anyone to believe that what he says has even a passing acquaintance with truth unless it has been independently verified.

The man is in the same category as the Moon Hoaxers, 9/11 Truthers and UFO cultists in terms of credibility. That's one of the things about integrity and credibility: Once lost, rehabilitation is very difficult if not impossible, depending on just how far you have gone. Felix may link to some interesting news articles, but he goes one step further and then presents hiw own opinions based on the articles as some sort of supposedly scientific fact, without understanding the first thing about any of it. Pointing out that he is a scientific fraud is not an ad hominem.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Yes, yes, yes, but that's all beside the point. You're *supposed* to ignore his statements. All licker said was that you should follow the links. Those links are to outside sources, some of them news sites (unfortunately, since I was hoping for studies), which should stand or fall on their own merits. Mr. Felix's biography is totally irrelevant because Mr. Felix's web site was specifically disclaimed by licker.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

If he wants to use the stuff linked by Felix, he can then do the legwork himself and link the sources directly. It's not my job to do his arguing for him and spend hours sifting through crap in the hopes of maybe finding something worthwhile.

If we want to play that game, I can do it just as well as anyone else, but I'd rather not as it offends my sense of personal integrity. Licker would also do better by linking things directly rather than using Felix's site as some sort of link hub, because that way they do not become immediately associated with an effort to misrepresent things.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

No argument there. It's the same annoyance I had with you over Dutch earlier. Yes, licker was in a hurry, but it's still not a very useful set of links, and anyway it would have been better to link to the worthwhile ones directly. It still doesn't change the fact that Mr. Felix is irrelevant.

I can't disagree with any of that.

-Max

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Point. I concede that I should have done a summary of the stuff contained on Dutch's page.

Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
 

Just for knowledge:

"President-elect Barack Obama has named Harvard physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to top science posts.

Obama made the announcement Saturday in his weekend radio address. Holdren will become Obama's top science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Lubchenco will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Both advocate a forceful government response to global warming.

Holdren also will direct the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Joining him as co-chairs will be Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander, a specialist in human genome research."