Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[licker]

http://www.tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=010405M

I'll post it again as I would be interested to see peoples responses to it.

[Executor]

Since we are talking about technologies of the future and alternative power sources, some of you might find this interesting.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...CzAtx43I2m5Y1Q

Helium 3, rare on Earth but an abundance of it on Moon. It is estimated that this potential power source could be available by year 2050. It's potencial is supposed to be enormous.

[atul]

Helium-3's use as a fusion fuel faces several difficulties. First of all, the reaction coefficients of He3-He3 -fusion require a lot higher temperature than for example Deuterium-Tritium fusion that's currently attempted in international fusion projects. Secondly, how are you planning on removing heat from plasma? With neutrons, 4/5 of the fusion energy is deposited at the walls by neutrons, but aneutronic fusion has nothing that's neutral in electric charge. And charged particles, like the proton advertised in wikipedia article, are trapped inside the plasma.

I'd get D-T fusion to work first. The activation by neutrons is a minor hurdle compared to the problems you have when none appear.

[Executor]

Ok, here's another one I remember reading somewhere.
Moon solar panels, there are some places on the moon that are exposed to Sun 90% of time, since the temperature of the moon is ? about 100C in the sun I believe, the usage of solar panel has greater potential there.
Energy gathered by solar panels could be transformed into microwaves and sent back to Earth to be transformed into electricity.

[Edi]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Interesting link, Edi. I'm disappointed that he spends so much time arguing with a straw man: people who think carbon dioxide has zero effect on the climate. He doesn't actually spend any time (in the first third, which is where I stopped) actually defending climatology predictions in any quantitative way, and of course that's where all the real disagreements lie.

Riddle me this Max: How the goddamn hell are you in any way competent to dismiss Mr. Dutch if you didn't bother to read his argument in its entirety?

He uses roughly the first third to smack down the idiot brigade (yes, it does exist, I've run into its representatives several times) precisely so that they can be told to bugger off the moment they try to bleat something.

The substantive arguments are further down. Yes, they focus on CO2 mostly, but that's something that impacts all climate models. His argument is based on the known properties of atmospheric CO2 and its effects. He also tackles many of the inconsistencies in the AGW position and the arguments include the documented impact of solar input of energy per surface area vs human caused input and various other things.

The statistical analysis of sources for various scientific arguments is also revealing in many places on just how things are often portrayed in the general media.

It's long, it's sometimes boring and it's not necessarily easy to understand, but I have enough working knowledge of math, physics and chemistry to understand his numbers and enough grasp of logic to understand his arguments, where they come from and how they follow.

If that kind of detailed arguments gets nothing better than a TLDR response, the person so responding can be dismissed as being full of crap and unqualified to comment meaningfully on the subject.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by licker

http://www.tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=010405M

I'll post it again as I would be interested to see peoples responses to it.

All I can say is, weird.

"Well, the big problem until recently with a solar forcing scenario for climate change has been that the sun's energy output through an 11-year sunspot cycle varies only by around 0.1 percent. This energy output variability is insufficient on it's own, to cause the 0.6 degree Celsius increase in global temperature observed through the 20th century."

In other words, it happens, but we can't explain why.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" -Isaac Asimov

-Max

P.S. And yes, I've heard the theories about cosmic rays and cloud formation. I have no way to evaluate whether they're accurate.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Edi

Riddle me this Max: How... are you in any way competent to dismiss Mr. Dutch if you didn't bother to read his argument in its entirety?

If you want to be technical about it, I was dismissing *you* as having recommended an irrelevant article. Now that you've explained that the real value is further in, I've gone back to see if he has anything to say after all. The section "Running the Numbers", about 65% of the way through, starts to be relevant and interesting. "A Step In the Right Direction" briefly refutes a statement by Richard Lindzen about sea temperatures (I haven't read Lindzen's paper here but Dutch is persuasive). And... that's it. Maybe six paragraphs in the whole thing not dealing with kooks and fools.

(Not that those kooks don't thoroughly deserve smacking-down. But I don't care about them and you're wasting my time by trying to make me read refutations of their arguments.)

-Max

[licker]

Why so hostile Edi?

It's true that a large portion of that link deals with strawman arguments. And while even if he is correct it doesn't shed much light on where the real debate lies.

He also seems to have some kind of fascination with Crichton and Boortz, and last I checked, no one was taking them seriously (RIP to Crichton anyway...).

The case for AGW rests on proving the link between CO2 and rising temperatures. This I think, everyone here agrees on. So far this link has been found wanting in the data, and no matter how much it seems that the link should be undeniable, the facts do not actually support it (historically as well as currently).

It could be correct, and it's certainly an hypothesis worth continuing to investigate. Further, it's also worth spending time and resources to mitigate and adapt to climate changes no matter the driver. It's also a good idea to continue to investigate and develop alternate energy sources (and clean or green can have a priority).

However, all of that is completely beside the point of what the evidence actually shows, AS FAR AS A DIRECT LINK BETWEEN CO2 AND TEMPERATURE IS CONCERNED.

Sorry to shout, but that's the fact, and I don't want it to get lost in the silly name calling or strawman rhetoric some people have been throwing around in this thread.

Everyone seems to admit that global climate is a hideously complex beast and there is not an abundance of historical data to use (in terms of the kind of data we have started to collect over the past decade or so). My contention has never been against the fact that there has been warming, or that we should be looking at ways to mitigate the damages caused by climate change (since clearly climate change is inevitable anyway, no matter the perceived causes). My contention has been with the seeming willingness of many people, scientists with whom I work included, to jump off this cliff without the normal scrutiny applied.

Look at cold fusion, look at the anthrax scare, look at various epidemics from history, look at WMDs in Iraq. When the scientific method (or just raw data) is misapplied (or taken out of context by governments) the results are usually an embarrassment to all involved.

[MaxWilson]

Let me put it this way, Edi: it bothers me a lot that all the criticism of AGW seems to come from skeptics. Normally you would expect someone to say, "This is my theory, here are my assumptions. Initially we were concerned because it seemed like A, B, C, but examining the data from experiment X it turns out that Y. We are currently still trying to explain Z but we don't think it's really a problem."

It bothers me a lot that people like you and Dutch address only the quacks instead of real questions (like the ones raised in the article licker cited a few posts earlier, or the ones like "Why is GISS so careless with its data? Why should we trust them?"). This may be because the issue is so politicized that you get better mileage out of criticizing the quacks, I don't know. In theory, AGW advocates should be *raising* the questions as well as answering them. In practice it doesn't seem to work that way.

-Max

Edit: typo fixes, added GISS question.

[Edi]

I'll get back to licker's article tomorrow. It is a good one. G'night...