Joking aside here is what I think is worth considering. But I'll lead in with an old joke.

An Electrical engineer, chemist, mechanical engineer and a Microsoft Programmer were traveling together when their car stalled.

The EE was certain it was a problem with the distributor, The chemist was certain that the problem was due to bad gas, the mechanical engineer said it must be a problem with the timing chain. The microsoft engineer said why don't we all just open the door and get out then get back in and see if it starts.

There is a danger of having to narrow a scope. In reality it was an EMF disturbance created by a government jet flying overhead ; )

I think this is worthwhile to know there are a number of the resources here with slightly different perspectives and basis for concern.


The hook. Generally played down though. News for the masses.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/05mar_arctic.htm

"If the Great Conveyor Belt suddenly stops, the cause might not matter. Europeans will have other things on their minds--like how to grow crops in snow. Now is the time to find out, while it's merely a chilling possibility."

Oceanic Climate Change Institute


http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewTopic.do?o=read&id=501



Selected topics

Ice and the atlantic and greater oceanic conveyer.

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9206

Common misperceptions about abrupt climate change

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=10149

Separating fact from fiction

The day after tommorow

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9948


Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?

Are we ignoring the oceans' role in climate change?

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9986

An Ocean Warmer Than a Hot Tub


http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=10366

Citing Woods Hole looks good on the surface, and they've got some very competent scientists working there.

Before taking everything you see on their site at face value, you might dig a little deeper into some background.....like for instance, "...As the American Geophysical Union recently concluded: "It is scientifically inconceivable that - after changing forest into cities, putting dust and soot into the atmosphere, putting millions of acres of desert into irrigated agriculture, and putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - humans have not altered the natural course of the climate system."

Does that represent the ENTIRE body of the AGU??? No, it does not. Neither is it taken in context. How many respected readers here actually KNOW an AGU member, much less have experienced discussing climate issues and specifics with an AGU member with expertise in the subject????

The chair of AGU's focus group on global environmental change is Dr. Roni Avissar, and he has some problems with GCMs(which the IPCC uses to base it's alarms on)...He said back in '98 that current GCMs only paramterize the effects of one important process, that is, the effects of turbulent heat fluxes close to the surface, which are dominant there. They fail however, to include the mesoscale heat fluxes that are dominant in the middle and upper parts of the boundry layer. Apparently it's still a problem, as evidenced in his PowePoint presentation in May of '05.

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/groups/ay0405-amazon.html


Thought it might be of interest to note some of his recent work, since it's been suggested here that trees are the answer.....

Durham, N.C. -- Growing tree plantations to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to mitigate global warming -- so called "carbon sequestration" -- could trigger environmental changes that outweigh some of the benefits, a multi-institutional team led by Duke University suggested in a new report. Those effects include water and nutrient depletion and increased soil salinity and acidity, said the researchers.

"We believe that decreased stream flow and changes in soil and water quality are likely as plantations are increasingly grown for biological carbon sequestration," the 10 authors wrote in a paper published in the Friday, Dec. 23, 2005, issue of the journal Science.

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/12/carbontrade.html

I believe we are focusing on different time scales. I'm looking more micro and geographic possibilities.

I'm not disagreeing with anything that has some correlation and validity. I am saying that the conveyor is a known physical process based on salinity and temperature differences. Temperature gradients effect weather severity. Is something outrageously new occuring here. No. I just expect there is a significant enough indication that we will see effects which revolve around this process.

fizzissist,

Had some difficulty with the first topic. Checked out the power point. Without having to time to hear the presentation I probably didn't much more than deforestation is accelerating and secondary growth doesn't do as well. Fires are a problem and roads accelerate deforestation.

On the planting of trees in deforested areas. The finding made sense. You lose the canopy/biomass and effect on ecosystem, jump starting it is not easy as just not destroying in the first place. The investment and period of time invested to restore a self sustaining, self replicating chlorophyl based carbon dioxide sequestering system requires more than just a weekends friend of the trees "planting" activity ; ).

I don't have the whole story. At the same time considering all the controversies I'm focusing on what I see as a core, albiet secondary mechanism of climate perturbation. Similary, I'd rather share something that was synthesis of ongoing work, though cognizant of the potential for bias. The hope is that more than just saying lets get all the carbon dioxide in hopes that it will reverse years of anthropogenic effects. What is a likely outcome that validates that we may need more than sunscreen and business as usual.

I really hate this topic but what bothers me more is seeing the way things are spun and the proliferation of the concrete jungle. The subtle progress of degradation that takes some of the magic of nature out of life.

The statement by whatever his name is not a quantified statement. It is an epistemic quandary at best. At what point does the number of pieces of straw equal a hay bale.

Ok, I admit to throwing in the deforestation stuff knowing it was off-track... but WHOIS quoted AGU, and that opens up the discussion to all the various avenues. After all, you put up the links...:)

I intentionally brought up the GCM problems, and they ARE central to the issue.

The ocean current that you talked about is one of Richard Alley's major interests, and look at what the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, chaired by him, has to say about them:

"At present, the models used to assess
climate and its impacts cannot simulate the size,
speed, and extent of past abrupt changes, let alone
predict future abrupt changes. Efforts are needed to
improve how the mechanisms driving abrupt climate
change are represented in these models and to more
rigorously test models against the climate record."

Again, I have to question, just what triggered these other abrupt changes, if it wasn't us???? The thermohaline stops, it starts.....and stops, and starts...
Sorry sports fans, but that puts us well into the realm of normal variability.

"......tree rings show the frequency of
droughts, sediments reveal the number and type of
organisms present, and gas bubbles trapped in ice cores
indicate past atmospheric conditions. With such
techniques, researchers have discovered repeated
instances of large and abrupt climate changes over the
last 100,000 years during the slide into and climb out of
the most recent ice age—local warmings as great as 28°F
(16°C) occurred repeatedly, sometimes in the mere span
of a decade."

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/abrupt_climate_change_final.pdf

So I get this right, you are saying that we can't prove we are causing global warming. If that is what your saying, ok I can accept that.

I hate using this because it is a bit silly but the old saying for lack of nail a shoe was lost, for lack of shoe a horse was lost, for lack of horse a soldier was lost, for lack of a soldier a war was lost.

Taking another angle we are assuming that only the same inputs can create a given outcome.

Example we have a hard time proving exactly what killed the dinosaurs we want the single smoking gun, meteor hit. However it has also been strongly that supported that this event in itself did not wipe out the dinosaurs nor did the previous impact wipe out there predecessors in the Permian.

Generalizing the meteor hit was a major climatic input to the system the propagation of this input created some chain of events that likely killed the dinosaurs.

Stepping along lets say that chain of events deforested a significant portion of the land mass at that time. It didn't happen all at once it was a breakdown of the existing trophic web. I think if I remember correctly what they found was a lot of ferns which are more tolerant to acidity than most flora. Large vegetarian dinosaurs couldn't live off ferns, carnivores were left with smaller prey combined with other stresses (acid rain). Game over.

Stepping away from that a little, instead of one time deforestation event, we have continuous deforestation, widescale depletion of species, varied and increasing sources of pollution. The horse is missing more than a shoe.

Sure this could have been the result of meteor strike or the 20 thousand year cycle of the sun coupled with other factors.

However we have become one of the major inputs to the system. So I agree with what's his name. We have taken some of the disorganized localized inputs that wax and wane with environmental changes and replaced it with ourselves, highly adaptive but our success is also detrimental.

How bout those frogs. We didn't give em extra legs, did we (:. Life here is carbon based. What's the saying matter is never created or destroyed it just changes form. Tongue in cheek all that carbon dioxide is somehow related to all the life forms we wiped out,disrupted, fished out, dug up, burned. Carbon lost from evironmental degradation. We inserted ourselves into the global process.

So while I stretched my logic very thin, just because it has happened before industrialization doesn't mean we are not currently part of the problem. Take a look around at what we have effected and what is truly natural, indigenous etc. Imagine what it looked like without us here.

Then tell me we don't factor into the equation, global warming or whatever else. It's ironic the contest is to effect the environment but we are arguing that we don't effect it. We can't take ourselves out of the equation, cause we got no place to go ; )

It's not a neat little package and the cause and effect involves everything. Consider maybe our form of ordering stabilized the climate but in a direction that wasn't sustainable. The amazonian canopy has an effect on the localized weather which is a component of the global weather, but we don't have an effect on the global climate?

So in this epic ramble I have not produced the smoking gun. The real question is with this degraded environment can a small stress that would have been balanced by other natural inputs now interact synergistically with our own negative stresses. We end up with a result that was created by different set of inputs in the past but this time we tipped the severity from minor to major.

A localized example would be the dust bowl that happened last century in the midwest. Our crops weren't indigenous so the effects were more catastrophic. Before my time so I think this is correct.

Makes me wonder what happened in Egypt, they sure like their sand ; )

Taking another angle we are assuming that only the same inputs can create a given outcome.

No, it's that our inputs are likely negligible in the overall scheme of things, and predicting that our inputs are the cause of changes that already happen naturally is logically unwarranted.

Along with this logically unwarranted assertion comes a demand for us to submit to world rule by those who posit the scenario. Turns out the politicians are paying the scientists, who are feeding the politicians the data they want to hear, all for the purpose of leading the gullible to believe that the 'middle of the road most sensible' approach, is to just give in, give them the power, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. They are smarter than us, and they will do our thinking for us, and tell us what the truth is, and tell us what to do.

You will end up feeding them out of the product of your efforts while they use everything they gain from you to drum up support for more and more control over your life. And they know -- once they control your access to energy, and the energy input to everything you can buy or eat (which starts out as dirt until you put energy into it), they've got you under control, with no escape possible.

I suggest reading Karl Marx and other socialist/communist thinkers. Just substitute the word "environment" wherever you see the words "society" or "downtrodden workers", and the ruse becomes clear. It's an attempted power grab on an unprecedented scale. The difference is, once the downtrodden workers find out they will be slaves, they can throw off the yoke of the parasite masters. Since that ploy didn't work, a victim that can't talk back had to be found. The 'environment' will be ever silent, and her changes will happen slow enough that they might be able to gain power before she changes her fickle mind and starts cooling again.

With the common man unable to comprehend high school chemistry and physics, our society will swallow this hocus pocus hook, line and sinker, never adding up the data for themselves. When the new dogma comes to be enforced with the power of the government gun, arguing about the science will not only be pointless, it will be loudly shouted down by all the true believers, who are comfortable in their 'knowledge'.

"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!"

--97T--

I hear you.

How bout this for hypothesized outside perspective :) an extreme, polarized view with a kernel of truth. Hmm perhaps we should be more worried about computers.


Agent Smith

As soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization.
I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you're not actually mammals. You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we, are the cure.
I'm going to be honest with you. I... hate... this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.Quite ironically we are the most readily available organic matter that can be used to generate energy. How is that for juxtaposition.

This brings to mind a recurring argument I have had in physics.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle doesn't mean we are uncertain that a chair will be a chair at any particular time (a popular misconception among Sci-fi/Fantasy book readers), it is merely a mathematical construct to say that OUR math isn't perfect and the error factor is present. Kinda like estimating your time of arrival at any particular destination.

My point is to read the actual studies and documents and principles behind the documents that state on conclusion or another.

Most of the stuff put up here and on other threads are just the hype or BS that public news or popular media throw out there with no particular emphasis on facts.

Exactly.

I'm going to propose that if we apply Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to GCMs and IPCC predictions, the result is simply the more accurate they propose to be, the less accurate they are in reality.

So far, this seems to be the case.

AlGore for President!!

it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong :) j.g. UT actuarial science

To some degree our perspective, our existence, approach influences the outcome though we might oversimplify our view that we are objectively measuring an independent phenomenon. And so not to butcher this completely and tie back, we can generally parameterize the behavior while not being able to discern all the interrelationships that effect the observed phenomena. More to it but that was my shallow recollection of the concept. Error being unquantified factors and interrelationships.

Einstien hated it but could not dismiss it. It is the freaky unfinished science. Freaky because we can't fully explain the behavior but we know it exists.

Ultimately, I'd say we have to look at the best evidence thoroughly and pursue the least disruptive course whatever that might be. It really can't be a purely quantitive because the models will never spit out the exact answers and I'm not sure we have to. Instead, we would have to make a human assessment of what makes the most sense. Balance short term realities with long term risk mitigation.

From Fizzissists' post.

"Growing tree plantations to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to mitigate global warming -- so called "carbon sequestration" -- could trigger environmental changes that outweigh some of the benefits, a multi-institutional team led by Duke University suggested in a new report. Those effects include water and nutrient depletion and increased soil salinity and acidity, said the researchers.

It just may be that herein lies the problem. "The economic incentive" that has help us here in the first place.

Foolishly planting trees wily nilly is indeed well, foolish. If a habitat did not naturally support trees in the recent past then it would stand to reason it will not now without adverse consequences such as the need for fertilization and sustained irrigation.

Any requirement for additional inputs by man to sustain the "reforested" areas would of course defeat the purpose of reforestation. If a geographical area even as small as a few hundred acres did not historically support certain vegetation then why try and force it to support it now?

I'll tell you why. Because a "reforested" area is very unlikely to be planted with a species of tree that has no near term economic benefit for either pulpwood or timber harvest. Cottonwoods and Poplars are touted as "carbon sequestering" trees of high merit that could be farmed plantation style and of course using some nice fast growing hybrid varieties quite economically as feedstock for the pulp and paper industry.

This doesn't mean that planting trees will hurt the environment, what it really means it planting trees for economic benefit disgusted as "carbon sequestration plantations" will.

What is needed of course is the reforestation (quotations now removed) of available lands with native vegetation, ie. trees and shrubs that would have or could now naturally grown in that habitat.

I'm quite sure this would be the intention of most people who suggest planting a tree if they were educated about the harmful consequences of planting trees that are incompatible with where they are being planted. A little biodiversity wouldn't hurt either.

Mike

Funny how the topic of RE-forestation, and sequestering CO2 oddly ignores the issue of land mis-use in the first place.

Avissar, the guy I mentioned earlier, is doing a lot of research into the that, along with many others. What I read so far on the subject seems to indicate that it isn't such a simple fix, and in fact there are some problems created. Drat. It's that old "you don't get something for nothing" quandry again....

I'm finding myself in greater and greater agreement that land use is every bit as important as spewed pollutants. The tropics, where the bulk of the sun's energy is absorbed, has vast forests that are dark and absorb heat, but at the same time suck up water which is evaporated into clouds. Those clouds tend to reflect UV energy.

Replanting one tree for every tree harvested....or slashed and burned....may sequester some CO2, but it doesn't offset the other factors that helped moderate climate.

Don't remember the actual numbers, but the greater Los Angeles area is covered with approx 40% development. The estimation I read about simply changing L.A. land use to 'normalize' the albedo of that area alone would reduce the heat loading significantly. ....Wish I could find that paper! It blew me away to see how much less power would be needed in air conditioning if the heat island effect was lowered by 5 or 10% in L.A. alone.

This whole concept of micro-managing the global climate trends by planting trees is ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I like trees. Planted an avocado today. I like guacomole.

jsage,

Your Agent Smith post pretty nicely sums up what I consider to be one of the root smuggled concepts of the entire environmentalist movement, one that is taught from kindergarten through university, and reinforced on every single piece of enviro propaganda 'science' show on TV.

It is the concept of man as alien being. The idea that "nature" is only natural if man is not present. The idea that any modification of his environment to suit him is destruction of "nature".

The closest term I can find for this concept is Nihilism. Nihilism is described as a philosophy of "total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself".

In this case, literally, it expresses a hatred for mankind. It is anti-human, against human life. "Nature" is described as the good, and human activity is described as evil.

In a subsequent post, you advise pursuing the "least disruptive course". This idea sounds reasonable if you have accidentally accepted the premise of the foregoing; that human life is destructive to nature and therefore evil.

But it doesn't sound reasonable to me, and here's why:

I submit to you that the good, morally and materially, is human life. That means my own life first, then the lives of people I love, then the lives of people that I respect, then the lives of all other humans, in that order.

I contend that the choice of any other thing besides human life as the ultimate good, your own life being primary, leads inevitably to the conclusion that somebody's life must be sacrificed for this other greater good. In other words, eventually, choosing anything other than life is anti-life.

Human beings have evolved to the point where we must use our brains to survive. We do not have the teeth and fur that it would take to survive in the wild without tools. Even under the most primitive of circumstances, we must think and act to survive. And this means we must modify our environment, control it, in order to create the conditions that allow us to survive.

Modifying our environment is part of what and who we are. We are able to exist only because we modify our environment. Man left alone in nature finds nature hostile to his survival. Where I live, you might survive a few hours at most if you were put out naked in the snow.

The "least disruptive course" to take would be to curl up and die.

I can see this premise behind every treatise on natural phenomena, behind all attempts to control your access to energy, behind the destruction of logging industry communities, behind every piece of environmental legislation being passed. Being raised in an atmosphere where this is the only accepted reality, it is not surprising that few question it.

But I see it as a philosophy of hatred towards human life. The results of accepting this philosophy unquestioned lead inevitably to the destruction of human life, if carried far enough. And therefore, I consider this philosophy to be fundamentally evil.

It's pretty easy to point out how and where this philosophy is silly, when anyone who has maintained a piece of property realizes that 'nature' takes over and would erase our efforts within a few short years, absent constant effort to maintain control. Try clearing land to grow something to eat without power tools of any kind, to see how much effort early farmers had to expend for basic survival, and to see how fragile the results are. (It's good exercise.) For more exercise, try navigating an area where beavers have taken over, and consider whether their efforts are any more or less natural than yours.

I contend that man's control over his environment for survival is a natural phenomenon. This is not evil, it is what makes our survival possible.

The term I use for someone who thinks the world would be a be a better place if I were dead, is enemy.

To be sure, most people never consider this issue in terms of essentials, they can go along with a mixed muddle of different premises popping up for different situations. So very few of them actually want to see me dead. But the end result will be accomplished -- the main point of the exercise is that if their policy dictates that I should be sacrificed for the greater good, everyone else, being intellectually disarmed by this unexamined premise wouldn't care. Especially if nobody got killed, but only their business got taxed and regulated out of existence (and here, other unexamined premises can make us not care about the destroyed livelihood of a business owner, but care about the workers he no longer employs).

And to be sure, the aim isn't really to destroy all businesses, in most people's minds. But the intellectual leaders of these movements are very clear in their pronouncements. They hate capitalism and would see it destroyed. They are using this idea that "nature" is the ultimate good while man is an alien destructive force that is the evil to be controlled, as the vehicle to intellectually disarm people from rebelling when their policies get carried out. There are perhaps actually very few true believers of this philosophy, but they are concentrated at the university level, and they write the propaganda that sets the tone for the rest of the enterprise.

In actuality, what is going on here is just an extension of the second oldest profession. Which is, find something that people willingly do, then find some reason to outlaw it, then set yourself up to allow and limit the activity and rake in protection money. Thereby collecting free money off other people who have earned it, and preventing them from complaining about it because they have been branded as immoral. A way for thugs to get money at the power of the gun without having their victims fight back with their own guns. What they started out doing to prostitution, they are now doing to industry in general.

These ploys won't work with me. Those that advocate my destruction, I consider to be my enemies, and publicly call them out for the evil that they advocate. It's certainly too little, too late, though. The game started before I was born, and the milking has been going on for decades. There is a tipping point beyond which a parasite cannot be supported by the host. What we are seeing in North America is capital flight. The domestic auto manufacturers are pulling every dollar they can scrape up and investing it overseas, out of the jurisdiction of our government, in preparation for declaring bankruptcy and leaving the looters nothing more to grab. It's happened with virtually all heavy industries, and with the auto manufacturers gone, all the support industries will wither as well. It'll take a while to wind down, but manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are permanently drying up.

That will make the environmentalists happy -- no production, no environmental destruction. But notice that environmentalists all live off the tax dole, along with an unprecedented percentage of our population. As industries get killed, wealth creation stops. Economic activity starts when humans turn dirt into wealth. When it stops, there is no need for services, especially an army of bureaucrats. Look for them to tighten the noose as tax revenues fall.

What happens after that could be the subject of another long winded dissertation.

I'd be a happier man if someone would prove me wrong on any of this.

--97T--

97t,

Of course we can't solve all problems at once. I think I have been accused of nihilsm once or twice. I'm probably even worst than that an idealist.

So what would be my ideal. The Japanese are looking at a part of it but the benefit could be argued and the fact that they are rapidly losing real estate makes it damn near a necessity. Those gigantic tree house like communities. It is a bit escapist.

Back to the point is it would be nice if things were more decentralized. That as individuals we were more self sufficient. I'll use deer as an example because we have a lot around here and they are still generally wild. I think it takes on average 3 acres to support a single deer.It is a gross oversimplification but there is something to it.


It would be nice if we found better analogs to nature. You pointed out an inherent conflict that we all struggle with, population. There of course is a maximum capacity that a given set of resources will support. Geographically that has already happened. People will have to recognize this relationship that they will have to be more efficient and conservation minded or there won't be enough to go around. Our superiority has it's limits. Our ability to understand cause and effect has come into question now.


As for politics, religion, philosophy, I feel sometimes the issue is the subversion of them not the construct themselves.

I don't expect anyone to take me literally, nor do I want undue influence. Instead I'm throwing out analogies and parables. Myth derived from story has achieved a perjorative connotation.

I have studied a number of fields but not an expert in any of them. An enlightening read but probably the most difficult to comprehend because we are in fact the civilized mind, is Structural Anthropology by Claude Levi Strauss. The name sounds exotic and fictional but it is basically an Anthropolical work set within a classic conflict of civilization versus primitive cultures, Moral Topographies. Industrial encroachment vs nature. It doesn't have an agenda except breaking down the human conflict and strategy which can be reduced to symbolic components, constructs. Within this you find that many constructs become a weakened tower. Whether it tumbles or not is a function realizing its flaws and fixing them.


Would of got back to you sooner but I was busy cutting down some trees so I could drive down to the pond ; )

One parting comment is we like to polarize, label, villify the other. In the matrix I would say that the other is an externalized conflict with oneself.

it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong :) j.g. UT actuarial science

<Snip>

Ultimately, I'd say we have to look at the best evidence thoroughly and pursue the least disruptive course whatever that might be. It really can't be a purely quantitive because the models will never spit out the exact answers and I'm not sure we have to. Instead, we would have to make a human assessment of what makes the most sense. Balance short term realities with long term risk mitigation.


I can see where the true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. However, picking a single variable to fix a systemic hickup that has yet to be proven aflicted by a sole vital influence. Moreover, has yet to be prove being broken in the first place.......just sounds delusional.

Akin to the neihborhood oddball down the street parking his beater car on the public street nearer your house than his own. You repeatedly ask him to stop and finally threaten to bust his headlights out if it continues. The oddball neighbor resolves this dilema by busting out his own headlights. Ahha, The oddball picks the headlights as the single solution to a problem, robbing his neighbors of control by retribution.

DC

I my attempts at not taking myself too seriously and taking a satirical view aren't working.

I spent two years working on a multivariate model that is infinitely less complicated than this one. A model only looks at what you put into it. A regression of those variables correlation gives you some indication of potential outcomes. However, often times there are underlying processes which have not been defined which render these models very primitive.

An alternative method is an auto regressive model which shortcuts what you can't define and assumes there are patterns in the data which can be extrapolated over a reasonable period. The ability to go beyond a reasonable period say 5 years assumes you have the same underlying process. Generally seasonal patterns repeat in some trajectory over a short time frame.

In your example a more basic view would be the neighbor across the street knows the odd ball and irritated neighbor. He has talked with both and knowing what you have said he predicts that neighbor will knock out his own lights. However, when the confrontation occurs a jet is flying overhead and the oddball neighbor doesn't hear the whole threat, he just hears car and can see the nieghbor is irritated. The oddball neighbor does not knock out his own lights.

The neighbor across is watching but doesn't hear the jet overhead cause he's got the tv on. His prediction is wrong but he does not know why.

Anyhow enough said.

One of Many,

I think I mistook what you were saying the first time around on the neighbor hood thing. I was still trying to explain why the uncertainty principle is relevant though not easy to fold into this topic.

Also to give you another version of your story with some relevance but for entertainment only. A guy in Rhode Island I believe bought some property under the assumption that he could build on it. Who was the bad guy in how this unfolds is unknown. What happened was some environmental influence prevented him from doing what he needed on his land. So what he did was hire people to cut all the limbs off the trees and then paint the trees red and white like peppermint sticks. Whether the guy thought he could skirt the zoning or similar, or environmental interest groups applied undue influence the result was a lose lose.

97t,

Not disagreeing with you. It is just my opinion that we shouldn't cloud the issue with whether we like Gore or if this is just another scheme to gain control.

As for nihilism I think as you defined it, not too many would wan't be labeled as such.

Ironically life probably originated as a virus, something that organized something else into a working organism. A cancer originates from a normal cell that replicates out of control.

As for the stink, I find I think the corporate world stinks when I'm a part of it. When I drive down the road and someone passes me in an abrupt manner and takes the next exit I just shake my head.

The quote is hyperbole. I debated on the last paragraph.

As for news I feel I can be infected by the sound bites that are perpetuated by the media. I'm supposed to ride a roller coaster figuring out what is most important this week. Not to mention I have to see everything bad that happened and who is bad this week. I'm apathetic when someone tries to influence me with an issue that is obviously biased.

For the record I thought Gore might work back in the last election. However I'm not affiliating with him. I concur with his "Issue" meaning I agree we should take some action but not in the same manner or necessarily for the same reason.

I've purposely avoided discussing politics and politicians. and tried to skirt all the intertwined issues. There is a common thread to my logic but it is no doubt driven by my own beliefs. The interjection of extreme examples is overplayed but the complete opposite would be to saying something so lukewarm that it really said nothing at all.

I wouldn't want a world full of people like me, however, it is the fact that we all have something to bring to the table that makes it work.

Politics is a big averaging machine a buffer to more radical influence. However Co-opted, somehow it seems to work itself out.

Global warming is a bit of a red herring. It is not the cause that concerns me it is that our reliance on current efficiencies that makes us more susceptible to disruptions. Note the pentagon declassified a document that flagged it as a potential National Security Issue.

There is a danger it has been played down as much as played up. Though I really don't want to get into conspiracy issues. I remember one that said that gas prices had been artificially been supressed in combination with reducing military demand.

I find hanging on these issues whether real or percieved distracts us from the larger question.

Sometimes I can be a bit dense. I remember the bumper sticker that said vote bush it's easier than thinking and a left a bit unsure who it was advocating :)

jsage,

I didn't mention Gore. I did point out that there is no clear cause and effect relationship, and therefore the scheme to gain control is based on lies. And I pointed out how a poisonous metaphysics is inculcated into young children in order to make the masses swallow these megalomaniacal schemes.

I sure wish someone would prove me wrong.

--97T--

We all knew ages ago (20 years +) that CO2 emissions were bad and nuclear was the only way to go, but the wooly hippy "I live in a tree" idiots kinda said no! it's nuclear! bad, bad.

Now it's back on the agenda and guess why.. cos govts need more tax off us and they've exhausted every other avenue.... Wow! Greenhouse Tax! sure! they'll swallow that... they did everything else. It's a con to get more money off us. I could not care a damn if the planet warms as much as Venus in the next 1000 years. I won't be here.

Anyway, I come from Scotland.. a wee bit of Global Warming would be nice.. it's bloody freezing here 360 days a year.

Anyway, I come from Scotland.. a wee bit of Global Warming would be nice.. it's bloody freezing here 360 days a year.

Decided to look into the north atlantic ocean temperatures to see if there's any hope for ya....and having a wee bit of scots blood traversing these veins, I hate to see kin folk suffering high heating bills!!

Found some interesting tidbits....like this from ScienceDaily in Dec '06.....

"......This trend of warmer sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic appears to be correlated with dry spells we have seen in the West since the late 1990s," said Veblen. "If the trend continues for the next 60 years or so as it has in the past, the degree of fire occurrence in the West could be unprecedented compared to anything in recent memory.........The key issue is that the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation persists on time scales of 60 to 80 years, compared to just one year or a few years for El Niño," he said."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061226134700.htm

60 year cycles???? How far into this one ARE we??? Better let the folks at the WHOI know, so they can update their website!
".....The results of the statistical analysis point to the area directly south and east of Newfoundland as a site of pronounced sea surface temperature variability. The figure below right shows the history of sea surface temperatures in this region since 1900. There is a notable tendency for cold and warm periods to be spaced approximately one decade apart, as well as longer-term warming and cooling trends that span several decades. When the near-surface wind field is analyzed in a similar manner (but independently from the sea surface temperatures), similar decadal-scale oscillations and longer term trends are evident. As noted in the McCartney inset below, this basin scale pattern of variability has been labeled the North Atlantic Oscillation...."

(my note: check out this temp chart http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=7971&aid=2342 from that page and note the 2+deg temp swings that happen even WITHIN a decade!!)
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2342&archives=true

Ok,,,,to be fair, the WHOI article is talking about a smaller region...but still, we're seeing some pretty big swings of temperature in a pretty big chunk of thermal mass in a fairly short period of time!!

How much money are we going to spend till someone admits that the earth is warming more than likely due to that 30 million degree lightbulb in the sky known as the sun. If there was an ice age long ago as they say something had to melt that ice before the combustion engine came along. Bottom line is the earth is a delicate balance that must be looked after where possible, likewise no matter what humans do there will come a day when the earth is gone. To hear Sen. McCain say "The Congress will Act," regarding warming of the earth what exactly is that supposed to mean? I know politicians are big headed ego manics but really if you can't even keep drugs out of prisons how do you expect to control the earth climate and temperature? All I can see happening from them "acting," is the removal of more money from my wallet and a pathetic play aimed to look as if they are doing something.

Considering those harping the loudest about the issue have homes the size of production facilities and fly private jets all over what do they expect the average person to do exactly to save the environment when they are putting more CO2 into the air in one trip on a jet then I will produce in most of my lifetime. They all need to look in the mirror first, till then they need to shut the hell up. Carbon offset my arse, I just read a place that sells them would charge $239 for offsets to cover a cross country flight on a Gulfstream IV Jet that pumps out around 8000 lbs of CO2 each way. How exactly is $239 going to make that CO2 go away? Wake up folks Al Gore is the same guy that wrote a book on de-forestation and had it printed on brand spanking new paper not even re-cycled. Why anyone listens to these idiots is beyond me.

Just like most things over time you find that the highest and mightest that preach the most are usually the ones taking the hardest falls off their perch when the truth about them comes to light. Preists and little boys, Congressman and little boys you get the drift.

Add to that the simple fact that now developing countries such as China and India have no alphabet soup regulatory agencies to contend with and they will be pumping out the polution more and more without any concern.

Time to go fuel up my Hummer and chainsaw ;)

Bo

Edit: as a side note, do you all recall the hole in the ozone layer dilemma years ago? I haven't heard anything about that in years. Maybe they spent enough of our tax money on research grants to figure out what we already knew. Sunlight passing through the atmosphere naturally creates ozone and my hunch is that that same sunlight is also warming the earth. Where should I send my proposal for a indepth study to get some of that grant money? If you have ever read any grant money studies when they are completed (aka out of money) they all say the same thing in the last few sentences. Something along the lines of while this study did conclude such and such versus the previous study by such and such that further study will be required to determine the actual impact of the issue being studied. Which can also be read as - We need a job, give us some more grant money.

Once I saw a study and this is no joke. This study looked at research studies and found that 2/3 of all studies were in direct opposition to like studies regarding the findings. So just pick a side and get your grant to debunk the other side. What a country!

What happened to the 1970's ice age prediction?
Shouldn't we all be frozen??
Mabey we were planted here by aliens to transform the planet, so
it would be more like thier home world???
hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I think I'll stick to the "we don't know what in the he** is going on theory".

One of Many,

I think I mistook what you were saying the first time around on the neighbor hood thing. I was still trying to explain why the uncertainty principle is relevant though not easy to fold into this topic.

Also to give you another version of your story with some relevance but for entertainment only. A guy in Rhode Island I believe bought some property under the assumption that he could build on it. Who was the bad guy in how this unfolds is unknown. What happened was some environmental influence prevented him from doing what he needed on his land. So what he did was hire people to cut all the limbs off the trees and then paint the trees red and white like peppermint sticks. Whether the guy thought he could skirt the zoning or similar, or environmental interest groups applied undue influence the result was a lose lose.


Well, it would appear you did spin it to fit your ideals. Not unlike so many of the GW proponents do. Doing something(like busting out your own headlights) is better than doing nothing , regardless of the solution ever being shown effective.

Time after time and article after article. They can mix irrelevant data, add in assumptions, then come to a conclusion where their theory cannot be wholly proven or disproved. So the wisest move from these masterminds is to turn it into a pandemic shouted from the rooftops. I can see this cashcow milked FOREVER without a shread of evidence to repeal it!

With Uncertainty as a cloak of all unknown causes and only a portion of the factual data. So, filling in the blanks, then disingenuously spin them into facts to support their case is acceptable Science? Then again ignore anything that exposes fatal flaws with certain data purposely left out as a detractor to the conclusion, but relevant to raise doubt to the conclusion.

Propagandizing there MIGHT be a problem with the climate and casting blame on one of many miniscule influences that CAN be controlled. Foregoing the elements they cannot control.


A bit oxymoronic to find that the Insurance industry considers weather to be acts of God, but a few Scientist think they can fix that by throwing money at the issue via regulations by force.



DC

Another term for CO2 is "Plant Food". Crops grow faster, forests grow faster, crop yields improve. Next, it will make tax revenues go up, along with power and influence.

--97T--

Yeah I'd hate to be in the insurance industry if this pans out or even getting insurance.

Here is what I posit to be a practical solution to determining the risk factors. Much of what is being discussed won't be resolved in the short term. Deforestation and all the other issues are important but would be a lot harder to quantify.


On the conveyor much of this already being done.

Doing measurements the old fashioned way and extrapolating the values and interaction.

Surface temps are interesting but not in and of themselves meaningful. In the Northeast a strong wind can effect it. Decadal temp cycles are a function of that big lightbulb in the sky.

If you measure the deep current movements distance, speed, temperature. Similarly measure salinity changes, measure changes in seasonal reversals you should be able get beyond a the existing confidence interval: no effect to a severe effect.

There will still be some intangibles like at what point will the change in salinity become critical. Similarly how will precipitation interact with the slow melting process.

Global warming and whether we caused it is a distraction at this point.

Long series of historical data are likely less important because we are deriving only a few data points. While these points may have macro implications or signals, they may only be say 40-60% of short term disruptions.

Referring back to long series multivariate (Stochastic) versus short term trend variable extrapolation and interaction (Autoregressive). Extrapolation of localized trends seems the most reasonable. The severity of the effect of a change in regional temperature, based on slowed temperature redistribution, will be another complexity.

The downside is you ideally want 5 years data based on the model I used. It allows you isolate out irregular effects and establish seasonal components. You also use smoothing methods to determine trend. One strength is overcoming purely linear models. These type of models can incorporate shocks which can decay over time or through interaction with other variables have exponential features.

Anyhow, hope for the best, nothing happens, at least take look at the worst, we have a change in weather.


TMI


Here is an applied version. I have very simple view somewhere. http://www.ees.nmt.edu/vivoni/h2cu/97WR00043.pdf

A basic component is that behavior of a measured variable over a given period will have a pattern that can be extrapolated but subject to the degree of auto correlation or memory of its own inital state or pattern. This correlation to its initial pattern will decay with the interaction of other variables, changing states. This autocorrelation varies depended on the variable. For example the accuracy of weather forecasts decay quite quickly. Water is less subject to change so should have a longer auto correlation to itself.

Fizzist it credits AGU!

One of Many - it is exactly the same thing the pharmaceutical companies do with clinical studies, I know I worl for one. During a clinical study a drug can be considered effective and of use to the public when it shows a mere 10% better efficacy rate than that of the placebo. Of which only 30% of the entire study noticed any improvement at all for both the drug and placebo users.

Studies have shown that studies will show whatever things the study funder wants them to show. Oddly enough.

Where ever someone takes ity-bity amounts of data from an ever changing environ, there can be trends. Making whole cloth from it would seem to indicate far too many variables are at play to pinpoint and implicate mankinds 2 tenths of one percent, as the key element for altering a larger trend over eons of time.

It is where extrapolation=conjecture=presumption=guesswork to which prediction reliability can be exponentially inconclusive but allows hysteria propaganda to take over.

Meanwhile a far more obvious trend goes ignored. As some despot Dictators on the other side of the world having clearly stated plans, rallying support and building weapons, to wipe a few Countries and their Allies off the face of the earth. Point being....there are real threats and percieved threats. Which are we to expend energy on with greater urgency?

DC

One of Many --

"Point being....there are real threats and percieved threats. Which are we to expend energy on with greater urgency?"

I predict it will be whichever one nets the politicians the greatest gains in power and wealth, with the best prospects for prolonging it. Foreign intrigues have been popular for this purpose since the beginning of civilization. In between those, there are witch doctors foretelling doom, and witch hunts, and games, and monetary policy, and five year plans, and other entertainment.

--97T--

Bowman and 97T

Tis true in both responses, I suppose. "Follow the money" has already been mentioned once in this thread.

Someone can take the fruits of my labor under threat of the feds.

Someone can take away my creature comforts under the threat of the environmentalist manipulating laws to regulate them.

Someone can take away the public presence of faith under threat it offends those that won't believe using the courts to oppress it.

But on a Global scale. Someone can take away the lives of tens of thousands many fold over under threat of hope, freedom and prosperity for all and next to nothing is discussed or brought into the light of day in comparison.

It makes this GW whoi, small potatoes in potential loss of life in the short term.



DC

Yeah I'd hate to be in the insurance industry if this pans out or even getting insurance.
If you own stock in AIG, you've been makin' a bundle!!! I seem to recall previously posting a whole treatise on insurance profits, hurricane alarmism, motivation, etc....
If you measure the deep current movements distance, speed, temperature. Similarly measure salinity changes, measure changes in seasonal reversals you should be able get beyond a the existing confidence interval: no effect to a severe effect........

Speaking of the THC, I found interesting the contridiction between Harry Bryden claiming the THC slowed 30% between 1957 and 2004, and J.R. Knight's work that showed a significant INCREASE since the '70s!! Hmmmmmm........

Physical oceanographer Carl Wunsch of MIT says: So has the conveyor slowed? Might it continue to slow? “We don’t know, and it may take a decade or two more of watching and waiting to know for sure."

Bryden, H.L., et al., 2005. Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25ºN. Nature, 438, 655-657.

Knight, J.R., et al., 2005. A signature of persistent natural thermohaline circulation cycles in observed climate. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, doi:10.1029/2005GL024233.

Anybody even consider the fact that the increased rate of population could be a factor. The population is increasing at a hyperbolic rate and yet the GHGs are entirely to blame.

Some one pointed out that humans are like virus'. I tend to think that humans are no different than any living thing on this planet. Observe ants for example. They will move onto a tree, counsume the 'resources' and move on to the next one, all the while reproducing.

Hyperbolic? Beam me up Scotty!

For amusement only.

Fizzissist,

On the insurance I was talking future. I took a quick look at AIG. They are extremely diversified multi line company. I'm not sure there are many pure play minimally diversified insurance companies out there. One example would be what yahoo references a portion of AIG business with some language resembling "non systemic risk". Best example is Lloyds of London which insured unique risk situations like a cargo ship crossing the atlantic. My insurance carrier, State Farm, has Lloyds tacked on to the name. I live on the very edge of town. Mega subdivisions, high end large lot developments, I'm backed up to a couple thousand acres which include city owned watershed properties.

As for how much measurement it would require to answer the core question. I don't complete buy what they are saying. Similarly, I can create a long bibliography list at the end of my research but kind of like Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, don't buy used books because the guy who highlighted it before you could have been a complete idiot ; ) Further being constrained by others works limits your methodologies. These methodologies may not have been intended to answer the question at hand. Lastly, the path of interpretation might not be the most relevant, concise or expedient. Yes peer reviewed, but peers like it when you agree with there work.

I keep seeing the detractors use words like Clinton when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Using one of your recent posts, Global hurricanes. Anyhow we are in the preliminary stages, 30 years from now a model may be moot point. I'm reading a fictional book on some global effect and ironically they curtailed funding all predictive modeling; )


Heisenberg:



I believe that the existence of the classical "path" can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it. --Heisenberg, in uncertainty principle paper, 1927



In the sharp formulation of the law of causality-- "if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future"-it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.
--Heisenberg, in uncertainty principle paper, 1927

My view if we knew the future with great certainty then we might curl up and die. Not necessarily in reference to this question but because the predictibility would be a bit soul deadening.

A few final things.

In my experience if your models show that the outcome could be none to severe the median outcome is a moderate effect the corresponding probabilities are smaller on either side (none or high). Of course it is emphasizing the quality of predicting a given outcome.

Again, I'm not saying the end is nigh. Anyone saying there will be some important effects will attract great scrutiny and attacks. Confidence that nothing major will occur is better than considering some imminent threat. Look at what happened to the market after 9/11 and the bursting of y2k exhuberence.

Anyhow, I think we can circle around with point, counterpoint but I'm not sure if this really productive. That's why I didn't respond until now and am bowing out. Kinda like a tickle, it's amusing but you want it to stop ;)

Quote: "I hate using this because it is a bit silly but the old saying for lack of nail a shoe was lost, for lack of shoe a horse was lost, for lack of horse a soldier was lost, for lack of a soldier a war was lost."

Or my version: "To get the money and gain control we promoted environmentialism to the level of a unitary religion, to promote the religion we saw justification in fabrication, in fabrication we created hystria, in hystria the masses over reacted, the over reaction killed the economy, in killing the economy we reduced the masses to burning wood and animal dung, in buring the dung we dirtied the skies, with the skies dirtied and our bellies empty we saw no reason to look up, while looking down a metor hit us........"

I think they called it chaos theory. Be careful of your cure, it might be worst than the "problem".