Wilkins Ice Shelf under threat

[KD in CA]

Anybody else hear an echo?

 

 

The one coming from inside your head, LinkBoy?

[/dev/null]

If all conservatives said the sky is blue, would you disagree?

 

Only if the DNC sent out talking points saying it was orange

[KD in CA]

Only if the DNC sent out talking points saying it was orange

 

And only then if he could find the DNC talking points website so he could post the link.

 

 

Would anyone else like to know what LinkBoy does for a living? I'm sure it's good for a laugh.

[elegantelliotoffen]

This must be some new and interesting definition of "humiliation" I've never heard before. I actually don't read Wacka's posts. As I've said before, and anyone can tell you...I think he's pretty much an idiot. Again, if you could read, you'd probably know that.

 

But you have a truly impressive knack for impressing absolutely no one but yourself. Keep it up, it's very entertaining.

 

Actually it should read "if you could read all 16,000 of my mind numbingly dull and unoriginal posts you'd probably know that". Now please share some more of you "original" "thoughts" dismissing global warming because it doesn't follow the scientific method. It's not like that meme hasn't been floating around talk radio, editorial pages, and the right wing hackosphere for years. You're just another astroturfing douche.

 

And only then if he could find the DNC talking points website so he could post the link.

 

 

Would anyone else like to know what LinkBoy does for a living? I'm sure it's good for a laugh.

 

I counsel nerds like yourself who have over 11,000 posts on a single message board. Just a reminder- having a 5 digit post count on any message board is mutually exclusive with having an opinion that anyone should take seriously, ever.

[KD in CA]

Actually it should read "if you could read all 16,000 of my mind numbingly dull and unoriginal posts you'd probably know that". Now please share some more of you "original" "thoughts" dismissing global warming because it doesn't follow the scientific method. It's not like that meme hasn't been floating around talk radio, editorial pages, and the right wing hackosphere for years. You're just another astroturfing douche.

 

I counsel nerds like yourself who have over 11,000 posts on a single message board. Just a reminder- having a 5 digit post count on any message board is mutually exclusive with having an opinion that anyone should take seriously, ever.

 

Embarrassed to tell us what you do for a living? Why am I not surprised!

 

But good job trying so hard to make that post count point LinkBoy.

 

Let's do some math that is beyond your skill set. Nearly 1500 posts in the last 6 months = about 8 per day -- hey, that's more than Tom or me or just about anyone else. But you keep trying to bash spammers LinkBoy. It's even funnier since you are too dumb to understand.

[DC Tom]

Now please share some more of you "original" "thoughts" dismissing global warming because it doesn't follow the scientific method.

 

I did. Again, if you could read you'd know that.

[elegantelliotoffen]

I did. Again, if you could read you'd know that.

 

Did you hit "submit post" twice? I guess you must have been confused after manically hitting refresh on www.redstate.com hoping to find new response.

[ieatcrayonz]

Rock on, DC Tom.

 

Can we build some more nuke plants already? I love the look of cooling towers and Homer is my favorite simpson. And I like paying less for energy, and shutting environmentalists up. Like little kids defying their parents, they are.

Have you ever sat in front of a Nuclear plant watching the smoke for two hours? Well, it is not CO2 but it looks like it. Can you imagine if it was CO2 and there were like a million Nuclear plants in the world? You do the math.

[DC Tom]

Did you hit "submit post" twice? I guess you must have been confused after manically hitting refresh on www.redstate.com hoping to find new response.

 

You know, I just realized...for someone who adds absolutely nothing to a conversation, you're a freakishly good speller. Really. It's borderline creepy. Most trolls can't spell for sh--.

[elegantelliotoffen]

You know, I just realized...for someone who adds absolutely nothing to a conversation, you're a freakishly good speller. Really. It's borderline creepy. Most trolls can't spell for sh--.

 

I'll be honest, it's not that good. I use the spell checker which has had the unintended consequence of ruining my natural spelling abilities.

[DC Tom]

I'll be honest, it's not that good. I use the spell checker which has had the unintended consequence of ruining my natural spelling abilities.

 

Not only do you reflexively contradict everything I say, you choose to reflexively contradict the compliment, not the insult!

 

You may be a buffoon, but you're sure as hell an entertaining one.

[elegantelliotoffen]

Not only do you reflexively contradict everything I say, you choose to reflexively contradict the compliment, not the insult!

 

You may be a buffoon, but you're sure as hell an entertaining one.

 

Forget what I just said then, I'm just a phenomenal speller.

[DC Tom]

Forget what I just said then

 

I usually do.

[elegantelliotoffen]

I usually do.

 

POW!

[/dev/null]

I usually do.

 

Game

Set

Match

 

 

Thanks for playing elegantelliotoffen, we have some nice parting gifts for you

[drnykterstein]

Have you ever sat in front of a Nuclear plant watching the smoke for two hours? Well, it is not CO2 but it looks like it. Can you imagine if it was CO2 and there were like a million Nuclear plants in the world? You do the math.

 

Didn't you mean nucular? Also, I don't know how to do math, I can't even read

 

I think this planet is just over populated and we're !@#$ed even if we fix the CO2 problem. So perhaps nuclear plants would help us by killing off the people who aren't strong and resistant to nuclear waste like I am.

[Wacka]

Didn't you mean nucular? Also, I don't know how to do math, I can't even read

 

I think this planet is just over populated and we're !@#$ed even if we fix the CO2 problem. So perhaps nuclear plants would help us by killing off the people who aren't strong and resistant to nuclear waste like I am.

 

We can help that by killing the terrorists.

[drnykterstein]

We can help that by killing the terrorists.

 

I'm telling you, I'd do it myself if you lined em all up in front of me. I just don't think it's possible though. There are too many and they are scattered all over and very hard to identify. It's just not a possible task to identify them all.

 

And I'm not a big fan of living in fear and spying on our own citizens either. That means to me that they have won.

[Dan]

Actually, no you can't. You can investigate theories from computer models. Form them...not so much. They're useful tools, but nowhere near and end-all and be-all, since they're only as good as your a priori premises underpinning them. I certainly wouldn't trust a theory derived strictly from them (not that global warming is strictly derived from computer models - my issues with it lie elsewhere.)

 

And a "theory" is nothing more than a description of the empirically observed world. A "scientific theory" is a theory that is falsifiable (or refutable), testable (verifiable by repeatable observation, such as but not limited to experiments in a lab setting), and predictive.

 

A good example of a "scientific theory" that isn't is intelligent design - it is completely unfalsifiable (any event that would refute it can be included in the theory with the simple statement "The designer designed it that way"), not the least bit testable (there is no observational test you can devise to demonstrate the existence of a designer), and it predicts nothing (actually, by including any event with the observation "The designer designed it that way", it predicts everything, which is fundamentally the same thing). Contrast that with evolution, which is falsifiable (axioms of such have been rewritten several times over since Darwin first wrote), testable (you can, using the theory, establish a hypothesis that can then be tested using observable evidence to examine the "robustness" of the theory - for example, antibiotic resistance in microorganisms), and predictive (again, antibiotic resistance).

 

The first requirement - falsifiability - is my biggest problem with global warming. Anthropogenic global warming is not allowed to be questioned. Period. If you, as a researcher, have a study that would call that in to question, it will not be published unless you include a statement such as "Although this does not preclude the man-made contribution to global warming..." The very moment the scientific investigation of the theory was required to include those words, the theory was made untestable, irrefutable, and hence unscientific (with recent studies stating ridiculous things like "We're entering a period of global cooling over the next three decades, which is attributable to global warming", it's literally become more religion than science in attributing contradictory data to the theory itself).

 

And it pisses me off, because it supresses some otherwise good research that's being done in preference for a lot of really crappy studies of a more teleological nature. And that research should be done - it NEEDS to be done - because either anthropogenic global warming is accurately predictive (note, I didn't say "true"), and the research will necessarily refine the theory. Or it's not predictive (note, not "false"), in which case it would be a good thing to know.

 

And either way, it doesn't preclude the wisdom of living with a smaller ecological footprint (which is more than just "carbon" - how much of your garbage ends up in a landfill every year? How wasteful is your fresh water use?) Disagreeing with global warming on fundamental methodological grounds does not mean disagreeing with environmental responsibility. In my opinion, quite the contrary: the environmental movement has been so hijacked by the anti-carbon agenda that in a lot of ways it's environmentally counter-productive (e.g., do you have any idea how environmentally destructive it is to manufacture a NiMH battery for a hybrid car?)

Excellent post. Although, the point regarding the falsifiability of global warming really refers more to the political and funding mechanisms that influence most all scientific research, as you mention in several other posts. But that, in general, is a problem with all scientific investigation. Most granting agencies only want to fund research that gives known results that the granting agency supports. But that's neither here nor there, I suppose. Good post.

 

 

At least. It's been agreeable for quite some time. You seem young (younger than me, at least)...I can recall back, to my late childhood, at least two other "most important environmental crisis that will kill us all!" in the past thirty years or so (CFC's destroying the ozone layer, sulfur dioxide and acid rain). To me, this focus on CO2 is simply yet another example of people's tendency to focus on the one single thing they're told is most important, while ignoring the simple fact that things are usually way more complex than just that one single thing.

I completely agree. It's kinda funny to think of some of the doom and gloom of the past that has and hasn't panned out. However, I think you must consider that some of these examples, CFCs and acid rain for example, may have been mitigated through our actions. We certainly use less CFCs than we used to, and legislation that required plants to clean their emissions surely had some effect on acid rain. I'm not trying to say that all the problems were there or that humans have completely "fixed" some of these environmental problems. However, I would argue that clearly we took steps to lessen the effects of CFCs (for ex.) and those steps had an impact, perhaps were even beneficial.

 

 

 

Back to the topic at hand, I find it interesting that we have trouble predicting whether or not it will rain next week yet we think we can predict the global climate 100 years from now. It's always prudent to keep in mind the limitations of computer models and our limited knowledge of the inputs into those models. Nonlinear, chaotic systems are not readily predictable by their nature.

 

From my understanding, there seems to be a fair bit of evidence that the global climate, in general, is warming and warming at a rate not typically observed in other warming periods. Is it driven by human kind? Perhaps that's the least important question. What are the potential effects? Can we do anything to keep the world as we currently know it? Should we even try? Is there a tipping point that we're heading towards that will inevitably lead to an alternate stable attractor that's vastly and catastrophically different from the world we currently live in? Do we hit that tipping point in 2012? Those are perhaps more important discussion points (well maybe not the last one, we all know that's when it happens).

[b stein 22]

This is an entertaining thread. Props to all.