[Discussion] Climate Change

This thread is just to post interesting news, thoughts, opinions about climate change.

Screw Arby's, there are 23,000 more travel agency employees than coal industry employees.

NOAA "requests" $5M cut in efforts to go to new, better forecasting models...

Perhaps most questionable is a "request" to limit the ability of forecasters to predict hurricanes and other severe weather with computer modeling. "NOAA requests a reduction of $5,000,000 to slow the transition of advanced modeling research into operations for improved warnings and forecasts," the budget blue book states.

Incredibly, this request comes as the US Global Forecast System, the nation's premiere forecast model for everything from hurricane tracks to 10-day weather forecasts, continues to get distanced by the European forecast model, which assimilates real-time data far better than the American model and consistently produces significantly better forecasts.

Overall, NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which researches weather and climate phenomena and seeks to improve computer modeling, would see a 22 percent budget decrease from $514 million to $400 million. “This budget would ensure that NOAA-NWS becomes a second- or third-tier weather forecasting enterprise, frozen in the early 2000s,” David Titley, who served as chief operating officer for NOAA from 2012 to 2013, told Capital Weather Gang.

If you ignore facts, they go away right? That's how this works?

Robear wrote:

NOAA "requests" $5M cut in efforts to go to new, better forecasting models...

What the heck? I mean, Katrina wasn't that long ago.

Didn't anyone tell the politicians that the military relies heavily on weather reports? It's tied into the military and the lives of servicemen so doesn't that make it a priority? Being able to predict disasters doesn't just save poor inner city folk that live on the coast if that's what they're worried about.

Kehama wrote:

Didn't anyone tell the politicians that the military relies heavily on weather reports? It's tied into the military and the lives of servicemen so doesn't that make it a priority? Being able to predict disasters doesn't just save poor inner city folk that live on the coast if that's what they're worried about.

... but the military is all poors too, right? Well, the ones that are most at risk, anyway. Ugh.

Kehama wrote:

Didn't anyone tell the politicians that the military relies heavily on weather reports? It's tied into the military and the lives of servicemen so doesn't that make it a priority? Being able to predict disasters doesn't just save poor inner city folk that live on the coast if that's what they're worried about.

It hasn't been abundantly clear that few politicans actually care about the effectiveness of the military and the safety of servicemen?

I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. "The tools we use to do our job are improving too fast. Please give us less money so that it doesn't improve so quickly." I want to believe there's some level of reasonable justification for that, even if I disagree with it, but that just sounds either bonehead stupid or flat out evil to me.

The best speculation I've seen is that they are thinking of outsourcing weather forecasting...

Robear wrote:

The best speculation I've seen is that they are thinking of outsourcing weather forecasting...

To Russia

Oh yes, the market needs to solve weather forecasting...
Lowest common denominator forecasting sounds AWESOME!

I'm sure they have a good reason why they want to throw away any lead the US had in weather prediction, along with trashing basic research, university infrastructure, recruiting foreign students...

Kehama wrote:

Didn't anyone tell the politicians that the military relies heavily on weather reports? It's tied into the military and the lives of servicemen so doesn't that make it a priority? Being able to predict disasters doesn't just save poor inner city folk that live on the coast if that's what they're worried about.

Other things it's used for:
- shipping & logistics
- transportation
- agriculture
- air traffic
- fighting wildfires
- utility companies (e.g. predicting AC use prevents blackouts)

People sometimes only think of consumer applications of technology, when the real transformation is often in the behind-the-scenes business-to-business applications.

It's nice to see the government and business sectors that are breaking from the narrative of 45 and announcing pledges to the Paris accord as well as a commitment to green futures.

Hobear wrote:

It's nice to see the government and business sectors that are breaking from the narrative of 45 and announcing pledges to the Paris accord as well as a commitment to green futures.

That was Trump's plan all along! #12Dchessmaster

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Hobear wrote:

It's nice to see the government and business sectors that are breaking from the narrative of 45 and announcing pledges to the Paris accord as well as a commitment to green futures.

That was Trump's plan all along! #12Dchessmaster

His plans are the best!

The Paris Accords are voluntary, self-policing, and your specific metrics are self-defined and can be changed. The symbolism of all nations (minus Syria and Nicaragua) agreeing that something needs to be done is the significance of this. This is just a political middle finger to the world to appease the nationalist base and troll everyone else. It makes sense when you realize Trump's only policy decision criteria is what gets him applause from his base. The concept of "we will renegotiate with the Paris Accords once we have withdrawn" is ludicrous once you realize we can already do this without leaving.

Nicaragua agreed that "something needs to be done", but given their geographical situation, they lobbied for *more* stringent requirements.

Robear wrote:

Nicaragua agreed that "something needs to be done", but given their geographical situation, they lobbied for *more* stringent requirements.

Yeah, my understanding was that their disagreement with the Accord was that it was, as noted previously, voluntary. They want actual sh*t happening with specific requirements and possibly penalties in place should they not be followed through on.

Yes, yes it is. It makes me want to move to Canada, but then I would be closer to the melting permafrost... I wonder if humanity's future is going to be living in domes.

dewalist wrote:

melting permafrost

This is one of my pet peeves. Permafrost thaws, it doesn't melt. A good analogy is a frozen piece of meat - the ice inside melts, but the meat thaws.

You shouldn't feel bad - professional journalists get this wrong constantly.

The locals in at least some portions of the Western Canadian Arctic refer to thawing permafrost as 'getting the permafrost out of the ground,' which is, in my opinion, complete nonsense to parse.

Gremlin wrote:

Well, this is a depressing read:

Super depressing. Just read through it myself. See this one?

Almost 90% of Americans don't know there's a scientific consensus on global warming

Not surprising considering America though. Even if they did know, I don't think it would make much of a difference anyway.

When I read that this morning all I could think was, "Thank God I didn't have kids. At least only my wife and I will be subjected to living through those scenarios".

I say that most days, though. When we chose not to have kids it was more general. Overpopulation, distrust of our fellow Americans. This is more specifically depressing.

I really hate being proven prescient on that choice.

How about this for even more depressing: I posted that article about the scientific consensus to Facebook and said hey everyone check this out, if you didn't know, now you do!

A couple days later a random dude (friend of a friend, random to me anyway) replied and said that the concept of "scientific consensus" is meaningless and useless and he hates the term. I probably shouldn't have to mention this, but when I clicked on his profile, I found he was a Trump supporter. America, folks. I'm ashamed to live here.

Of course he did, because science is not about consensus. It's about world-changing mavericks who buck the establishment, man, and show us all THE TRUTH while the elites grind their teeth and do their best to shut them down. Was Galileo part of the consensus? Alfred Wegener? Immanuel Velikovsky? All of them were persecuted by the "consensus" scientists, but we know that the elites were wrong then and the mavericks were RIGHT! And the same will undoubtedly be true this time around, because, underdogs, 'Merica, YEAH!

And that's why a half dozen or so lukewarm climate skeptics know better than 3000 published professionals, 80 national academies of science, 13 countries and 18 other scientific organizations. Underdogs for the win, baby! Don't let those eggheads push you around just to suck off the government teat.

Robear wrote:

Of course he did, because science is not about consensus. It's about world-changing mavericks who buck the establishment, man, and show us all THE TRUTH while the elites grind their teeth and do their best to shut them down. Was Galileo part of the consensus? Alfred Wegener? Immanuel Velikovsky? All of them were persecuted by the "consensus" scientists, but we know that the elites were wrong then and the mavericks were RIGHT! And the same will undoubtedly be true this time around, because, underdogs, 'Merica, YEAH!

And that's why a half dozen or so lukewarm climate skeptics know better than 3000 published professionals, 80 national academies of science, 13 countries and 18 other scientific organizations. Underdogs for the win, baby! Don't let those eggheads push you around just to suck off the government teat.

I mean it can't be that there's 100 huge corporations who are responsible for 70%+ of greenhouse gas emissions, that they're continuing to invest trillions in fossil fuels, and that those investments (and profits) would be put at risk if they acknowledged climate change and their role in it.

The weird way cultural artifacts inform us about scientific and technological advancement is partly to blame. We sure love a hero story. The problem is that the idiots are right. There isn't that big of a difference between a lunatic claiming that orbits are elliptical, and a lunatic claiming that climate change isn't man made. The great achievement of the scientific method isn't maverick discoveries, but repeatability, standardization, and peer review. That is, the true revolution isn't when the kid says the emperor doesn't have anything on. It's when the scientific method, wielded by the crowd at large, allows them to independently verify that yes, the emperor does indeed have nothing on!

LarryC wrote:

There isn't that big of a difference between a lunatic claiming that orbits are elliptical, and a lunatic claiming that climate change isn't man made.

I'd say the verifiability of the former's data and the repeatability of the process they gathered it with are pretty big difference.
The former is usually considered a lunatic not just because they're running counter to the prevailing consensus, but because they're presenting it without providing adequate evidence (usually due to the technology required not existing yet or they're putting forth a hunch instead of a supported theory). They get to be the hero only after they invent the tech they need or endure the tedious task of slowly gathering the evidence they need (sometimes it's just waiting for enough predictions coming true).
The latter is considered a lunatic because they're making claims that have already been verified as not being true or are for something that cannot be tested against. They spend their time fantasizing that they're already a hero and the victim of a world-wide conspiracy instead of putting the work in.

That's exactly the point. Pop culture stories emphasize that the science is in the radical, whereas the difference between myth and science is in repeatability and verifiability. That is, the task of making studies to confirm findings is what makes science science. Consensus isn't just a lot of people agreeing. It's a lot of people seeing the same thing independently. So the maverick only marks the start of when the idea comes about, but it becomes consensus only when many, many other people do the somewhat thankless job of making studies for or against the idea, and then coming to similar conclusions.

The mavericks aren't and shouldn't be the heroes of science. There are mavericks championing every crazy idea under the sun. It ought to be all the people doing the unprofitable and thankless job of confirming the data.

Exactly LarryC! And that's the point I tried to make to the guy when I (wasted my time) replied to him. The response from him was right on with Robear's perfect explanation. How do we even try to convince people about this stuff? I'm not sure it's possible.

When they toss out evidence and reason, what do you have left? Emotions I guess, but they won't have those until the ocean has literally risen to their doorsteps or we get a good summer with a month of straight 135 degree days in Maine.