This thread is just to post interesting news, thoughts, opinions about climate change.
ungh this john bates "whistle blower" who wasn't even involved in the studies in question, who conveniently chose to blow to the mail of all things...to an author who is a known climate contrarian... and even though the studies in question didn't have much sway on the climate pact anyway and even though they were thoroughly validated by numerous independent sources from around the world... is sadly encouraging a lot of misguided belief that there was active and intentional fraud committed by the NOAA.
Media isn't helping much, and of course the Trump party is all too glad to jump on board.
Ars Technica did a good article on Mr. Bates. Not sure if it was posted here yet.
Ars Technica did a good article on Mr. Bates. Not sure if it was posted here yet.
Yeah, my dad emailed me links to that whole thing because I've lightly brought up the problem. I instantly face palmed and checked Ars Technica for details on the whole thing and that article delivers. I responded to my dad that it was propaganda and linked to the Ars Technica article as an objective look at why it was propaganda. He said it was interesting and left it at that. I'm not going to argue with my folks about things like this, politics, and religion, but I'm starting to have to at least state my viewpoint and leave it at that because just shrugging and not letting them know how I view huge problems in the world isn't working anymore.
I saw this today: monster wind turbine.
I'm not understanding why bigger is better here. We see plenty of examples in nature where lots of smaller things are more efficient than one big thing. I'm thinking of a grid of smaller turbines - maybe 1ft each or so. Each could be on it's own swivel, in case the wind at the lower level is at a different angle than the higher level. That way even the smallest breeze could be generating power. If one turbine fails, a worker can be ready to swap it out from a stockpile of replacement modules. No one is doing this, so I'm sure there's some very good reasons - I just haven't heard why... Any thoughts?
The wind has a higher and is more consistent as you go up.
States like Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, etc have decent wind at about 80meters so that is where you want the nacelle.
However, in some place like Georgia to have wind towers with utilization rates above zilch you would need towers with nacelles at 100 or 120 m.
The tricky bit is that for towers over 80-90 meters they require some alternative method of production as for say a 120 meter tower on land in the US some of the prefab tower sections are larger than bridge clearences on highways.
This article from 2012 may be of interest, dewalist. Short and to the point.
Remember that there is a bottom end to the friction introduced by gearing (that is non-zero lol), so you can't really take advantage of "the smallest breeze" since it won't turn the blade usefully. That's why a bunch of one foot blades is not going to yield as much energy as a single equivalent length of one blade in a turbine. A look around some industry sites shows that around 7-12mph constant wind is the commercial bottom limit; even if you made turbines that could work with less, the cost of making them would wipe out much of the carbon savings, and the energy generated would be negligent (since energy generation increases as the square of the length of the blade). There's an upper limit, too, as the article discusses, because the weight of the blades increases as the *cube* of the blade length. So what we're doing, essentially, is developing technology to approach two "sweet spots", one for smaller turbine systems at the low end, and for giant systems at the high end. Above and below those, physics gives us greatly reduced results for incremental changes.
(Say a one foot blade produces one unit of energy. Five of them would be a cumulative five feet length of blades, right? It would have five mounts and gearing and transmission systems, and produce five units of energy. But one five foot blade would extract *25 times* as much power as one one foot blade, and five times as much as five of the small systems, because of the square law progression of energy produced for blade length, but with fewer components).
Fascinating! Thanks for the replies - it makes a lot more sense now!
Apropos of nothing much I work near Durban harbour and I've seen a few ships come in carrying turbine blades. They are astonishingly large when you see them disassembled with 6 loaded on a ship of the size that would normally be carrying hundreds of containers.
Donald Trump has reportedly narrowed down his choice of Science Advisor to two climate-change skeptics. William Happer, who made a name in adaptive optics systems and participates in the Heartland Institute's flavor of propaganda, and computer scientist David Gelertner, a Jewish Yale professor who, among other things, attributes part of the decline in "patriotism and family values" to the presence of Jews in higher education. You can't make this stuff up, folks...
Oh, I think the power of imagination could surprise you.
and computer scientist David Gelertner, a Jewish Yale professor who, among other things, attributes part of the decline in "patriotism and family values" to the presence of Jews in higher education. You can't make this stuff up, folks...
Wait... Am I reading that right? He is a Jewish professor who thinks Jews in higher education are destroying this country?
Tkyl wrote:Robear wrote:and computer scientist David Gelertner, a Jewish Yale professor who, among other things, attributes part of the decline in "patriotism and family values" to the presence of Jews in higher education. You can't make this stuff up, folks...
Wait... Am I reading that right? He is a Jewish professor who thinks Jews in higher education are destroying this country?
Well, it's easy to make that case when you are your own evidence...
This guy must be a logic professor. "I mean, I'm basically an asshole, so all Jews in academia must be assholes. QED."
Ugh.
From Russell Jacoby's 2012 review of Gelertner's "America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats)". That's the book in which he argues that Jews in academia are bellwethers and leaders of the moral decay of our society.
How did liberals take command of higher education and derail America? The standard conservative interpretation is straightforward: America progressed smoothly from Presidents George Washington through Dwight D. Eisenhower, but went to hell in the 1960s and has yet to recover. Radicals have taken over the universities and spread their poison. That is the gist of David Gelernter's book.Patriotism and families once flourished, Gelernter argues, and then patriotism disintegrated into bitterness, and the nuclear family crumbled. The proportion of children born to unmarried women began to rise in the 60s from 5 percent and has not stopped since, reaching 41 percent today. That is bad news for children, who suffer in every way from single parenthood. What accounts for these two phenomena—the fall of old-style patriotism and the traditional family? Easy. Intellectuals. "Patriotism has been beaten bloody and the family is on the ropes. It has been a great epoch for American intellectuals," Gelernter writes. How do intellectuals engender the rise of single parenthood? Again, easy—so easy that he does not explain, and never returns to the subject.
What he does try to explain is how intellectuals gave "an explosive left hook" to the old elite universities. There was a time when those elite schools were run by a benign establishment, generally white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who saw their role as civilizing and uplifting. But the WASP's were knocked out by what Gelernter calls PORGI's, "post-religious, globalist intellectuals," who took over and indoctrinated the students. Armed with empty leftist theories, the PORGI's transformed students into PORGI Airheads. The Airheads follow orders "as faithfully and thoughtfully as a bucket carries water."
Gelernter highlights the role of American Jews as "carbon 14," a way to trace the enormous cultural change and its consequences in higher education. Up through the 60s, the WASP establishment excluded Jews from elite universities. But by 1970, Jews had pushed their way into student bodies, faculties, and administrations. The consequences? Again, easy. Jews are both leftist and aggressive. "Naturally, we would expect that an increasing Jewish presence at top colleges" would imprint the schools with those qualities. "And this is just what happened." Colleges and universities became more leftist as well as more "thrusting" and "belligerent."
Gelernter is Jewish, and it is not likely that a non-Jew would airily argue that obnoxious leftist Jews have taken over elite higher education. But Gelernter does so with enthusiasm untempered by facts. Aside from quoting Jewish neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz as sources, Gelernter does not offer a single example of what he is writing about. Who are these belligerent leftist Jewish professors? Anthony Grafton? Steven Pinker? Richard Posner? Martha Nussbaum? Perhaps Alan Dershowitz?
Moreover, the entire formulation remains vague. What does it mean that colleges have acquired "a more thrusting, belligerent tone"? The whole college? The administration? The students? One might imagine that Brandeis University, founded in 1948 by Jews, would be a perfect example to verify Gelernter's argument. Is it loud and leftist? Gelernter does not mention it.
He has other fish to fry. In the 1950s, "America was properly proud of itself, and the economy was booming." Then the Jews and leftists took over—the PORGI's. Does the civil-rights or antiwar movement figure into Gelernter's account? No—or only to the extent that they were invented by the PORGI's. "Intellectuals and elite college students had conjured up the peace movement." They "captured the establishment," wrote the history books, and taught the college courses. By the 1990s, leftist intellectuals commanded the educational posts and produced a generation of leftist Airheads who elected an Airhead president, Barack Obama.
In his usual language, Gelernter opines:
"The nation is filling inexorably with Airheads, nominally educated yet ignorant; trained and groomed like prize puppies to be good liberals. ... Old-time conviction conservatives are also being supplanted—by puppy-liberal Airheads. Politicized schools are one-way streets; they all go left. American schools are a bizarre echo of the old Soviet schools, which used to teach that, whatever the issue, the USA was always wrong. Now American schools teach that, whatever the issue, the USA is always wrong."
Of course, Gelernter provides no information about this familiar charge by conservatives. He has none—or nothing that is new. It also seems strikingly off the mark. The humanities in general have been declining, and business and business-related majors increasing. In my experience, most students pay little attention to the pronouncements of graying leftist professors. Most students want jobs. A recent report in The New Yorker on the entrepreneurial spirit dominating Stanford University—titled "Get Rich U."—seems a more accurate reading of elite universities than Gelernter's belief that they are churning out Young Pioneers. Even the president of Stanford bemoans the fact that too many students are majoring in business, too focused on getting wealthy.
Gelernter's favorite subject is Obama, whom he detests. He recycles charges from his well-thumbed copy of "The Crimes of the Liberal Media, Tea Party Edition." He lambastes the "unctuous reverence" of the media for Obama, and cites specifically "the media's indifference to the anti-American hate speech of Jeremiah Wright, and to the nature and meaning of Obama's relations with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist." Those less partisan might consider those subjects aired ad nauseam. Needless to say, Gelernter says nothing about the media's relation to President George W. Bush or its support of the Iraq war.
For Gelernter, Obama "is not an ideologue; he does not reach that level. ... The president is an Airhead liberal who speaks out of ignorance and bases his opinions on nothing." Gelernter takes up Obama's declaration to close the Guantánamo Bay prison. Drawing on his usual conservative sources, Gelernter declares that Guantánamo is a well-run and humane prison with lovely accommodations. Those are "the plain facts, meticulously documented." But Obama (at least initially) sought to close the prison despite the facts. "The creeping suspicion began to grow, like the gathering shudder in a well-made horror film, that Obama had actually believed what he said during the campaign. He actually believed that Guantánamo was some sort of cruel, stinking hellhole." Obama based his ideas on the leftist "theory" that America is always wrong; he acted out of ignorance.
The suspicion begins to grow, like a gathering shudder, that Gelernter actually believes what he writes; that the learned scholar does not understand the central issue about Guantánamo. It is not how well the prisoners are treated—of course Gelernter does not breathe a word about torture—but the ethical and legal justification for holding prisoners without charging them, in a war on terror that has no end. The suspicion begins to grow that Gelernter lives in a Manichaean world in which liberals are evil and conservatives blessed. Although he writes with his usual fairness, "There is an Airhead left but no matching Airhead right," the suspicion grows that Gelernter is the real McCoy, an Airhead Conservative.
Some actual, you know, climate stuff:
January 2017 3rd warmest January since global records began in 1880. The two warmest Januarys were during El Nino outbreaks, this year's was not.
I wonder what the deal is with the cold spot around Greece and Turkey.
I wonder what the deal is with the cold spot around Greece and Turkey.
Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe, has generally had a much colder winter than the US has had.
Indeed that climate map is right for the south eastern seaboard of Australia. Record heat, threatening power security as everyone switched on their aircon as solar production cut off with sunset.
I wonder what the deal is with the cold spot around Greece and Turkey.
Cold and warm spots are to be expected on this kind of figure. At the global scale, it is likely pretty representative of how January fits in a climatic context, but since it's only for a single month, there will be many local weather effects that show up.
Oh yeah, the EPA is in good hands.
(The EPA chief stated that he doesn't believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to the global warming we've been seeing)
Just and FYI: I heard on the local news last night that in addition to having record setting heat year after year in the world, California has just had the wettest 2 or 3 months in 122 years as of Feb (at least) if I got the blip right. It can threaten the record and may be threatening the record since these past weeks have seen more and more rain. (in Feb the total was 27.81 in and the record is 40.41)
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/0...
*sticks head in sand* Nothing to see here. Move along.
edit: full disclosure I had heard on the local news that we had broken the record but when researching it today, I only found the weeks old article about passing the '82-83 storms for second highest) And these past few weeks have been more of the same heavy rainfall with few breaks. Those pictures of CA drought a year ago to now are even more stunning:
Good couple of months for California (and the West in general), precip-wise:
Nationwide, temps have been pretty tough though
The new head of the EPA everyone.
Pruitt’s comments on the CNBC program “Squawk Box” – that “we need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis” over climate change – prompted an immediate pushback from many scientists and environment groups. It also drew a rebuke from at least two of his predecessors at the EPA.“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said on CNBC.
And the scientific community responded pretty quickly to the above statement by the head of the EPA. I love the fact that they just flat-out state that this is fact, no beating around the bush.
On Monday, the American Meteorological Society, a key scientific organization whose members have considerable expertise in studying the climate and weather, wrote a letter to Pruitt strongly critiquing the remarks.“The world’s 7 billion people are causing climate to change and our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause,” wrote the group’s executive director, Keith Seitter. “This is a conclusion based on the comprehensive assessment of scientific evidence. It is based on multiple independent lines of evidence that have been affirmed by thousands of independent scientists and numerous scientific institutions around the world. We are not familiar with any scientific institution with relevant subject matter expertise that has reached a different conclusion.”
...
Not long afterward, a group of 30 U.S. scientists who share an expertise in climate change also wrote to Pruitt, with a similar message. As they put it:
… human beings are changing the Earth’s climate. This key conclusion follows from the basic laws of physics. Just as there is no escaping gravity when one steps off a cliff, there is no escaping the warming that follows when we add extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The signatories included Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Kevin Trenberth and the Carnegie Institution’s Ken Caldeira, among many others.
There's no consensus. It's too uncertain. Too complicated. There needs to be more research and analysis before we can draw any conclusions.
But oh yeah, let's cut all the funding to anyone doing the research and analysis...
I mean, how blatant can it get here?
“This is a conclusion based on the comprehensive assessment of scientific evidence. It is based on multiple independent lines of evidence that have been affirmed by thousands of independent scientists and numerous scientific institutions around the world.”
See! Climate change is just an excuse for thousands of scientists to get fat and rich off of taxpayer-funded research grants!! Of course they're going to say it's real because they that's the only way to keep the gravy train running. Wake up sheeple!!
blah, everyone will remember
The new head of the EPA
and ignore and/or forget
And the scientific community responded pretty quickly to the above statement by the head of the EPA.
So making cars less fuel efficient will somehow add jobs.
Auto manufacturers said making cars that fuel efficient by 2025 would be "costly" and "unattainable with current technology" so Trump is agreeing to roll back the increased fuel efficiency requirements put in place by Obama so companies don't have to spend so much money reducing the national dependency on foreign oil and helping the environment. And because Obama put those regulations in place.
I get that it would cost money to do it. But how does that cost us jobs? If anything employing people to figure out how to make cars more efficient will add jobs. Not to mention when fuel prices go up again (which is inevitable) US made cars will be too expensive to operate.
I get that it would cost money to do it. But how does that cost us jobs? If anything employing people to figure out how to make cars more efficient will add jobs. Not to mention when fuel prices go up again (which is inevitable) US made cars will be too expensive to operate.
Cars get more expensive.
Fewer cars sold.
Fewer cars made.
Jobs lost.
That is the chain of logic. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's the thinking.
Coral reef bleaching is reaching a critical point. The most diverse undersea ecosystem (that we know of) may not exist soon.
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