climate change times are a changin'

[LynahFan]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

When the heating elements are active, the roadway draws power--they acknowledge as much. I guess the question then becomes whether the power draw is more or less efficient than a fleet of snow plows and whether or not is can be as effective in all conditions.

No chance it's more efficient. Just keeping a road warm in below-freezing weather would take more power than plowing it, to say nothing of actually melting the frozen water sitting on the road. Say a snowplow gets one mile per gallon of diesel fuel - imagine spreading that one gallon over a full mile of roadway and lighting it on fire. How much snow would that melt? Almost none.

[St. Clown]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

It's infuriating that with all the information out there and the almost complete consensus by the people who spend their lives working in the field, it's expected by a certain type of person to get undue respect and to be taken seriously for their unsupported comments, psuedo-scientific garbage, and outright pants on head ******** comments. And when they don't they whine about how their ideas aren't being tolerated.

Communists.

Ah yes, the deniers are completely out to lunch while the global climate change supporters are completely sane and so smart, much smarter than anyone who could ever doubt models that have continually prove themselves wrong.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/taxpaye...-change-games/

Columbia University’s Climate Center has received $5.7 million from the National Science Foundation for the university’s “PoLAR Climate Change Education Partnership,” to “engage adult learners and inform public understanding and response to climate change.”

Based on the theory that games “motivate exploration and learning of complex material,” the school created “Future Coast,” a website that features hundreds of made up voicemails painting a dire picture of the future as a result of climate change.

“There’s a lot we don’t know about our possible futures, but one thing we do: It’s got a software glitch in it, in the voicemail system, which is sending their voicemails back to our time,” the website explains. “As these futurismo objects we call chronofacts. Huh. Weird.”

...

That future, according to Columbia, includes a world with robotic arms, where humans are “like pets,” live underground, and in fear of their lives from climate skeptics.

Listeners also learn that in 2020 people will still be making Chris Christie Bridgegate jokes.

“Hey sweetheart, it’s Rob. I’m gonna be coming home late tonight. There’s a storm coming up the Jersey shore and they’re expecting the Turnpike to be under water for a couple of hours,” a voicemail says. “So the tunnels will be down and the bridge will be on Chris Christie time again.”

A woman in 2056 is afraid her house is going to “topple into the ocean pretty soon, it’s looking pretty unstable.” “We had to ride our bikes since our sector has driving restrictions today,” she adds.

In 2037 macaroni and cheese is a delicacy. “We are really low on water and we’ve been harvesting the water but it’s not going to rain for another year and a half, and I really want to give Owen his favorite thing, macaroni and cheese,” a girl says in the message “Owen’s birthday.”

Some messages are indecipherable. In 2030 a man just repeats “don’t eat the bacon,” “don’t even think about it.”

In 2020, a man informs his mother that he has not been going to Thanksgiving since 2016 because of a scam involving “Hurricane Simulators.”

“Listen, mama, it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just I cannot come to Thanksgiving because of what Craig did to Annabelle a couple a years ago,” he says. “He suckered her in to buying all of those used hurricane booths.”

“He knows that nobody cares about going to those hurricane booth simulators because everybody’s been in a gosh-darned hurricane now!”

People will live to 200 by 2064. A son plans a “special” surprise for his mother’s birthday, a hike in a terrarium since “nature no longer exists.”

One message, “Molly and Billy,” the characters use redneck stereotypes to talk about how climate change has ruined their crop.

“Howdy ya’ll, this is Molly,” she says in 2060. “And it’s pretty hot out here, we’re farming, me and Billy. Come to the phone Billy.”

“Dag nab it, Ma,” Billy says. “Oh these beetles, they ruined our crop again … I wish it was like it was the way it was.”

In 2030 Citi Field is just a marsh, the Mission in San Francisco is under water in 2044, and every kid has a miniature panda in 2059. Limes cost $10,000 in 2035, a caller informs after he has been mugged going to the “Skymall.” You can only visit Paris by submarine in 2059, the “coasts and the beaches have disappeared,” and there’s only one lobster left.

....

In 2035 “Neo-luddites” are “closing in.”

“It’s the Neo-luddites. Anybody who has any sort of scientific knowledge, they want to kill, so we have to pretend from now on that we know nothing,” a caller says. “Please tell me that you’ve gotten away from that place, I haven’t heard from you in a very long time.”

The capitol of the Neo-luddites appears to be Texas.

“The Neo-luddites are coming up from Texas, the Luddites, they hate everything,” a caller says. “They’re gonna wipe us out.”

[Foxton]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Ah yes, the deniers are completely out to lunch while the global climate change supporters are completely sane and so smart, much smarter than anyone who could ever doubt models that have continually prove themselves wrong.

That's a bold claim Cotton, wonder if he'll provide a source for how models have continually proved themselves wrong. Maybe he could even find one that doesn't come from a political think tank with the specific goal of advancing an agenda like how the sun is the single cause of climate change.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/taxpaye...-change-games/

Almost 6 million dollars to try and get students/adults around the country involved in thinking about how changing climate will effect them and what they can do to make the world a better place? Sounds like a terrible waste of money.

Wouldn't it had served you better to point out how it was in fact a massive waste of money, not just that money was spent on it? There is literally nothing in that link talking about how the project succeeded or failed. But it is clearly slanted enough to show how those science types are advocating extreme levels of doom and gloom against the skeptics. Rather than...

The beauty of FutureCoast is that no possible future is excluded. Whether a player is skeptical about the current scientific findings of climate change or whether they adhere stringently to theories of global warming, their personal story of the future will find its place in FutureCoast. It is a safe space for discussions and ideas where players can engage in collaborative worldbuilding. This collaborative space, Eklund maintains, is where a compelling authenticity can be created.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Sigh... oh, politics...

An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. I'll let you guess who voted for it.

http://amendments-rules.house.gov/am...4080929929.pdf

None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation's Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Sigh... oh, politics...

An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. I'll let you guess who voted for it.

http://amendments-rules.house.gov/am...4080929929.pdf

Oh, no! That's so horrible that an amendment was added to make sure that the authorization act doesn't cover something that isn't part of National Defense. What a nightmare! /sarcasm

[Bob Gray]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Oh, no! That's so horrible that an amendment was added to make sure that the authorization act doesn't cover something that isn't part of National Defense. What a nightmare! /sarcasm

You just want to destroy the earth, don't you!

[FreshFish]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

One of the biggest barriers to a conversation about this "issue" is that so few people seem to understand the difference between causation and correlation. Even the "best" climate science models can only track correlation; yet the zealots are so quick to turn it into only one single sole source of causation and we already know from the historical record that such a claim cannot possibly be true.

The key question would be, how much correlation is there between human activity and climate change compared to how much correlation is there between things like wildfires that cover hundreds of thousands of square miles, volcanic activity, sunspot variation, etc., and then whether the incremental changes correlated to human activity exacerbate or modulate other factors.

Good luck trying to have a rational conversation with anyone along those lines! Either you are a zealot or a denier. No place for reason.




Correlation matters because if we have to expend trillions of dollars for minimal incremental change, then it certainly does become reasonable to ask whether, perhaps, if we spent those same trillions to adapt to the change instead, we'd get much better outcomes from those expenditures. After all, there are fossils of tropical plants in Antartica, no?

So even if one were to concur that there is a significant correlation between human activity and climate change, it does not at all follow necessarily that the only "solution" is to curb said human activity. Perhaps we adjust the human activity toward proactive responses to the changed climate to come instead???

[GrinCDXX]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

something that isn't part of National Defense.

The DOD thinks it is:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/pentag...rticle/2545075
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121237

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Oh, no! That's so horrible that an amendment was added to make sure that the authorization act doesn't cover something that isn't part of National Defense. What a nightmare! /sarcasm

Well, specifically it bars funding to any part of our National Defense that acts on initiatives relating to it. So if the Navy wants to start looking into how rising sea levels will impact their bases (makes sense), there's now red tape associated with it.

And it's not like that's not a big issue...

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/...52iidtjimy.png

[Gurtholfin]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

Well, specifically it bars funding to any part of our National Defense that acts on initiatives relating to it. So if the Navy wants to start looking into how rising sea levels will impact their bases (makes sense), there's now red tape associated with it.

And it's not like that's not a big issue...

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/...52iidtjimy.png

In looking at that map, I've wondered from time to time when speculators will start buying up the land at the 1 meter or 3 meter mark that will some day be ocean front property...

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

To boot:

Here's a Congressionally mandated defense review, put together by the Department of Defense. Of note:

Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating. These changes, coupled with other global dynamics, including growing, urbanizing, more affluent populations, and substantial economic growth in India, China, Brazil, and other nations, will devastate homes, land and infrastructure. Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.

Also a whole spiel about climate change on page 47 concerning energy scarcity and the need for greater efficiency in that area.

Edit: I know... I know... the military and their ****ed liberal agenda... amirite?

[LynahFan]

One of the biggest barriers to a conversation about this "issue" is that so few people seem to understand the difference between causation and correlation. Even the "best" climate science models can only track correlation; yet the zealots are so quick to turn it into only one single sole source of causation and we already know from the historical record that such a claim cannot possibly be true.

I'm a whole lot closer to climate denier than zealot, but you disgust me. The fact that there was natural climate change in the past proves that there cannot possibly be human-induced climate change today? Where did you learn to do logic? And then you have the audacity to whine that we can't have a rational discussion. Well, you're right about that part - but it's because of people like you!

[Bob Gray]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

To boot:

Here's a Congressionally mandated defense review, put together by the Department of Defense. Of note:



Also a whole spiel about climate change on page 47 concerning energy scarcity and the need for greater efficiency in that area.

Edit: I know... I know... the military and their ****ed liberal agenda... amirite?

Who is the commander in chief? Seems logical that the military follows direction from the top and this is stuff Obama is interested in.

[FreshFish]

Re: climate change times are a changin'

The fact that there was natural climate change in the past proves that there cannot possibly be human-induced climate change today?

You totally misread what I wrote. That is not at all what I thought I had said.

I said that the fact that there was natural climate change in the past proves that human activity cannot be the single, sole, and exclusive driver of climate change today. That is a very, very different statement entirely!


I am saying that human activity is only one possible driver of climate change and we need to tease out the incremental effects to understand how to make effective policy. If we were to cease all human activity entirely, climate change would still be going on. Consequently, we need to discern how much a change in human activity will lead to how much a change in climate change to understand whether it is worth engaging in that change or whether it is better to adapt to a change we cannot affect no matter how much we try.

It is an open question: if a change in human activity has very strong incremental effects, then we choose one course; if a change in human activity has minimal incremental effects, we choose a different course. Right now, the state of the "conversation" is that either you are 100% in one camp or 100% in the other camp, while it seems to me that we just don't know enough yet because we are not even examining the right questions.

[LynahFan]

Who is the commander in chief? Seems logical that the military follows direction from the top and this is stuff Obama is interested in.

The military has been involved with green/alternate energy for a whole lot longer than Obama has been around. I was tangentially involve in a biofuel for military aviation project that was going on under Bush I. They generally come at it more from a Peak Oil/denied supplies perspective, though. The military is incredibly energy hungry - for them, efficiency and ability to generate electricity in remote locations is about mission capability, not saving the planet.