Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

I always cringe whenever I read "Venus" in these conversations. My greatest fear is that all sapient life anywhere is destined to screw itself over like this, and that Venus itself became an uninhabitable hellhole because sapient life did the same thing there that we're doing right now. The best way I have to dissuade myself from this thinking is that any past Venusians would have at least put something in space that was obviously not of natural origin if they had that level of technology, but that could have been destroyed a long time or maybe they didn't even give a poo poo about space and never got around to advancing past 19th century technology.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 05:41

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# ? May 30, 2024 09:20

Big Hubris: Mar 8, 2011

quote:

Climate Change:Oh God, we've solved Fermi.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 06:57

duck monster: Dec 15, 2004

Some Guy TT posted:

I always cringe whenever I read "Venus" in these conversations. My greatest fear is that all sapient life anywhere is destined to screw itself over like this, and that Venus itself became an uninhabitable hellhole because sapient life did the same thing there that we're doing right now. The best way I have to dissuade myself from this thinking is that any past Venusians would have at least put something in space that was obviously not of natural origin if they had that level of technology, but that could have been destroyed a long time or maybe they didn't even give a poo poo about space and never got around to advancing past 19th century technology.

Yeah I was being colorful. We're probably not going to go the full venus.

*I think

:suicide:

# ? Sep 21, 2012 07:05

Ratios and Tendency: Apr 23, 2010; MURALI

I assume this is naive but has anyone done any modelling on how much could be done with a massive reforestation program? Instead of painting roofs white just put permaculture fruit gardens pretty much everywhere, a massive expansion of national parks, just jamming productive trees anywhere they'll fit, planned rainforests etc?

# ? Sep 21, 2012 07:13

Uranium Phoenix: Jun 20, 2007; Boom.

Venus's atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth, and 96.5% of it is carbon dioxide (compared to Earth's 0.038%). Even in the absolute worst case scenario, Earth isn't going to become Venus, full stop.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 08:27

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

Ratios and Tendency posted:

I assume this is naive but has anyone done any modelling on how much could be done with a massive reforestation program? Instead of painting roofs white just put permaculture fruit gardens pretty much everywhere, a massive expansion of national parks, just jamming productive trees anywhere they'll fit, planned rainforests etc?

It's not naive. I recall reading a study that concluded that planting trees is currently the cheapest method of sequestering carbon already in the atmosphere. Unfortunately I can't remember the specific numbers or whether it could be scaled up to usefully reduce atmospheric carbon content, but I'll try to find the study again. Additionally countries like Canada and Russia routinely use their large forested regions to claim substantial reductions in the amount of carbon they emit (see the LULUCF credits). The downside with relying on trees is that they eventually die or catch on fire and return a portion of that carbon to the atmosphere. It's also worth noting that as climate change begins to take (more) effect, the rate of forest fires will likely increase.

I still think large scale tree planting is worth doing if done intelligently, and it's a more realistic plan than the various aerosol/cloud formation/catalytic carbon capture methods that rely on some sort of technological breakthrough to become cost-effective. A lot of the required infrastructure is already in place, as forestry companies in the developed world routinely replant forested areas. A reasonable cap and trade or carbon tax system would easily cover the costs (tree planting is cheap, its powered by poor college kids desperate to pay tuition). A related approach would be to stop deforestation, which ties in neatly with consumption reductions that we need to undertake anyway.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 11:40

global tetrahedron: Jun 24, 2009

I know it's incredibly selfish and insular but at this sorry stage it's almost like the best thing I can hope for is that the poo poo hits the fan just after I'm dead. I'm 24 now, so this hope is probably in vain, and I will likely live to see calamitous events, but I feel completely powerless to enact any change. Simply hoping I live to be about 70 with a roof over my head is about as optimistic as I can be, and many days it's hard being even that optimistic. Being filled with a vague dread is not a healthy mindset but how can any informed person not have these moments or days of panic?

I hear people in this thread suggesting that we should simply enjoy our lives and be glad we won't be around for the worst of it which strikes me as by far the most morally questionable option. Surely we are compelled to act towards *something* out of a sense of basic conscience and moral obligation?

However, in some ways this 'sit back and enjoy your life' may also be the most pragmatic option, because I certainly do not see the drive needed among the public to drastically re-imagine and restructure our society. This re-structuring is basically the only option human beings have to stop mass extinction. But once people are forced to wake up to this fact it may be fruitless and probably too late.

Presuming that 'enacting change' is a fruitless goal, any energy I have left after a day of work can either be transformed into dread and worry, and blame and ire towards baby boomers/global capital for setting us onto this course, or it could be used to enjoy the time I have with my friends, by living modestly and not getting too attached to any particular way of doing things. Am I doing it right? Is there any other choice? I can't sit around going 'why me? Why now?', and I can't try and convince denialists who are convinced of an entirely different version of reality.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 17:41

Harold Fjord: Jan 3, 2004

Uranium Phoenix posted:

Venus's atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth, and 96.5% of it is carbon dioxide (compared to Earth's 0.038%). Even in the absolute worst case scenario, Earth isn't going to become Venus, full stop.

Yeah. We'll all be dead long before we hit 1%.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 18:00

karthun: Nov 16, 2006; I forgot to post my food for USPOL Thanksgiving but that's okay too!

Ratios and Tendency posted:

I assume this is naive but has anyone done any modelling on how much could be done with a massive reforestation program? Instead of painting roofs white just put permaculture fruit gardens pretty much everywhere, a massive expansion of national parks, just jamming productive trees anywhere they'll fit, planned rainforests etc?

You could do that but you would need to sequester then carbon somehow. Best way is probably to throw all of the wood and biomass into a subduction zone of the crust and let the mantle take care of it.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 18:08

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

McDowell posted:

Until about 2010 all observations were within two standard deviations of the mean (the upper and lower dotted lines)

The mean of what? I take it that those are supposed to be various projections, but unless they're projections from the fifties, how could they fail to match observations?

Following links backward suggests that it's from models that participated in the coupled model intercomparison project, which was in 1995. So did most of these models 'project' incorrect levels of sea ice for the past, or what the hell?

(unrelated, but the dotted lines are listed as indicating one standard deviation distance from the mean, not two)

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Sep 21, 2012

# ? Sep 21, 2012 20:09

bpower: Feb 19, 2011

edit: wrong thread

bpower fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Sep 21, 2012

# ? Sep 21, 2012 20:40

Paper Mac: Mar 2, 2007; lives in a paper shack

karthun posted:

You could do that but you would need to sequester then carbon somehow. Best way is probably to throw all of the wood and biomass into a subduction zone of the crust and let the mantle take care of it.

Wood is sequestered carbon, you don't need to put it in the mantle.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 20:55

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

Paper Mac posted:

Wood is sequestered carbon, you don't need to put it in the mantle.

Trees are an incredibly slow and inefficient way to sequester carbon. If you want to do it with plants you're much better off using something fast growing like bamboo. The best biological sequestration method would probably be some kind of engineered algae. When it was done you could just liquify it and inject the whole mess down a deep hole somewhere.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 21:04

Stroh M.D.: Mar 19, 2011; The eyes can mislead, a smile can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth.

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Trees are an incredibly slow and inefficient way to sequester carbon. If you want to do it with plants you're much better off using something fast growing like bamboo. The best biological sequestration method would probably be some kind of engineered algae. When it was done you could just liquify it and inject the whole mess down a deep hole somewhere.

That's pretty much what the Aston Inventions carbon negative power plant does; except it uses the algae to produce heat (a natural by-product of algae growth) that drives a turbine to produce energy. The waste produced by dying algae is collected and retained as biochar that can be used as a fertilizer for even greater carbon-negativity.

As for afforestation, there sure are some exciting - if extreme - options. How about afforesting the entire Sahara and the Australian Outback with Eucalyptus through artificial irrigation? Like I said, it's extreme in concept, but the link is to an actual, well sourced scientific paper showing why this is both possible and fairly affordable.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 21:26

Paper Mac: Mar 2, 2007; lives in a paper shack

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Trees are an incredibly slow and inefficient way to sequester carbon. If you want to do it with plants you're much better off using something fast growing like bamboo. The best biological sequestration method would probably be some kind of engineered algae. When it was done you could just liquify it and inject the whole mess down a deep hole somewhere.

That doesn't really have anything to do with putting trees in the mantle.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 21:42

Rent-A-Cop: Oct 15, 2004; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!

Paper Mac posted:

That doesn't really have anything to do with putting trees in the mantle.

Once a plant has sucked up all the carbon it's going to suck up you have to dispose of it somewhere. Feeding things to the Earth's gooey magma center is probably overkill though.

# ? Sep 21, 2012 21:57

Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

Strudel Man posted:

(unrelated, but the dotted lines are listed as indicating one standard deviation distance from the mean, not two)

The solid line is a mean of all the models. The upper dotted line is mean + std dev.

The lower line is mean-std dev.

From the 50's to the 70's the line follows the model mean (since that is when the models were first developed)

From the 70's to ~2000 the observations followed the lower bound (mean-stddev) which means that it's still following the model with regard to error.

It's like the 'cone' they project when predicting where a hurricane will hit. Except it bucked the predictions and made a sudden right turn.

# ? Sep 22, 2012 01:26

Ansar Santa: Jul 12, 2012

Sequestering carbon is all good and fine ,but before we do that and have it be of any effect, we're going to need to stop spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere. Problem is, we probably won't. The average person doesn't believe in climate change, or thinks "Hey, global warming is a good thing, winter will be more bearable!". And it will take a lot to change their minds. Especially since everybody's terrified of nuclear power.

It might just be that I live in Alberta, the Texas of Canada, but the impression I get from most people I talk to is that caring about the environment is for faggots, and global warming won't have much effect until after we're dead, so why care?

So I'll throw in my lot with the "mankind is doomed" side. Oh well. At least I can look forward to lynching oil company CEOs and people with huge pickup trucks. That should be pretty fun, beating a guy to death with his own truck-balls.

# ? Sep 22, 2012 02:06

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

McDowell posted:

From the 50's to the 70's the line follows the model mean (since that is when the models were first developed)

Do you have a source for this? That sounds rather early to me. Particularly given that, again, the project this was taken from was initiated in 1995 - it would be surprising if they included models which inaccurately described the previous 40 years.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Sep 22, 2012

# ? Sep 22, 2012 06:04

Shipon: Nov 7, 2005

Sidakafitz posted:

Sequestering carbon is all good and fine ,but before we do that and have it be of any effect, we're going to need to stop spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere. Problem is, we probably won't. The average person doesn't believe in climate change, or thinks "Hey, global warming is a good thing, winter will be more bearable!". And it will take a lot to change their minds. Especially since everybody's terrified of nuclear power.

It might just be that I live in Alberta, the Texas of Canada, but the impression I get from most people I talk to is that caring about the environment is for faggots, and global warming won't have much effect until after we're dead, so why care?

So I'll throw in my lot with the "mankind is doomed" side. Oh well. At least I can look forward to lynching oil company CEOs and people with huge pickup trucks. That should be pretty fun, beating a guy to death with his own truck-balls.

The fear is that we'll have to give up our comfortable lifestyles (read: exurban lifestyles and cheap energy) to mitigate the damage, and people naturally don't want to face that reality. Sure, there's a lot of money to be made in clean energy, but our consumption-based economy would naturally have to take somewhat of a hit if we priced in the environmental harm we cause. There's a lot of money to be lost by people who pollute and don't pay for their damage, so it's only natural they'll do everything in their power to prevent their businesses from taking the hit.

# ? Sep 22, 2012 09:12

The Ender: Aug 2, 2012; MY OPINIONS ARE NOT WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN SHIT

quote:

Venus's atmospheric mass is 93 times that of Earth, and 96.5% of it is carbon dioxide (compared to Earth's 0.038%). Even in the absolute worst case scenario, Earth isn't going to become Venus, full stop.

Venus underwent a feedback loop at some point that caused it's oceans to all evaporate into it's current atmosphere. Put all of Earth's oceans into it's atmosphere (which will eventually happen irregardless of any other complications, thanks to the Sun's increasing luminosity, in a few billion years), and we'd mirror Venus quite nicely.

But yeah, it's unlikely that we could do that much damage ourselves, and it's unlikely the Venus had a civilization on it that caused it's current state (...or had a civilization on it at all, for that matter).

# ? Sep 23, 2012 10:44

Big Hubris: Mar 8, 2011

They're feeding cows cheerios because corn costs too much.

This wasn't supposed to affect the first world so quickly!

# ? Sep 23, 2012 19:51

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ErichZahn posted:

They're feeding cows cheerios because corn costs too much.

This wasn't supposed to affect the first world so quickly!

Do you have a link for me so I can read up on this? The cheerio part, not the corn not fertilizing part.

edit: Found it

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0923/Candy-cereal-cookies-Farmers-keep-cows-going-on-creative-feed-alternatives

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 23, 2012

# ? Sep 23, 2012 19:58

Big Hubris: Mar 8, 2011

Sweet times for cows as gummy worms replace corn feed.

:welp:

# ? Sep 23, 2012 20:03

Dafte: Jul 21, 2001; Techno. Logical. Pimp.

ErichZahn posted:

Sweet times for cows as gummy worms replace corn feed.

:welp:

Corn feed is already horrible to cows for a variety of health and nutritional reasons. I can't even imagine what gummy worms are going to do to them. I also somewhat question the health effects of people eating gummy worm cows.

# ? Sep 23, 2012 20:39

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Political forecast savant Nate Silver is embroiled in a spat with Michael Mann over misrepresentation and alleged propagation of denialist memes in his new book. In a twitter battle Nate claim's Mann didn't properly read the book, Mann responds that Nate minces words and tries to play both sides.

Michael Mann posted:

FiveThirtyEight: The Number of Things Nate Silver Gets Wrong About Climate Change
By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 24, 2012 at 1:57 pm

The climate science literature is vast. It merits broad and deep reading by anyone planning to write about it. The fact is the IPCC forecasts have generally underestimated key trends, including warming (see here) and greenhouse gas emissions and Arctic sea ice loss and ice sheet disintegration. I explain why here. Finally, the IPCC generally overstates uncertainty because it insists on conflating uncertainty in future emissions with uncertainty in the climate�s sensitivity to those emissions. Continuing to take no serious action on climate eliminates almost all of the uncertainty as to whether or not future impacts will be catastrophic. Even while publishing this piece by one of the country�s top climatologists debunking the climate analysis in Nate Silver�s new book, I remain a big fan of Silver�s polling analysis (as does Mann) � Joe Romm.

by Michael Mann

If you�re a science or math geek like me, you can�t help but like Nate Silver. He�s the fellow nerd who made good. His site FiveThirtyEight.com is a must for any serious polling buff, and he regularly graces the leading talk shows with his insightful if wonky commentary. So you can imagine how excited I was a year ago when Nate�s assistant contacted me, indicating that he wanted to come to State College, PA � the �happy valley� � to interview me for his new book on �forecasting and prediction.�

Nate, I was told, was working on a chapter about global warming. He sought me out because he felt my expertise would make me an �excellent guide to the history of climate modeling�. He also expressed interest in my own upcoming (since published) book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars which details my experiences at the center of the climate change debate. Needless to say, I was very much looking forward to the meeting.

And so it was on a crisp early November day that Nate arrived at my office in the Walker Building of the Penn State campus. We exchanged pleasantries and proceeded to engage in a vigorous, in-depth discussion of everything from climate models and global warming to the role of scientific uncertainty, and the campaign by industry front groups to discredit climate science (something that is the focus of my own book). As I saw Nate off, I insisted he sample the Penn State Creamery�s famous ice cream before leaving town. I tweeted excitedly about my meeting with him, and by the end of the day Nate had even added me to his relatively short list of twitter followees. Certain our discussion had been productive and informative, I awaited Nate�s book with great anticipation.

And so I was rather crestfallen earlier this summer when I finally got a peek at a review copy of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don�t. It�s not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change denier; He accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems of prediction in the realm of human behavior � where there are no fundamental governing �laws� and any �predictions� are potentially laden with subjective and untestable assumptions � with problems such as climate change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect, that are true whether or not you choose to believe them.

Nate devotes far too much space to the highly questionable claims of a University of Pennsylvania marketing Professor named J. Scott Armstrong. Armstrong made a name for himself in denialist circles back in 2007 by denouncing climate models has having no predictive value at all. Armstrong�s arguments were fundamentally flawed, belied by a large body of primary scientific literature � with which Armstrong was apparently unfamiliar � demonstrating that climate model projections clearly do in fact out-perform naive predictions which ignore the effect of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. As discussed in detail by my RealClimate.org co-founder, NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, Armstrong simply didn�t understand the science well enough to properly interpret, let alone, assess, the predictive skill of climate model predictions.

That Nate would parrot Armstrong�s flawed arguments is a major disappointment, especially because there are some obvious red flags that even the most cursory research should have turned up. A simple check of either SourceWatch or fossil fuel industry watchdog ExxonSecrets, reveals that Armstrong is a well-known climate change denier with close ties to fossil fuel industry front groups like the Heartland Institute, which earlier this year campaigned to compare people who accept the reality of climate change to the Unabomber, and secretly planned to infiltrate elementary schools across the country with industry-funded climate change denial propaganda.

I suspect that Nate�s failing here arises from a sort of cultural bias. There is a whole community of pundits with origins in economics and marketing who seem more than happy to dismiss the laws of physics when they conflict with their philosophy of an unregulated market. Nate may not share that philosophy, but he was educated by those who do.

Nate Silver was trained in the Chicago school of Economics, famously characterized by its philosophy of free market fundamentalism. In addition to courses from Milton Friedman, Nate might very well have taken a course from University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, known largely for his provocative 2005 book Freakonomics and its even more audacious 2009 sequel Super Freakonomics � a book that, perhaps better than any other, serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers that lurk when academics attempt to draw sweeping conclusions in fields well outside their area of training. In Super Freakonomics as you might guess, Levitt drew questionable conclusions about climate change and related energy issues based on an extrapolation of principles of economics way, way, way, outside their domain of applicability. Even some very basic physics calculations, for example, reveal that his dismissal of solar energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuel energy in combating climate change because of possible waste heat is total nonsense. Ray Pierrehumbert, a chaired professor himself at the University of Chicago, in the Department of Geosciences, pointed this and other serious errors out to Levitt in an open letter that concluded with a campus map showing how easy it would have been for Levitt to walk over to his office to discuss his ideas and, presumably, avoid the serious pitfalls that ended up undermining much of what he ended up saying in his book about climate change and energy policy.

Unlike Levitt, Nate did talk to the scientists (I know. I�m one of them!). But he didn�t listen quite as carefully as he should have. When it came to areas like climate change well outside his own expertise, he to some extent fell into the same �one trick pony� trap that was the downfall of Levitt (and arguably others like Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point). That is, he repeatedly invokes the alluring, but fundamentally unsound, principle that simple ideas about forecasting and prediction from one field, like economics, can readily be appropriated and applied to completely different fields, without a solid grounding in the principles, assumptions, and methods of those fields. It just doesn�t work that way (though Nate, to his credit, does at least allude to that in his discussion of Armstrong�s evaluation of climate forecasts).

As a result, Nate�s chapter on climate change (Chapter 12: �A Climate of Healthy Skepticism�) is marred by straw man claims that don�t stand up to scrutiny. These include the assertion that (a) climate scientist James Hansen�s famous 1988 predictions overestimated global warming (they didn�t), that (b) �the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) settles on just one forecast that is endorsed by the entire group� (pure nonsense � even the most casual reading of the IPCC reports reveal that great care taken to emphasize the non-trivial spread among models predictions, and to denote regions where there is substantial disagreement between the projections from different models) and that (c) �relatively little is understood� about the El Nino cycle (here I imagine that Nate might have misinterpreted our own discussion about the matter; I explained in our discussion that there are still open questions about how climate change will influence the El Nino phenomenon � but that hardly means that we know �relatively little� about the phenomenon itself! In fact, we know quite a bit about it).

Finally, and perhaps most troubling (d) while Nate�s chapter title explicitly acknowledges the importance of distinguishing �signal� from �noise�, and Nate does gives this topic some lip service, he repeatedly falls victim to the fallacy that tracking year-to-year fluctuations in temperature (the noise) can tell us something about predictions of global warming trends (the signal). They can�t � they really can�t.

Nate�s view of uncertainty, and its implications for climate model predictions, is particularly misguided. He asserts that the projections of the IPCC forecasts have been �too aggressive�, but that is simply wrong. It neglects that in many cases, e.g. as regards the alarming rate of Arctic sea ice decline (we saw a new record low set just weeks ago), the climate models have been far too cautious; We are decades ahead of schedule relative to what the models predicted. Uncertainty cuts both ways, and in many respects � be it the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, or the melting of the ice sheets � it is cutting against us. Uncertainty, as many economists recognize, is thus a reason for action, not inaction! I�m surprised someone as sharp as Nate just doesn�t appear to get that.

Nate also takes some unnecessary cheap shots. In what has now become a rite of passage for those looking to establish their �honest broker� bona fides in the climate change debate, Nate makes the requisite �punch the hippie� accusation that Al Gore exaggerated the science of climate change in An Inconvenient Truth (a team of climate scientists reviewed the movie for accuracy and found that by-and-large Gore got the science right). He characterizes climate scientist Gavin Schmidt as a �sarcastic� individual who is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is by betting his personal savings on his climate model predictions (this felt to me reminiscent of Mitt Romney�s widely mocked $10,000 bet challenge to Rick Perry). And while I do appreciate some of the nice things Nate says in the book about me personally (e.g. �Mann is exceptionally thoughtful about the science behind global warming�), he at the same time deeply misrepresents our discussion on several counts.

I had emphasized the importance of distinguishing the true uncertainties in climate science (and there are plenty e.g. the influence of warming on hurricanes, how the El Nino phenomenon might be affected, or how regional patterns of rainfall may change) from the manufactured uncertainties and myths typically promoted by climate change deniers and contrarians (e.g. �how come there has been no warming since 1998?� � the answer is that, of course, there has been). I stressed how important it is, when scientists communicate to the public, to make clear that while there are many details that are still uncertain, the big picture (that humans are warming the planet and changing the climate, and that far larger and potentially more dangerous changes loom in our future if we don�t act) is not.

Nate cherry-picks a single sound bite (�our statements [should not be] so laden in uncertainty that no one even listens.�) to once again reinforce the false narrative that scientists are understating uncertainty. The point I was actually making was that we cannot spend so much time talking about what we don�t know, that we don�t end up telling the public what we do know. That, as Nate correctly quotes me, �would be irresponsible�. Nate states that �the more dramatic [climate scientists'] claims, the more likely they [are] be quoted��, seemingly implying that scientists have a motivation to overstate the science. He ignores the fact that those scientists willing to feed the false �scientists are exaggerating� narrative are the true darlings of the �balance� over �objectivity� school of news reporting � a school of thought that Nate sadly seems to have subscribed to.

Most disappointing to me of all was the false equivalence that Nate draws between the scientific community�s efforts to fight back against intentional distortions and attacks by an industry-funded attack machine, and the efforts of that attack machine itself. He characterizes this simply as a battle between �consensus� scientists and �skeptical� individuals, as if we�re talking about two worthy adversaries in a battle. This framing is flawed on multiple levels, not the least of which is that those he calls �skeptics� are in fact typically no such thing. There is a difference between honest skepticism � something that is not only valuable but necessary for the progress of science � and pseudo-skepticism, i.e. denialism posing as �skepticism� for the sake of obscuring, rather than clarifying, what is known.

Nate deeply mischaracterizes an editorial published by the prestigious and staid journal Nature (whose sentiments are echoed in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars) warning scientists that they �must acknowledge that they are in a street fight, and that their relationship with the media really matters.� Nate grossly mischaracterizes the quote, claiming that �the long-term goal of the street fight is to persuade the public and policy makers about the urgency (or lack thereof) of action to combat climate change.� Nate makes it sound like the �street fight� was of the scientists choosing, completely turning on its head what Nature was actually talking about : scientists finding a better way to defend science from cynical attacks whose sole aim is to confuse the public about what we actually do know about climate change (and therefore forestall any efforts to deal with it).

I could detail the numerous other problems with the chapter (and no � there aren�t really 538 of them; I confess to having taken some �poetic license� with the title of this commentary). But the real point is that this book was a lost opportunity when it comes to the topic of climate change. Nate could have applied his considerable acumen and insight to shed light on this important topic. But the result was instead a very mixed bag of otherwise useful commentary marred by needless misconceptions and inappropriately laundered denialist memes.

Don�t get me wrong. I�m still a FON (Fan Of Nate). I will continue to follow his thoughtful commentary on all matters of politics and polling. But when he makes claims about other topics, like climate change, I think I�ll be a lot more skeptical. Skepticism � real skepticism � is, after all � a good thing.

Michael Mann is Director of Penn State�s Earth System Science Center and author of �Dire Predictions� and �The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.� This piece was also published at Huffington Post and was reprinted with permission from the author.

# ? Sep 25, 2012 01:32

MotoMind: May 5, 2007

Stroh M.D. posted:

As for afforestation, there sure are some exciting - if extreme - options. How about afforesting the entire Sahara and the Australian Outback with Eucalyptus through artificial irrigation? Like I said, it's extreme in concept, but the link is to an actual, well sourced scientific paper showing why this is both possible and fairly affordable.

It doesn't seem like such a great idea to cover huge swaths of the planet with an oil-laden tree whose reproductive strategy is to burn so hot that they incinerate everything around them, then grow back first. The fires would be unprecedented in scale.

MotoMind fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Sep 25, 2012

# ? Sep 25, 2012 05:38

Nocturtle: Mar 17, 2007

Rent-A-Cop posted:

Trees are an incredibly slow and inefficient way to sequester carbon. If you want to do it with plants you're much better off using something fast growing like bamboo. The best biological sequestration method would probably be some kind of engineered algae. When it was done you could just liquify it and inject the whole mess down a deep hole somewhere.

This bothered me, you dismissed a reasonable method of carbon sequestration without any real evidence in favour of an uncertain and technologically intensive fix. I actually dug up some numbers:

Cost of carbon sequestration through trees: $0.10-$100 USD/metric ton of Carbon
(from IPCC III section 4.5.1 http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg3/ , also check out the neat graph)

Cost of sequestration through algae-based capture: Hard to find numbers, ~$30-50 USD/metric ton of CO2 (http://www.powerplantccs.com/ccs/cap/fut/alg/algae_co2_capture_costs.html)

So the cost efficiency of carbon sequestration through trees is comparable and in some cases better than algae systems. Plus we already know that this approach can be scaled up (forests exist), while this is an unknown for algae and a lot of novel carbon capture methods. I'm not saying intensive forestation is all we need to do, there are obvious land use constraints and we should adopt a range of solutions. But to dismiss tree planting out of hand is just wrong.

# ? Sep 25, 2012 08:44

Mercury_Storm: Jun 12, 2003; *chomp chomp chomp*

ErichZahn posted:

Sweet times for cows as gummy worms replace corn feed.

:welp:

This is some "uniquely American" poo poo right here. I can only hope whatever idiots were dumb enough to do this lose their entire herd as a result and go out of business.

The gummy worms cows love, the electrolytes plants need!

Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Sep 25, 2012

# ? Sep 25, 2012 09:20

Ignatius M. Meen: May 26, 2011; Hello yes I heard there was a lovely trainwreck here and...

Dafte posted:

Corn feed is already horrible to cows for a variety of health and nutritional reasons. I can't even imagine what gummy worms are going to do to them. I also somewhat question the health effects of people eating gummy worm cows.

Is it wrong if I want some effect to exist just because the thought of news reporters uttering "gummy cow disease" with a straight face makes me laugh?

# ? Sep 25, 2012 09:57

ANIME AKBAR: Jan 25, 2007; afu~

Yiggy posted:

Political forecast savant Nate Silver is embroiled in a spat with Michael Mann over misrepresentation and alleged propagation of denialist memes in his new book. In a twitter battle Nate claim's Mann didn't properly read the book, Mann responds that Nate minces words and tries to play both sides.

Being a climatologist must really suck. Their work is extremely important, but they get ignored and shat on by most people. Then once in a while an opportunity like this comes around to spread good science, and even that gets hosed up by authors and journalists.

I'm hoping Nate will respond, but I have a feeling he won't.

# ? Sep 25, 2012 13:14

Struensee: Nov 9, 2011

This years minimum arctic sea ice extent is at a record low:

quote:

This year�s minimum was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below the previous record minimum extent in the satellite record, which occurred on September 18, 2007. This is an area about the size of the state of Texas. The September 2012 minimum was in turn 3.29 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum, representing an area nearly twice the size of the state of Alaska. This year�s minimum is 18% below 2007 and 49% below the 1979 to 2000 average.

source: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Edit: I looked this up because I had a discussion with a friend of mine, where his argument centered on the antarctic gaining ice while the arctic was losing it. Turns out, the arctic is losing more ice in relative and absolute terms than the antarctic is gaining: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/difference.html (bottom of page)

Struensee fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Sep 30, 2012

# ? Sep 30, 2012 13:20

Guigui: Jan 19, 2010; Winner of January '10 Lux Aeterna "Best 2010 Poster" Award

Didn't a gigantic portion of the ross ice shelf in Antartica calf off in 2010?

# ? Sep 30, 2012 21:24

Geoid: Oct 18, 2005; Just Add Water

Struensee posted:

This years minimum arctic sea ice extent is at a record low:

source: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Edit: I looked this up because I had a discussion with a friend of mine, where his argument centered on the antarctic gaining ice while the arctic was losing it. Turns out, the arctic is losing more ice in relative and absolute terms than the antarctic is gaining: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/difference.html (bottom of page)

It's also key to know that while the extent is going down, it turns out most of our Passive Microwave-derived sea ice thicknesses algorithms have been OVERESTIMATING ice thickness. What multiyear ice is left is becoming thinner and more rotten than we thought.

I'm holding fast to a bet that we'll see an ice-free Arctic summer by 2015 and then it will become very interesting very quickly, as that thick multiyear ice has had a role in lessening the extent loss in warmer summers.

EDIT: because I said the opposite of what I meant.

Geoid fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 1, 2012

# ? Sep 30, 2012 21:46

Struensee: Nov 9, 2011

Geoid posted:

It's also key to know that while the extent is going down, it turns out most of our Passive Microwave-derived sea ice thicknesses algorithms have been OVERESTIMATING ice thickness. What multiyear ice is left is becoming thicker and more rotten than we thought.

I'm holding fast to a bet that we'll see an ice-free Arctic summer by 2015 and then it will become very interesting very quickly, as that thick multiyear ice has had a role in lessening the extent loss in warmer summers.

Do you mean thinner? And yeah, from the charts that were posted a while back, it certainly looks like 2015 is the year it's going to happen.

# ? Sep 30, 2012 22:47

bpower: Feb 19, 2011

To lighten mood somewhat.

"What ever happened to global warming eh?" STOP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQlHaGhYoF0

# ? Sep 30, 2012 23:41

Geoid: Oct 18, 2005; Just Add Water

Struensee posted:

Do you mean thinner? And yeah, from the charts that were posted a while back, it certainly looks like 2015 is the year it's going to happen.

Yep, changed.

# ? Oct 1, 2012 00:26

Mazzagatti2Hotty: Jan 23, 2012; JON JONES APOLOGIST #3

Have there been any scientific studies released that counter the theory that our current level of warming is related to a lull in volcanic activity, and that climate change will be resolved by a future increase in eruptions?

This is the argument I most often hear from acquaintances on the skeptic side, and while I usually counter with the fact that volcanic cooling is temporary whereas C02 induced warming is cumulative and constantly quickening, it would be nice to have data on hand to support this.

# ? Oct 5, 2012 15:58

a lovely poster: Aug 5, 2011; by Pipski

Mazzagatti2Hotty posted:

Have there been any scientific studies released that counter the theory that our current level of warming is related to a lull in volcanic activity, and that climate change will be resolved by a future increase in eruptions?

This is the argument I most often hear from acquaintances on the skeptic side, and while I usually counter with the fact that volcanic cooling is temporary whereas C02 induced warming is cumulative and constantly quickening, it would be nice to have data on hand to support this.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/coming-out-of-ice-age-volcanoes.htm

Skeptical Science is really the "go to" for climate change counterarguments.

# ? Oct 5, 2012 16:13

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# ? May 30, 2024 09:20

FAUXTON: Jun 2, 2005; spero che tu stia bene

There was frost on my car here in Omaha last night after work. Take that, liberal climate science :bahgawd:

never mind that we had snow in September last year, or that we'll be back up in the 60's on Monday and stay there and up into the 70's for the next 2 weeks at least. Last year saw a high of 75 on Thanksgiving Day, so we'll see how it goes this year. Perhaps we'll have the jet stream repeating it's "gently caress YOU ARIZONA AAAHAHAHAHA" antics this year and get just slightly chilly springtime temps all winter.

poo poo's hosed up. October used to be goddamn ice storm month. We used to have loving water falling out of the sky so cold that it froze on contact with the ground. You'd have to deal with your loving sidewalk having a glaze of ice, while you were trying to scrape enough of it off your car to safely drive it - on roads similar to hockey rinks. Now? Ehhhhh frost, not even on the windshield, just on the roof of my car. And that's only because my car was parked in an open parking lot exposed to the wind.

# ? Oct 6, 2012 11:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Climate Change thread: tl; dr - We are so screwed

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