Sangoma wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 1:44 amThat's why I don't believe, using your metaphor, we should use the drug.
I think are fundamental splitting point here, is I (really Taleb, I am echoing his argument) see the CO2 as the drug that we shouldn't use since (by your argument) we don't have a model to predict what will happen to the Earth when we use it, sending a big-ass monster slug of it into the atmosphere. You've accepted its use as fait accompli, and see potentially reducing it's use as "the drug".
I see it differently. Using your analogy the patient (planet) is sick (has a fever, literally). You believe that reducing exposure to some factor (CO2) will bring improvement. I, on the other hand, am not sure the patient is sick in the first place, not convinced that the fever is caused by CO2 and want to see reasonable evidence that if we reduce CO2 by introducing fairly drastic measures (that are not likely to be successful) the fever will subside. So, exactly, it's not CO2 that is "the drug" it's the attempt to reduce it.
Lastly, don't hang on Taleb's ideas too much. While he says a lot of interesting things he also manages to say shit of unbelievable magnitude without giving it much thought.
Turdacious wrote: ↑Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:42 pm
I love how you Gaia lovers always ignore how regressive your preferred solutions are in practice. The correlation between carbon production and extreme poverty reduction is hard to deny. Why do you hate poor people so much?
Poor people are dirty and boorish, and there's way too many of them. That's why. But carbon sequestration is a straightforward path to reduction in atmospheric carbon that requires no "regressive" practices. As if iPhones, fast food, and vacation junkets measure progress...
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Not interested in getting into this argument. Hell, I don't even know where you guys get the time to write all this.
Nonlinear fluid dynamics is not my area of expertise. I do have enough experience with it, I'm guessing more than anybody on here, and its modeling to have a good sense of its utility and limitations. I also personally know some of the folks involved in the highest levels of this work. Not a noteworthy resume but enough to make some general observations.
The equations are well known. The primary governing equations are Navier-Stokes. It's a nonlinear partial differential, making it very sensitive to initial and boundary conditions. The same equation is used for modeling fluid flow in seemingly such disparate areas as fluid (air) flow over an aircraft design or the dynamics in a chemical reactor. The important thing to note is all these areas of study are heavily supported by empirical work. You'd be a fool to climb into an airplane designed solely from a model without there being extensive wind tunnel work. It's because the nonlinear properties of the equations make exact solutions highly elusive. Further, the solutions are developed by brute force calculation, no closed form solution exists for all but trivial, pedantic problems.
Two points here. You need the empiricism to pin the model and even that pinned model can diverge . This observations can be in a laboratory experiment or, as is the case with the climate, direct observation of the object under study. Next, in spite of this inability of the model to predict the evolution of the system over all time, for all forcing functions and boundary conditions does not render its predictions useless or unhelpful. If you require a 100% predictive model then don't get on an airplane. There's no guarantee it will fly or stay up if it does.
That said, anybody who tries to tell you the models can predict the exact amount of ice melting, ocean temperatures or levels, especially 50 years from now, is blowing sunshine up your ass. BUT, the inclusion of anthropological CO2 sources sure does drive those models to better predictions. We can include other things, like variations in sun intensities, wherein there's evidence of temperature rise in other planetary systems, but they don't come near as close as those human-driven forcing functions. We don't need exactitude to gain insight from the model.
Given all that, good sense says effort should be expended in minimizing those CO2 sources. There are ways of so doing that don't turn economies on their collective ears and require research that has the possibility of yielding other dividends in technology as do most such large research efforts. The only exception to such thinking is if there are reasons to believe that the suggested methods of minimizing CO2 production could result in doing harm to the climate rather than good. I'm not aware of any.
Sua Sponte wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:06 pm
Given all that, good sense says effort should be expended in minimizing those CO2 sources. There are ways of so doing that don't turn economies on their collective ears and require research that has the possibility of yielding other dividends in technology as do most such large research efforts. The only exception to such thinking is if there are reasons to believe that the suggested methods of minimizing CO2 production could result in doing harm to the climate rather than good. I'm not aware of any.
Dumbfuck nerds screech like castrated teens that you need to know everything perfectly in order to have a decent idea of how to improve a situation, but that's why they end up with ugly chicks. They're losers waiting for shit to just happen.
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Fat Cat wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 6:34 pm
Poor people are dirty and boorish
there's way too many of them.
That's why...
carbon sequestration is a straightforward path
reduction in atmospheric carbon
requires no "regressive" practices.
iPhones, fast food, and vacation junkets measure progress...
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
So far predictions by all existing CO2-climate models have been dismal. I would not be boarding a plane designed with models of similar quality. Neither will I do anything to a patient that is likely to produce result similar to the climate models. But for some it makes sense to keep doing the same thing - pouring more data into a computer - and expect a different result. Good luck.
Alas, opinions differ. Some of us are dumbfuck nerds, some are brainwashed patsies. The former tend to try have a discussion, the latter mostly lean on emotional, catastrophe and insult. A new word: pedophrasty: the use of children's welfare to make the argument stronger. Very useful for CO2 debates: "I feel sorry for our children ..." To each his own.
I believe that climate shtick distracts us from problems that are a) more pressing, b) have solid cause and effect evidence base and c) are more manageable. Pollution, overpopulation, overuse of resources - very obvious three. Makes more sense to me to apply effort here instead of trying to change the weather in the next hundred years.
Sangoma wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:00 pm
So far predictions by all existing CO2-climate models have been dismal. I would not be boarding a plane designed with models of similar quality. Neither will I do anything to a patient that is likely to produce result similar to the climate models. But for some it makes sense to keep doing the same thing - pouring more data into a computer - and expect a different result. Good luck.
Yes, you've said all of that already. What you haven't touched on is: (i) is carbon a greenhouse gas; and (ii) are we dumping more carbon into the atmosphere. Hint: the answer to both of those questions is yes.
Sangoma wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:00 pmSome of us are dumbfuck nerds, some are brainwashed patsies. The former tend to try have a discussion, the latter mostly lean on emotional, catastrophe and insult. A new word: pedophrasty: the use of children's welfare to make the argument stronger. Very useful for CO2 debates: "I feel sorry for our children ..." To each his own.
You weren't having a discussion. You were talking about what you wanted to talk about--modeling--and not about the basic facts and the constructive next steps.
Sangoma wrote: ↑Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:00 pmI believe that climate shtick distracts us from problems that are a) more pressing, b) have solid cause and effect evidence base and c) are more manageable. Pollution, overpopulation, overuse of resources - very obvious three. Makes more sense to me to apply effort here instead of trying to change the weather in the next hundred years.
Sell it to yourself however you like. Limiting pollution would include limiting air emissions. Limiting population would limit air emissions. Limiting overuse of resources would limit air emissions. So fuck it, let's do those three things. I'm on board.
Toilet paper is a daily necessity, but most of us never give a thought to where it comes from.
The manufacture of bathroom tissue — particularly the soft, fluffy kind marketed for American bottoms — is one of the most "environmentally destructive" processes on the planet, according to the NRDC.
"Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age," NRDC scientist Allen Hershkowitz told the Guardian in 2009. "Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution."
Motherfuckers talking about toilet paper when animal agriculture is the leading cause of rain forest clear cutting, and possibly more GHG emissions than all of the transportation sector.
I don't have a lot of experience with vampires, but I have hunted werewolves. I shot one once, but by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog.
Alfred_E._Neuman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:55 pm
Motherfuckers talking about toilet paper when animal agriculture is the leading cause of rain forest clear cutting, and possibly more GHG emissions than all of the transportation sector.
Just curious, Alfred, are you a vegetarian?
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Alfred_E._Neuman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:55 pm
Motherfuckers talking about toilet paper when animal agriculture is the leading cause of rain forest clear cutting, and possibly more GHG emissions than all of the transportation sector.
Alfred_E._Neuman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 2:55 pm
Motherfuckers talking about toilet paper when animal agriculture is the leading cause of rain forest clear cutting, and possibly more GHG emissions than all of the transportation sector.
Just curious, Alfred, are you a vegetarian?
Indeed. Wasn't really a sudden thing, just found myself eating less and less animal products until I basically wasn't eating any at all. I think it's been at least a decade since eating meat and maybe 3-4 years of no animal products at all outside of some honey.
My empathy slider is moved all the way to the right, and I just can't be the cause of any more suffering than I have to be to exist in this world.
I don't have a lot of experience with vampires, but I have hunted werewolves. I shot one once, but by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog.
Interesting and thank you for the response. I grew up vegetarian, and I also worked as a kid as a produce guy and then later on, the produce buyer for a vegetarian health food store. It actually had the opposite effect on me. The number of animals killed for produce astonished me, I never would have believed it until I saw it. In my opinion, it's not the dietary choice that matters, it's the raw numbers of people that place excessive pressure on the environment. If there were a global population of 1,000,000 everyone could eat steak and lobster every day and it wouldn't have an appreciable adverse effect but 7.7 billion can eat soylent and grasshoppers and still cause catastrophic damage. Quantity is a quality all its own.
Honesty, you may have drunk too deeply from the wine of compassion. Our biology is not some elevator we can just step off at will.
My solution is to depopulate the Third World.
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Completely agree about population. The world will soon have to have some adult conversations about what the carrying capacity for this planet is, including a return of as much area as we can to it's natural habitat. There seems to be very little understanding that we exist as one tiny part of a vast interconnected biosphere. If we don't figure out some way to bring this thing in for a soft landing over the next generation, we'll be looking at famine/plague/war to bring it down for us.
The other, equally unappealing, solution will be everyone living in MegaCity X and getting your allotted calories for the day. With every square millimeter of arable land stripped for farming the most caloric dense food we can to keep everyone breathing.
Re: the compassion. I'm not a Jain, but I can definitely see how some slide down that slope.
I don't have a lot of experience with vampires, but I have hunted werewolves. I shot one once, but by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog.
To me the huge irony is that ostensibly compassionate policies like vaccination and agricultural modernization are having the effect of destroying life on earth and driving present crises like mass migration.
"I have longed for shipwrecks, for havoc and violent death.” - Havoc, T. Kristensen
Fat Cat wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:36 pm
Interesting and thank you for the response. I grew up vegetarian, and I also worked as a kid as a produce guy and then later on, the produce buyer for a vegetarian health food store. It actually had the opposite effect on me. The number of animals killed for produce astonished me, I never would have believed it until I saw it. In my opinion, it's not the dietary choice that matters, it's the raw numbers of people that place excessive pressure on the environment. If there were a global population of 1,000,000 everyone could eat steak and lobster every day and it wouldn't have an appreciable adverse effect but 7.7 billion can eat soylent and grasshoppers and still cause catastrophic damage. Quantity is a quality all its own.
Honesty, you may have drunk too deeply from the wine of compassion. Our biology is not some elevator we can just step off at will.
My solution is to depopulate the Third World.
One hundred percent correct (not including the last sentence). Couple of vegetarians got very irritated and dismissive when I mentioned that Australian wheat farmers shoot thousands of kangaroos every year to keep the crops going. Brad Warner used to have a good article on his site discussing this, but no more - I am guessing it's too sensitive a topic for Buddhists.
The reality is that all is one. Meaning that for one thing to live another dies. The trick is to be responsible about it. Wasting food, for example, is one of the biggest "sins" you can commit, that includes both meat and plant.
As for solutions - humans haven't been good at finding those on the large scale, I am afraid. Biosystems autoregulate.
One of the points in the climate debates is health effects of hot weather. So, just to keep a healthy dose of hatred and obscenity, here is an article I came across:
But while isolated heat waves pose a major health risk and grab headlines when they occur, recent research has uncovered a more complex and perhaps unexpected relationship between temperature and public health—on the whole, far more deaths occur in cold weather than in hot. This reality is obscured by the fact that, unlike heat-related health effects, which spike during discrete events, cold-related illnesses and deaths are diffuse throughout the year, don’t require extreme temperatures, and can lag well behind cold snaps.
An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of U.S. temperature-related deaths between 2006 and 2010 showed that 63% were attributable to cold exposure, while only 31% were attributable to heat exposure.In Australia and the United Kingdom, cold-related mortality between 1993 and 2006 exceeded heat-related mortality by an even greater margin—and is likely to do so through at least the end of the century. Researchers who evaluated 74 million U.K. and U.S. deaths reported in May 2015 that low temperatures are associated with 7.3% of all deaths versus just 0.4% for high temperatures, a ratio of more than 18 to 1.
I am obviously using quotes to prove my points and my superior intellect, but the rest of the article is actually very interesting.
Sua Sponte wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:06 pmwherein there's evidence of temperature rise in other planetary systems, but they don't come near as close as those human-driven forcing functions
This is an interesting claim. I'm not asking you to verify it I can do that. I wonder how much bias is in the research?
Sua Sponte wrote: ↑Thu Dec 27, 2018 8:06 pmThe only exception to such thinking is if there are reasons to believe that the suggested methods of minimizing CO2 production could result in doing harm to the climate rather than good. I'm not aware of any.
If you listen to the Gaia worshipers you get the impression that Nuclear power, which is very CO2 negative, would harm the planet. In contrast the vast amount of waste from making solar cells and wind mills is neglected, and the CO2 inputs building these things and maintaining them is neglected too.
I'm still trying to figure how to derive "global average temperature" out of a dynamic system like the Earth. At what points on the planet, what time of the day, ground or air temperature, time weighted, taken on the "hottest day of the year"? What is it?
Last edited by Gene on Sun Sep 15, 2019 4:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I think that reliance on fossil fuels keep the price of energy too high. I'd like to see more nuclear power, which ain't cheap because the operators can get away with the prices. More so fusion than fission. Plasma fusion is a tough problem but we spend so little money on it. Who is restricting that money? The Greens or fossil fuel companies? If people want low CO2 energy production then do or do not.
If we had cheaper energy then recycling of waste would be practical. We would need to mine less if we were digging up scrap metals, construction materials and other items. Make energy and automation cheap enough you could recycle almost anything.
I don't need the Theology of Gaia to see what a shitty deal reliance on fossil fuels are to most people. We need those fossil fuels as chemical feedstocks, to make stuff for people liberated from expensive energy.
Two billion human beings are going to bed hungry tonight. They are priced out of the energy market by expensive and scarce fossil fuels.
I want to raise those human beings up. The Greens want us all to live like them.
Last edited by Gene on Sun Sep 15, 2019 4:18 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Sangoma wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 12:58 amThe reality is that all is one. Meaning that for one thing to live another dies. The trick is to be responsible about it. Wasting food, for example, is one of the biggest "sins" you can commit, that includes both meat and plant.
As for solutions - humans haven't been good at finding those on the large scale, I am afraid. Biosystems autoregulate.
Is life really zero-sum? Can't organisms find new niches?
Biosystems will self regulate until they break, then they go into a different equilibrium or they decompose if they are an individual.
Humans rarely work together in large groups. We work for our families and "tribes". Maybe this has to do with the problem of scaling solutions?
..." To each his own. 
You too my Russo-Afro-Australasian fren!
