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Recently, the U.K. Met Office announced a revision to the Hadley Center historical analysis of sea surface temperatures (SST), suggesting that the oceans have warmed about 0.1 degree Celsius more than previously thought. The need for revision arises from the long-recognized problem that in the past sea surface temperatures were measured using a variety of error-prone methods such as using open buckets, lamb's wool–wrapped thermometers, and canvas bags. It was not until the 1990s that oceanographers developed a network of consistent and reliable measurement buoys.
[...] But that's where the good news ends. Because the oceans cover three fifths of the globe, this correction implies that previous estimates of overall global warming have been too low. Moreover it was reported recently that in the one place where it was carefully measured, the underwater melting that is driving disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers is occurring far faster than predicted by theory—as much as two orders of magnitude faster—throwing current model projections of sea level rise further in doubt.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:29AM (10 children)
I am looking forward to a good-natured, well thought out discussion about this subject.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:41AM
Global warming gonna kill yo ass dead, then you be a full time zombie, nigga.
(Score: 5, Funny) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:03AM (8 children)
I'll start: I need a hug.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:18AM (7 children)
Hi, I'm a Saguaro... cactus. There will be many more of us around in your future, so I'll gladly hug you. You do have a nice thick hide, no?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:42AM
I want to shave your spines.
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:08AM (5 children)
While I appreciate the offer, if I had a thick hide I wouldn't need a hug now, would I? In that case, I'll delicately land on one of your spines like a special snowflake.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:35AM (4 children)
It'll have to be special, because when my people cover the earth, there won't be any snowflakes.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:43AM (2 children)
At the rate Snow gets around I wouldn't bet on it.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:45AM
Ah yes, the eternal question of quantity versus quality of offspring [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:45AM
He has pretty much failed so far, one female offspring? Not like he is some Canadian Ghengis Khan with a pen? [youtube.com]
It was in my pocket before.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:10PM
Snowflakes will be spared the ravages of climate change, safely preserved in Safe Spaces.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gringer on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:35AM (11 children)
I suspect it's more likely that the greater rates of temperature increase weren't believed, so scientists have moderated their message to only report the less extreme rates to media and the public.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:10AM
Are you saying there is a climate conspiracy to mislead the public?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:33AM (9 children)
I have seen this effect in my area (medical research - yeah, fuck you p-haters).
Bunch of studies reporting nothing special then one day someone discovers a physical mechanism that suggests there should be an effect. Now everyone reports seeing this effect in their data. It's sad but "real" scientists are actually a conservative bunch, shit-scared of standing out from the crowd. Much easier to hide in the nonsignificant space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @08:41AM (8 children)
That should tell you how worthless statistical significance is... Even doctors know to ignore it unless it supports their preexisting belief. And how hard is it to come up with some mechanism to explain any result? Just add more feedbacks and pump and receptors, etc till it makes sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:52AM (2 children)
And I should say, when I did medical research that was exactly the state of the field. Then when I calculated how much room it would take to hold all these supposed components and energy required to run it, it was almost the entire energy and space budget of the cell. All that for a single relatively minor signalling system, just one among thousands or tens of thousands of things the cell needs.
Medical researchers are amazingly quantitatively ignorant, which leads them down some very silly paths.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:45PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:41PM
The latter get paid waaaaay better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:36PM (4 children)
Doctors are not scientists. Most don't know statistics.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019 [bbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:18PM (3 children)
Almost no one researching anything in medicine has any understanding of statistics. If you see "p < 0.05" or the phrase "statistically significant", that is a shibboleth. It shows you are in the group of people who have no idea what they are doing and can be trusted not to be too harsh.. since your closet is filled with crappy unreliable conclusions too.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:54PM (2 children)
Exactly I prefer my hypotheses to be taken as a priori true from from a biblical source. WMD in Iraq? Let's ask the Decision Maker. Vaccines cause autism? Teach the controversy. Trickle down tax cuts? True true true. No p values necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:19PM (1 child)
I prefer science. NHST is no better than a bunch of monks praying... whether you use pseudoscience or dogma doesn't make much difference to me.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:02AM
I've only ever seen you shit on the null hypothesis paradigm, but so far haven't seen you offer an alternative (some sort of Bayesian paradigm maybe?)
What do you have in mind as its replacement, and how do you know that it will perform better? Unless you have something better in mind, all you're doing is blowing raspberries at the best tool by a large margin we have. Put up or shut up.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:02AM (16 children)
And they expect us to believe their forecasts for the future?
(Score: 1, Troll) by qzm on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:16AM (15 children)
No, you dont seem to understand..
Old people are stupid. They could never read a thermometer correctly.
In fact, the further you go back, the more stupid they were, and they got the reading more and more wrong.
The interesting bit is that they always got the reading wrong in one direction - they always read a higher temperature.
So, the only way to fix this is to assume that since older people are more stupid, and they always over-read.. An adjustment MUST be required, and the real temperature was colder the further back you go.
How do they prove this? Models of course! If it wasnt true, then their models wouldnt show what they do.. so it MUST be true.
And if the models dont match next years measurements? More adjustments! Not to the models, but to the historical data - thats the ticket!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:33AM (13 children)
Must not feed the trolls...
Old people may not be as stupid as you appear but technology is always
evolving and getting more accurate. In the old days we all used
analogue weight scales which are accurate to plus or minus 1 lb, now
we use digital scales accurate to .01 pound, and my cheap digital
calipers are (reasonably) good to .001 mm. It is entirely possible
that earlier measuring techniques were .01C high, that's the
definition of bias in measuring, and happens all the time. In, fact
it's not even hard to check the two tools side by side.
Meanwhile we have record heat waves with temperature increasing on the
order of .05 C EVERY summer, so the whole point about .01 C is moot.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:41AM (2 children)
According to:
https://time.com/5635062/europe-heatwave-temperature-records/ [time.com]
The average U.K. summer temperature between 2008-2017 has risen by 0.7ºC
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:53PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:56PM
And so... don't look at it at all? Trumpian logic.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/5/10/1763436/-Trump-Cancels-NASA-Greenhouse-Gas-Monitoring-Program [dailykos.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:39AM (4 children)
In the US, heat waves have decreased over the past 120 years [globalchange.gov].
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:42PM (1 child)
Wow, impressive, a double-cherry-pick!
1: Heatwaves can decrease while the average increases.
2: The US is not the globe.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday August 23 2019, @06:50PM
The post I was responding to said
My link regarding heatwaves was on-topic and not a cherry-pick at all. Their post said nothing about region. There's a good chance they meant the US. Anyway, a lot of US people are unaware of the long-term heat wave trend, so I posted the link for them to check it out.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:46PM (1 child)
From your link:
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday August 23 2019, @06:40PM
It may have increased since the 1960s and 1980s, but before that, in the 1930s, heatwaves were even stronger!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:39AM (3 children)
Oh FFS, having spent a hell of a lot of time in chemical labs weighing all sorts of stuff to fractions of grammes using analogue mechanical balance scales, that statement is just so full of shit I don't know where to start, does the name Sartorius (the name I'm most familiar with) mean anything to you?, if not, google them..and while you're doing that, find the Wikipedia page on Weighing scales and have a read.
And, how would you know? Ever checked them out against a certified thickness standard ?
There is a world of difference in the real vs stated accuracies of cheapo calipers and those of their more expensive bretheren (I've always liked those made by Mitutoyo, can't afford them for home abuse though)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @07:10AM (2 children)
Just how accurately do you need to measure the size of your penis?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:26AM
Well, using the smallest apposite available units, that'll be to the nearest treble digit whole multiple of the size of your fully erect member...thanks for asking..or were you meaning the erect size?....be more specific.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:39AM
The dangers of posting using a mobile phone with a borked touchscreen...that was supposed to read
'..home workshop abuse..'
(But, as you've now mentioned it.....)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:55PM
Oh, please - they were weighing grams in the 17th century. Molar weights and masses were understood by a guy who died in 1910 . . .
https://chemistry.oregonstate.edu/courses/ch121-3s/ch121/Answers%20to%20interesting%20questions/history_of_the_atomic_mass_unit.htm [oregonstate.edu]
Let us note that small measurements like the gram were discovered/invented in France in the 17th century, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, or some forgotten culture didn't have something like it first.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:02AM
I see you inherited your stupidity from your parents.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:20AM (31 children)
Well, we're boned!
Seriously, I don't see a good way out of this mess. The options are (A) completely reconfigure the global economy, (B) blot out the sun [forbes.com], or (C) do nothing and fry/drown. And right now, most of the people with the power to make decisions are all opting for option C with a little bit of option B thrown in for show.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by qzm on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:25AM (17 children)
Actually, most of the people in power are busy working their hardest to use a combination of AGW, Terrorism, and Identity Politics (and soon 'Recession Economics') to try and create Totalitarian states that have themselves at the top.
If they succeed, then I suspect that global temperatures will be the least of the issues for the foreseeable future.
If you actually want to do something about AGW its relatively simple. Support nuclear power (by which I mean new design reactors built without massive over-regulation and NIMBY politics to push the costs through the roof), and fight against centrally planned states (which have long histories of creating massive ecological disasters and huge inefficiency).
The #1 ecological issue facing us right now is massive inefficiency and waste. the US leads, however others are racing to catch up. Get rid of that, and carbon emissions would crash.
However, the financial markets see daily oil use as a positive measure of 'growth', so, good luck with that..
So yes, we are boned, but not for the reasons most people think. We are boned BECAUSE of the people at the top yelling about global warming, not despite them - because they have agendas, and helping you aint one of them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @08:20AM (2 children)
Uh. No?
If we ramped energy efficiency and food production to 100% perfection given solar input, it would buy us less than a century at current consumption/capita and growth.
In softwarespeak: inefficiency and waste are low order terms and scaling constants, in the big-O versions ecological formulas. They matter, in the sense of "pay twice for bread" matters, but not in the sense of "inflation has made bread prices exponentially increase in cash-dollar prices" and I hope you can guess which of these perspectives matters to ecological matters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:56AM (1 child)
If instead you want humanity to huddle on planet Earth, reducing itself to squalor over dwindling resources in wait for the next asteroid to put it out of its misery - then going out quicker with a bang is the better option. Reduces total suffering.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:05AM
The point you miss is that both terraforming and the comparatively simpler Earthship/Generation Ship models we'd need require precisely the same skills, actions, and attitudes that keeping THIS planet livable does. If we were somehow able to escape and colonize, with our current state of mind, we'd just shit up wherever else it is we went.
No, we need a fundamental change of heart before we'll be capable, let alone morally fit, to colonize space.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday August 21 2019, @08:48AM (4 children)
> and fight against centrally planned states (which have long histories of creating massive ecological disasters and huge inefficiency).
1. The only states that do anything are centrally planned. There has never been an anarchy successful enough to make anything.
2. There are many examples of centrally planned states that have not created ecological disasters. Far more than those that have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:59AM (2 children)
I dare you.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday August 22 2019, @08:22AM
> how say pre-WW2 USA was centrally planned
Well, there were a bunch of people called the senate, and another bunch of people called the house of representatives, and a guy called a president, and they got together to make a bunch of laws. The laws enabled the people in those houses and their flunkies to collect taxes, which were used to build roads, railways, electrical power distribution networks and other infrastructure along planned routes to certain regions.
Etc, etc.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:49PM
How pre-WWII America was centrally planned:
1. Starting in the early 1800's, the various state and federal governments, along with private businesses, planned out and created a network of canal and river transportation routes to aid in commerce. Major examples of this were the Erie Canal (connecting New York and the east coast to the Great Lakes) and the Ohio & Erie Canal (connecting the Great Lakes to the Ohio River and from there the Mississippi). Some of these are still in operation today, e.g. the Intracoastal Waterway along the Atlantic coast.
2. Throughout the mid- to late-1800's, the government was working alongside railroad companies to plan both rail routes and what sort of development would occur along those routes. Those rail routes are in many cases still here, and if they're not here as rail routes they are often here as major roads. For instance, Amtrak still runs trains over a section of the original transcontinental railroad route, and a bunch of the rest of it is now Interstate 80.
3. There was a massive central planning effort between 1861 and 1865 which was needed to fight the Civil War on both sides (the Confederates were far more centrally planned than the Union, because they got much more desperate).
4. As you get into the Gilded Age, the central planning stops being run by the government, and is instead being run by JP Morgan and the many many businesses he controlled, with substantial influence of other major industrialists like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockafeller, and Henry Ford. Morgan was instrumental in managing several financial crises, to the point where the US Secretary of the Treasury was often answering to Morgan rather than the other way around. Throughout this period, the US military is regularly deployed in Latin America and the Pacific to take over countries on behalf of US industrialists - they even invent the country of Panama specifically because Nicaragua was refusing to allow a canal to be built.
5. Woodrow Wilson adds a great deal of government central planning to first support the Entente powers (Britain, France, et al) and later send US troops to fight World War I. This process greatly increases the US Army's standing forces and hardware.
6. Franklin Roosevelt spends all of the 1930's engaged in central planning efforts to try to mitigate the worst effects of the Great Depression.
But I'm sure you'll be quite happy to go on pretending that the concept of central planning was invented by Communists or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:04PM
Like start wars that kill millions or tens of millions of people? Drain the Aral Sea? Commit the genocides of history? "Do anything" isn't necessarily better than "do nothing", and a vicious state is not better than anarchy.
Perhaps we should go through this list of centrally planned states to see what needs to be thrown out? Either on the grounds that it has actually created ecological disasters contrary to assertion, or on the grounds that it isn't actually a centrally planned state. Central planning is more than just regulation or having some central government that decides a few things. It's allocation of most resources over the entire state based on what an ignorant committee or person decides is appropriate.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:40AM (6 children)
According to my observation, those who try to make their states more totalitarian are mostly climate change deniers. They do use terrorism and identity politics (and fear of refugees) for their purpose, though.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:41AM
It is called the Welfare-Warfare state for a reason. Good god, what is so difficult to understand about this?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:24PM
I guess you need to look a little harder. Note that the fixes for climate change all require changing developed world peoples' behavior. None of the people most concerned about climate change consider adaptation (except to discount it by claiming it's ridiculously expensive) even though it's much less impact on people and their freedom. Nor do they consider a similar forcing of peoples' behavior in the developing world, like China, even thought that would in theory have more impact since there's both more people and more growth in greenhouse gases emissions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:05PM (3 children)
Outlawing automobiles, air conditioners, beef, plastic straws, plastic bags, taxing sugared drinks, limiting the size of drink you can buy, promised gun confiscations, none of those things are a sign of totalitarianism, are they? These are the things O'crazio and her Squat club promise us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:24PM (1 child)
Damn you're like an infinite font of stupid.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:34PM
If so, I rely on your aquifer of stupid to feed me. WTF do you think "totalitarianism" means, anyway?
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:01AM
...and possibly even the confiscation of straw men.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:30PM
No, it is not. What gets missed in efficiency arguments are two very important things. First, that there's a solid limit to how efficient you can get - while technology development can bypass the limit altogether. The most efficient hand shovel user will move far less dirt than a backhoe operator who takes two hour smoke breaks.
Second, many of these efficiency ideas waste more valuable things to preserve less valuable things. For example, recycling is a notorious example - wasting peoples' time to save a few scraps of low value paper, plastic, and glass. It's only a "few minutes" of your time individually, but that time is still more valuable than the materials being recycled and that waste adds up.
Thus, fixing ecological issues often makes us less efficient. The good fixes are mild, like putting scrubbers on coal power plant chimneys (or having chimneys in the first place!) - a mild cost with substantial benefits. The bad ones are massively inefficient like mandating that we reduce pollutants to lower levels than they appear in local nature (particularly happens with some toxins like arsenic or lead, and radiative pollutants).
Sure, there are ecological practices, particularly in agriculture and food storage, that can get both better environments and better efficiency, but it's a conceit that somehow we are so inefficient that we merely need to use everything better in order to get out from under. The problem, as I see it, is that we have well over 7 billion people on Earth with continued population growth - no matter how efficiently we get, without reducing that population and its growth, we can't escape from massive problems in the future. The way out as I see it is to push everything to developed world status - which has solved basic problems like overpopulation and most sorts of pollution. But that pushes everyone into the sort of societies you consider wasteful.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:04PM
Yeah, I'm sure fear of central planning is why the party that believes that AGW either doesn't exist or isn't a problem in the face of overwhelming evidence has, in recent years:
- Made it illegal to protest centrally planned oil pipelines.
- Made it illegal to produce your own electricity by putting up a windmill on your property, so that you'll be more likely to rely on the centrally planned electric grid.
- Made it more expensive to produce your own electricity by putting solar panels on your roof or property, so you'll be more likely to rely on the centrally planned electric grid.
- Made it legal to frack for natural gas even under your land even if the company doesn't own the mineral rights, thus allowing companies to centrally plan their extraction efforts more easily.
- Overthrown or attempted to overthrow multiple foreign governments, some of them democracies, in order to get at the oil. This is the ultimate in centralization, because now you're not even allowing foreigners to choose their own government like we do.
- Given massive government subsidies to oil and natural gas companies, artificially lowering the price of gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels, as part of a central plan to aid those companies.
I'm going to hazard a guess that all this has jack squat to do with principles of decentralization, and everything to do with a handful of very large corporations who own drilling rights for oil and gas worth $trillions wanting to maximize their return on investment, who are bribing politicians to pass laws favorable to that effort and running a very large public propaganda campaign to convince people like you to put up with it. All of which was centrally planned, I might add.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:39AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Wednesday August 21 2019, @04:13AM (3 children)
How about (D), move to Alaska or Canada or Russia?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:38AM
The way things are going, we can just sit tight and wait for Russia to come here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @07:28AM
Wait until they stop smoking before you move.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:00PM
Nah, I plan to vote for (D) instead, so we can use science to fix the problem instead of just pretending it doesn't exist.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by quietus on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:58AM (7 children)
No, we're not boned. There are a number of practical things we can do to at least mitigate the effects.
Off the top of my head:
None of these things are expensive, big ticket, items to do.
Adapting to climate change will not require big sacrifices. It will not require you to change your diet.
Instead, it will make your environment more pleasant to live in and, hence, increase your quality of living.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @12:28PM
None of that carbon-focused stuff is going to do anything to help with climate change... total waste of time and resources. You end up poorer and more vulnerable in the end.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:08PM
(Score: 1) by saturnalia0 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:24PM (1 child)
I am yet to see a widely accepted, widely publicized study clasifying the main sources of global warming. Does it really help to change your light bulbs? If so, how much? Or perhaps it makes no significant difference, since the X industry is orders of magnitude more pollutant (perhaps it doesn't even cause larger CO2 emission but emits a sufficient amount of other stronger greenhouse gases).
The causes must first be accurately quantized before thinking about acting on them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:57PM
It's called a greenhouse gas inventory. [www.ipcc.ch]
The EPA compiles USA's greenhouse gas inventory annually, it's located here. [epa.gov] They've been compiling this data for about 30 years now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:09PM
While it is unknown in The Hotbed of D, a large part of the world has this yearly natural phenomenon known as "winter". When whatever energy the new expensive appliances "save", then need be fed into another appliance known as "heater", or the user of the appliances will freeze to death and become unable to pay the interest on their loans.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)
Yes, all those things will help.
They're orders of magnitude less than what's needed to prevent catastrophic global warming. We're already losing glaciers, melting the polar ice caps, and unfreezing the methane in the arctic permafrost which will create a nasty positive feedback loop. Oh, and the Amazon rainforest is currently on fire, sea levels are already rising substantially, and hurricanes have gained intensity. Even if we somehow reduced the growth of CO2 to zero (and we haven't even come close to that), we'd still be in serious trouble.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:27PM
Why do you think they're orders of magnitudes less than what's needed?
And secondly: what do you want -- reorganizing economy and society in a couple of years with a war-like effort and attitude? That, to me, seems only likely when things already have hit the fan i.e. really large-scale disruption due to a whole cascade of extreme weather events. When that happens, we're likely to be already in a runaway process -- trying to stop that, if it is at all possible given our limited scientific knowledge, is likely to cost us a lot more than taking a number of steps now.
Besides, there's human psychology to behold: taking a number of small steps, which turn out not to be a doom-discomfort-and-sacrifice happening, will prepare minds for even further steps, if necessary. You do not immediately start to rebuild a precious old-timer, you first practice on cheap cars.
And one more thing, what khallow already alluded to: the focus now is very much on negative feedback loops. Systems often also have feedback loops that run in the counterdirection: good old Earth may as yet still surprise us, positively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @02:40AM
All those poor subs just shoved aside only to have the gates thrown open to the Philistines!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @09:17AM
This reminds me of how the government releases their report on GDP, which shows how greasy things are. Then a few months later they always "revise" the last estimate downward so the new estimate shows how much more great growth has been going on.
In this case it is supposed to show you how scared you should be instead of how great things are, but same idea.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:34AM (1 child)
And the water feels fine to mee, just like yesterday and not too hot at all!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:15PM
The senator you speak of is really a turtle.
Turtles all the way down.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:11PM
if only the parasitic governments of the world would have stolen more this could have all been avoided!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:34PM (2 children)
http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-3/ [aei.org]
My point is not to deny, in fact I am pretty sure the future world will be habitable only by the followers of the beast, but pollution is about control and environmentalism is about control too. And you are in the middle. Do you remember the left/right fluff? Capitalism, thesis, communism, antithesis, death of the middle class, synthesis. With the climate I expect something similar. Polluters keeping on poisoning us, environmentalists burying small realities under tons of taxes and procedures.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:12AM (1 child)
If anything "The Beast" is *already here.*And it's Trump if it's anyone. He's the closest match for the figure of the Anti-Christ in the Revelation of John I've ever seen, and his ability to utterly captivate supposed strong-in-the-faith Christians by the million is somewhere between mystifying and horrifying.
Of course, if you knew your ancient languages and your Bible study you'd know "The Beast" was Emperor Nero ("Here is [esoteric] wisdom; let him who hath understanding reckon the number of The Beast, for it is the number of a man, and the number is six hundred threescore and six"). In Gematria, that's more or less Neron Qaisar, with the lesser-known 616 variant simple being Nero Qaisar as the value of the Hebrew "nun" was 50.
YOU are a follower of "the Beast," and you don't even know it. I suspect you can't know it. But it doesn't take much metaphor stretching to see that you have the "mark" in your right hand (i.e., the things you do) and on your head (the things you think).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:34AM
Come on the antichrist can't be so hated by the leftists. The house divided in itself cannot stand. I'd rather bet on Greta Thunberg than Trump.
The historicist approach to the revelation is a bit problematic IMHO. Too many symbolic references to tech that simply wasn't there.
As for the beast, I think we'll end up both in it. The mark of the beast is the SSN? some other issued ID? SWIFT? paypal? or maybe it's banknotes? Pretty easy to ascertain, just look at what to do when you buy and sell from the POV of regulations.
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