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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Nasa needs to focus on Planet Earth.
Cancel the Space Program until we get this handled.
Or ship all the engineers to GM.
Integrate roads and cars together.
Funny thing, China and India come online, and the ice starts melting. OK, no relation there, if your Catholic.
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Xela
climber
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Apr 10, 2009 - 10:51am PT
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JEleazarian wrote:
“I'm trying to answer a different question from the one you're posing. You're looking at the levels we need for stabilization. I'm trying to prove that the economic decisions this implies are worth it. “
No, I am illustrating how you might go about constructing a damage function. You did want to estimate marginal benefits (avoided damages) did you not? Damages are tied to temperature increases, which are tied to atmospheric concentrations, which are tied to end-of-pipe emissions. As damages increase they have a negative effect on economic activity. It is reasonably easy to estimate the cost of mitigation for any level of end-of-pipe reduction. If you haven’t already done so, you should look at the work done by Tol, William Nordhaus, or Terry Barker. All have investigated the issue of timing. In fact you can get the GAMS code for Nordhaus’ RICE and DICE models and look at any type of scenario you want.
“As one (pro-environmentalist) law school professor said to my class about thirty years ago, "the environmental scientists give us a lot of data -- all of it useless." What he meant was that we're trying to justify economic decisions with non-economic data.”
The integrated science economic work that exists today would tend to invalidate that statement.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
dangling off a wind turbine in a town near you
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Apr 10, 2009 - 11:01am PT
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Denying human impact on our system is sheer lunacy. We are placing a very large impact on the system. Just reference the 2nd law of thermodynamics and you can see where this is (eventually) headed.
However, the ability of our system to absorb the impact is very large as well. We cannot model our system as completely closed because we receive solar flux, adding energy to replace that lost through entropy.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is this; live as simply as possible, 'cause there are plenty of other people shitting upstream from you and the water's getting yucky.
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bobmarley
Trad climber
WAS Auburn CA, NOW Seattle WA
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Apr 10, 2009 - 11:15am PT
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i'm currently reading 'Unstoppable Global Warming' by Singer and Avery: 2 unpopular scientists who are claiming the Earth's warming is caused by a 1,500 year cycle - not from Man's footprint. i've typically been on the 'Gore side' of things but this book has me questioning many of those assumptions.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:19pm PT
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bobmarley:
i'm currently reading 'Unstoppable Global Warming' by Singer and Avery: 2 unpopular scientists
who are claiming the Earth's warming is caused by a 1,500 year cycle - not from Man's footprint.
i've typically been on the 'Gore side' of things but this book has me questioning many of
those assumptions.
Before taking that book too seriously, it would be good to read some of the reviews by active
climate scientists (not "the Gore side," I mean the actual, state-of-the-art researchers).
For example, here's a good point-counterpoint summary of the Singer-Avery claims, along with
followup discussions. The point-counterpoint section is written by David Archer.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:34pm PT
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A sample of Archer's point-counterpoint response (written in 2006) to the Singer-Avery thesis:
"Point. The existence of the medieval warm and the Little Ice Age climate intervals,
and the 1500 year D-O cycles in glacial climate, proves that the warming in the past decades
is a natural phenomenon, not caused by human industry at all.
CounterPoint. The existence of climate changes in the past is not news to the climate
change scientific community; there is a whole chapter about it in the upcoming IPCC Scientific
Assessment. Nor do past, natural variations in climate negate the global warming forecast.
Most past climate changes, like the glacial interglacial cycle, can be explained based on
changes in solar heating and greenhouse gases, but the warming in the last few decades
cannot be explained without the impact of human-released greenhouse gases. Avery
was very careful to crop his temperature plots at 1985, rather than show the data to 2005."
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:52pm PT
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Xela,
Thanks for your explanation. I'm still trying to measure what you say is difficult to measure. I'd appreciate your pointing me to the integrated scientific and economic literature to which you refer. I'd rather not keep crunching numbers only to discover my work is preempted.
Thanks in advance.
John
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Will Hobbs
Trad climber
Santa Monica, CA
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Apr 10, 2009 - 02:38pm PT
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'I'm currently reading 'Unstoppable Global Warming' by Singer and Avery: 2 unpopular scientists who are claiming the Earth's warming is caused by a 1,500 year cycle....'
Can't comment about Avery, I've never met the man, but Fred Singer has always been 'unpopular' in the discipline because he's a rude, arrogant and unpleasant tw#t.
Slightly off-topic, but I just noticed something as I was looking through the list of geophysicists who are high-profile climate-change 'skeptics'. They're almost all retired.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
dangling off a wind turbine in a town near you
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Apr 10, 2009 - 04:51pm PT
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Yeah, but the huge bald eagle sure lends it a lot of credence...
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hossjulia
Trad climber
Eastside
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Apr 10, 2009 - 05:09pm PT
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http://www.viewzone.com/endtime.html
yeah, thread drift, but if you are going to talk about the Earth in a large scale way, this needs to be considered as well.
It IS complicated and many faceted, looking at JUST global warming isn't enough.
I was looking for some concrete data on the 2012 phenom, and this is one site I could understand.
This may very well make global warming meaningless but since it might not, I sold my big truck and bought an older econo car.
The changes are being made in peoples psyche. I see it all the time and overheard an astonishing conversation in Bishop last year between 2 local ranchers. They were discussing this very subject and what they needed to do to change with the times and get off of oil. Not just for the $$$, which hit the ranchers hard when diesel fuel went sky high, but because they really do care about the land and how they impact it. They acknowledged global warming as something they could do something about, no skepticism at all about it.
Talk was of changing haying methods and scraping alfalfa, using some of the drafts coming out of the Canadian PMU program to replace tractors, they did not even discuss using solar, it was a given, as in, oh yeah, the solar guy comes out for an estimate next week. How many panels are you going for? that sort of thing.
I tell ya, I was so fascinated I forgot to eat my breakfast.
Lets see, they also discussed non-tillage methods and over planting, growing their own food again, like gramps used to, encouraging "good bugs" by not using any more of those "damned chemicals", all kinds of stuff that had my jaw on the floor. Maybe they were an exception, but if you saw them on the street, you'd automatically label them "redneck".
This is not an isolated incident.
Some of you guys are sounding very jaded here.
Me? I have total faith in a human turn around, I think it's happening now, lost faith in big biz and government, people getting more self sufficient and *off the grid*, realizing they've been had by the status quo. And hey, what do I have to loose by thinking this way? If it all ends with a solar storm on Dec. 21, 2012. (Which I don't think is going to happen, I have a good feeling about this.)
People learn their lessons best when it hurts.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Apr 10, 2009 - 06:47pm PT
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I'm gonna write in my blog that the moon is made of cheese.
Then someone can cut and paste that to Supertopo, as proof that it is.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Apr 10, 2009 - 06:53pm PT
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"First the temperature goes up and years later the CO2 level goes up.
Then the temperature goes down and years later the CO2 goes down.
All without 6 billion humans on the planet burning hydrocarbons
except for this last cycle which is well within the norm for all the other ups and downs.
But you're not gonna get a research grant/job saying that, now are you?"
Forests have come and gone for billions of years, all before the existence of axes (and chainsaws).
Therefore deforestation is a natural event and we don't have to worry about the disappearance of old growth forests.
But your not going to get a research grant for saying that (except maybe a nice little check from Pacific Lumber).
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bachar
Gym climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Apr 10, 2009 - 07:12pm PT
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Yeah I know, I was just joking. The planet has been warming up and cooling down for a long long time. If we're adding to it is not the point. Polluting the heck out of everythng just isn't good no matter what.
The planet is fine, the people are phucked...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Apr 11, 2009 - 07:03am PT
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Seems both sides can claim the others data is flawed and back it up with more data that can also be called in question. The old
saying 'you can prove anything with statistics' is true.
One plan is to follow your conscience and stop
doing stuff that puts GH gasses into the atmosphere.
An alternate plan, if you're up to it, stop your GCC-denier neighbor from putting CO2 into the air.
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Terry
climber
Spokane
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Apr 11, 2009 - 11:48am PT
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It doesn't matter if Climate Change is man made because we can't do anything about it if it is, not without causing more suffering and misery for humanity than temperature change ever would.
But what I don't get is why we believe Global Warming would be such a bad thing (Ans: Because if it wasn't bad then they couldn't control the world) Every period in history that had warmer temperatures shows a positive societal impact. So instead of believing the facts of what actually occurred we are listening to 'predictive' models that say the world will end and we'll all die if we don't stop the warming. Good Grief.
That's my point. From here on its a rant.
The cap and trade 'plan' is an unverifiable piece of bullschit, and would be the biggest tax to redistribute wealth in the history of man. That's the bottom line and what this is all about.
What is even more amazing is that all the liberals who have historically railed against being controlled by "The Man" are the primary ones who have hitched themselves to their master's wagon and are helping pull the largest load of BS ever unloaded on humanity up the mountain. Think Y2K times a gazillion.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Apr 11, 2009 - 11:54am PT
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But what I don't get is why we believe Global Warming would be such a bad thing
Terry, I gather that your mind is made up, but for anyone else who doesn't "get" this or is
curious, I'd recommend reading some actual research. For a quick look, check out the
quote from Science that I posted upthread. Better yet, read the article it came from, and
look up who those people are that it cites.
We're changing thermal properties of the atmosphere of our planet. Those properties control
how the winds blow, oceans circulate, seasons change and where the rain falls. It ain't like
just turning up the thermostat in a room.
Every period in history that had warmer temperatures shows a positive societal impact.
Seriously, have you never heard of a drought?
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 11, 2009 - 12:33pm PT
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I finally agree with the the Dr F.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Apr 11, 2009 - 02:49pm PT
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Dr - your comments please on my previous post #100 in this thread
concerning the 'CO2 versus Sun/Cosmic Ray' warming theories?
and any comments on the new historic levels of CO2 graph by direct chemical measurements?
Shows higher levels 200 yrs ago than today's human fortified levels.
Some more CO2 science - Phoenix AZ - effects of the urban CO2 dome.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/u/summaries/phxurbanco2dome.php
As more and more wiggles matching the waxing and waning of the sun show up in records of past climate, researchers are grudgingly taking the sun seriously as a factor in climate change. They have included solar variability in their simulations of the past century's warming. And the sun seems to have played a pivotal role in triggering droughts and cold snaps.�
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