Climate change. discuss/.

[Declan]

10 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

The real question is why some people need to believe that population growth makes everything impossible, even though that's not true (and fairly easy to show that it's not).  I suppose they just need to find an excuse to go on being self-indulgent like they have for the rest of their lives and blame someone else for the results (ditto).

It always seems to be old men that pedal the overpopulation trope. 

[Manximus Aururaneus]

9 minutes ago, Declan said:

It always seems to be old men that pedal the overpopulation trope. 

So a simple question from this old man Declan if I may?

Give me a simple figure, a ratio, devoid of opinion or comment. 

What percentage of current global warming is due to Mankind - and what percentage is due to natural causes / cycles? What is the ratio?

[Albert Tatlock]

1 hour ago, foxdaleliberationfront said:

There is no such thing as 'man made climate change' - the set of data that Climate Change Extremists use to promote their view is so tiny in the history of the planet that it's actually funny. 

The earth is 4.5 billion years old, they're using information from the early 1800's to today and most of the climate data pre-1940 is sketchy at best. 

 

Green technology is such a growth area because big industry has cottoned on to the fact they can sell green crap to gullible idiots with money to burn 

 

Yeah...easy mistake for 10,000 scientists to make that.

[BallaDoc]

4 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

So a simple question from this old man Declan if I may?

Give me a simple figure, a ratio, devoid of opinion or comment. 

What percentage of current global warming is due to Mankind - and what percentage is due to natural causes / cycles? What is the ratio?

Depends on your timescale.  Over the last billion years up to around 1700, I would say 100% of climate change was natural.  Since 1700, I would say 99% man made because of the way it has speeded up in a previously unprecedented way. 

[Manximus Aururaneus]

10 minutes ago, BallaDoc said:

Depends on your timescale.  Over the last billion years up to around 1700, I would say 100% of climate change was natural.  Since 1700, I would say 99% man made because of the way it has speeded up in a previously unprecedented way. 

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with that opinion because I do not know either.

My point is, if we are going to be asked for extra taxation, drastically changed lifestyles, and (perhaps) even to reduce our production of offspring - then at the very least we deserve facts upon which to make those very serious decisions.

I am simply asking for facts, not opinion, guilt, blame, hyperbole, or even tropes.

I have a scientific type background (I'm a Chartered Engineer) - When a problem presents, I like to commence the search for the solution with known facts (despite my age).

[Manximus Aururaneus]

29 minutes ago, Declan said:

It always seems to be old men that pedal the overpopulation trope. 

No Man - No Man Made Global Warming. 

No Trope.

[BallaDoc]

15 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

I am not agreeing or disagreeing with that opinion because I do not know either.

My point is, if we are going to be asked for extra taxation, drastically changed lifestyles, and (perhaps) even to reduce our production of offspring - then at the very least we deserve facts upon which to make those very serious decisions.

I am simply asking for facts, not opinion, guilt, blame, hyperbole, or even tropes.

I have a scientific type background (I'm a Chartered Engineer) - When a problem presents, I like to commence the search for the solution with known facts (despite my age).

Surely the difficulty here is that we are dealing with opinion and probability rather than provable facts?  If an engine is not working, you can usually establish the fact of why it's not working, whether it's a blocked fuel line, or a broken piston or something like that.  With climate change (or medicine) you are dealing with far more complex systems so the best you can say is that atmospheric CO2 has increased, global temperatures have increased in parallel, and the consensus of scientific opinion is that there is probably a causal link between them.   

[Max Power]

This all assumes that we live on a planet with a stable climate, we don't and never have. Most of the past 100,000 years was spent in an ice age, the past 10,000 years have been spent in a warming period, allowing us to develop farming, language, engineering and civilisation in general. Prior to this, we were just trying to stay alive!

[Donald Trumps]

Prof Curran's Climate Change Report is being debated in January Tynwald I think

Hope the President will allow proper time for the whole thing to be debated in detail

[Non-Believer]

36 minutes ago, Donald Trumps said:

Prof Curran's Climate Change Report is being debated in January Tynwald I think

Hope the President will allow proper time for the whole thing to be debated in detail

They'll debate it, shelve it and agree to a proposal that it needs another 24 CS on the job to gather more information. Reporting back in a year.

This is the next great PS employment opportunity.

I'd put money on it.

[Manximus Aururaneus]

1 hour ago, BallaDoc said:

Surely the difficulty here is that we are dealing with opinion and probability rather than provable facts?  If an engine is not working, you can usually establish the fact of why it's not working, whether it's a blocked fuel line, or a broken piston or something like that.  With climate change (or medicine) you are dealing with far more complex systems so the best you can say is that atmospheric CO2 has increased, global temperatures have increased in parallel, and the consensus of scientific opinion is that there is probably a causal link between them.   

Yes, you could say that. But I could just as easily reverse the example.

I could say that, with medicine, a dislocated shoulder could be diagnosed as easily as your broken piston example.

Likewise, you can make detailed scientific / engineering calculations as to the precise moment a nuclear reaction will result in criticality, super-criticality, self-sustaining etc. Then the issues start to get a little more difficult than a blocked fuel line like this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_factor_formula

Then, haven taken the above basics, you can re-calculate for the much more complicated real-world reactor taking into account short and long-term reactor poisoning, calculation of irradiation damage (ageing) to stainless pressure vessels and welds, reactor chemistry and physics results etc.etc. I spent decades doing so.

Einstein, Oppenheimer, Rutherford and the rest struggled to achieve the above - but they got there in the end. Calculations done at Bletchley park? Again they got there in the end. Both examples achieved amazingly accurate results based on 'Probability'.

The algorithms invented by the early nuclear engineers are the basis of the algorithms used today throughout the finance world (especially futures and options etc.).

To say that we must base the challenge of Global Warming on opinion (your first line) is clearly wrong.

But to say that we are dealing with 'probability' (again your first line) is exactly correct - but 'probability can be as amateur or as exact as you wish to make it - probability can get very very close to the truth IF you feed in the correct facts. Engineering is every bit as complicated as medicine. The human body may be super complicated, a fantastic organism, but our understanding of it is limited to the intelligence of doctors and scientists in the same way as the understanding of space, finance, engineering etc. is similarly limited. Global warming is no different.

To state that "The best you can say is that atmospheric CO2 has increased......" is just wrong.

That's all I'm asking for. Facts to feed in, in order to get the probabilities as accurate as possible. Then (and only then) we can formulate a plan. The blame game has achieved nothing and will continue with the same lack of success.

[Donald Trumps]

1 hour ago, Non-Believer said:

They'll debate it, shelve it and agree to a proposal that it needs another 24 CS on the job to gather more information. Reporting back in a year.

This is the next great PS employment opportunity.

I'd put money on it.

Well, yes & no

Common sense suggests it forms at least the basis for the next programme for government

Depends what resistance to change the 'we don't do change' members of Tynwald can put up

[WTF]

3 hours ago, Albert Tatlock said:

Yeah...easy mistake for 10,000 scientists to make that.

there are more than 10,000 people who believe in  god.

[NoTail]

4 minutes ago, WTF said:

there are more than 10,000 people who believe in  god.

Not so many scientists though

[Non-Believer]

14 minutes ago, Donald Trumps said:

Well, yes & no

Common sense suggests it forms at least the basis for the next programme for government

Depends what resistance to change the 'we don't do change' members of Tynwald can put up

There'll be little or no change countenanced or permitted IMHO. The groups who are currently comforted and cossetted will not wish to be impacted on and will see to it. Particularly if it's deference to mere environmental reasons.