andrel wrote:
> On 30-6-2009 5:57, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> It's not like scientists haven't gone overboard making up projections 
>> before. See "Nuclear winter".
> 
> I might have missed it, but I think we haven't had a nuclear war yet to 
> test that one.

No, but Sagan and Feynman and the other scientists who talked about it have 
admitted they made the whole thing up.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> a écrit dans le message de 
news:4a4a38fd$1@news.povray.org...
> No, but Sagan and Feynman and the other scientists who talked about it 
> have admitted they made the whole thing up.

The WP page about nuclear winter seems to indicate that while the concept is 
debated it's still supported by contemporary research (what is under debate 
is how dramatic it would be, which is what one would expect from a 
mathematical model) and that the main critic was a guy writing survival 
books. Also, there's a paper here 
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html about the comments by 
Dyson, Feynman and others where the author re-interviewed them a few years 
later with interesting results. In a nutshell, just like creationism and 
global warming today, it seems that this was instrumentalised in the US for 
local political gain by the usual suspects, which is probably why these 
"controversies" don't seem to cross the Atlantic and Pacific (or lose 
considerable strength when they arrive on the other side).

G.

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> I think the problem is not so much the number of people burning stuff as
> it is the mining of carbon in the form of oil and coal that has been
> buried since before humanity arose. No matter how much wood you burn,
> the forests will turn it back into wood. But if you burn 100 forests
> worth of carbon, the one forest nearby will have trouble keeping up.
> 

Speaking of oil, buried under the oceans since before humanity arose, I
honestly think that humans have done nature a kind of favor with digging
it up slowly and letting the nature to keep up at least somehow. I mean,
the oil is generated under some kind of pressure and if humans wouldn't
pump it up, it would be freed by some clitch on the Earth oslt and most
probably a big amount of raw oil would spill into the ocean from the bottom.

-Aero

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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> tempuratures have actually gone "down" in the last few years! Sigh... 
> 
> Well, to be fair, on the other hand, a lot of the projections are huge 
> variations in the future. It's not like everyone is working with solid 
> data and some people are making things up.  Everyone's making up 
> projections, so even small variations in what's going on now can modify 
> tremendously the future.
> 
> It's not like scientists haven't gone overboard making up projections 
> before. See "Nuclear winter".
> 

Yeah, well. Projections tend to be, you know.. not accurate.. lol

In any case, the denialists in this case still have to explain the "dry 
region" changes from 15% of the planet to 40%, and a number of other 
factors, even if there was a "localized" trend for cooler weather. Heck, 
based on data and theory we do have, the last two ice ages where a 
result of disruptions in water flow in the oceans, in large part. I.e., 
if you disrupt the ability of warm water to shift north, and cold south, 
in the normal pattern, you get "no" warm water going north, and the ice 
formed thicker. Fix that, and it starts melting, until... well, you get 
another smaller disruption, (when the great lakes melted enough to dump 
into the ocean and cool the water by a huge margin again), whoops, 
mini-ice age, until it fixes itself again.

What they don't grasp is the bigger picture, and the fact that "short 
term" drastic shifts can happen, due to normal water/weather patterns 
being disrupted, leading to "pockets" of areas where the results get all 
screwed up from normal.

You even get the same thing "locally" when building cities. Doing so 
will either increase, or decrease, reflected heat, lowering or raising 
the air temperature over the buildings, and significantly altering the 
local rain fall and weather patterns. Maybe if where I live, in Lake 
Havasu, AZ, without all the buildings, it would only be 110 degrees, not 
120? Who knows, but the presence of buildings, and parking lots, changes 
what the "result" is over the city, so odds are, it has "some" effect. 
But, these people can't grasp the big picture, never mind grasp the 
"small" local ones.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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On 30-6-2009 18:10, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> much, much less. Simply because there were less people. 
> 
> I think the problem is not so much the number of people burning stuff as 
> it is the mining of carbon in the form of oil and coal that has been 
> buried since before humanity arose. No matter how much wood you burn, 
> the forests will turn it back into wood. But if you burn 100 forests 
> worth of carbon, the one forest nearby will have trouble keeping up.
> 
It is of course both the number of people and what they burn. My point 
was simply that if the number of people had not risen so much there is a 
good change that nature would have been able to accommodate burning of 
the limited amount of coal by these people. e.g. by sinking it in the 
ocean.

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On 30-6-2009 18:53, Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> a écrit dans le message de 
> news:4a4a38fd$1@news.povray.org...
>> No, but Sagan and Feynman and the other scientists who talked about it 
>> have admitted they made the whole thing up.

I never heard that story.

> The WP page about nuclear winter seems to indicate that while the 
> concept is debated it's still supported by contemporary research (what 
> is under debate is how dramatic it would be, which is what one would 
> expect from a mathematical model) and that the main critic was a guy 
> writing survival books. Also, there's a paper here 
> http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html about the 
> comments by Dyson, Feynman and others where the author re-interviewed 
> them a few years later with interesting results. In a nutshell, just 
> like creationism and global warming today, it seems that this was 
> instrumentalised in the US for local political gain by the usual 
> suspects, which is probably why these "controversies" don't seem to 
> cross the Atlantic and Pacific (or lose considerable strength when they 
> arrive on the other side).

but that may be because they didn't.
Here we also have that ugly beast of truth on the internet rearing it's 
head. Who can we believe?
Interesting story nevertheless.

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On 30-6-2009 13:40, John VanSickle wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> The evidence that we have had any significant effect on the planet's 
>>> climate is far from conclusive.
>>
>>   The significant increase in CO2 emissions by humans in the last 100
>> years and the significant increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere in
>> the last 100 years is certainly a heck of a coincidence.
> 
> Well, nobody's arguing against that.
> 
> What many people are arguing is that the evidence for catastrophic 
> anthropogenic global warming is far from conclusive, and that an 
> increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is actually beneficial overall. 
> These many people include thousands of scientists with bachelors, 
> masters, and doctorate degrees in climatology, computer science, 
> physics, chemistry, engineering, and biology.
> 
> The idea that there is a consensus among scientists on this issue is false.

There is a general consensus that there is anthropogenic global warming, 
  what is in discussion is whether it will be catastrophic. Some believe 
it definitely will be, some don't and a majority thinks that we should 
not take the risk. I have never heard a serious argument that it is 
beneficial, other than in the pub, but I am not living in the USA.

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>>>  The significant increase in CO2 emissions by humans in the last 100
>>> years and the significant increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere in
>>> the last 100 years is certainly a heck of a coincidence.
>>



>
> ...which would still mean that humans caused the rise of CO2...

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that CO2 will continue to climb,
it probably means that the CO2 levels will stabilize at the new
slightly higher levels. That's hardly something to panic about,
and it's not a very good reason to cripple the economy.
They'd get better results by paying poor 3rd world people
to plant trees, instead of trying to make it so you can breath
car exaust.

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> In any case, the denialists in this case still have to explain the "dry 
> region" changes from 15% of the planet to 40%, and a number of other 
> factors, even if there was a "localized" trend for cooler weather. 

Water vapor is a result of evaporation, and evaporation is
a result of heat, so cooler global temperatures means drier weather. 

Maybe if where you live, in Lake Havasu, AZ, without all the buildings, 
it would only be 110 degrees, instead of 70 degrees with the AC on.
:-)

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Invisible wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> Except climate... we f***ed that one up.
>> 
>> http://xkcd.com/603/
> 
> I don't think it has *ever* been the case that intelligent people had
> more children. (Quite the converse, actually.) Possibly more of them
> *survived*, but that's a different statement. ;-)

I remember my biology teacher saying it's ironic that protozoa (unicellular
life form), when lacking nutrients around them, produce some solid
substance around them and "hibernate" (that dissolves if they get back in
water), and if they have good amounts of nutrients around them, reproduce.
In contrast, poor humans have more children than rich humans. How does this
make sense, aren't humans supposed to be *smarter*?

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