Yeah I wouldn't brush that off if it was a weirdo in a trench coat.
Do men flash other men? I'd think that'd be a good way to get their ass kicked.
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The phrase was perfect but also saving like 10p or whatever to delay postage by a day is a very British thing to do. First class is for when you've left it until the last minute to send a birthday card or your passport application, everything else is second class.
In this day and age it's probably a hate crime to kick the shit out of a flasher. While it's very much illegal to expose yourself in public, naturists and nudists do so all the time without consequence. The difference of course is to those people it's a way of life, while the flasher is deliberately trying to provoke a reaction. It's difficult for law to distinguish between the two.
Let's put it this way. If you kick shit out of a nudist who offended your eyes, that's definitely going to land you in a lot of trouble. idk about a flasher, just so long as he can't viably use the nudist defence.
Goddamn wokey cokeys.
It's certainly illegal. The shit kicker might get some sympathy from a judge though if it's a clear case of flashing.
That said, my guess is the average flasher wouldn't be keen on talking to the police. "So let me get this straight Mr. Johnson, you went into the park wearing a trench coat with nothing underneath, and this guy just beat you up for no reason?"
Don't naturists and nudists have places to go, like nude beaches? I don't think someone can just decide "I'm a nudist so I'm gonna walk around the woods naked," and not face any consequences.
Just for the record, I'm not for kicking the shit out of anyone by default. I wouldn't kick a nudist and a flasher I would just report. Not everyone has my pacific demeanour though, I can easily see a flasher getting his ass kicked.
It's not so clear cut. Yes they have places that cater for their lifestyle, but walking around a woods naked isn't going to upset a judge quite like walking the streets of a town within sight of a school. The context of the offence is extremely important. It's still technically illegal to walk naked around woods but if you can demonstrate to a judge that it is indeed a lifestyle, and that should be fairly easy because you'll have a social history, and you can also show that you didn't reasonably anticipate children being present, then you'll at least get leniency (definitely not jail) and might even get away with it altogether because a judge might not see a moral problem. I don't see a moral problem with it. If I see someone naked (with no sexual context or weirdness) and that causes me alarm then I understand that's my problem. Nudity is natural.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
I've seen a big fat naked guy cycling around Brighton before, and I got the impression that wasn't a rare sight in that city.
It will happen regularly, and I have no sympathy for those who are doing it purely to cause distress for others. If a flasher exposes himself to someone's young daughter, chances are the father will want a word with him. I'd hope the judge shows some leniency, but that would depend on the restraint the father showed while hitting the flasher.Quote:
Not everyone has my pacific demeanour though, I can easily see a flasher getting his ass kicked.
Heyo!
Happy to be home again safe and sound.
So amazing to finally meet Beans and Ongie in person. London is too big and there's simply too much to see and learn outdoors in 3 days!! We didn't even go into any museums and it was exhausting to try to remember all we'd seen and learned each day.
A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe was fun. It was a modern take on Shakespeare. The jokes were cute. The costumes were great. The acting was ... well I'm no critic, but good enough to entertain me. All in all a great experience.
The long drives through the countryside were absolutely lovely. Though holy crap I feared for my life a couple times on those skinny fucking roads and the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car and the car is on the wrong side of me and the traffic is on the wrong side of the road. Harrowing to drive after sundown on the first day of driving. Sorry Ong. Thankfully, there was no additional charge on the rental for that hedge I ... caressed gently. :whistle: It got easier each day and I could keep to my own lane and navigate roundabouts fair enough by the 3rd day of driving.
We absolutely luckboxed on the weather. Wonderful partly cloudy skies the entire week aside from a couple minor drizzles to spot the pavements when we were in London. It was cool by my standards but warm by local's standards, so a lovely temperature, too. For reference it'll be 31 C in St Louis tomorrow.
Allison loved your little town, Ongie. She even said she wants to go back to see all the shops and stuff, so you must've made a good impression on her. I must say... watching the stars come out on that old bridge, with the sound of the water and the broken castle as a backdrop was certainly a highlight of the vacation. Sharing it with you and chatting like old friends is something I hope to never forget.
Can confirm that McDonalds Chicken McNuggets in the UK are superior to same in the US. Not even close.
Scotch egg is great. Maybe I just got one from a fancy place, though. The Blue Boar in London. There were hot towels in the bathroom and an attendant. Heh. Oops. Accidentally posh?
Cider is amazing. WTF America! Get on it.
UK vacation fail- Crumpets achieved: 0
Damn. Must go back for crumpets.
After we left Ongie-shir, we drove up to Barnoldswick, or Barlick as the locals call it, which was also beautiful. We toured Skipton Castle for a couple hours, then we did a canal boat tour before we walked around the shopping district for a while. We found the cutest little nerdy shops and picked up some gifts for our friends and family at home. Also a nice restaurant that just totally hit all of our desires in that moment on that spot. We even found a street vendor selling desserts afterward and it was just all so fantastic.
I even ran into Tom Scott of YouTube fame at the airport / car rental spot.
I recognized him as he walked casually in front of me while waiting for the shuttle to get us from the airport to the car rental lot. I greeted him and he looked at me with that look that means, "Oh dear god should I remember your name?" so I quickly assured him that I was simply a fan of his work and have been for years and all that. He very graciously and politely apologized for being terribly jet lagged and really couldn't maintain a conversation at the moment.
So I thanked him and politely turned back to Allison so as not to stare or anything. When the van (lorry?) came to pick us up, Tom was going to the same place, and politely volunteered to be the last to get in so as to be the 1 standing passenger. As I moved in front of him, he complimented my backpack, of which he had the same brand and style, maybe a couple years younger. What a nice chap.
So we get to the car lot, and everyone's getting their luggage and getting out of the van. I was in the back seat, so was last to leave.
Now... you see... there's a thing about the van that is rather important to my story from here. You see, this special van was modified for this specific purpose and had, inside the van, along the sliding door, about a 4 inch step down. It wasn't a very wide step, and I certainly noticed it upon entering the van, but alas...
So I pull my luggage off the rack and step back and there's no floor there. But like... 1/4 of my foot caught the top of the step... so I start slowly falling out of the van, but my hands are completely full... and in my panic I look for a direction to rapidly step down and out of the van before I actually lose my balance entirely and fall down.
Well to my right is the driver of the van, and to my left is Tom Scott. Obviously my brain said, "Do NOT fall on TOM SCOTT!!" and I simply announced to the driver, "I'm falling ... on you." and proceeded to thoroughly body-check the driver. Thankfully, he caught his balance and helped steady me and not even a scratch was delivered to flesh nor property.
But my pride took a hit.
Glad you had a good time Mojo and sorry I wasn't around to meet you. Next time I will show you poopshire!
I'm totally with you on the English countryside. So lush and varied, and so much prettier than the brown grassy prairies where I grew up. Also with you on the country roads being much narrower here. I've caressed many a hedge in my day (in fact I lost a side mirror once when I was suddenly confronted with a big truck coming the other way and ended up caressing a tree with my mirror).
We'll almost certainly return to the UK eventually. No fewer than 4 years, though.
We really loved just about everything about our week in England.
You certainly did luckbox into the weather, spring was dragging on and you pretty much flew into England just as we were beginning to transition into summer.
That place with the bridge and the weir, it's called Dinham (spoken like Dinnum) and was the original name for the castle and apparently an old name for the town of Ludlow, it translates to "the palace of princes" which I literally just discovered. Most tourists don't find that spot because it's down the winding steep roads, but you had the privilege of negotiating those lanes in a car instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by mojo
I'll say it now... there were times I was terrified in the passenger seat of the car. Your spacial awareness on your left was all out of synch, so you were coming real close to parked cars, walls and hedges when getting out of the way of oncoming traffic. Understandable of course, you're used to there being nothing to your left after a few feet. I'm glad that hedge scratch didn't cost you anything, presumably it was just twig residue that came off with a wipe? Anyway I'm sure you're a great driver on American roads and I'd be much less terrified! I'm glad you made it around the country in one piece!
It was a really nice few days, lovely to meet you after all these years and Allison is lovely too, I'd definitely like to meet up again if you're back in the UK.
btw it's grey and cooler now. I just had to close my window, and it's June tomorrow. That window, once I open it for summer it's usually open until late September. So yeah, good timing.
That takes guts to rent a car for the whole trip and drive around the country like that. I was pretty discombobulated the first time I drove here. Roundabouts were complete mindfucks. I'd have to stop at the entrance and think 'ok, who am I yielding to, where do I get off, and how am I gonna do that' before I went in just about every time until I got used to them.
And now when I go home, I get up the first morning and start driving on the left, until I see a car coming the other way, then I'm like 'oh yeah, this is the wrong side of the road here.' lol
Yeah it can't be easy at all. I don't drive but being in France last year there were multiple times I just glanced the wrong way when going to cross a busy intersection, each time I stopped and checked the other way but it was completely unnatural to me. Even if you can flip your mind so you're getting the roads right, remembering that you've got three quarters of a car to your left is still another unnatural thing to have to do. It's not so much that it's a lot to remember, it's more that it takes that split second to remember. It shows how crucial a split second can be when driving. We tickled a bush or two for sure, it's probably down to mojo's good driving rather than sheer luck that we didn't hit a wall or parked car.
btw I'd have been a great deal more terrified if I were driving. It was just the occasional moment and it was always getting out of someone's way, a split second decision that requires the conscious mind to overrule the subconscious in order to remember there's much more car on your left than you're used to.
Friend of mine came back to the UK from the Middle East a few months back and drove me to the North. I was shit up quite a few times as he drove very close to the left in the middle lane of the motorway. I've had Americans tell me I do the reverse when driving on the right in the US.
I've just come back from a few days in Paris. Took me a couple of days to adjust to the direction of traffic, then promptly nearly got run over looking the wrong way coming out of St Pancras. Also, fuck every cab driver that doesn't have a child seat (which is all of them). With the train strike yesterday, it was either 200 quid for a hotel or 80 quid for two tickets to my mum and dad's for the night on one of the only train companies operating, which is 80 miles from home.
Fortunately I live about as far as it gets in England from a motorway so we didn't have to venture out on one!
On behalf of my best friend who's a taxi driver, may I say fuck every entitled parent with sprogs that need special treatment.Quote:
Also, fuck every cab driver that doesn't have a child seat (which is all of them).
He does have a child seat in the boot though (he likes to imagine he's getting it out of the boot to make room for the kid, rather than for safety/comfort). Just one though, so if you've got a litter of sprogs you're out of luck.
I turned up for work at 10pm tonight only to find out it's not my shift. So now I'm primed for the night with fuck all to do. Poker it is then.
Your friend is rare for a taxi driver. It would have been an easy 150 quid for any of the taxi drivers sat around doing nothing on Weds (if they just had a child seat). It's pretty standard in Europe for taxis to have a child seat.
Sky Poker is still soft for anybody based in the UK. £10-£15 per hour is easily doable at 10nl and 20nl. 60% ROI at MTTs up to £11.
I've made quite a lot from SkyPoker over the years but it's not easy to get a roll going because it's so wild that variance is huge. It seems to attract British gamblers though, which is great. British people on average are pretty terrible at poker, especially those who bet on football.
Awww... I pressed some button and a whole long post just vanished.
Fuck.
Everything about driving in the UK was wrong. Where my eye line looks down the road was wrong. All the little things you take for granted that your peripheral vision directs when you glance away from the road were programmed wrong. Every time I wasn't consciously focusing on where my head should be above the road, it would drift off to the left... as my training puts my head on the left of center. That and other trivial things add up to a mentally exhausting experience.
Thankfully, it got easier each day. Sleeping would do wonders. Resetting the anxiety and allowing some deep learning to happen made each morning of driving feel much better than the prior day.
I was terrified driving, too. Especially the first day, which is when I first met up with you, Ong. Goddamn, the lanes are so skinny and the speed limits just insanely too high on twisty country roads. Not to mention the fact that in the towns, cars are always parked on the sidewalks on both sides of the streets, leaving barely a lane wide enough for a single car. It was harrowing.
To your credit, you never showed your fear while I was driving, and I can't thank you enough. I assure you, I was terrified as well, and if you or Allison were expressing your own feelings on it, it would have only added to my anxiety. Love you, man.
Roundabouts are starting to be a thing in the US, so I was quicker to get on board with them. We don't have multi-lane roundabouts in the US, really, AFAIK, so that was new. My major complaint about roundabouts is that while they are great for cars, they're shit for pedestrians. Trying to cross the street near a roundabout is hard. There's never a stop light to give pedestrians a chance to cross. Eventually, you just pick a time and run, and the cars don't even slow down for you. Sheesh.
Well the last thing you want is a panicked passenger, that's just an added stress and distraction. And I had faith that you would get more used to our roads, which you did.Quote:
Originally Posted by mojo
Yeah they tend to have pedestrian lights maybe 50 yards down the road. Busy roundabouts are pretty much a no-go area for pedestrians, while single lane ones with not much traffic are much easier to cross when you're naturally checking for cars in the right directions. Cars will slow down if they are forced to, they are legally required to and people in cars don't tend to like hitting people who are walking because it's extremely inconvenient. But sometimes it does kinda feel like you're playing Frogger.Quote:
My major complaint about roundabouts is that while they are great for cars, they're shit for pedestrians.
One thing I simply have to share:
The Olympics museum in Lausanne is worth the entire trip to Switzerland. I don't even really like sports. I'm no good at them, and I don't follow any sports teams or anything. The entire suggestion to go to the Olympic Museum felt like a big WTF to me.
So it's no light comment coming from me that this museum is the best I've ever seen. It could have been about the history of bread and I'd be this excited about it. The museum itself was perfect. The layout, the pace, the visuals, the interactivity, every bit flowed perfectly into the next. I didn't realize at the time how much about the museum was just perfectly intuitive until a couple days later when I was reflecting on the experience and comparing notes with my partner.
She noticed a lot of little things I'd missed... like the fact that there were appropriately located seating locations that were themselves interactive exhibits. They literally gave you reasons and excuses to sit down for a bit and rest your feet... all so subtly that it didn't feel like a rest, but just a continuous part of the exploration.
And it did feel like an exploration... the rooms were just big enough to spend a good 15 - 20 minutes in to explore all the things... but the rooms were also arranged in a linear manner such that you, as if by accident, did all the things in the museum without ever having to backtrack to choose a different branching path. There was only 1 real path through the museum, but it was meandering and casual while fully informative and often inspiring stories were there to be taken in.
Truly a masterpiece and prime example of how a museum should be organized and built. It was definitely an experience to have that thrilled me in many unexpected ways.
Def. put this on your bucket list, IMO. The local area in walking distance of the museum is lovely. Lakeside walks with the Alps in the background with restaurants and shops along the street facing the lake. People and families were out everywhere, with picnic blankets and little picnic games going on. Boats out on the lake showing people enjoying themselves out there as well. All in all a lovely place to spend a half day or more.
Damn. I just watch these and think "why would you go that?" I get that whole 'some is good so lots is better' logic, but really you just have to be a retard to go OTT like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiBpKuTrFrw&t=409s
I'm going to Chicago Cubs against St Louis Cardinals in London on Saturday. Apparently there will be Chicago- and St Louis-style food available. @Monkey - what is that likely to be please? Just figuring out if I should eat that or get some street food somewhere else
Heh. I heard about that.
St Louis style pizza is not good. The crust is a thin cracker, and the cheese is fake processed cheese that tastes like processed cheese. Thankfully, it's cut in small squares instead normal pie wedges, so if you have the chance to try just one slice for the experience, maybe go for it.
Chicago style pizza is good. Chicago pizza is a very deep dish pizza that's going to be a few cm tall and plenty of sauce and toppings. It's a lot more food than your average pizza. Like 2 slices is a full meal. Worth trying.
Actually good St Louis foods:
Toasted Ravioli is breaded ravioli, either baked or fried. Served with marinara dipping sauce. It's great. Try it unless you hate ravioli.
St Louis style ribs are dry rubbed for seasoning, and served dry. You're expected to add BBQ sauce, but to each their own. The meat should be so tender and juicy it slides right off the bones and just melts in your mouth. If you like pork, try these.
Gooey Butter Cake absolutely lives up to its name. It's a soft gooey cake that is very sweet with a strong buttery flavor.
Frozen Custard is like a cross between ice cream and crème brûlée. Delicious and very popular on a hot summer day. Served in any way you'd serve ice cream.
Typical stadium foods include nachos, hot dogs, hamburgers, beer, soda, water, ice cream, candies.
Stadium food is expected to be unhealthy and overpriced and if it tastes good, that's more a perk than the expectation.
Wow, that's way more than I was expecting and it definitely had me salivating. Thanks!
I could do that problem but why would I?
Replace the cats with dogs and I'd consider it.
It all cancels out, the answer is zero.
They're saying warmest June on record for UK, which really doesn't do much to quell my skepticism. It's been nice but record breaking? Really? That seemed like a slightly above average June to me. And that comes off the back of a cool spring, so it should feel warmer than it is. It's also pretty fresh out there right now, certainly not high summer.
1995 was hotter, I'm sure of it. That was a relentless summer, May to September, pretty much constant blue skies. Maybe that felt warmer than it was because it was constantly sunny but that summer still sets the bar for me, save for the 4-day heatwaves we occasionally get giving us brutal heat.
Yeah, why trust experts with things they're experts on? Someone on facebook said the ice sheets are actually getting bigger, I'm going with that.
Checks calendar.
I guess you could look it up but that would require giving credence to scientific data rather than an Ongometer.
I wasn't here in 1995, but I don't remember too many 30+ degree days in June in past years. Usually it's July or August before it gets that hot.
I've know 30 degrees in May, though it's very unusual. It's not so unusual in June to be jaw dropping though. And did we even have any 30 degree days this June? Feels like we maxed out at around 30, which is completely normal for a nice June. The UK record temperature for June is 35.6 degrees, we were definitely nowhere near that last month.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
The record that we've apparently broken is the overall day/night average, at 15.6, up from 14.9. I'm going to suggest one possible explanation for that is urban heat islands. Cities and towns are bigger now than they used to be, with many more people and cars. I really don't know how much this could impact nationwide averages, that's going to depend on where the averages are taken from. I mean, if we have ten night time urban measurements for every one rural, that's going to skew the numbers isn't it? More so if we had 5:1 in the past. I'm pulling number out of my arse here obviously but it's something to consider.
btw, 1995 is the third hottest summer (daily average) on record for the UK, behind 1976 and 1826. August '95 was the hottest on record. June 28-30th that year was very hot, at 33.8 max. The summer max that year was 35.2 in August. It was a significant enough summer to warrant its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_B...sles_heat_wave
Also the idea that the nights are so much warmer than average as to make the day/night average record breaking is weird, seeing as I've had my window closed most of the month. Usually I open it in May and leave it open until September. Not this year.
I'm out in the countryside, in the coldest county in England/Wales by record. So maybe that is also clouding my judgement. Maybe it actually has been cooler here by night than it has been elsewhere.
It is worth noting that not all averages are equal. There are many different ways to get an "average" and they can be wildly different from one another. One way to get a really bad average is the way I described... take ten urban measurements for one rural measurement and take the mean. If the urban measurement is the lowest of them all, then this really is stretching what we understand when we think of an "average". Most people assume the mean is the "best" average but that isn't necessarily the case.
I don't know what average they're using for June, nor do I know that it's the same average used for previous Junes. I don't see how it can be precisely the same average, seeing as measurements are taken from a large (and probably growing) number of locations, most of which don't remain fixed over long periods of time. And measurements likely become more accurate over time. So how can we reply on it to actually tell us anything factual?
It's like you think the meteorologists, the trained scientists who do this for a living, never thought of these things.
I'm pretty sure they take a range of temperatures from literally hundreds of weather stations around the country. None of these are sitting in a place that would obviously be affected by human activity, like the top of a chimney. They are surely balanced between urban and rural locations, for any measurements across years to be valid.
The idea that there's noise in the measurements also seems off to me. They're pretty precise instruments, thermometers. You have some mercury in a tube - when it gets hotter it expands and goes up the tube. Been around a very long time. It's not like in 1985 they measured temperature by having some guy sticking his finger in the air and then writing down how hot it felt.
My point is, they just say "average" and everyone thinks that we're talking about directly comparable values. We're not.
If we take the extremes, let's say I take 100 measurements on some random day in June 2022... 9 in Antarctica and 1 in the Sahara desert, and conclude the average global temperature is -35 degrees for that day. Then same date next year I take 9 in the Sahara and 1 in Antarctica and conclude the average global temperature is 40 degrees. There's some serious global warming. Obviously this is nonsense but it's a fair use of the word "average" given the information. So how do we improve? More measurements in more locations. But we can't measure everywhere all the time.
Measuring the average temperature is rather like measuring a coastline. There's a fractal nature, and it's constantly changing.
This is an excellent way of saying you don't understand what an urban heat island is.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
Do you think the thermometers of 1850 had the same accuracy as the ones we have today? They're pretty damn accurate now, certainly the top grade equipment, but can you say that the records of the 1800s and 1900s are as reliable as today's? If you don't have the same confidence in the accuracy of historical records, then how can you make direct comparisons and draw apocalyptic conclusions from them?Quote:
The idea that there's noise in the measurements also seems off to me. They're pretty precise instruments, thermometers.
fyp
Yeah, that's not what they do though is it. They're perfectly aware of this problem and actively take steps to avoid it.
I do know what an urban heat island is. I just give scientists credit for knowing it too, and factoring that into their calculations of average temperature. You, OTOH, seem to think they're too stupid to do that. Or maybe you think every meteorologist and climate scientist in the world is in the pocket of Big Wind.
When 99% of experts agree on something, it's probably true.
If you don't believe that, ask the 1% of economic experts who were advising Liz Truss to lower taxes and have unfunded spending how that worked out.
The proper question to ask is whether they had a systematic bias one way or the other (either to overestimate or underestimate temperature). This is why people who don't understand measurement error and statistics shouldn't be deciding what matters in measurement and what doesn't.
I don't doubt they have gotten more accurate over 150 years, my point is that:
1) that improvement in accuracy is miniscule; and
2) any noise in measurement was random and did not affect average temp calculations.
I have confidence that the millions of measurements made between 1850 and now, on average, show an increase in global temperature, and that this increase is real, yes.
There's no simple way to measure the averages, and no single party doing the measurements. For the UK there's the Met Office, but also NASA, NOAA and I'm sure a bunch of others using their own measuring stations and methods. All of these tend to align nicely. I' m sure all of them even say exactly where the measurements are made, by whst methods and how the averages are calculated. But I admit googling those'd be far less fun than assuming global conspiracies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
Fair. Apart from the fact you're slamming down the word "scientists" like that's who I'm suspicious of.
The scientists takes the measurements, and analyses the data. The scientist doesn't choose how to interpret that data in the public domain. That's the realm of media and those who influence them. We're stepping away from the world of science and into politics. That's where my distrust is. I don't doubt that the vast majority of scientists go about their business with the utmost integrity. But it's not them writing articles that people read. The scientists write papers, which are presumably unbiased, with perhaps presumed or proven conclusions, with a proper approach to caveats and limitations in the approach. Nobody reads papers, people read media articles.
So at the very least, please don't assume I'm taking a massive shit on scientists when I show political skepticism.
The problem you seem to have poop is that "science" is basically an authority to you. Science can be wrong, and the data can be massaged by those who have an agenda, without a single scientist ever doing anything willfully deceptive. So science is not an authority. Mathematics is an authority. You can present maths to stupid people in an attempt to massage the data, but it's like computer code, the information is there. Science isn't code. Science is attempting to understand the code.
Ok, so you've gone from "I don't believe in global warming because the measurements are suspect," to "I don't believe it because the political interpretation of the measurements are suspect."
If you had just started with the latter, I'd say fine. Except for the fact that politicians have been very reluctant to do anything meaningful about climate change, so it's more like they're resisting the claims of scientists than anything. There might be a few climate-change deniers among politicians, but more typically they accept it's happening but either make excuses for why we can't do more about it, or pretend they are doing something about it, but it's for some reason taking a century instead of a decade or two.
For example, electric cars have been around for a long time, we could easily all be driving them by now, but we're still mostly driving around in petrol cars belching noxious fumes into the atmosphere. We could all easily be heating our homes with solar, wind, thermal, hydro, etc.. energy but instead we're mostly using gas. Who benefits from this?
So it's hard to follow your argument because I'm not sure where you're going with it, or where it ends up.
No, this is simply your interpretation. Skepticism and denial are synonyms to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
I'm showing doubt. That's not the same as saying I believe it's a hoax.
They do a lot of talking.Quote:
Except for the fact that politicians have been very reluctant to do anything meaningful about climate change
Let's assume it's real, that we're in a man made warming phase. And for clarity I can see how humans can have the influence, not just with emissions but with deforestation. The idea we're having this effect is not as ludicrous as the idea that a massive building will fall at near freefall speed when hit from the top by a single plane. I digress.
To actually take action against climate change is to nerf the economy. It's really that simple. That's a huge political problem. You don't want to be seen to be not doing anything, nor do you want to be the person initiating policy that will cause the standard of living for people to decline. So they do a lot of talking without doing anything. They can easily blame China and India while making nominal cuts to emissions, and hope to still get votes. Democracy is a bitch sometimes, it can have the effect of politicians becoming spineless and bowing to misinformed public pressure.
Maybe they're too expensive for people to readily invest in. And they're not as green as they like us to think. For a start, mining and processing those rare earth materials is intensive.Quote:
For example, electric cars have been around for a long time
Could we though? We get nearly 20% of our total energy from wind, but when it's not windy enough we use gas. Solar technology isn't where we hoped it would be by now. The UK is not particularly geothermically active, and hydro is a huge engineering project that turns large parts of the countryside into lakes and disrupts nature, and isn't particularly appropriate for a small island with generally small rivers. Hydro currently accounts for 2.8%, I'd be surprised if we can significantly improve on that.Quote:
We could all easily be heating our homes with solar, wind, thermal, hydro, etc.. energy but instead we're mostly using gas. Who benefits from this?
Wind is probably the most promising, but it's not reliable enough to solve our dependency on alternatives. Nuclear isn't very popular for obvious reasons, and is potentially more environmentally harmful than gas.
And all this is all very well and good but like I mentioned earlier, there's China and India, who are the two nations on the planet capable of actually making a difference. We can't influence their policies. A convenient scapegoat for the politicians.
On top of all this, oil and gas is huge business and the people with a vested interest in these sectors are wealthy and powerful enough to influence global geopolitical policy.
There are too many factors working against a fully renewable future, at least in the immediate future.
Reductio ad Ongo.
The problem is all the reasons you provide for your skepticism. None of them are valid so far (which was the point of my previous post), mostly revolving around non-issues like measurement error and some imaginary morally corrupt tree-huggers spinning the facts, but let's see how it develops...
And yet they have no problem with nerfing the economy as long as banks and other investors can make a huge profit from it. Or damaging it for some pointless war.
Not addressing climate change is likely going to nerf the economy a lot more in the long term than building some electric cars and substituting clean energy for oil.
The problem as I see it is short-termism. There is almost certainly a long-term gain to be had by saving the environment, but if it causes short-term pain, then it's harder to do if you're trying to win elections.
If you want a fun read try Jared Diamond's "Collapse." He explains how overexploitation of natural resources and not adapting to changing conditions has caused several societies over the years to implode. The implication is we're not immune to the same thing happening on a global scale.
As who likes us to think?
Maybe, but mining and processing oil and gas is also a dirty operation, never mind the damage that happens when you oxidize them.
Every one of these problems could be solved if countries invested money and ingenuity in it. Wind is largely an issue of storage, for example. Solve that and wind alone could run the world.
There's ways to pressure rogue countries to get on board. Economic sanctions, for example. Diplomatic pressure. Of course, it assumes the countries doing the pressuring are themselves on board.
Well yeah, ldo.
That's the kind of fatalism that inspires people.
I believe it was Churchill who said "We could try to fight them on the beaches, but then we'd also have to fight them on the landing grounds, in the skies, and on the seas. I mean mates, it would really be a bitch. Also, we left a lot of our war stuff at Dunkirk and would need to make some more. And we haven't trained that many troops so would need to do that, and shit they got submarines that are going to attack our shipping. So screw that everyone, we'll forever surrender!"
Basically I see you've gone from skepticism based on nothing, to just saying well even if it is real we can't do anything about it, so it doesn't matter what I believe.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/d...uction-per-twh
If by obvious reasons against nuclear you mean scaremongering and misunderstandings, yes. Nuclear is the way.
You most certainly give the impression that you can't see a distinction between skepticism and denial. Maybe skepticism to you is to just think "that's weird" but not say anything. Is the act of speaking out what makes it denial?Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
The reason I'm skeptical is because climate change is so politically driven, it's presented in the media as "you must think this" and "you're stupid if you disagree", "99% of scientists agree", "you're a right wing nutter if you don't agree", it's a massive appeal to the authority of science without there appearing to be a proper scientific approach to this mater, at least in the public domain. I mean, stuff like "heatwaves are twice as likely due to climate change", that's not science, that's someone pulling a number out of their arse and using it in media articles to influence the way people think. It's politics.
Yeah well the economy might not be as strong as it could be if it weren't for political incompetence and/or corruption, that's a whole different story, but I'm not talking about nerfing in the sense of making people a little bit poorer but still managing to keep the country at a relatively high standard. I'm talking about a serious decline in the standard of living. That's what happens if we completely abandon oil and gas too soon. Unfortunately oil is the prime reason we have a high standard of living.Quote:
And yet they have no problem with nerfing the economy as long as banks and other investors can make a huge profit from it. Or damaging it for some pointless war.
That's a matter of opinion. The single most important thing in an economy is energy. It's not like cars are the biggest energy demand humans have. Nowhere near. So even if we went fully electric, it's a drop in the ocean and might not even be reducing our carbon footprint because making a car uses a great deal more energy than running it, and electric cars use rarer materials.Quote:
Not addressing climate change is likely going to nerf the economy a lot more in the long term than building some electric cars and substituting clean energy for oil.
Nobody has the power to "save the environment". No political party does either. You can be seen to be on the right side of history, that's a powerful motivator for some, but politicians are generally mostly motivated by votes. And if people won't vote for a politician who will actually screw over businesses and people in order to "save the environment", then is it really fair to blame the politician for inaction? Blame the people for not wanting to live in the third world. It's not even important if that's what really happens, people just need to think it happens, to be afraid of a much lower standard of living, and they'll vote for people who will keep that standard of living acceptable.Quote:
There is almost certainly a long-term gain to be had by saving the environment...
Those who sell them, and those who want to present them as a cure to our carbon problems.Quote:
As who likes us to think?
Trading your car in for another one that uses a different fuel isn't that great of a solution. Better would be to use public transport. If you're going to push for massive social change, why not just go for a modern public transport system that is significantly cheaper for the commuter than using a car, and ban all cars from the roads in the cities? Replacing cars with more cars seems wasteful.
True, both industries are filthy as fuck. But it's important to be aware of the carbon footprint of production. How much of an impact do we actually have by not using petrol at the very end of the process?Quote:
Maybe, but mining and processing oil and gas is also a dirty operation, never mind the damage that happens when you oxidize them.
One figure I found which is interesting is electric cars are thought be to 25% cleaner than petrol/diesel in Poland, which uses a lot of coal for its energy, so that's assumed to be the poorest western performer. Up to 75% in the UK, since we use so much wind. That's great. But how does that compare to not replacing your car and just keeping your old one? By changing car you're increasing the demand for more cars.
Maybe, but if all of our energy comes from wind, won't this have an impact on the climate? We're literally taking energy directly out of the atmosphere.Quote:
Every one of these problems could be solved if countries invested money and ingenuity in it. Wind is largely an issue of storage, for example. Solve that and wind alone could run the world.
Direct solar energy seems the most promising, from an environmental pov. You're using energy that would either be absorbed by the ground or reflected back into space.
This only works if the country issuing the sanctions is a powerful global financial player. The USA very much is, and has been for a century or so, which is why sanctions have had an impact on policy making around the world, but that tide is turning I'm afraid. USA is no longer the dominant financial power it was. USA sanctioning China will have around the same impact as China sanctioning USA. So there's not really any point in USA doing it other than for show.Quote:
There's ways to pressure rogue countries to get on board. Economic sanctions, for example.
So not only do you have an issue with skepticism, you don't like realism either? You prefer deluded optimism and angry outrage at those who don't get on board?Quote:
Basically I see you've gone from skepticism based on nothing, to just saying well even if it is real we can't do anything about it, so it doesn't matter what I believe.
Oh and hydro is hugely problematic and not a solution I see as viable, not for the planet in general. Not only is the terraforming a problem, with the potential for dam breaches (deliberate or accidental), but it's a geopolitical issue too. Egypt and Ethiopia will likely soon go to war over the latter's hydro projects that is affecting agriculture in Egypt. China have numerous dams on rivers that flow into other countries, giving them massive geopolitical leverage.
It might work for small countries like Iceland that don't have such geopolitical concerns, but even there you get Bjork's mum (true story) protesting at the environmental damage these projects cause.
What's annoying about this is that instead of going to the trouble of finding out even some portion of the truth yourself, you're just taking the lazy option of being a "skeptic", remaining agnostic, and expecting us to respect that as an equally credible position to people who've spent a lifetime researching the topic.
It would be different if you'd read the peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, then listened to the media reports, and only then come to the conclusion that the facts are being misrepresented.
There are climate scientists all over the world saying the same thing. There's literally tens of thousands of scientific papers written on it, by qualified scientists, in respected journals. Objective temperature data confirms it. I don't know what else you want.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=global+warming
notsureifsrs.jpg
You're into physics, right? Do you understand how much energy exists on this planet just in the form of wind alone? Do you understand how hugely this dwarfs human consumption?
Now taking energy out of the environment is ok. Glad you turned around on that.
See above. My issue is with using skepticism to justify not having a willingness to learn anything on your own.
You sound like the guy who sees a sign saying "weak bridge, limit 12t," ponders whether the engineers are being politically manipulated by Big Bridge, and so figures ergo, we should drive a 16t truck over it.
This is funny. Do you know how much the atmosphere dwarfs human emissions? Yet you're arguing, rightly so, that there are serious concerns about the impact on climate. Seemingly negligible effects add up over time.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
If all human energy came from wind power, and we assume that energy demands increase over time, then yes I can see a world where this becomes a problem, disrupting established wind currents, resulting in man made regions of high atmospheric pressure where massive wind farms slow down air.
It's not quite on the scale of tidal energy, which takes energy from (mostly) the earth-moon system and results in a very very gradual slowing down of the earth's rotation. I think the sun goes supernova before we lose a minute in the day, or something absurd like that. But considering wind doesn't have an effect on the rotation of the earth, I think it's fair to say the earth's inertia is many many orders of magnitude more massive than the total wind energy in the system.
We naively thought we couldn't do any harm by burning coal. How can you be sure you're not making the same mistake here?
You must be trolling me here. I can't believe you're not capable of understanding the difference.Quote:
Now taking energy out of the environment is ok. Glad you turned around on that.
If you're serious, it's your physics that's lacking.
Using sunlight is not the same as using wind, in terms of how the useful energy is taken, and then turned into useless energy.
With wind, you're taking kinetic energy out of the atmosphere and turning it into heat, well actually infra red light but same thing in this context. With sunlight you're taking solar energy directly from space and turning that into heat, which is radiating it back out into space.
The total amount of sunlight that arrives on earth is almost precisely equal to the amount of blackbody radiation the earth emits into space. It must be otherwise our climate problems would be a great deal more serious. Sunlight is low entropy useful energy. Blackbody radiation is high entropy useless energy, it's low frequency infra red light and is basically heat, in the context that heat is energy spreading out. You can take more energy out of it if you increase its wavelength further (spread the energy out further) but ultra-violet light (thank you the sun) has much lower entropy because it's much more useful, the energy is not nearly as spread out.
Solar energy is as good as it gets on paper. You're using energy that was coming anyway and was being radiated out anyway. All you're doing is changing the process without ever changing the balance of energy in the earth's system. Of course taking wind energy also doesn't change that overall balance, but none of the energy returned to the system is wind energy, it's heat. So slowing down wind warms the atmosphere slightly and reduces it's kinetic energy slightly. Using direct sunlight takes a photon of high frequency and returns it into space at a lower frequency, which is also heating up the atmosphere but only by as much as the ground absorbing it would have done. If we didn't take the wind out of the system, it would have remained wind until it hit a mountain or something. Those mountains aren't going anywhere, so we're just adding to that heat by using wind energy.
This added atmospheric warming caused by win will be tiny, gradual, but constant. It becomes a problem eventually, whether it's 100 years or a million.
btw the whole "greenhouse effect" propaganda isn't mentioned these days, largely because it doesn't stand up against basic science. The warmer the planet gets, the more it radiates heat into space. It's a self balancing process that can be disrupted (see Venus) but always finds an equilibrium. And the fact we aren't going full Venus is pretty strong evidence that there is no such greenhouse effect. We're at equilibrium, and any change in that will be very, very noticeable.
Another btw... you can feel the impact that slowing down wind does if you do the exact opposite. When you're hot, turn the fan on. You're creating wind and it cools you down. Magic. That's because moving air has a lower pressure than still air, which allows the gas to expand, which results in cooling. Also it replaces higher humidity air with lower humidity air, allowing for sweat to evaporate and cool you down, but that's a bonus. You can feel that, it's not negligible to you in your immediate vicinity. Now do the reverse, multiplied by all of human energy, and ask if that atmospheric warming is really all that negligible.
This is like arguing with a five year old.
The CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are a result of BURNING hydrocarbons. That is changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. We have burned billions of tons of hydrocarbons over the last two centuries. There's now literally 30% more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was 100 years ago, or has been in the last million years.
Taking some microscopic proportion of the total amount of energy in wind (which is already in the atmosphere) and returning it to the atmosphere in different ways would have a negligible effect on the atmosphere. Fundamentally zero.
There's currently 11,000 windmill turbines in the UK right now. Its supplying what, 20% of our energy, so 55,000 would supply 100%. Double that and it's 110,000 spread out over the UK and nearby oceans. Hell, let's make it 10 x even that just for fun, so 1 million windmills. That's more windmills than we would ever need. Let's also ignore offshore wind just to make the math easier.
The UK is 245,000 square km, so that's 4 windmills per square km, again ignoring offshore wind farms. And you're trying to say that would disrupt worldwide wind currents. lol, just lol.
The word "slightly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It would not be enough to even be picked up on any instrument we have now, never mind make a difference to how the wind currents operate.
The equilibrium point is determined by the amount of heat that is being trapped by greenhouse gases. Venus is in equilibrium, but only because it's so fucking hot now it can't hold any more heat.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/overview/
Quote:
Venus has a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and it’s perpetually shrouded in thick, yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid that trap heat, causing a runaway greenhouse effect.
Does this look like equilibrium to you?
https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...al-temperature
https://www.climate.gov/sites/defaul...?itok=JBME0itq
You're making up science here.
A fan works by moving the hot air near the surface of your skin away from you and replacing it with cooler air, which allows you to lose more heat. It has nothing to do with low pressure/high pressure. Moving air doesn't cool it down.
This is loaded with assumptions, which makes your argument precisely as strong as mine. This isn't a scientific debate is it? It's philosophy and politics.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
How much is our current global energy consumption per year? How much do we anticipate that will increase over time? How long before these microscopic proportions add up to something that isn't negligible? It's not fundamentally zero. That's a huge assumption and equally as naive as someone burning a tyre saying they're doing no individual harm.
Show me the study that has taken into account the reduction of kinetic energy in the atmosphere and the increase in heat, that has given numbers that indicate it is fundamentally zero.
Yeah let's ignore the largest farms that will be integral to future wind exploration and situated over sea, which has less natural impact on wind than land.Quote:
Let's also ignore offshore wind just to make the math easier.
Offshore wind farms will be where the problem will be. That's where the stubborn man made regions of high pressure will be. Consider the warming and cooling of the Pacific that causes El Nino and La Nina cycles. The atmosphere is a fluid in a state kinetic equilibrium. If you disrupt that fluid's kinetic energy, a new equilibrium is found. It doesn't have to be gargantuan amounts of energy to do this. Consider that you can disrupt the flow of water just by sticking your finger in it. That can cause eddies that weren't there before. It's really very easy to disrupt a fluid.
And your numbers are making one large assumption - that energy demands remain static over time. They don't. History shows us a rapidly increasing demand for energy as technology and populations develop.
The fascinating thing about your arguments is they have a shred of prima facie plausibility, which shows you're intelligent enough to string words together to make sentences that might sound reasonable to a person who doesn't know anything about anything.
You also manage to project the same amount of confidence when you're talking complete bollocks as when you're stating a simple truth. Its quite impressive in a way.
Turns out there's actual scientific study relating to this very matter.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...4243511830446X
Happy reading.
Here's a teaser...
One more...Quote:
Summary
We find that generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TWe) with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24°C.
Those numbers are links to sources.Quote:
Observations show that wind turbines alter local climate,1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and models show local- to global-scale climate changes from the large-scale extraction of wind power.11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Yes, it's very very close to equilibrium. That's a 1.5 degree fluctuation you're getting all moist over.Quote:
Originally Posted by poop
Yeah the 1.5C only means more frequent extreme heat waves, droughts, storms, flooding, sea level rise of a couple meters in the next couple hundred years. Ocean acidity will rise so byebye 70-90% of the rest of the coral reefs. Those are hardly anything to get moist over. 2C will be a lot worse, and we're heading towards 2.5'ish at the minimum right now unless things change.
I'm suprised and stand corrected that there's no impact from wind farms on temperature.
At the same time, I notice that from the article you cherry-picked your points for maximum effect, doing the very same thing you accuse the "other" side of doing.
An important summary of their research is this:
True, solar is even better. But that's not a reason in an of itself to not replace fossil fuels with wind, where solar is not practical for whatever reasons.Quote:
Wind beats fossil fuels under any reasonable measure of long-term environmental impacts per unit of energy generated.
Also worth noting that the increase in temperature from wind farms is due to a convection effect where the warmer air is circulated back towards the ground, mostly at night. Certainly that would affect things on the ground, where most living things are, but it's a one-off increase that doesn't have the runaway feedback loop effect that burning fossil fuels does.
It's not that they're generating heat that will make the atmosphere as a whole hotter over time, it's that they're moving heat from an upper air level to the surface. So you would want to be careful not to put wind farms in places where this would cause a problem, like the antarctic for example.
Glad you finally looked at some real science though Ong.
Well done for chiming in with irrelevance. The point of poop showing that was an attempt to demonstrate we're going full Venus by suggesting what we have is not thermal equilibrium.
Poop showed evidence of man made climate change, not man made or natural planetary runaway greenhouse effects.
You really do give the impression sometimes that you have no interest in actually thinking about what we're talking about and instead just reply with something like this.
I never said it was a "big problem", I'm suggesting it's something we have to think about, which you've then run away and assumed I'm shitting my pants over it.
1.5 degrees is a lot when it comes to the natural climate balance, and so is 0.24 degrees. It's next to nothing when we talk about a disrupted thermal equilibrium such as Venus. You're deliberately conflating the two different scenarios just so you can mock my argument, which turns out to have merit, rather than having a discussion about something that's actually quite interesting, at least to me.
And you're even presenting my argument as though I'm trying to say wind is as bad as oil. Obviously it's not. I really shouldn't need to say "oh they do point out that wind is still pretty clean" which I never once disputed, because it's obvious and I never disputed it.
I might as well just wall quote the entire article right so I'm not cherry picking?
You're incredibly insincere when you want to be.
You're changing my argument to something you want to argue against.Quote:
True, solar is even better. But that's not a reason in an of itself to not replace fossil fuels with wind, where solar is not practical for whatever reasons.
I started off suggesting that using wind for our entire energy needs might have a climatic impact, which you roundly mocked for a few days until I showed that it's actual science, and now you're trying to argue that I was suggesting we shouldn't use wind. Insincere.
I can assure you that slowing down wind increases the pressure, and therefore temperature, of the air mass. I'm really not sure how much of a problem this is, all I ever tried to do was talk about it. Wind farms most certainly generate heat, if they didn't they would be 100% efficient and we wouldn't really have a problem with fossil fuel dependency. And wind farms generate direct heat by slowing down air. If you compress air, you warm it up. Slowing down wind is to compress it.
It should be obvious that wind farms generate heat. They work by taking advantage of the collisions between air molecules and turbine blades. The air collides with the blade, and imparts energy onto the blade, causing it to move. Due to the geometry of the blades, this motion is nearly all rotational, and the turbine rotates. Magic.
You can warm up an object by dropping it, picking it up, and doing this over and over again. ActionLab did exactly this. It's the impact with the ground that does it. That's what's happening to literally every single molecule that slams into the turbine blades.
The very reason compressed air heats up is because you increase the number of collisions between molecules. What's happening is that you had two particles that were moving at x and y velocity, and after the collision the difference between x and y is less than it was. The average velocity of them both remains constant, but the difference does not, it is less. That's heat. No energy is lost, it's just transferred in such a way as to make it harder to transfer more energy. It's spreading out, seeking the average. More collisions in an air mass means a greater tendency to thermal average.
So yes, slowing down wind warms up the air mass. Of course it does. Thermodynamics insists it does.
Pot kettle black.
Point is you dismissed a 1.5C change as a fluctuation but went to the trouble of pointing out a (hypothetical, based on mathematical models) 0.24C change.
Bringing up Venus is a sign you're just waffling here. Venus is hot and has a lot of greenhouse gases. We are increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Venus is an example of what can happen over eons. It's not the same as saying it will happen to us in 10 years if we don't build more wind farms. ffs, what's your point.
No I was presenting it in the context of your other argument that 1.5C is no big deal. Do you see the contradiction there?
I mean, ok, fine, wind farms slightly raise the temperature of the ground beneath them. It's nothing compared to what burning hydrocarbons is doing.
Are you?
I'm not, I'm pointing out why it doesn't matter in the larger picture.
The first part is correct, you should have stopped there. I never said you argued that we shouldn't use wind. I even agreed with you that solar is better.
But, the topic is climate change, not the physics of wind farms (which you still don't understand btw because you didn't actually read the paper you quoted from). Like I said, you just picked the bit that would help you win a side-argument about the effects of wind farms.
You still haven't explained your skepticism that climate change isn't real, which as you'll recall is where this conversation started.
That may all be true, but that's not the main mechanism that causes windfarms to generate heat at ground level, which is convection (at least according to the paper you quoted).
That's why the temperature rise during the day is minimal (because convection is happening naturally) but greater at night (because daytime convection is replaced by windmill-driven convection).
btw, it's hilarious that you're pontificating about thermodynamics and trying to apply it to windfarms, when you don't even understand how a fucking fan cools you off.
There are collisions and skin friction in turbines between the air molecules and the turbine molecules, but that's not the main transfer of energy. It's easier to talk about the momentum transfer than the energy transfer, but these are both conserved quantities so little understanding is lost in either description.
To make this as short as possible, the main method of energy transfer is due to something called the Coanda effect. The shape of the turbine wing is curved in such a way as to redirect the streamlines of air flow across it. This redirection causes pressure changes. Move some air a little to the left, and the other air to the left gets compressed a little and the other air to the right gets decompressed a little. This pressure difference is source of the energy exchange. Pressure exerted over a moving area is energy. The turbine wing is moving, and voila, energy is transferred.
Now... there are 2 kinds of wings. Those that work by collisions and those that work by pressure differences. A water wheel in a river is technically the same physics as a propeller, just working with more dense working fluid at slower speeds. If you look closely at an airplane propeller, you can see the transition from 1 type to the other as you look from the center of the prop (slow moving) to the tip of the prop (fast moving). The inner part of the propeller works by collisions and the outer part by pressure. The entire prop technically uses both, but is optimized for different speeds at different radii.
Pretty cool, right?
If you're interested in the science of global warming, I can recommend Simon Clark's YouTube channel.
I've learned a lot from the few videos of his I've watched. The content is not all based around global climate change.
Meh, it didn't break the record where I live ergo it's all a big lie.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/st...27804110905344
Climate change broke my computer.
I mean this perfectly illustrates my point about how people think they can readily compare conditions today, where we have accurate measuring devices, to 100k years ago, where we were in an ice age and rely on geological records and things like that to determine how warm it was, which isn't as accurate as thermally expanding mercury.
Chances are, it's been warmer and we just didn't record it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroe...h=477a541967dd
Yeah so basically the warmest daily average since 1979 at least, and certainly warmer than the last ice age.Quote:
The exact modeling system used to estimate Tuesday’s temperature has only been used since 1979, but scientists are able to estimate average temperatures going back tens of thousands of years by using instrument-based global temperature records, tree rings and ice cores, climate scientist Paulo Ceppi told the Washington Post.
We use modern instruments on geological data to suss these things out. We don't rely on historical records, though when the source is reliable, we can verify that and extrapolate from their writings some things that we cannot directly observe today.
Using the geological record, we can't pinpoint the exact temperatures at a location like we can with mercury or alcohol thermometers. We can put good boundaries on global averages, though. As well as a host of other data like atmospheric contents of CO2 and O2 among other things. That helps us build a predictive model of how atmospheric conditions relate to average global temperatures.
You're right that we get better data from live lab readings today than looking at the geological record, but I think you're selling short just how much can be gleened from the geological record when modern scientific methods and instruments and minds are on the case.
Don't fall into the trap of assuming that so-called modern science is superior to ancient cave-man frat bro wisdom.
Ug was renown for his amazing weather predictions. The loss of Ug's big toe was the biggest setback in meteorological predictions in the history of the human species.
Surely those ancient frat bros had their fingers on the pulse of divine mysticism that our modern science makes our conscious minds ignore the real underlying truth. It's metachlorians all the way down. Ancient aliens. Primal mysticism. Flat Earth. Paleo diet. The path to real wisdom was known to our ancient ancestors and we squander it away for crap like longer life-span, better health and wellness, more economic opportunities, mass communication, entertainment and HVAC.
Truly we would all be happier if we died by the age of 35 to myriad diseases or wolf attacks while sweating our balls off all summer and suffering from malnutrition treated by leeches.
I don't doubt it but do such methods give 0.1 degree accuracy? Do they even give 1 degree accuracy? I'm sure some techniques give excellent estimates in some locations but applied globally over millennia?Quote:
Originally Posted by mojo
How can these indirect methods be anywhere near as accurate as a direct measurement now?
No. we dig up cores from mud, and ice, and look at geological records and such. There's tons of methods we use to make estimates. Key word - estimates. What we have when we measure the temperature today with modern equipment is also technically an estimate, just a really fucking good one, far superior to geological records, which certainly don't tell us the average temperature over day or a week.
Talking about 95% Confidence Intervals, here:
Current measures of global average temperature tend to have uncertainty less than +/- 0.1 C.
Going back to ~1880, the +/- increases gradually up to about 0.25 C
Going back to the BCE/CE change (year 1), the uncertainty goes up to ~0.3 - 0.4 C.
At this point I'm bored of google searches for "uncertainty in global temperature measurements" and "uncertainty in historical global temperature measurements" and "uncertainty in ancient global temperature measurements."
Of course modern measurements have less uncertainty, but the uncertainty in our historical data is still low enough that talking about a 2 degree rise in temp is not ambiguous or misleading.
Wow, I didn't realise the intervals were THAT tight.
So the z-score for a change from 1880 to now that is actually 0C instead of 1C is z=7.84. IOW, the probability that it's just measurement error is essentially naught point naught naught and about a hundred more naughts before you get to a value greater than naught.
IOW, more naughts than can fit in this probability calculator app thingy.
https://www.omnicalculator.com/stati...0000000,z:7.84
(or at least that's what Big Solar told me to say. Big Wind was telling me the same thing but I told them to gft with their nighttime convection shit ruining the planet).
My favourite part of this whole discussion is how Ong seems happy to entertain a scenario that requires the vast majority of climate scientists to just be happy to make strong claims based on statistically unreliable data. Like they don't care about their scientific integrity, or like they all missed the first day of Science School where they warn you over and over not to do that.
My favourite part is the bit where you utterly fail to understand the distinction between science and politics.
The politics is real.
Politicians make it sound like, "Yeah, it's getting a bit warmer, but we'll fix it in like 10 years, and then it'll be back to normal."
Spoilers: It's not going back to "normal." Not in our or our children's lifetimes.
Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions, the planet's warming is on a rise... the rate of rise will start decreasing, but the rise itself is still rising. It will continue to rise more and more slowly until it peaks and starts to come back down, but the continued rise in temperatures is unavoidable at this point.
First you dispute GW based on not believing the evidence. Now that we've shown you the evidence is overwhelming, you want to claim that your skepticism on GW is actually about politics.
Ok, go on then. What is it that politicians are doing/saying that makes you not believe the scientific evidence?
Honest question ong, what would convince you to believe in GW?
Of all places you'd think on a gambling forum people, and by people I mean Ong, would understand probability. Climate prediction models have a lot of data points and a lot of different ways to predict outcomes. Even if many models are inaccurate or have varying degrees of uncertainty, the overwhelming consensus is that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to an increase in global temperatures.
We are currently engaging in a worldwide scientific experiment where we inject 25 gigatons of CO2 into our planets atmosphere each year to see what happens. Since the 60's the atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by 30% and we increase the amount we put into the atmosphere each year still. The overwhelming majority of scientists who specialize in figuring out what this does agree that this has a 1-10% chance of basically ending all life on the planet within 100-500 years, and a very high chance of various other catastrophic outcomes.
This is where radical climate terrorists are saying: maybe we should just not!
You wouldn't take a 10% ROR gamble with your retirement fund. Why is this considered an ok gamble with the continued existence of life on this planet?
You ask that question like I don't believe in it, like it's a binary yes/no matter. That's the problem with divisive politics in today's world. People can't wrap their heads around middle ground.
It makes logical sense that humans have influenced the climate with emissions. I already believe it could very well be happening, at the alarming rate we're being told. Emphasis on the word "could".
It's also a very big world and nature is far more powerful than we are, so it's also quite possible that the effect we're having is close to negligible and climate change is being exaggerated and exploited for political purposes. What those purposes are, I can't tell you that because I can't put myself in the shoes of psychopathic corrupt politicians and businessmen.
The way climate change is presented in the media is a massive appeal to authority, and if you even question it then you're assumed to be a science denier and basically should be cast to the fringes of society. Maybe it's all nothing more than a means of social control, like a cult.
To be sceptical is to question the motives of those who control our countries and the world, and that scepticism is very much justified and healthy.
Yeah and the media moguls, politicians and mega rich businessmen are probably not being honest with us.Quote:
Originally Posted by oskar
If anything, the media massively underplays what is at stake. Almost no politicians advocate for what is truly necessary to reduce CO2 emissions to a level where CO2 levels can go in remission. Even the most radical parties push for what is essentially just damage reduction.
I guess the difference between me and the rest of you guys is that I believe the politicians and other powerful wankers of the world are more influential than scientists, that is that the powerful can decide what science is taught and what is thrown into the bin, which scientists get to be famous and which ones get to be fringe, and most important what is consumed by the masses and what is not.
Politics is bigger than science in today's world. If science was bigger, this would be a different conversation.
Maybe they straight up don't have any good decisions. If we can't replace the fossil fuel energy with renewable energy, then what? Cut down our energy use significantly? That potentially results in a global breakdown in civilisation that might have more disastrous consequence than current climate change trends. Imagine if we didn't have the energy to keep our nuclear power plants safe.
Have fun balancing those interests while trying to win votes.
In other words: we can't afford not to destroy the planet we live on.
Well you're talking about 1-10% probabilities and shitting yourself over that, but what if nearly all scientists agreed that devolving back into the middle ages would result in a 50% chance of a mass extinction event happening?
Maybe the status quo is the lesser risk.