I had a fireplace with glass panes instead of wire mesh for spark guard. Pretty much turned the fire into a decorative light source. it blocked the infrared near completely.
To my recollection, in his later years Dr. Pournelle repeatedly remarked that although he wasn't convinced that an AGW-predicated catastrophe was in the pipeline he preferred we not run the experiment on Earth's atmosphere... :)
That sounds like what I would expect. Though I have read most of his published fiction (and a nontrivial portion of his published nonfiction), I only peeked at his blog now and then.
What we DON'T have is actual data. I'm sorry. We have a couple hundred years of some measurements at some specific points versus the geological span of the planet. None of what we have raises above the noise floor. And let's do models. We don't have any models yet that have successfully run into the past and ex post facto described any trends that we knew about. Therefore you can throw out all of those models for predicting future events. I'm all for nucs but I'm still not in favor of preemptive air pollution experiments in the name of pseudoscience.
Premature panic is a double plus bad thing. And it is bad for the environment as well as for people.
The points I am trying to hammer in are:
1. Global warming concerns are not a communist hoax. They are an issue that the Left is using and abusing.
2. If the college educated crowd insists on acting now, then let's do the obvious, easy, and environmentally responsible thing: build more nuclear power plants. If we can remain civilized, avoid WWIII, and not tolerate incompetence in the name of Equity, then nuclear power is the most eco friendly form of power for high density civilizations.
_____
I was originally going to go through a bunch of the Republican talking points for both accuracy and persuasiveness, but this post was already getting too long. One of the better talking points is that we have very little overlap between our direct temperature measurements and the proxies. And even over that small overlap the data is contaminated by urban heat island effects. Corrections have been made, but are the corrections correct?
___
Some of the signs that things are getting real are false. Yes, there are some places like Tangier Island that are going underwater, but I strongly contend that these places are sinking, vs. the waters are rising. Tangier has been paved over to a great deal so rainwater washes off vs. sinking into the ground. My proof is simple: I can go to my home town an look at the small strip of sound side beach that my grandparents owned. It's still there after half a century. The water has not risen significantly...yet.
I cannot speak to scientists fretting about increased melting in Greenland and whatnot. These might be real. More homework is needed.
Coral bleaching is the only near term thing that has me concerned.
... and then there's geoengineering. how can anyone know for certain that what it is and is not causing?
... and then there's modern farming techniques which some apparently believe contributes to the heating, but again, how can anyone be certain about this?
... and then there's modern warfare which must also be negatively contributing to the otherwise natural environment. besides the carbon footprint that must be created in typical military battles (like in Ukraine), what kind of environmental impact might the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines caused which the current foolish administration most likely perpetrated?
the problem is that there are too many agendas without the concern for truth, and none of these "studies" can be trusted (in like manner as the STATE sponsored "food pyramid" deceit).
and now we have the added hurdle of massive censorship actions under the guise of "controlling misinformation" by the F-MSM & the STATE, which ironically have been the two primary sources of actual misinformation forever.
thankfully, i remain convinced all this will come to an end soon, but in the meantime it's maddening and there is no resolve when people make religion out of what they falsely call “science”, as was done with the PLANdemic.
Proper grass farming (Salatin style) does sequester carbon. I'm all for it.
Regarding geoengineering: the energy involved in HAARP is tiny compared to weather energy. Utterly miniscule.
Even if jets are adding chemtrails to the contrails, the volume of stuff is microscopic compared to what is put into the air from burning fossil fuels.
There are evil genius types who want to lob sun blocking particulates into the upper atmosphere. They should be thwarted. There is no crisis...yet. And no, any attempts at such have been small to date. Clear skies still happen.
i honestly believe you grossly underestimate the scope and potential affect of geoengineering.
HAARP isn't even the only such facility in existence. other countries have also been participating in Frankenskies for decades. USA began tampering with weather in the 1930's. if such effects are minuscule, then why do various countries continue to waste money on experimenting with geoengineering?
regardless, if scientists aren't going to take the effects of geoengineering seriously, then why should anyone presume CO2 level panic (or any other for that matter) seriously?
again, it all goes back to what i stated above: too many agendas without the concern for truth. why should anyone take any so called "experts" seriously when they perpetually pick & choose data which supports their agendas?
i remain convinced that it is impossible to have a scientific discussion about "ice age / global warming / climate change" without considering ALL potential sources of such effects — especially potentially resulting from the actions of this and every other corrupt STATE, and geoengineering is certainly not off the table.
I take CO2 more seriously in part for the same reason I take a bulldozer running through my yard more seriously than a rabbit running through my yard. (Granted, if that rabbit is similar to the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I will have misjudged...)
Regarding the latest doomsayer predictions, agreed. I don't believe them either. I don't trust the fidelity of the DETAILED models. We won't know when any tipping points are reached until they are reached. Or maybe even after, since the surface waters of the oceans act as a delay circuit.
As I wrote in the article, we *might* see some truly noticeable effects in a couple of generations. I don't expect to be around when it happens (but I could be wrong). For the young, trouble could begin in their lifetimes.
What I do know is that I trust the judgment of John von Neumann more than any modern conspiracy theorist. von Neumann was one of the greatest geniuses in human history.
The first order warming effects from CO2 are utterly non controversial among those who have done their homework. It doesn't require resort to great authorities. The physics is of the sort which can be verified in a second or third tier college lab.
Gauging the early signals for a tipping point is rather like predicting when the Carolina Panthers will next win a Superbowl. Rather hard to predict.
----
But what I can say for certainty is that millions of highly educated people are freaking out. Steal the issue. Win back the country.
Indeed, AGW doesn’t have to be a complete hoax in order to oppose the anti human non solutions proposed by our current leaders. Water vapor and carbon dioxide increase the temperature. We have long known about this. So? As you said let’s find ways to engineer around whatever warming is going to happen. If the Dutch people in the Middle Ages were able to reclaim land from below sea level certainly modern civilization cannot be helpless in the face of climate change?
Read The Case For Nukes by Zubrin, it's a great realist, optimistic take on the whole AGW situation and I recommend it to everyone. Also the climate change chapters from Zeihan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning
I read "The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear" by Petr Beckmann over 30 years ago. And I have been reading BF Randall's Mining Atoms Substack recently. If you look at the overall numbers, nuclear wins by a large margin.
But I have also read a lot of Nassim Taleb. Black Swan events can happen. Even though the number of deaths from coal and falling off ladders are far higher than the number of deaths from nuclear power plants, past performance is not entirely predictive.
Safe nuclear power requires continued civilization. Barbarous things happen in wartime. And given that we are currently at war with Russia and threatening war with national socialist China, real devastating war -- something we last experienced in the 1600s -- could be in our future.
And then there is Equity. Equity and nuclear power are a very dangerous mix. Look at the whackdoodle Biden put in charge of overseeing our nuclear waste.
I'd rather trust equity hires to install solar panels.
CO2 doesn't affect the climate. The climate affects CO2 levels. Believing the opposite is the basis of the psyop the Club of Rome came up with in the 1960's. In recent years we have produced 14% of the total CO2 emmisions humanity has produced in our entire history, yet there's been negligible warming over this period, no correlation. We in a slow warming interglacial period, defrosting, still technically in the ice age.
Sorry I was referring to the psyop the eugenicists at the Club of Rome obviously came up with to tie into their Limits to Growth propaganda as a mechanism leading towards global governance by the technocratic elite, not when global warming was first discussed. Because a scientific theory was discussed earlier doesn't make it real/true, unless one believes "the science is settled", and concern over warming/cooling need not relate to CO2ppm.
Fire causes heat. Heat causes fire. In a positive feedback loop situation causality runs both ways.
Obviously there are some negative feedback loops as well else we would have had a runaway greenhouse transition long ago.
But at what point do we drive the system past the rim of the metastable equilibrium. The experiment is ongoing. And we live in the test tube. Some people are understandably worried, including people who have done their homework.
*What* positive feedback loop? The Earth has had significantly higher temperatures, and significantly higher levels of CO2, then we do now -- and these did not cause thermal runaway back then.
Racism is way down from my earliest memories. (My childhood home town was one where the sun never set on a live negro. Things have gotten significantly less racists there since.)
So am at a loss to see parallel logic. Please clarify.
I had a fireplace with glass panes instead of wire mesh for spark guard. Pretty much turned the fire into a decorative light source. it blocked the infrared near completely.
To my recollection, in his later years Dr. Pournelle repeatedly remarked that although he wasn't convinced that an AGW-predicated catastrophe was in the pipeline he preferred we not run the experiment on Earth's atmosphere... :)
That sounds like what I would expect. Though I have read most of his published fiction (and a nontrivial portion of his published nonfiction), I only peeked at his blog now and then.
Thank you for the info!
What we DON'T have is actual data. I'm sorry. We have a couple hundred years of some measurements at some specific points versus the geological span of the planet. None of what we have raises above the noise floor. And let's do models. We don't have any models yet that have successfully run into the past and ex post facto described any trends that we knew about. Therefore you can throw out all of those models for predicting future events. I'm all for nucs but I'm still not in favor of preemptive air pollution experiments in the name of pseudoscience.
ABSOLUTELY!
Premature panic is a double plus bad thing. And it is bad for the environment as well as for people.
The points I am trying to hammer in are:
1. Global warming concerns are not a communist hoax. They are an issue that the Left is using and abusing.
2. If the college educated crowd insists on acting now, then let's do the obvious, easy, and environmentally responsible thing: build more nuclear power plants. If we can remain civilized, avoid WWIII, and not tolerate incompetence in the name of Equity, then nuclear power is the most eco friendly form of power for high density civilizations.
_____
I was originally going to go through a bunch of the Republican talking points for both accuracy and persuasiveness, but this post was already getting too long. One of the better talking points is that we have very little overlap between our direct temperature measurements and the proxies. And even over that small overlap the data is contaminated by urban heat island effects. Corrections have been made, but are the corrections correct?
___
Some of the signs that things are getting real are false. Yes, there are some places like Tangier Island that are going underwater, but I strongly contend that these places are sinking, vs. the waters are rising. Tangier has been paved over to a great deal so rainwater washes off vs. sinking into the ground. My proof is simple: I can go to my home town an look at the small strip of sound side beach that my grandparents owned. It's still there after half a century. The water has not risen significantly...yet.
I cannot speak to scientists fretting about increased melting in Greenland and whatnot. These might be real. More homework is needed.
Coral bleaching is the only near term thing that has me concerned.
I found this author comment by Michael Crighton that I think is timely. Here is the link. Note the part about climate religion as colonialism. That's telling to me. https://www.michaelcrichton.com/works/state-of-fear-authors-message/
Very nice statement. I agree with just about all of it.
... and then there's geoengineering. how can anyone know for certain that what it is and is not causing?
... and then there's modern farming techniques which some apparently believe contributes to the heating, but again, how can anyone be certain about this?
... and then there's modern warfare which must also be negatively contributing to the otherwise natural environment. besides the carbon footprint that must be created in typical military battles (like in Ukraine), what kind of environmental impact might the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines caused which the current foolish administration most likely perpetrated?
the problem is that there are too many agendas without the concern for truth, and none of these "studies" can be trusted (in like manner as the STATE sponsored "food pyramid" deceit).
and now we have the added hurdle of massive censorship actions under the guise of "controlling misinformation" by the F-MSM & the STATE, which ironically have been the two primary sources of actual misinformation forever.
thankfully, i remain convinced all this will come to an end soon, but in the meantime it's maddening and there is no resolve when people make religion out of what they falsely call “science”, as was done with the PLANdemic.
Proper grass farming (Salatin style) does sequester carbon. I'm all for it.
Regarding geoengineering: the energy involved in HAARP is tiny compared to weather energy. Utterly miniscule.
Even if jets are adding chemtrails to the contrails, the volume of stuff is microscopic compared to what is put into the air from burning fossil fuels.
There are evil genius types who want to lob sun blocking particulates into the upper atmosphere. They should be thwarted. There is no crisis...yet. And no, any attempts at such have been small to date. Clear skies still happen.
i honestly believe you grossly underestimate the scope and potential affect of geoengineering.
HAARP isn't even the only such facility in existence. other countries have also been participating in Frankenskies for decades. USA began tampering with weather in the 1930's. if such effects are minuscule, then why do various countries continue to waste money on experimenting with geoengineering?
regardless, if scientists aren't going to take the effects of geoengineering seriously, then why should anyone presume CO2 level panic (or any other for that matter) seriously?
again, it all goes back to what i stated above: too many agendas without the concern for truth. why should anyone take any so called "experts" seriously when they perpetually pick & choose data which supports their agendas?
i remain convinced that it is impossible to have a scientific discussion about "ice age / global warming / climate change" without considering ALL potential sources of such effects — especially potentially resulting from the actions of this and every other corrupt STATE, and geoengineering is certainly not off the table.
I take CO2 more seriously in part for the same reason I take a bulldozer running through my yard more seriously than a rabbit running through my yard. (Granted, if that rabbit is similar to the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I will have misjudged...)
Regarding the latest doomsayer predictions, agreed. I don't believe them either. I don't trust the fidelity of the DETAILED models. We won't know when any tipping points are reached until they are reached. Or maybe even after, since the surface waters of the oceans act as a delay circuit.
As I wrote in the article, we *might* see some truly noticeable effects in a couple of generations. I don't expect to be around when it happens (but I could be wrong). For the young, trouble could begin in their lifetimes.
What I do know is that I trust the judgment of John von Neumann more than any modern conspiracy theorist. von Neumann was one of the greatest geniuses in human history.
The first order warming effects from CO2 are utterly non controversial among those who have done their homework. It doesn't require resort to great authorities. The physics is of the sort which can be verified in a second or third tier college lab.
Gauging the early signals for a tipping point is rather like predicting when the Carolina Panthers will next win a Superbowl. Rather hard to predict.
----
But what I can say for certainty is that millions of highly educated people are freaking out. Steal the issue. Win back the country.
Indeed, AGW doesn’t have to be a complete hoax in order to oppose the anti human non solutions proposed by our current leaders. Water vapor and carbon dioxide increase the temperature. We have long known about this. So? As you said let’s find ways to engineer around whatever warming is going to happen. If the Dutch people in the Middle Ages were able to reclaim land from below sea level certainly modern civilization cannot be helpless in the face of climate change?
Read The Case For Nukes by Zubrin, it's a great realist, optimistic take on the whole AGW situation and I recommend it to everyone. Also the climate change chapters from Zeihan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning
I read "The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear" by Petr Beckmann over 30 years ago. And I have been reading BF Randall's Mining Atoms Substack recently. If you look at the overall numbers, nuclear wins by a large margin.
But I have also read a lot of Nassim Taleb. Black Swan events can happen. Even though the number of deaths from coal and falling off ladders are far higher than the number of deaths from nuclear power plants, past performance is not entirely predictive.
Safe nuclear power requires continued civilization. Barbarous things happen in wartime. And given that we are currently at war with Russia and threatening war with national socialist China, real devastating war -- something we last experienced in the 1600s -- could be in our future.
And then there is Equity. Equity and nuclear power are a very dangerous mix. Look at the whackdoodle Biden put in charge of overseeing our nuclear waste.
I'd rather trust equity hires to install solar panels.
CO2 doesn't affect the climate. The climate affects CO2 levels. Believing the opposite is the basis of the psyop the Club of Rome came up with in the 1960's. In recent years we have produced 14% of the total CO2 emmisions humanity has produced in our entire history, yet there's been negligible warming over this period, no correlation. We in a slow warming interglacial period, defrosting, still technically in the ice age.
Concerns about global warming predate the Club of Rome by over a half a century.
Sorry I was referring to the psyop the eugenicists at the Club of Rome obviously came up with to tie into their Limits to Growth propaganda as a mechanism leading towards global governance by the technocratic elite, not when global warming was first discussed. Because a scientific theory was discussed earlier doesn't make it real/true, unless one believes "the science is settled", and concern over warming/cooling need not relate to CO2ppm.
Fire causes heat. Heat causes fire. In a positive feedback loop situation causality runs both ways.
Obviously there are some negative feedback loops as well else we would have had a runaway greenhouse transition long ago.
But at what point do we drive the system past the rim of the metastable equilibrium. The experiment is ongoing. And we live in the test tube. Some people are understandably worried, including people who have done their homework.
*What* positive feedback loop? The Earth has had significantly higher temperatures, and significantly higher levels of CO2, then we do now -- and these did not cause thermal runaway back then.
Bistable system is another possibility. A more pleasant Siberia and Canada plus needing to move coastal cities inland. The experiment is ongoing.
Apply the same logic to "racism" to see how ridiculous your position is.
Carbon dioxide is building up.
Racism is way down from my earliest memories. (My childhood home town was one where the sun never set on a live negro. Things have gotten significantly less racists there since.)
So am at a loss to see parallel logic. Please clarify.