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johnd at 21:38 PM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
chris at 20:43 PM, as mentioned in the findings of the Horsham trials, such real world trials found increased wheat yields for the CO2 enriched samples averaging 31% with protein levels declining from 18% to 17.3%. Food quality in terms of % protein content may be down, but it is the amount of protein produced per hectare that matters when it comes to feeding the worlds population. -
chris at 20:43 PM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
JMurphy at 20:09 PM on 14 May, 2010 Yes that's right. To quote from the paper I linked to above:"As atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise and NO3 – assimilation diminishes, crops will become depleted of organic N compounds (see Fig. 3), including protein, and food quality wll suffer. Increasing nitrogen fertilization might compensate for slower NO3 – assimilation rates (Fig. 3), but such fertilization rates might not be economically or environmentally feasible."
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embb at 20:37 PM on 14 May 2010Are we too stupid?
Jacob Let us focus the discussion a bit. There is one simple question for me. According to the bill: "We also set up a tough, WTO-consistent border adjustment mechanism so that there won't be any "carbon leakage" of companies manufacturing things overseas in countries that don't manage their emissions. Imports from those countries will have to pay a fee at the border." Translated to practical terms this means that any country not having carbon tax will be punished by a hefty "fee at the border" or to put it another way by a high customs duty. What will the impact of this be on the economy of these states? On the smugglers? On the US economy? "The funny thing is that economists had nothing to do with it. It was originally thought out by a physicist. How about that?" I can completely understand this. :)) -
JMurphy at 20:09 PM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
johnd wrote : "The conclusion of the abstract from the paper you linked states the obvious, and what has always been known, that being, if you want plants to produce more then you must feed them more." Doesn't that mean extra problems of time, labour and money ? -
chris at 19:46 PM on 14 May 2010Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet
tiny error in the top post. Should be Michael Mann (not Micheal Mann). I'm also going to vote for Peter Sinclair whose videos are very straightforward, truthful and impactful (and also quite funny sometimes). -
apeescape at 19:08 PM on 14 May 2010Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
Will, Human civ., which started ~10000 years ago was largely established thanks to the climate. I think a 2C decrease would also cause a lot of problems. Here's a nice graph, although I'm having the hardest time pinpointing the source. Maybe Fig. 1.3 of Climate change and human health : risks and responses. Editors : A. J. McMichael et al. WHO. 2003.
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mginaus at 18:49 PM on 14 May 2010We're heading into an ice age
gary4books might be right. both sides of the argument seem to be afraid of the possibility of change. EVERYTHING CHANGES! The biology of this planet is good at adapting to changes. "Positives and negatives of global warming" is a ridiculously one-sided attempt of trying to purport to have a balanced view. (of course there are more papers on scary outcomes than on positive outcomes - no one funds/reads rosy pictures) Even with all the evidence in the world nothing is going to make energy companies let go of the status quo in time to make a difference, nor will it make enough people CHOOSE to pay more for energy. I believe all of us in the scientific community need to stop trying to WIN the argument and start working out what we know and what we still need to know - then we will actually be able to move forward intelligently. -
Riccardo at 18:37 PM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
quokka, i like your idea, but it's a lot of work. Maybe it could be feasible if limited to the acronyms and if someone else, not John, takes care of the compilation (you? :)). -
Riccardo at 18:29 PM on 14 May 2010Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet
I'm one of those who really like Sinclair approach to the problem. I find it stimulating critical thinking, he always shows a denialist claims and contrast it with the science. It's very efficient in showing in an easy yet rigorous way both what science says and the errors, and sometimes the flat lies, of the AGW deniers. This should be contrasted with the approach used by many denialist blogs, where the they use fake science to push their agenda. No critical thinking, not a tiny drop of skepticism despite they like this word (not its meaning) a lot. They only act as amplifiers of a propaganda probably elaborated elsewhere with the support of professional PR. This is why they're so efficient, they are not forced in the narrow lane of reality. In mathematical terms i'd say that the two are incommensurable. -
quokka at 18:14 PM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Here's one more suggestion for the site. A glossary would be quite useful, especially for readers less acquainted the science. I'm thinking particularly of acronyms such as SST, TOA etc. It could be simply a link to for example the RealClimate glossary or something more elaborate with links in posts etc.Response: This is a good idea. How I'd approach it is to set it up as a database where others can edit it, wiki style. That way, it's not too much of a time sink for me - just the initial set up time. The main thing I'm wondering is to whether to make it open access or just limited access. I welcome thoughts. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 17:56 PM on 14 May 2010Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet
"Since its launch a year ago, CDCW has gained an enthusiastic audience and inspired praise from scientists and professionals in the field around the planet." And for me CDCW are too simplistic, does not stimulate the logical thinking process, circumventing the problem too complicated. Skeptics (especially recently) are more effective - increasingly more efficient (use more precise analysis - instead of propaganda - public relation). For example, in the U.S.: "To no surprise, the American public is less worried about the threat of global warming than at any time in the past 13 years. According to Gallup's global warming poll, 48% of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, which is up from 41% in 2009 and 31% back in 1997. Also, 19% of Americans say that the effects of global warming will never happen, while 16% stated that the effects of global warming will not happen in their lifetime." "In a sharp turnaround from what Gallup found as recently as three years ago, Americans are now almost evenly split in their views of the cause of increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century," according to Gallup. 50% of Americans believe that increases in the earth's temperature over the last century are due more to human activities, while 46% say it is due to natural causes. These numbers were 61% and 35% respectively back in 2007. [??? ...]" -
Svatli at 17:27 PM on 14 May 2010Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet
Just remember that there are 3 votes for each voter - I used my 3 votes on Peter Sinclair, he is doing a great job :) -
James Wight at 17:19 PM on 14 May 2010What causes Arctic amplification?
I recently read a post on WUWT which I thought misinterpreted this paper, so I added the argument to your list. I think this post could probably double as a response to that argument.Response: Thanks for the suggestion. I've added the new skeptic argument Melting ice isn't warming the Arctic. Curious that Steve Goddard accuses the paper of not investigating physical mechanisms - I wonder if he even read the paper. -
yocta at 17:07 PM on 14 May 2010Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet
Already voted on Monday! When do we get to vote for your site? Type...you have: “Brilliant job… among the ?nest, most reasonable stuff I have seen..” It should be “Brilliant job… among the finest, most reasonable stuff I have seen..”Response: Fixed, thanks for the tip -
Ed Seedhouse at 10:46 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Kernos, you may feel free to disagree, and so am I, but the authority if their is one is the W3C who designed the html/css standard and, as it happens they agree with me. I have done html both ways, and my experience is that your way is much harder and leads to worse web pages. The way you word your reply suggests that you haven't really understood the alternate, so maybe you should find out what all the fuss is about before you condemn it out of hand. I know from experience that the approach using valid semantic html, separation of concerns, and CSS to define presentation and layout is just ever so much easier. But it does require you to be willing to put away some of the erroneous things you have learned about how to do web pages. You seem to be saying something like "I know the best way and have made up my mind and am unwilling to change it even if the evidence says I should change it." Remind you of some of the global change deniers on this site? -
quokka at 10:26 AM on 14 May 2010Climate Change and the Integrity of Science: a letter to Science
Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and NY Times all refused to print this letter. What a disgrace. MSM Rejects Letter from 255 Scientists -
johnd at 09:21 AM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
chris at 07:37 AM, this FACE wheat trial conducted at Horsham Victoria in 2008 do not support your assertion of increasing problems. Nitrogen uptake increased 20-30%. Limitations due more to soil processes than plant inability to uptake. Higher plant yields but lower protein content should be benchmarked against area planted, not solely plant biomass. http://anz.ipni.net/ipniweb/.../FLRC%20Elevated%20CO2%20Norton%202010.pdf As happens in everyday cropping, yields can vary enormously within short distances and slight changes in conditions. Wheat yields and protein are often the inverse of each other meaning these problems have always existed. The conclusion of the abstract from the paper you linked states the obvious, and what has always been known, that being, if you want plants to produce more then you must feed them more. -
chris at 07:37 AM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
Likewise, increasing [CO2] is increasingly identified as a a problem for agricultural production. A paper in today's Science shows that increased [CO2] (of itself, and not heat related) results in reduced nitrate assimilation in wheat and Arabidopsis. (This also could be moved to arguments about effects of increased [CO2] and global warming on agricultural prodution). -
chris at 07:29 AM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
Of course, while these analysis relate to extreme temperatures that would likely only be achieved with another few hundred years of unlimited fossil fuel burning, the effects of relatively small temperature increases can have very large effects on species survival.....even in lizards. A paper describing warmth-induced extinctions in lizard species is described in today's Science (also an accompanying commentary). These papers also relevant to arguments about adverse effects of global warming and effects on species survival. -
Jacob Bock Axelsen at 07:10 AM on 14 May 2010Are we too stupid?
embb, Do you see any electricity company begging for a carbon tax? The carbon regulation made companies beg the consumers to use less energy. The dividend/tax made that happen and Schwarzenegger finalized the legislation. The funny thing is that economists had nothing to do with it. It was originally thought out by a physicist. How about that? "I said that (OPEC) did not succeed, so what is your point?" That it is a bad example for an international coalition that worked. OPEC worked in the 1970s to cause almost total collapse of the world economy. They were using reciprocity, so it was actually a very good example that you brought out. Thanks a lot! "Please point to studies that show that geo-engineering will pose a smaller risk than reducing emissions of CO2." Did anyone ever do a comparative study? You do not need it. Geo-engineering may aggravate the environmental problems, since nobody really knows what could happen. Climate science is already disputed by the policy makers who wish to maintain the status quo, so how can they argue that geo-engineering is less risky? What is the science? No science, no policy. Global warming plus all the unwanted - and, mind you, very expensive - sideeffects is guaranteed to be mitigated by stopping the use of fossil fuels. You have a stake in maintaining the status quo because you think geo-engineering is too risky No, I have consistently argued for changing the status quo by mitigating climate change. You argue that stopping the use of carbon is too expensive, which it is not, but if you get your way then either climate change or the risky geo-engineering will affect us all economically and perhaps physically anyway. There is no escape in your logic. That is the dilemma. It leads to tragedy of the commons. The fittest fig wasps survived and cooperate because the tree uses reciprocity. (...) this is a benign example of reciprocity Tell that to the dying larvae and their mother... The non-cooperating wasps were punished with extinction because the fig tree used reciprocity" . translated to human terms it would mean to eradicate the non-cooperating states - surely less then a benign solution. Which is it: benign or eradicate? Pick a choice. I have certainly never suggested eradication or anything of the sort, because it seems to defy all reason, so I am not sure what you are talking about? a "comprehensive" agreement makes sense (...) in order to get that you need to make every major player cooperate - and that there is no benign way of achieving. You are mistaken. The examples of CFCs, asbestos, lead in gasoline etc. clearly disproves it. So, in the end you are arguing for a (trade)war against defectors. I will never and have never argued for real wars. If a trade war is the only way to coerce a state to cooperate, which it is not, it is of course relatively benign. By the way, nobody would go to war to defend burning coal. However, many may go that way to defend resources that have gone scarce due to unmitigated climate change. The Pentagon even acknowledges that it can "fan the flames of war". That is a real danger? you can call threatening and blackmail indirect reciprocity if you prefer (...) but it is still what it is. If you keep emission goals and you issue warning and subsequently restrict imports from someone who defect then it is fair punishment as agreed in the treaty. Calling it blackmail and threats is therefore clearly a mistake, as it is usually between criminal offenders. "The US may start already this year..." and this is for the present discussion almost totally irrelevant. When will China, India and Brazil start - this is the question. China is already leading in sustainable energy investments, and in your logic, they are sadly rendering their entire production apparatus uncompetitive. And yet the US is scrambling to get ahead as they too are blind to the obvious? Brazil has had some problems, but they have had the intention to get off oil since the 70s in spite of the tragedy of the decision to grow sugar canes in deforested lands. They will get it right now because China and the US will lead the way. Once the US, China, Brazil is on track, the democratic India will follow suit. I have extremely smart collaborators in the US, China and India so these countries know what is the right thing to do. Maybe you`ll care to explain just how the US will use "indirect reciprocity" to get them on board without causing a global catastrophe? The US would cause a global catastrophe to avoid a global catastrophe? Seems futile doesn't it? (..) WTO-consistent border adjustment mechanism(...)" Care to explain how this is going to be managed? No, because I have explained that numerous times already. Look it up. -
Kernos at 06:27 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
I disagree. Tables are perfectly valid for layout. CSS is considered more 'modern' by those who were in school this century. Fads come and go. Where CSS is useful is with DHTML, but that's another story. -
apeescape at 06:23 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Hi John, I think it will be useful (especially for people who only speak 1 lang.) to have contact info. of translators on the Translations page and/or at the footer of each translation article. I second tadzio's suggestion to show a widget that tracks the reader composition (e.g. Clustrmaps). Currently I have no idea if my translations are read by anybody :) -
KR at 04:37 AM on 14 May 2010Estimating climate sensitivity from 3 million years ago
RSVP - you stated that the radiative model doesn't take into account nonlinearity of IR vs. temperature - I would have to beg to differ, as ALL models do take this into account. Any model using the Stefan–Boltzmann equations, as all radiative models do AFAIK, incorporate the fact that the power radiated scales as the 4th power of the temperature. Incidentally, if all humans disappeared at once, it would be quite some time before the CO2 forcing (and all the feedbacks) backed off, allowing temperatures to lower. I believe a number of people have modeled that already. But removing CO2 emissions would definitely change the forcings on temperature! -
Alexandre at 02:59 AM on 14 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
About earlier hot periods: One important thing to remember is the speed of change. Even very fast warming events like the PETM were something like 6ºC in 10,000 years, or even slower. The world did not reach the high temperature of the Cretaceous as fast as that. Give us a couple million years to genetically adapt to global warming and new ecosystems will flourish - provided we do enough conservation in the meantime. But we´re talking about some 6ºC of warming in a century or two. That´s too fast even for many species´ moving capabilities, let alone genetic evolution. -
Ed Seedhouse at 02:59 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Kernos, the idea that it is "tables vs. CSS" is just false. Tables are perfectly useful html constructs when used to mark up tabular information. If the information is indeed tabular in nature it is an abuse *not* to use them. BUT they are not designed for layout and shouldn't be used for that. I agree with your remarks about fonts and font sizes, being visually challenged myself. But valid semantic html with CSS for layout is in fact the solution to this problem. Alas, there are many myths about html/CSS going around and a real scientific skeptic should be wary about falling for them. Unfortunately many do. I will admit that it is far more important to apply skeptical thinking skills to climate change as John does at this site. But it is still rather sad that he does not apply it also to the site itself, because that could make it so much better while consuming less time and effort. -
Kernos at 01:14 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Being one of those stuck on slow dial-up, I appreciate your text menus and everything else that minimizes bandwidth. Your site is one of the fastest loading I frequent. RE: Tables vs CSS. I consider this a bit of arrogance by those deeply involved in CSS. Most do not do it properly. I have old eyes, and use a default font of 18 pt, and still have to increase font display 2 or 3 times on most sites in order to read easily. CSS usually gets messed up with overlapping and truncated text. Up with tables! They work in all browsers, are much faster to create and load! Thanks you for your effort! Bill -
Ed Seedhouse at 01:08 AM on 14 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
"Response: I actually did use CSS mark-up to layout SkS but am actually transitioning back to tables. I just find it too time consuming to get the results I need using pure CSS layout. It's not as 'pure' as tables but sometimes tables just get the job done quick and dirty when I don't have much time." Actually I think you'll end up doing a good deal more work for poorer results. It is, unfortunately, true that there is a learning period to go to the "correct" methods. I am sure you have much to do and I'd much rather have your site with the bad code practices than not at all, much much rather. But in my opinion by sticking to these out of date methods you are losing much more time than than you would gain if you used correct ones. IF you could find the time to learn to do it right you'd end up saving a lot more time in the end. Using CSS is not the big solution, though. There are plenty of sites using CSS whose designers end up with worse results than if they just kept using tables. For good results with CSS you need to understand how to write valid and semantic html first, before you do any CSS work at all. Validity is easy, because validity can be checked by computers, and a few hours or days working with the free on line validators, or with browser attachments that can also do it, can teach you how to do it right with little effort. Semantic coding methods, however, require a different understanding, and the machines can't help you much, you have to grasp the basic idea and understand why it works. But it really isn't that hard and can be understood in just a few days. If you write valid and semantic html without regard, during the markup phase, to layout or presentation, then it makes the whole process much much easier and make producing a good page much easier and faster once you learn it. Applying CSS to a properly marked up valid and semantic html page is a doddle. Trying to apply it to old fashioned pages using tables for layout is a right pain. Once again, I'd rather have your present content (and more please!)in a badly designed page such as you have now, than a well designed page without the content. Content rules! -
Tom Dayton at 00:17 AM on 14 May 2010Climate sensitivity is low
Details about Riccardo's point about Spencer's papers are provided by chris in an excellent comment on another thread. -
Riccardo at 00:00 AM on 14 May 2010It's satellite microwave transmissions
Actually both of you have the numbers wrong, it's neither 1 W/km2 nor 0.01 MW/km2 (had model299 used the same numbers): 5 MW/ 530 M Km2 ~ 10-2 W/km2 = 10^-8 W/m2 = 10 nW/m2 the conclusions of the post stand a fortiori. -
embb at 23:57 PM on 13 May 2010Are we too stupid?
"To maximize profits the electricity producers of California are now begging consumers to use less electricity." So? Do you see any electricity company begging for a carbon tax? "I said that they did not succeed, so what is your point?" That it is a bad example for an international coalition that worked. "Please point to studies that show that geo-engineering will pose a smaller risk than reducing emissions of CO2." Did anyone ever do a comparative study? Please point to a study that shows that CO2 taxing is less risky then geo-engineering. You still miss my point: you said that I have a stake in the status quo BECAUSE I think CO2 taxing is too risky. I said that based on the same logic YOU have a stake in maintaining the status quo because you think geo-engineering is too risky " The fittest fig wasps survived and cooperate because the tree uses reciprocity." Okay, lets discuss this clearly: you cite this as a benign example of reciprocity and this is false. How about the following reading: The non-cooperating wasps were punished with extinction because the fig tree used reciprocity" . translated to human terms it would mean to eradicate the non-cooperating states - surely less then a benign solution. "We can conclude that all that is needed is a comprehensive protocol calling for ending the use of fossil carbon." I cannot even guess how you came to this conclusion. The whole discussion revolves around the point that only a "comprehensive" agreement makes sense ans in order to get that you need to make every major player to cooperate - and that there is no benign way of achieving that. So, in the end you are arguing for a (trade)war against defectors. This is where we started and we this is where we are now. As I said you can call threatening and blackmail indirect reciprocity if you prefer fancy terms, but it is still what it is. "The US may start already this year..." and this is for the present discussion almost totally irrelevant. When will China, India and Brazil start - this is the question. Maybe you`ll care to explain just how the US will use "indirect reciprocity" to get them on board without causing a global catastrophe? "Note: there is nothing about the mafia, deadly trade wars, crippling homeland competitiveness, feeling-good pious wishful thinking or the slightest concern about a potential world police state." Sure: anyone can chose to close their eyes if they wish to. Still there is a small hint here: "We also set up a tough, WTO-consistent border adjustment mechanism so that there won't be any "carbon leakage" of companies manufacturing things overseas in countries that don't manage their emissions. Imports from those countries will have to pay a fee at the border." Care to explain how this is going to be managed? -
Tom Dayton at 23:57 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
HumanityRules, following up on michael sweet's response, there is even a post about inaction: Are We Too Stupid? -
michael sweet at 23:00 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
HumanityRules at 42: I am not sure what country you live in, but I live in the USA. There are a lot of people, approaching a majority, who are adamently opposed to taking any action about AGW. My government has taken virtually no action about this topic in spite of all current scientific findings. Other countries have taken more action, but the overall global response is small. Why are you so convinced that human society will respond strongly when the current response is so small? What makes you think people will be wiser in the future? When will this time come? In the meantime, we need to work to convince politicians to take substantial action. -
model299 at 22:25 PM on 13 May 2010It's satellite microwave transmissions
I think your data is wrong. there are now 928 active satellites, and using your mean of 3200 watts of overall power that I assume you got from the spreadsheet you linked, plus space station alpha the total okay roughly 3 megawatts. dividing 3 million by 530 million is about .005 Mw per km^2 or if I multiply the decimal by one million to convert it to watts 5,660 watts per km^2 or 5.6 watts per m^2 Although, if that were true I should be able to boil 2 cups of water in a square meter in a little over an hour. Assuming the water could not cool due to atmospheric influence or evaporate due to solar radiation. (based on 1100 watts taking 3 minutes to boil water for tea) anyhow, I think this article needs to be reworked as microwaves really have to be focused deliberately (see comment above). It would be nice if someone did this so that it could be taken seriously. Well because, the issue of non-ionizing radiation is very serious and until someone treats the research with any amount of reverence, the public will never know and corporations will continue to break fcc rules concerning non-ionizing radiation. -
kdkd at 21:34 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
As a part time "hobby" web developer, I too used to hate and fear css, until I discovered css frameworks like this one. -
Daved Green at 21:22 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Hi Mr Cook , thank you for your efforts and all the other posters , they are very valuable in the fight against ignorance . One thing I would like to see is how many people login are read your blog , you seem to have followers from many countries and it would be encouraging to see how many ppl do understand greenhouse gases effects on climate . -
Craig Allen at 21:03 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
It's actually possible to have your top menu with a graphic look and for it to be editable. Use the sliding doors css technique. This lets you have each menu item with a graphic that stretches to fit the width of the text. In a nutshell, your menu is created as an unordered list, presented horizontally. The 'A' elements have the left side of each graphic as their background images. And the 'LI' elements have the right side of each graphic as their background images. Once you have the CSS set up you can add, remove or edit the menu list elements and they will all automatically be rendered correctly regardless of the width of each item. Also, to ease the pain of making your site compatable with multiple browsers, use a css reset stylesheet before your other stylesheets. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 20:37 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Would it be possible to have a link somewhere to "new comments to skeptical arguemnts"? The present "recent comment" link seems to get swamped by recent comments to the last three or four threads, which I usually skim anyhow. I understand that the house policy is to direct comments to the "proper thread". This is an excellent policy, but at least I tend to miss such comments if they are made to threads older than the last ones.Response: This is a good idea as it's relatively quick and easy to program. I'll do this next housekeeping. -
James Wight at 19:58 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
John, I know you have lots to do, but may I make some suggestions to further improve the site navigation? There still remain several pages on the site which are not easy to find quickly. These include: • The About page (which should probably be more prominent since it’s likely to be what people will look for when they first arrive on your blog). • The Articles page. • The Contradictions page. • The page ordering skeptic arguments by percentage. • The explanation of how Skeptical Science measures skeptic argument frequency. • Archives (which can only be found by scrolling to the very bottom of the sidebar). • Your to-do list. (Incidentally, the purpose of this page might need more explanation – perhaps you could copy from the relevant paragraph on the Support SkS page.) One way to make all these pages more accessible would be to add drop-down menus to the navigation bar, as I recall you were intending to do at one stage. Alternately would it be possible to have two rows of links in the header? (I don’t know anything about web design so I don’t know how much effort this would involve.) A couple of other suggestions: • As I’m sure you’re aware, you currently have two pages which are called “Links” (this one in the header and this one in the footer). This could be confusing to people who haven’t been following your housekeeping updates. Perhaps you could distinguish the two by calling one “Resources” and one “Links”, and placing them next to each other in the header/footer? • In the sidebar, the text saying “Link to us” is presumably supposed to go here, but it actually goes to the iPhone icons page. As usual, all this is offered in the spirit of constructive criticism. I wouldn’t want to distract you from the more important task of updating the site content.Response: The good thing about you, James, is all the high quality feedback you supply. The bad thing is then I have to implement it! I'm still yet to go through all the suggestions you suggested on the Every skeptic argument page.
Two rows of links are not a good idea - becomes a bit of a mess (general rule of thumb, don't have more than 6 to 8 navigation links). I still plan to add drop downs - would've done it today but revamping the comments page took a while so it's been relegated to the next housekeeping session. I'll go through your other ideas at that time too. In fact, with all the comments and suggestions coming in, my dance card for the next housekeeping session is filling rapidly. -
Jacob Bock Axelsen at 19:15 PM on 13 May 2010Are we too stupid?
an emission tax? It will increase the production costs hence make the industry less competitive. You are wrong. To maximize profits the electricity producers of California are now begging consumers to use less electricity. "Jacob:OPEC is an excellent example of how powerful a coalition using reciprocity can be." I seem to remeber lots of defections during its existence. Also, Russia, one of the biggest producers, is not a member. OPEC caused the oil crisis in the 1970's. Have you never heard about that? I said that they did not succeed, so what is your point? CO2 is a pollutant. People prefer to live in less polluted areas. Thus people should be willing to pay for having less CO2 in their area. You need to read about how CO2 acts as greenhouse gas on the mean temperature of the Earth. The FAQ for policy makers from the Fourth Assessment Report from IPCC is a good start. There is also plenty of good information on this site. You were talking about "immediate" effects, they are talking about "threats". Surely you see the difference. There are serious health effects of Global Warming now. It is about the same problem of trends in statistics that people misunderstand when mixing up weather and climate. Read the reference. You completely miss my point. You were advocating immediate actions regardless of the risks. I am asking YOU if this is your attitude towards geo-engineering as well? Please point to studies that show that geo-engineering will pose a smaller risk than reducing emissions of CO2. If you argue against geo-engineering then according to YOUR own logic you have an interest in not mitigating climate change. If geo-engineering is proven less risky than reducing CO2 pollution then I would favour it, thus disproving your argument. Where are your references to the risks and what is the overwhelming scientific concensus about geo-engineering? Evolution is about the survival of the fittest - so defectors will just die. The fittest fig wasps survived and cooperate because the tree uses reciprocity. Your world police state argument is also self-contradictory. Imagine if you were right about everything we have discussed and people still wish to mitigate climate change. Then they would indeed make a world police force - and sadly history proves that people often have favoured that so why would they stop now? I argue the contrary, and the recent history with CFCs etc. and the game theory of this post indicates that it is not needed at all. If there was a truly democratic world government with a police force, then there would indeed be no need for the game theory I wrote about. This is not the case and will not be for some time. We can conclude that all that is needed is a comprehensive protocol calling for ending the use of fossil carbon. Similar measure were taken before and natural phenomena shows us that evolution has handled defection with reciprocity alone. The US may start already this year with taxing and capping carbon pollution because of global warming, money lost overseas and because China may beat them to it. Note: there is nothing about the mafia, deadly trade wars, crippling homeland competitiveness, feeling-good pious wishful thinking or the slightest concern about a potential world police state. -
RSVP at 18:14 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
"I've been very grateful to have the help of a number of moderators who ensure the comments all adhere to our Comments Policy. It's thanks to them that the quality of discussion... " ...however, there is a higher probability of getting a comment pruned if it isnt aligned in some way to the accepted school of thought.... and the website continues to call itself "Skeptical"Science.Response: Comments are pruned based on behaviour, not whether the comment adheres to a particular view. Lately, I've actually been deleting more comments that are pro-AGW but violate the "no ad hominem attacks" rule (calm down, people!). Regular visitors to this site have found when they post comments that stick to the Comments Policy (eg - learn to play nice), their comments are left online. This applies to both sides - many newcomers, both skeptic and pro-AGW, have had to adjust their usual online discussion style here. -
JRuss at 18:08 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
I have over a ton of hydrated CO2 stored in my garage. To prevent the hydrated CO2 from decomposing, pure CO2 was injected into the #10 cans in which it is contained. That is how I store my wheat. I highly recommend this form of storing excess CO2. -
mattnz at 17:06 PM on 13 May 2010A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper
Interesting to see that J. Salinger, one of the authors of the rebuttal piece is at the very same university department as Chris de Freitas (School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland). That has to make for some awkward moments in the lunch room...! -
Riccardo at 16:47 PM on 13 May 2010Estimating climate sensitivity from 3 million years ago
Berényi Péter, "That's not an answer." Indeed! The question was ill posed, mine was a request for clarification. Now I see that you were not interested in asking. Lunt et al. paper looks at the equilibrium climate sensitivity, i.e. at the long (thousands of years) time scale; already in the abstract they point out that this long time scale response is often negleted. You contrasted it with a sensitivity derived over an extremely short (months) time scale. Your comparison has not much value. Let me remind you that upon looking at progressively shorter time scales you'll "discover" the strongest and fastest negative feedback we know, thermal emission. And let's not forget that feedbacks are additive. -
Bern at 16:39 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
I'm also an adherent of the "if it works well, it's good enough" school... I've fallen into the trap of doing things the 'right' way before, sometimes it means you end up doing 10 times the amount of work to achieve the same result (a programmer friend of mine called it 'premature optimisation' - where you spend more time optimising the code than you could possibly save by optimising it). To be honest, I've never used the "Recent Comments" page. I like it! :-D One suggestion - the title for the page the comment is on is currently placed after the comment. Is it possible to have it positioned before it? That makes more sense to my engineer's brain, and would make it a bit easier to skip comments I've already read (by way of reading the entire page).Response: Tried the titles above the comment. Don't know if I like it better but then, I'm not an engineer :-) -
Bern at 16:31 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
@HumanityRules at 42: You're right, this may never come to pass. But while we may never quite get to a Tw of 35ºC, even getting a few degrees closer to that mark will result in enormous death rates in heat waves, particularly in the very young, the elderly, and the sick. You're also right, it suggests a passive role for humans. The question is, if we get a century down the track with 'Business as usual', will there in fact be anything we *can* do about it? Is there anything we can do about it now? Well, yes, we can drastically cut our rate of carbon emission, to give nature time to soak up the excess before it gets too hot. Perhaps in 50 years we'll have sufficient non-carbon sources of power & massive CO2 capture plants that do nothing but liquefy CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it deep underground. It might take that kind of effort, but it's going to be a job and a half to sequester a few hundred billion tonnes of CO2. -
RSVP at 16:22 PM on 13 May 2010Estimating climate sensitivity from 3 million years ago
doug_bostrom at 03:13 AM on 13 May, 2010 "RSVP, you've got to make a stronger effort here." For the sake of a possible "new" reader, and so that you know I understand what you are referring to, allow me to first clarify the context of your remark. Correct me if I am wrong..., I am somehow not able to see why the Earth's temperature should stabilize to where it "should" be if all radiative forcings were to be "pre-Industrial Revolution", etc. I am actually basing my question around the radiative forcing model, which assumes that only "changes" in forcing can cause "changes" in temperature. Kind of like an aircraft's bank angle... it doesnt right until steering corrects, etc. Another analogy would be voltage or drift in a circuit. You can have unwanted voltages lingering due to poor grounding. No extra energy is needed. So if intuition leads one to think that the Earth's temperatures would return to normal if all humans just disappeared all at once, it probably has to do with the fact that the amount of IR radiated is a function of temperature, and that that radiative model is flawed as it doesnt take into account this nonlinearity. -
quokka at 16:12 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Well, I like it the way it is. It renders very quickly, is reliable, decent layout and easy on the eyes. Something that half the sites on the web can't manage. If John finds CSS to be a drain on his time, I think thats sufficient reason to not use it. It is all to easy in software to place too much emphasis on technique and to forget the objective of getting the job done. As long as current technique is not leading to an unreasonable future maintenance burden it is often best to leave things the way they are.Response: I used to be a HTML code purist before the weight of the world broke my spirit. Now I use any hack solution that gets the job done. My earlier, idealistic self would despise my current self. -
Ed Seedhouse at 15:03 PM on 13 May 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: navigation, comments and Thai translation
Actually I think the links look ever so much better as text. However as someone who has worked designing web pages I must say that the markup of your site just isn't up to current standards. I come here for the content of course, and that's always the most important thing. But still tables for layout went out ten years ago and the site would be much better and easier to use if you'd convert to modern semantic coding methods. I am not trashing tables, which have their function for marking up properly tabular data. But, for example, menus are not tabular, a menu is a list of links, and should be marked up with one of the html list structures, normally the UL element. I hasten to add that this is far less important than having good content, which you do, and it makes up for many sins. Still the basic design elements of this site are not up to scratch for a recently designed site. Sorry to be so negative, but I think you deserve to hear the truth!Response: I actually did use CSS mark-up to layout SkS but am actually transitioning back to tables. I just find it too time consuming to get the results I need using pure CSS layout. It's not as 'pure' as tables but sometimes tables just get the job done quick and dirty when I don't have much time. -
HumanityRules at 15:00 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
35.Bern I'm not sure it's even a worst case scenario. I haven't read the paper. But what John describes is the possible upper limit for human life. There's no sense in John's post that these numbers will ever be reached or approached. In that sense it's an intellectual fancy derived from a curious mind. I still contend that does suggest a fairly passive role for human society. As though we would quickly approach extra-ordinary conditions and do nothing about it. -
Doug Bostrom at 13:36 PM on 13 May 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
Joe Blog, we need to be able to evaporate water at a certain rate in order to shed metabolic waste heat resulting from a certain level of activity. Our skin surface area remains the same even as our liberation of waste heat and the ambient wet bulb temperature may vary. Realizing that at a certain wet bulb temperature we can evaporate water and thus remove heat at a certain rate from this fixed surface area, it's then not hard to see that as wet bulb temperature increases, the rate at which we may shed heat decreases. Knowing that, we can predict what levels of physical activity are sustainable at a given wet bulb temperature; for a given activity level, if the wet bulb temperature is high enough we can't evaporate a sufficient mass of water rapidly enough to maintain a stable temperature. If the rate we're able to evaporate does not keep up with the waste heat we're trying to shed, our temperature climbs. Long story shorter, no surprise: as the wet bulb temperature increases, the rate of sustained physical activity we can support drops since we know our surface area is fixed even as the rate at which we can shed waste heat via evaporation drops. So to experience hyperthermia we need not be "submersed in 35c water." Moist, warm (high wet bulb temperature) air will do the job. This is not a matter of doubt or speculation, though it may seem counterintuitive to you. Also helps to bear in mind, it's not possible to drink enough chilled water to directly cool a human body performing sustained physical activity. We stay cool by sweating, not urinating.
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