[lug] Anyone else hate to get rid of old equipment?

[Davide Del Vento]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 19:15, David L. Anselmi <anselmi at anselmi.us> wrote:
> Davide Del Vento wrote:
>> I am a physicist and I work at NCAR so I must answer. The reality of
>> global warming and its cause is indeed certain. Pumping into the
>> atmosphere stuff that was in the ground increases the greenhouse
>> effect and thus Earth *average* temperature, period.
>
> So where can I go to see the evidence that convinces you that man-made CO2 is causing a continual
> increase in global temperature?

Let's start with the past and present status.
There is overwhelming evidence in thousand of publications. You can
even download CCSM, study its code and do your own simulation and see
by yourself.
Removing anything from the model (e.g. the human emissions, the
volcanoes, or whatever) will cause the model to be grossly
inconsistent with the observed data, within the errors (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errors_and_residuals_in_statistics and
reference within). That doesn't mean that there could be a mistake
sometimes, but the data is very clear and scientifically sound. The
ball does indeed fall, according to any gravity theory.
This is a fact and who doesn't "believe" it is "Flat-Earth-er"

I believe the problem with this topic is that everybody takes it
personal, uses it for political or ideological goals, so too many
people (from both sides) tends to spread FUD instead of using his/her
brain to "negotiate" with the other part. In fact there are three
aspects of the issue that are completely separated and that tends to
be wrongly commingled in all the discussions (including this one).

The first is what I stated before: global warming (or climate change,
if you prefer the word) is a fact, today. We know "how much" is a
fact, because the models tell us pretty well what the climate would
look like without human emissions (mostly burning fossil fuels, but
non only). It is different from what we measure today.

The second aspect is that it will surely get worse and that there may
be "unexpected" consequences. This is certain too (if the climate
changes, there will be changes in vegetation and wildlife), but less
clear. Is the beetle problem we have in Colorado related to climate
change? It might, but we are not sure. This is field of research
today. The climate aspects are the easiest, the difficulties are the
human-related inputs (will be e new technology that will reduce
emission? how much will the population increase? etc) and the
consequences (does the climate change really cause the beetle to
prosper and destroy the whole tree population??)

The third point is the most important, and the only one we should
argue about. Human presence change the environment, period.
Environmentalists that say otherwise lie, unless they seriously think
we should go back living in caves and let 80% of our offspring die of
starvation and illness. The point of the discussion is what we agree
is ok to "kill" or "destroy", and what is not. Is it ok to kill a cow
to feed my kids? Most people would say "yes". Is it ok to kill Jeffrey
Haemer to feed my kids? Most people would say  "no". Is it ok to kill
some trees to build a house? Etc. etc.
This should be the core of the discussion, at least in a geeky-smart
circle like ours. I understand that's easier for one side to claim the
there isn't any climate change at all (or that we don't know exactly
or whatever). And for the other side to claim that the changes will be
so big that we must stop our lifestyle yesterday, because we are going
to kill this or that species.

Of course it's impossible to find an happy medium that makes everybody
happy, but the discussion should aim at something like that: what is
ok to change, what is ok to destroy and what is not? Of course a big,
huge part of that is that there are too many people on the Earth, and
counting!

I won't say here what I think it's ok and what I think it's not,
because it's irrelevant in this context, but if we switch the
discussion this way, I'll be glad to participate (I wonder why we talk
more about biking and climate than linux, though).
Well, I have to say something about what I think it's ok and what I
think it's not: I promise that I won't kill Jeffrey to feed my kids,
relax :-)

> And what's the ozone hole up to these days?
> Huh, looks like little change in the past 15 years:

Uh? So what? What in the heck the ozone hole is doing in a climate
change discussion? I'm really sorry to hear something so stupid from a
guy so smart!
Putting ozone hole in a climate change discussion sounds like the
following in a Linux vs Windows discussion:

My friend has a Mac. She had her email phished. I received an email
from "her" asking for money because she was allegedly robbed while in
vacation oversea. Several other friends have Windows and that never
happened to them. Macs suck because they didn't protect my mac-user
friend. Macs are unix-like, and so is linux. Thus linux must sucks too
:-((

Bye,
;Dav