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 Post subject: The problem with numbers
PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 11:17 am 
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So, I'm reading a article on the nature.com web site about the "great pacific garbage patch"...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598- ... emarketing

Quote:
Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported.


So, between 45000 and 129000 metric tons of plastic inside an area of 1.6 million square km! Huge, right? but then I do the numbers...

... between 99208018 and 284396318 lbs of plastic... 617763 sq miles... so, somewhere between 160 and 460 lbs of plastic, average, per square mile.

I guess it sounds more impressive if you call it "great" or something, and that's only if you accept the results of their model. It was previously estimated to have as low as 10 to 29 lbs per sq mile, if previous reports are to be considered. Yeah, there will be higher concentrations in some areas and lower in others, but still.

These are the reasons folks are considered "skeptics"... 'cause to me, it's not a good thing, but it's been blown way out of proportion.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:46 pm 
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It's not bad to be skeptical about the extent of climate change. But still, there's a huge difference between, "It's not clear to what extent human actions are affecting the climate" and "Global warming as a concept is a total hoax created by the Chinese to corner the tungsten market."


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:17 pm 
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Tungsten is nothing more than giving a Jewish girl a rim job.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:25 pm 
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Xequecal wrote:
It's not bad to be skeptical about the extent of climate change. But still, there's a huge difference between, "It's not clear to what extent human actions are affecting the climate" and "Global warming as a concept is a total hoax created by the Chinese to corner the tungsten market."

Look on a US government or science website sometime for what percentage of the total yearly CO2 emissions is that's directly attributable to human sources. That is, if you can find it. I wouldn't have expected that information to be as difficult to find as it is, and the only links I've found in the past have been ones that didn't have links from anywhere, they were dead ends. You can find it on "skeptical" web sites though, but I don't like relying on any source that might bias the results.

Same thing though - it's a small number - a tiny fraction of the total, less than 3% from what I can find. Sure, warming might kill some folks, but to make any appreciable dent in that small of a number, you're gunna freeze more folks than will drown from a sea level rise of a couple of feet over a couple of hundred years.

I can't get all worked up after I realize that folks exaggerate and make mountains out of molehills. They lose all credibility.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:25 pm 
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Taskiss wrote:
So, I'm reading a article on the nature.com web site about the "great pacific garbage patch"...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598- ... emarketing

Quote:
Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported.


So, between 45000 and 129000 metric tons of plastic inside an area of 1.6 million square km! Huge, right? but then I do the numbers...

... between 99208018 and 284396318 lbs of plastic... 617763 sq miles... so, somewhere between 160 and 460 lbs of plastic, average, per square mile.

I guess it sounds more impressive if you call it "great" or something, and that's only if you accept the results of their model. It was previously estimated to have as low as 10 to 29 lbs per sq mile, if previous reports are to be considered. Yeah, there will be higher concentrations in some areas and lower in others, but still.

These are the reasons folks are considered "skeptics"... 'cause to me, it's not a good thing, but it's been blown way out of proportion.


The quantity of plastic is irrelevant. What is relevant is the impact it is having. A blanket statement like that based solely on what you think are small numbers doesn't mean anything. What if I said cancer cells were irrelevant because they are so small? The point is you need to educate yourself about the impact this is having. It's a huge problem, and getting much worse.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/

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A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 3:44 pm 
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Arathain Kelvar wrote:
Taskiss wrote:
So, I'm reading a article on the nature.com web site about the "great pacific garbage patch"...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598- ... emarketing

Quote:
Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported.


So, between 45000 and 129000 metric tons of plastic inside an area of 1.6 million square km! Huge, right? but then I do the numbers...

... between 99208018 and 284396318 lbs of plastic... 617763 sq miles... so, somewhere between 160 and 460 lbs of plastic, average, per square mile.

I guess it sounds more impressive if you call it "great" or something, and that's only if you accept the results of their model. It was previously estimated to have as low as 10 to 29 lbs per sq mile, if previous reports are to be considered. Yeah, there will be higher concentrations in some areas and lower in others, but still.

These are the reasons folks are considered "skeptics"... 'cause to me, it's not a good thing, but it's been blown way out of proportion.


The quantity of plastic is irrelevant. What is relevant is the impact it is having. A blanket statement like that based solely on what you think are small numbers doesn't mean anything. What if I said cancer cells were irrelevant because they are so small? The point is you need to educate yourself about the impact this is having. It's a huge problem, and getting much worse.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/

Quote:
A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.

What do you read as the scope of the impact from the info at that link? I see more "big numbers" that collapse into tiny numbers when the totals are considered in respect to the areas affected.

I'm all for conservation. I was reading the nature web site out of concern for this issue, if I didn't care I wouldn't have. I just see wild claims that don't live up to the expectation they generate when they're examined.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:04 pm 
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Taskiss wrote:
What do you read as the scope of the impact from the info at that link? I see more "big numbers" that collapse into tiny numbers when the totals are considered in respect to the areas affected.

I'm all for conservation. I was reading the nature web site out of concern for this issue, if I didn't care I wouldn't have. I just see wild claims that don't live up to the expectation they generate when they're examined.


There's a crap ton of research on the impacts of plastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Yes, they are big numbers, because we are talking about global inputs. Again, if you can't wrap your head around the big numbers, or more accurately, the very small numbers associated with plastic concentrations per volume of ocean water, then just focus on the impacts like I said. Look at the research, there's a ton out there. Don't focus on any one link if you're really interested.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:48 am 
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Taskiss wrote:
Same thing though - it's a small number - a tiny fraction of the total, less than 3% from what I can find....I can't get all worked up after I realize that folks exaggerate and make mountains out of molehills. They lose all credibility.

Hm, that's a good point. Just to be sure, though, let's see if that "it's a small number so no big deal" thing really works as a general principle. How about we try changing 3% of human DNA as a test. As you say, 3% is just a tiny fraction of the total, so I'm sure it'll be....

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:28 am 
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or for example: .5 mg is the very high end of a recreational dose of LSD. (Enough to cause significant hallucinations, etc) The average mass of a human is 75 kg.

That less than 0.0000007% of the mass of a human. And I'm fairly certain it would blow your mind. (though not from personal experience)

Just because something has a small mass doesn't mean it can't have a massive impact.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 10:32 am 
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Taskiss wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
It's not bad to be skeptical about the extent of climate change. But still, there's a huge difference between, "It's not clear to what extent human actions are affecting the climate" and "Global warming as a concept is a total hoax created by the Chinese to corner the tungsten market."

Look on a US government or science website sometime for what percentage of the total yearly CO2 emissions is that's directly attributable to human sources. That is, if you can find it. I wouldn't have expected that information to be as difficult to find as it is, and the only links I've found in the past have been ones that didn't have links from anywhere, they were dead ends. You can find it on "skeptical" web sites though, but I don't like relying on any source that might bias the results.

Same thing though - it's a small number - a tiny fraction of the total, less than 3% from what I can find. Sure, warming might kill some folks, but to make any appreciable dent in that small of a number, you're gunna freeze more folks than will drown from a sea level rise of a couple of feet over a couple of hundred years.

I can't get all worked up after I realize that folks exaggerate and make mountains out of molehills. They lose all credibility.

Could it be that your Lord and Master Donald Trump's lackies have purged nearly all the climate and human influence data from Gov't websites?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/clim ... hange.html
https://envirodatagov.org/website-monitoring/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/arti ... hive-data/
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... o-from-epa
https://futurism.com/the-epa-just-remov ... e-website/


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:31 pm 
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"Lord and Master"

After all these years you're still a slimey piece of ****.

Never change.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:05 pm 
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...says the man who proudly wears an "*******" badge as his avatar. But hey, if you're having an issue coming up with ... you know.. facts... or logic... or even common sense to use, I'm sure the ad hominim attack will get the job done.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:39 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
) Just because something has a small mass doesn't mean it can't have a massive impact.

I bet you say that to all the ladies...

I mean, come on, why do you make me do this?

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:06 am 
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ROTFL


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:48 am 
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TheRiov wrote:


This is no difference than the CDC not being allowed to engage in gun control advocacy. Such data is there for actual science, not for non-scientists to scream at people they disagree with over the internet about "hating science" or a "war on science" or what the **** ever. Once you people learn that reality does not have a leftist bias and regulatory agencies are forbidden to, you can have your toys back.

Not before.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:33 am 
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Taskiss wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
It's not bad to be skeptical about the extent of climate change. But still, there's a huge difference between, "It's not clear to what extent human actions are affecting the climate" and "Global warming as a concept is a total hoax created by the Chinese to corner the tungsten market."

Look on a US government or science website sometime for what percentage of the total yearly CO2 emissions is that's directly attributable to human sources. That is, if you can find it. I wouldn't have expected that information to be as difficult to find as it is, and the only links I've found in the past have been ones that didn't have links from anywhere, they were dead ends. You can find it on "skeptical" web sites though, but I don't like relying on any source that might bias the results.

Same thing though - it's a small number - a tiny fraction of the total, less than 3% from what I can find. Sure, warming might kill some folks, but to make any appreciable dent in that small of a number, you're gunna freeze more folks than will drown from a sea level rise of a couple of feet over a couple of hundred years.

I can't get all worked up after I realize that folks exaggerate and make mountains out of molehills. They lose all credibility.


Global warming is going to kill a lot of people. You see, there's merit to the argument that we're actually in a natural warming cycle and humans are having less of an impact on the warming than is claimed, but the Earth is definitely warming. It's going to have catastrophic consequences in poor equatorial regions.

Most of the arable land in Central America, for example, is only arable because stretches of rainforest shield this land from El Nino effects that cause drought. Ever more severe El Nino events caused by global warming are rapidly destroying this forest shield, and once this is gone it's going to turn the land that currently feeds 200 million people into desert.

Sub-Saharan Africa is in even worse shape. This area of the world already only produces enough food to feed half its current population, and is entirely dependent on Western food donations for the other half. Despite this, the fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is a ridiculous 5.1, meaning the population is going to nearly triple in the next forty years. Every year, global warming causes the Sahara to expand, reducing the available arable land and compounding their problems. If Europe decides to take Poland or Hungary's nationalist approach and/or the US elects someone even more nationalist than Trump and food aid stops, we're looking at a famine with a nine-figure death toll.

Honestly, I think there's merit in the theory that conservatives are pre-emptively pushing "global warming is a hoax" in order to head off calls to provide assistance to equatorial countries. This is because they know from experience that "it's not our problem" doesn't sell well politically. If global warming is perceived to be "our fault," people will demand that we pay to fix these problems and they want to cut that off before it can even begin.


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:01 am 
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Diamondeye wrote:
TheRiov wrote:


This is no difference than the CDC not being allowed to engage in gun control advocacy. Such data is there for actual science, not for non-scientists to scream at people they disagree with over the internet about "hating science" or a "war on science" or what the **** ever. Once you people learn that reality does not have a leftist bias and regulatory agencies are forbidden to, you can have your toys back.

Not before.

This might be the stupidest Most intellectually dishonest thing you've ever posted. I call Bullshit. This is about hiding a truth that Conservatives are trying to pretend doesnt exist. The public is not served by hiding scientific, peer reviewed data and you goddamn know it. You just dont like that the facts contradict your agenda. Purging data from public sources means that other scholarly articles can't use that data as a starting point. It hampers the production of new science. And it prevents other policy makers from utilizing the data.


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 4:48 pm 
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TheRiov wrote:
This might be the stupidest Most intellectually dishonest thing you've ever posted. I call Bullshit. This is about hiding a truth that Conservatives are trying to pretend doesnt exist. The public is not served by hiding scientific, peer reviewed data and you goddamn know it. You just dont like that the facts contradict your agenda. Purging data from public sources means that other scholarly articles can't use that data as a starting point. It hampers the production of new science. And it prevents other policy makers from utilizing the data.


The EPA isn't about science.

And the National Review, while by its own admission is conservative, is populated by credible writers and is an entirely reliable source, so don't even start with that horseshit. With the exception of the Hill, the sources you cited are leftist outlets and entirely non-credible on such a sacred cow as climate change.

You are just spewing the usual nonsense lines about people "not liking data that doesn't support their conclusions." No. What I don't like is activists masquerading as government employees and scientists feeding data to the public and trying to stymie any attempt to actually evaluate it.

Quote:
But Pruitt hasn’t done anything to discourage peer review. In fact, he’s done the opposite: He has called for the use of more independent experts to review the EPA’s research and has just announced that the agency would rely only on studies for which data are available to be shared.

Quote:
Pruitt’s critics have also excoriated him for insisting that the EPA’s advisory boards consist of independent scientists, ending the practice of including researchers who receive grants from the agency — exactly the sort of conflict of interest that progressives object to when researchers receive money from private industry. He has also proposed an analysis of climate change using a “red-team/blue-team” exercise, an innovative technique that has been used to draw up plans at the Defense Department and the CIA and by private industry for industrial operations and projects such as designing spacecraft. A group of outside experts, the red team, is brought in to critique the work of the in-house blue team, which then responds, and the teams keep going back and forth, under the supervision of a moderator. It’s an enhanced form of peer review, forcing researchers and bureaucrats to defend or reconsider their ideas, and ideally leading to sounder conclusions and better plans. A version of this exercise has already been used to bolster the case for man-made global warming, as noted by Joseph Majkut of the Niskanen Institute.


Just because the EPA put data on its website does not mean that data was either credible or responsible or obtained by anything like legitimate scientific investigation. Just because data is on the EPA website does not make that data either credible or responsible to release. Like the DOJ civil rights division, it attracts a certain kind of activist (both with its mission and the attractive government salary; it's quite the racket) and it is an entirely untrustworthy agency, up there with the IRS in terms of its history of dishonesty.

But relly, the problem here is you and your lectures about science. You don't know **** from shinola about science. It's a word you throw at people in your hubristic assumption that your politics make you both better informed and more morally virtuous than others. To be fair, you are far from the only one; being too lazy to learn anything beyond what YouTube and Wikipedia teach and then sanctimoniously preaching about "Science" has been a common internet passtime for at least a decade now.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:04 pm 
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Diamondeye wrote:
TheRiov wrote:
This might be the stupidest Most intellectually dishonest thing you've ever posted. I call Bullshit. This is about hiding a truth that Conservatives are trying to pretend doesnt exist. The public is not served by hiding scientific, peer reviewed data and you goddamn know it. You just dont like that the facts contradict your agenda. Purging data from public sources means that other scholarly articles can't use that data as a starting point. It hampers the production of new science. And it prevents other policy makers from utilizing the data.


The EPA isn't about science.

And the National Review, while by its own admission is conservative, is populated by credible writers and is an entirely reliable source, so don't even start with that horseshit. With the exception of the Hill, the sources you cited are leftist outlets and entirely non-credible on such a sacred cow as climate change.


Well lets see: The Hill, the NYT and PBS all come out slightly left of center but hardly the 'leftist outlet' you claim.
Futurism is showing up not having a left/right spin, just pro-science and is deemed credible.
The National Review on the other hand is far-right bias. I suppose if you could find an article refuting the fact that the data was purged (lets be clear, I dont think such an article exists.


(source: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com, https://www.allsides.com/, )

But I'm not even using these sources for their spin, just the fact that the data is being removed. I guess you could try to lie to yourself and claim its because the science is bad.

In fact, its becoming clear that the Right actively wants the United States population to become less informed.

One party attempts to defund schools every chance they get.
One party supports banning some topics from the classroom.
One party is making it harder for people to go to college.
Polls show that after watching the primary conservative outlet, people are LESS informed about the world.

Hell, polls are starting to show that increasingly, republicans think that higher education is BAD for America. (I can understand why, the more highly educated a person is, the less likely they are to vote republican (http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/ ... filiation/)


Let me be clear, I'm not saying voting Republican makes you stupid or that only stupid people vote Republican. What I am saying is that the leadership of the GOP knows where their base is, and planning for the future, wants to remain in power. They therefor would prefer it if the people who vote, "the masses" were less educated, more religious, because that demographic votes their way.


I mean realistically, BOTH sides would prefer an electorate that was easily manipulated by their particular narrative if it means they can remain in power.


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You are just spewing the usual nonsense lines about people "not liking data that doesn't support their conclusions." No. What I don't like is activists masquerading as government employees and scientists feeding data to the public and trying to stymie any attempt to actually evaluate it.


You know, I think you've repeated this lie often enough you actually believe it yourself. But the fact of the matter is that people go through grad school, spend decades on their education for what are typically only middle-class jobs not because they're pushing an agenda, but because they're passionate about the science. You cannot survive in science if you're unwilling to question and be questioned. You seem to think that graduate schools are churning out long haired hippies to push a political agenda. Rather the reverse is true: People who study the science, who understand the science, come to conclusions. Did they come in with a bias? Surely. That doesn't mean its easy to hang on to that bias in the face of mountains of data. Real science (the thing you STILL fail to understand) demands that when the data shows something other than your beliefs, you must discard those beliefs.



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Quote:
But Pruitt hasn’t done anything to discourage peer review. In fact, he’s done the opposite: He has called for the use of more independent experts to review the EPA’s research and has just announced that the agency would rely only on studies for which data are available to be shared.

Quote:
Pruitt’s critics have also excoriated him for insisting that the EPA’s advisory boards consist of independent scientists, ending the practice of including researchers who receive grants from the agency — exactly the sort of conflict of interest that progressives object to when researchers receive money from private industry.


Receiving a grant does NOT necessarily make you biased. Go'vt grants contain no stipulations about what the research must show; the research methodology itself must bear up to scrutiny. The problem is that these "independent" researchers that Pruitt claims to be hiring are nearly always shills for gas companies, etc--- people who ARE biased. The Government still gets money from taxes regardless of what the data shows. The overall impact of any ten studies has little to do with the funding the agency gets and more to do with party in power. The people doing the research have no real stake in a conclusion one way or another. Even negative results are results. A hypothesis proven false is good science.

On the other hand oil and gas companies profit margins, their ability to drill, burn, pollute are 1000% more biasing than the government funding, butseem incapable of understanding this basic human motivator; greed. There are billions of dollars out there for corporate funded scientists and the profitability of commercial research vastly exceeds academic and government research. Follow the goddamn money



Quote:
He has also proposed an analysis of climate change using a “red-team/blue-team” exercise, an innovative technique that has been used to draw up plans at the Defense Department and the CIA and by private industry for industrial operations and projects such as designing spacecraft. A group of outside experts, the red team, is brought in to critique the work of the in-house blue team, which then responds, and the teams keep going back and forth, under the supervision of a moderator. It’s an enhanced form of peer review, forcing researchers and bureaucrats to defend or reconsider their ideas, and ideally leading to sounder conclusions and better plans. A version of this exercise has already been used to bolster the case for man-made global warming, as noted by Joseph Majkut of the Niskanen Institute.


This equal time approach is the same idiocy that leads to 'intelligent design' nonsense and presuming there is some merit to flat earth theories. You research where the data takes you, not down every path you wish it would go and then try to find confirmation of it.

Quote:
Just because the EPA put data on its website does not mean that data was either credible or responsible or obtained by anything like legitimate scientific investigation. Just because data is on the EPA website does not make that data either credible or responsible to release. Like the DOJ civil rights division, it attracts a certain kind of activist (both with its mission and the attractive government salary; it's quite the racket) and it is an entirely untrustworthy agency, up there with the IRS in terms of its history of dishonesty.


You're right. Of course anyone can put data up there. But the stuff being purged was solid research; they just didnt like the results.

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But relly, the problem here is you and your lectures about science. You don't know **** from shinola about science. It's a word you throw at people in your hubristic assumption that your politics make you both better informed and more morally virtuous than others. To be fair, you are far from the only one; being too lazy to learn anything beyond what YouTube and Wikipedia teach and then sanctimoniously preaching about "Science" has been a common internet passtime for at least a decade now.


Yeah I guess undergrad studies in astrophysics/physics and mathematics, research theses I helped gather data for, the summer internships, the two years I spent in a research lab don't mean anything. I was only raised by researchers, married a researcher, etc. But hey, I don't know anything about science!


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 18, 2018 11:55 am 
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TheRiov wrote:
or for example: .5 mg is the very high end of a recreational dose of LSD. (Enough to cause significant hallucinations, etc) The average mass of a human is 75 kg.

That less than 0.0000007% of the mass of a human. And I'm fairly certain it would blow your mind. (though not from personal experience)

Just because something has a small mass doesn't mean it can't have a massive impact.


"The dose makes the poison." - Paracelsus (paraphrased)

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 7:47 am 
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Serienya wrote:
"The dose makes the poison." - Paracelsus (paraphrased)

I've tried to find other examples where an additional 4% of a naturally occuring chemical in an environment was touted as the cause of the entirity of effects of that chemical and I came up with nothing... so when folks claim that humans are responsible for global weather effects because they generate an additional 4% of the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere I tend to be skeptical.

To put it terms some folks can understand, if I dropped .5 mg of LSD and someone else added .02 mg to that total, I can hardly blame them for the effects the total causes, unless of course I was blaming others for things they truly weren't responsible for because I had an agenda. Then it becomes understandable. And when I see that folks are factoring the number of deaths the weather effects will be responsible for and neglect to factor the deaths from cutting energy usage, I'm double skeptical. If someone flips a coin and only shows me one side it makes me believe there's something on the other side that might indicate I'm being scammed.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:33 am 
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You're mixing arguments here. If we're talking about plastics:

Plastics are really not naturally occurring in any quantity; they're occasionally the result of biologic processes, but those are few and far between. The concentration of plastics in these 'garbage islands' is orders of magnitude higher than natural, and on top of that not all plastics are the same; generally those that can be produced by biologic processes can be broken down by biologic processes.

https://psmag.com/environment/now-weve- ... tion-67345

The difference between nuclear decay and the critical mass for a nuclear explosion for example is a function of density/mass. A percent here or there will definitely make all the difference in the world. No pun intended.



But if we're talking about atmospheric gasses (where I guess you got your 4% increase in CO2?)then you're talking about equilibrium situations (Like Earth's atmosphere) there are lots of examples but This might be an occasion where working with the 'real' thing is easier than using comparison.

Without humans or outside influences, the Earth settles into equilibrium. The rate we radiate away heat balances out with the amount of heat we absorb.
Change the amount of heat absorbed and the temperature rises. Eventually the system stabilizes again as the Earth begins to radiate away more heat too; but now the equilibrium point is at a higher temperature.

Let me use some pretty sloppy math for a minute here, but a 4% increase in temperature is the difference between 65 degrees F and 84 degree F. (now a 4% change in CO2 levels won't result in a 4% difference in temperature, but you have to understand the math scientists are using. 32F ->64F is not a 100% change in temperature.)


Back to Equilibrium :The same is true for the amount of CO2 produced. As CO2 levels rise, you would expect that something would 'step in' to take advantage of increased CO2 levels. If atmospheric CO2 levels raise by 4%, humans themselves can obviously live with that much variance in CO2 (otherwise you'd suffocate after just a couple of breaths under the covers) but it does mean that the planet absorbs more overall heat. Temperatures rise. Now, Plant growth (which consumes CO2) might increase because of a plentiful atmospheric source..... except that we are actually reducing the amount of green space on the planet. (and I am fairly certain that CO2 availability is the bottleneck for plant growth; water and soil nutrients are)

So what if we do produce 4% more CO2 in the atmosphere. That's a small change right? The planet will survive.

Yes the planet will survive. Nothing here is planet ending. But humans have evolved to live in a fairly narrow range of conditions. Chemical processes for life exist in a fairly narrow range. (Think about your body temperature. 98.6 F is human average. Thats 310.2 K. A Fever that causes brain damage is around 106F-- 314.3K. Thats a difference of 1.3%.

The 'small percentages dont matter' argument is demonstrably false.



I'm STILL baffled why you think scientists have an agenda. The science goes on regardless of the results of their study. Unless you are actually receiving patent money, or are shilling for a corporation, or selling sensational books, you don't make money as a scientist; if that was their motivating factor they would be in very different fields. No one spends 10 years on a PhD just to make 75k a year (100k if you're in a highly specialized and technical field like Engineering or Physics) If money is your motivating factor, you do something else.
No one gets up in the morning and says "I'm going to participate in a global conspiracy to trick the public into thinking we're overproducing chemicals in the hopes I'll get more grant money" -- Human beings don't think like that.

Yet you're somehow convinced that huge swaths, in fact 98% of all scientists in the discipline are involved in this conspiracy, and that the other 2% are being silenced or somehow stifled from coming forward, and that its ONLY the protection of the fossil fuel industry that allows them to speak the truth.

Is that REALLY easier to believe, than to believe that we actually are having this impact (which is predicted by the science) and that the naysayers are the ones being paid (who have a direct financial stake in doing so) to discount the accounts?


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 11:05 am 
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TheRiov wrote:
You're mixing arguments here. If we're talking about plastics:
Well, since plastics are fairly inert and have little or no effect on the chemical makeup of pretty much anything in relationship to the volumes we're talking about, and LSD pretty much does the opposite, the moving target you're presenting is kinda hard to hit. I aimed at your LSD target as the nearest equivalence to my observations on CO2 loading in the atmosphere 'cause it's the closest to being relevant to anything I've talked about - there's no info that I can find on the strict impact of VOCs and/or DOCs in the oceans and inhabitants therein, and what I do find claims that the effects are "largely unknown".

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467- ... rigin=ppub

And, my biggest clue that there's more to the "global warming" story comes from a lack of attention alternative energy sources are getting. Figure the population will about double in the next 100 years, what will carbon credits benefit? What will insignificant reductions in CO2 emissions effect? Honestly, nuclear energy the only known sustainable energy source that seems to address the future requirements that I've seen proposed, and I'm even more of a fan of hydrogen power so my observations don't align with my desired solution. I'm not letting wishful thinking cloud my judgement. Magnetic confinement fusion research is the solution and it's getting little to no $$$ and global warming studies funding is in the billions.

As long as the real solution - viable alternative energy sources - gets less attention from governments than wealth redistribution, I'm going to remain skeptical that a real solution is being considered, so I gotta figure that the problem isn't as big as it is being claimed.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:56 pm 
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Taskiss wrote:
TheRiov wrote:
You're mixing arguments here. If we're talking about plastics:
Well, since plastics are fairly inert and have little or no effect on the chemical makeup of pretty much anything in relationship to the volumes we're talking about, and LSD pretty much does the opposite, the moving target you're presenting is kinda hard to hit. I aimed at your LSD target as the nearest equivalence to my observations on CO2 loading in the atmosphere 'cause it's the closest to being relevant to anything I've talked about - there's no info that I can find on the strict impact of VOCs and/or DOCs in the oceans and inhabitants therein, and what I do find claims that the effects are "largely unknown".

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467- ... rigin=ppub

I'm not arguing about what the effect of plastics is here. The only argument I'm making is that you can't just claim "well its a small % so we can ignore it"

Quote:
And, my biggest clue that there's more to the "global warming" story comes from a lack of attention alternative energy sources are getting.

Uh. What????? I guess if all you listen to is Fox news, then yes, you might find that articles on alternative energy don't come up much. I wasn't able to find a good source but the news sources I read regularly talk about alternative energy sources, the funding of such, etc. (in fact, far more than HIGCC gets attention) But lets face it, a 5% increase in efficiency in x solar cell vs y solar cell isnt generally newsworthy.


Quote:
Figure the population will about double in the next 100 years, what will carbon credits benefit? What will insignificant reductions in CO2 emissions effect? Honestly, nuclear energy the only known sustainable energy source that seems to address the future requirements that I've seen proposed, and I'm even more of a fan of hydrogen power so my observations don't align with my desired solution. I'm not letting wishful thinking cloud my judgement. Magnetic confinement fusion research is the solution and it's getting little to no $$$ and global warming studies funding is in the billions.


While I question your ability to determine what the future of fusion research is (not that I necessarily disagree, but I'm not qualified to make this call, and this is my field of study. My advisor didn't even know, (granted his area of study is relativity, not fusion). But as of 2012, the US alone had spent 24 billion on fusion. I'm not even sure if that's just the Government spending on it in terms of grants. I know some private companies, specifically Lockheed Martin have been dumping money into the research. (http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19 ... on-reactor)

There are others who say that the other technologies work NOW (Solar, Wind, Hydro, etc) so why not invest in them instead of pie-in-the-sky projects. Wind and Solar account for more than 10% of US electric generation (https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/ren ... ble-energy) China has committed to spending more than 360 Billion on renewable energies by 2020. And in fact, the cost-per-energy-unit for these technologies is going way down. (https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... -bad-sign/)

Quote:
As long as the real solution - viable alternative energy sources - gets less attention from governments than wealth redistribution, I'm going to remain skeptical that a real solution is being considered, so I gotta figure that the problem isn't as big as it is being claimed.

Your argument is how much government spends? The same politicians that get 125 million/year being lobbied by the O&G industry ?
But you will note that we actually invest a fair amount on renewable
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca ... so-costly/) I'm not sure the fact that you didn't notice that we do means that its not a priority.


Last edited by TheRiov on Thu Apr 19, 2018 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:54 pm 
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Microbeads and other small particles of plastic are in most bodies of water and bioaccumulate when mistaken for food by shellfish and fish. They can also contain hazardous chemicals, either from the start or picked up when they're in the water (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34351).

Given that they're in our food chain, getting a handle on it is important.

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